Workers are Fighters, Not Victims — Communism Will Put an End to Bosses Who Treat Us Like Guinea Pigs
PUGET SOUND, WASHINGTON (US)—Twenty-seven thousand Boeing workers were ordered back to work the week of April 20-27. We can dismiss the company propaganda about how their first priority is our safety. Boeing executives continue to flout even the inadequate recommendations of the official medical advisory groups.
Corporate executives cite the law to justify risking our lives and the lives of those we interact with in the community. Federal and state laws say Boeing can continue “essential production.”
A worker asked her boss what is essential. The boss answered, “Anything we say is essential is essential.”
In what circle of hell is making planes essential when 62% of all Boeing jets are grounded, about 7040 aircraft?
Desperate airlines have already requested a cascade of jet delivery deferrals. Hundreds of MAX orders have been canceled.
Usually, Boeing delivers over 80 planes a month. In March, they “delivered” a total of 12 widebodies. Ten of those are now sitting in the Everett plant’s parking lot. The few that are assigned to customers may never get picked up.
Another friend summed up the situation when he heard that Boeing was forcing us back to work. “To do what?” he questioned with astonishment.
It’s certain there will be thousands of layoffs. The only question is how many tens of thousands. And how many millions of subcontractor workers, a disproportionate number of whom are black and Latinx?
This circle of hell is called capitalism. The premature resumption of production is based, in part, on a desperate attempt to get the fatally flawed 737 MAX back in the air. The company needs us to prepare the Renton factory for production, even before the FAA clears the plane to fly.
In addition, a small number of planes are commercial adaptations used by the military. About 2,000 workers involved in their production started working last week, along with hundreds assigned to maintain the growing number of commercial jets sitting in company parking lots.
International capitalist competition drives this reckless rush to production. China is scheduled to start commercial production of its competing jet next year. Even the hobbled Airbus is in a better position to face the new competition.
The same grim scenario is playing out among 2.6 million European auto workers. Auto bosses have ordered their assembly lines to start rolling. They have openly admitted this is an experiment—with the autoworkers as guinea pigs. Meanwhile, sales have dropped 85 percent. And so it goes everywhere in this capitalist world.
Capitalist Science Serves the Bosses
To Boeing, beating the competition and securing its profits is essential. But that rationale might not fly with most workers. In order to win over workers, the company has turned, in part, to capitalist science.
During the 4-week shut down, many of us got our information about the company plans from a specially designed website. The website featured pages upon pages praising the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
We noticed the CDC started to change its guidelines. Many in our text groups and those who came over to pick up masks saw the handwriting on the wall. Self-quarantine and completed tests for Covid-19 were waived. These changes (and others) were shaped to accommodate the capitalists’ need to preserve their shaky position in inter-imperialist competition.
When it was announced that the federal government was forming a new coronavirus task force consisting of top financial and business executives (including Boeing CEO Calhoun), we were certain. Safety—and maybe our very lives—was being sacrificed on the altar of profits and competition.
The only way out of this circle of hell is with communist revolution. More workers are seeing this. Red Flag is filled with their stories. And this is happening even as our comrades are physically separated from their co-workers because of the pandemic.
Collective communist production centers will make whatever is needed, especially during an emergency. We will no longer be hamstrung by the need to protect profits and beat the competition. Communism will unleash the most powerful force on earth: billions of workers dedicated to building a communist society. Join the ICWP to hasten the day.
Transit Worker: “Count on Me—I don’t see any other way out of this situation”
LOS ANGELES, USA, April 20 — Nationwide, more than seventy public transportation workers have died from the coronavirus. Hundreds more have been infected
In early April, bus drivers in Detroit carried out a successful work stoppage demanding protective masks and other safety equipment.
There is a lot of anger against the bosses and the union for the belated way they are “protecting” these so-called “essential” workers to transport those who are still working or going to hospitals.
For capitalists, ALL workers are expendable. Many have been able to see that aspect more clearly. But the most important thing is that many have been able to see more clearly the need to build a new communist society based on the well-being of ALL workers and not any longer on the bosses’ profits.
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, workers who are members and friends of ICWP at the MTA (public transit) in Los Angeles were meeting weekly and organizing study groups in a couple of divisions (shops).
Recently we have recruited new friends to the meetings that we sometimes have outside the workplace, to take advantage of the presence of other members and their families.
For a few days, on-the-job meetings were interrupted because most left work with permission to help care for their children or adult relatives. We stayed in communication by phone. But this week some have started to return, and we are planning the meetings at work.
Meanwhile, those who were still working maintained an ideological struggle with other workers, with whom a political relationship already existed. The responses have been very positive, and it seems that the Party is solidifying even more.
A mechanic who reads Red Flag told us, “You all are right in what you say; we need to organize ourselves.”
Another mechanic said, “In the next meetings, count on me, because I don’t see any other way out of this situation.”
A bus driver who has always collaborated with bringing Red Flag newspapers to the drivers’ cafeteria, told us, “From now on, I want to help organize among the drivers.”
There are many comments about suspicions of the bosses’ plans to murder millions of workers in order to continue exploiting and perpetuating their profit system.
Although we are not at the point of taking bolder actions as we would like, it is clear that we have fertile ground and a plan to grow our party and expand the fight for a communist society.
Caption: Bangladesh, April 15, 2020—Garment workers demand wages
Garment Workers Should Fight Fear by Organizing for Communism
LOS ANGELES, April 21— “I am afraid of catching it, and infecting my family. But I have needs, that’s why I come to work in these conditions,” said a garment worker, expressing the worries of hundreds of workers at the Los Angeles Apparel factory.
This factory opened a new section, hiring hundreds of workers, to produce millions of face masks, destined for sale for profit.
“They tell us to keep six feet away from the next worker, but it’s hard. Although we have gel and wear masks, we believe that it is not enough. We are all afraid. Either the virus kills us, or hunger kills us. We have to keep working,” said another worker. These are the working conditions in these sweatshops that expose the workers to infection.
Fearful or not, the workers, many of them undocumented, continue to work in an industry where conditions were previously unhealthy. Now with the pandemic they are a time bomb, which can infect and kill thousands of workers.
There is only one alternative for workers: to fight for Communism. Millions of workers around the world face the same situation. The bosses are the only ones responsible for this pandemic crisis. They created the conditions for the virus to spread rapidly.
The bosses knew that the virus was super-contagious and deadly, and they continued to leave hospitals without supplies to protect their workers.
To the capitalists, their profits are what matter, before, during and after this crisis. What should matter to us workers is to finish them off right now. These are difficult times for workers, but it is not the end of the world, as some are proclaiming.
The working class has a promising future. We are in a crisis, but we also have the opportunity to crush the capitalist system, by building the International Communist Workers’ Party.
We are organizing worldwide, through our Red Flag newspaper. We have comrades in India and El Salvador who work in garment factories, who suffer the same needs as garment workers in Los Angeles.
Women and men there are also organizing to build a Communist society. Let’s organize the ICWP in the factory, in the hospital, in the field, everywhere. Communism is our solution!