New US Industrial Policy Needs an Immigration Policy for War here ā¦ Hurricane Helene: Bossesā Greed Kills Workers here ā¦
New US Industrial Policy Needs an Immigration Policy for War
USA, October 1ā āI wish I had 30 moreā said the CEO of Springfield-based McGregor Metal. He currently employs 30 Haitian workers.
In August, far-right extremists and neo-Nazi hate groups had spread lies online about how Haitian immigrants were supposedly killing and eating peopleās pets in Springfield, Ohio. Then Trump and his running mate VanceĀ joined the fascist, racist bandwagon.
On the one hand, Haitian immigrants are attacked by far-right groups and right-wing politicians. On the other hand, they are welcomed by business owners and liberal politicians who want to super-exploit and extract maximum profits from them. Fascism requires super exploitation as well as racist terror.
In Springfield, thousands of jobs have been created. And many immigrants are working in them: for example, in Springfieldās Dole Fresh Vegetables and automotive machining plants.
āWe needed a workforce to fill jobs in a resurgent local manufacturing sector and staff a growing number of warehouse and distribution centers,ā said the director of workforce development with the Greater Springfield Partnership.
The hourly wage in Haiti is around 60 cents.Ā In Springfield, the minimum wage is $10.45 an hour. But this is less than half of what a family needs to live on. Industries are thriving based on the super-exploitation of Haitian immigrants.
However, there is the bigger picture.
The US is strapped for skilled workers as well as unskilled. As a result, they are scrambling to put in place a new industrial policy: a new industrial policy for war production. They must do this to prepare the groundwork for war against China, Russia, or both. The general crisis of capitalism is propelling this. It has led to an intensification of inter-imperialist rivalry that has not been seen since before World War II.
This new industrial policy includes investing billions to prepare and train a domestic workforce. Programs like the Apprenticeship Building America initiative and American Workforce Hubs are trying to do this.
However, the dominant wing of the ruling class fears that this twenty-first-century industrial policy of war production will not succeed unless it is paired with a twenty-first-century immigration policy. Achieving it requires a deep, highly skilled talent pool currently in short supply in the US labor force.
Thus, they are committed to recruiting foreign-born skilled workers as well as unskilled.
These new immigrants and their children, together with their native-born working-class siblings and their children, will fill up the bossesā industrial factories and barracks.
The International Communist Workersā Party is committed to doing both industrial and military work. From South Africa to El Salvador, from Israel and Palestine to the US and other places, we are recruiting new comrades from both sectors.
Together, and as members of the international working class, we are realizing our common interests. To organize, mobilize, rise up, and make revolution to create a different world. A communist world.
A world without borders where human beings will not be forced to leave their homes. A world where everyone will live free from any form of exploitation and any form of racism. Where all of us will live collectively, according to the principle āfrom each according commitment and ability, to each according to needā.
We are entering an era of imperialist war and communist revolution. At this moment it is key to invite and struggle with family, friends, soldiers, industrial workers, and others to join party collectives and organize everywhere.Ā These party collectives will be the germinating seed that will bear the fruit of an international Red Army that will crush capitalism-imperialism, build the revolution, and sustain it.Ā We have a world to win!
Missing plastic factory workers, Erwin, Tennessee
Capitalist Greed Kills Workers in Hurricane Helene
ERWIN, TENNESSEE (US), October 3 ā “Why did they make us come to work that day? Why didnāt they let us leave? It all comes down to greed if you ask me. It broke my heart that they didnāt make it. Every one of them was good people.ā said a worker from Impact Plastics in Erwin, Tennessee.
He was talking about six co-workers, white workers, and Latino immigrant workers (including two women) who were killed because, even though water was already up to the doors and covering their cars, the bosses wouldnāt let them leave work.
When the bosses finally let them leave, a full 15 minutes after the plant lost power, flood water was sweeping through the area. Many families are furious at the plastics factory owners whose greed turned a Hurricane Helene into a tragic human disaster.
An Impact Plasticās worker, Jacob Ingram, said lives could have been saved, had workers been allowed to leave the facility sooner. When the flooding started, the managers only told the workers to move their cars.
āWe should have evacuated then, but they wouldnāt let us,ā he said, āI didnāt hear anyone say āleaveā or nothing like that. I asked one of the higher ups. They told me āNo, not yet.ā even though it the water was already above the doors and the cars and everything else.ā
Ingram was swept away by floodwaters. He had to struggle to climb on top of a semi-truck to get to higher ground. The driver of the truck, with only few minutes to spare, rescued Igram and some of his co-workers by backing up his truck into the flood waters to save them.
Erwin is in eastern Tennessee. This is in Appalachia, a mountain region whose environment has been devastated by the unchecked greed of the logging and coal industries. It has little to no infrastructure to withstand devastating storms.
Historically, the poorest workers, mostly, but not all, white, have lived in company towns in this area, with extreme exploitation and poverty. These workers, especially the miners, have been the most consistently militant white US-born workers. They have waged armed class struggle against the mine owners and the US government for over a hundred years.
Now, as at Impact Plastics, they are joined by Latino immigrant workers, who also come from areas with a long history of class struggle and armed insurrections against capitalism and imperialism. This creates the material basis for their unity and solidarity.
Over one thousand people are reported still missing in the Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina and Tennessee areas. The official death toll now stands at over two hundred. Local residents fear it will be over two thousand. They claim whole towns and many isolated individual houses were swept away by the raging waters. Many roads are still impassable because many bridges were swept away.
The flooding has continued. The crumbling US infrastructure isnāt capable of protecting workers in the face of climate change devastation caused by capitalism. In fact, FEMA, created to give aid in disasters like this, says it wonāt have the money to cover the hurricane season.
Some in the bossesā media claim that FEMA has no money to help hurricane victims because it used all its funding to help migrants. āThat is pure racism. They are looking for a scapegoat to get US workers to blame migrant workers for these deaths,ā said a FedEx worker when a couple of ICWP members discussed these events with him.
āYou are right,ā responded the comrades. āUS rulers super exploit migrant workers in their industries to maximize their profits and are now scapegoating them to cover up that they have no money for disaster relief but billions for Israelās genocidal war and for Ukraine.ā
Hurricane Heleneās strength was due to the extremely warm water in the Gulf of Mexico due to capitalist caused global warming. The communist masses will eliminate production for profit and organize production and all life in harmony with the environment to reverse and end the devastation caused by global warming.
Capitalism is deadly in every way! The unity and anger shown by Erwin workers need to and will become a revolutionary communist tidal wave as we build ICWP and spread Red Flag.
Read our pamphlet:
Fight For the Day When No Worker Will be Called Foreigner here