Strikers Welcome Communist Conversations here ♦ Communism on Kaiser Picket Lines here ♦
South Africa, December 6—Close to 18,000 workers at Massmart (owned by Walmart) went on strike for two weeks over wages , hours, and jobs for laid-off workers. Communist Revolution, not trade-unionism, is what they and all workers need.
Strikers Welcome Communist Conversations on Picket Line
LOS ANGELES COUNTY, CALIFORNIA (USA), December 5—A few comrades recently visited striking unionized workers at Rich Products, mostly immigrants, 90% women. They have been on strike for a month, picketing 24 hours a day. They warmly welcomed us into a small sheltering tent, where the workers offered us delicious warm punch. They were glad to get Red Flag, and were very interested in our work, especially when we began asking about their struggle.
Their employer is an international corporation that makes $4 billion a year worldwide. They supply frozen desserts to major retailers in the US and other countries. They work in cold temperatures. They are forced to produce more cakes per minute through speed up. The assembly line never stops 24/7.
A cruel point system hangs over the workers. They have three sick days a year. After that, they are given points for time off for illness, childcare, or other urgent reasons. After reaching a set number of points, they are fired. They also get the most minimal bathroom breaks, or none.
“To our demand of a wage increase because of rising inflation, the boss answered: ‘Not my problem. Nothing I can do about it,’” said a worker.
They agreed that when workers fight for a wage increase, even if they get it, the bosses take it back by raising prices.
We said that the wage system (money) enslaves us to the capitalists and that to end this wage slavery we need a communist revolution. Communism will produce to meet the workers’ needs. For this all we need is workers’ labor (mental and physical), not money. In communism, work will be safe and enjoyable with plenty of breaks and many more people sharing the work.
We said that the bosses pay workers just enough to survive to work the next day and to produce the next generation of wage slaves. “Oh, yeah,” a worker responded. “I guess that’s why they call the room where babies are born ‘Labor and Delivery.’” Everyone laughed.
We said the purpose of capitalist schools is to train our children to be disciplined wage slaves. The same worker said, “I see. To get them used to being on time with bells, like we have to be on time for work.”
Our new friends knew about exploitation worldwide, and about the unequal pay in different locations and countries where the company exists. Workers in another US state get paid more than they do. This led to discussing how wages, racism and sexism are used to divide workers—and how communism will abolish wages, the reason for racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
The conversation touched on the US-China inter-imperialist rivalry. “That’s the reason Evo Morales was deposed and invited to Mexico,” said a worker. “He was about to give the Bolivian lithium mines to China. The US didn’t like that.”
“Yes, but we have no dog in that fight. Evo will go to the highest bidder. US and China are fighting for world domination,” said a comrade.
“Yes, and China is eating the US lunch. They will trample us under their feet,” she added.
“If we let them. That’s why we need a revolution,” we concluded.
Workers thanked us for coming and asked us to come back soon. We said we will and that next time we will bring food, too.
Communism on Kaiser Picket Lines
In November I distributed Red Flag to picketing Kaiser workers in Oakland (USA). They were out on a sympathy strike to support the Kaiser engineers, who had been on strike for 60 days.
Kaiser made $6.4 billion last year in profits during the pandemic but has refused a cost-of-living increase in engineers’ salaries. Nurses and other unionized health care workers approved a tentative contract agreement on the eve of their scheduled strike, defeating Kaiser’s divisive two-tier salary proposal. So what a pleasure to see workers striking in solidarity with another union!
Workers have been shoved up against the wall in the US for decades. We’ve suffered the flight of industrial jobs, mechanization of jobs, behemoth corporate wage gouging, growing massive personal debt, government union busting legislation like the Taft Hartley act, Reagan’s war on unions, and neoliberal tax cuts for the rich.
When workers organize and resist the greedy 1% that sucks their massive profits from our lifetime of work, we begin to realize our power. The corporate ownership class has always feared and tried to destroy the labor movement.
Unionized nurses and other health care workers cannot heal the chaotic, dysfunctional health system in the US, where one tenth of us are uninsured, and with little access to basic healthcare in low-income communities. Our privatized health care and unregulated, pernicious pharmaceutical companies create mistrust even of good medicine.
With the Covid Omicron variant emerging, the world needs access to vaccinations. But the profit-driven health care machine cannot relinquish the reason that it exists: to make more money.
Every human being deserves health care. The capitalist system functions by playing us against each other. Together, united, we can fight for a communist system that provides quality healthcare and sustenance for all. Under Communism, we will have collective control and ownership of our working life.
-Retired worker
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