Vol. 77/No. 47      December 30, 2013

“Workers have been complaining that the company does less for Thanksgiving,” Tom Baumann, who works in a warehouse in Miami, wrote with a note he sent with a $20 contribution. “This year they excluded temporary workers, like myself, from participating in the hourly raffle, previously open to all workers. Most co-workers disagreed with this. ‘You guys do the same work as us. It’s not fair,’ one of them said to me.”

After workers protested, the temps were included in the $20 turkey gift card “bonus” the same day.

“I was happy to get it so I could turn it over to put it to use building the communist movement,” Baumann wrote.

Blood money is a term used to describe bosses’ bribes intended to convince workers to accept speedup, wage cuts, concession contracts and dangerous working conditions. They take various forms: safety, attendance, production and “profit-sharing” bonuses; contract-signing incentives; and holiday “gifts.”

Maggie Trowe and Ellen Brickley also donated their Thanksgiving gifts of $25 each from a plastics factory in Des Moines, Iowa.

“With the blood money gift we got a letter from the company president about how great ‘our team’ is and how she likes Thanksgiving because it is a ‘noncommercial’ holiday about family,” Trowe wrote. “With pleasure we put this blood money toward building the revolutionary party.”

Carole Lesnick and Eric Simpson contributed September and October “on-time” bonuses for the sum of $240. They work at United Airlines in San Francisco.

“The company briefings motivate the bonus by saying that we contribute with hard work,” Simpson wrote. “Because of bad weather next month, there will be no bonus. But we’ll still work just as hard.”

To make a contribution to the Capital Fund, write or call a Militant directory listed on page 8.

— EMMA JOHNSON