Despite the Pandemic, “We are Back in the Trenches”
EL SALVADOR, June 28 — “The masks they give us are made of cloth, they are unsafe,” a garment worker asked the supervisor. “Why don’t they give us surgical masks?”
“If you want one of those, buy them yourself,” the supervisor replied. “The company doesn’t have the money to buy them.”
We workers, women and men, get paid $9 a day. A surgical mask costs about $1 and is to be used for six hours. The company makes millions of dollars. This is the reality that we face as the working class.
Returning to the factory after the coronavirus lockdown, we workers organized in the International Communist Workers Party have analyzed our situation. With our labor power, we are the fundamental condition of production. Without us, factories are nothing but air, buildings, and machines. The bosses by themselves are useless. The transformers of the raw material into useful things for society are us workers.
When the companies first re-opened, despite the upward curve of the Coronavirus, the maquilas took back workers whose contracts had been suspended since March. Still 25% of the workers aren’t back, those who have not been incorporated. In the plant where we work, only about 670 workers are going to work, because collective transport has not yet resumed. That means that many workers still continue suspended.
There are comrades, readers and friends of the Party who are not receiving wages and are waiting to go back to work, including the doctor we saw for medical consultation.
The current government of Nayib Bukele promised that it would compel the bosses to pay workers for the months in which their contracts were suspended. The government and the boss are two sides of the same coin.
We have met with ICWP comrades inside the factory and we have had conversations about how to do the organizational work in this new situation. Before, we had approximately 45 minutes for lunch. Now we have 30 minutes. We have also taken the opportunity to discuss the world situation and how we will hold cell and extended Party meetings.
We have talked about how the bosses have wanted to starve us to death, but that we have had the solidarity of our class through the Party, organized in other parts of the world. This has helped us to keep the morale high of all the ICWP members here.
We will resume our ICWP cell meetings, and we will continue with the rest, when the collective transportation begins to function. We are once again in the trenches, in our workers’ center, to win our class to Communism. We have had one-on-one discussions. We are learning to use our group on WhatsApp, video calls and how to be present at national and international meetings.
Today more than ever we have seen the need to continue fighting directly for Communism. As ICWP we continue in active ideological struggle, because for us, being organized is the weapon that guarantees unity for the victory of communism.
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