LOS ANGELES, USA—“What is happening with the contract?” asked an MTA bus operator at Division 8.
“I don’t know,” said the Red Flag distributor, “they are keeping it a secret.”
The union and MTA bosses held their first negotiating session last February 15. The next day, the union posted this on its website:
“During the duration of the negotiations, no specific agendas, proposals or tentative agreements will be shared publicly, by either side, until an agreement is ready for ratification by the members. This policy is not in place to unnecessarily keep information from the members but is designed to protect the negotiations process.”
An MTA bus operator from Division 18 commented, “The union and MTA both know what is happening in the negotiations. So, whom are they protecting them from? From us, the members; neither the union nor MTA want us to know what’s happening. They are afraid we would organize to reject the contract if we didn’t like it, and go out on a real strike.”
Recently, at a small gathering, both MTA mechanics and bus operators were discussing the question of union contracts. They commented that the last contract, and others before that, were bad. Some thought the union should fight for better contracts.
Others said that there is no such thing as a good contract. “The union contract justifies and legalizes our slavery; unions are a key part of imposing it. Wages are the chains that bind us to the capitalists. The union leaders, even those who want to do good, only negotiate the terms of our wage slavery. A wage increase only lengthens temporarily the chains a little bit; it doesn’t break them.”
We all had a good laugh when someone said that a union contract for us wage slaves would be similar to chattel slaves bargaining with their slave masters to be whipped 15 times instead of 25, when what they needed was to destroy slavery.
From this, we concluded that our historical task as wage slaves is to destroy capitalism, its wage slavery, and money. In communism, there will be no unions, no contracts, and no wages. No longer will we bargain the conditions of our labor because we will no longer sell our labor power. Instead, we will use it collectively to produce everything that workers need.
We will decide collectively what we need to produce, how to produce it and how to distribute it according to need.
Talking about organizing a revolution for communism, one worker mentioned that the ATU Local 1277, the MTA service attendant and mechanics union, will endorse May Day this year.
“The unions are afraid that Trump will destroy them like Ronald Reagan did with the air controllers union,” he added. “There are a lot of organizations calling for people to march on May Day, but they are calling to march for reforms and to support the Democratic Party, not for communist revolution.”
The International Communist Workers’ Party will be marching for communism. May Day was born in Chicago in1886 when US workers, led by immigrant workers, organized a general strike on May first of that year to fight for the 8-hour workday.
The Second Communist International, in honor of the workers and leaders shot and hung by the Chicago cops and the US capitalists, respectively, declared May Day the International Workers’ Day in 1889.
Ever since then, workers worldwide have marched on May Day, many under the red banners of revolution. But, also since then, May Day has been a struggle between marching for reform and patriotism under the flags of different capitalist-imperialist nations, or marching for revolution and communism under the red flags of the international working class.
If the MTA transit union hacks endorsed May Day, we should have no illusion that they will organize to mobilize many MTA workers to march, or, more obviously, that they will organize them to march for communism.
We call on ICWP members and Red Flag readers at MTA to organize MTA workers to come to the May Day march to march in the ICWP contingent for communism. We call on all workers, students and soldiers to march with us to put an end to capitalism’s wage slavery. This will inspire more workers to spread Red Flag and to join ICWP to mobilize for communism. A world where we produce and transport everything and everyone to meet the needs of our one international working class.