MONTREAL — On May 8 six rail workers in the Teamsters union in Montreal met with Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president.
They started with the potential nationwide strike at Canada’s two largest railroads — the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City — and ended up with a discussion of why only the working class can resolve the economic, social and moral crisis of capitalism.
“I want our voice to be heard by everyone in Canada in the blue collar circles. I want to make it known what we are fighting for,” Giulio Archambeault explained. “Our going on strike is showing our dedication to fellow rail workers, not just here but in the U.S. We are fighting for safety, for balance in our lives, for time with our wives and kids or girlfriends or boyfriends. We need salaries that keep up with inflation. They don’t care about us.”
Fruit said, “Rail workers in the U.S. gained a lot of support last year when they voted in their majority to strike, and despite that, the government forced the bosses’ contract on them. More and more working people have come to understand the unsafe conditions facing rail workers, that they have no time to rest, let alone time to read a book, etc.”
“I hope it doesn’t take a tragedy here for people to see what is at stake,” Sebastian Santamaria said, “like what happened in East Palestine and Lac-Mégantic.”
They discussed the appeal for protective work gear for rail workers in Ukraine issued by their fellow union in the U.S., SMART-TD, in collaboration with a rail union there. Fruit said this kind of international solidarity helps to give our class confidence in our own capacities.
Santamaria asked, “Isn’t the government of Ukraine one of the most corrupt governments in Europe?”
All capitalist governments are corrupt and my party doesn’t support the Ukrainian government, Fruit said. “But the Ukrainian people are fighting to defend the existence of their country, their language and culture. At the same time, the workers fight to defend their unions from attacks by their own government.”
Fighting Jew-hatred is union issue
“Isn’t the fight against Jew-hatred a central part of your campaign?” said Felix Ardea. “Yes,” Fruit replied, explaining the Socialist Workers Party’s position.
Santamaria agreed with Fruit that Hamas was a terrorist organization, but said he thought the numbers of Palestinians killed in Gaza showed that Israel’s war in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas assault was unjust.
Philippe Tessier read a passage out loud from a new book, The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class, published by Pathfinder Press. He quoted from Hamas’ founding charter explaining the purpose of their organization is to kill Jews. Jeffrey Shulman said he had just gotten the book and was looking forward to reading it.
Shulman said he can see how attacks under the capitalist system in Canada on workers’ standard of living have accelerated. Housing is simply unaffordable for more and more working people.
At the same time, he said, he has friends who, “because they have an education, think they are too good to work with their hands, like it’s beneath them. They’d rather complain about being broke than take a real job.”
Fruit pointed to the book Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes. It describes the privileged upper-middle-class meritocracy, which thinks it can tell workers how to live and how to think.
“Workers need to learn how to run all of society, how everything works, how to build everything. We need these skills,” she said. “If you study the Cuban Revolution, you can see how they worked to overcome the division between manual and mental labor and make culture available to all workers.”
In response to a question about Donald Trump, Fruit explained he is a capitalist politician who has no answers for working people. At the same time, she said, the Democratic Party’s frame-up against him that dominates U.S. politics is aimed at preventing him from running or winning the election. It’s an attack on the rights of those who want to vote for him.
“The Democratic Party pays no attention to the millions of working people in the middle of the country,” she said. “They refer to this as ‘flyover country.’
“Shortly after Hillary Clinton talked about working people being ‘deplorable,’ teachers in West Virginia went out on strike. Their strike unified the working class behind them and set an example to workers everywhere,” Fruit said. “They learned from the history of the United Mine Workers of America, where for years miners used their union to take control over safety and work conditions.”