OAKLAND, Calif. — The Socialist Workers Party announced Jan. 11 it is running chocolate-factory worker and long-time unionist Eric Simpson in the special election here to decide who will replace former Mayor Sheng Thao, who was recalled in November. The election will take place April 15.
At shopping centers and door to door in working-class neighborhoods, campaigners for Simpson are getting out the party’s program, signing up new subscribers to the Militant and gathering signatures to put him on the ballot.
“Only by organizing the working class can we solve the problems in Oakland and elsewhere,” Simpson told Tsai Saephan and his son Jeff Phan after knocking on their door Jan. 12. “We can start by building up the unions and organizing solidarity with union struggles.”
“My goal is to get a union job,” Phan said. “I support unions. The politicians don’t understand what workers are going through.”
“Union officials here supported Sheng Thao, who is a Democrat, and that got us nowhere,” Simpson said. “The politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties rule in the interests of the rich. We need for the unions to break from supporting these parties and build a party of labor, to take political power away from those running the country now.”
Saephan told Simpson he was laid off from his job and concerned about the closing of factories and other businesses in Oakland, including the sports teams that have left. He was in agreement with the Socialist Workers Party’s call for a federally funded public works program to provide union-scale jobs building housing, child care facilities, hospitals and infrastructure.
“Bosses are forcing workers to do overtime, with schedules that make it impossible to have time for family, while other workers are left without any work,” Simpson said. “All workers should have the right to a job. We need our unions to fight to shorten the workweek with no cut in pay to spread the available work around.”
Simpson also speaks out on the big national and international issues facing the working class — from Israel’s fight to defend its right to be a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms, to the battle of the Ukrainian people against Moscow’s invasion, to the example for workers everywhere of Cuba’s socialist revolution.
Simpson, a member of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union, is building solidarity with the strike at Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas. He points to the recent successful strike of hotel workers, members of UNITE HERE in San Francisco, the same union of the workers in Nevada, as an example of the growing willingness of workers to fight.
“Workers at the six hotels in San Francisco organized picket lines 24/7 for 90 days,” he told Marco Lopez, a union carpenter, while campaigning Jan. 11. “The strikers stayed out until they were able to win a wage increase and push back the company’s demand for concessions on health care. This is an example for other union fights.”
“I’m union. I understand,” Lopez said. “Strikes can have a domino effect.”
Simpson said his campaign calls for unions to fight for cost-of-living adjustments so wages automatically keep up with rising prices. Lopez said that even a wage of $30 an hour wasn’t high enough to keep up with mortgages and other bills in the Bay Area.
The campaign for mayor was announced at a Militant Labor Forum here Jan. 11, where Socialist Workers Party leader Jacob Perasso, a participant in the recent Guadalajara book fair, was a featured speaker. He described the recent roundup of farm workers and other undocumented workers in California’s Central Valley.
Simpson said the Socialist Workers Party opposes these roundups and supports the fight against deportations. “My campaign finds widespread agreement with the party’s call for amnesty for undocumented workers in the U.S., a necessity to unite workers and cut across divisions used by the bosses to drive down all our wages,” he said.
On Jan. 15 Simpson and his supporters will submit the signatures of 100 registered voters supporting his right to be on the ballot, double the requirement.
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