Vol. 77/No. 8      March 4, 2013

They also had to deal with a campaign by an anti-labor outfit called the Socialist Equality Party, also known as the World Socialist Web Site. Their intervention against the strike had nothing to do with building solidarity with the workers’ struggle. It was aimed at demoralizing workers resisting the bosses’ assaults. They showed up when the workers were locked in combat with the city and the bosses, seeking to turn them against their union, the Amalgamated Transit Union.

The Socialist Equality Party aims to get a hearing for its anti-union propaganda by painting itself as a socialist group on the side of the rank-and-file workers. Their main message to the bus workers was a call for them to quit their union. Bus workers “must organize independently of the union,” their flyers urged.

“The way the strike was shut down epitomizes how hostile the union apparatus is toward the workers trapped inside these organizations,” said one of their flyers dated Feb. 18.

In their circulars, the outfit makes no distinction between the unions and the policies of the current leaderships, and they paint the union and the bosses as part of a conspiracy allied against the workers.

“The real scabs are the unions themselves,” said a flyer posted on their website Feb. 14 that they handed out to workers.

They suggested workers should just cross the picket line. “Privately, some workers stated that they think they should go back to work and save what they can of their jobs, paychecks and benefits,” they claimed. “Such sentiments are entirely understandable.”

The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site have a long history of anti-labor disruption aimed at workers engaged in often bitter struggles and at revolutionary working-class organizations like the Socialist Workers Party.

Their efforts pick up whenever workers are on the move. They don’t build any solidarity or participate in struggles. Instead, particularly as some fights wear on and workers face more difficulties, the outfit seeks out and feeds off frustrations, discouragement and demoralization.

Over the course of the last two years, they have intervened against the unions in a number of battles of workers on strike or locked out, including at Cooper Tire in Findlay, Ohio; Caterpillar in Joliet, Ill.; Con Edison in New York; and American Crystal Sugar in North Dakota and Minnesota.
 
 
Related articles:
NYC school bus union officials suspend strike
Solidarity with school bus workers!
On the Picket Line
 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home