The changing world order

Reprinted from the UK socialist website Left Horizons.

By Roger Silverman *

The world today is in a more disturbed state than at any time in the last eight decades. The global structure that came into being after the Second World War had divided the world into three sharply defined sectors: the industrially developed capitalist countries (“the West” plus Japan); the Stalinist states (the USSR and its East European satellites plus China); and the former colonial world.

The very description given to relations between “east” and “west” during this period as the “cold war” confirmed that each side had its own designated “sphere of influence” which was accepted by the other as forbidden territory – at first by a tacit understanding and later explicitly underwritten by formal agreements and mutual disarmament treaties.

Since 1991, this division of the world has been blown apart by a number of changes: the collapse of Stalinism, the effects of globalisation, the relative deindustrialisation of the USA and Western Europe, the meteoric growth of the Chinese economy, and the development of the “BRICS” nations.

The relative stability of the postwar epoch has given way to unprecedented turmoil. The 2008 economic crash precipitated a wave of turbulence worldwide: an upsurge of protests, uprisings, governmental crises, coups, civil wars, the collapse of reformist parties, the sudden eruptions of new left movements, soon to end in their equally sudden collapse, the coming to power of far-right governments east and west…

Intensified global conflict

We are living in an age of intensified global conflict. Hundreds of thousands have died in the Ukraine war, now entering its fifth year. Gaza has suffered outright genocide on a scale not seen since the world war, alongside systematic ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, outbreaks of war throughout the Middle East, and war, insurrection and a massacre in Iran. Civil wars have raged in Yemen, Sudan and Congo. The US raid on Venezuela and the abduction of its president constitute an act of blatant piracy, opening up a renewed era of naked imperial plunder in which all pretence of diplomacy is abandoned. And politicians and generals throughout the world are openly predicting and preparing for a new world war.

All these conflicts are violent manifestations of volatile changes in world relations. In 1960, the US economy was as big as all the next eight countries put together, but its nuclear-armed rival, the USSR, was in second place. By 1991 the USSR had collapsed and the USA had no economic or military rivals.

Following that collapse (an event rather prematurely celebrated by one Western academic as “the end of history”), the USA enjoyed a brief spell of uncontested global domination; but by the mid-2010s its supremacy was already coming under challenge from China, with its combination of state planning and a vast untapped supply of cheap labour, and also from a resurgent Russia, with the formidable military power accumulated during the cold war.

Today the balance of forces has once again shifted dramatically, with the unprecedented growth of China and the rise of the BRICS nations. The IMF lists the gross domestic product of the top ten countries in this order: USA, China, Germany, Japan, India; Britain; France; Italy; Russia; Canada.

However, taking into account purchasing power parity (considered by some a truer measure of an economy’s real size), the World Bank has compiled a very different ranking order: China at number one, followed by the USA; India; Russia; Japan; Germany; Brazil; Indonesia; France; and Britain. By either measure, Asian countries constitute three out of the top five economies.

The end of globalisation

The age of globalisation is over. The liberal dreams of eroding national borders have been shattered. The EU, NATO and the United Nations are all crumbling. The USA has cut $1 billion from United Nations-funded bodies and is busy assembling in its place an exclusive club of countries called the Board of Peace, membership of which is accessible only by Trump’s personal invitation or by a billion-dollar admission fee.

Trump has explicitly declared the postwar global order obsolete. He is a perfect personification of the vulgarisation of decadent capitalism. As a middleman who creates no value but simply buys and sells, he runs the state as “the art of the deal” (to quote the title of his ghost-written book) and treats the presidency as a sequel to his former TV “reality show”, approaching international diplomacy in much the same way as the property speculator he was before, salivating at any prospect of acquiring lucrative real estate. Now elevated to the most powerful player on the world stage, Trump’s foreign policy largely entails the acquisition of property: the oil of Venezuela, the minerals of Ukraine, the rare earth metals of Greenland, the “riviera of the Middle East” in Gaza, the Panama Canal, the wealth of Canada, etc…

Trump has said in so many words that he “doesn’t need international law”, since the only constraint on his exercise of power is “my own morality, my own mind”. The distinctions between the USA and Trump personally are continually blurred. For instance, after abducting the president of Venezuela, rather than installing in office as nominal president his ally Machado, he opted instead to leave Maduro’s deputy in office, out of pique that Machado had been awarded the Nobel Prize that he had felt was rightfully his.

This was confirmed once again when he justified his intention to annex Greenland by telling the Norwegian Prime Minister: “Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace.”

There are many more examples of his confusion between the interests of the American ruling class and his own personal ambitions. During the Israeli bloodbath in Gaza, Trump posted on social media an AI-generated video showing the territory transformed into a luxury seaside resort called “Trump Gaza”, which featured Trump and Netanyahu sunbathing, a golden statue of Trump, Trump cavorting with a belly dancer, and Elon Musk being showered with banknotes.

In other contexts, Trump complained that “China is operating the Panama Canal and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama and we’re taking it back“; “How stupid we were to give Greenland back to Denmark“; and “Venezuela’s oil will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America.”

World’s greatest oil reserves

Incidentally, although Venezuela has the world’s greatest oil reserves, given the current world glut of oil and its consequently depreciated price, the “heavy” nature of its crude oil reserves, and the inefficiency of its oil technology, it is doubtful to what extent Trump’s seizure of its oil fields will be at all attractive to the USA’s oil companies.

World trade is reeling from completely arbitrary on-again-off-again US tariffs, imposed as purely punitive sanctions or bullying bargaining counters, yo-yoing from one day to the next, creating drunken volatility in world markets.That is the parasitic and predatory nature of capitalism today.

Of course coups and wars for plunder or for “regime change” to facilitate it have always been a staple of US foreign policy, from the invasion of the Philippines and Cuba in the Spanish/American war at the turn of the twentieth century, to the coups in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973, to the war on Iraq in 2003, or the kidnapping of foreign heads of state like Noriega from Panama in 1989, or Aristide in Haiti in 2004, to take just a few examples.

While such attacks are nothing new for US imperialism, the diplomatic hypocrisy that was habitually used in the past to justify them is now largely abandoned. In the brutal language of Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller: “You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world… that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”

Redividing the world

US world dominance is nevertheless shrinking. That is what lies behind the White House’s publication of its “National Security Strategy”, which has officially pronounced the end of the “American century”: “After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” 

Even more explicitly, the day after the kidnap of Maduro, the State Department posted on X a message in capital letters: “THIS IS OUR HEMISPHERE” – an admission that the age of “unipolarity” (the short-lived “American century”) is over. As Russia reasserts the dominion of the Tsarist empire in Chechnya, Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and (at the cost of a million soldiers killed or wounded) Ukraine; and as China reasserts its grip over Hong Kong and threatens the sovereignty of Taiwan; the USA is in practice acknowledging a new division of interests in the world, in which Latin America is brought firmly back under the heel of the USA, Europe is cut loose and much of its eastern wing left to the mercy of Russia, while the USA reserves the right to contend for control of the Middle East through its bloodthirsty surrogate Israel.

Trump favours the ceding of Donbass to Russia, and giving China a free hand regarding Taiwan: “He (Xi) considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing.“

For now, the USA is imposing what Trump himself has defined as “American pre-eminence in the western hemisphere”: a revived version of the “Monroe doctrine”. He has acknowledged this himself, calling it “the Donroe doctrine”. This means total domination of Latin America, exclusive control of the region’s strategic natural resources, and a new western-hemisphere supply chain cutting out China.

Recognising that manufacturing jobs will never return to the USA, instead its goal is now “near-shore” manufacturing in Latin America on the basis of a US-dominated supply chain. With a compliant regime already in place in Argentina, the USA is forcibly replacing Chinese ports around Panama and Peru and other “Belt and Road” projects. It has kidnapped the president of Venezuela and imposed a military regime in Honduras. It is trying to undermine and ultimately overthrow left governments in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua and even Cuba. And it has threatened to annex not only Greenland but even Canada.

Preparing for war

But empires rarely cede supremacy to a rising adversary without a last-ditch fight. The USA is gearing itself up for an inevitable future conflict with China. And one key element in its preparations is the need somehow to neutralise the potential military threat from the huge nuclear arsenal stockpiled by China’s current ally Russia.

The strategy of the traditional faction of the US ruling class, represented now mainly by the Democrats, had been to seek (at colossal cost and with diminishing returns) to exhaust Russia’s military, diplomatic and economic resources with economic sanctions and a proxy war in Ukraine. The new administration is supplanting this policy with an alternative strategy: to neutralise Russia rather than confront and provoke it.

A split is widening within the US ruling class between the Democratic faction, which is clinging to the old strategy of sapping the resources of China’s nuclear-armed ally Russia to exhaust its capacity, and the Trumpian Republicans who have opted instead for appeasement of Russia, and a return to the partition of the world into rival spheres of influence.

Trump’s Vice-President, Vance, calls for a “focus on East Asia, which is where our most significant competitor is for the next 20 or 30 years”. Even more clearly, his Secretary of State Rubio says: “We’re in a situation now where the Russians have become increasingly dependent on the Chinese…If Russia becomes a permanent junior partner to China in the long term, now you’re talking about two nuclear powers aligned against the United States…It’s not a good outcome for America or for Europe or the world.”

This explains Trump’s determination to end a war which it was already losing in any case, by conceding to Russia the neutrality of Ukraine and ceding to its jurisdiction the territory both of Crimea and Donbas, with their predominantly Russian ethnic populations.

But in foreign policy too, what counts nowadays is not just diplomacy or strategy but money. In return, Trump plans to commandeer the rich mineral, agricultural and energy resources of Western Ukraine. In effect, the outcome will be a partition of Ukraine, with Russia reoccupying the East, and the USA swallowing up the assets of the West.

While neither Russia nor even China at this stage have the means to challenge the USA’s role as pre-eminent global superpower – the USA has 800 overseas naval bases; China, just two – all three are giant regional powers, carving up a redivision of the world into spheres of influence, of which the USA is by far the most powerful militarily. This can only ultimately lead to increasingly dangerous global confrontations.

Concentration of wealth

The old capitalist economies of Europe are in irrevocable decline. In Western Europe, annual growth hardly reaches 1%. Europe’s strongest economy, Germany, actually contracted in 2023 and 2024, and remained stubbornly stagnant in 2025.

Apart from brief blips, the US economy too is slowing down relentlessly. Between 1945 and 1973 it grew by an annual average of 4%; since then it has hardly reached 2%. Over the past 15 years, the average growth rate of the US economy has slumped by nearly half compared to the previous 25 years.

Since the 1980s the US economy has suffered a process of deindustrialisation comparable to that of Britain. The economies of both countries are now largely based on parasitical speculation in finance, real estate, the stock market, etc.

American companies are currently burdened with the heaviest debts in their history, with a total outstanding debt amounting to five times their annual income. Over the past two years, corporate bankruptcies have soared by 87%.

At the same time, the world’s super-rich have enjoyed a colossal rise in their wealth. The world at the beginning of 2026 has more dollar billionaires than ever: 3,028 (247 more than one year earlier). They’re richer than ever, and their wealth is soaring at unprecedented speed. In the year 2000, the combined wealth of the world’s billionaires had amounted to just $1 trillion. In recent years it has swelled from £12.2 trillion in 2023, to £14.2 trillion in 2024, to $16.1 trillion in 2025. Elon Musk has just accepted a business deal whereby he is due to become the world’s first dollar trillionaire.

Within the five years 2020-2025, the collective wealth of the billionaires grew by 81% ($8.2 trillion), to $18.3 trillion – enough, according to Oxfam, to eradicate global poverty 26 times over.

This has compounded a colossal rise in inequality. The USA has the grossest income inequality of all the G7 countries, as well as the lowest life expectancy. In 2011, 400 people had owned more wealth than the bottom half of the whole American population; by 2019 this had shrunk to just three.

Globally, 60,000 people (just 0.001% of the world population) own as much wealth as the bottom half (over four billion people). Similarly, when it comes to earnings, the top 10% earn more than the other 90%, while the poorest half earn less than 10% of total earnings (World Inequality Report 2026).

While the wealth of the world’s richest 1% at one end of the scale has trebled since 1989, at the other, that of its poorest 50% had not grown at all in the same three and a half decades.

It is this gross concentration of wealth that explains the nature of US politics today.

Plutocracy – rule by the rich

In this grotesque nightmare society, every kind of monstrosity flourishes. Social life within the USA is rotting, resembling more and more the end days of the Roman empire. Over 48 million Americans have a drug- or alcohol-related disorder. In the year 2025 there were 425 mass shootings (defined as incidents in which at least four people were killed or wounded): that means more than one mass shooting every day. These and other horrific symptoms are hallmarks of a terminally sick society.

In the year since Trump took office, paramilitary troops have patrolled major cities, suspected migrants snatched from the streets, over 605,000 deported and almost two million driven by sheer terror to flee the country voluntarily. Hundreds of thousands of state employees have been furloughed or permanently sacked.

The threadbare tissue of constitutional legality has been ripped open, a process foreshadowed in the 2021 Capitol riot, and now in the occupation of one city after another by the paramilitary federal state terror army ICE, with its free licence to kidnap, incarcerate and murder.

The spectacle of ICE’s thugs rampaging through one US city after another, randomly rounding up innocent victims, incarcerating them indefinitely in concentration camps on US soil and abroad, assaulting and sometimes murdering bystanders, has invited comparison with the fascist gangs of pre-war Europe. How justified is this comparison?

Strikebreaking street armies

The ultimate victory of fascism means the physical destruction of the organisations of the organised working class at the hands of strikebreaking street armies. This entails the voluntary surrender by the ruling class of direct political power, in conditions of crisis and deadlock in the class struggle, to an agency of hired mercenaries, once traditional means of control have failed.

Trump and his entourage certainly have fascist ambitions. Musk’s sieg heil salute at Trump’s inauguration was no accident. The mercenary fascist gangs they do have at their disposal, so far relatively small, stand ready for deployment (the Proud Boys, the Oath Takers, the mob which stormed the Capitol in 2021).

But at this stage they are held in reserve. ICE is a terrifying paramilitary force, but so far it remains an agency under the control of the state which could be demobilised at any moment or even disbanded, like Hitler’s SA storm troopers were after his seizure of power.

Under classic fascist regimes, the capitalists and their traditional politicians surrendered political power to an unaccountable dictatorship as their best hope of preserving their property. Trumpism represents on the contrary the direct personal seizure of the functions of the state by a handful of capitalist oligarchs who have amassed into their hands such a vast accumulation of wealth and power that they feel able to dismiss the services of a professional elite to administer their affairs. The combined wealth of this, the richest cabinet in US history, comes to $7.5 billion. This is not a government for the rich – it is a government by the rich.

Far from ceding sovereignty to an unaccountable gangster clique over which it has no immediate control, the Trump regime represents the direct administration of affairs by a capitalist class which has become so concentrated that it has dispensed with an entire culture of statecraft.

The ruling corporations have amassed into their hands such a grotesque accumulation of wealth and power that they no longer require a professional elite to administer their affairs. Far from relinquishing direct power to a fascist dictatorship, they have even dispensed with the finesse, diplomacy and strategic planning of a classic bourgeois state.

So how do we define this new phenomenon? It’s time to retrieve the word plutocracy: literally “rule by the rich”.  Of course, the rich have always ruled; but up to now they have entrusted the administration of their rule to a special caste of professional mandarins, politicians and bureaucrats.

Society has become grotesquely polarised

Society today has become so grotesquely polarised, wealth so monstrously concentrated, capitalism so grossly monopolised that the plutocracy feels able to dispense with any requirement to assign its collective interests to a specialised political agency: it now rules directly in its own name.

Naked personal power is concentrated directly in the hands of the multi-billionaires: the venture capitalist Elon Musk (soon to become the world’s first trillionaire); the shopping tycoon Bezos; the social media mogul Zuckerberg; all under the banner of the property speculator Trump. The ruling corporations have amassed into their hands such a grotesque accumulation of wealth and power that they no longer require a professional elite to administer their affairs.

Trotsky commented that at its height the British ruling class was able to plan for decades and even centuries ahead. By contrast, Trump has the strategic foresight of a flea; he switches policy literally several times a day. Trump is the personification of the dominant get-rich-quick class of parasitic property speculators which has abandoned any long-term strategy in search of instant cash gains. Therein lies its imminent downfall.

The more perceptive of the world’s super-rich are alarmed at the dangers ahead. They see the writing on the wall: the imminent threat of a social explosion. There is even a group called the Patriotic Millionaires which conducted a poll showing that over 60% of the 3,900 millionaires they had surveyed were concerned that extreme wealth was a threat to democracy, and that two-thirds of them supported higher taxes on the super-rich to invest in public services. This is a measure not of their philanthropy but of their fear of revolution. Predictably, their call was ignored.

Nearly 400 millionaires and billionaires from 24 countries signed an open letter to the recent World Economic Forum meeting at Davos: “A handful of global oligarchs with extreme wealth have bought up our democracies; taken over our governments; gagged the freedom of our media; placed a stranglehold on technology and innovation; deepened poverty and social exclusion; and accelerated the breakdown of our planet.

“What we treasure, rich and poor alike, is being eaten away by those intent on growing the gulf between their vast power and everyone else. We all know this. When even millionaires like us recognise that extreme wealth has cost everyone else everything else, there can be no doubt that society is dangerously teetering off the edge of a precipice.” 

We can only agree. 

*Roger Silverman is a member of the Workers International Network (WIN)

Childcare for workers is a social issue. For publicly funded childcare centers

Source

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

When I was active in the union movement we used to publish an opposition newsletter that was quite widely read and had subscribers across the nation, including local unions.  As an opposition in formation we published a series of demands, issues we stood for and campaigned around. One of these demands was for free on site childcare in all public sector workplaces.  This issue was especially relevant for women back then and is as important today.

The median pay for childcare workers in 2012 was $19,510 a year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is half the median for all workers.  It shows what little regard the US 1% and their representatives in the two Wall Street parties have for families or children for that matter. But childcare is like health care, the rich will always have it. They have socialism, they simply object to the rest of us participating. And to think we are told to fear ISIS or some other nebulous grouping of individuals once in the pay of the US government. *

There is a real shortage of childcare facilities which is no surprise given the poverty wages and this is happening as birth rates are rising. So, as is the case in the so-called free market economy, demand is greater than supply and costs for those parents who are foolish enough to have children are rising. Child care and nursery school costs rose at an annual 4.3% in June according to Bloomberg Business Week compared to 0.1% for all consumer prices.**

The cost of childcare is the biggest problem for Millennials BW says and this is causing problems all round.  If they can’t get grandparents or other relatives to care for their children, parents are forced to do it themselves reducing purchasing power. This is of great concern to capitalists as consumer spending is some 70% of the economy. If people don’t buy things the economy doesn’t work. In capitalist terms this means profit cannot be realized. Profit is created by extracting surplus value (unpaid labor) from the worker in the process of production then realized through the sale of the commodities produced. If people are forced to cut in to their disposable income to care for their offspring they’ll buy less. Let’s not forget what the imbecile Bush said on 911, “Go shopping”.

According to census figures, the number of mothers with children under 18 that didn’t work outside the home went from 23% in 1999 to 29% by 2012 while the number of fathers staying at home almost doubled over the same period going from 1.2 million to 2 million.

One woman explains her plight in the Business Week article. “We basically had to remake our entire budget around day care” she tells BW.  She retuned to work after the child hit three months and had to put her in day care that cost $2100 a month.

BusinessWeek being a journal of the 1% the idea that the state should provide such a service is not in the cards, it would take money away from drone warfare and also take up a slot private capital could fill. State subsidies for childcare were some of the first benefits to be cut after the Great Recession hit and they haven’t returned. Downturns are good for capitalists. As Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and destroyer of public education stressed, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”. Childcare subsidies in Illinois were the first to be cut there, the article points out. Illinois is a state where parents spend an average of 16% of their income on full-time childcare.

And we’re supposed to spend every thinking moment worrying about ISIS, foreigners, immigrants from Central America who contribute a lot more to our well being than Rahm Emanuel a former IDF thug and other external enemies.

I would ask workers who have the tendency to think that the private sector, owning your own business, entrepreneurship and the so-called free market are the elements that guarantee we live a healthy prosperous life to think about that.  Firstly we only have to look around us and see that capitalism cannot even provide a decent life in the most powerful capitalist economy in history. If we work for the public sector we have a more humane workplace, more security better retirement. The same class of people that own the media and the corporations and profit from the wars our children are sent too fight bombard us day in day out with this propaganda that the private sector is the answer to all things. This is why some of us believe it even when the conditions under which we are forced to live show it to be false.

That doesn’t mean we don’t absorb some of this propaganda. If they couldn’t influence thinking, they wouldn’t spend billions a year on advertising. But in the last analysis of course, consciousness, ideas, have a material base. We can absorb it to the point that we blame ourselves for conditions that are generally beyond our individual control as opposed to them and their system, Blaming ourselves is very destructive to us as human beings. That public money should be used to provide on site childcare would give us more security, perhaps more free time. But the 1% do not like this. They want us forever insecure, constantly in fear of losing our jobs, being attacked by hordes of bees, overrun by immigrants who are escaping conditions even worse than ours caused by the same people that cut the measly social protections we have. We have to be distrustful of each other, in competition with each other at all times.

We create the wealth that we call public money; we create this social capital through our labor. We should benefit from it and decide how we use it, when and where.

We need to worry less about Iran, a nation that has invaded no one in generations and whose wealth has been plundered by British and US corporations and their managers, and more about the folks on our shores who call themselves Americans. They especially remind us that we’re all Americans when they need our kids to die to maintain their plunder and profits abroad but begrudge them care when they return physically and emotionally destroyed. That’s if they do return.

They refuse to even provide childcare unless we pay extra for it. If we can’t pay for it, “you’re on your own baby.”

We have to change this.

* Up until 1999 every Taliban official was in the pay of the US government

* *Millennials’ Biggest Problem? Day Care. Bloomberg BW 8-24-15

OWS movement in danger of isolation if tactics don't change

If we want to put a stop to this we have to ensure that the OWS movement does not become isolated form the working class in this country and to do that we have to reach out to the working  class in a systematic and conscious way. And we have to recognize that dangers can come from those who claim to be our friends.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has arisen as a response to the capitalist offensive in the age of capitalist globalization. In previous blogs we have written about the decline of US imperialism on the world stage and in the midst of this process, the US capitalist class finding it necessary in its hapless struggle to maintain global dominance to put the US working class on rations.

The young people that have been behind the Occupy Wall Street movement have been an inspiration for so many of us.  They have shifted the focus of the debate as we have said and we can see from the report on CNBC of a memo about the finance industry paying almost $1 million to a lobbying firm to go after OWS and politicians sympathetic to it that the movement has had an affect.

The other important aspect of the OWS movement is that it has decidedly broken from the passive and ineffective methods of the liberals and the Labor hierarchy, sending an email to our Congressperson or appealing to so-called “friendly” Democratic politicians.

Direct action, defiance of the law and occupations of public space and buildings has transformed the mood and the consciousness of the vast majority of Americans and has stirred some hope among the rank and file of organized Labor.  I was present as we returned to Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland after the police had cleared it out for a second time.  Courage and audacity is not in short supply among the movers and shakers in the OWS movement.

But in our opinion there has been serious weakness and that is the reliance alone on action, action, action. There has also been a consistent opposition to discussing politics and raising any demands at all.  “Occupy everything, demand nothing” was a slogan I have seen more than once. I was at a Labor outreach meeting of Occupy Oakland a week or so ago and a woman that describes herself as an Anarchist of some sort commented that they don’t allow the police in to OO, that the police are not welcome here and that they stay out.  This is a false estimation of our strength.  I explained that as we spoke, a nationwide discussion was taking place between the various municipalities, states and at the federal level about how to proceed.  The police weren’t coming in because they were as yet unprepared to.  It is a credit to the resilience and determination of the OSW movement that the state forces had to do this but not a day or so later they cleared out the tents from the plaza. We must not underestimate the resolve of our enemies.  They are driven by the system itself to drive back this movement and have shown that they will do so with extreme brutality.

We have stressed that if the movement does not reach out to the millions of workers and our families, if it does not raise high on its banner demands that speak to the need that ordinary working people face, the state will isolate the OSW movement. We have approached this question on numerous occasions including here and here. 

With regards to occupations, the idea of continually occupying open spaces like the plaza here in Oakland and other cities is a bit of a gift to the cops. They know where we all are and can plan accordingly. Workers discovered in the 1930’s that occupying factories had its advantages.  It removed them from the picket lines where they were exposed to the violence of the cops and hired thugs and also affected consciousness as workers saw that the workplace could work without the boss in it.  In Flint, when they entered the factories, they threw out the bosses. The bosses cared much more about damaging their property that the workers had taken over than they did when it came to attacking workers on a picket line.

The activities that were taking place in Oscar Grant Plaza, providing, shelter food and medical assistance to the homeless and those that capitalist society abandons are good but better to occupy a huge warehouse or any one of the numerous large empty, privately (or publicly if its unused) owned buildings in town.  The same activities could be carried on under a roof and people would have more shelter.  Mass pickets could surround the occupied properties and appeals could be made to workers and their Unions in the water, power and other departments to not shut these services off.

Yesterday within a 17- hour period, (6.PM Saturday to 11:AM Sunday) I received the following announcements from Occupy Oakland:

*Occupy Oakland has a new home at 19th and Telegraph. Big housewarming part right now. Bring tents!

*OccupySF call for support: come defend 101 market, cops in riot gear NOW staging a few blocks away.

*Riot cops here at occupy oakland. GET HERE NOW!!!! 20 minute warning for raid.

*Please bring trucks to save our tents and supplies! ASAP!

*New camp at 19th and Tele raided. Campers now setting up at OG plaza.

*Tents and other equipment salvaged from 19th are now at Snow Park.

*Emegency GA tonight at 6pm to talk about next steps

Now I am retired with some time on my hands that workers still on the job don’t have and even I could not keep up with this frenetic pace?  I also don’t agree with playing this game of tag with the cops running from one area of the city to another.  Most workers simply cannot do this. And we can’t reach out to workers if we’re doing it.

Not only that, the Occupy Oakland movement has really made no serious attempt to reach out to working class communities and draw them in to the struggle. When I say them, I mean the 30,000 or 40,000 people that came down for the general strike on November 2^nd.  I don’t mean to be too hard on people here but its almost like the folks who are designing and maintaining what I believe is a failed strategy expect that we can all come running to defend it when the state moves in.  But this strategy will isolate the movement from workers more and more.  The support that exists presently will begin to be broken down as the movement does not engage with the mass of the working class and offers little in terms of concrete demands.

Rather than simply occupying a park or square, all occupations should be related to some issue affecting the mass of the working class population---foreclosed homes, schools, libraries, workplaces etc.  Every time we occupy a bank we should have fliers and placards with demands for the workers there, unionization, wages, health care, vacations, sick leave and other benefits. Nationalizing the banks is OK but we have to appeal to workers in the immediate as well.  The movement can occupy the welfare office if a recipient isn’t getting their check or the housing authority if a section 8 is being abused or assist tenants facing eviction by slumlords.  In this way the OWS movement will be seen and become a broad national movement against all the victims of capitalism and workers will come to see it as our movement enter it and enrich it.

With this strategy as the movement grows then independent political candidates rooted in the movement can challenge the monopoly that the two Wall Street Parties have over political life in the US.  We cannot vote capitalism out but we can use the political process to help change consciousness build an independent working class movement that can transform society.

One last point: the flier announcing the march in Oakland yesterday claimed it was “called for” by Occupy Oakland and “Bay Area Labor”.  But this is not the case; it was called by Occupy Oakland and the Labor hierarchy.  The leaders of organized Labor and the 12 million or so members are two very different things. The heads of organized Labor have a plan.   They support concessions and cutbacks and that their own members must tighten their belts in order to help US capitalism remain competitive in its struggle with its rivals for global market dominance. The 200 or so bases, endless wars and bribing of its flunkies costs money and the war at home is to ensure the working class coughs up. The Labor leadership supports in theory and practice, the Team Concept or what is also called, Labor/Management cooperation, the view that workers and bosses have the same interests. If you check out the earlier post about the UFCW workers you’ll see that the local UFCW bureaucracy chose as their person of the year in 2009, the Chairman and chief shareholder of the supermarket chain Save-Mart. 

When rank and file members move to fight back against concessions and violate this pact the Labor hierarchy has with the employers the leadership throws every obstacle in their path and eventually drives them in to submission.  It was a mistake to enter in to a bargain with the Labor hierarchy over Saturday’s rally and March and inaccurate to portray it as the Occupy Oakland and Bay Area Labor March.  The Labor leadership are not complete fools, they enter in to this partnership with a clear goal in mind, no criticism of their polices, no rank and file voices that share the incredible anger that the vast majority of Union members feel towards the heads of organized Labor.

The Labor officialdom is intent on getting Obama elected in 2012. Their partnership with Occupy Oakland in the organizing of yesterday’s March is part of this plan that they are implementing with supporters of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party like Oakland mayor and former Maoist, Jean Quan. The heavy police security was there with the Labor hierarchy’s support you can be sure.  This is different than our movement having its own security for implementing a strategy to deal with police violence as well as preventing the minority in our movement who have the view that smashing a few windows and other acts of vandalism is a revolutionary act.  This strategy drives workers from the movement and helps to isolate us from where our power lies. Workers and our families are not drawn to it.

I was talking to a young activist friend who I have high regard for and he agreed with me that the bureaucracy was using Occupy Oakland and had no intention of organizing the rank and file of the Unions and bringing them in to the movement.  But he said, we revolutionaries can take the opportunity to talk to some rank and file workers they do bring. I have heard this argument a million times and it is a mistake. The vast majority of people there yesterday would have been that milieu that are employed or are supporters of the officialdom and some of their left hangers on. This does not mean that one or two fresh workers may have been there but entering in to a pact with the officialdom comes at a price.  They could easily use their money and staff and resources to go to every workplace union or not and organize workers around a fighting program but they will  not do this for fear the anger of their own members will be unlashed and threaten the relationship they have built with the bosses based on Labor peace.  They are also concerned about losing what are very comfortable jobs.

The most damaging aspect of this unholy alliance with the Labor hierarchy is that it undermines what we should be doing which is, apart from occupations related to workers’ issues, going directly to the working class in to workplaces, jobsites, office buildings and leafleting Union halls (most workers won’t be there of course). The issue of the collaboration of top officials with bosses has to be openly dealt with and explained that it is not so much due to corruption as most workers think (their officials being bribed for example) but that their officials are ideologically corrupt---they support capitalism and the market. They have the same world-view as the boss.

The OWS movement has deviated from the passive ineffective methods used so far and has reintroduced the methods that won us our rights and our Unions in the first place, mass defiance of the law, occupations and strikes.  But we have to take this message and methods in to the working class and we must also help rank and file workers build genuine fighting opposition caucuses that can rid ourselves of a leadership that has completely capitulated to the bosses’ offensive and build a Labor movement that will unite with our communities in an offensive of our own.

If the OWS movement fails to do this there is a serious possibility it will be isolated from the working class and driven back.

FOR A WORKERS MARCH AGAINST WALL STREET

New York
October 18, 2011

An Opportunity for Action

An Open Letter

We, the undersigned Wall Street protesters and union members, think the response to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has shown that broad layers of working people are ready to support a movement that stands up to the ongoing attempt to solve the economic crisis on the backs of working-class and poor people. Union solidarity has contributed a growing momentum of protest that we should build on and not let fade away.

To that end, we have endorsed the motion shown below that calls on the NYC Central Labor Council and other union organizations to build for a march of hundreds of thousands on Saturday, November 5, with the following slogans and demands:

Working People Shouldn’t Pay for a Crisis That They Didn’t Make!
No to Layoffs, Budget and Service Cuts!
Create Jobs, Build Infrastructure with a Federal Program of Public Works!
Stop Police Harassment of the Wall Street Occupation!

We will be leafleting the next CLC delegates meeting on Wednesday, October 19, starting at 5:30pm at:
IBT Local 237
First Floor Meeting Room
216 West 14th Street (between 8th and 7th avenue)
New York, NY

We hope to draw attention to the opportunity for and need for broader action, and to provide an opportunity and focus for those in and outside the unions to agitate for the unions and other organizations to commit themselves to broader action.

We ask activists and organizations who see the need for this to:
endorse this call; publicize this motion and letter on websites and through other means; raise similar motions in unions and other organizations; and help build for the leafleting of the CLC meeting.

We wish there was more time to circulate this proposal more broadly than we already have to allow for more discussion and improvement, but the next CLC meeting where we can push for action is just days away on October 19. We trust that activists understand our sense of urgency and support this initiative in the spirit of solidarity that inspires it. For more information or to be listed as endorsing, please e-mail us at Workers.March.Against.Wall.Street@gmail.com.

Also, when this and related motions are voted on in other unions or organizations, please let us know!
MOTION for a Massive March on Wall Street

Whereas, the response to ‘Occupy Wall Street’ (OWS) has shown that broad layers of working people are ready to support a movement that stands up to the ongoing attempt to solve the economic crisis on working and poor people’s backs;

Whereas, unions can best defend their members’ jobs, wages and working conditions by standing up in defense of all working people;

Whereas, OWS and trade unions’ solidarity with the protests have created momentum toward a fight-back in defense of working people’s living standards against layoffs and budget cutbacks that should be built on and not allowed to fade;

Whereas, it is necessary for our struggles to go forward to bring into action much larger numbers of workers and other people facing the brunt of this economic crisis,

We move that:
This body call on its member unions as well as all other unions and community organizations to build a massive march on Wall Street of hundreds of thousands, mobilizing organized and unorganized workers, on November 5, the first Saturday of next month,

That this protest raise demands that can unite all workers, poor people and all those facing the brunt of the crisis:

Working People Shouldn’t Pay for a Crisis That They Didn’t Make!
No to Layoffs, Budget and Service Cuts!
Create Jobs, Build Infrastructure with a Federal Program of Public Works!
Stop Police Harassment of the Wall Street Occupation!

And to this end, we appeal to other union bodies, council and federations around the country to organize similar protest actions across the country on November 5.

Endorsers include the following:
CCNY Chapter of PSC-CUNY
Christine Williams, Executive Board Member, TWU Local 100,* Stations Division*
Juan A., SEIU Local 32BJ* and Wall Street protester
David Abramsky, unemployed actor, Wall Street protester
Austin B. Arrington, Wall Street protester
Paul Armstrong, Ironworkers 433*
Elizabeth B., public interest lawyer, Wall Street protester
Wendy B., non-unionized worker and Wall Street protester
Cesar Luis Brito, Wall Street protester
Gregory A. Butler, Shop Steward, Carpenters Local 157*
Stephen C., student
Ben D., restaurant worker, CUNY student
Bob D., Local 57 carpenters,* Wall Street protester
Sean D., USW 6500*
Naomi Dann, Wall Street protester
Chetram Dhanroy, Wall Street protester
Richard Diaz, Occupy Wall Street*
Barbara Drum, Wall Street protester
Jorden Eck, Boston University student, Wall Street protester
Emma Elbaum, Wall Street protester
Anne Marie Elliott, student, Wall Street protester
Gabrielle Engh, Wall Street protester
John Ferretti, Shop Steward, TWU Local 100,* Wall Street protester
Michael Felisme
Rust Gilbert, CWA/Washtech*
Mike G., Project Manager*
Julim Gashwan, LREI*
Carlos Gomar, Occupy Wall Street*
Marty Goodman, TWU Local 100*
Darryl Goodwine, Wall Street protester
Georgiana Hart, Nurse Practitioner, PLP*
Theint Heinn, Wall Street protester
Jason Hicks, TWU Local 100,* Wall Street protester
Diego Ibanez, Occupy Wall Street*
Eric Josephson, Shop Steward, TWU Local 100,* Wall Street protester
Miranda Kahn, Wall Street protester
Andrew Kelly, photographer, Wall Street protester
Maya Klein, Wall Street protester
Margaret Kwateng, Wall Street protester
Bob Lang, UFT Delegate*
James Leighton, Wall Street protester
Teddy Mapes, L.U. 638*
Yadel Muhigeta, Wall Street protester
Jason McGaughey, Wall Street protester
Anna Mocti, student, Wall Street protester
Michal Nemcok, Wall Street protester
Rick Nensesian, Wall Street protester
Sue P., Wall Street protester
Benjamin Prouse, CEPU Plumbers Union*, Australia
Abdul H. Qumiyn, Wall Street protester
Christina Robohm, Wall Street protester
Penny Rosenblatt, Wall Street protester
Seth Rosenberg, Shop Steward, TWU Local 100,* Wall Street protester
Dave Ryan, artist, Wall Street protester
Keshet S., DC37 Local 2054*
Michael S., City College student, Wall Street protester
Barbara Sher, Wall Street protester
Max Simkins, Bard student, Wall Street protester
Krishna Singh, NYC High School student, Wall Street protester
Elyssa Soto, Wall Street protester
Stefan Superti, Bard College*
Mark Turner, CCNY Chapter of PSC-CUNY,* Wall Street protester
Glenn Jonathan Waldrip III, unemployed, Wall Street protester
Erik V., Wall Street protester
Francis Vazquez, CUNY*
March Young, Wall Street protester
Bob, Boston construction worker, Wall Street protester
* Organizations listed for identification purposes only
e-mail: Workers.March.Against.Wall.Street@gmail.com

San Leandro rally supports Occupy Wall Street----attacks the banks

This is a very short clip of a rally in San Leandro, a small town, almost a suburb of Oakland CA.  It has somewhat of a past. The old black guys I used to work with called it Klan Leandro because, they told me, they were often harassed by the police on the way to our corporation yard where they worked or if they were seen driving in the city. If my memory serves me correctly it was on the TV news show 60 minutes in the 1950's as one of the most racist towns in the US.

It is very different now though, a much more diverse community.  This rally was organized by the group "Move On" which explains why most of the people there were older.  It was also very much an Obama crowd.  When I first arrived I could see that some of the folks had never taken action this way, or participated in political expression other than the voting booth.  I talked with one of them about how we occupied the Wells Fargo bank in Oakland and that the police, when you are a group of workers with children, generally warn you before arresting you, although this isn't always the case obviously.

The crowd was overwhelmingly supportive of the OWS movement and urged people to join it and support it which is a very positive thing.  Even more impressive was the support they got from people walking past and driving by; it was overwhelmoingly positive a people honked their horns.  School bus drivers, firefighters and others in work vehicles showed support. 

I got a very good response when I suggested to a couple of teachers that rather than rely on e mail communication we should have a leaflet for the next event and actually go out and hand it out at the high school as the parents pick up their kids and to the youth themselves.  We could have two different leaflets for each group. 

Anyway, this was a small but important example of the generalized mood in US society against the banks and the rich and the solidarity Americans of different backgrounds and views feel toward the OWS movement.  The OWS movement shows no signs of fading at this point.  I have noticed an increase in Union staffers at some of the events, young people that the Labor hierarchy sends in to these movements to temper them and hopefully direct the movement solely in to the electoral arena and support for the Democratic Party---they are actually on the clock.   The Union hierarchy has been shamefully successful with this strategy in the past like in the Direct Action Network that existed in the aftermath of the shutting down of the WTO in Seattle in 1999.  But there's no doubt that the OWS movement is determined and it is a national phenomenon and we will have to see where it leads; the authorities are a little cautious about wading in too hard as they don't want to embolden the movement and increase social unrest. These are interesting times.

Bob King and UAW leadership undermine R&F Union power at the Big Three

Left: Where the concession strategy has led us.  The struggle for a 6 hour workday with no loss in pay is an important part to job creation.

I was reading some of the details of the contract negotiations between the UAW and the Big Three US auto companies in Gregg Shotwell’s reports on the SOS website. There is nothing new as Gregg points out, simply further concessions and undermining of the collective interests of workers on the job.  UAW president, Bob King, like the entire leadership at the helm of the AFL-CIO, is nothing more than a Labor broker.  His job, he believes, is to provide the investors that own the auto industry with Labor power at the most competitive price. Along with this, the workplace itself, the actual process of production which is the source of profit, must be free from any rules or regulations that undercut this profit taking otherwise the owners of capital will take it elsewhere, China perhaps, or Vietnam. This is why it is crucial we link with workers in these countries and help them raise their wages and conditions rather than compete against them by advancing protectionist policies.

Globalization and their complete capitulation to the almost "divine right" of the market have brought the heads of organized Labor this far.  They do not even pretend anymore as the objective situation and the obstacle of their own consciousness forces them to assist the employers in driving US workers’ wages and condition down further.  If we read the public statements of both the auto bosses and Union officials like King we can see the unity that bonds them.

Speaking about the contract at the Lake Orion plant in Michigan GM Vice Chairman Stephen J Girsky announces, “I’ve got to have a very competitive and unique labor deal at the Lake Orion plant.”

(Business Week, 9-19-2011)

No worries, UAW president King is on the same page, “We are going to make sure the companies are competitive coming out of these agreements.” He told the bosses at the Detroit Economic Club last month. (Check the UAW label for more on this subject).

This formidable combination of the employers and the heads of organized Labor has been very successful in doing just that. Business Week gives an example of one auto-worker that started in 2008 at the GM sport-utility plant in Lansing. His started at $14 an hour and earns less than $16 two years later. This worker’s grandparents worked all their lives for GM and his mother is a GM lifer still working at a plant across town where she makes twice his pay for the same work. These divisive and solidarity busting conditions have come about with the willing help of the UAW leadership at the entire leadership of the AFL-CIO, the national Union body to which the UAW is affiliated.

The Union hierarchy has capitulated completely to the bosses’ agenda.  “The idea of having middle to upper-middle-class wages in manufacturing has been over for a long time” says Diane Swonk an economist in the financial industry.  The Union officials hope against hope that if they help their bosses compete against their rivals for market share and win the rapacious race for profits they’ll return to more normal times and things will get better.  Ms. Swonk makes very clear the intentions of the bosses; they are serious about this. No matter what they think personally, and I am sure individually they may feel bad that for a family of six the starting wage at GM assembly plants is at the federal poverty level, the bosses are driven by the laws of the system to do take this path.  They have to compete with their rivals in China and other countries where wages are much lower and conditions more favorable to wage exploitation. If we as workers accept these same laws, that the production of society’s means of transportation must be privately owned and that our own individual employers’ interests and ours are the same and we have to help them compete with their rivals in this struggle for profits pitting us against other workers who are doing the same, then we cannot win; we must accept “their reality” as the Labor officials do and suffer the consequences. 

It is not the individual bonuses or wages or lifestyles of the bosses or the Union officials that is the root of the problem, these are secondary details, it is the laws of the system itself; it is a natural process in a capitalist system of production and it is where we have to direct our thoughts and actions if we want to stop it.

It’s somewhat laughable that big business politicians and corporate heads talk of the “powerful” Union movement.  But for the last half-century, excepting a rise in militancy in the eighties and early nineties with strikes defeated primarily due to the failure of the top leadership to fight, the Union leadership has pretty much given the bosses’ everything they want.  Every now and then we get an upsurge like we have recently with 100,000 on the streets of Madison Wisconsin and the Verizon strike that has disappeared from the news and look at what they did there?   We have retreated to the point where we have 100,000 workers on the streets demanding the right to representation that we won years ago and are striking to get the bosses to talk to us at all.

It is important to defend the right to bargain, but it is also important what we are bargaining for.  Instead, the 100,000 in Wisconsin were sent home and directed in to an electoral campaign to elect Democrats in to office.  The moment was ripe for the running of independent candidates based on a program that spoke to people’s needs and that could have been the basis for building a national mass party of working people. Instead, it will leave many people demoralized further, especially the youth who entered political life for the first time.  It will only be temporary though as further battles lie ahead and lessons will have been learned.

There’s some explosions ahead, of this there is no doubt in my mind.  What this means with regard to organized Labor is that we have to build workplace committees that reject the bosses reality and demand what we and all workers need to live a decent and productive life and develops a fighting direct action strategy for winning. Based on these committees we can build opposition caucuses in our local Unions that do not limit themselves to immediate economic interests but reach out to our communities, the youth, and other sections of our class as part of building a generalized movement to drive the bosses offensive back and initiate an offensive of our own.  In this way we can openly challenge the collaborative strategy of the present leadership and replace them.

We have no alternative but to fight.

Potential explosions are everywhere as unemployment lingers

The percentage of working age men with a job “any job” Business Week reports, has fallen to 63.5%, the lowest since 1948. For those in what they call their “prime” working age, 25 to 54, only 81.2% have jobs.  In 1969, 95% of men in the prime working age category had a job.  Business Week points out that the social consequences of this permanent state of the unemployed or underemployed as those who do find jobs find that wages are not what they used to be.  Taking inflation in to account, median wages of working men between 30 and 50 fell 27% between 1969 and 2009 according to one analysis.*

In 1969 fewer than 50% of women held a job (outside of family maintenance that is).  After the end of the post war boom, millions of women entered the workforce and by 2008 72% held jobs but women too have suffered through this economic crisis falling to 68.9% this summer.  Business Week reminds us that women still earn 16% less than men which if correct is a significant change from what was the 70 cents to a man’s dollar gap for many years. But women still do most of the family maintenance, housekeeping, child rearing etc. as well as working outside the home.  They also suffer gender discrimination as well as setbacks in their careers and job opportunities as they are victimized in capitalist society for being the carrier of future workers.

The coupon clippers are concerned about the loss of jobs among the male population as this has other negative effects.  “While unemployment is an ordeal for anyone, it still appears to be more traumatic for men.  Men without jobs are more likely to commit crimes and go to prison” BW says. I know after following some of the family annihilation's that have occurred after which fathers have taken their own lives that these often occur after job losses or being unable to “provide” for the family which is supposed to be their role. A tremendous feeling of failure is common among men who cannot fulfill this gender role.  They did everything right, worked hard, sacrificed and end up with nothing, losing all they have worked for to the tumultuous eruptions of market forces.

W Bradford Wilcox of the National Marriage project points out that unemployed men or husbands actually do less work in the home as the result of unemployment and the loss of a means of subsistence leads them to withdraw from family life altogether. This is a result of the powerful effect of gender roles in society as hopelessness and failure consume people and destroy their self worth because they have absorbed all the macho garbage that is perpetuated in film, television, religion and in every day life through the institutions of the state.

The bourgeois will build more prisons but the US already has two million people in prison, more than any other country in the world. The fact that some 50% of this overwhelmingly working class population is black folks is an unshakable confirmation of the racism that is inherent and institutionalized in US society. Racism and sexism will never be completely eliminated without transforming the organization of society.

We can see the predicament the ruling class is in as their system is convulsed in crisis.  One of the solutions is education, BW says, “reducing financial barriers to higher education would be a start” the magazine adds.  But we are heading in the completely opposite direction.  Also, new technology and capitalist globalization, has created a much larger Labor market in areas where wages are much lower and workers’ rights much weaker, capital is naturally drawn there.  So even if education were to become more affordable which is not likely, the jobs are not there.

Obama’s proposal is to give the private employers taxpayer money in the form of tax credits to hire us. We give an individual or group of individuals our money so they can use it to pay us wages in return for work—after they skim their share off the top that is. 

But the best ideas, or the ones that express in complete honesty the way bosses really view working people are to reduce unemployment benefits extensions for those workers who have been unemployed for a year or more in order to get those lazy bums to work.  It gives those of us “getting by on an unemployment check a stronger incentive to take a job…”  BW writes.  We all know how wonderful a year out of work is, it brings the family together, improves personal relations, makes the kids happy as dad or mum are at home even if little league, cello lessons and the summer camp have to go.

Another proposal from the capitalist economists is to give someone who doesn’t want to work but wants to hire others to do so skimming their share off the top taxpayer money to hire retired disabled people to get them off social security. “Since 1970, the fraction of 25 to 60 year old men on disability has more than doubled from 2.4% to 5%.  Once they begin receiving disability payments, few return to work” Business Week whines.

Now there’s nothing wrong with people with disabilities being productive. It’s healthy to produce, we all need to go home at the end of the day and feel we have contributed to the collective good, that we have produced something. But the bosses and those unelected folks that run society see it merely as reducing some social costs while creating an opportunity for a budding Donald Trump to profit off of the Labor of others.

We only have to think of how social workers or people that look after our children in capitalist society are treated or paid to remind ourselves of how much it values human life.

*Michael Greenstone MIT

An appeal for solidarity to all workers of Suzuki Motor Corporation

More than 2000 of your co-workers are on strike for their right to organise and form a union in the Maruti Suzuki plant at Manesar in India

Workers have to fight unitedly against heightened attacks on labour rights all over the world in the name of recession and austerity measures

Dear friends,

More than 2000 workers of the Maruti Suzuki factory at Manesar, Gurgaon are on strike since last June 4 and have occupied the factory. Their demands are totally lawful. For now they are just demanding that their legal right to form their own union be recognised. As per the labour law, they have all the rights to form their own union and all the workers support this demand. These include a large number of contract workers and apprentice workers who have been working in the factory for years. Maruti Suzuki India, the biggest car maker in India is a partial subsidiary of the Suzuki Motor Corporation who owns 54 percent of its equity.

But the management of Maruti Suzuki, in a totally illegal manner, has refused to give recognition to the union and is adopting fascist tactics to break the agitation. It is getting open support from the Congress government of the state of Haryana. The management has declared the strike as illegal and the 11 leading workers have been dismissed. Even the state  government has declared the agitation as illegal. It has given a free hand to the Maruti Suzuki management to deal with the workers.

The workers are sitting inside the factory gates for past 12 days. The management has disconnected the electricity and water supply in the factory premises and even the canteen has been shut down. The workers are sitting in the same clothes in excruciating summer heat but they are not ready to buckle down in the face of the strongarm tactics of management. Large number of police personnel and armed security guards of Maruti Suzuki are deployed at the factory gate who stop everyone at a distance of 100 meter from the factory gate. Not even the media persons and the relatives of workers are being allowed to meet the workers. The relatives who take food to the workers inside are also being threatened and intimidated. Those who are trying to spread their message to fellow workers in the region are attacked by the security gurads of the company. (Please go here for more news about the strike: http://workersresist.net).

We appeal to all the workers of the Suzuki Motor Corporation to show solidarity with their co-workers who are fighting against all odds and pressurise the company to stop its repressive tactics and accept the just demands of the workers. Workers all over the world are facing heightened attacks on labour rights in the name of recession and austerity measures. Workers have to fight unitedly against the might of the corporates to safeguard our rights and jobs. We must find ways to organise all workers of transnational corporations like Suzuki as well as all workers of an industry like the automobile industry. The corporations are colluding to crush workers all over. It is high time that the workers across countries start joining hands to resist.

Citizens Front in Support of the Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Movement
Sandeep (8447011935) , sandeep.samwad@gmail.com
Sourav (9811841341) souravbanerjee25@yahoo.com

-           Ajay Swami (9540436262), Delhi Metro Kamgar (Workers) Union