The following statement was issued May 24 by Joanne Kuniansky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey State Senate.
Around the country Writers Guild members are striking against bosses’ drive to slash wages and residual payments, and worsen working conditions. I had the great pleasure to join hundreds of Guild members in a spirited New York City rally yesterday.
Teamsters at UPS nationwide are fighting for a contract that ends two-tier wages and for substantial pay raises for part-time workers.
In the last two weeks, United Auto Workers members at the Clarios battery plant near Toledo, Ohio, walked out for better wages and conditions; nurses in Belleville, New Jersey, rallied for safer staff/patient ratios and higher pay; and meatpackers at two Iowa plants have begun union-organizing drives.
Working people in East Palestine are fighting for greater control over medical care and the cleanup of the area after a toxic train derailment there. They’re winning growing support from the unions.
Bosses count on help from the big-business press to maintain a wall of silence around these fights. My campaign and the Militant strive to build working-class solidarity. All these battles deserve wide support.
Help spread the word! Help involve your union in sending messages of support, visiting picket lines and organizing contributions for these strikes.
Millions are learning from their own experience that politics today is class vs. class. They sense that new winds are starting to blow, and they’re increasingly open to getting involved. Victorious labor struggles set an example.
More workers are also learning they can’t look to the bosses’ political parties — the Democrats and Republicans — in these class struggles. The employers count on workers believing the only choice they have is to hold their nose and choose the “lesser evil” between parties that govern for them at home and abroad. But evil is evil. Millions have given up and no longer bother to vote.
Working people need our own party, a labor party based on the unions, that can speak for and mobilize all those exploited and oppressed by capital — small farmers and shopkeepers, immigrant workers and more.
A labor party can fight to put in power a workers and farmers government to rebuild society in our class interests. With power in our own hands, we can end the system of wage slavery and join in the worldwide fight for socialism.