From longshoremen in the U.S. to rail workers in Canada, hotel workers in Los Angeles to park workers in Minneapolis, flight attendants who’ve gone years without a new contract to independent truckers hit by rising costs, more and more working people are saying, “Enough is enough!”
Some 45,000 dockworkers, members of the International Longshoremen’s Association at ports from Maine to Texas; more than 30,000 International Association of Machinists members at Boeing in Seattle; and 200,000 federal workers, members of the American Postal Workers Union, face contract deadlines this fall.
Tens of thousands of unionists are using, or preparing to use, their unions strike power to defend and improve their wages and work conditions, and exert more control over production and safety. Solidarity with these struggles is crucial. It can tip the scales so workers can advance instead of being pushed back and down.
The crisis of capitalism today, including sharper competition and downward pressure on profit rates, is pushing the bosses to go on the attack. Under these conditions, rising prices and debt levels, unlivable work schedules and dangerous working conditions, uncertain job prospects, and the growing expenses of trying to raise a family make it harder and harder to make ends meet.
In Canada, rail workers have set a deadline of Aug. 22 to win a new contract or go on strike. They face a threatened boss lockout the same day. In Australia, workers face a major union-busting attack on the national construction workers union as the Labor government seeks to impose its “administration” on the union.
The big employers are intent on deepening the exploitation of labor as their only solution, along with intensified rivalry and conflict with competitors and their governments abroad. They have their political parties and state power, the cops, courts and the news media all at their disposal.
“A decades-long retreat by the working class and unions has come to an end,” explains the book The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark.
This, the book explains, comes amid the shattering of “the global order imposed by the victors of the inter-imperialist slaughter of World War II.” This brings a world of increasing devastation and war to millions. It also means fresh opportunities for class-conscious workers to organize, fight and build solidarity with each other’s battles.
“Workers are in a mood to fight,” Rachele Fruit, the SWP candidate for U.S. president, explains wherever she goes. Many unionists sense that a fresh breeze is beginning to fill the sails of our fighting organizations.
Every labor struggle is at the same time a political struggle. As we fight, we also see more clearly the need to break from the bosses’ parties and build a party of our own, a party of labor. This is the way to better defend the interests of the working class and its allies today and to gain the experience and class consciousness to take political power tomorrow.