French Train Strike Signals Fighting Spirit

PARIS, April 7 — Launching of a national train strike here today indicated that workers’ fighting spirit is growing. They’re demanding 2,000 new jobs and an end to restructuring. A relatively high number of train drivers and conductors — over one-third — are participating in a renewable 24-hour strike against the national train company.

This indicated that worker militancy may
finally be forcing the union misleaders to organize more than symbolic 24-hour strikes. For decades, workers’ capacity to shut down industries here has been frittered away on “symbolic” strikes.

The strike is limited by the small number of non-train crew workers involved, and respect for the government-imposed minimum service, which has kept 75% of the high-speed trains and 60% of other trains rolling.

When rank-and-file workers take control of a strike, it can be a step in upping the ante of class struggle, which, with the development of communist leadership, could lead to a revolutionary movement to end capitalism with communist revolution. 

Forum Links Afghan War to Cutbacks At Home

Along with 20 other churchgoers, I attended a forum on the effects of the war in Afghanistan on U.S. workers. A teacher described the impact of the war economy on education; a nurse practitioner detailed the effects on medical care; and a lawyer presented the consequences for immigrants. The forum’s moderator leads the congregation’s anti-racist committee.

Nobody was unsympathetic, but many different views were expressed on the war’s effects here. Time limits precluded dealing with the terror and war’s impact on the Afghan people, who identify strongly along tribal lines. However, some serious aspects of imperialism were dealt with.

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We’ll meet riot cops face to face…’ France: Workers Seize Factory, Fight for Jobs

LA-SEYNE-SUR-MER, FRANCE, April 10 — The 120 workers at Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) have occupied their factory and are threatening to burn it down if the government does not step in to save their jobs. “We’ve made molotov cocktails and we’ve put highly inflammable materials at the factory gate,” said union steward Eric Mariacci.

“We’re not going to play the fool any more,” added Ryad, a production worker. “If they send in the riot police, we’ll meet them face to face.”

The workers have made bonfires of pallets and tires and dumped thousands of silicone breast implants to block the factory entrance. A thick black smoke envelopes the industrial zone.

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Mass Multi-Racial Action Stops Immigrant’s Deportation

LYONS, FRANCE, April 1 — Hundreds of parents of Lyons students fought the threatened deportation of 45-year-old undocumented Angolan immigrant Guilherme Hauka Azanga and forced the government to free him.

Azanga, who has lived in France for eight years, was arrested in front of his family’s four children, one of whom attends Gilbert-Dru elementary school. Shocked parents held a spontaneous demonstration on March 25 at the school. Two days later, in a show of multi-racial, international working-class unity, several hundred marched in downtown Lyons demanding his freedom.

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Japan’s Fake Leftists Betray Revolutionary Novel

The economic meltdown that has hit Japanese workers and students in the last decade has led to an intriguing trend: the renewed popularity of Takiji Kobayashi’s proletarian novel Kani Kosen, translated as “The Factory Ship” (or “Crab-Canning Ship”).  Takiji’s work is considered a staple of the Japanese Proletarian Literary Movement, which flourished from around 1920-1930, and included figures such as Shigeharu Nakano, Fusao Hirabayashi, and the anti-imperialist and anti-militarist novelist Kuroshima Denji.

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30,000 Building Workers Prepare To Strike

NEW YORK CITY, April 13 — An angry, militant and festive sea of about 10,000 doormen and apartment building workers — black, Latino and white, women and men, citizen and immigrant — marched up Park Ave. today, warming up for an April 21 strike against the real estate bosses. They’re members of Service Employees International Union Local 32 B-J.

The bosses want to cut sick days, vacations and healthcare, and end pensions for new hires. The workers voted overwhelmingly to strike to defend their living standards and protect new hires.  A strike by the 30,000 workers could be one of the city’s biggest in a while. PLP will mobilize city-wide support, while struggling to make such a strike a school for communist revolution, the only thing to secure our class’s future. 

Expose School ‘Reform’ As Rulers’ Attack on Students

BROOKLYN, NY, March 28 — A recent school forum about the threats looming for workers and their children in the public education system attracted 25 teachers and other school staff, including PL members, friends and CHALLENGE readers.

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Workers: Unite to Fight Immigrant Slave Labor SMASH ALL BORDERS!

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 21 — Over 250,000 working-class youth and families marched and rallied in support of the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (CIR) bill. The crowd was loud, spirited and hopeful, but at the same time wary. The Democratic Party, along with unions, churches and community groups, organized the event they called a “March for America.” It was no surprise that the marchers, led by SEIU president Andy Stern, were prompted to wave the U.S. flag and chant, “USA, USA.”

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France: Multi-racial Action Backs Undocumented Strikers

PARIS, March 25 — Today a well-coordinated united, multi-racial action of militant trade unionists and undocumented immigrant strikers enabled the latter to occupy the former Galeries Lafayette warehouses here for six hours.

At 1 p.m. a “commando” team of 20 trade union activists walked quickly up the Rue Blanche. At the signal “Let’s go!” they ran to the renovation site and quickly broke open the gate. Then 63 undocumented workers invaded the site under the stunned eyes of the construction workers inside. The latter then left as the 63 undocumented workers settled in.

At 7 p.m., the police, without any court order, evicted the occupiers. The 63 workers marched out, chanting slogans from the construction site to the subway station.

The aim of the action was two-fold. First, it united the undocumented strikers, who work in small groups for many different subcontractors, allowing them to form a “critical mass” and realize their strength when unified into a larger force.

Secondly, it aimed at putting pressure on Bouygues Construction — which is renovating the warehouses — and is one of the big companies that employs undocumented workers and is blocking the across-the-board “legalization” of all undocumented workers. Worldwide, Bouygues Construction employs 52,600 workers and netted over one-third of a billion dollars profit in 2008.

It also exposes the international and racist super-exploitation of the mostly North African undocumented workers since the U.S.-based Carlyle group owns the warehouses. (Former president George H.W. Bush is one of its principal directors.) Carlyle invests in buyouts, growth capital, real estate and leveraged finance on six continents. Since 1987, it has invested $59.6 billion of equity in 952 transactions for a total purchase price of approximately $233 billion.

While capitalist bosses set up national borders and use them to divide workers and super-exploit immigrants, they have no hesitation to cross these borders themselves in their drive for maximum profits. Still another reason for workers to unite worldwide to destroy this thieving system and replace it with one run by and for the working class — communism. 

The $2.5 TRILLION Swindle: U.S. Rulers Plunder Workers’ Social Security to Fund Wars

In one of the U.S. ruling class’s biggest swindles in history on the backs of the working class, the rulers have plundered Social Security (SS) surpluses of $2.5 TRILLION and used the swag to finance every U.S. imperialist war from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Now they want to plunder it still more.

A recent NY Times front-page article (3/24) reported that for the first time in decades the annual money being paid out in Social Security (SS) checks will exceed the amount coming in from current SS payroll taxes. It said that continuation of this trend will cause the SS Trust Fund to go broke, on “a long, slow march to insolvency.”

Already Alan Greenspan, “architect of the plan to rescue” SS 27 years ago, is saying, “When the level of the trust fund gets to zero, you have to cut benefits.” (NYT, 3/24) Actually it was Greenspan’s“rescue plan” that helped steal the $2.5 trillion from SS’s surplus.

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