Years of soaring prices at the grocery stores and gas stations, and for rent, health care, child care and more are felt in sharply different ways by working people and the ruling capitalist families. They’re upending our lives, dealing blows to our ability to keep a roof over our heads, start families, stay healthy and provide care for the elderly.
Under these conditions, it’s no surprise that both life expectancy and birthrates are falling. The normal workings of the dog-eat-dog capitalist system breeds a deep social and moral crisis marked by the rulers’ utter disregard for workers’ lives.
To change this and win what workers need starts with today’s union struggles. Working people are more willing to fight. More than 30,000 members of the International Association of Machinists at Boeing will strike if they don’t get a better contract this fall, as will some 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association on East and Gulf port docks. Beginning July 30, some 8,000 airline catering workers at Gate Gourmet are released from anti-union government red tape that has blocked them from striking.
Spread the word and build support for their struggles! Solidarity brings workers together, strengthens the unions and is essential in winning gains that can benefit all workers.
Both Democratic and Republican candidates say “trust us,” we’ve got a plan to rebuild “the economy.” But the capitalist economy is built so that the wealthy rulers profit at workers’ expense. The labor movement needs to break from the bosses’ parties and adopt a fighting program to meet the needs of the vast majority.
Socialist Workers Party candidates call for a union-led fight for:
Cost-of-living adjustments to counter rising prices in all contracts — union and non-union alike — as well as in retirement, jobless and disability payments.
A federally funded public works program to provide jobs for millions at union-scale wages to build hospitals, housing, day care and badly needed infrastructure.
An income that’s sufficient for all families of working people so we can keep a job, as the labor movement fights for universal child care and health care.
A shorter workweek with no cut in take-home pay to prevent layoffs.
Contrary to the myths presented by the bosses and their bought-and-paid-for Democratic and Republican politicians, higher pay doesn’t lead to inflation.
All wealth comes from one place — the labor of the working class. Rising wages simply mean a greater share of the wealth we produce goes to the working class instead of into the bosses’ profits.
All workers’ struggles are political struggles. The capitalist government, with all its anti-labor regulations and bloated agencies that exist to enforce them, is set up to interfere with our unions and prevent workers from effectively using union power.
Workers need to break with the capitalist parties and build our own party, a party that can defend the interests of all those oppressed and exploited by capital. Such a party, a party of labor, would draw working people everywhere into today’s union battles, deepening our consciousness as a class. It would chart a course to lead the working class in its tens of millions to take political power from the capitalists into our own hands.
This is the program advanced by Rachele Fruit, Dennis Richter and the whole Socialist Workers Party 2024 campaign.