Melanie Gutermuth is a twenty-five-year-old veteran. She served in the Army for four years. Since the completion of her service, she has been greeted with twelve months of unemployment. Joseph Jacobo is an Iraq war veteran. At the end of his military service, only the streets welcomed him home. He has been homeless since his return. Melanie and Joseph are two among hundreds of thousands of unemployed and/or homeless veterans.

There is a lot of talk about “taking care” of veterans returning from war, but the realities of capitalism, the system of profit we live under, hit them just as hard as their fellow
civilian working-class brothers and sisters. The Department of Labor statistics report that the number of unemployed veterans has increased to more than 250,000 and the Veterans Affairs (VA) estimates that over 200,000 veterans are currently homeless. While some claim that widespread problems among veterans such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or substance abuse are to blame, a closer look at capitalism exposes the real root of the issues veterans are faced with.

Capitalism is an economic system based on profit. In order to remain competitive with other bosses around the globe, U.S. bosses must maximize profits by exploiting workers as much as possible. Under the best circumstances, some members of the working class are allowed to live comfortably. The profits earned through the super exploitation of most black and Latino workers have been sufficient to keep the U.S. bosses on top. In the current economic crisis though, this is no longer enough and mass lay-offs and unemployment become unavoidable.

Although this crisis began due to some major calculation errors on the part of the big banks, economic crises are inevitable under capitalism. The drive for maximum profit will always cause these crises. As long as we continue to allow this system to exist, the working class will suffer at the hand of the ruling class’ greed. In order to guarantee that veterans and all workers have a place to live and a means for survival, we must build a communist society which will be run in the interest of the working class. This means that society will be run by workers in order to meet the needs of the whole working class.

Soldiers, sailors and marines have the potential to be the most important workers in this struggle. We are in the unique position to have been given weapons and sent into the most unstable and strategically important areas of the world that the U.S. bosses want to control. Armed with the revolutionary understanding that capitalism has nothing to offer the working class besides misery, we have the power to turn the guns around and replace this profit system with communism. Join Progressive Labor Party in the struggle to turn the bosses’ “Army strong” into a revolutionary movement for communism. 

I work in a pharmaceutical plant in the Bronx. Approximately 200 workers are Latino and about 30 are black. When I told several co-workers I was writing an article for CHALLENGE I asked them what I should write about. They said, “the racism of the factory.” Guys, this one is for you.

When the manager does hire, he mostly hires black temporary workers, using them for the two months that the temp agency, not the factory, pays their wages. Then, when the company has to decide if they will hire them, the company fires most but keeps what they call the few “good workers,” or favorites that they think will produce the most profits for the company.

The night crew that I’m on has 60 workers,
almost half of whom are black. The morning crew outnumbers us 3 to 1, yet the bosses still have us compete with the morning crew for more production. The bosses even told us that if the morning shift finds a mistake from our work we have to find TWO mistakes from their shift. The night crew has always been pressured to work harder than the morning crew because of our small numbers.

Our boss tries to keep us divided from our morning-shift brothers and sisters, yet he fails to do so. We stay united on the same issues, like fighting for better air conditioning in the factory. Once it was so hot a worker almost passed out due to heat exhaustion. At a recent company meeting intended to be about how much we were slacking off and costing the company money, we spoke one after another turning it into a meeting about our concerns. We supported each other concerning the heat. We controlled that meeting.

This is why we need to organize to fight for communism; a society built upon workers’ needs, where the workers lead every aspect of society. Under communism our meetings wouldn’t be based upon the bosses profit but simply what we workers need to figure out to get it done. Bosses will be a thing of the past. We won’t need any bosses standing around getting rich off of our labor telling us how we need to make them more money.

Most of my co-workers I’ve talked to recognize the racism running the factory and dividing the workers. The bosses just made a new rule that divides workers more, giving us separate lunch schedules, and preventing us from socializing with one another. Some of the black workers on the job can see the racist ways of the company but blame it on their Latino brothers and sisters. I struggle with them not to fall for another “divide and conquer” tool of the bosses.

The bosses need racism, and not only to keep workers divided. When they want to increase their profits, they hire immigrant workers, pay them less and/or don’t give them any benefits, and tell us that they are stealing our jobs. In our case, the disproportionally black night-shift workers are
being worked harder to produce the same
extreme amount of profits as the morning crew.

Now I have four workers on my job that regularly receive CHALLENGE. They all really enjoy reading the paper. They love how it’s written by the workers for workers. They find it encouraging to read about all the other workers around the world experiencing the same racist exploiting cruelty by the bosses. We need to have these discussions on the job about what concerns us, continuing to struggle with each other. The only people we should be fighting are the bosses, just as we stood up to the district manager, for they don’t care about workers’ needs. Only a communist revolution can end the tyranny of these money-hungry bosses, and allow us to unite as one international multi-racial working class. 

STRASBOURG, July 31 — In what bosses in France hope will be a trend-setting decision, workers at GM’s automatic transmission plant here approved a 10% cut in wages and benefits in return for keeping their jobs. The two-month struggle with GM illustrates the nightmare of life under capitalism.

In late September, 2008, when GM went bust, its Strasbourg plant was turned over to Motor Liquidation Company, a hollow shell charged with finding a buyer. Deals with VW, Mercedes and Weichai fell through. In June, GM offered to buy back the plant for one symbolic euro, on condition that the 1,150 autoworkers take the 10% cut and that all unions sign the three-year contract. GM promised to keep all workers on the payroll for the life of the contract. (265,000 jobs were lost in France in 2009, including 168,000 industrial jobs.)

The largest union at the plant, the CFDT, urged accepting GM’s terms as “the lesser evil.” It was backed by two smaller unions, the CFTC and FO, and by the Socialist Party. The second-largest union, the CGT, backed by the “Communist” Party, opposed the sellout.

On July 16, 200 workers struck to protest the give-back, which includes a two-year wage freeze and voids a previous agreement establishing the 35-hour work week at the plant. But one week later, faced with a GM ultimatum to accept or see their jobs shipped to Mexico, 70% of the 950 workers participating in a non-binding secret ballot referendum accepted the deal.

That same day, management organized some workers to hold CGT union stewards hostage for several hours, threatening to kill them if they did not sign the contract. On July 27, the CGT announced it was filing charges against the assailants.

But on July 28, the CGT signed a separate deal with GM, promising not to challenge the new contract in the courts for the next three years. GM allowed the CGT to save face and did not force the union to sign the contract. Today GM announced it was going ahead with the purchase, which will take two months to finalize.

Everyone knows the Strasbourg workers have gained nothing in giving in to GM’s blackmail. In 2007, the Continental Tire factory workers in Clairoix agreed to return to a 40-hour week in exchange for a management promise not to close the factory. Today, it is closed.

Firstly, the bitter defeat for the GM workers demonstrates that a lack of unity plays into the bosses’ hands. Secondly, it shows that the best our class can obtain under capitalism is rotten compromises. In both cases, the remedy is to unite around communist leadership to organize for a revolution that will put our class in power

While the Obama Administration babbles about a supposed “economic recovery” over 33 million U.S. workers are still looking for non-existent jobs. There is only one job for every six jobless workers. The unemployment rate is really 21.6% according to ShadowStats.org which includes short- and long-term discouraged workers and underemployed workers, dwarfing the “official” 9.5% unemployment rate.

Many economists are calling this current “above-normal” level of unemployment the “new normal.” The Atlantic’s Don Peck says this could be the beginning of a “lost decade.” It will fundamentally transform a whole generation, as families fall apart, neighborhoods fall into turmoil and young workers see their lifespan significantly shortened due to the effects of continuous unemployment.

With over 8.4 million jobs lost in this economic depression, it’s become increasingly clear that recovery for many workers will be impossible. In order to provide jobs for the 1.5 million people joining the labor force each year and to return to the “normal” 5% unemployment rate in five years, the economy would have to create 250,000 jobs a month.

Then, to reach a “recovery” in two years that jumps to over 600,000 new jobs every month. In the last 20 years there has not been one monthly average job growth of 250,000. In fact, since 1989 the average has been 91,000 a month, far short of what capitalism needs for a “normal” recovery.

Now, as of July 30, 108 banks have failed this year alone, a pace exceeding the 140 bank failures in 2009. The collapse of the housing market is actually accelerating, with a record one million home foreclosures predicted for 2010. Bank of America hopes to be able to foreclose on 45,000 homes per month by December. And consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of total economic activity, continues to fall far short of expectations.

In short, the “recovery myth” is a political cover for an economic depression that is continually worsening. The current crisis U.S. unemployment levels are unlikely to ever decline, and may very well increase in coming years.

Workers Sped Up, Earn Less; Bosses Sit On $1.8 Trillion

The fear of unemployment and layoffs has allowed U.S. companies to speed up workers while cutting pay. Today workers are working 10% fewer hours while production remains at pre-cutback levels. This means they’re working a lot harder for a lot less. Consequently non-financial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion and are still refusing to hire new workers.

The NY Times praised German “recovery,” quoting a German economist that, “Fear of unemployment made workers more willing to accept concessions.” By “resisting a rise in wages” German capitalists have profited handsomely, a victory for capitalism says the Times.

But the unemployment lifting capitalist profits is deadly for workers. The average life-span of a worker losing a job at 30 is reduced by 1½ years when compared with those who’ve never lost their job. As CHALLENGE has repeatedly noted from a 1971 Congressional report, a 1.4% rise in unemployment leads to 30,000 deaths over the following five years. A 3% increase in unemployment raises the suicide rate by 4.5%.

The racism that causes black and Latino workers to be the first fired and last hired makes them especially vulnerable to deadly unemployment. Black and Latino workers suffer unemployment rates twice that of white workers. This is a direct result of racist hiring practices designed to keep workers’ divided and wages down.

Capitalists Unconcerned With Recovery for Workers

When economists talk about returning unemployment rates to the “normal” 5%, that means still over eight million workers on the streets! Capitalists are incapable of providing full employment. Only communism can transform work from a mechanism for the profit of the few into a liberating force for the world’s working class.

For capitalists, workers’ lives are always secondary to profits. To escape the evils of unemployment and its deadly side effects, the whole capitalist system must be destroyed. This begins with fighting the bosses’ plan to build their recovery on the backs of the working class. Employed and unemployed workers must unite to fight layoffs, evictions and foreclosures and racist bosses’ imperialist wars. Ultimately unemployed workers, as all workers, must be won to join PLP and organize to replace the profit system with a communist society free of bosses, profits, racism and war. J

On October 2, Reject The Bosses Elections and Fight for Communist Revolution

Under the guise of launching a movement for jobs, the agents of the  Rockefeller wing of the capitalist ruling class in the mass movement are organizing a mass demonstration on October 2 in Washington, D.C. to channel workers’ anger into working for Democratic Party candidates in the upcoming Congressional elections. Its goal: keep workers’ anger against racist unemployment under the tight control of the union misleaders and the NAACP and slap down the bosses’ rivals in the racist Tea Party.

We must not think that the Rockefeller-led bosses are “lesser evils” compared to the Tea Party fascists. Actually, the Rockefeller wing, which tends to look towards the longer-term interests of the imperialist system as a whole, will strengthen its ability to impose fascism and wage wars far better than the amateur fascists in the Tea Party.

Initiated by Local 1199 of the SEIU and the NAACP, the October 2 “March for Jobs, Justice, and Peace” has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO leadership, possibly ensuring a massive turnout. The build-up to this event is an important opportunity for PL’s revolutionary communists to deepen their ties in the mass organizations being recruited for this demonstration. We will expose the bosses and their agents in the workers’ movement and fight for a revolutionary path instead of an electoral one.

The fight against racist unemployment must be a priority for revolutionaries. We should never side with one group of bosses against another — they will always serve their own interests, not ours. The current economic crisis has demonstrated yet again that capitalism can never serve us, and must be destroyed by communist revolution so that we workers can organize society to meet the needs of our class on an international basis. Join us on October 2 to expose the misleaders and build for workers’ revolution worldwide!