UBC Leaders Charged With Wire Fraud.

From David Johnson, host of the World Labor Hour and former member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters AFL-CIO. Check out the The World Labor Hour on WEFT

My old Union of 30 + years, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters ( UBC ). This is not the first incident of such corruption, especially in the NYC area. The U.S. government under both Clinton and Bush through the Dept. of Labor helped the dictator ( General President ) of the Carpenters Union Doug McCarron crush the rank and file rebellion of 1998-2002.

ALL Carpenter Union staffers are appointed by McCarron and through his proxies. Because of all of the corruption in the NYC UBC the Dept. of Labor and the Dept. of Justice were forced to hold an actual democratic election by the members in NYC for the head of the NYC Regional Council in 2006. Mike Biello ( a rank and file democracy activist ) was elected.

After his election Biello began an aggressive campaign of going after corruption in the UBC, forming alliances and coordinated actions with other Unions both in and outside the building trades, and began to go after many of the wealthy developers in NYC who were building non-Union. After four years of success of getting more developer work to build Union, the dept. of Labor removed Biello from office under the flimsy yet court upheld excuse that he was " incompetent " because he was using Union funds ( with membership approval ) to forge alliances and partnerships with community activists and running media ads exposing corrupt developers.

Just like it's foreign policy, the U.S. government prefers to support corrupt dictators then to support democracy and redistribution of wealth, with both foreign governments and American Unions.

Top Union Officials ‘Sal’ and ‘Cigars’ Indicted by DOJ for ‘Rampant Admissions-Bribery Scheme’

 by Matt Naham | 1:33 pm, June 27th, 2019

Reprinted from Law and Crime

Top union officials for the Brooklyn and Manhattan chapters of an international labor union for carpenters were indicted on Thursday by the Department of Justice for allegedly accepting “tens of thousands of dollars in cash bribes” in a union admissions-bribery scheme.

Salvatore “Sal” Tagliaferro, the 54-year-old president of the Local 926 chapter of United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America in Brooklyn, and John “Cigars” Defalco, the 51-year-old VP of the Local 157 chapter of the same union in Manhattan, have each been charged with honest services wire fraud, conversion of union assets, and conspiracy. Both were arrested on Thursday.

The union big-wigs are accused of “abus[ing] their positions of authority to solicit and accept cash bribes from prospective union members in exchange for securing the bribe payers’ admission into the union.” The allegations are similar to those made by the DOJ in the massive prosecution known as “Operation Varsity Blues,” where William “Rick” Singer solicited large sums of cash from parents looking to guarantee their kids’ admission to the university of their choice.

“In doing so, Tagliaferro and Defalco defrauded the union of its right to their honest services, and unlawfully converted union property to their own use,” the indictment said.

Prosecutors said the two defendants, “[f]rom at least in or around 2017 up through and including in or around June 2019,” engaged in a conspiracy to accept bribes. The DOJ described this a “rampant admissions-bribery scheme.”

“[T]he defendants, and others known and unknown, conspired to sell admission into the Local 926 in exchange for cash bribes,” the indictment continued. “In particular, Defalco and other co-conspirators identified prospective Union members and solicited cash payments from them, often in the amount of $1,500.”

“Then, once prospective Union members made the payments, Defalco sent those individuals’ names to Tagliaferro, who would use his authority as President of Local 926 to ensure that they were accepted into the Local 926 and received Union books,” it was alleged.

The defendants allegedly shared the bribe payments. But wait — there’s more. Defalco has been charged for alleged witness tampering and obstruction of justice:

DEFALCO and TAGLIAFERRO also took numerous steps to conceal their conduct from investigators, and DEFALCO attempted to tamper with witnesses and obstruct the federal investigation. Among other things, DEFALCO pressured one co-conspirator to sign an affidavit falsely exculpating him and directed that co-conspirator falsely to exculpate DEFALCO, TAGLIAFERRO, and others if questioned. DEFALCO and TAGLIAFERRO also discussed a false cover story to explain the involvement of another co-conspirator in the scheme, and DEFALCO instructed that co-conspirator to repeat this false cover story to a federal grand jury investing his conduct. DEFALCO also instructed a co-conspirator to delete incriminating text messages between them that were responsive to a federal grand jury subpoena served on the co-co-conspirator.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman said in a statement that the indictment represents a broad commitment by law enforcement to “root out corruption in union leadership.”

“As alleged, the defendants abused their leadership positions to line their pockets at the expense of their union and its members, whose interests they were duty bound to protect. By allegedly demanding and accepting cash bribes in return for union membership, the defendants not only betrayed their union, but personally profited off the needs of those seeking work,” Berman said. “The charges announced today reflect our tireless commitment to working with our law enforcement partners to root out corruption in union leadership and our commitment to bringing to justice those who corrupt their positions.”

According to the DOJ, Tagliaferro, a Staten Island resident, and Defalco, of Secaucus, N.J., face serious prison time if they are convicted.

The conspiracy and conversion charges are punishable by up to five years of prison each, while the wire fraud charge is punishable by up to 20 years. Note that these are maximums, not likelihoods; these individuals are innocent until proven guilty. Also note that the judge will ultimately decide what the punishment should be. There’s also the possibility that, given the situation, either or both of these defendants will take a plea deal.

Defalco’s legal peril, however, is currently worse on paper than Tagliaferro’s, given the witness tampering and obstruction charges. Per the DOJ, each carries a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars.
Salvatore Tagliaferro, John Defalco indicted by Law&Crime on Scribd

Facing up to Libra

by Michael Roberts

Libra is the name that Facebook, the global social network company, is calling its planned international digital currency.  What is Facebook’s purpose with this planned new currency?



According to Facebook, Libra is “a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people”. In its statement, the company says that: “The world truly needs a reliable digital currency and infrastructure that together can deliver on the promise of “the internet of money.” Securing your financial assets on your mobile device should be simple and intuitive. Moving money around globally should be as easy and cost-effective as—and even more safe and secure than—sending a text message or sharing a photo, no matter where you live, what you do, or how much you earn. New product innovation and additional entrants to the ecosystem will enable the lowering of barriers to access and cost of capital for everyone and facilitate frictionless payments for more people.”

So the professed aim is to provide a currency for everybody using the internet to buy and sell goods and services to each other across the world, seamlessly and with near-zero transaction costs.  International banks and national currencies would be by-passed and all their costs and fees would be avoided.  Moreover, all transactions would be private and not viewable by the authorities or banks.  And supposedly over one and half billion people without bank accounts would be able to carry out transactions globally on their phones and laptops, not using cash.

Libra’s setup may make international transactions a little faster, but actually not nearly as fast as traditional payments processors. It looks like Libra can do about 1,000 transactions per second. A traditional payments processor like Visa can do about 3,000 transactions per second.

In principle, any digital currency ought to make payments for goods and services simpler and cheaper so that people do not need to carry wads of cash about (eg flying to country with a suitcase).  A digital currency seems the way to go in the 21st century – but it immediately poses issues.  Who controls this currency and what about people who want to hold cash and do not want to be forced to have a bank account or a Libra ‘wallet’ to buy things?

Facebook is not a pioneer here – already a digital payments service operates in China with WeChat and Alipay.  The issue here is the sheer size of Libra’s global grasp, with the billions of Facebook users and also the number of large multinationals that have pledged to back and take the new currency.

Libra is the latin word for pound in weight of silver or gold.  It was a universal measure of value in Roman times.  But Facebook’s Libra will be no such thing. It is not the future people’s currency controlled by the people.  It is a privatized currency for commercial gain for Facebook and its investment backers. It will be owned and controlled by a board of multi-national corporate investors who will pledge capital to get it going.

The US dollar currency is owned by the US government.  This is the same for other national currencies.  As such, there are regulations and laws on how national currencies are issued.  None of that will apply to Libra.  Holders of Libra will have to trust Facebook and the investing board, not any government, that nothing will go wrong with their money.

Facebook says it will be using blockchain technology, the decentralized digital settlement system that is behind such so-called cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin.  Cryptocurrencies aim to eliminate the need for financial intermediaries by offering direct peer-to-peer (P2P) online payments. Blockchain is a ‘ledger’ containing all transactions for every single unit of currency. It differs from existing (physical or digital) ledgers in that it is decentralized, i.e., there is no central authority verifying the validity of transactions. Instead, it employs verification based on cryptographic proof, where various members of the network verify “blocks” of transactions approximately every 10 minutes. The incentive for this is compensation in the form of newly “minted” cryptocurrency for the first member to provide the verification.

The purpose of money in a capitalist economy is first as a universal means of payment, then as a store of value and finally as a unit of account in balance sheets.  Cryptocurrencies are nowhere meeting these three criteria.  Their function as a unit of account and store of value are greatly impaired by their speculative nature. The value of bitcoin is very volatile because it is really only bought and sold by speculators and not used by the general public or corporations for transactions or savings.



Libra does not even have the ambition of bitcoin to be a universal decentralized digital currency for people.  It will be a private currency designed to extend Facebook’s control over the purchasing power of its 4bn users and make money.

Libra is really, in financial jargon, an exchange traded fund (ETF), where the value of Libra is based on a ‘basket’ of five national currencies (dollars, euros, yen, sterling and Swiss franc) according to a weighted ratio. Libra is not a true international digital currency in its own right but dependent on the value of these major national currencies.  It’s a private currency for Facebook users. It will be similar to the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) used by the IMF for the settlement of contributions and payments by national governments to the IMF. SDRs are also tied to the value of national currencies like the dollar.

And here is the rub.  If you buy some Libra and hold it in your Facebook Libra ‘wallet’ for future purchases, you won’t get any interest as you would if you held dollar deposits in a bank. But this Libra sitting in wallets around the world will be invested by the multi-national board in financial assets to make money for them.  In effect, all interest goes to the owners of this private currency – it’s a form of seignorage, previously only available to national governments and central banks for the use of their currencies.  As the white paper puts it: “Interest on the reserve assets will be used to cover the costs of the system, ensure low transaction fees, pay dividends to investors who provided capital to jump-start the ecosystem, and support further growth and adoption…..Users of Libra do not receive a return from the reserve.”

Indeed, the huge amounts of Libra that build up in Facebook users ‘wallets’ would become available for the board to speculate in financial assets globally, thus adding a new dimension to the possibility of credit bubbles and financial crashes that could come back to hit billions of Libra users.  The regulation of the banks and other financial institutions has not worked, as the global financial crash proved.  And the huge rise of private sector debt continues alongside the rise in public sector debt that mushroomed to bail out the global banking system. With a successful Libra, there would be another new layer of credit-fuelled debt created, with repercussions for billions of people and this time without any deposit insurance from governments!

What is worrying from global capital’s view is that if a large section of a country’s population were to use Libra instead of the sovereign currency, central banks could be left powerless or unable to stop the rapid conversion of currency into Libra during periods of financial distress.  Now you might say that’s good news for people, if not for capital.  People need to break away from the control of central banks, commercial banks and governments and ‘free up’ the currency and reduce the cost of our transactions.

But Libra will not deliver on this aim.  Libra’s claim that the currency will be designed and operated “as a public good” with “decentralised governance” is hard to tally with an operating structure comprised of unaccountable and highly-centralised global corporations such as Facebook, Uber and Paypal.  With cash use increasingly restricted, we’re already reliant on a handful of big banks to manage our money and make payments, while Visa and Mastercard have achieved almost total dominance of the card market. Visa now accounts for 98% of debit cards issued in the UK.  Libra is really a corporate attempt to assert even greater control over our money.



What we really want from a digital currency is transparency in its operations and privacy with your data – Facebook’s Libra is the mirror opposite of that.  What it does show is the bureaucratic, inefficient and autocratic control of our money by the state and its institutions is now under threat from mega-global tech companies using their control of social media.  This is ironic just when the supporters of Modern Monetary Theory are telling us that it is the state that controls and creates money so we can use the state to get employment and incomes for all.  Now it seems the state will be challenged by mega private monopolies for the control of our money.

What we really need is democratic control of financial institutions and the take over of mega-tech companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon.  Governments should then use technological innovation to develop an international digital currency controlled and run in the public interest.  But such a public digital currency would require common ownership and control of financial institutions and digital monopolies.  In the meantime it will be the US dollar or Libra… maybe.

Democratic Socialists of America: Sanders and 2020.

Teachers and Educators. A new workers movement is rising. 

by John (Sean) Throne.

I am a member of Democratic Socialists Of America  (DSA) However due to age and health I cannot be very active other than writing and exchanging views and writing on this Blog, Facts For Working People.   I would like to contribute my view on DSA and the elections in 2020.

I believe that DSA is making a very serious mistake in backing Sanders. He wants to regulate capitalism. If that is what DSA wanted then Warren has a more serious approach. However I am a socialist and DSA is a socialist organization. 

After Wednesday's debate where Sander's was explaining how unequal is US capitalist society, something just about everybody knows, he made little impact. By the way, credit where credit is due, it was not Sanders who made the idea of the 1% part of the mass consciousness in US society. It was the Occupy Movement and its direct action tactics. 

As to how Sanders would get his policies implemented, he repeated the same old story that it would take millions on the streets. But where is Sanders leading millions on the streets?  Where has he ever led millions on the streets or even hinted he would do so? This is a way to put the responsibility on his supporters for when if elected he would be unable to implement his policies. 

I appeal to my DSA Comrades to consider if Sanders would win the nomination and get elected president. In the coming economic plunge, most likely a slump, he would seek to deal with this inside the confines of capitalism. As usual, the working class would pay and the capitalist class would hold on to their wealth and power. And if DSA continues to endorse Sanders we would have to take the blame for this. 

I have shared before my view that DSA with its 60,000 plus members should reject both the Democrats and the Republicans and reach out to the rank and file of the union locals, the teachers and educators movements, the workers in the workplaces, the specially oppressed racial and gender minorities, women, the climate change movement, the environmental movement, and build a coalition which can put forward a socialist candidate for the working class in 2020. If we continue to support Sanders this will come back to haunt us.  

It is a serious mistake to think that US political life has not fundamentally changed.  The two party capitalist monopoly of the Republicans and the Democrats over US politics is in the process of breaking up. It is very likely that there will be a number of major candidates in 2020. 57% in opinion polls want an alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans. 100 million people did not vote in the last presidential election. They could see no point in supporting either the Republican or the Democratic candidate. Look internationally and see how the most unlikely of individuals and new parties, and existing parties thought long dead such as the British Labor Party, are gaining support. We are in a new era. Continuing to support the Democratic Party threatens to leave DSA on the wrong side of history. 

Back to Sanders. See where he refers to FDR as an example to be followed. What was FDR? FDR himself explained that his policies were to save capitalism from itself. This capitalist politician that Sanders mentions as an example also interned Japanese Americans by executive order. Similarities to the children in cages under Trump. 

It is important that we campaign in DSA for the decision to endorse Sanders to be set aside and a proper discussion on what to do for 2020 be established.

Democratic Debates. No Change in Political Fundamentals. Just Appearances

The US edition of the UK Guardian reports on last night's Democratic Party debate. The headline reads, "No country for old white men: Kamala Harris leads changing of the guard."

Unfortunately, on the substantive issue, that the Democratic Party remain the party of capital and Wall Street and that the capitalist system with its racism, exploitation and global plunder continues, there is no changing "the guard" just that the guard become younger and a little different in appearance. There are others wanting a piece of the action.  You can read the article I refer to here.  

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

The liberal British newspaper, The Guardian has gained tremendous popularity in the US where the mass media is so conservative. It shows the thirst for more left leaning liberal social democratic views. But, as with the title of this article above, it descends deep in to identity politics so rampant here in the US. It's not to say that one's identity, what color, sexual orientation or race a person is doesn't matter or need special attention in a society based on class exploitation that uses our differences to divide us. It doesn't mean socialists or any social activist should focus on class and class only. The liberal middle class refers to this as class reductionism and it is often used by some not all, to undermine anyone that points to the issue of class as integral to capitalism and the struggle to overthrow it.

It is not accidental that Marx called not for academics of the world, gays of the world, transgenders or vegetarians of the world to unite. He suggested workers due to their special role in the system of production.  Certainly most of those who do not fall in to the old male, white and heterosexual category are also workers. So failing to pay special attention to racism, sexism, or the identity oppression of those who are not male old or white, and having no political program and strategy that can correct this, makes uniting the working class and the elimination of capitalism and class oppression impossible.

Of course, liberals have no intention of eliminating capitalism, only making it nicer, fairer, giving everyone the "level playing field" which is not possible and hard to imagine that any worker would think it. The Guardian is the voice of this predominantly middle class political current. It is a positive thing that people of color, gays, women and other specially oppressed sectors of society are struggling, and more successfully, to escape marginalization or their "special oppression", and that workers see in political figures, leaders in education, science, art, culture and especially in the trade unions and workers organizations, all the diversity that makes up humanity. (The liberal left, or to be honest, petit bourgeois left, will find fault in my use of the term "humanity" as a political weakness a product of my patriarchal nature). But their world view, that capitalism can be turned in to a just and fair system of production, that racism and sexism, war hunger and environmental catastrophe can be eliminated within the framework of capitalism, leads them to weaken further the struggle of the working class to change it and the working class is the only force that can change it.

But for this political current the working class doesn't exist, certainly not as a force for change that can govern society. Moses Mayakiso, the South African union leader said at the founding of COSATU that they didn't simply want to change the color of the face of the exploiter, but the system of exploitation itself.  In the approach of the left liberals like the author above and the Guardian in general, the complete absence of the class question, while filling the predominantly white middle class liberal audience with sheer joy, does not really threaten the white racist, male dominated US ruling class as well. The main criticism though, is that it is politically conservative and fails to give any serious explanation of why society is like it is. It is as pro-capitalist as Fox news in the end.

The leaders and public figures in society looking more like the many faces of society in general is a good thing.  But age is not bad. Though it appears that the author certainly thinks so and expresses it because he cannot attack capitalism as he supports that too, albeit a friendly more humane capitalism. Capitalism with rules as Elizabeth Warren says.

Being white is not bad, it is not the main problem in society. If you are an older worker, a male, and white and you fight oppression and injustice and especially capitalism, this is positive. But the author cannot describe the most important aspect of society, class exploitation. So he champions a lawyer, a prosecutor of working class people in a society with a racist justice system. He chooses her because she is a woman and a person of color. Kamala Harris got where she is (a meteoric rise the Guardian describes it) as a member of a major capitalist party, one of the world’s most powerful, and the only political party in history to have dropped nuclear bombs on urban centers.  As a prominent member of this Wall Street institution she is vying for the head of the world's most powerful and most violent capitalist state by sending many young workers to jail or punishing them in one way or another. She proved to the racist justice system and its primarily white male capitalist power structure that she could be trusted; that she was tough on crime, especially black crime and black youth. I saw her in action as an assistant DA in Oakland. For workers and middle class people that are staunch Democratic Party supporters or who genuinely believe that the only position they must take in 2020 is to vote Democrat, Elizabeth Warren is by far the best choice. She is the most honest and sincere of the Democratic Party candidates. 

I am a member of DSA and unfortunately DSA could offer a real alternative to the two Wall Street parties but is supporting Sanders which is a huge mistake and likely to harm DSA as time passes. 

See: DemocraticSocialists of America: Support for Sanders a major mistake.

This is what happens when the class issue is buried under the mountainous weight of identity politics. What a person’s political views are, how they see society, what their program for change is and what that change might be is all put aside to warm the cockles of the liberal heart.  That it offers no solution to the working class, cannot eliminate racism and sexism and other means of social control from above, and in fact divides us further, matters not to this political current. Workers, if we matter at all, are there to be led.

Working People Should Support Megan Rapinoe

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I am not in a position to write myself about this issue and the attacks on Megan Rapinoe from the US Predator in Chief and serial rapist Donald Trump.  I can at least share this short video describing her thoughts about this and her brave stand.  She articulates her thoughts very well in these quotes. Of course, the government of the US and any other country does not stand for values that protect any working class person; the working class is not the class that governs. As Ms Rapinoe explains herself, she has not experienced the racism and police violence that people, of color face in a racist society. But being gay she can identify with it and sympathize with it.

All workers are oppressed, are exploited in class society. What matters in capitalist society is profit and capital accumulation, not the welfare of those whose labor power is the source of the capitalists accumulated wealth. It is always important to remind ourselves that wealth in capitalist society comes from the unpaid labor of the working class. It is in this view we should be grounded.

To not sympathize and stand in solidarity with those facing racial, religious, xenophobic, sexual or any other form of discrimination is in opposition to working class values. It weakens us in our struggle to be free of capital. Like Megan Rapinoe, I have not experienced the same experiences as others, as people of color, women, gays, and so on. I am oppressed as a worker as all workers are, but there are others that have additional crosses to bare and it is in my interests to stand with them. To quote the great American socialist Eugene Debs:

 "While there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison I am  not free."

I do not believe so many white athletes and workers have stood aside, have remained silent because they don't care or because they are racists, though there are those that are. We cannot exist in a racist or sexist society and not be affected by this ideology.  It shows the level of control the rich, the capitalist class has over millions of people, how we live in fear that if we open our mouths, we lose important things, rent, housing, a job etc. This is not freedom. That Megan Rapinoe is the first white athlete to take a kneel in support of Colin Kaepernick confirms this.  We should be proud of her.

UAW Leadership's Strategy Leads to Another Defeat in Chattanooga Organizing Drive

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The report from Chris Brooks on yet another UAW organizing defeat at the VW plant in Chattanooga Tennessee is interesting.  Brother Brooks is correct to criticize the tactics that contributed greatly to the defeat referring to them as the“….unsophisticated, shallow organizing approach of the UAW.” , and that,  “Even if the union had won the election, its weak and conflict-averse organizing approach raises serious questions about whether it could have won a first contract—or a good one.”

This is pretty strong stuff and to the point. Brother Brooks goes on to challenge perhaps the most damaging aspect of the trade union officialdom’s approach in all class conflicts and labor disputes and that is the Team Concept, the view held by the entire leadership of organized labor that workers and bosses have the same economic interests. Brother Brooks refers to this as the, “labor-management partnership”.

I had written an article in response to an earlier report Chris Brooks wrote on the VW organizing drive that was in Labor Notes Magazine. I shared the differences myself and others around our blog, Facts For Working People have with how Labor Notes traditionally approaches union work and in particular the refusal to point to the role of the trade union leadership. While Brother Brooks does take up crucial issues, I think we have to explain two things: one is the role of the trade union leadership and the other is why they do what they do.

But in this latest report Brother brooks again, when raising failed tactics and strategies, refers to the UAW as opposed to the UAW leadership. But the tactics are not developed by the UAW; they are determined by the leadership of the UAW. The only way the unions will be made into democratic fighting organizations and the unorganized will be organized, is if we look at the policies of the union leadership as distinct from what is in the interests of the union membership.

The trade union leadership supports concessions. Their entire approach is one of “controlled retreat”. I recall during the UFCW’s strike against Safeway in California in 2005 Ron Lind, a UFCW official on the negotiating team, assuring the employers and the public through the mass media how responsible the UFCW leadership’s position was: “We want to make changes with a scalpel, not a chain saw.”, he announced. It can’t get any plainer than this and there are simply too many examples of labor officials pleading with the bosses’ to be less aggressive, don’t cut too deep, to not see it for what it is, a weak and conflict-averse strategy as Chris Brooks describes it.

Many rank and file workers explain away the trade union leadership’s friendly relationship with the bosses, with the capitalists, as being a problem of corruption in the sense of criminal activity or taking bribes. Some think it is due to their obscene salaries and perks.  These are certainly a factor, but this is not the main reason the leadership refuses to go on the offensive, refuses to mobilize the potential power of organized labor.

The main reason the union leaders from the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka on down refuse to fight is that they see no alternative to capitalism. So when the system goes in to crisis their first instinct is to bail it out. For them there is no other alternative but to make a deal with the capitalists that inevitably means at their own members expense and at the expense of the working class as a whole.

If it is a choice between mobilizing and fighting and winning victories they will choose defeat because a mobilized membership threatens this relationship they have with the capitalist class; it threatens their world view. Victories would energize and inspire the trade union rank and file and all workers as they will see that there is an alternative to the present policy of class collaboration.

Any significant victories by sections of the trade union membership like we saw in West Virginia with the teachers/educators, threatens the entire policy of the union leadership for the past three or four decades based on their arguments that victories were impossible. So not only do they not organize in a way to achieve victories, they actively sabotage any struggles that look like winning. There are many instances where union members voted down concessionary contracts as a first step to pushing back only to have the same rotten deal brought back to them time and time again to wear them down. In the Boeing contract a few years ago, the national leadership sabotaged that deal and back in the 1980’s the great Hormel strike the UFCW leadership simply replaced the leadership of UFCW Local P9 with a more compliant one.

The recent struggles in education have shaken the confidence of the trade union officialdom as they were rank and file led, violated anti-union laws or legislation and were organized in a way that drew in the community and all other workers in education. They were run counter to how strikes and protests have been organized by the established leadership that were designed to fail. These victories cannot be ignored and have even forced the labor hierarchy to publicly state that strikes can be won. But the strategy and tactics of the educators’ struggles are a major threat to the present leadership and their view that there is no alternative to capitalism. For them, a mobilized and conscious membership and the victories that would come from this can only lead to chaos.

Read more on this subject:

Labor's Leadership Failed Teachers Parents and Youth in Kentucky

How Arizona Teachers Built a Movement. Every Activist Must Read This "Work With Capitalism, Not Against It". Why the Labor Leadership Surrenders to the Bosses 
UPS/Teamster Contract: Two Strategies, Labor Notes and FFWP

Horrific, Inhuman Conditions for Immigrant Children in US Concentration Camps.

Detained immigrants, economic refugees El Paso Texas. April 2019. Image not with post below.

Below is an excerpt from a report of the conditions at a migrant detention center in the US. It was broadcast on PBS News Hour in the United States. Here in the UK I have met numerous young people and young children in particular who dream of coming to the Unites States. "Is it true that crossing the road in the US you can meet a famous person?" one young girl asked, swayed by the powerful US media and movie industry. Not only are there millions of people poverty stricken and with little hope of escaping it in the US, these are the horrific conditions young immigrant children are being kept in as the war against economic refugees by the US government continues.  The assault on economic refugees has existed for a long time, Obama was known as the Deporter in Chief, but it has intensified under Trump as a means of diverting attention from his disastrous policies and to appeal to the right wing racist, nationalist section of his base. The full report can be watched and read here.


Editor's Note: After our broadcast, CPB responded to our request for comment with the following statement:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) leverages our limited resources to provide the best care possible to those in our custody, especially children.  As DHS and CBP leadership have noted numerous times, our short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations and we urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis.  CBP works closely with our partners at the Department of Health and Human Services to transfer unaccompanied children to their custody as soon as placement is identified, and as quickly and expeditiously as possible to ensure proper care.
All allegations of civil rights abuses or mistreatment in CBP detention are taken seriously and investigated to the fullest extent possible.

Transcript Audio

The Associated Press details grave conditions inside a Texas migrant detention facility where 250 infants, children and teenagers were being held without adequate food, water or sanitation during a recent visit. Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University, joins William Brangham to share her firsthand account, what Border Patrol agents think and what's next for these children.

Read the Full Transcript

• Judy Woodruff:
  But first, a new report is again casting a spotlight on the harsh conditions for migrant families and children who are being detained by the U.S. government near the Mexican border.
  William Brangham gets a firsthand account about what some children are dealing with at a detention facility southeast of El Paso.
• William Brangham:
  That's exactly right, Judy.
  The Associated Press detailed conditions inside a Customs and Border Patrol detention center in Clint, Texas, were, allegedly, 250 infants, children and teenagers are being held.
  According to the AP, there's not adequate food, water or sanitation inside. The report describes teen mothers and other younger kids being asked to care for infants and toddlers on their own, with little or no help from any adults.
  Warren Binford is one of the lawyers that visited that Texas facility and spoke with the children being held inside. She's a law professor at Willamette University in Oregon.
  Professor Binford, thank you very much for being here.
  As I mentioned, you were inside this Texas facility. Can you just give us some sense of what it is you saw inside?
• Warren Binford:
  Yes.
  Basically, what we saw are dirty children who are malnourished, who are being severely neglected. They are being kept in inhumane conditions. They are essentially being warehoused, as many as 300 children in a cell, with almost no adult supervision.
  We have children caring for other young children. For example, we saw a little boy in diapers — or he had no diapers on. He should have had a diaper on. He was 2 years old. And when I was asked why he didn't have diapers on, I was told he didn't need it.
  He immediately urinated. And he was in the care of another child. Children cannot take care of children, and yet that's how they are trying to run this facility. The children are hardly being fed anything nutritious, and they are being medically neglected.
  We're seeing a flu outbreak, and we're also seeing a lice infestation. It is — we have children sleeping on the floor. It's the worst conditions I have ever witnessed in several years of doing these inspections.
• William Brangham:
  What you're describing is really hard to sort of put our heads around, that this is inside a U.S. government facility.
  I wonder, what do we know about, where are these children's parents? Were they coming across the border alone? Did they come with their families and separated? How did they get there?
• Warren Binford:
  Almost none of the children that we interviewed had come across the border themselves alone.
  Essentially, they came across the border with family. And they are trying to be reunited with family who are living in the United States. Almost every child that I interviewed had family, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, siblings here in the United States who are waiting for them and are ready to care for them.
• William Brangham:
  We know the American Academy of Pediatrics, among many others, as you are testifying, said, these are not the kinds of facilities for children.
  And my understanding is that, under federal law, these children are supposed to only be kept for about 72 hours, and then transferred to Health and Human Services facilities elsewhere. Is that going to happen with these children? Would that be a better outcome for these children? What do you know about their future?
• Warren Binford:
  You know, the goal for all of these children is eventually to place them with their family.
  The facilities that you're saying they're supposed to be transferred to, those are not required by law. That's just the way that the administration is doing it. These children can be placed with their families immediately, if we wanted to do that.
  And so, basically, what we're doing is, we're taking children away from their family at the border. We're putting them in inhumane conditions in Border Patrol facilities, where they shouldn't be at all, not even for a few hours. And that 72 hours, that's the maximum that someone is supposed to be kept there.
  And the children are supposed to be moved through these facilities as expeditiously as possible.
• William Brangham:
  We asked CBP for a comment, and we haven't gotten one yet.
  But we have heard government officials say, we were just caught flat-footed on this. We built these facilities, as you said, for single men, and now we have this influx of children. We simply don't have the capacity or the staff or the funding to properly care for these children. And Congress needs to pass more money, so that we can do our job better.
  Is that your sense of what's going on there?
• Warren Binford:
  That's exactly what I'm hearing from the Border Patrol officers who spoke to us privately in the hallways. They are on our team. They don't want the children there.
  They — many of them are parents themselves. They know that these children don't belong there and they need to be with their families. They're saying that ORR and ICE are not coming to pick up these children and process them, so that they can be reunited with their families.
• William Brangham:
  All right, Professor Warren Binford of Willamette University, thank you for your time. And thank you for coming forward with this.

Sudan – women at the heart of mobilizations

Source

Women have played a key role in the protests in Sudan since December 2018, and continue to do so since the fall of the dictator al-Bashir in April 2019. Shared from Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African Socialists.

The level of women’s participation and their role in organizing daily struggles is unprecedented in the country’s history. The presence of women on the streets and on demonstrations is massive. They are also involved in workers’ organizations, including the Sudanese Professional Association, and opposition parties within the Coalition of Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change (FDLC) that are leading negotiations with senior military officials.

Two feminist groups are also involved: the No to the Oppression of Women initiative and the Civil and Political Feminist Groups, whose influence is clearly visible in the coalition’s agenda. It is reflected, for example, in the presence, among the coalition’s main demands, of a demand for a 40% quota reserved for women in the legislative assembly and an end to all discrimination against women and equality.

We should remember that the regime, combining military and Islamic fundamentalism, has targeted women in particular in recent decades and since the beginning of the popular uprising. Under the Bashir regime, Sharia, or Islamic law, was the source of legislation leading to, inter alia, the flogging of women for “indecent behaviour”, prison sentences or fines for women accused of wearing “indecent clothing” or “immoral behaviour”. Sudanese women’s rights NGOs report that more than 15,000 women were sentenced to flogging in 2016 in Sudan. The objective of the regime was to limit and control the presence of women in the public sphere by strengthening moral and criminal laws against them.

Since the beginning of the mobilizations in December, women have been specifically targeted by the security services, who have not hesitated to imprison, intimidate and sexually harass them. Detained demonstrators also had their hair completely shaved. Sexual repression and assault measures are a weapon intentionally used against women demonstrators to weaken mobilization.
Sudan has a long history of women’s activism, but the current revolutionary process goes beyond the women’s mobilizations of the past. The massive participation of women in the organization of popular struggles sheds light on the depth and radical nature of this popular uprising, which is far from having said its last word.

On 3 June 2019, the Sudanese regime launched a deadly crackdown on demonstrators who had been occupying the square in front of the headquarters of the Transitional Military Council for several weeks, killing more than 100 people and injuring hundreds. In response, the Alliance for Freedom and Change (ALC), the spearhead of the protest movement, called for “a total and indefinite strike and civil disobedience”, “peaceful marches and processions in neighbourhoods, cities and villages”, and “the overthrow of the Military Council”.

Joseph Daher
Article published originally on International Viewpoint http://www.internationalviewpoint.org

Capitalism Starving the NHS Amid a Sea of Cash

NHS March on the Isle of Wight Source

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

6-22-19

“The need for care was rising so fast amid acute staff shortages that the progress of the NHS towards providing better care had stalled and in some ways was going backwards.” (Guardian UK 6-21-19)

The National Health Service (NHS) is Britain’s public health care system, a major social service introduced in1948 and one of the important social reforms following the end of World War 11. There is no doubt that the mood among the general population and returning troops must have placed considerable pressure on British capitalism to reward the working class for the sacrifices made over the war years.

But like any social services in capitalist society, permanence is not an option.  In the neo-liberal era, all that was won by the working class in the previous 70 years is under assault as the global crisis of capitalism is shifted on to the backs of workers and the poor.

A new survey of 76,000 patients found that “The proportion of people who were satisfied with their care fell last year for the first time in six years.”  (Guardian UK 6-21-19) The reason for the decline according to “experts”, is that the NHS is “…so hamstrung by shortages of staff and money.”

The NHS is one of the great treasures of British society and revered by many, especially the few that can still recall the dark days without it. And this attitude to the NHS still exists today. It is this consciousness that has to be broken. My father was a conservative who spent all of World War Two as a guest of the Japanese, first in Hong Kong and then in Tokyo working for Mitsubishi. For him, the NHS was untouchable, it was out of the question to even consider shifting to a market based for profit system like we have in the US.

With the present global capitalist offensive, all the social gains made in the post war era are under assault; not just in Britain but in the US and also in the traditional social democracies like Germany, Sweden and so on.

Source

There is no shortage of money as the quote above implies. "Between 1989 and 2018, the top one percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion,"  writes Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-wing think tank People's Policy Project adding that, "The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period."

The reality is that the NHS is being starved of funds, in other words, the British capitalist class is consciously undermining it. This is being done piecemeal because waging a frontal attack on this treasured social service would generate massive resistance. Trump, (in brain out mouth) made that mistake claiming the NHS would be “on the table” in any trade negotiations with Britain. The response was so swift, right wing Conservative Party politicians, eager to move to a US based market system at the root of most personal bankruptcies in the US, had to push back. 

In the US and led by Trump, a section of the US bourgeois has become overconfident, has pushed too hard too fast and is forcing some sections of US society to resist. We have seen this with the recent strikes and protests in education occurring in right to work Republican (red) states and not generally led by the established trade union leadership.

I was traveling in the UK with a friend two years ago and we witnessed the massive fire at the Grenfell Towers flats. Grenfell Towers is in the same borough of London as Buckingham Palace; the victims were working class and poor people, many of them immigrants. Those killed in the Grenfell Towers fire were murdered by capitalism; we must be clear about that. This is not some joke here. It was not an accident, it was not an act of religious terrorism, Islamic Catholic or otherwise. It was not arson------capitalism killed them. The NHS is also being destroyed by capitalism. The staff shortages, the funding, the one in six that claimed they “definitely” waited too long to get a bed or the 33% who claimed the staff weren’t doing enough to “control their pain” or the 59% who said they couldn’t “always” get a member of staff to help them, are all victims of the so-called free market and the ruling class that governs that system. If you starve a car of gas it won’t run and that’s what British capitalism is doing to the NHS.

In the US, we face an even more ferocious assault from capitalism as the working class has no history of having our own national political party. The death and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina was market driven, not an “act of God” as these catastrophes are often called. Climate change is a capitalist disaster.  The collapse of our infrastructure (there is no money we are told) the horrendous situation with homelessness, health care, drug addiction are part of the capitalist offensive. The two million people incarcerated in the US are overwhelmingly workers and poor people capitalism has abandoned; people of color are disproportionally represented in the prison population and in all other aspects of US capitalism’s failure to provide the basic necessities of life for millions of Americans.  The never-ending US wars are driven, as all wars are, by capitalism. War, starvation, millions dying from diseases long ago cured are all a product of the so-called free market, are integral to it.

Racism, on the basis of color in particular, has been the dominant “divide and rule” policy to maintain social control and weaken working class unity in the US. But while the Predator in Chief Trump has encouraged racist elements and brought them out in to the open, the overall mood to return to America’s brutal racist past is not there. Trump and the section of the US bourgeois that supports him are overconfident; US society is an explosion waiting to happen. It is worth noting that the life expectancy of whites, an historically privileged group, is declining. This helps to undermine the racist white ruling class attempts to draw white works to their banner on the basis of white identity and their claim that color is a race.

The problem is that there is no real social power to turn to. The trade union leadership is wedded to the market and capitalism and offers no real alternative, in fact is silent on most major issues while acting in all cases to bail capitalism out when it goes in to crisis. One can imagine the difference in the class composition and the leading figures in the massive women’s marches had there been a real union presence with union banners and working class women from all works of life involved.  Wages, housing, health care, education, all these social issues would have been front and center along with sexual abuse and women’s oppression in the home and at work. In workers’ struggles, identity politics, so prevalent here in the US will not have the same character.

Lastly, some of us around the Facts For Working People Blog have been thinking (and talking) about our responses to this crisis of capitalism.  In the UK there is a similar situation and while the development in the Labor Party and the rise of Corbyn is a positive thing, he is failing to grab the bull by the horns. In the US it is similar. By this I mean that the right wing, Trump, Boris Johnson, Macron, in France, Orban in Hungrary, Erdogan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil not to mention the racist Netenyahu are quite willing and open about their politics. They want to smash the working class and all that we have won over a century or more. They openly boast about their views, about the defense of capitalism and its importance as the only system of production. Social reformers like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Sanders, not socialists by any means but supporters of a kinder gentler capitalism are vilified in the capitalist media but it has forced the big business media to address the issue and articles attacking socialism or trying to explain it are much more common.

Left forces, whether it’s the new left in the Democratic Party represented by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Sanders and others or Corbyn,in the UK are all treading lightly. There is a difference with Corbyn who, as far as I can tell, is calling for the re-nationalization of certain industries and of course, organized labor has a strong presence inside the British Labor Party, but in the US, despite radical rhetoric and fiery speeches, the solution on the table is a return to FDR’s New Deal and like Corbyn, they all want to make capitalism fairer. As Elizabeth Warren, perhaps the most sincere and thoughtful Democratic Party candidate for president says, she wants capitalism with rules.

The capitalist class is not afraid to speak its mind and state its intentions boldly. They are proud to be capitalists they remind us. For socialists though, is it possible we are being too timid, too cautious?   We must be careful we do not appear too conservative and underestimate the mood and anger that exists in society, not so much beneath the surface any more. In the case of the continued assault on the NHS in Britain is it not time to call for the public ownership of the health industry under the democratic control and management of the working class as producers and consumers. The NHS, just like the postal service in the US is efficient, they are proof that society can be organized differently and of the market’s failure.

Millions of young people consider capitalism a miserable failure, would they not respond favorably to calls for the pharmaceutical industry as well as the financial industry that controls access to and the allocation of capital in society to be taken out of private hands?

I think the answer to that is yes.

Catholic Church faces crisis in Poland

Order this book here.

By John Pickard, Brentwood Labour Party
June 19, 2019

One of the crucial elements in the upcoming elections in Poland, where the governing ‘Law and Justice’ Party is regarded as an upholder of traditional ‘Polish values’ may well be the role of the Catholic Church.

A recent TV programme on child abuse in the Church has created shock waves in Poland. The programme, Tell No One, has had a huge impact on the population of what is considered the most religious country in Eastern Europe. There are very harrowing scenes, including one in which a woman confronts a priest who had abused her when she was only seven years old. Now released on YouTube, it has been viewed more than 22m times, the overwhelming majority of these from Poland, where the population is only 38m.

Predictably, some right-wing politicians and clerics have denounced the film, calling it an attack on the right wing and on the Church, but others, including even leading figures in the Church, have publicly admitted the existence of an abusive Church ‘mafia’. The Polish primate, Archbishop Wojcciech Polak has apologised for ‘every wound inflicted by people of the Church’ but this has not stopped calls for a separation of Church and state in Poland. Other politicians are calling for a public inquiry. The new film on child abuse follows an earlier film called Clergy, which also showed priests in a very damaging light and which became the third most ever watched film in Polish cinema.

In March the Polish Church published its own report into abuse, identifying abuse cases involving nearly four hundred priests and over six hundred children between 1990 and 2018, although critics have suggested that this considerably understates the scale of the abuse. As it has been the practice in Ireland, the USA and everywhere else there has been abuse, the common practice among Church officials was to cover up abuse and to simply move abusive priests from one parish to another.

During the period of Poland’s domination by Russia prior to 1989, the Church was seen as one of the bulwarks of Polish national identity and resistance to Stalinism. The ruling regime found it difficult to directly suppress movements that were based on the Church or to ban meetings held in Church premises. As a result of those opposition movements and the perceived role of the Church, Catholicism received a boost around the period of the collapse of Stalinism and shortly afterwards. That is beginning to change now, however.

As it was in the Republic of Ireland until recently, the overwhelming majority of the population regard themselves as Catholic and the Church pervades all aspects of civil and political life. But there is a growing gulf between the young and the old. While 55 per cent of adults over 40 attend Church regularly, just over a quarter of those under 40 do so. ‘The discourse of the Church has become less and less adequate for young people’, according to Marta Kolodziejska, an academic at the Polish Academy of Sciences. (Financial Times, June 17).

It is difficult to say how much this scandal will affect the coming elections. In rural areas priests have openly called for votes for the Law and Justice Party, but their appeals may not cut much ice among younger voters, or even, as was the case in Ireland, with older voters. The Vatican has sent its chief child-abuse investigator, Archbishop Charles Sciluna, to Poland to paper over the cracks in the Church edifice, but it might be too late to prevent the slide of its influence and the ‘Irelandisation’ of the Church in Poland.

The film Tell No One is available on YouTube (with English subtitles) here.

Global Capitalism: Strikes in the Long Depression

by Michael Roberts

Jorg Nowak, a fellow at the University of Nottingham, UK has just published Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India:: popular mobilisation in the Long Depression.  Nowak argues that in the 21st century and in this current long depression in the major economies, industrial action is no longer led by organised labour ie trade unions, and now takes the form of wider ‘mass strikes’ that involve unorganised workers and wider social forces in the community.  This popular mobilisation is closer to Rosa Luxemburg’s concept of mass strikes than the conventional ’eurocentric’ formation of trade unions.

The nature of global labour struggles against capital and the changing forms of class conflict is important.  But what also interested me was Nowak’s chapter on the political economy of mass strikes in the current global capitalist crisis – and in particular the section on strikes and economic cycles (pp113-117).

In that section, Nowak develops the argument that the intensity of class conflict between labour and capital varies with stages in the economic cycle of capitalist economic upswings and downswings.  He cites various authors who seek to show that when capitalism is in a general upswing in growth, investment and employment, class conflict as expressed in the number of strikes rises, particularly near the peak of the upswing.

Nowak surveys the work of those authors (including my own) that assert evidence for a Kondratiev-type cycle or wave in capitalist expansion. The mostly likely length of a full Kondratiev cycle is put at 64-72 years (longer than traditionally claimed).  If that K-cycle is broken down into ‘seasons’; first there is the ‘spring’ period of recovery from depression, with rising profitability of capital and a revival of labour organisation; then there is a summer period of falling profitability and strong labour forces.  Those two seasons complete the K-cycle upswing.  Then in the downswing comes autumn (rising profitability but weakened labour) and finally winter (economic depression).  Nowak reckons that the two periods of most intensive class conflict are at the cusp of spring through into summer seasons (as in 1964-82, for example).  Then there are weaker more local struggles towards the end of the downswing in the winter season. Nowak presents two case studies based on India and Brazil in the period 2010-14 to argue for this theory and to generalise it internationally.

Back in 2006, in my book, The Great Recession (2009), I also argued that K-cycles could be correlated with the intensity of class struggle.  I developed this further in my book, The Long Depression (2016).  More recently, I wrote a chapter on the UK in World in Crisis (2018) in which I outlined the trajectory of the UK rate of profit since 1855 and how it matched broadly the ‘seasons’ in the K-cycle.

In 2017, I took this scenario further in a paper to the Capital:150 conference held in London to commemorate the publication of Marx’s Capital Volume One.  In that paper, I attempted to map out the class struggle in relation to the movement in the rate of profit for the UK.



When Marx was writing Capital, the UK economy was experiencing a boom in profitability and growth and British capital was ruling the world and at its zenith.  However, from the late 1860s, profitability turned down and the UK, along with other major economies entered a long depression through the mid-1880s (longer in the US).  Depression weakened the old unions and class struggle faded.  After the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871, the first international was dispatched to retirement in New York by Marx.

If we look at the history of British capital after Marx’s death in 1883, I think we can link the profitability of capital to the intensity of class struggle as defined by the level of strikes.  In the period from the 1890s to WW1, we find that strikes were initially high as new mass unskilled unions formed as British capital recovered some profitability after the end of the depression of 1880s.  But strikes dropped off after the late 1890s as profitability rose and wage demands were met.  However, from the 1900s profitability of capital began to diminish and in the years leading up to the war, strong unions and a rising labour movement engaged in more intensified struggle.



After the end of the war, that struggle resumed.  But with the defeat of the transport unions in 1921 and the general strike in 1926, UK profitability jumped up and intense class struggle dropped away through to the end of the WW2.



The post-1945 period started with high profitability and growth (after 1946), leading to a recovery in trade unions (in new industries).  Strikes rose a little but class struggle was generally ameliorated by concessions and wage increases.  However, from the mid-1960s, UK capital entered a long profitability crisis (as in other economies).  Capital needed to reverse this by crushing labour power.  Strong unions took on capital in the most intense class battle since the early 1920s.  Two big slumps and other neo-liberal measures eventually defeated union power and the class struggle subsided.  The neoliberal period ended in the 2000s and capitalism entered a long depression after the Great Recession.  There has been no recovery in the labour movement or class struggle (at least as measured by strike rates).



This map of the class struggle in Britain implies that only a sustained recovery in profitability in capital that also allows labour to recover its organised strength in new industries and sectors can create the conditions for intensified struggle when profitability eventually drops back again – as it will.  That suggests a generation ahead before we can see intense class struggle as experienced in the 1910-26 period or in the 1970s.  This is a similar conclusion reached by Nowak (p115).

Nowak considers two case studies of mass strike waves in the winter season of the current cycle – the Long Depression.  I presented a paper to the Society of Political Economy in Brazil last year (The rate of profit and class struggle) that also looked at the Brazil experience using macroeconomic data.  Noronha et al. (1998) conducted a study about the evolution of strikes in Brazil, identifying some key characteristics observed from the end of decade of 1970s and until the beginning of decade of 1990[i].

According to those authors, the phenomenon of Brazilian strikes began around 1978 in the main industrial area of the country and identified three major cycles of strikes: first cycle had an upward trajectory, ranging from 1978 to 1984, where the organization of unions began in Sao Paulo and spread to other regions in the country; the second cycle occurred between 1985 and 1989 and presents a flat evolution path; finally, the third cycle was characterized by a decline in stoppages after 1990.[ii]  Thus a rise in strikes matched a period of falling profitability from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s.  Strikes flattened out with the flattening out of profitability up to the end of the 1980s. The rise in the rate of profit in the 1990s and the adoption of neo-liberal policies saw a decline in class struggle.

In Brazil, unionization rates experienced a small decline during the 1990s, yet between 2000 and 2006 this trend was reversed.[iii]  The number of strikes nearly tripled between 2002 (298 strikes) and 2012 (873) while the number of working-hours lost more than tripled in the same period. According to Brazil DIEESE’s estimates, in 2002 working-hours lost due to strikes amounted to around 116.6 million while in 2012 it was around 381.7 million.


The profitability of capital in Brazil peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s on the measures above.  But Brazil’s labor movement strengthened in the early 2000s, so when profitability began to fall again and employers applied pressure to control the cost of labour, there was a class reaction through increased strikes.  The Great Recession did not affect Brazil’s economy severely until the commodity price boom collapsed in 2011.  The strike wave faded in the initial period of the global crash but started to rise again from 2010 – up to 2016 according to Nowak.

So it seems that class struggle (as measured by strikes) tends to be more intense in the summer ‘season’ of the K-cycle, when profitability has been falling but the labour movement and workers’ confidence has not yet been crushed.  Eventually, labour defeats and economic slumps usher in a period (neo-liberal) when class conflict is subdued.  This continues in the ‘winter’ period of low profitability and weak growth, although Nowak provides evidence that there can also be a strike wave towards the end of this period (2010-14), perhaps from new sectors of the economy that had not been in action before.

[i] Noronha, E. G;. Gebrin, V.; Elias Jr. J. Explicacoes para um Ciclo Excepcional de Graves: o Caso Brasileiro. XXI Congresso internacional do LASA, Latin American Studies Association, 1998.

[ii] Aricieri Devidé Júnior, José Raimundo Carvalho,Strike Duration after Collective Bargaining Legislation Changes: A Reappraisal of the 1988 Brazilian New Federal Constitution with Better Micro Data

[iii] Walter Arno Pichler, Giovana Menegottol, Union membership and industrial action in Brazilian public sector in the 2000s