Seattle: Building On-the-Job Ties with Industrial Workers here ♦ Los Angeles: Communist Fight Against Union Reformism here ♦
For a Communist World Without Borders: Build Relationships with Industrial Workers Inside Factories
TACOMA USA), June 6— The United States has been built on the labor and lives of Indigenous and enslaved peoples and immigrants. The leadership of big unions in the Pacific Northwest, such as the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) at Boeing and IAM District Lodge160, had never called for a rally to protect immigrants. Not until this month.
Eight years ago, ICWP organized to stop production in a Boeing plant the first time Trump separated migrant families. The union bigshots were nowhere to be found.
On May 15, 2025, Maximo Londonio, a member of IAM District 160, was arrested as he stepped off his plane at Sea-Tac Airport. He was returning from the Philippines, where he and his wife celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary with their daughter. He has held a green card (permanent residency) for over 20 years.
This time, union headquarters stepped in, calling for a rally at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. There is one reason they did.
“It’s because the rank-and-file forced the leadership to allow it,” declared a comrade.
For months, comrades and friends have distributed Red Flag and talked to the Boeing workforce at the factory gates. Many workers come from immigrant families. They are eager to discuss how to defeat fascism and genocide with communist revolution.
The union leaders’ change in rhetoric is not limited to the detention of Maximo Londonio. The speechmaking has changed among industrial unions’ leadership, but their alliance with the Democratic party remains.
This alliance insures continued capitalist exploitation, wage slavery, racist attacks and forced deportation.
Only communism can end deportations. Communist revolution will open the door to a world where all workers are welcome everywhere. The horror of capitalist profits and wage slavery will be no match for an unleashed working class. Collective production will provide for the needs of the masses.
Friends We Met; Friends Who Knew Our Comrades
The multi-racial rally included young and old, men and women leaders, union and non-union, and protesters from around the world.
ICWP comrades talked to a worker from the Boeing Auburn plant, north of Tacoma. Within minutes, this machinist stopped the conversation.
“I remember you,” he said to comrades. “You and your friends gave a speech about the World Trade Organization when we were organizing against the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.”
He is trying to build an Action Committee inside the factory. He asked us to join the conversation. We are bringing our communist ideas to meetings with active Boeing workers.
We struck up a conversation with a teamster who recently returned from the Philippines. It was a dangerous trip. One of his friends was red tagged. Red tags label individuals and organizations as “communist terrorists.”
When the teamster returned, he and some of his friends decided to build an international labor working group. He asked us to sign up. The teamster and IAM Boeing worker both took copies of Red Flag and ICWP leaflets.
While we were talking with them, another comrade distributed Red Flag and our leaflets among union members and activists. She made friends with Maximo’s wife. More women who have been fighting against deportation joined their conversation.
While the capitalists accelerate forced deportation, the International Communist Workers’ Party builds for communist revolution.
Between the distribution of Red Flag and communist leaflets at the Boeing gates and developing friendships with workers who are inside the plants, we will forge an opening for ICWP growth not only in the Boeing factory, but internationally as well.
Los Angeles (USA): Union Reformism Diverts Workers from Communist Revolution
“We have to organize immigrant workers from the pulpit,” said Cardinal Mahoney. He was speaking to union officials and community organizations in Los Angeles’ Alameda Corridor in 1994. “If we don’t, the communists will.”
This followed the 1992 riots sparked by the televised police beating of Rodney King.
The Alameda Corridor runs along the railroad to the harbor. It was once home to a multi-racial workforce at Bethlehem Steel, Firestone Tires, and General Motors. It had become a wasteland. About three hundred unionized heavy industry factories had closed during the 1970s and 80s.
This also happened in the US “industrial heartland.” US imperialism began its long decline. Capitalists in Japan, Germany, South Korea, and eventually China began to beat out US capitalism
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of refugees from the US-backed civil wars in Central America were arriving in Los Angeles. Many got jobs in small garment sweatshops. Communists who are now in the ICWP organized in those factories, building an Anti-Racist Garment Union. We now fight directly for communism, not reforms.
Other immigrant workers found jobs as janitors in big office buildings, hotels, and restaurants. The bosses’ unions never organized the Alameda Corridor warehouses that replaced the factories. They did, however, organize the immigrant janitors, and hotel and restaurant workers.
Those unions now dominate California labor. They constitute the mass base of the California Democratic Party. By organizing immigrant workers for reforms, they hope to divert their anger from communist revolution.
On June 6, federal agents arrested David Huerta, president of the statewide janitor’s union. He was outside a Los Angeles garment warehouse. Protestors were denouncing a workplace immigration raid there. Democratic governor Newsom called Huerta a “respected leader, a patriot, and an advocate for working people.”
The unions and the Democratic party do their best to organize immigrant workers (and all workers) to support patriotism. And to fight for crumbs.
Communists fight for the whole cake, the bakery, and a communist world without nations or borders. Join us!
Pamphlet: Bigger Industrial Working Class, Bigger Communist Potential Worldwide here