The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is an international network of democratic, worker-controlled rank-and-file committees. It was formed to provide workers with the organizational means to unite across workplaces, companies, industries and national borders, independent of the pro-corporate trade union bureaucracies.
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There are now rank-and-file committees of autoworkers, educators, Amazon and logistics workers, postal workers, bus drivers, and many other sections of the working class.
Rank-and-file committees are of, by and for the rank-and-file workers, who have a different set of interests than management, the bosses, the politicians, and the trade union apparatus, who oppress workers in order to defend the profits of the ruling elite.
Contact us now to join a committee. If there is not already a committee in your workplace, industry or region, we will help you start one!
In his campaign announcement, Lehman called for workers to support his campaign, including by running as delegates for the UAW Constitutional Convention, which will be held from June 15-18.
A strike would shut down the center of American and world finance and set the stage for a far broader movement of the working class against inequality and exploitation.
A progressive response to this offensive is possible only through a frontal assault by the working class on the unchallenged “right” of capitalist property itself.
The ruling class is using the economic shocks produced by the war on Iran to accelerate a sustained, bipartisan attack on the working class stretching back half a century.
An inquiry independent of Stellantis, the United Auto Workers (UAW) apparatus and state authorities is essential to uncover the truth, expose systemic safety violations and prevent future deaths.
Approximately 100 workers and youth attended the hearing, which was addressed by members of the IWA-RFC and Shamenia Stewart-Adams, the widow of Ronald Adams, Sr.
One year ago today, 63-year-old machine repairman Ronald Adams Sr. was crushed to death at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Complex in Southeast Michigan.
Stellantis, the United Auto Workers and Michigan safety officials continue to remain silent on the death of the 63-year-old skilled tradesman, even as full production at the engine plant has resumed.
We refuse to carry out any order to withhold, delay or “verify” mail-in ballots. We will not be the instrument of the disenfranchisement of the American people.
The struggle at National Steel Car cuts directly across the national divisions that the corporations, governments and union bureaucracies are trying to impose on workers.
“This young man is immensely courageous in speaking out against war. His persecution is setting a precedent against anyone who opposes any war and a warning to all.” — Mental health nurse
The National Steel Car Rank-and-File Committee (NSC-RFC) was founded by shop floor workers in June 2023, on the eve of the last strike, after it became clear to them that the United Steelworkers (USW) bureaucracy would not wage a genuine fight for workers' demands.
Fain’s declaration of “solidarity” with IG Metall is an alliance of two union apparatuses implementing mass job cuts, backing trade war and preparing the plants for war production, against the emerging international movement of the rank and file.
The IG Metall union staged its “day of action” on 21 September, with nationwide, plant-level protests in the auto and supplier industries. The VW Action Committee has issued a fighting programme for auto and supplier workers, starting from the fact that IG Metall representatives voted through a further 50,000 job cuts at Volkswagen on 3 September.
Twelve hundred Bradford White workers in Middleville, Michigan are continuing a strike that began September 16 against near poverty wages and abusive conditions.
Across the unions, executives present themselves as partners of government and management in the struggle for markets, industrial capacity and military supremacy.
A bus driver at Wood Green said, “I am very shocked by this. Fifteen years? I will sign the petition, and I will most certainly pass it around at work and online.”
Workers condemned the participation of Transport Workers Union Local 100 in the investigation alongside the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), arguing that the agency cannot be relied upon to hold itself accountable.
In response to Luc Massie’s death, the railway issued a lying statement, claiming safety is “our highest priority.” As every rail worker knows, the “highest priority” for CPKC, which controls a continent-wide railroad network, is maximizing profits.
Striking National Steel Car workers should take USW Local 7135 President Frank Crowder’s hysterical outbursts against the NSC Rank-and-File Committee and the WSWS as a sign that the leadership is preparing to unveil a sellout agreement, as they did three years ago.
During those 12 months, Henry Ford Health has steadily hardened its position, while tens of thousands of nurses and other healthcare workers have struck across the United States over the same basic issues.
Doctors walked off the job in opposition to the state Labor government’s attempts to inflict deeper real wage cuts and further entrench dire conditions in the sector.
Emergency Department nurses have declared a “state of emergency,” asserting they will no longer remain silent about appalling hospital conditions.
Healthcare workers have demonstrated in central London and outside the prime minister’s office in Downing Street in defence of Abu Safiya.
Germany posted its worst PISA scores since testing began in 2000, as the government funds the largest rearmament drive since the Nazi era.
This is not an increase in funding for disadvantaged schools, but a reallocation of scarce resources within a system that has been systematically starved for decades.
The suggested “Western Momentum” model means even more intensive workloads for educators, at the expense of the quality of education for students.
Pennsylvania's radical 1776 constitution issued the first American mandate for public schools. Its 250th anniversary arrives with the right to public education under attack.
Jaylene Vargas Gonzalez was found in the back of her van after it had been parked for hours.
The ALU could not simultaneously integrate itself into the orbit of the union bureaucracy and the Democratic Party while developing an independent movement of Amazon workers against the entire corporate and political structure those forces defend.
The death went unreported for a week before the online investigative outlet, the Western Edge, broke the story on April 13.
A core element of Amazon’s operations is the Delivery Service Partner (DSP) program—a sprawling network of nominally independent subcontractors through which Amazon controls the lives of hundreds of thousands of delivery drivers without, it claims, employing a single one of them.
The lockout of 120 Marathon refinery workers, the contract struggle involving 23,000 steelworkers and the National Steel Car strike in Canada point to the conditions for a united struggle across North America.
Locked-out workers who spoke with the World Socialist Web Site say that BP is dragging out the lockout to starve workers into submission.
Africa’s four richest billionaires own $57.4 billion—more than the combined wealth of half the continent’s 1.5 billion population
Around 50 workers on site when the blaze erupted escaped without injury, but some were forced to literally run for their lives.
Black lung has returned to 1970s levels among veteran underground miners in Central Appalachia as a long-delayed federal silica standard remains stalled and the UMWA bureaucracy has spent decades suppressing the industrial power of the miners.
The El Teniente disaster was caused by the relentless pressure to cut costs, outsource labor and maximize production that is inherent to the capitalist mode of production, a pressure that operates whether the owner is a state corporation or a private shareholder.
The corporatized union apparatus aligned to the Chilean “left” has done nothing but issue statements, observe moments of silence and light candles.
The fraudulent settlement enables the Rabuka government to set aside a historic crime against the working class while enlisting the unions to absolve multinational mining companies of culpability.
Imperialist wars abroad are coupled with class war at home. Students will graduate into a society ransacked by the capitalist oligarchy.
Academic workers now account for roughly one quarter of UAW membership. In recent years, graduate employees, postdocs, adjuncts and other university workers have carried out major strikes and repeatedly voted by overwhelming margins for strike action over wages, housing, insecure employment, immigration, democratic rights and the Gaza genocide.
The students of Rayen Mapu, their parents and their teachers have demonstrated courage and democratic conviction in the face of state violence.
On May 1, the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), Local 3350 of the American Federation of Teachers, extended the old contract with the University of Michigan and announced no plans to strike for a new agreement.
The ICFI and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties are advancing this initiative to begin and develop a global counteroffensive of the working class against the homicidal policies of the governments controlled by the capitalist ruling class, which are responsible for the worldwide catastrophe.
This resolution was adopted unanimously by the membership of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States at its Sixth National Congress, which was held online from July 19 to July 24, 2020.
The characteristic of every great crisis is that it lays bare the contradictions that have accumulated and been suppressed for decades. All that is backward, anachronistic, corrupt, and, in the most profoundly objective sense, absurd and even irrational in the economic organization, social structure, political leadership and dominant ideology of the existing society is brutally and comprehensively exposed. The pandemic is such a crisis.
This lecture by David North examines the causes for the betrayals of the trade unions in their hostility to the class struggle and socialism, and reviews the historical conflict between the trade unions and revolutionary Marxism. It was re-published in the 2014 book, The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished 20th Century.
