Covid-19 and Class Struggle in Aerospace

During Boeing Production Suspension, Shelter-In-Place: Workers Ponder Actions, Racism, Xenophobia

PUGET SOUND (US), April 7— “Does Boeing management really want us to go back to work on April 8? That sounds crazy to me,” texted a comrade’s co-worker. Similar sentiments were expressed in two text groups we set up at the beginning of the production suspension that idled 70,000 workers.

The comrade answered, “This is not about crazy. It’s about Boeing’s priority, to keep up with the competition. That’s the logical consequence of capitalism’s profit-driven production.

“If they force us back, we should be prepared to shut it down!” chimed in another machinist.

Widespread reactions like this forced the company to reconsider its plans. Rapidly deteriorating conditions virtually stopped delivery of parts and subassemblies from the supply chain. Officially, more than 150 Boeing workers have contracted COVID-19. The real numbers are likely 5 to 10 times higher.

But we should have no illusions that Boeing will suspend production until it is safe. The executives postponed suspending production until the deaths started to mount up. Even now, they are pushing for the resumption of production sooner rather than later.

Boeing friends and Red Flag distributers are circulating (via text groups and social media) reports on private meetings of top CEOs (including Boeing CEO Calhoun), billionaire financial speculators and the federal government. They “fear a lack of urgency on the part of many to go back to work.” “Some are willing to risk some horrors to avoid others,” Bloomberg reports.

As of Wednesday, April 8, 30,000 Puget Sound factory workers will join the tens of millions newly unemployed in the U.S. alone. The horrors these capitalists are willing to risk always falls on the backs of the world’s working class.

Our friends are among those bombarding the union. Many are demanding that the company spend at least some of the $100 billion government stimulus on us workers.

But the union is playing its usual social fascist role. They try to make workers feel impotent, rather than expand the struggle to mobilize the vast power of the working class for communist revolution.

Boeing Workers Must Take on Racism, Xenophobia to Expand Struggle

In one Boeing text group, a Red Flag distributer highlighted the racist disparity of US deaths from COVID-19.

“Here we go again. Twice the proportion of deaths among blacks in Louisiana. Detroit, Chicago, Georgia, Mississippi,” he wrote. “We [the working class] are in this fight together and what effects one affects the other, so WAKE THE HELL UP.”

He was particularly concerned about the devastation coronavirus will cause in Africa. In fact, the whole group of Black, White and Asian Boeing workers were concerned.

Another text group discussed the caravan demonstration at the Tacoma immigration prison (within 30 minutes of the plant). Over 300 detainees were on a hunger strike to protest the massive spread of the disease.

The caravan rolled out to support these hunger strikers. If Boeing workers walked out to join the caravan, it would send shock waves throughout the world.

“It’s a weird world,” texted more than one in both groups when they heard what was going on in the Tacoma detention center.

More accurately, it’s a capitalist world. A world in which social distancing is impossible for prisoners (mostly Black and Latinx), immigrant detainees and factory and farm workers. A world that puts our whole class, the working class, in jeopardy in the never-ending competition for commercial, military and political dominance amongst various national ruling classes.

No matter what actions we take—strikes, walkouts, confrontations in the plants, caravans—we must be clear about our goal. The “craziness” of capitalism—and the resulting murder of our class brothers and sisters—can only be ended with communist revolution. Mobilizing the masses for communism must always be our aim.

The Crazy Logic of Capitalism

Our Boeing friends tell us the bosses’ response to COVID-19 is illogical.

In the US they knew in January that it was coming but they did nothing. They didn’t ramp up production of masks or PPE and didn’t implement social isolation. Even now, there is no crash program to do so. In France, the government got hold of a supply of masks – and gave them, not to the health service, but to Airbus (!) so it could resume production. In the US, GE, which actually makes ventilators in normal times, will not convert any of its jet engine facilities to ventilator production.

It looks like a combination of stupidity and incompetence with a bit of greed and downright insanity mixed in. But this is a misunderstanding; the bosses’ response has its own logic.

It’s the logic of competition. Even before COVID-19, the sharpening crisis of overproduction had raised competition between the US, China, and Europe to a fever pitch. Airbus was surging ahead. The MAX fiasco crippled Boeing. China was preparing to enter the shrinking plane market with its own airliner.

The coronavirus outbreak forced the Chinese bosses to divert a lot of capital to fighting it. They had to temporarily shut down production. This gave Europe and the US a break, but it did not last long. Now the US and Europe risk falling behind while they try to get a grip on the pandemic. To save lives, they have to spend billions on masks, hospitals, ventilators, etc. and they have to lose billions – maybe trillions – shutting down large parts of their industry.

There are increasing signs that they feel they can’t do this (if they want to stay competitive). Their media is reporting calls to end what the French call “confinement” and send everyone back to work. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of lives could be lost.

One reporter put it this way: if we end confinement too soon, we risk a health catastrophe; if we end it too late, we risk an economic catastrophe. Given a choice, which do you think our psychopathic rulers will go for?

For the moment they’ve failed to make aerospace workers “die for the Dow.” During the last two weeks of suspended production, their calls to shut down the factory have skyrocketed.

In communism, there will be no corporations, banks or stock markets to protect. No economic competition to get in our way. No more risking our lives to make planes that go directly to the parking lot after they get out the factory door.

Instead, the immense power of communist masses will be devoted to harnessing the forces of production necessary to make masks, tests, ventilators and whatever else we need to defeat this pandemic.

Working class logic demands a communist revolution. So, join the ICWP now to prepare the way.

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