Vol. 79/No. 14      April 20, 2015

All out for the April 15 national day of action for the Fight for $15 and a union. Bring your co-workers, your family, your friends.

The protest will be a demonstration of growing confidence as the working class in the U.S. begins to transform itself through resistance to the bosses’ attacks.

The fight has spread beyond fast-food and Walmart workers to other layers of the class who work for wages that don’t pay the bills — from contract airport cleaners to home health care workers to carwasheros.

The demand for a minimum wage of $15 an hour has gone from a wish to a watchword for millions of workers, forcing big-box retailers and now McDonald’s to announce wage increases that, while limited and inadequate, show workers that by fighting you can win. “The bosses are scared of us,” they correctly say.

Layers of better-paid workers, including union laborers and janitors, are weighing in on the side of the lowest paid workers, whose persistence and confidence is inspiring. The Steelworkers union has set an example for militancy and taken the moral high ground in fighting for safety, both for oil refinery workers and those who live in surrounding communities. The growing refusal to accept police brutality and racist attacks is another sign of the changing consciousness among millions of working people. The protests since grand juries let cops walk in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, have reinforced the Fight for 15, and unionists are increasingly showing up at actions against police violence, from London to Smyrna, Georgia.

As they engage with others in struggle, workers broaden their scope and deepen their sense of solidarity. They see themselves differently, not as lone wolves condemned by “human nature” to battle other workers, all looking out for number one, but as members of a class and a movement that can win concessions on the road to ending the dictatorship of capital and building a society based on our morals, not theirs.

More workers will be attracted to the example of the Cuban Revolution, its internationalism and self-sacrifice, and repelled by Washington’s 56-year effort to overturn it. And the rise of resistance in the bastion of the empire strengthens the Cuban Revolution.

The Militant is a weapon in the hands of those beginning to resist boss attacks. It tells the truth about their fights, lets them know about others fighting worldwide, discusses the key political questions facing humanity from the working-class point of view and draws the lessons of revolutionary struggles past and present. Join us to help expand the paper’s circulation.
 
 
Related articles:
All out April 15 for $15 and a union!
National actions grow, win support
Oil strike for safety continues at Texas, Indiana, Ohio refineries
On the Picket Line
 
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