This report was given by Eric London to the Seventh Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US) in support of the resolution titled “Build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees! For a global counteroffensive of the working class!”
The report issued in advance of the conference in Davos details a series of deepening crises: the ever-worsening economic outlook, the intensification of geopolitical conflicts and tensions, the deterioration of health care, and the effects of climate change.
The announcement by Google that it is laying off 12,000 workers is the latest in the intensifying jobs bloodbath in the technology sector internationally and the spearhead of a drive by the financial elite to impose the inflation crisis on the backs of the working class.
Lehman’s written protest is an encyclopedic historical record of the election, comprehensively detailing every facet of the antidemocratic conspiracy by the entrenched bureaucracy to cling to power by suppressing the vote.
We are building a network of rank-and-file committees of workers in key industries and workplaces to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save lives, and prepare for a political general strike.
To fight for our rights, we must build action committees of fishing workers, independently of all capitalist parties and the fishermen’s associations.
Having launched a three-day strike, LA educators now confront the need to mobilize ourselves independently in order to expand our struggle and appeal for the widest possible unity and support from workers throughout the city and the world.
We made the decision to found the Caterpillar Workers Rank-and-File Committee earlier this year because we understood, based on the UAW bureaucracy’s previous record of sellouts and betrayals, that it would not fight for us, and that any real struggle for workers’ rights and interests would have to be organized from below.
There is enormous anger among striking public sector workers at the provocative offer from the state and federal governments. At the same time, discontent with the Verdi trade union is growing as it seeks to avoid organising joint industrial action at all costs.
A graduate student at Temple University explains the contents of the current contract, which was forced on his fellow university workers in the recent strike.
The deal ending the strike codifies poverty-level wages for 750 graduate and teaching assistants represented by the TUGSA union.
The details leaked to the press do not come close to meeting any of the demands fought for by graduate students when they walked out to picket on January 31.
Temple University has demanded that striking grad students pay back the sum of their tuition for the semester beginning today.
Fain is not the expression of rank-and-file revolt against the UAW apparatus. Rather, he is the defensive reaction of the apparatus and the ruling class to a growing movement from below.
Workers denounced the dishonest character of the Monitor’s rejection of Lehman’s protest.
The document outlines the strategy the frontrunner for UAW president plans to use to impose management’s dictates on 150,000 GM, Ford and Stellantis workers.
Montel Mickles says he took an emergency vacation day to visit his sick mother in the hospital. He was fired from Dana, got evicted, and is now fighting for his job back.
Since a new payroll system was implemented in 2020, workers have complained of continuous underpayment of wages.
The WSWS spoke with a worker about conditions on commuter trains in the capital city, where COVID-19 is out of control and the Rail and Maritime Transport Union recently imposed significant wage cuts.
UPS worker Gerardo explained what conditions at UPS are like and what he and other workers are demanding in the next contract.
Around 250,000 workers and students were stranded for hours last Wednesday afternoon in Australia’s most populous city due to a fault in the network’s outmoded communications system.
The strikes in Portugal are part of a wave of struggle against austerity and inflation by millions of workers across Europe.
Mayor Eric Adams and the public workers union are pushing a deal for 100,000 city workers containing massive cuts to real wages.
Union leaders have begun an operation framed as a “dialogue” designed to pressure members into accepting a rotten deal.
The Socialist Equality Party is the only party in the NSW election offering workers an alternative to the ongoing slashing of wages and cuts to health, education and other social services.
In this interview, Tynisa Williams, former teacher in Montgomery, Alabama, describes the experience of being forced to teach in-person in the fall of 2020 and winter of 2021. She and her coworkers waged a courageous struggle to stop the deadly return to in-person learning that cost the lives of eight educators in the district.
On behalf of the family, Ruth Perry’s sister, Julia Waters, said Ruth’s death was the “direct result” of the “deeply harmful” inspection and was in “a direct result of the pressure put on her by the process and outcome” of the inspection.
Workers need “social disobedience on a massive scale, like a general strike,” one Michigan teacher said. “The important thing is unifying all the different groups of working people and not isolating them like the union bureaucrats tend to do.”
A graduate student at Temple University explains the contents of the current contract, which was forced on his fellow university workers in the recent strike.
So far in 2023, tech companies, including giant players such as Meta, Google and Microsoft, have laid off nearly 140,000 employees.
Amazon opposes any form of workers’ organisation or representation and refuses to recognise or negotiate pay with the GMB. This has lent the union an oppositional standing it does not deserve.
The 30,000 square meters plant at Martorelles, opened in October 2017, is set to close on April 22.
There is anger and opposition among Amazon workers over the impending closure of the Shakopee MSP5 warehouse, expressed in a February 12 protest.
Ben and Max Morrissey were burned to death in an explosion and fire at the BP Husky oil refinery in Oregon, Ohio, just outside of Toledo. For American capitalism, the life of a worker is very cheap.
The struggle at Refap raises the possibility of a major strike during the first months of the Workers Party (PT) administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
ExxonMobil and Chevron have reported record profits and at the same time implemented massive share buybacks to further enrich shareholders amid growing world poverty and hunger.
Over 300,000 workers and youth marched yesterday in France in a day of action protesting inflation and the Macron government’s attempts to crush a nationwide refinery strike.
UMWA President Cecil Roberts has announced that pickets are authorized to return to work at Warrior Met; there is still no contract for the miners who have been picketing for nearly two years.
The tragic death of two young workers, Dylan Langridge and Trevor Davis, highlights the ongoing refusal of mining corporations, governments and unions to implement basic safety measures.
The fathers of two of the 29 workers killed in the 2010 Pike River mine disaster are campaigning for the release of documents and correspondence relating to a 2013 decision to drop charges against Pike River CEO Peter Whittall.
The latest deaths follow a spate of fatalities and serious injuries in mining operations across the state last year.
Striking London United bus strikers spoke to WSWS reports during their strike this weekend.
Last May, the union pushed through a 2.25 percent increase for a two-year agreement up to December 2021. Shepherds Bush was one of three garages that voted the deal down.
A driver from Norwood told WSWS, “It’s a really difficult time. Mortgages are going up and we have to work overtime to make ends meet. Without overtime you can’t survive.”
By Unite’s own admission, it has presided over four years of below-inflation pay deals. It now wants to impose another one.
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.
