Gov’t to give pork bosses sole power over line speed

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019
Dakota Premium meatpacking workers march and rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 2000 during fight that won a union and workers’ right to monitor line speed in the plant.

The Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service is threatening to eliminate its current limit of slaughtering 1,106 hogs per hour in the nation’s pork packing plants and turn inspection there over to the company bosses. This is an…


Communications Workers hold four day strike across 9 states

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Some 20,000 workers, members of Communications Workers of America District 3, went on strike  against AT&T in nine states Aug. 24-27. They included technicians, customer service representatives and others who install, maintain and support AT&T’s residential and…


Airline catering workers picket Dallas airport in contract fight

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019
Hundreds of airline catering workers, working for LSG Skychefs, rally near American Airlines headquarters by Dallas-Fort Worth airport Aug. 13, demanding wage raises and new contract.

EULESS, Texas — Several hundred airline catering workers employed at LSG Skychefs from cities across the country joined a lively informational picket line near the American Airlines headquarters outside the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Aug. 13. The unionists, members of…


Asda store workers in U.K. rally against concessions contract

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019

LEEDS, England — Hundreds of Asda store workers marched here Aug. 14 past the company’s headquarters to protest a new concessions contract with the retail chain. It would allow bosses to arbitrarily switch workers’ shift schedules and eliminate pay for…


Toronto cop who killed youth paroled after only two years

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019

TORONTO — The Parole Board of Canada Aug. 13 granted day release to imprisoned former cop James Forcillo, less than two years into his six-and-a-half-year sentence for killing Sammy Yatim in 2013. This ruling was a topic of discussion among…


Socialist revolution is ‘historical mission of modern proletariat’

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019
Garment workers in Heze, China, in 2018. The industrial workforce is “the class that is the foundation and special product of capitalism,” writes SWP leader George Novack. It is also “destined to take charge of the economy and remodel society from top to bottom.”

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for September. Engels was the lifelong political collaborator of Karl Marx in founding the modern international communist movement. This title was first published in 1880.…


Israeli rulers bomb Tehran’s bases in Syria and Iraq

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019

The Israeli Defense Forces unleashed airstrikes on Iranian Quds Forces and militias allied with Tehran in Aqraba, Syria, Aug. 24, claiming their bombardment had thwarted a “large-scale attack of multiple killer drones on Israel.” The following day two drones that…


Organize workers to defend class interests

Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019

The following statement was issued Aug. 28 by Seth Galinsky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New York City public advocate. Working people from New York and Puerto Rico to the coalfields of Appalachia and the Powder River Basin face attacks…


Workers in Puerto Rico face crisis of colonial rule

Protests oust governor, spur debate on way forward
Vol. 83/No. 33 - September 9, 2019
Yasmin Morales, from family that live by fishing, describes conditions in El Negro area of Yabucoa in Puerto Rico to Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party 2016 presidential candidate Aug. 17. The capitalist parties are like “sharks going after the small fish,” Morales said.

YABUCOA, Puerto Rico — When she returned to what was left of her home in the small El Negro neighborhood overlooking the sea after Hurricane Maria in September 2017, Yasmin Morales looked up at the nearby hills. “There wasn’t a…