Gov’t to give pork bosses sole power over line speed

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019
Dakota Premium meatpacking workers march and rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 2000 during fight that won a union and workers’ right to monitor line speed in the plant.

The Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service is threatening to eliminate its current limit of slaughtering 1,106 hogs per hour in the nation’s pork packing plants and turn inspection there over to the company bosses. This is an…




‘We need to organize workers to defend environment, safety’

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019

“It’s only by organizing a fighting workers’ movement and using union power that we can prevent the bosses from poisoning the air, water and soil,” Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Atlanta School Board, told Belinda Aycock who was…



Miners win support in fight against Blackjewel

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019
Chinese restaurant owner Joyce Cheng, in miner’s helmet and jacket, with nurses at Harlan Appalachian Regional Healthcare July 11. She ran 50 miles “asking every person for a dollar” for laid-off Blackjewel miners, raising over $5,000 for miners’ families she knows.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Coal miners laid off July 1 by bankrupt Blackjewel Coal have vowed to maintain their encampment on railroad tracks in Cumberland, Harlan County, to prevent coal bosses from moving coal out of the Cloverlick No. 3 mine.…


Workers in Puerto Rico face crisis of colonial rule

Protests oust governor, spur debate on way forward
Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019
Yasmin Morales, from family that live by fishing, describes conditions in El Negro area of Yabucoa in Puerto Rico to Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party 2016 presidential candidate Aug. 17. The capitalist parties are like “sharks going after the small fish,” Morales said.

YABUCOA, Puerto Rico — When she returned to what was left of her home in the small El Negro neighborhood overlooking the sea after Hurricane Maria in September 2017, Yasmin Morales looked up at the nearby hills. “There wasn’t a…


Letters

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019

Stigma of mental illness Thank you for comments on the capitalist misuse of mental illness in the article on the mass shootings. Their attitude only serves to increase the stigma that divides working people. Homelessness, hospitalization and incarceration are often…


Israeli rulers bomb Tehran’s bases in Syria and Iraq

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019

The Israeli Defense Forces unleashed airstrikes on Iranian Quds Forces and militias allied with Tehran in Aqraba, Syria, Aug. 24, claiming their bombardment had thwarted a “large-scale attack of multiple killer drones on Israel.” The following day two drones that…


Organize workers to defend class interests

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019

The following statement was issued Aug. 28 by Seth Galinsky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New York City public advocate. Working people from New York and Puerto Rico to the coalfields of Appalachia and the Powder River Basin face attacks…