Category: Uncategorized

2021: Strikes, solidarity heat up the class struggle

Workers use their unions to fight boss attacks
Vol. 86/No. 1 - January 3, 2022
Nabisco strike support rally in Chicago Sept. 4. Issues raised by strikers, from fighting divisive two-tier wages to need for automatic cost-of-living clauses, are important for all workers.

“The concession stand is closed,” United Steelworkers union members told the Militant on the picket lines during their three-month strike against Allegheny Technologies Inc. earlier this year, showing their determination to take on the bosses’ unrelenting drive against our unity,…

Celebrate 63rd anniversary of the revolution in Cuba

Vol. 86/No. 1 - January 3, 2022
Fidel Castro addresses crowd in Havana in January 1959, after triumph over U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. “Before January, a vanguard was the main protagonist in events” in Cuba, Castro said 20 years later, but “since that January, the main protagonist has been the people.”

Below are excerpts from a speech given by Fidel Castro in Havana, Jan. 1, 1979, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the defeat of the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship and the opening of the first socialist revolution in the Americas. Castro…

Too Many Babies?

Vol. 86/No. 1 - January 3, 2022

A woman’s private decision to decide when and how many children to have is being twisted by many liberal and middle-class radicals today who are hysterical about imminent climate change disaster and the bleakness of life they perceive. This has…

Bolshevik Revolution advanced the fight for women’s equality

Vol. 86/No. 1 - January 3, 2022
Literacy class for women factory workers in Moscow. After Russian Revolution in 1917, Soviet government led by V.I. Lenin aided women in making giant steps forward. This included 1919 literacy drive, fight for equal rights, state guarantee of child care, decriminalized abortion.

One of the central tasks taken on by the Soviet Union after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was to organize determined steps toward women’s equality and ability to participate fully in society as part of advancing the revolution. Below…

Workers vote to end strike at Kellogg’s, go back stronger

Vol. 86/No. 1 - January 3, 2022

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — Some 1,400 cereal workers, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union, voted to end their 2 1/2 month strike against Kellogg’s, the union announced Dec. 21. The key issue in the battle…

‘Militant has news workers need to fight effectively’

Vol. 86/No. 1 - January 3, 2022
SWP member Josefina Otero, left, talks to Marrie Martinez and Arianna Ortiz at Martinez’s house in Dallas Dec. 3. Martinez renewed, saying she likes the Militant’s strike coverage.

Socialist Workers Party members and other readers of the Militant newspaper have been getting back to the paper’s hundreds of new subscribers, visiting them on strike picket lines and at their homes, meeting in coffee shops and staying in touch…

Importance of labor unions shown during deadly Midwest tornadoes

Vol. 86/No. 1 - January 3, 2022
2019 strike at GM plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Union-organized plant had basement tornado shelter, no lives were lost, unlike at nonunion Amazon warehouse, candle factory.

Natural disasters under capitalist rule inevitably become a social catastrophe for workers and farmers, as the effects are multiplied by the workings of the dog-eat-dog for-profit system. This exposes the contempt the wealthy rulers have for the safety, life and…

Ukraine miners expand protests, demand back pay

Vol. 86/No. 1 - January 3, 2022
Miners protest in Kyiv, Ukraine, Dec. 16, after not receiving millions in back pay or funding for health and safety measures. Signs read “Our families” and “our children also want to eat.”

Miners at a number of state-owned Ukrainian mines brought their protests over wage arrears to the streets of Kyiv, the capital, Dec. 16. The action was followed by underground sit-ins and aboveground protests at the Myrnograd mine in Donetsk and…

Student workers strike for first contract at Columbia University

Vol. 86/No. 1 - January 3, 2022

NEW YORK — Some 3,000 graduate and undergraduate student workers at Columbia University, members of United Auto Workers Local 2110, have been on strike here since Nov. 3, fighting for their first contract. The workers won a ruling from the…