We are publishing here the report to the Eighth Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US) given by Tom Hall. The congress was held from August 4 to August 9, 2024.
That the continuing significant upturn in strike activity has led to zero growth in union membership is an indictment of the right wing character of the corporatist US trade unions.
Fain has gone almost overnight from presenting himself as a so-called “militant,” “democratic unionist,” spouting slogans like “eat the rich” and denouncing Trump as a scab, to announcing his willingness to collaborate with the most right-wing government in US history.
Trump set himself above the bank and energy executives on the panel, who groveled, flattered and praised him. But like every dictator, he speaks not only for himself but for a social class.
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.
The following statement was written by a founding member of the Costco Workers Rank-and-File Committee (CWRFC) to be read at Sunday’s public meeting called by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, “Mobilize the working class to save the US Postal Service and other federal programs!”
The CFPE calls on teachers and school workers to join our ranks to fight for decent conditions and wages for all educators, and a public education system that provides the highest quality schooling for all students.
Attendees at meeting called by the US Postal Workers Rank-and-File committee passed a resolution calling on workers to make preparations for “mass resistance, up to and including strike action.”
The attacks on federal workers are part of a broader attack on the social and democratic rights of workers across the country. Join postal workers, federal employees, autoworkers, postal workers from other countries and others in an online meeting this Sunday at 3pm Eastern/12pm Pacific to discuss a strategy to fight back.
Ford and other automakers have been encouraged by Trump’s ICE raids to run roughshod over the constitutional rights of autoworkers.
Shawn Fain lied when he and the UAW apparatus backed Harris and the Democrats, claiming that they were allies of workers. Now he is lying when he claims that Trump’s tariffs will benefit the working class.
Workers in the US and Mexico expressed concern about trade war measures and job cuts.
Rank-and-file opposition is growing over the last-minute agreement reached by the UAW to prevent a strike by 800 aircraft engine workers.
Members of the International Association of Machinists have reportedly ratified a five-year deal with CSX Transportation, the same sellout previously pushed through at BSNF and Norfolk Southern.
Musk’s comments sum up the strategy of the ruling class: to loot whatever is not bolted down in the federal government in order to enrich themselves.
There is a direct link between our industrial dispute and the rapid changes in world politics.
Although none of the chronically short-staffed air traffic controllers have yet been fired, the cuts have already hit FAA staff that support their safety-critical functions.
A well-attended online meeting of health workers discussed the government’s austerity budget and the political and industrial struggle required to fight it.
Health employees can only defend their wages and allowances and defeat the government attacks in unity with other workers facing the same assaults.
Nurses and other health workers are angered by the government’s drastic cuts to overtime and public holiday pay rates and the imposition of longer promotion periods.
Despite attempts to censor the WSWS, workers wanted to discuss the broader questions and did so with our reporters at length.
Lecturers and support staff at Dundee University are opposing massive job cuts threatened because of a £30 million deficit run up by the university in pursuit of regional investment and profit.
In contrast to the union bureaucracy, rank-and-file educators are pressing for collective action to halt the shutdown of the Department of Education and gutting of school programs.
Arab American middle school student, Danielle Khalaf, refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance “because of what’s happening in Palestine.” She was told to “Go back to your country.”
McMahon’s mandate is to take the Department of Education apart piece by piece until Congress approves its final elimination and the mass privatization of public education.
Utterly opposed to mobilizing the social power of the working class against the giant corporation, the unions are promoting a diversionary consumer boycott, while urging workers to pressure Ottawa and Quebec City to intervene on their behalf.
If confirmed, the raid is an exposure of the Teamsters union, which covers workers at the facility and which openly backs Trump’s anti-immigrant racism.
This $2 trillion global behemoth applies the dictatorial principles of oligarchic rule: any effort by workers to challenge their hyper-exploitative working conditions is to be ruthlessly crushed.
The e-commerce giant has extended its reach into smaller markets and rural areas, a move that has significant economic implications for rural carriers and raises serious questions about the future of the United States Postal Service.
The 250 striking workers were given just 48-hours notice to vote on a lengthy seven-year contract that failed to meet their key demands.
On strike for more than three months, Marathon workers called for joint action to stop the cutoff of their insurance on December 13.
The working class in the metro Detroit area must come to the defense of the more than 250 Marathon refinery workers who have been on strike for three months.
After more than 10 weeks on strike, workers at Marathon Detroit Refinery are determined to win improved wages and stop subcontracting, healthcare cuts and dangerous work schedules.
Tahmoor workers’ livelihoods are tied up with the fortunes of GFG Alliance, a company that is wracked with crisis on an international scale.
This is a revolting crime of South African capitalism. Comparisons are already being drawn in the country to the Marikana Massacre of 2012, where police under the command of the ANC killed 36 striking workers at the Lonmin platinum mine.
The 111-day walkout by coal miners, which began on December 6, 1977, was a major strategic experience for the American and international working class.
For 14 years, successive governments, state agencies, the judicial system and the union bureaucracy have worked to prevent anyone being brought to justice for the avoidable deaths of 29 workers in Pike River Coal’s underground mine.
The lawsuit, launched by the ACLU in California, alleges that the summary banishment by the University of California Regents was illegal.
Suspensions, banishments, withholding of diplomas, and demands for letters of apology are among the weapons used to attack freedom of speech.
The significance of the strike, and the police-state measures used to end it, are that they anticipate an even broader and more explosive confrontation between the working class, which is being forced to pay the cost of war, and American and world imperialism.
The UAW apparatus is a critical instrument of the Biden administration, which is relying on the discredited labor bureaucracy to hold back opposition to US imperialism’s wars for global domination.
The union is facilitating the destruction of a portion of its membership. This is the logical follow-up to the sellout contract agreed to by SAG-AFTRA after a lengthy strike last year.
We recently spoke to stuntwoman-actress Michelle Shock about the SAG-AFTRA contract and the general situation in the film and television industry.
When only a little more than a third of the membership bothers to vote in such circumstances, this has to be considered a vote of non-confidence in the union leadership.
The Drescher-Crabtree-Ireland leadership and the national board as a whole have proven themselves to be conscious agents of the corporate predators.
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.
