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.
The Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee issued this statement to 1,300 workers at the Saginaw, Michigan plant voting on a third sellout contract pushed by the UAW bureaucracy.
After workers voted down a second UAW-backed contract by 73 percent, local union officials called a membership meeting for Sunday. The following is a statement by the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee.
Days after making a splash in the local Calgary media by unveiling a new $75 million state-of-the-art warehouse facility, Coca-Cola Canada Bottling Limited unceremoniously axed an injured worker with 35 years at the company—essentially crying poor.
A “no” vote on the new TA and strike by the 1,300 Nexteer workers could spark a mass movement of auto parts workers and galvanize production workers at the Big Three factories.
Workers at Bridgewaters Interiors in Warren, Michigan, have voted to reject a tentative agreement while thousands of Dana auto parts workers are being kept in the dark ahead of imminent contract ratification votes.
Like previous TAs, the latest proposal does not include any protection against layoffs, under conditions in which as many as 300 to 400 workers face job elimination over the next years through automation and consolidation.
One thousand American Axle workers continue their walkout which began on Monday against the key auto supplier and are reporting efforts by the company to move product across their picket lines while provocations against pickets have been reportedly instigated by company security guards.
Rank-and-file workers have already denounced the deal as the same contract they have already rejected three times.
That First South Yorkshire was ultimately forced to retreat from its insistence that the 7 percent offer was "final" was due to the determination and unity of the drivers.
Transport for London’s had not budged on its plans. Talks between management and the RMT union have revolved around the definition of what constitutes a “voluntary” implementation aimed at demobilising opposition.
While the cause of the accident still remains unknown, officials said 11 rail cars carrying finished vehicles derailed along a major rail corridor that cuts through a busy industrial and commuter section of northwest Houston.
Commuters in the city's poorest neighborhoods, already stretched by soaring costs of living, are now facing roving MTA inspection teams in place of the free rides their mayor promised them.
Labour is presiding over a social catastrophe, including the deepest levels of poverty in 30 years, and trailing the far-right Reform, the Conservatives and the Greens in general election polls. If he successfully becomes an MP, Burnham is expected to challenge Starmer for the Labour leadership and to replace him in Downing Street.
Staff at over 50 hospitals across Germany recently protested against the government's planned cuts in the healthcare and nursing sectors, which threaten wages, working conditions and the existence of many hospitals.
With a career spanning 47 years, Mary Jo Marinelli offers a candid look at the steady decline of the American healthcare system.
Last Thursday, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 called off a state-wide strike at around 1:00 in the morning, announcing the deal and a snap vote.
After reluctantly calling a second statewide stoppage in November to head off teachers’ discontent, the QTU leadership shut down further industrial action and effectively joined hands with the state government to refer the dispute to compulsory arbitration.
After years of mounting anger over worsening conditions and real pay cuts, and a 98 percent vote for industrial action, many educators view the agreement as another betrayal.
The strike was shut down this week by the United Auto Workers because it raised deeper political and class questions which the bureaucracy works to suppress.
“If members can’t ask questions or raise concerns without being censored, what sort of democracy is that? The union clearly works for the government not for us.”
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.
A video uploaded to TikTok shows the warehouse doors being shut and locked as more than a dozen drivers tried to get inside.
Around 50 workers on site when the blaze erupted escaped without injury, but some were forced to literally run for their lives.
BP Whiting refinery workers continue their battle, as Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) locks out 1,700 USW workers.
An ethylene production plant at Mossmorran, Scotland has ceased production and started laying off its 400 strong workforce.
This is the second major incident at a US refinery in the past five months, following an explosion at the El Segundo Chevron refinery which rocked much of the Los Angeles area last October.
Together they expose a single reality: The mining companies, the federal and state regulators and the union apparatus are all part of the same machinery that treats miners' lives as a cost of production.
The high death toll at the Liushenyu mine and widespread public outrage on social media has meant the tragedy could not simply be hushed up locally. A more sophisticated top-level cover-up is now underway.
The mine explosion is another graphic example of the dangers facing miners and other workers around the world as their lives and health are subordinated to the rapacious corporate drive for profit.
Rescue operations were hampered by the fact that blueprints of the mine provided by the company did not correspond to the actual underground layout, forcing rescuers to improvise.
The strike was shut down this week by the United Auto Workers because it raised deeper political and class questions which the bureaucracy works to suppress.
Demonstrating the bankruptcy of the union’s strategy, the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) suspended its strike as workers faced being locked out for the summer term and beyond.
A graduate student worker at UMass in Boston described how Harvard and other major universities rely on exploitation of academic workers.
Will Lehman, a rank-and-file Mack Trucks worker who is running as a socialist candidate for UAW president, is calling on workers to break the union's isolation of the nearly two-week walkout by 4,000 Harvard graduate student workers.
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.
