Letter from Tube Worker

Dear All my Commuter friends & anyone else who is interested in details of the strike action and dispute between TfL and their staff.

As you know I don’t usually comment on my work life as nobody really cares about other people’s jobs but due to some friends posting complete bullshit that they’ve copied and pasted from the media and haven’t got the common sense to ask someone who actually knows what they’re talking about now leaves me to enlighten you.

This dispute is not about money!

You can expect the usual barrage of total bollox in the media about “Greedy Overpaid Train Drivers” but this dispute has never been about money, It is about protecting work life balance and making sure that change in contracts are negotiated, not just imposed. And it’s not only Train drivers that voted for industrial action, it’s every grade of staff that works on the Underground network.

Everyone I work with that I know has given the same message, we cannot continue to have more and more weekend and anti-social hours working.

I have never been opposed to Night Tube, but it has to be introduced in a way that is fair; that recognises that staff are human beings with lives and families as well as a job.

The job I signed up to do works 1 week of nights over a 52 week period, sometimes 2 weeks if need be but under new terms I would have to work a minimum of 14 weeks of nights. I have a family, I would like to see them at weekend, shift work already takes a lot of that away. TfL can offer as much as they want, I work to live, not live to work.

TfL could have spent the last three months genuinely discussing how to resolve this dispute. They chose not to. They have not changed their position in any way (until yesterday, keep reading I’ll get to that).

If London comes to a halt this week, the people who should be blamed are not those who work hard to keep it moving all year round. It is the directors, and those above them, who simply do not believe that their staff have a right to a reasonable quality of life.

Yesterday’s events (Monday 6th July) at ACAS were really quite extraordinary. TfL having failed to change their offer for the last three months, now made a new proposal in the afternoon, but explained that it was “time bound” and would be “withdrawn if its conditions were not accepted by 18.30 this evening” by all four trade unions and industrial action was suspend.

TfL must have been aware that of course it would be impossible for Unions to comply with this ultimatum. Unions would need to properly consider the implications of the proposal and consult with Reps and their Executive Committees. Unions offered to return to ACAS at 12.00 today (Tuesday 7th July) to respond to the proposal but were told that it would be off the table after 18.30 today (Monday).

To be clear, Unions did not reject the offer. It has been withdrawn because the four Trade Unions were unable to comply with an utterly unrealistic “take it or leave it” ultimatum. It is pointless for Unions to express an opinion on an offer that no longer exists.

This now puts Unions in a position where there is no offer on pay, conditions or Night Tube on the table. It is difficult to believe that TfL are negotiating in good faith. Their offer seems to have been designed, not to resolve the dispute but to be used as a way to blame the Unions for what now seems to be inevitable industrial action.

Union members voted by a record breaking margin for industrial action.

I personally believe that TfL do not want to run a Night Tube service as it will cost them millions, the train and track are maintained to a minimum standard as it is but the Mayor of London announced it before it was ever discussed so they had to push ahead with it. I have a feeling TfL will now say it can’t run Night Tube due to the Unions but in reality they actually don’t want it.

Strike action will start from 21.30 on Wednesday 8th July.

Thanks for reading x

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tube-strike-live-the-underground-drivers-letter-that-may-change-your-mind-on-todays-walk-out-10378637.html

Iceland's Class War

Iceland was the first country to be hit by the financial crisis—and it was hit hard. When the global economic crisis hit in 2008, Iceland suffered terribly—perhaps more than any other country. The savings of 50,000 people were wiped out, plunging Icelanders into debt and placing 25 percent of its homeowners in mortgage default. Its three biggest banks—Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki—were 14 times larger than Iceland’s entire GDP and had lent excessively and recklessly. In the mid-1990s, under the leadership of David Oddsson, of the center-right Independence Party, who was prime minister from 1991 to 2004 and inspired by Reagan and Thatcher, Oddsson slashed taxes and privatised Iceland’s biggest banks, freeing the country's financial sector and entrepreneurs to embark on a decade of unprecedented growth and asset accumulation. As prime minister and, later, as head of the Icelandic Central Bank, Oddsson helped turn the country into a global financial player. For a few years, Icelandic banks worth billions of dollars managed cash for internationally recognized brands and a new generation of Icelandic conquerors bought up corporate assets around the world.

Much to the delight of some on the Left throughout the world, Iceland let the big banks topple and prosecuted the bankers. Several CEOs from the country’s largest financial institutions were sentenced to between four and five years in prison. These criminals didn’t get off with just fines but spending time in prison.

The radicals and progressives busy praising the Icelandic government overlook that the class war still exists and is currently ongoing. Nearly 1,000 people recently gathered in front of Government House in downtown Reykjavik in silent protest against their government. In a country with only 320,000 people, a crowd of 1,000 counts as a mass political event. Supermarkets in Iceland are running out of meat due to a nationwide strike called by vets as veterinarians are required to approve conditions at slaughterhouses and inspect imported meat.

Seven years after the financial crisis began, the government’s austerity course is seeing a backlash.

 “There’s no trust anymore,” said protester Bragi Skúlason, 57, a Lutheran chaplain at Landspítali, the largest of Iceland’s two major hospitals. “It’s gone. And politicians have to realize that.” 

The organizers behind the protest were two of Iceland’s major public sector labor organizations, representing university professors and nurses, both of which have been on strike for weeks. Officials have hinted to the local press that the government may pass legislation outlawing the strike and compelling the nurses to return to work. If they take that approach, many of the nurses are predicting mass resignations.  Later this month, at least three other unions will join the strike as well. Iceland has already just narrowly averted a strike that would have affected 40% of its labor force, when the government reached a tentative agreement with four other major unions. The Icelandic government agreed to put a bill to parliament that would postpone ongoing strike action by specific member organizations of the BHM umbrella organization of academics, and the Icelandic nurses, until July 1.

Gudmundur Gunnarsson (father of the singer Björk) became head of Iceland’s electricians union in 1987, just a few years before Oddsson took office, and stepped down in 2011, when Iceland was just emerging from a post-collapse depression. In the early 1990s, Gunnarsson and other labor leaders reached an agreement with the government, the central bank, and various private sector businesses: lower wage increases in exchange for lower inflation. Workers were willing to accept modest raises, as long as they remained ahead of the cost of living. Between 1990 and 2000, Gunnarsson says electricians’ wages increased by only about 1.4 percent annually, but the real value of those wages was more than enough to stay ahead of rising prices. Then, Gunnarsson said, “Everything went crazy in Iceland." As the country’s economic boom hit its apex, foreign money deluged the Icelandic economy, while the country's citizens took advantage of the easy money to take on billions of dollars in household debt. Inflation started to rise, and the unions once again increased their wage demands in order to keep up. Union leaders from the other Nordic countries warned Gunnarsson that Iceland was headed for disaster. “I said, ‘It’s going well. Everybody’s happy. Everybody’s driving around in a new car and has a new house,'” said Gunnarsson. “And they said, ‘It can’t go on like that. There is something wrong.'" In 2008 — when the Iceland's biggest banks finally fell apart, the United Kingdom seized some of their foreign assets, and the krona plunged in value — Gunnarsson says electricians lost five years’ worth of wage gains. "We went down," he said. "Very fast, we went down."

In 2013, when the country's main labor federation tried to revert to the labor strategy of the 1990s, trading very gradual wage increases for low inflation and a stable currency. That frustrated many union members, who were still hurting from the meltdown and subsequent devaluation of their wages. When negotiators reached an agreement to raise pay for most workers by a mere 2.8 percent, several unions were incensed. Why should their members continue to sacrifice, they said, when bankers and business owners are only getting richer? Vilhjálmur Birgisson, chairperson of a fishermen’s union, told reporters at the time,  “To my mind, it is shameful that the salaries of working people hasn't been corrected more than we've seen.”

In 2014 higher-skilled public sector industries went on strike. First, some teachers, and then the doctors union rejected the government’s offer of a roughly 3 percent pay increase and initiated a work slowdown in late 2014. Once wages for some of the skilled, middle-class public sector workers started to go up, other unions began to demand more. Soon unions in both the public and private sectors were readying for a general strike calling for a nearly 50 percent increase in the effective minimum wage. A poll from late April showed that more than 90 percent of Icelanders supported the union’s demand. While many of the workers on the lower end of the income spectrum have gotten an increase, educated, middle-class professionals — including electricians, nurses, professors, architects, psychologists, and others — are still on strike.

This month, the country began removing the capital controls it put in place following the financial collapse, a major step toward recovery. In a March address to the central bank, Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson hailed the country’s economic progress as “nothing short of a metamorphosis.” However, Orri Hauksson, the chief executive officer of Siminn hf, Iceland’s biggest telecommunications company, says the island only enjoys a “fictitious” stability thanks to those currency restrictions. 

Gunnarsson is less sanguine about the future of his country. He says he is now considering joining some of his children and grandchildren abroad, perhaps in Denmark. “Everybody’s saying this isn’t working, and the government has to realize that,” said Gunnarsson. “We are not going to live in a country or a society like the right-wing politicians are building. We don’t like this.”

Páll Halldórsson, who leads the talks for the BHM association says a third of radiologists have quit their jobs and many vets and midwives have started looking for jobs in the other Nordic countries. 

The Chinese Class Struggle Continues

WORKERS UNITED 

“Ten years ago, we didn’t have any conception of the law or defending our rights,” said a worker involved in strike action against their Lide shoe factory bosses. In the face of rising inequality, China’s government, over the last decade, passed landmark laws establishing employee rights, including social insurance payments from employers, and compensation when factories relocate. But the Lide shoemakers had no doubts where the authorities stood. “The government here just pressures us workers. It speaks on behalf of the bosses,” said one worker of more than a decade. After a six-day stoppage, employees went back to work, saying they had won sufficient concessions. “We basically got what we wanted,” said one female worker. “But our pay is still low. How can we be satisfied?” 

Low-cost labour has been key to China’s decades-long economic boom, and a newly found worker activism has authorities worried. There were 1,379 protests by workers in China last year, more than tripling in just three years, according to data from the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin (CLB). Employees have been empowered by a labour shortage and recent laws giving them greater rights. “They are not only aware of their rights, but understand that they are part of the working class, a class that increasingly has the strength and ability to forge its own destiny,” CLB said.

Finance Minister Lou Jiwei last month warned that China risks falling into a “middle income trap” if high wages make manufacturing less profitable before the country can shift to less labour-intensive, more value-added industries. He called legislation promoting bargaining between workers and employees “scary”, and blamed excessive “union power” for the multiple bankruptcies in the United States auto industry. The ‘Communist’ Party fears an independent labour movement, and only allows one government-linked trade union federation, which claimed 290 million members at the end of 2013, which tends to side with employers. Authorities face a dilemma between raising living standards for ordinary people, a key part of their claim to a right to rule, and ensuring healthy profits for local industries — often with close official connections. At the same time, they consider social unrest anathema and want to see economic growth, but China is facing increasing labour cost competition from elsewhere in Asia.

When activist Wu Guijun arrived in the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen 13 years ago, strikes were almost unheard of, despite his meagre monthly wages of just a few hundred yuan. “Workers struggled individually, and rarely spoke of defending their rights,” he said. Workers have been emboldened, Wu said. “As their living standards improved, they have started to pursue the respect and status they deserve from society.” Wu turned to activism after leading his co-workers in protest when his furniture factory faced sudden closure in 2013. Despite striking or organising walkouts not being illegal, Wu was detained by police for more than a year until prosecutors dropped charges of “gathering a crowd to disturb public order”. Given a compensation payout of more than 70,000 Yuan for unwarranted detention, he founded his own labour rights organisation, the 100 Million New Labourers Centre. In a borrowed office stocked with pamphlets on Chinese labour laws, Wu advises young workers on strike tactics and how to use social media, despite the constant threat of police harassment and detentions.

Turkey's Wildcat Strikes Pre-Elections

With all the attention here in Turkey being focused on the upcoming June 7th parliamentary elections, the strike by thousands of workers in Turkey's automobile production sector, concentrated in the northwest provinces of Bursa and Kocaeli, caught everyone by surprise. For those of our readers who did not know, Turkey has a significant vehicle manufacturing industry. In 2014, 1.17 million cars and commercial vehicles were produced. In fact, it is the backbone of Turkey's export sector with a yearly value of nearly 23 billion dollars. So when auto production is virtually shut down, as it was for the past week or two, this is big news.

We spent most of our working lives in the U.S. working union jobs, as steelworkers and railroad workers, although we did our time in non-union workplaces as well. We are well aware of the sorry plight of unions in the U.S. but, believe us when we say that we were privileged to work under union contracts. In spite of how bad our union leadership might have been, and it was about as bad as it could be, workplace safety, wages, benefits and job security was better than for the overwhelming majority of workers without union representation.

Previously, we have written about the long hours, low pay and dismal working conditions of the Turkish working class. The deaths of workers in the mines and on construction sites are some of the highest in the world. The 301 coal miners who died in a mining disaster in the town of Soma a year ago have become a national symbol of the life-and-death issues that workers here face every day they go to work. The unexpected downing of tools by thousands of autoworkers here in the midst of the election campaign has again brought the issue of workers' wages and working conditions forcefully back onto the national agenda. More than that, it has highlighted the demand of the workers to be represented by unions of their choice, free from company or government control.

The strikes in auto here have been wildcat strikes, organized by the rank-and-file without notice and without the approval of their union leaders. Workers at Oyak Renault (a joint venture with the Turkish military's pension fund) and Tofaş (a joint Fiat/Koç Holding venture), Ford Otosan as well as major parts suppliers and Türk Traktör stopped production for more than a week. Oyak Renault and Tofaş produce some 40% of Turkey's export vehicles. While most have now gone back to work having negotiated concessions from the companies in wages and working conditions, Renault workers at Turkey's biggest car factory have rejected the company's offer and remain on strike. Thousands of workers have resigned from their company 'union', frustrated and angry that it did not represent their interests. Forty-seven strike leaders have been summoned to court by a prosecutor, accused of organizing an illegal work-stoppage. To be able to understand these developments, readers should be aware that most unions in Turkey were effectively smashed in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup. The unions that were allowed to exist were company and military-approved 'unions'. Their purpose was to ride herd on the workers, put a damper on militancy, keep production running and ensure that company profits were protected. In addition to these company unions, the military-written constitution of 1982 severely curtailed workers' rights. The result is that today only 8% of Turkey's workers are union members, only about 4.5% are covered by union contracts, and most of the major unions defend the company's interests more than they do the workers'. It is in this context that the wildcat strike of autoworkers can best be understood.

These wildcat strikes have been a wake-up call to both workers and their bosses. The speed with which the strike spread and the resolve shown by the workers shows an incredible courage that has been an inspiration to the downtrodden Turkish working class and a message to Turkey's powerful business class. No matter the results of the June 7th election, we can expect that those who work to create Turkey's wealth will be flexing their muscles and demanding that their voices be heard.

from here

Solidarity with workers worldwide!

US Oil Refinery Strike Escalates

The  first nationwide strike at U.S. oil refineries since 1980 is expanding to two more plants due to unfair labor practices by oil companies. Walk-outs at BP Plc’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery and the company’s joint-venture refinery with Husky Energy in Toledo, Ohio, shortly after 12 a.m. local time on Sunday would bring the number of plants with striking hourly workers to 11, including nine refineries accounting for 13 percent of U.S. refining capacity. About 4,000 workers at refineries in California, Kentucky, Texas and Washington initially left their jobs when the strike began shortly after midnight on Feb. 1.

Another 1,440 workers will join the picket lines when employees of the BP-operated refineries in Indiana and Ohio. This will be accounting for 13 percent of U.S. refining capacity.

The union, United Steelworkers, said in a statement that U.S. refinery owners led by Royal Dutch Shell Plc have failed to discuss health and safety issues and engaged in “bad-faith bargaining, including the refusal to bargain over mandatory subjects; undue delays in providing information; impeded bargaining; and threats issued to workers if they joined the strike.”

Aware that the oil companies and media will try to portray the union’s members as greedy bastards, USW spokeswoman, Lynne Hancock, made it clear that, while hourly wages are a component of these negotiations (as they have been in virtually every contract negotiation in every industry in history), they are not central to the bargain. This shutdown isn’t about hourly pay. “Wages are not a part of this walkout whatsoever,” she said, adding that the workers are seeking better health care benefits and limits on the use of contractors to replace union members in maintenance jobs.

The local Toledo union posted on its Facebook page that the “strike is NOT about money, this is about addressing safety issues that have been ignored for way too long … 138 workers were killed on the job while extracting, producing, or supporting oil and gas in 2012 … the number was more than double that of 2009.”

USW International Vice President Gary Beevers, who heads the union’s National Oil Bargaining Program (NOBP) cited “flagrant contracting” as having a negative impact on health and safety. The most common causes for oil and gas accidents include failure to provide proper training to new employees and failure to properly implement and update safety procedures.

In January there were at least four major mishaps at a U.S. pipelines that resulted in costly explosions or spills. In 2013, Texas led the country in oil and gas sector fatalities with 106. Overall, oil and gas workers are six times more likely to die on the job than average Americans. With the recent growth of the industry due to the proliferation of new drilling techniques such as fracking, safety measures can suffer. In North Dakota, which has been at the forefront of the oil boom, the fatality rate for industry workers was three times the national average in 2013.

“Management cannot continue to resist allowing workers a stronger voice on issues that could very well make the difference between life and death for too many of them,” said USW International President Leo Gerard. USW represents about 30,000 workers at more than 200 refineries, terminals, and pipelines across the country.

Among the issues central to the strike are: mandatory employee contributions to medical insurance, continued reductions in headcount (leading to lower staffing, longer hours and more fatigue), and the company’s refusal to take seriously the union’s request that the membership be trained for jobs that are increasingly being performed by outside contractors. This outside contractor issue has become a huge deal to unions everywhere. And when it reaches critical mass, it’s going to become a huge deal to non-union workers as well. Based on what’s occurring in the marketplace, it’s the dream of every company to change the status of their workers from “employee” to “independent contractor,” thereby allowing them not to have to pay for insurance, pensions, vacations or holidays. Once your employees become classified as contractors, all you have to do is give them cash for doing the job. Write them a paycheck and be done with it. And because there’s almost always going to be a surplus of workers, market forces are going to constantly drive wages downward. But even on those occasions when employers are required to pay top dollar for workers, the savings in benefits and administrative costs is going to be enormous. Which is why the move toward “de-categorizing” employees has become so popular.

Oil companies are continuing to operate all but one of the plants with temporary replacement scab workers.

The notion of loyal employees retiring after working thirty years for the same company is an anachronism. Companies don’t want loyalty. They want flexibility.

Buses Stop

Drivers from eighteen different bus companies will go on strike across the capital. Workers will take to the streets to protest for equal pay and improved conditions for all drivers across London. Employees from the city’s biggest bus companies, Arriva North and Arriva South, London United, Hackney Community Transport and the East London Bus and Coach Company are planning to take part in the strike.

Wayne King, regional officer for the bus driver’s union, Unite, said: 

“London’s bus operators have raked in millions in profits while driving down pay and refusing to tackle pay inequality on the capital’s buses. As bus company directors enjoy lottery style salaries, bus drivers doing the same job on the same route are being pitted against one another on different rates of pay. Strike action is the last resort. We’ve been forced into this position by the operators’ refusal to even meet with us. Passengers sitting side by side on the same route expect to pay the same fare, so why shouldn’t drivers expect to be paid the same rate? The bus operators need to stop pleading poverty in defending pay inequality and collectively start negotiating about a fairer deal for London’s bus workers.”

Belgium general strike

The blog a few days ago reported on a near-general strike in Italy against anti-working class legislation. Today we see a massive anti-austerity strike in Belgium. The strike extends beyond the capital, Brussels, to both French and Flemish-speaking regions of the country.

Union-led strikes against the new centre-right coalition government of Charles Miche budget plan have cut air and rail service to Belgium, and affected schools, businesses and government offices across the country. The government intends scrapping the customary cost-of-living raise for 2015 as well as plans to raise the country's retirement age from 65 to 67 by 2030 and institute additional public sector cutbacks. The austerity measures targeted by protesters are intended to save 11 billion euros ($13.69 bn, £8.7bn) during the new government's five-year term. Protest organisers say the Belgian administration’s policies are unjust as they target workers instead of businesses. Taking to the streets of the country’s capital many demonstrators blocked key roads. One protester noted the growing demands being placed on people in an age of austerity:

“There are young and older workers, they were all told that they need to work until the age of 65 and now they need to work 2 years more.”

The European Transport Workers’ Federation explained , “The Belgian government is using EU austerity targets to penalize families, employed and unemployed, students and the poorest of society rather than targeting the big capital that remains almost untouched by the government’s austerity measures.” http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/12/13/390027/belgium-faces-chaos-over-general-strike/

The managing director of Brussels Charleroi Airport, Jean-Jacques Cloquet, described the disruptions to air service as a "real disaster".

The public sector movement against the government’s policies began early November with 100,000 people taking part in a march in the Belgian capital city of Brussels. The rally was followed by a series of strikes.

Italy Protests

People worn down by years of economic stagnation and austerity are suddenly giving vent to their frustrations with a spate of strikes and spontaneous protests which have taken politicians by surprise. Scarcely a day goes by without Italy's main cities being disrupted by workers, students or angry citizens' groups.  Two major trade union confederations  in Italy held nationwide strikes over changes to the labour market, prompting huge rallies in more than 50 cities across the country. The third big confederation, the CISL, will join them in a separate strike for public sector workers on a date to be announced. At least 40,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Rome. The strike by CGIL and UIL unions hit public transport as well as hospitals, schools and civil administrations across Italy.

The main target of Friday's strike action was the "Jobs Act", aimed at loosening restrictions on firing employees without having to pay high severance payments, particularly for recently employed workers and weakens a right to protest unlawful dismissal. With unemployment at record levels and youth jobless rates topping 40 percent, unions say the burden of the reforms and spending cuts is being placed unfairly on workers and will do nothing to revive growth.

The industrial action is the first ever by two of Italy's largest union confederations against a centre-left government. Centre-left administrations have traditionally had close relationships with the unions.

Among the protesters was 32-year-old Domenico Antonucci, who has worked in the building's cafeteria for the past decade, earning 1,000 euros ($1,240) a month. Until recently, he thought he was one of the lucky few of his generation with a full-time, permanent contract that would see him through to retirement. But with his layoff notice, he says, he will now face what will very likely be a lifetime of underpaid short-term contract jobs - the fate of so many Italians of his generation. "We're not asking for special treatment," says Antonucci, who says he has had to struggle to pay the bills on salary that is low, but average. "We're just asking to keep our jobs."

Italy's National Institute for Statistics reports that 17 percent of Italians, about 10 million people, live in relative poverty. More than six million - 10 percent - live in absolute poverty, mostly in the country's southern regions. Unemployment is around 15 percent - 45 percent for young people.

"The young people in Italy have been bearing the weight of the high turnover jobs and the older people have decided never to change jobs in order not to lose that job security," says Elisabetta Addis, economics professor at the University of Sasseri, referring to what many in Italy call "employment apartheid." Elisabetta Addis says that precisely because so many people are excluded from the full-time jobs unions are trying to protect, it is a waste of energy to focus on labor reform as the magic solution to Italy's recession.

Union leader Fausto Durante explains “Renzi thinks trade unions, social actors and citizens associations are the bad heritage of the 20th century. It's not only an Italian attitude; at the European level we're experiencing this cancellation of what we used to call social dialogue. This kind of approach leads to social tension and clashes between different parts of society, and that's exactly what's happening in Italy.”

Anger among the unemployed, the young and people living in deprived is taking the form of "do-it-yourself" protests among people who had previously been desperate but apathetic. It is targeted at politicians of all stripes and has seen a surge in support for the anti-immigrant Northern League party. In Tor Sapienza, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome, the residents have been protesting for days against a local center for immigrants, throwing rocks and setting bins alight. "We are surrounded. There are the prostitutes over there, the gypsies down there, here the immigrants. It's just too much," said pensioner Milena Pecci. Most locals claim they are not racist, just exasperated by rising crime, squalor and lack of basic services like street lighting. Visiting politicians of all colors, including the center-left mayor, have been greeted with boos and derision. Corcolle, another eastern suburb of Rome, was the scene in September of similar violence to Tor Sapienza. 

Italians used to clear political divisions are disoriented by Renzi, who is often more popular among conservative voters than left-wingers, contributing to the unstructured stream of protests. "Nobody knows if this is a left-wing government or a right-wing government and this creates enormous confusion and uncertainty," Luca Ricolfi, sociology professor at Turin University and one of Italy's foremost political commentators, said. Centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi, reviled on the left, publicly supports many of Renzi's policies, and while they are resented by large sections of Renzi's Democratic Party.

Labour won't support labour

Carers for disabled people, who have been involved in one of the longest strikes in the history of the health service, accused Ed Milibandof failure to offer public support for their cause. The carers, who have been on strike for 90 days, told the Labour leader of their deep disappointment with what they say is his failure to help his constituents in Doncaster.

Sixty carers are striking in support of a living wage for staff within the privatised care service, now run by the private equity-owned Care UK.

A letter handed to him from the strikers read: “Mr Miliband, it’s not easy to sit here and say this: we have had private, but no public, support from you or any of the local Labour MPs. The local Labour party and councillors have been worse. We have not had one word of support or visit to our picket line from any of the local Labour party. We cannot tell you how disappointing this has been for us. Most of us have been Labour voters all our lives, a good proportion of us are your constituents … It’s time to get off the fence. We want you to publicly state your support for our action.” The strikers’ letter added: “You say you support a strong NHS. You say you recognise there is a cost-of-living crisis. You have backed demands for a living wage. We are at the sharp end of this government’s creeping privatisation of the NHS. We need your help"

Care UK, whose majority shareholder is a private equity firm, Bridgepoint Capital, took over services for people with severe learning disabilities in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, from the NHS this year, cutting wages of staff who had been on NHS terms by up to 35%, while bringing in 100 new workers on £7 an hour. The strikers, most of whom were transferred from the NHS to Care UK, are demanding a living wage of £7.65 an hour for their poorest-paid colleagues. They are also asking for a wage rise for better-paid, experienced staff, who they say have been left in dire straits by Care UK’s decision to cut hourly rates for working weekends, bank holidays and nights. The strikers plan to continue their action unless Care UK meets Unison officials and comes to a satisfactory settlement.

A spokesperson for Ed Miliband said “ He believes the best solution … is for both sides to sit down and seek to find a way forward.”

 A year-long inquiry into the state of social care by John Kennedy, director of care homes for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation notes that 78% of frontline care staff earn an average of £6.45 an hour, adds: “The care home sector employs hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers, mainly women. Care workers are the lowest-paid, lowest-status workforce in the economy.”

Let the Labour Party rot!

How Was The World Cup For You?

The World Cup is in full swing, and official propaganda from President Dilma Roussef’s administration portrays Brazil as a wonderland. But Brazilians have been exposing the truth in a full year of demonstrations, protests, and strikes.
The massive public spending on the World Cup has thrown into contrast the poor pay, high fares, and starved public services Brazilians endure. And the construction has driven up housing costs and displaced poor workers.
Protests began last summer when two million people, mainly youth, filled the streets of several cities. The demonstrations kicked off protesting transit fare hikes and spread to include causes such as an end to official corruption.

Worker mobilizations took the national stage in 2014.
In January, a 10-day bus drivers strike brought the city of Porto Alegre to a halt. The strike wasn’t led by union officials—the union is conservative—but by the opposition union caucus backed by Bloco de Lutas (Fighting Bloc).
This first bus strike triggered others in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, and Sao Paulo, plunging traffic into chaos in these major cities.
Janitors who clean the streets in Rio de Janeiro also struck during Carnival, leaving the city a mess. In spite of that, most people supported the janitors against the mayor, who was refusing to increase their wages.
“The mayor says that our movement is a riot, but a riot is an uprising of prisoners,” one of their leaders declared to the mainstream newspaper O Globo. “Here is an action of workers, unless the mayor believes that janitors are thugs.”
The janitors’ rebellion started because the mayor and union officials had agreed on what workers thought was a too-small wage increase: 10 percent (Brazil faces 6.37 percent inflation this year). Like the bus strike, this was led by an opposition caucus. It ended with janitors winning a 37 percent increase.

Another wildcat strike, by the 22,000 workers at the Petrochemical Complex (Comperj) in Rio de Janeiro, lasted 40 days. They got a 9 percent increase plus some other benefits.
In the end, a fired member of the safety commission said, “Even dismissed with no rights, I feel proud to have carried out this struggle, as today I feel myself [to be] a real human being.”

Construction workers too carried out many strikes in 2013 and 2014, though these also were not supported by their unions. Eleven workers have lost their lives building or renovating football stadiums.
It’s notable that many strikes are being organized from below, without the approval of union leaders. Activists are seeking alternatives to pro-government unions and federations.
CSP-Conlutas, a militant federation formed by unions and activists who broke away from Brazil’s largest labor federation, the CUT, is becoming a pole of attraction for this new generation of labor activists.
“Without support from their unions, they look to us or any of the unions affiliated to CSP-Conlutas to provide infrastructure for their struggles,” says Atnágoras Lopes, a construction worker who is one of the federation’s leaders.
Labor sociologist Ruy Braga, at the University of Sao Paulo, links this new labor movement to the increase in casual and outsourced workers, underpaid and working in degraded conditions. They’re the ones who are “rising against union officials and their compromising spirit,” he explained to alternative newspaper Correio da Cidadania. Casual and outsourced workers in Brazil may have unions, but often don’t share the same union or the same contract as regular workers.

Union officials have led some strikes, including those of public university employees, and workers in the Ministry of Culture and in the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.
The most important was the Sao Paulo metro workers strike June 5, the anniversary of the 2013 demonstrations about fare increases, and shortly before the start of the World Cup. The union was defending the right of public transit and demanding a 12.2 percent pay increase.
Nearly all workers crossed their arms for five days, and rallied with community members raising banners reading “Transport is not a commodity.” The union offered to suspend the strike if the metro were made free.
A court ordered them back to work, but they refused. Only supervisors kept working and managed to open some metro stations. Despite the disruption to the transportation system, 77 percent of the population supported the strike, according to a survey carried out by a mainstream TV channel.
The governor of Sao Paulo sent the riot police into metro stations to beat and arrest striking workers. Courts sided with the governor and declared the strike “abusive.” Then 42 workers were fired. The union is campaigning to reinstate them, and the strike is suspended as of this writing.
The Sao Paolo metro strike got international attention and support. The mainstream newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo published a profile of Altino Prazeres, the union president, with the headline, “Who is the man who threatens the World Cup?”

On top of labor struggles, there are community and student mobilizations to protest exorbitant World Cup expenditures. They’re motivated by dissatisfaction with corporate privileges and low-quality public services. Dilma Roussef’s administration is their main target.
Interestingly, these mobilizations have no presence from traditional organizations like the CUT, the landless movement, or the national students’ association. Even the homeless movement, which had been occupying an area next to a $400 million stadium in Sao Paulo, compromised with Roussef’s administration in exchange for the building of 2,000 housing units.
Instead, the protests are led by new formations, such as Na Copa vai ter luta (There will be struggles during the world cup), Não vai ter Copa (There will be no World Cup) and ¿Copa para quem? (Who is the World Cup for?).

There’s no sign this struggling mood will stop after the World Cup. On the contrary, there are many opportunities for contract campaigns in traditional sectors—metal, oil, and bank workers—to link up with popular, youth, and non-union labor struggles.

from here

Toyota Strike And The Scourge Of Contract Labour

Originally posted at the Countercurrents website 

The stand-off between Toyota India and its 6,400 employees in Bangalore continues. Members of the Toyota Kirloskar Motor Employees Union have now downed tools. Toyota Kirloskar Motors Vice Chairman - External Affairs Shekar Viswanathan . He said the issue with the workers' union at the plant has now gone beyond the wage hike negotiations.

Toyota, halted production at its two factories in India and locked-out workers who have refused to sign an undertaking of good conduct but have now lifted the lock-out but workers declined to return to work. Besides company's security guards, state police personnel have been stationed around the twin plants in Bidadi industrial township to maintain law and order.

Negotiations over a wage increase have been taking place for the past 10 months. The union is demanding a wage rise of Rs 4,000 per month as against Rs 3,050 proposed by the management. So far 48 rounds of talks have been held with the management, which include 7-8 talks in the presence of state labour department and union lowered its demand from the original Rs 8000.

Toyota had said that "certain sections of the employees have resorted to deliberate stoppages of the production line, abuse and threatening of supervisors thereby continuously disrupting business".

The TKMEU general body met on Saturday and said they were ready to resume work on March 24 but would not sign any undertaking. The union had also sought withdrawal of suspension of 17 employees. Toyota ruled out compromising on discipline and said the suspension of some workers on disciplinary grounds would be withdrawn only if they apologise first.

"Discipline is required when you are in an industrial environment with a large number of workers. They need to obey rules. The words compromise and discipline don't go together," Shekar Viswanathan told PTI. We have suspended workers and inquiry will be conducted to decide what action must be taken...If they apologise, we are willing to take them back but if they don't, we have to take remedial action," Viswanathan said, without elaborating.

500 workers, who were supposed to enter the factory at 6 AM for the first shift, refused to do so because they were asked to sign the undertaking.

"We have not resumed work today. We had said the company should lift lockout unconditionally and we will not sign any undertaking as desired by the company," Toyota Kirloskar Motor Employees Union (TKMEU) President Prasanna Kumar told PTI. "We had gone there...but they have not allowed us in. They are insisting that we have to sign the undertaking," he said.

“As we are against giving or signing any undertaking, none of us has entered the factory for the first shift which began at 6.00am,” he told AFP. “The undertaking is against our rights as workers. We have a right to protect our interests and ensure that our welfare is not jeopardised.”

Kumar said, "The undertaking sounds like we are accepting the lockout notice that blames us for issues related to delay tactics in work, threatening supervisors.....It also asks us to follow all rules, regulations or orders laid upon us without questioning it. Whatever they say will be final. It talks about not using mobile phones and the installation of electronic devices and cameras, which shows least respect to our basic rights."

1,500 workers at the Toyota plants are contract workers. Today, contract employees account for about 34% of the total workforce in India's top publicly traded companies. The share of contract workers in the total workforce is as high as 47% in the automobile sector which has witnessed the most labour-related disturbance in recent years.

 In a background analysis of the situation Livemint.com observes that the preference of companies to employ contract labour is explained by India's labour laws, such as the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 that requires both compensation and prior permission from the government for laying-off of workers in firms employing more than one hundred workmen. This has led companies to hire labour through contractors, helping to keep many of their employees out of the regular payroll, thus escaping the provisions of the Act.

Effectively, contract labour provided companies with the flexibility to hire or fire based on business conditions, while undercutting the power of the unions. This presented companies with a luxury they could not afford otherwise, but more importantly it brought into focus the relationship between regular and contract workers. Contract workers could cooperate—or effectively unionize—with regular workers and demand higher wages and benefits. Or they could compete with regular workers, forcing them to perform better, accept lower wages, or simply perish.

During the previous 2012 Maruti strikes, the demand to offer regular employment to contract workers formed an important part of the agenda of protesting workers. Both regular and contract workers colluded to take on the management. But in the Toyota episode, there does not appear to be the same kind of solidarity. In fact, according to some Toyota union members, the management continued to operate the plant during the lockout with the aid of contract workers and management, undermining the power of the Toyota union.

The advent of competition in the labour market with the entry of contract labour has coincided with greater uncertainty in the power of the unions. Toyota's tale points to an underlying story of management taking advantage of decreasing labour union power, who fear a decline in the bargaining power from an influx of contract workers in a relatively open labour market.

As Kumar pointed, at the commencement of the dispute the company, was trying to bring in a new work culture "with more production for less pay". He had earlier explained.

UPDATE
As of the 28th, the workers have still not returned to work with management using office staff and contract workers plus apprentices to try and break the strike.

The Great Class War

2014 may be the year to remember the Great War but it is also the time to recall the class war of the 1984/5 Miners Strike. More than 11,000 people were arrested during the strike and more than 8,000 were charged. In September, 1984, the High Court ruled that the NUM had breached its own constitution by calling a strike without first holding a ballot and ordered sequestering of the union funds until by the end of January 1985, around £5 million of NUM assets had been confiscated. Scotland was different where the court ruled that Scottish miners had acted within their rights by taking local ballots on a show of hands and so union funds in Scotland could not be sequestered.

The government mobilised the police (including the widely despised Metropolitan Police) from around Britain to stop the pickets preventing the strikebreakers working. Many picketers were subject to intimidation and violence from the police. Police stopped pickets travelling between pickets on the spurious legal grounds. Stella Rimington (Director-General of MI5) published an autobiography in which she revealed MI5 'counter-subversion' exercises against the NUM and the striking miners, which included the tapping of union leaders' phones.

Many have seen this as class warfare. No longer was this an industrial dispute but instead it was a challenge to British democracy and hence the British people. The miners in the words of Thatcher were the ‘enemy within’ and she proceeded to declare war on mining communities. The media portrayed strikers with an obsessive one-sided reporting of the 'violence' of  unarmed men and women who, in the end, offered little serious challenge to the truncheons, shields and horses of a well-organised and strategically- deployed para-military police force.

 The strike proper started on March 1 1984, when George Hayes, the South Yorkshire NCB director, announced that Cortonwood would close in five weeks time. Six days later Ian MacGregor announced plans to cut 20,000 jobs. The NUM activist Dave Douglass explains “Nobody is crying for a ballot, because it is the other side that has launched the attack on us, and we are simply responding to it. Miners see stopping the assault as the task, not sticking to the terms of rules drawn up for premeditated and long-considered action.” (Weekly Worker July9 2009) Douglass goes on to point out that ‘The myth that the strike was down to one man comes about for two reasons: the press wants to believe it true because it fits in with the idea that Scargill was a labour dictator who had some sort of magnetic hold over our minds; secondly, Arthur likes to play up his own importance in everything he was involved in.’
So, whatever he may or may not have claimed to the media, it was not Arthur Scargill who called the strike - he had no constitutional means of doing so.

The issue of whether a ballot was needed for a national strike had been complicated by the actions of previous NUM leader Joe Gormley. When wage reforms were rejected by two national ballots, Gormley declared that each region could decide on these reforms on its own accord. Scargill did not call a ballot for national strike action. Instead, each region was permitted to call its own strikes, imitating Gormley's strategy over wage reforms. It was argued that 'safe' regions should not be allowed to ballot other regions out of jobs. This decision was upheld by another vote five weeks into the strike. Many miners, especially at the threatened pits, were also opposed to a ballot because of the time required to organise one and the urgency of the situation arising from the accelerated closure programme.

The decision to strike was made and could only be made by the members themselves. The NEC met on March 8 and ruled that it would endorse, as official, strikes against closures in Scotland and Yorkshire which they presumed would result from the branch meetings.  From March 12 every pit in Yorkshire was out, with the enthusiastic mass support and votes of the members. The decision to strike was taken at pitheads, by the members, over the weekend of March 10-11.  Rule 41 endorses area strikes as official while  rule 43 stipulates that national strikes could only be called by a national ballot. The situation was an area was seeking the support of another area by picketing and requesting solidarity action. It de facto became a national strike.  Every area had debated whether to have a ballot and every branch in Britain voted on the question.  The miners were not denied the right to have a ballot and all the evidence shows that the strikers would have won such a national ballot anyway - the NCB commissioned opinion polls which confirmed that a strike vote would be successful. At a conference in Sheffield the Kent Area opposed holding any ballot and this was seconded by Yorkshire. The Kent resolution gained 69 votes, with 54 against. Whether this decision was tactically sound is another question, but it was not Arthur Scargill’s decision to make. Like the strike itself, it was the miners themselves who took it.

 Nottinghamshire produced 20,000 out of 27,000 miners in the county voting against the strike.  To add insult to injury the scabbing miners  the area later voted by 20 branches to 11 to lift the overtime ban too. So it was not enough to break the strike five days a week, eight hours a day: they voted to put in extra hours to do it!  There is something in the culture and political perspective of the Nottingham miners which is out of step with the rest of the coalfields. During the 1926 lock-out the number of men breaking the stand-out and working was, by October 1926 64.8% in Nottingham rising to 80.3% by November. In regards to forming the breakaway UDM. a very similar situation also occurred also in 1926 with the creation of  the Spencer ‘non-political industrial union’. There is a brand of left workerism which refuses to see ‘ordinary workers’ as ever being at fault and prefer to blame false leaders but scabs are responsible in the final analysis for their own actions and their own lack of courage.

In Nottingham area communities were overwhelmingly dominated by scab miners and were praised by the media as heroes, and it was the strikers who were the ‘scabs’. The strikers had to walk from the picket lines through villages full of real scabs and go home to streets full of real scabs. The graffiti, the cat-calls, the violence, the threats, the intimidation of families - it was all anti-strike. The Notts strikers were blamed for everything the pickets did across the country,  and would be avenged by victimising the vulnerable minority in Notts.

The personal pain and the day-to-day struggle is reflected in the published diary of John Lowe, a coalface worker at Nottingham Clipstone colliery, who was neither a branch official nor a member of the branch committee. He describes the civil war nature of the strike that caused families to divide. ‘My position is this. My wife is 101% behind my stand. Two sons are scabs, as is a son-in-law at Mansfield colliery. A row developed in which a daughter-in-law decided that her view was totally right, hence a split. The rest of the family then isolates both of us for a while … For many weeks my wife cried herself to sleep nightly, and awoke each morning in the same state … It was like a knife twisting inside me. The hardest part was not seeing our grandchildren - the worse scenario which I could not have envisaged ...’

The toughest battle for the miners and their families was not on the picket line or at Orgreave, but back within the four walls of the family home.

Lowe also describes in his diary how “As the strike wears on and the bitterness in the close and tight-knit villages increases, a veritable war is unleashed on the strikers and their families: abusive letters, phone calls and graffiti, escalating to smashed windows, wrecked cars and physical attacks; arrests and intimidation by police; blanket bail restrictions and hefty penal sentencing by the courts; victimisation and sackings by the Coal Board; stonewall indifference from the benefits agencies. On top of all this, the lack of financial back-up and tangible solidarity which those of us in the solid areas came to take almost for granted." and  he recollects how when the strike ended “We in Notts … had to return without the fanfares and publicity. There were no bands to lead our lads through the villages and into the pit yards; there were no cameras to show our defiance in the face of defeat; people did not line the streets of our pit villages. This was Nottinghamshire; we were a minority and surrounded by hostility.”

Public opinion during the strike was always against the miners. When asked in a Gallup poll in July 1984 whether their sympathies lay mainly with the employers or the miners, 40% said employers; 33% were for the miners and by December 1984, 51% had most sympathy for the employers; 26% for the miners. When asked in July 1984 whether they approved or disapproved of the methods used by the miners, 79% disapproved and. When asked the same question in December 1984,  88% disapproved. In July 1984, when asked whether they thought the miners were using responsible or irresponsible methods only 12% said responsible; 78% said irresponsible . When asked the same question in August 1984, 9% said responsible; 84% said irresponsible.

It is beholding to the Socialist Party to place the Miners Strike in perspective and it is ably done by  Ian Isaac, lodge secretary of St John’s Colliery, Maesteg and member of the South Wales executive plus a member of Militant Tendency in ‘When we were Miners'.

‘The miners’ strike was not the catalyst for the revolutionary overthrow of Britain and the setting up of workers’ councils (soviets) out of the miners’ support groups and women’s support groups. This was never a possibility, given the balance of forces at the time. The work of the miners’ support groups had an enormous, uplifting impact on morale, but they were not soviets in waiting. The strike was a “political civil war without guns”, in the words of Ken Smith [Chairman of the NUJ in Wales.] ...” He added that ‘There should have been one union for mineworkers, whether as underground or surface workers, craftsmen, deputies or overmen. If there had been one union instead of a dozen, then a different outcome historically could have been achieved.”
 It could be argued that the biggest turning point in the whole dispute was the decision by the Nacods leadership to permit their own 80% ‘yes’ strike ballot to expire and sign up to a unilateral deal, which, as time would tell, did not save one job or one pit.

Much of the above information has been gleamed from articles and letters by Dave Douglass, former executive committee member of the Yorkshire area NUM and one time Class War activist, published in the Weekly Worker. 

China's Rising Workers

WORKERS UNITED CANNOT BE DEFEATED 

China’s workers have emerged over the last few years as a strong, unified and increasingly active collective force. Workers have time and again demonstrated the will and the ability to stand up to abusive and arrogant managements and to demand better pay and working conditions. However, workers are still hampered by the lack of an effective trade union that can maintain solidarity, bargain directly with managements and protect labour leaders from reprisals.  As a result, workers are turning to labour rights groups that can advise and support their collective actions while, at the same time, demanding more of the official trade union and putting pressure on it to change.

 China Labour Bulletin recorded 1,171 strikes and worker protests from mid-2011 until the end of 2013. The police intervened in about 20 percent of the protests recorded by CLB and occasionally conflicts erupted, leading to beatings and arrests.  About 40 percent of the industril action were in manufacturing industries particularly hard hit by the global economic downturn and the decline in China’s economic growth during this period. Factory workers staged protests when they were cheated out of their wages and overtime payments, when their bonuses and benefits were cut back and when the boss refused to pay the social insurance premiums mandated by law. Workers also went out strike to demand higher pay, equal pay for equal work, and proper employment contracts.

Transport workers staged strikes over high costs, cumbersome regulations and unfair competition; teachers protested at wage arrears, low pay and attempts by the government to introduce a performance-based salary system in schools, and sanitation workers, some of the poorest-paid in China, staged numerous strikes and protests in Guangzhou and eventually won a long-overdue raise.

Despite China's seemingly miraculous economic boom, in many ways, its emergent labor struggles are strikingly similar to those experienced by workers in more developed economies: weak-to-zero collective bargaining rights, a lack of social and health protections, the poverty and instability facing interregional migrant labor, global economic volatility and consequent job insecurity. And of course, that’s all in a fractious atmosphere of breakneck national growth rates, greater economic ambitions among the working class and soaring inequality. The rising militancy (and even class consciousness) across the industrial workforce is being facilitated by the expansion of digital communications networks—as more workers begin to enjoy the tech gadgets they’ve been producing for rich countries all these years

Without a free media or independent unions, it’s hard to tell how unified China’s workers are or can be, but CLB describes bread-and-butter struggles at various multinational factories, as well as public sector workforces such as teachers battling wage arrears and sanitation workers denied social insurance.  Workers are lacking direct channels for airing grievances. Although China is technically home to the world’s largest union organization, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the many spontaneous strikes and protests of recent years reveal that the state-run labor bureaucracy, while not completely an arm of the government, has largely been ineffective in responding to workers' intensifying needs and demands.
CLB found that in their pursuit of “better pay and conditions,” workers are bypassing traditional trade union organizing entirely in favor of organizing actions themselves. One worker told the local press, “We don’t want a union chairman who is partial towards the employer. We want to elect a chairman who can speak up for us.”

The report notes, “One of the most intractable obstacles to the development of the workers’ movement in China thus far has been the inability of workers to maintain the solidarity and momentum created by isolated victories in the workplace.” Ultimately, the reclaiming of the union from state and corporate power depends on how workers’ raised consciousness evolves into more systemic mass action and internal union reforms. But it looks like China’s capitalist miracle has opened the potential for its working masses to create the century’s labor miracle as well.

Taken from here

A 50-page report by the CLB is available for download here

Remembering the class battles of the past

Today we remember the Akron Rubber Strike which begun on the 17th February, 1936

One big strike was staged in 1913 by the Industrial Workers of the World. The rubber companies broke that strike through the tactics of organizing a Citizens' Police Association, comprising 1,000 vigilantes, and the establishment of martial law. Other unionization efforts were thwarted, through the use of spies, widespread firing of men for union activities, and other forms of intimidation, and by factional warfare within labor's own ranks. The AFL instead of keeping these industrial workers together in one big union, distributed them among 13 separate ones. Under the cumbersome system of craft organization workers couldn't make headway. The Akron work-force pressed for a union of their own, and in 1935 William Green received a charter. The delegates insisted on electing their own officers.

Factory workers including those who worked for all three major rubber makers in Akron, Ohio faced poor working conditions, low wages, and benefits close none. In 1929 the average pay of rubberworkers was $1,377; in 1933 had been cut to $932. Thousands became jobless. Those who remained in the factories were driven mercilessly under the conveyor-belt system of production. These conditions resulted in workers establishing the United Rubber Workers in 1935, who organized the fist major strike in the Akron Rubber Industry. The United Rubber Workers belonged to a larger organization, the newly founded Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The CIO consisted of an umbrella organization for multiple unions, formed in 1935, out of a rebellion against the leadership of the AFL that was unwilling to support industrial union organization such as in the rubber industry. Workers in those industries felt betrayed & John L. Lewis, head of the United Miner Workers, led the split for an industrial union strategy (opposing the craft-worker approach of the AFL).

These unions worked together by providing both moral and material support to CIO-member unions, especially when these member unions went on strike. The strike began as a protest against a plan created by Goodyear to reduce wages and increase the pace of production. The workers utilized the concept of the "sit-down" strike. In the past, when workers went on strike they would leave the factory to join picket lines. Company owners often hired "scab" laborers to cross the picket lines and continue production. The practice of using scab labor made it difficult for striking workers to obtain their demands. In contrast, in a sit-down strike, workers quit working but still occupied their places within the factory. This process meant that the factory owners could not send in additional workers to continue the job. In addition, factory management was more reluctant to use private security forces or other strikebreakers to intimidate the striking workers, as that approach threatened destruction to plant property. Akron's mayor attempted use police force to put and end to the strike, but officers refused to do so when they confronted the thousands of organized workers. By conservative estimates, 10,000 pickets had gathered. Practically every one was armed with a baseball bat or stick.The strike was successful in getting Goodyear to negotiate better contracts for the worker with the United Rubber Workers.

The victory of the Akron rubber workers revealed the full power of the sit-down strike for the first time. The tactic of seizing possession of, and holding, great plants was not entirely unknown to the workers of the United States, but nothing like its mushrooming during the struggles of the mid-thirties had ever been seen before. In the sit-down strike the workers found a weapon. In the same year the Flint Sit-Down Strike changed the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from a collection of isolated locals on the fringes of the industry into a major labor union and led to the unionization of the domestic United States automobile industry.

Socialists unhesitatingly declare that the struggle on the economic field must be looked to and encouraged. But the workers must not be deluded into a false sense of power by occasional union victories, They have to strike and face lock-outs because they are slaves to the capitalist class. A year later in 1937 workers at Fansteel Corporation stage a sit-down strike to gain recognition of their union. This strike later led to a decision of the US Supreme Court declaring the illegality of such strikes.

In any war there are only two options: fight to win, or surrender. Both options produce casualties. There is no “safe” option for workers under attack in the class war. The Socialist Party does not advocate doing nothing and wait for some spontaneous, successful strike to resuscitate a dying labor movement. Our most urgent task is to reconnect the labour movement with the genuine socialist tradition. We can and must lay the foundation for renewed struggle in the here and now. Developing class solidarity is a process. Socialists require to provide the information and the arguments we need to build a new labour movement from the ground up – one that fights to win. Any goal short of victory for all is an injury to workers everywhere. The battleground is the shop floor, not the bargaining table. We can be certain that capital will continue to assault labour, and workers will continue to defend their rights. Whether workers prevail will depend on the extent to which they fight as a class, using their greatest power – the power to stop production. Workers must use their power as a class and fight as a class.

The Cambodian Class War

At least four people were killed and about 20 others wounded when police in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh opened fire to break up a protest by striking garment workers, demanding double the minimum wage. The clashes took place at Canadia Industrial Park in Phnom Penh, home to dozens of factories that make clothing for western brands that include Adidas, Puma and H&M Hennes & Mauritz. Workers at most of Cambodia’s more than 500 garment factories are on strike, demanding an increase in the minimum wage to £97 a month, double the current rate. The government has offered £60 a month.  The garment industry is Cambodia’s biggest export earner, employing about 500,000 people, worth $5 billion a year. In 2012, Cambodia shipped more than £2.4 billion worth of products to Europe and the US.  The government is in close alliance to the factory owners, whose exports fuel the economy and who are generally seen as financial supporters of Mr Hun Sen’s ­ruling Cambodian People’s Party. Many western brands outsource footwear and clothing to Cambodian factories, in part because labour is cheaper than China and even lower than neighboring Thailand and Vietnam.

Chuon Narin, deputy chief of the Phnom Penh Municipal Police, said  “They are ­anarchists, they have destroyed private and state property. That is why our forces need to chase them out.”

Mak Vin, a 25-year-old worker, said he was among those protesting for more than a week over the wage issue. He said that yesterday morning, as the workers burned car tyres and shouted slogans, “hundreds” of armed police arrived and opened fire.” He said most workers were not cowed by the shooting, and would continue their strike.

 The previous day  at a different location, outside a Yakjin (Cambodia) Inc factory in another part of the city, when armed troops struck demonstrators with batons, wounding 20 people, troops broke up a demonstration outside a factory, beating demonstrators and arresting people, including Buddhist monks, according to witnesses from human rights groups. Yakjin is a maker of clothing for Gap and Walmart .

Violent suppression of social and political protest has not been unusual under Mr Hun’s Sen’s authoritarian government.

The Wildcat Strike

The Western Socialist, July-August, 1953

The workers mill around in small groups. A buzz of excitement sweeps through the room and spreads rapidly. The huge steel-cutting machines lapse into silence. The conveyor lines halt as if struck dead by some unseen hand. Everything is at a standstill. A wildcat strike is being born. The workers await its delivery

A chief steward has been fired. Or perhaps the line has been speeded up, and the workers walk off in protest. Or perhaps. . . rumors. . . facts. . . confusion. . . unrest. . .

A group of men push their way through the workers. These are the committeemen, perhaps accompanied by local union officials. They listen to the workers’ complaints. Go back to work. We will settle this through the regular grievance procedure.

Some of the workers nod in agreement. But they are pulled back into the circle by those who voice defiance and protest. We have followed the grievance procedure before and got nothing. This time we are going out.

The officials try another argument. The walkout has not been approved by the International Executive Board of the union. The workers answer: Hell, we voted 98 % to strike three months ago, and the International still hasn’t authorized the strike. We’re hitting the bricks.

The situation is getting beyond the control of the local union officers. They deal one last card. They tell the workers: you will be violating the Taft-Hartley Act. The union will be sued, its treasury wiped out. This has even less effect than the other arguments. Washington is a long way off to these workers. Their immediate grievance looms larger. Suddenly someone cries what are we waiting for. Let’s go. Survey the scene as if you were seated in a high crane with a view of the entire shop.

Large knots of workers formed here and there in the various departments begin to break up into small knots. The workers are arguing, discussing. Then they begin to leave the plant.

They merge like so many rivulets into small streams, then into large rivers, until finally all are swept out through the gates in a mighty flow. The company enters the scene. Telegrams are sent out to the workers. Return to work or be considered as having voluntarily quit your jobs. Still the workers remain away, in sullen defiance.

Momentarily the company has lost control of the workers. The union goes into action. A mass meeting is scheduled. The “big guns” from the International union scold the workers. They spend most of the meeting, talking, repeating, talking, and repeating. Very little time is left for the rank and file. When a rank and filer speaks, his limit his five minutes, while each International man speaks for half an hour, often longer.

The International tells the men: you will lose your jobs. The plant will move out of town. Other companies will get the work. The arguments have a telling effect. Thousands of workers have come to this meeting for one purpose only: to vote to go back to work. The motion is made and passed to return to work and “continue negotiations.”

The militants who argued in favor of continuing the strike are defeated, the conservatism of the workers prevail. On this the International office had pinned their hopes to end the stoppage.

Wait. All is not over. The men return, but the following week other cats take place. The International officers apply a heavy foot. An administrator is placed over the Local union. Bargaining continues with the company, but the administrator has the final words on everything. The democratic right of the workers to make their own decisions has been abolished.

Despite this dictatorship over their affairs, the workers continue to strike. The “instigators” are fired. The union remains silent, in approval of the company’s action. Gradually the strikes fade out until the administrator leaves. Then the process begins all over again. . .

THE PATTERN

Not all wildcat strikes follow this pattern. The one above – an actual situation which took place in the auto industry recently – enables us to view a wildcat strike from beginning to end.

Some strikes never reach the point where the workers leave the plant. They are in the nature of sit-downs, where the workers stay at their machines without turning a hand, or let jobs go by until a jam piles up at the end, and the line must shut down. Still other actions take the form of slow-downs. The workers let every other job on the line go, or if running a machine reduce the speeds and feeds. They are working, but not producing their quotas. Both the company and the union terms this a strike.

Why do these wildcats take place? What significance do they have toward developing the thinking of the workers?

To some these wildcats are the work of an “irresponsible few,” of a “small dissident element,” or even of “Communists.” This is the attitude, not only of union leaders, but also of many workers.

There is no use denying the facts. In certain isolated cases a few individuals might agitate for a wildcat and succeed in bringing it off, but can a few lead thousands, if the conditions are not present for these thousands to be led? What becomes of the “communist” arguments when wildcats break out in plants where there are no known “communists” and where the participants are all “loyal American workers”?
ORIGIN OF WILDCATS

The point is that the wildcat walkouts, the sit-downs, the slow-downs have their origin in the economic system we have today. To allege the cause of these works stoppages to “leaders,” and not to conditions, is to cover up the real nature of capitalism. Labor leaders do it from ignorance or from plan – because of their belief in and collaboration with the capitalist system – but the workers do it out of sheer ignorance of the real conditions.

In a system of society such as we have now where one class works for wages and another class reaps the profits from their labor, a struggle goes on continually between the two classes over the fruits of production.

Socialists call this the class struggle. This struggle embraces a multitude of matters. It takes place over wages and hours at work. It takes place over working conditions, safety, speedup, etc. It takes place over firings, penalties for being late and absent, even over the location of a time clock.

The outlets of this struggle are numerous and varied. Already we have mentioned the wildcat, the sit-down, and the slow-down. Other forms exist. When the worker reaches up and flips the counter on his machine a few dozen times without increasing his production, when he turns in production figures beyond what he actually produced, when he spends half an hour beyond that time necessary to perform his biological functions, he is engaging in a struggle against those who exploit him. When he tightens up a nut, takes it off, and then puts it on again to kill time on the line, he is carrying on a struggle against his capitalist employers.

The wildcat strike is just another manifestation of the class struggle. When workers have grievances over speed-up, these grievances arise out of the fact that a class is seeking to make more profit from them. When workers have grievances for higher wages, these grievances stem from the fact that the workers must struggle for their standard of existence against the class which seeks to keep wages down.

The wildcat takes place when the workers feel that the grievance procedure is too slow, when on-the-spot action is necessary, or when they have no confidence in the ability of their leaders to solve their grievances through the regular procedure.

The labor leaders may clamp down hard, may place one administrator after another over one local union after another, but the conditions of capitalism continuing, wildcats are bound to result. Not a day passes that a wildcat does not take place in some shop throughout the country. Still the union leaders are foolish enough, or ignorant enough, to believe they can suppress the class struggle. Even Hitler could not stop strikes under his dictatorship, nor as recent events in East Germany showed, could the armored tank divisions of the Red Army.

POLITICAL MEANING

What is the political significance of these wildcat strikes? One school of thought in the working class political movement sees these wildcat strikes as bona fide rebellions, not only against the labor leaders, but against the capitalist system itself. This school views the wildcats as the beginnings of a real rank and file movement which will eventually result in the workers throwing out the union bureaucrats, taking over the factories, establishing workers’ councils and ultimately a “workers society” based on these councils.

If one reads the newspapers – and at one time half of Detroit’s auto workers were idle because of wildcats – he might gain the impression that a tremendous political movement of the workers was under way. To one directly involved in these struggles, and in daily contact with the workers, another, more accurate, picture enfolds itself.

These wildcats are purely economic struggles on the part of the workers. They have a grievance arising out of the conditions of their work, instinctively they bring to bear their only weapon, withdrawal of their labor.

For a brief period the workers are aroused. They assail their union leaders in no uncertain terms. But they learn nothing of the role of these union leaders in support of capitalism because they do not understand the society under which they live. In a few days, after the wildcat is over, the workers return to their routine thinking.

A LEVER TO EMANCIPATION?

Another school of thought believes these wildcats can be used as a lever to push the workers along a political road, towards their “emancipation.” How is this possible if the workers do not understand the political road, and are only engaging in economic struggles? The answer is that “leaders in-the-know” will direct the workers, much as a Seeing Eye Dog guides a blind person.

But these leaders can also lead the workers in the wrong direction, toward the wrong goals (nationalization and state capitalism), as the workers later find out to their sorrow.

The socialist approach of education- rather than the non-socialist approach of leadership – is much better.

Through education it can be pointed out to the workers that wildcat strikes arise out of the nature of capitalism, but that they are not the answer to the workers’ problems. These economic struggles settle nothing decisively because in the end the workers still wear the chains of wage slavery. It is the political act of the entire working class to eliminate the exploitative relations between workers and capitalists which can furnish a final solution.

Is not this giving leadership to the workers, to point these things out? In a sense it is, but it is a leadership of a different type. It is not the non-socialist leadership of a minority which knows (or thinks it knows) where it is going over a majority which does not know where it is going, and merely follows the minority.

It is the socialist leadership of educating workers to understand the nature of both capitalism and socialism, so that, armed with this understanding, the workers themselves can carry out the political act of their own emancipation.

The non-socialist leadership is based on lack of understanding among the workers. The socialist leadership is based on understanding among the workers.

This is the lesson of the wildcat strike and all other outbursts of class struggle among the workers. These struggles can be used as a means of educating workers to the real political struggle – socialism. They should not be used as a means to gain leadership over the workers, or to lead them along a political path they do not understand.

KARL FREDERICK

(EDITORIAL NOTE: A wildcat strike is a work. stoppage which has taken place in violation of a contract with management, or which has not received official sanction from the authority – usually the International Executive Board – established under the Union’s constitution. The author of this article has participated in dozens of wildcats in the automobile industry, and thus writes from first-hand observation.)