The following letter is a testimony given by a comrade in support of the Securing Wages Against Theft (SWEAT) bill at a New York State legislative hearing. Annually billions of dollars are stolen from workers in New York City alone. Loopholes in the state rulers’ laws make it easy for bosses to ruthlessly steal from workers and hide their assets in such a way that makes it nearly impossible for workers to recover their stolen wages. Antiracist organizers are fighting for a lien law that freezes criminal bosses’ assets.
If won, the SWEAT law may give workers the tools to recover their stolen wages, but it will never change the fact that capitalism is a criminal system and exploitation is its bedrock. All waged work under capitalism is exploitation. Profits are extracted from the necessary unpaid labor time of workers, and wage theft only deepens this contradiction. The Wage theft epidemic we’re currently experiencing is a symptom of a system that is spiraling further into crisis.Ultimately, workers must fight for a communist revolution to put an end to this racist super exploitation.
The SWEAT bill is currently under attack by a powerful restaurant boss lobby called the Hospitality Alliance courtesy of its liberal fascist lackeys in Albany. Workers plan to protest Melba Wilson, a Black celebrity restaurant owner who fronts the racist Hospitality Alliance, later this month. Please look out for an article on this fightback in the next coming issues of CHALLENGE.
I'm speaking on behalf of Women Against Racist Violence (WARV) a multiracial collective of young people, organizing to address the racist violence that women experience daily in forms such as the 24 hour workdays, wage theft, and displacement.I'd like to share our perspective on wage theft along with a personal anecdote.
In my early 20s I worked at a bar where I was promised cash payments at the end of each night. After eight hours of work, the manager tells me that he can only pay me if I get male customers to buy a certain amount of drinks. I noticed that many of the girls around me were roped into this line of work, to accept being groped by drunken men out of necessity. Many had children or were undocumented. I walked out of there with $5 for a metrocard. I can't describe how violated and worthless I felt that night.
It was only years later till I began organizing with the Sweat Coalition and also with home attendants, hearing about their harrowing stories of wage theft that I was able to make sense of what me and many of my colleagues endured.
Every year bosses steal billions from workers and our state turns a blind eye and their zero response leads many to believe that wage theft is a victimless crime and that bosses can freely get away with stealing from workers. What's the use of calling wage theft or a crime if it goes unpunished?
Part of the problem lies in how our perspective on what constitutes a crime sometimes ends up trivializing the issue. It doesn't capture the suffering and generational aftershocks that this crime causes. Wage theft destroys worker's lives, their families, and their communities. I think we need to start calling wage theft what it is: racist violence.
Let me break it down if you think this is hyperbole. Every paycheck that is stolen from a worker is a step closer to starvation and homelessness. What is this if not violence? Every paycheck stolen from a woman is a step closer to staying in an abusive relationship to survive. What is this if not violence? Every paycheck stolen is a step closer to a worker landing in prison for committing a crime out of desperation.
In the South Bronx, one of the poorest congressional districts in the United States, where many of the home attendants I work with live and where wage stealing agencies operate — every 13 hours stolen from a home attendant each year means money deprived from them and their families, impacting their ability to afford education, housing and other necessities. This traps our kids and communities in a cycle of racist violence of poverty.
Perhaps this is why I'm so infuriated today. Wage theft continues unabated because politicians are too immobilized by bloodsucking sweatshop bosses to end this violence. They've been duped by unethical and shameful organizations like Hospitality Alliance, against their better judgment, to believe lies about how workers will abuse SWEAT and file false claims.
In the era of #metoo we're told to believe all victims of abuse, that is unless they've had their wages stolen and dare to speak out.
Shame on Hospitality Alliance for using their Black celebrity president as cover for their racist crimes. If politicians have a shred of integrity they'd stop listening to Hospitality Alliance, and pass SWEAT and be part of the solution to violence rather than an obstacle.
- Information
Oakland Strike exposes capitalist education in crisis
- Information
- 08 June 2023 737 hits
BAY AREA, June 7—In the interest of the “common good” (read: pro-student and class-solidarity demands), over 3,000 education workers went on an eight-day strike against the Oakland Unified School District. Communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) went to picket lines at schools where we knew striking teachers to build solidarity, raise class consciousness, and communicate communist ideas.
From May 4 to 15, these workers honored the picket line, 34,000+ students were out of schools, parents & students joined the picketing and rank-and-file teachers set up solidarity schools for younger children of working parents. A Temporary Agreement (TA) for 2.5 years was signed late Sunday night on the 7th day for a return to school on Tuesday.
The school bosses used legal tactics to create planned Chaos, “delay, deny and blame the victim,” all typical strike-breaking tactics. The contract expired in Oct 2022. Finally, Oakland Education Association (OEA) called a strike in May due to unfair bargaining practices; a “legal” cover for immediate action rather than months of fact finding. This was after a rank-and-file caucus carried out a one-day wildcat strike in March, mainly in high schools, and demanded a 50-person bargaining committee to be responsible to the membership.
What did we learn? What did we teach?
PLP went in solidarity with and to learn from the strikers: how did they view their struggle and the world that produced it? We learned that conditions in and out of the schools had many teachers talking about the problems of capitalism, but that they did not have a full explanation of “why are things so bad?”
We learned that the Oakland R&F Caucus understands working class power: “We are…committed to transforming the Oakland Education Association into a democratic, member-led union that fights for high-quality schools for all.”
One big lesson developed during the previous teachers’ strike in 2019 when teachers organized with members of the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) to shut down the Port of Oakland. The California Teachers’ Association (CTA) sabotaged this action due to fear of being sued for a secondary boycott. Building on that experience, that’s when teachers led the wildcat strike.
During this strike, teachers shut down OUSD (Oakland Unified School District) construction of a new administration building costing $57 million to point out the hypocrisy that $57 million is needed to upgrade the schools, not produce a fancy building for the administration. Many construction workers on site supported this one-day shutdown). They kept the strikers informed on progress and mobilized parent support.
Racism part and parcel of capitalism
The strike’s demands addressed conditions for teachers and students. OUSD is one of the lowest paid districts in the Bay Area, which creates difficulty recruiting and retaining teachers and staff. Schools with the largest population of working-class Black, Latin, immigrant, Indigenous, disabled and special needs students had the most unmet needs, had unhoused families and deteriorated physical plants. For example, one teacher said, “The school’s buildings” have “lead in the soil and a rat and mice infestation in the classrooms, and they’re concerned about lead in the water.”
Years of school closings, charter school privatization, and real estate profit-motivated displacement had increased these disparities and overcrowding in these neighborhoods. This goes along with imperialist-war related education cutbacks.
A district spokesperson said “the district has a total of $3.4 billion in upgrades and other changes that must happen to get all schools upgraded and modernized.” OEA’s common good proposals are “far too costly for the district to handle” and should not be included in any collective bargaining agreement (KQED, 5/12).
Developing class consciousness
On the picket line, PLP members discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the reform struggle. We distributed CHALLENGE with a report from the Los Angeles teachers strike, and international news of class struggle to those who were interested and planned follow up activity after the strike. Many events in this strike showed that workers can oraganizr figure out how to run things for the benefit of the whole working class where humans strive to collectively build a world of equity; based on production for need, not for profit. That system is communism. A teacher reported on the strike at our PLP May Day celebration.
One of our goals was to support and expand on the class consciousness in the “common good” demands. At one school, an AFSCME member struggled with coworkers to honor the picket line. Students from a solidarity school joined the picket line with their own chants. This was an opening to bring up the history of Industrial Unionism. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was founded with the leadership of the Communist Party USA that organized for everyone in an industry to be in the same union. In Oakland in 1947, transit worker solidarity with striking retail workers sparked a general strike.
Such history helped develop an understanding of capitalism’s stratified wage system using racism, sexism and anti-immigrant ideology. This lowers wages for all. These ideas made sense even though some teachers had never heard of the CIO.
Imperialism and finance capitalism on display
Our PLP picket signs addressed the war budget, imperialism and privatization with charter schools increasing segregation. They were well received (see picture) and we had many conversations about the decline of U.S. capitalism, imperialist wars with rivals, mainly China, over control of labor, natural resources, markets, and even the threat of replacing the dollar as the world currency.
We brought up that finance capital has been moving into the public sector to secure tax money to make up for shrinking profits in other areas. Privatization includes charter schools, the testing industry, and an army of “private” consultants and NGOs (non government organizations).
The Wall St Journal directly attacked the teachers and belittled the “common good” demands: “the teachers’ union strike that is holding children hostage in the name of climate and housing for the homeless… How about “remedying the enormous learning deficits the union has caused by protecting bad teachers and closing schools during the pandemic?” (WSJ, May 9).
We explained that the WSJ represents finance capitalists who understand the danger when workers move away from business unionism or electing Democrats to develop working-class solidarity social justice unions. This can unleash the united working class to challenge capitalist rule; like back in the day when communists developed class solidarity against capitalism and fought for communism.
The role of liberal reformers
During the strike, we had the opportunity to discuss the role of the liberal reformers who led the vicious attack and echoed the call to exclude common good demands from the contract. Many teachers agreed that voting for a leader who is a lesser evil, has personal credentials including identity politics, is a deadend when that individual accepts the limits set by capitalists’ budgets.
Superintendent of OUSD Kyla Johnson-Trammell (salary $452,500/yr) grew up an Oakland student, taught 25 yrs in OUSD, agreed with WSJ: teachers “should not hold children’s learning hostage or deprive students of the services that schools provide.” One teacher told us that a poster exposing Kyla was controversial since she is Black.
President of the Oakland School Board, Mike Hutchison, promotes himself as an “OEA Baby,” product of Oakland schools with his mother aOUSD teacher, and an organizer fighting school closings/ budget cuts. He attacked “items that are outside of the scope of the contract, which are basically compensation and work conditions, are not going to be negotiated…Common Good proposals... do not belong in the contract language…” (The Oaklandside, 5/8).
We discussed: Why do liberal politicians and leaders end up attacking working-class teachers and students? Is it personality? Ego? Many teachers recognized that the memorandum of understanding makes the OEA leadership a partner with OUSD to administer shrinking tax dollars that will continue to produce failed solutions to the issue of housing, school closing, community school funding, and racist conditions. We agreed with the activist teacher organizers that such a partnership would try to stop direct rank-and-file actions, like future wildcat strikes, or port shutdowns.
These partners could use corporate laws to justify firing, jailing, and legal suits for damages and school closures. Capitalism in decline won’t provide the money for an equitable education for the working class.
Capitalism attacks those who dare to struggle. Class solidarity and revolutionary potential grow when we dare to win!
The vicious racketeering and collusion charges, carrying up to a 12-year sentence, leveled by the Joe Biden administration against abortion rights organizers illustrates how the liberal ruling class is the greater danger to the working class. The antisexists’ crime? Spray painting.
The profit system requires maximum profit at all times. Workers are the ultimate source of profit. Every commodity is produced by a producer. Women workers produce the producers of everything. So, the need to produce workers to be bullet sponges is the context wherein we should understand the rising attacks on our working-class siblings and reproductive rights.
Ruling class in crisis
The first context is the 2007 financial crisis where the subprime mortgage collapse was the final straw. The ruling class bailed themselves out. Like in the Great Depression, the lowest birth rates were hit when the crisis of capital was in full tilt in the mid 1930’s. The key difference being that there was an international communist movement that had taken state power in the Soviet Union facilitating a powerful CPUSA (Communist Party USA) who was organizing among the working class. The New Deal was a direct response to the Red ‘30’s. So, this brings up the question of leadership.
Pacifism is a dangerous ideology to the working class. When one is silent, it makes the bully perpetuating the violence feel that they can continue on with it. The liberal ruling class and their state continues to attack working-class women, as well as undocumented and Black workers. They want us to be passive as groups actively attack workers stocking shelves with Pride merchandise.
The ruling class would like for the working class to believe that these parallels to Berlin in 1933 should be handled by them, because history shows us exactly how a liberal government handles growing fascist movements, so we know we need our own Progressive Labor Party (PLP)-led Red Army to smash them once and for all.
Unfortunately, history also shows us that fascism can be decisively defeated by communists with great sacrifice and still not lead to an egalitarian society, so we need to fight for revolution and not reform.
The IMF (International Monetary Fund) postulates that “Policymakers in some advanced economies will need to tackle this trend [of a declining birthrate] and find ways to encourage women to have children. For example, increasing access to affordable and high-quality childcare, family-friendly labor laws, and tax policies” (IMF Blog, 11/13/18) and/or by actively rescinding abortion and reproductive healthcare.
Reproduction and childrearing, a collective responsibility
Under communism, Marx said that “sensuous human discourse” (Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844) would be the primary aspect of reproduction. In other words, we would learn how to actively work together to produce what we all need, with children being the responsibility of the whole of society. Instead of any of the identities that are so important to the modern liberal movements, we would struggle to allow for human beings to be who they actually are and love who they choose since there would be plenty of nurturing to go around. The whole human race would be a whole human family.
When the working class takes hold of ideas, they can then turn them into reality. It is the power of the working class being held in the prison of capitalist ideology that allows for the profit system to continue. When the Florida Attorney General points out that she is attacking Antifa and Jane’s Revenge, what she is really worried about is exactly what the Biden big bosses are afraid of, too, and that’s a communist organization being able to actively coordinate and lead attacks on the fascists, and, ultimately, on the bourgeoisie themselves to take hold of the means of production.We need the working class to wake up to the need for communist revolution. This requires patient organizing in mass organizations with the intent of building a mass international Party whose breadth balances being a secret to the bosses while being seen as the bulwark to the working class.
Neither education bosses nor union misleaders care about students
There’s a reason why the club is the most important part of the Progressive Labor Party. It is the collective that we need in order to do the important work that we do. As soon as the teachers union in our city put out an email saying that they were having actions as a reaction to the Department of Education (DOE) putting out a calendar that stripped holidays away from kids and forced us into what almost amounts to a sixth class, we knew that the sellout was underway.
As soon as the email was sent, comrades in a club contacted each other. They discussed what was going on as far as the context of the DOE putting out a calendar with no regard for the negotiations with the union. This conversation then focused on answering the question of how this attack on the teachers was also an attack on students. Increasing the amount of time that students are in school, though it appears to be an improvement, is actually an attack on students by grinding them down with more work. Now, the fact that there would be a uniform starting time of 8 am would wreak havoc on bussing the neediest students. This is all a part of the need for the bosses to build fascism as they increase the workload their parents have.
The bargaining pattern that the teacher’s union is following is the union that represents the hardest hit of the working class: laborers who are primarily women, Black, and Latin. They are jumping the gun and grabbing the deal the liberal bourgeoisie demands.
Conversations the next day with coworkers were sharp as the comrades were fresh from the collective discussion that focused them on how it was an attack on students and why the bosses were attacking now. One comrade sat down in the teachers center and wrote a chapter update with several teachers, struggling with each one to see the current issue within the context of class struggle and the union misleaders as servants of the bourgeoisie.
The rumors were that the contract was a done deal and that the whole fight the union was putting up was a smoke screen to help the teachers take a terrible deal and call it a victory. The union bosses are creating this whole façade to help them sell us a contract that will likely attack our students by speeding them up and increasing their hours; attack our healthcare because keeping us alive is too expensive; and give us an inflation-affected, pennies on the dollar raise.
It is the collective working together and sharing of understanding that allows the Party to be able to struggle with our coworkers and against the bosses. The next step is to continue to discuss this attack with our students, their parents, and continue to do so with teachers through Chapter Updates and any means we have at our disposal. And let’s not forget the fight for communism where workers will really be educated about how capitalism works and how to get rid of it with communist revolution.
In Atlanta, more than 100 people from all over the U.S. gave over 15 hours of public comment to the local City Council against a huge cop training facility, better known as Cop City. The Black, Asian, Muslim and nonbinary council members still voted yes to expanding police terror and fascism through the 90 million dollar project. This is what the Party means by liberal fascism.
The case of organizers fighting through the system and being denied is what it looks like. Placing liberals and marketing them as friendly faces in the highest offices is not enough for the ever growing masses of workers that are turning to militant fightback over the ballot boxes. The U.S. and worldwide infrastructure from schools to roadways are crumbling. The bosses need police to keep workers repressed, terrorized and focused on the ploy to blame themselves and each other for the circumstances brought on by a profit driven system.
*****
Cop city = liberal fascism
Cop City is in response to what was the largest mass antiracist protest that spurred from George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s vicious murders by kkkops. The fight around #STOPCOPCITY is one of the most critical struggles that we must not only keep our eyes on but expand in every city. Because there is a training ground for cops and military that’s being built or expanded in every city. And building up the capabilities of the police and military is the liberal ruling class’ plan as the system of capitalism becomes more unstable. Liberal politicians in Atlanta, Newark, L.A., Chicago, Mexico, Colombia are the ones side by side with the corporations funding the war and the police waging it. As communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), use the case of organizers trying to stop Cop City as a reason for why revolution will never be on the ballot and must be enacted by communist fighters in one mass internationalist Party. Our class needs leadership, our friends are learning from us and our children are watching. Let’s fight for each other and fight together!
*****
poetry vs. alienation under capitalism
I wrote this poem with all the rage I had after being humiliated by the boss at my workplace for being gay. I was told that I had to censor myself to respond to the sensitivities of anti-gay sexism of people at the workplace. People in solidarity with me had to witness this.
Fatality
The leader who misunderstands his understanding
Of his own alliances
With the system that is making him a weapon against the ghost of his own better
ideals
Long ago sold to his masters
Exposed and corroding
Tragedy
Not the worker who was made to choke
On the pride & joy of sharing how they
exist
In response
To the attack, the shame, the guilt
Of others’ prejudice and bigotry
Pitiful
The liberal boss who says they seek justice
In equally protecting the right of people
With violent ideas
Of having double standards
Not thinking twice of the intent
Emanating from white bodies,
or heterosexual bodies
While being trained to fire the bullet of guilt without hesitation on bodies of darker skin, on feminine bodies
Fanning the flames of division and distrust
Within the working class to distract…
Better than any open fascist can
And retaining the power of their terror concealed
Misfortune
The educator who hides their own lack of confidence in the working class…behind
Respect for cultural populations whose bigoted ideas “unfortunately cannot be changed”
When in reality it is their own racist limitations that hold them hostage from fighting for what is better
Optimism
Those who surpassed a new limit
In the courage and action
They were willing to undertake
In standing side by side
With workers being attacked
For fighting to put all power
In the hands of the working class
Forward
The people whose solidarity with the working class has forever changed
When being pierced by being witness to the visceral pain of a fellow worker who has been attacked
While the bosses seek the justice that serves themselves
In the spiritual lynchings they unleash
On the spirit of the fighters ready to expose their masters
Victory
To the communists
Who are lodging confidence
Deeper and deeper
within the working class
By turning painful attacks
Into fights
And never losing sight
Of what is the win
Up against the terror the bosses use
To have us see everything but that
- Information
Editorial: Turkey’s crisis at the crossroads of imperialist superpowers
- Information
- 08 June 2023 784 hits
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s hotly contested re-election highlights the country's internal crisis and its unstable position between imperialist super-powers. Erdogan's victory signifies a shift away from liberal democracy toward fascistic consolidation by Turkey’s ruling class. With Erdogan’s U.S.-backed opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, failing in the runoff, it also reflects waning U.S. influence in a critical geopolitical region.
Runaway inflation (up to 84 percent last October), two devastating earthquakes, and a ballooning migrant crisis have put the Turkish economy on the brink of collapse. To contain workers’ anger, the Turkish capitalist bosses are using Erdogan—now entering his third decade in power—to impose tighter control over the media, the judiciary, and a mostly powerless Turkish parliament. Since surviving a 2016 coup attempt, Erdogan has seized more executive power, sidelined political opponents, purged large sections of the government and military, and arrested hundreds of protesters (Al Jazeera, 7/15/22).
The struggles facing the working class in Turkey are a sobering reminder of the limitations and illusions of capitalist elections. The Progressive Labor Party is working to build communist working-class consciousness that rejects the dead end of electoral politics. By organizing and mobilizing the working class, we can build a revolutionary movement that smashes capitalism and builds a society to serve the needs of the international working class.
Liberals are the main danger
Opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his Republican People’s Party painted themselves as champions of social reforms, the liberal alternative to the authoritarian Erdogan and his ultra-nationalist Justice and Development Party. But in a desperate move to defeat the incumbent, Kilicdaroglu won the endorsement of the gutter-racist, third-party candidate, Umit Ozdag, by promising to kick out millions of Syrian refugees (Turkish Minute, 5/24). Kilicdaroglu charged that Erdogan had failed to “protect Turkey’s honor or borders” (Al Jazeera, 5/22). Both Kilicdaroglu and Erdogan accused the other of colluding with “terrorists,” which translates to a push for more racist oppression of Kurdish workers.
In recent years, more workers in Turkey have been misled by these divisive racist appeals. Under the ruthless profit system, a society that creates a handful of winners and masses of losers, a lack of revolutionary class consciousness makes the working class vulnerable to racist and fascist ideas. In a volatile period with surging economic insecurity, liberal racists and open racists alike aim to exploit the frustrations of the working class and to channel their justifiable rage into scapegoating other workers. The liberals are especially dangerous in diverting class struggle away from the communist fight for state power and back to the straitjacket of voting.
Trapped in the middle
A critical bridge between Europe and Asia, Turkey under Erdogan is struggling to balance its own nationalist ambitions with the competing imperialists in Russia and the United States. The country has positioned itself as a major player in the region surrounding the Mediterranean and Black seas. It has recently pivoted toward Russia for military support and has engaged in negotiations to become a hub for a Russian gas pipeline (Al Jazeera, 10/14/22). But with its economy in shambles, Turkey will need more financial help from the United States and the European Union—or whoever else is willing to sign a big check.
After claiming neutrality in the war in Ukraine and acting to block Sweden from joining NATO, Erdogan may need to make concessions to get loans from the World Bank and prop up Turkey’s collapsing economy (Bloomberg, 2/9). To get financing from the International Monetary Fund, he will need to raise interest rates and impose austerity measures that will impoverish and starve millions.
As the big powers lurch toward the next world war, workers in Turkey seem likely to be trapped in the middle.
Fight for communism!
The plight of workers in Turkey cries out for more than mere reforms or empty promises by the rulers’ politicians. Workers need a revolutionary communist movement that exposes the root causes of workers’ economic, political, and social struggles, and that builds international class solidarity. Workers need an organization that fights for a society free from imperialist exploitation, racism, and sexism. By uniting under the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, workers in Turkey can pave the way for genuine liberation and a brighter future for all. Join us as we organize this international communist movement!
