Communist Fight Against Factory Closings and Layoffs here ♦ New Communist Collective here ♦
The Communist Fight Against Factory Closings and Layoffs
EL SALVADOR, July 9— “It is a real fear due to the factory closures and dismissals. My husband and I both work in the maquilas. Despite this we continue in the communist struggle. We cannot stop gathering in the bus and reading the Red Flag newspaper,” said Comrade M.
More than 12,500 maquila workers, men and women, have lost their jobs in the last six months. The entire working class is affected. A system change is needed. We need a communist system where there is no money and where no worker will be unemployed.
The workers are outraged. They are looking for solutions for their salaries, benefits, and compensation.
On June 6, a factory closed in the San Marcos “free trade zone.” Approximately 770 workers were laid off. Red Flag had been there.
ICWP comrades work nearby. They comment that “the employer uses the examples of closing these factories to subject workers to even more exploitation.” It is also a threat to those who complain or get involved in unions, or to those it has identified as belonging to ICWP.
On top of this harsh economic crisis hitting the working class, the entire state apparatus uses its power for the benefit of these capitalist bosses. It thus increases their profits. But despite everything, workers have the option to fight for their human dignity and for their lives by organizing for Communism.
“We see the ability of the Bukele regime’s propaganda machine to selectively silence what is not convenient for them,” says C. “They are so efficient in silencing the working class that they have managed to make these problems invisible, through their power.”
R expresses that “foreign investment escapes justice due to this fascist capitalist political system. It supports these owners of the means of production as long as they are sympathetic to the regime. They simply leave the country with impunity.”
Many of these factories hide behind the fact that they have closed operations due to the economic impact of the United States. They say that orders have decreased. This has led to stagnation that generates bankruptcy. They cannot continue operating. This is just a smokescreen to disguise their failure to meet their obligations to the working class.
The capitalist system of the exploitative factory owners implicitly or explicitly threatens the working class with layoffs. This is a strategy to subdue them with the fear of being replaced.
Our struggle takes place under fascist conditions imposed by the government’s “emergency regime.” Denouncing it, exercising “freedom of expression,” becomes a crime that leads to jail. We are fighting to inform, denounce, and organize through this Red Flag newspaper.
We are fighting to continue building and strengthening communist political relationships. It is necessary to build this kind of unity and political struggle among our comrades, neighbors, and friends to advance our goal of mobilizing the masses for communism.
The ICWP fights directly for communism. We struggle to recruit young workers, the entire working class, and soldiers to become part of the party and join its communist cells.
We collectively fight to develop communist leaders to make our ICWP mass. Only with a communist society will we live in a common good where everything belongs to everyone and for everyone.
We invite you to read and distribute our Red Flag newspaper to strengthen and unify the masses.
The communist revolution is achieved by fighting.
New Communist Collective in Western El Salvador
The best way to organize to reach our goal is to engage the interest and effort of each one. We have to add one more friend, day after day. That is, we need all readers of Red Flag to achieve the goal,” said worker comrade E. “I promise to be part of that. I am in the Party, and I will take another step forward in this work.”
“My family and I are clear that organized struggle is the key to organizational success,” said comrade J. “Because where I work, we have already spent more than three months working and they always withhold our salaries. We are tired of seeing how this government is not interested in the working class,” J concluded.
These comments opened up a discussion in a new collective of the International Communist Workers’ Party of how we can organize the masses for communism. We were meeting to plan the political work of organizing the masses for communism that we are starting in the west of El Salvador.
We believe that we have to give more support to the comrades of this area, where the ideas of the ICWP are now arriving.
Two comrades travelled to the capital on their day off to attend this meeting. They left their family days off to follow up on the Party’s ideas.
We looked at how we can distribute Red Flag to more workers. We talked about doing clandestine work hidden from the bosses while being open with the workers. That is, to be more open with the ideas of the Party without losing the perspective of recruiting workers and soldiers. We also want to find a way to organize in the communities where the workers live.
“Capitalism only brings misery, repression, and death to the workers. With its lying discourse it seeks to deceive and dominate the population. Most of all, we need more than leading a life of misery and extreme poverty. We will continue to organize and spread communist ideas,” concluded Comrade E.
—Red Comrade in El Salvador