NY hospital workers picket against pension, health cutbacks

Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018
Local 1199 SEIU hospital workers picket Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York July 12, one of more than 100 actions statewide protesting bosses’ moves to cut pensions, medical care and training.

NEW YORK — “Everybody’s fighting back,” some two dozen workers chanted as they joined an informational picket line outside the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center here July 12. “Nurses, fighting back. Housekeeping, fighting back. Food service, fighting back,” they…


British Columbia: Hard Rock Casino strikers win solidarity

Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018

COQUITLAM, British Columbia — Some 400 members of the British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union, who have been on strike since May 11, voted by a 55 percent margin July 4 to reject a new proposal by Hard Rock…


B.C.: Hard rock miners strike to demand union rights for temps

Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018

WILLIAMS LAKE, British Columbia — Some 210 hard rock miners are on strike in this province’s Cariboo region in a fight to strengthen and unify their union. The strike began May 23, three hours after Imperial Metals Corporation, the mine’s…


‘Revolutionary war began liberation of women in Cuba’

Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018
Above, participants in International May Day Brigade to Cuba hear from combatants in Cuba's revolutionary war. Inset, Teté Puebla, left, and Pérsida Chibás Ponce joined Rebel Army in their teens, were transformed in revolutionary struggle.

  HAVANA — One of the high points for participants in the International May Day Brigade to Cuba this spring was having the opportunity to hear from some of the combatants who took part in the revolutionary war there. Led…


Great 1877 Strike showed class-struggle road for US workers

Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018
Blockade of engines at Martinsburg, West Virginia, during 1877 rail strike. "The first eruption against the oligarchy of capital which had developed since the Civil War," wrote Karl Marx, showed one key component of the class forces - the working class, oppressed toilers who are Black and exploited farmers - that would come together to lead the revolution in the U.S.

The “Great Strike” of 1877 started among rail workers and then drew in more than half a million overall. Karl Marx wrote that the strike “could very well be the point of origin for the creation of a serious workers’…


Build fighting unions! Pensions for all!

Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018

With 1.3 million workers holding pension plans that are heading toward insolvency and millions more dependent on Social Security payments you can’t live on, there is a pressing need for labor to lead a fight for government-guaranteed pensions at union…


25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018

August 9, 1993 PINCKNEYVILLE, Illinois — As the strike battle between the United Mine Workers and Bituminous Coal Operators Association expands, the miners are reaching out to win new support across the country. There are now 16,000 miners striking in…


Unions rally in fight for gov’t-funded pensions

All workers need pensions at union-scale pay
Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018
United Mine Workers rally, Lexington, Kentucky, June 2016, protests cuts to pensions, health care.

Car caravans and busloads of active and retired union members from across the Midwest and beyond are gathering in their thousands at the Ohio state Capitol in Columbus July 12. They’re demanding that the government fund the pensions for hundreds…


Twin Cities rally: ‘File charges against killer cop’

Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018

MINNEAPOLIS — Some 60 people turned out in front of the 4th Police Precinct July 1 together with Melinda Blevins, speaking, in demanding charges be filed against the two Minneapolis cops who shot her cousin, Thurman Blevins Jr., and that…


Books by SWP leaders draw interest at Tehran book fair

Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018
Books by SWP leaders draw interest at Tehran book fair

TEHRAN, Iran — The 31st Tehran International Book Fair — held under the slogan “No to Not Reading Books” — took place here in May. The annual event was held at the Imam Khomeini Mosalla, an enormous mosque in the…