Vol. 75/No. 31 September 5, 2011
Over the past months communist workers from Atlanta to Des Moines, Iowa, have sent “blood money” contributions to the Socialist Workers Party’s Capital Fund. The fund helps finance long-term projects of the party.
Blood money is a term communist workers use to describe so-called bonus payments handed out by employers as bribes to try to get workers to accept speedup, wage cuts, concession contracts, and dangerous work conditions.
Jacob Perasso sent in $339 he received as the company implemented a 10 percent speedup in production of all-terrain vehicles at a plant in the Atlanta area. “The time we had to do our jobs was cut from 78 seconds to 69,” he wrote.
“In the area where I work the radiator-fill machine has sprayed anti-freeze on five people in the last month. A coworker told me that the reason the company doesn’t fill the radiator off the line, after production, under less pressure is that the fluid, which is toxic, could damage the body of the vehicle. It is evident that the company cares more about damage to the vehicle than damage to us.”
“Many coworkers said they consider the bonus a bribe,” Perasso continued. “A coworker with many years in the plant showed me a display in one of the break rooms with a photo of a worker killed on the job in 2003. The equipment that electrocuted him needed to be fixed and everyone knew it but the company refused because of the cost.”
In Des Moines, Chuck Guerra sent in $50, the cash equivalent of a gift card he received from the company for showing workers from another site how to run the mail insertion machine he operates.
“This is an example of a crumb thrown to a worker to try to buy our loyalty and get us to compete among ourselves to curry favor with management,” he wrote. “I’m glad to turn the money over to the Capital Fund where it will help produce the publications we need to build a movement to bring down the system that pits workers against each other and in which we’re supposed to be grateful for any little ‘bonus’ we get.”
—BRIAN WILLIAMS