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Vol. 72/No. 49      December 15, 2008

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
December 16, 1983
As the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) convention assembles in Pittsburgh December 12, miners are under sharp attack from the coal operators. Close to a third of the active union membership is laid off. Mine safety and health is being willfully neglected. New mining operations are being opened nonunion. A recent court decision holding UMWA locals responsible for company profit losses due to “unauthorized” strikes is the latest example of antilabor government intervention on behalf of the employers.

The coal operators’ attacks on the UMWA are leading to a bigger confrontation between the companies and the union when the national contract expires at the end of 1984. This is part of the full scale assault the employers and their government are waging today against all working people at home and abroad.  
 
December 15, 1958
AFL-CIO president George Meany received an enthusiastic response from the 2,800 delegates and alternates to the merger convention of the New York State AFL and CIO on Dec. 9, when he warned Big Business that if it did not halt its anti-labor drive the union movement would be compelled to build a labor party.

Meany’s statement is designed to put pressure on the Republicans and Democrats. It is not a serious declaration of intention to get down to the business of building such a party. Only last Oct. 8, Meany asserted that for labor to build its own party and aim for political power “would mean the end of democracy in America.”

While not intended as such, his declaration is in fact an admission that the victory of the “pro-labor” Democrats has not disposed of the anti-labor offensive.  
 
December 16, 1933
The lynching wave comes up suddenly, and runs its course, with unrestrained violence. These features are characteristic now of almost every large scale social event. The strike wave of last summer was marked, among other things, by the speed with which it developed and the violence which accompanied it. In nearly every large strike there was not only the usual capitalist routine of police brutality, but bloodshed: Patterson, Ambridge, the Pennsylvania captive mine strike, etc.

The farm riots of the middle West last spring against foreclosures also shot across the social-political sky like a meteor. At Lemars, Iowa, the farmers dragged a judge from his court by a rope around his neck.

As the capitalist system disintegrates further the social weather is going to get stormier and stormier.  
 
 
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