In the cities where partisans of the Militant organized special campaigning teams during the October 2-10 target week, they made good strides. Socialist campaigners in Des Moines set an example, inviting and hosting others from several Midwest cities to join them in a special regional sales effort, which was combined with campaigning for the socialist ticket in the November elections. Here’s a report from that Midwest team.
Volunteers from Minnesota, Nebraska, Illinois, and from this city fanned out across central Iowa to the cities of Perry, Marshalltown, Ottumwa, and Des Moines to reach packing house workers and others with the campaign of Róger Calero for president, Arrin Hawkins for vice president, and Edwin Fruit for U.S. Senate. They also celebrated the grand opening of the new Militant Labor Forum hall and the Iowa 2004 Socialist Workers Campaign center in Des Moines with a public meeting and social.
Iowans signed up for 9 Militant subscriptions and 15 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial. They also bought 26 copies of the Militant, and 5 copies of PM. Workers at meatpacking plants in the region snapped up 11 of the subscriptions.
Campaign supporters going door-to-door found a good response when they pointed to the socialist campaign theme of the pressing need for working people to organize unions to resist the bosses’ offensive against our living and working conditions. Many workers explained how this offensive is affecting them.
During door-to-door campaigning in Perry, for example, a woman who works for Sears Credit agreed with what campaigners were saying about the grind facing working people on wages, health-care benefits, and other conditions. She is working to pay for her medical insurance, she said, which costs $220 a month, and she still has inadequate coverage.
A single mother, also in Perry, who works for the nonunion Hy-Vee grocery chain, said she is living paycheck to paycheck on the low wages they pay the workers there.
Workers at the Swift hog slaughterhouse in Marshalltown, organized by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1149, said the company keeps increasing the line speed and number of hogs killed each shift. “Last week we set a new record, 8,535 in eight hours,” said one kill floor worker sarcastically. “And they want more and more.”
Another Swift worker, who used to work at the Quality Pork Products plant in Austin, Minnesota, held up his swollen hands as testament to the increasing productivity drive of the bosses.
A worker from the load-out area of the Tyson plant in Perry, also organized by UFCW Local 1149, said that after Tyson bought the plant from IBP the workload was intensified, which includes longer hours. Other workers at Perry said Tyson is combining jobs, with some workers now doing the work of three.
These packinghouse workers and others said that their unions are not responding to these attacks and wanted to talk about how to strengthen them to fight against the worsening conditions on the job. A Honduran family that works at the Excel plant in Ottumwa asked what book to read to help them work with others to strengthen the UFCW there. They picked up a PM subscription and purchased a copy of Rebelión Teamster (Teamster Rebellion) by Farrell Dobbs, who tells the firsthand story of the union battles and organizing efforts by militant truck drivers in Minnesota in the 1930s who set an example and inspired similar struggles by workers throughout the Midwest (see ad).
Kevin Dwire is a meat packer in Des Moines. Edwin Fruit is a member of UFCW Local 1149 in Perry and is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa.
Fall Militant/Perspectiva Mundial Fall Subscription Drive chart (week 6)
Pathfinder Supersaver Sale