This report was given by Eric London to the Seventh Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US) in support of the resolution titled “Build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees! For a global counteroffensive of the working class!”
The report issued in advance of the conference in Davos details a series of deepening crises: the ever-worsening economic outlook, the intensification of geopolitical conflicts and tensions, the deterioration of health care, and the effects of climate change.
The announcement by Google that it is laying off 12,000 workers is the latest in the intensifying jobs bloodbath in the technology sector internationally and the spearhead of a drive by the financial elite to impose the inflation crisis on the backs of the working class.
Lehman’s written protest is an encyclopedic historical record of the election, comprehensively detailing every facet of the antidemocratic conspiracy by the entrenched bureaucracy to cling to power by suppressing the vote.
We are building a network of rank-and-file committees of workers in key industries and workplaces to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save lives, and prepare for a political general strike.
Canada Post strikers are determined to wage a struggle. But they are being hamstrung by the disastrous policies of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Canadian Labour Congress, which are forcing the workers to stand alone against the combined strength of corporate Canada and its bought-and-paid-for political representatives.
The Health Workers Rank-and File Committee—a group of doctors, nurses, pathology and ancillary health workers from across Australia—extends its full support and solidarity to striking Woolworths and Lineage Cold Storage workers.
“We say from bitter experience that to avoid yet another sell-out, you need to take matters out of the hands of the UWU bureaucrats.”
The result of the recent Berlin Transport Company (BVG) staff council election in Berlin has revealed the extent of opposition to the public service union Verdi.
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.
The 53-year-old was caught under a vehicle moving on the assembly line and crushed to death on August 21.
Workers currently making up to $38 an hour would see their wages fall to $19 an hour or below and their benefits cut in half.
General Motors has sold its stake in its joint venture battery plant in Lansing, Michigan, leaving workers in a state of uncertainty.
Stellantis has announced the closure of the Luton van plant, directly axing at least 1,100 jobs, with production ending in the second quarter of 2025.
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.
UPS announced the closure of three facilities in November, laying off more than 1,000 workers as part of its plans to automate its operations.
The National Government Workers Group called a one-day strike over new seniority rules, while CN rail workers could be in a position to strike by January 1.
The result of the recent Berlin Transport Company (BVG) staff council election in Berlin has revealed the extent of opposition to the public service union Verdi.
A resounding vote in favor of a strike must be followed by the organization of a rank-and-file committee through which workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center can wage a successful struggle.
By refusing to organize a fight, 1199SEIU has allowed RWJBarnabas Health to take a hard line against 500 nurses at Clara Maass Medical Center.
Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday and later charged by New York City prosecutors with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4.
UnitedHealth Group has consistently come under fire for denying patients’ claims, leaving countless individuals and families grappling with the financial and emotional toll of medical crises.
Educators, support staff and other workers staged protests in Argentina over austerity, while 5,000 Providence hospital staff are in position to strike in Oregon.
Australia’s main university union, the National Tertiary Education Union, has prevented any organised struggle against the restructure of WSU College, setting a brutal precedent.
Opposition is growing among educators and working class and immigrant families against the closure of 7 of 15 charter schools by the charter schools operator.
A series of lawsuits have been launched by pro-Zionist outfits against California teachers and school districts in an attempt to stifle opposition to the genocide in Gaza.
The disciplining of the youth, for wearing a keffiyeh, was clearly directed by the NSW Labor government.
During the sweltering summer of 2022, three workers died due to the excessive heat at separate Amazon warehouses in New Jersey. The company has denied all responsibility.
The event, hosted by Times writer Aaron Ross Sorkin, exposes whatever is left of the newspaper’s pretension to be the voice of American “liberalism,” as opposed to a voice of the American oligarchy.
If the postal workers are to prevail, the working class throughout the transportation and logistics sectors, and across all other economic spheres, must be mobilized and the strike made the spearhead of a working-class counteroffensive against the capitalist elite’s class war agenda of austerity and war.
Amazon workers took part in protests in more than 20 countries on Friday and last weekend, during the Black Friday shopping event.
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.
Chemical leaks this week at petrochemical plants in Baton Rouge and a Houston suburb killed two workers and caused dozens of serious injuries. The facilities had been cited repeatedly for safety and environmental violations.
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.
As a result of privatisation, workers face the same risks of dismissal, wage cuts, loss of social rights and even increased risk of death and injury in precarious conditions as in other companies.
The police’s murderous tactics, dubbed “surrender or starve”, have caused outrage in South Africa where unemployment has soared to 42 percent and economic desperation is widespread in the world’s most unequal society.
The company is also seeking to impose further real wage cuts for remaining workers at the facility.
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.
