Kaiser Strike-We Must Unite for Revolution here ♦ Whose Time, Our Time here ♦ Communist Action against Imperialist APEC here ♦
Striking Kaiser workers read Red Flag
Kaiser Strike: Capitalists Unite to Oppress Us and We Must Unite for Revolution
LOS ANGELES (USA), October 4— Over seventy-five thousand Kaiser workers are on strike across the US in the biggest healthcare strike in US history. Shortages in staffing, longer work hours, and poor pay are problems growing everywhere!
Kaiser members are affected by the staff shortages. They must wait weeks and sometimes months before they can see a healthcare provider. The bosses care about employees only insofar as they provide the service that puts money in Kaiser’s pocket. The bosses care about healthcare only insofar as they get paid.
Today in the US if you break your arm and show up in an emergency room uninsured, you will be turned away. A broken arm is not an emergency, hospitals say. In communism, healthcare will not be driven by profit but by what workers need. Learning about our health will not be something taught to a select few but made available to all.
Kaiser fights its workers’ demands for pay raises, adequate staffing, and job protection. But it found $1 million to give to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in November. This is to support a US-led trade group that will further the exploitation of workers and rally US allies against China. (see APEC article below.)
The ruling class prepares for broadening wars and tightens the belt on workers. But the workers’ fight often remains shortsighted. The ruling class unites internationally in trade blocs. We workers must also unite internationally.
The contradiction between workers and bosses is intensifying, so the bosses’ media and politicians step up their propaganda to convince us that they’re on our side. To convince us that our fight is not against capitalism but against this or that individual corporation. They don’t want us to see that we all have the same enemy and same fight!
Kaiser workers and all workers should use reform struggles to talk to coworkers about how to end exploitation once and for all. Temporary “victories’’ will be eaten up by inflation! Capitalism keeps workers on an endless treadmill. We always have to fight to try to catch up because wages are designed as subsistence, nothing more.
Take this Red Flag and distribute it further. Join ICWP and join in the discussion for a future where we are no longer constantly fighting for crumbs.
Join the fight for a true communist share-and-share alike system. Without profits, resources can be used to meet the masses’ needs. Without wage slavery, we’ll achieve better healthcare and healthier lives.
WHOSE TIME? OUR TIME!
“Working 12 hours a day.
Seven long days a week
I lay down and try to rest.
But I’m too tired to sleep.”
—Detroit auto worker.
Capitalism is restless. While it is true that the bosses need us, the reality is that they need more and more from us!
While it’s true that they exploit us, the reality is that they are also locked in a life and death struggle against each other. Businesses compete to attract the investments they need to keep or grow their share of the market and its profits.
The losers are bought out by rivals or go bankrupt. So, out of necessity, the bosses turn to exploiting us more and more.
They make us work longer hours, or for lower wages, or faster, with no rest times on the job. Or they combine all three – longer hours, lower pay, and more intensity.
That’s exactly how the world’s biggest (i.e., most successful) companies work. A 2012 survey of ten factories in China making Apple products for worldwide distribution illustrates this.
The survey pointed out that low wages compelled the workers to work long hours. In general, they put in 11 hours every day, including weekends and holidays during peak seasons.
Before the production line starts management asks the workers, “How are you?” They must reply in unison, “We are good. Very good. Very, very good!”
But quotes from the survey tell the real story:
“We can’t stop work for a minute,” one worker said, “we’re even faster than the machines.”
“Wearing gloves would eat into our efficiency,” another added, “We have a huge workload every day and wearing gloves would influence our efficiency.”
Another at the Shenzhen Longhua plant detailed her job. “I take a motherboard from the line, scan the logo, put it in an anti-static electricity bag, stick on a label and place it on the line. Each of these tasks takes two seconds. Every ten seconds I finish five tasks.”
Imagine 11 hours a day, five to seven days a week, in a job like that. It will use up and spit out the vital energy of anyone trapped in it. As we said in the first article in this series, work is better than a job – especially a paycheck-to-paycheck job.
The “just-in-time” production method used in Apple factories in China are the norm worldwide. Nummi, the Toyota-GM auto production plant in California, was able track the work of its production crew 57 seconds out of every minute.
On top of that they encouraged workers to go in early to work, work overtime and join in management “Quality Circles.” And, after demanding all that out of your life, they still went out of business!
Communism will take the profit out of production. The whole purpose of making things will change. We’ll only make things if we, or the community at large, need them.
We won’t compete with others making the same things. We’ll co-operate with them and share the load. Work will have a social purpose and a worker-friendly pace and intensity. Our Detroit auto worker will finally be able to sleep.
Protest Imperialist APEC Meeting in San Francisco, Nov. 10-12
A Call to Communist Action
USA— The war between the capitalist rulers and the international working class is escalating! So is interimperialist rivalry between China and the United States, from Asia-Pacific and the Middle East to Eastern Europe, America, and Africa.
The rulers organize themselves into competing trade blocs such as BRICS, the G20, APEC, and RCEP. More such groups are in the works. These alliances have only ever resulted in greater exploitation for our class.
Ruling classes enter these alliances to protect and advance their economic and geopolitical interests. Imperialist powers China and the United States are turning them into platforms for collecting allies for global war.
The International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) is building a foundation for the working masses, the vast majority everywhere, to end capitalist exploitation and war with revolution for a true communist society.
Our fight must be directly for communism. We aim to build a mass party of millions of leaders worldwide. When we win, we will build a society based on “from each according to ability and commitment, to each according to need.” We will share and share alike, in scarcity and abundance. There will be no money. We will produce directly for society’s needs.
ICWP comrades and friends from Southern California and the Pacific Northwest are mobilizing to converge on San Francisco, November 10-12. World leaders will be meeting there to discuss APEC and IPEF. This is an opportunity to meet and talk with people who are angry about imperialism and exploitation about our communist ideas and organization.
Our message will be that mobilizing the masses for communist revolution is the only possible way to get off this path of super-exploitation and global war! We fight for the interests of almost all humanity, not for new oppressors.
Join us for a weekend of lively discussion, comradeship, and action! Get details from the person who gave you this paper. While traveling to San Francisco, we will get to know each other, discuss communist ideas, and build momentum to power us into – and through – the weekend and beyond.