Vol. 76/No. 13      April 2, 2012

Over the last nine months class-conscious workers have contributed more than $25,000 to the Socialist Workers Party Capital Fund. The fund helps finance long-term work of the party.

Dean Hazlewood in Miami sent in a $280 production bonus from a temp agency. “At the same time as they sent me this blood money,” he writes, “they told the state unemployment agency that I had abandoned the job, instead of the truth that I was laid off.”

Blood money is a term used by the communist movement to describe “bonuses” and other bribes from the bosses to make workers accept speedup, wage cuts, concession contracts and dangerous working conditions.

Tom Tomasko, a machinist and Teamster union member at United Airlines in San Francisco, contributed $3,330, from a contract signing bonus paid out to get workers to accept the elimination of pensions from the contract.

Ted Leonard, a worker at Gillette razor company in Boston, sent in $265. “We got this 1 percent bonus in lieu of a pay raise,” he writes. “Meanwhile, our ‘team’ was reduced from six to five workers and the material handler position in the department was eliminated. (So we do the work instead!) No thanks, I’ll take the road to workers power.”

To contribute blood money to the SWP Capital Fund, contact Militant distributors on page 8.

—EMMA JOHNSON