Vol. 73/No. 10      March 16, 2009

Sending in these “bonuses” from the bosses to the Capital Fund, which goes to advance the long-term publishing program of the communist movement, is consistent with the long and proud tradition of workers in the revolutionary socialist movement not accepting company “blood money” bribes. They’re called that because they’re used to buy our silence about speedup, long hours, and unsafe work conditions. They come with our blood and that of fellow workers on them.

The Capital Fund makes it possible to produce the political weapons workers need to understand the laws of the wages system and be better equipped to fight to abolish this system for all time and replace it with the rule of working people.

Contributions of this kind to the fund continue to roll in. Vivian Sahner, also from Atlanta, sent in an incentive bonus of $840.39. She noted that the company sent out a memo the same week asking for volunteers to cut their hours of work “and unfortunately our pay as well.”

Jerry Freiwirth, a refinery worker in the San Francisco Bay Area, sent $1,400, the amount after taxes from a contract-signing bonus.

Communist workers are also finding innovative ways to turn the various forms in which they receive blood-money bribes into contributions to the communist movement. Five meat packers from Des Moines, Iowa—Diana Newberry, Helen Meyers, Chuck Guerra, David Rosenfeld, and Rebecca Williamson—received grocery coupons from their employers. “After discussing how to turn the coupons into cash we decided to use them for shopping and donate an equivalent amount to the Capital Fund,” Newberry told the Militant. They sent in $100.58.

John Hawkins, a cutter in a Chicago area meatpacking plant, sent in a $155 holiday bonus he received just before also getting a layoff notice.

—SAM MANUEL