Vol. 76/No. 5      February 6, 2012

Some 28,000 members of the International Association of Machinists who work for Boeing aerospace in Washington State received bonus checks in December for approving a new four-year contract.

“Merchants, are you planning any special sales to entice that windfall out of Boeing workers’ wallets and into your cash registers?” asked the Tacoma, Wash., News Tribune.

“I’m going to spend my windfall on where it will do the most good for the working class,” said Boeing worker Dean Peoples. He sent in a $5,000 contribution to the Socialist Workers Party Capital Fund, which helps to finance long-range work of the party. Peoples said the bonus is “blood money” given out “to help buy a ‘yes’ vote on the contract.”

Blood money is a term communist workers use to describe so-called bonuses and other bribes from bosses or their government, usually given as part of pressing workers to accept speed-up, wage cuts, concession contracts or dangerous working conditions.

“I am sending a check for $106.71 to the Capital Fund. This came in the mail in the form of unclaimed property from the state of Iowa,” writes Amanda Ulman from Houston, Texas. “It’s from a job I had more than 15 years ago. I assume it’s some company bribe or a production or ‘safety’ bonus of some kind.”

Ulman made the contribution to aid the SWP “build a revolutionary movement of working people to take political power and bring the whole system of exploitation crashing down,” she said.

“I know it will be put to good use in the Capital Fund,” wrote Rita Lee from Pittsburgh with a $1,000 check from workers compensation money paid from an injury at U.S. Steel Corp.

Ned Measel and Glova Scott, two workers at an ice cream plant in Washington, D.C., sent in $140 for the fund from a monthly bonus for production and reducing waste. “The bonus is based on how production lines meet the company’s criteria,” Measel said. “On some lines, they try to get workers to pressure each other to work faster” to receive this blood money.

Dennis Richter, a worker at an electronic assembly plant in Chicago, sent $30 from a “Christmas gas card blood money gift from the bosses turned into cash for the party.”

If you want to contribute blood money to the party’s Capital Fund, write or call Militant distributors listed on page 6.

—EMMA JOHNSON