Help get the word out about the strike by workers at Case New Holland widely in the labor movement and beyond! This fight by hundreds of United Auto Workers members in Iowa and Wisconsin is a fight in the interest of all workers. They’re defending themselves and their families from skyrocketing prices by fighting for better wages and pensions.
Like employers everywhere, bosses at Case count on keeping the strike out of the news, leaving fighting workers isolated. Socialist Workers Party candidates champion working-class struggles like this, from protests by Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail workers across the country for the right to strike against government restrictions, for better pay and safer working conditions, and against bosses’ harsh attendance policies; to the fight by mushroom workers in Sunnyside, Washington, for better working conditions.
These battles come after gains were won by striking bakery workers, nurses, steelworkers and others over the past year. Striking miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama are determined to win their bitter 15-month strike to defend their union and win a better contract.
For decades too many union officials relied on collaborating with the bosses and getting Democrats elected, forswearing the use of union power and solidarity. When capitalist profit rates started declining beginning in the mid-1970s, bosses responded by accelerating their assaults on our wages, working conditions, and relentless speedup on the job.
Since the 1990s the labor movement has been in retreat, resulting in a big decline in union membership, to a low of 6.1% in the private sector, below what it was in 1929.
Today we face both plunging living standards from the highest inflation in 40 years and a slowdown in production and hiring.
More workers support the labor movement today and are willing to use their unions to defend hard-fought gains, reject divisive multitier contracts, and win protection from ruinous price hikes. The low point in labor resistance is behind us. There is no strike wave, but there are more openings to use unions to fight for what workers need. Millions of workers, farmers and youth can be won to join in organizing solidarity with these labor battles — support that is crucial to their outcome.
Through these fights workers build their self-confidence and class consciousness. We come to recognize there are two classes, with interests that cannot be reconciled. Only by driving down our wages and conditions can bosses compete for markets against rivals. Workers can only defend ourselves by standing up to them and recognizing we share interests in common with fellow working people around the world against the exploiting classes.
Join workers at Case on their picket lines. Bring your co-workers and fellow unionists. Use the Militant to get out the word about their fight. Send messages of support and win contributions to their strike funds. Help win a victory for all working people!