Striking United Auto Workers at the Big Three are fighting to end conditions that confront tens of millions of workers across the country and beyond.
For decades, the capitalist bosses have pushed to defend their profits by a relentless assault on workers and the unions. They’ve driven down wages, introduced divisive two-tier contracts, slashed benefits, increasingly brought in temp workers, increased work schedules that wreak havoc with workers’ families and personal lives, and instituted speedups that make every job more dangerous.
But that has started to change.
The fight being waged by autoworkers today is a fight for all labor. A UAW victory will give confidence to workers everywhere.
They need and deserve the backing of working people and the unions. Take advantage of this opportunity by bringing labor’s power to bear. Mobilize your unions and co-workers to strengthen their picket lines.
Workers involved in union struggles today need to look at the history of the labor movement when it was on the offensive, like during the powerful mass working-class movement that built the CIO in the 1930s.
Workers don’t have to start from scratch. There is no better place to begin than by reading the firsthand account of the class battles that established the Teamsters as a powerful force across the Midwest, written by Socialist Workers Party leader Farrell Dobbs.
Study the history of the wave of UAW sit-in strikes that inspired workers everywhere and forced the Big Three to recognize the union.
These courageous workers acted on the necessity of working-class solidarity. They built alliances with the unemployed and with impoverished working farmers. They refused to bow down to the government, state regulatory agencies and the courts that tried to use injunctions, cops and the National Guard to defend the bosses’ interests.
Through their struggles, they began to envision a world where the working class was in charge. They charted a road toward breaking from the bosses’ Democratic and Republican parties and building a labor party based on the unions.
These lessons are discussed weekly in the Militant, and in books like Farrell Dobbs’ four-volume Teamsters series and Labor’s Giant Step, Art Preis’s riveting history of the rise of the CIO. Get them, read them, study them. Share them with like-minded co-workers and friends. Join Socialist Workers Party members to help get them around.