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Vol. 71/No. 39      October 22, 2007

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
October 22, 1982
DETROIT—By a whopping two to one majority, Chrysler workers are rejecting the proposed contract with Chrysler. Workers are outraged at being offered a contract that gives them close to nothing. “Three times was enough,” was how one worker put it.

Since 1979 Chrysler workers have been forced to accept three rounds of major concessions. They have gone through the bitter experience of union-management collaboration. From the local plant level to United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser’s decision to join Chrysler’s board of directors, the strategy of collaboration has been carried out.

Since Chrysler claimed it was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1979 and demanded that the workers help bail them out, workers have lost an estimated $1.06 billion in wages and benefits. In 1979, Chrysler employed 76,000 workers. Today there are approximately 45,000.  
 
October 21, 1957
The election campaigns being waged by the Socialist Workers Party in New York and San Francisco are providing a growing basis for united action by socialists of various persuasions who share a common belief in the need to advance an independent socialist alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties of Big Business.

Vincent Hallinan, former Progressive party leader, will speak at rallies in both New York and San Francisco on behalf of the SWP slates.

In a letter of October 10, James Aronson, editor of the influential weekly, the National Guardian, urges support to the rally. The letter declares that a “vote for either of the major parties in the New York Mayoralty election on Nov. 5 would be a foolish waste of a valuable ballot.”  
 
October 22, 1932
A special cable to the New York Times of October 17 announces: “The most important Communist arrest ever made in Shanghai was carried out this morning when International Settlement police, acting on warrants issued by Chinese authorities, raided secret Communist headquarters and seized Chen Tu-hsiu.”

The reference is obviously to our comrade Chen Du-hsiu, who was political secretary of the party during the period of the revolutionary struggle of 1925--27 and who subsequently came to the conclusion that the whole Stalin-Bucharin course during the Chinese revolution had inexorably driven the movement to its catastrophe.

It now appears that in alliance with the police of the foreign imperialists stationed in Shanghai, the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie has finally arrested Chen Du-hsiu.  
 
 
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