Kshama Sawant is changing the dialogue in US society. We demand the right to socially productive labor. We reject the notion that we have to compete with each other for who gets a decent life and who doesn't. This is reprinted from Kiro TV
Seattle City Councilmember-elect shares radical idea with Boeing workers
SEATTLE —
Seattle
City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea
of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state
“The
workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s
profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union
supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.
This week,
Sawant became Seattle’s first elected Socialist council member. She ran
on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers’ rights, and a $15 per-hour
minimum wage for Seattle workers.
On Monday night, she spoke to
supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract
guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight
years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company
pensions.
Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other
states. “That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it's
going to devastate the state's economy,” she said.
Sawant is
calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett
airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that
"democratic ownership."
“The only response we can have if Boeing
executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to
say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we
don't need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the
machinists do,” she said.
Sawant says after workers “take-over” the Everett Boeing plant; they could build things everyone can use.
“We
can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of
destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.
Sawant
says she was referring to “drones” when speaking of war machines. Still,
she says even as they work on the lines, building airplanes daily, she
believes Boeing workers are under siege.
“Workers have to realize, they have more power than they think,” she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment