SWP: Workers control needed for nuclear safety

Militant/Steve Warshell

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Two hundred people showed up March 31 for a meeting here on safety at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant after weeks of reports about radioactive tritium leaking into Biscayne Bay. Among those attending were members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, some of whom work at the reactor.

Florida Power and Light bosses and officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission tried to prevent the “open house” from becoming a forum, angering many.

Cynthia Jaquith, above, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate, and supporters distributed a campaign statement pointing out that one-third of the world’s population has no access to modern energy. “Today, working people can only fight to close that gap through nuclear power. But that doesn’t mean we have to accept dangerous conditions,” Jaquith said.

The fight for safety at Turkey Point is linked to the fight for $15 an hour and a union, against police brutality and for women’s access to abortion. “In each of these battles we are up against not only our bosses but the two parties they control, the Democrats and Republicans, and the regulatory bodies they appoint,” she said. The Socialist Workers Party calls for “a labor party based on the unions that champions the fight for safety as part of organizing working people to take power out of the hands of the capitalists who poison our water, air and land and to replace their system of exploitation with one that guarantees working people safe conditions of life and work and energy to meet human needs.”

Workers should control safety conditions and should shut down any facility found to be operating unsafely until the problem is solved, Jaquith said.

Many union members liked this approach. “If I am told to do something unsafe, I am expected to report it. That’s why I like the union,” IBEW apprentice and construction worker Mario Garcia told Jaquith.

— STEVE WARSHELL