U.S. bosses and their government are fond of telling us that an expanding capitalist economy is like a rising tide, it “lifts all boats.” This flies in the face of what workers experience in real life.
“Record profits weren’t enough to prevent Mercedes from imposing an unfair two-tier pay scale,” Jeremy Kimbrell, a worker at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, said in a new video, surrounded by his co-workers. And the bosses only gave “us a 42 cents raise over a six-year period.” He announced a majority of workers at the plant have signed up to join the United Auto Workers and appealed for workers elsewhere to stand with them. “Enough is enough.”
The conditions he describes face workers everywhere.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams claims, “We are thriving in this city.” He doesn’t say which “we” he’s talking about. The city’s poverty rate rose from 18% to 23% in the past two years. Demands for food stamps are surging, while “affordable housing” is a joke.
But with more jobs available today, even if a lot of them aren’t better-paying union jobs, workers are more confident we can join together and use the unions to fight for what we need. Support the UAW’s fight to win union recognition at Mercedes-Benz and elsewhere! Back the fight of 100,000 flight attendants for a new contract and higher wages!
Workers can use the unions to fight for cost-of-living adjustments in every contract. There is no way to prevent inflation under capitalism, but unions can win protection from its effect on us and our families. Every time prices go up, our wages should rise automatically. That protection must be extended to all workers and to pensions and federal programs like Social Security.
The capitalist rulers are experts at hiding their balance sheets. Unions need to demand bosses open their books to inspection by workers to find out the truth about company profits and practices. Unions need to establish consumer committees to monitor the real effect of inflation on the products workers need.
Union struggles increasingly take on bosses’ demands for “suicide work schedules,” forced overtime and debilitating speedup that makes our jobs more dangerous. Winning workers control of production can ensure no worker has to die or get maimed on the job. As the disasters at Boeing show, workers taking control over the organization of production is necessary to ensure the products we make are safe.
These are proposals Socialist Workers Party candidates are presenting today to advance workers’ unity, power and self-confidence. They encroach on the power of the bosses and point toward the necessity of workers uniting and acting in our millions to replace dog-eat-dog capitalist rule with workers power.