NY Teamsters strike at United Metro Energy enters ninth month

Vol. 86/No. 2 - January 17, 2022
Teamsters Local 553 members and supporters picket United Metro Energy in Brooklyn, New York, Dec. 14. Workers are demanding pay equal to other area fuel-terminal operators.

NEW YORK — Fourteen workers, members of Teamsters Local 553 in Brooklyn, have been on strike against United Metro Energy Corp. since last April. They are fighting to win wages and conditions that match what workers at other fuel-terminal operators…


Pharma bosses, US gov’t fight over patents, millions lack vaccines

Vol. 86/No. 2 - January 17, 2022
Striking sanitation workers picket Republic Services in Chula Vista, California, Dec. 29. Union fight to get workers vaccinated would strengthen labor and struggles against bosses’ attacks.

“All working people should get vaccinated, including getting booster shots. This is in the interests of strengthening the unity and fighting capacity of the working class,” said John Studer, Socialist Workers Party national campaign director, Jan. 5. “Our unions must…



HarperCollins strikers fight for higher wages, union rights

Vol. 86/No. 2 - January 17, 2022

NEW YORK — “We’re fighting for higher wages and union security,” Laura Harshberger, a senior production editor and chair of the bargaining unit at HarperCollins, told the Militant. Some 200 workers — hourly employees in editorial, sales, publicity, design, legal…


California hospital engineers end strike

Vol. 86/No. 2 - January 17, 2022

OAKLAND, Calif. — After 90 days on the picket line, with Kaiser management still refusing to budge on its insulting concession demands, the 700 stationary engineers on strike at 24 Northern California hospitals ended their strike Dec. 18. Officials of…


Ironworkers end strike at Erie Strayer, win dental plan

Vol. 86/No. 2 - January 17, 2022

PITTSBURGH — After 75 days on strike, the 40 members of Ironworkers Regional Shop Local 851 at Erie Strayer Company approved a new contract Dec. 19. It includes a dental plan for the first time and higher wage raises than…


Pallet distribution workers in Manchester strike for 5% pay rise

Vol. 86/No. 2 - January 17, 2022

MANCHESTER, England — “Our claim is for a 5% rise in our wages, the company is offering 2%,” Malcolm Bostock, a Unite union representative, told the Militant  on the picket line at the CHEP U.K. plant in Trafford Park. CHEP…



Moscow, Beijing, Washington frame opponents as ‘foreign agents’

Vol. 86/No. 2 - January 17, 2022

As they deepen their assaults on working people and political rights, the regimes in Moscow and Beijing are trying to silence political opponents by smearing them as “foreign agents.” Washington condemns these two rivals for repression, but has used the…


‘Culture enables man to be more complete, revolutionary’

Vol. 86/No. 2 - January 17, 2022
Che Guevara at the time of victorious battle of Santa Clara, which sealed the defeat of U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. Harry Villegas is at right, Aleida March is second from left. Che played a leading role in everything from literacy classes for Rebel Army combatants in the mountains to theater and ballet for the soldiers under his command in La Cabaña fortress in early 1959.

Making History: Interviews With Four Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces  by José Ramón Fernández, Enrique Carreras, Harry Villegas, and Néstor López Cuba is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for January. The excerpt below is from an interview…