More workers today are speaking up, using unions and organizing solidarity. Opportunities to build and strengthen the labor movement continue to open up, which were reflected at Labor Day actions nationwide.
Strikes by members of the United Auto Workers at GE Aerospace, which just began in Kentucky and Ohio, and by Teamsters at Republic Services in Massachusetts, who have been on strike since July 1, deserve support. Get out the word, join their picket lines!
These and other strikes are the result of attacks by the bosses and their governments, driven by the deepening crisis of capitalism. Bosses are fighting against wage increases and demands for safe working conditions, highlighted by the multiple explosions that rocked the U.S. Steel coking plant in Clairton, Pennsylvania, last month.
Political questions come to the fore in all union battles. Flight attendants at Air Canada, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, defied a government back-to-work order aimed at breaking their strike. Other unions have faced similar government attacks.
Today’s union struggles take place as President Donald Trump steps up the U.S. rulers’ bipartisan assault on immigrant workers, sharply posing a life-and-death question for the labor movement. The goal of the government’s raids and deportations is to instill fear among immigrants and deepen divisions among workers of all nationalities.
There is only one answer to this assault — a fight for an amnesty for workers without papers in the U.S. Such a struggle would unify all working people and put our unions on a stronger footing for today’s union battles and those that lie ahead.
Union struggles are taking place in the wake of big shifts in world politics, intensified by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom. These changes set off new trade conflicts and an arms race, as capitalist rulers see that wars are inevitable.
Violent Jew-hating assaults, alongside attempts to drive Jews out of public life, are on the rise in the U.S. and worldwide. Fighting Jew-hatred wherever it occurs is a question for the unions and all the oppressed.
Working people are joining the debate on a road forward. On one side are middle-class Stalinist forces who say workers need a “peoples front against fascism” and unity with the Democrats. On the other side are the Socialist Workers Party and militant workers who see the need for a break with the bosses and their parties. Workers need a party of our own that acts on the capacities of working people, and the fact that socialist revolution is not only necessary but possible in the U.S. and worldwide.
Join the SWP!