The 6,700 striking Machinists at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis deserve the support of the entire labor movement and other fighters. By standing up to the aerospace giant, they have put themselves on the front lines of the resistance by working people to the bosses' drive to cut workers' wages, job conditions, and expectations.

McDonnell Douglas is trying to impose what every capitalist enterprise must do today under the pressures of intensified competition with rivals in the United States and abroad - cost- cutting, outsourcing, and job combinations aimed at reducing the workforce by another 1,700 workers over the duration of the proposed contract.

When McDonnell Douglas President Herbert Lanese advised the machinists to "think of the people in Boeing and Lockheed Martin...like I do, as your mortal enemy," he meant it. Working people recoiled from Lanese's statements. Although Lanese later sought to deny these comments, they accurately reflect the true colors of the capitalist bosses and their governments whether they be in Washington, Bonn, London, Paris, or Tokyo. They try to convince workers to see each other as the enemy, and keep us competing for jobs, in order to better divide and rule.

When workers begin to fight for their rights and dignity, like those at McDonnell Douglas, they become open to seeing that, as one striker put it, "unions have to stand together not only here but in the whole world." Workers employed by McDonnell Douglas face the same enemy as those working at Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, and other companies around the world - this capitalist system and the joblessness and worsening conditions it breeds.

Unionists and other people fighting against Washington's war moves around the world, against racism and attacks on immigrant rights, and in defense of affirmative action should get out to the picket lines to give solidarity to the McDonnell Douglas workers. We should demand the government end its picket line injunctions and threats of intervention against the strikers.

Support the McDonnell Douglas strikers!  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home