Protests, job actions hit bosses’ disdain for safety

Workers’ fights today are road to force gov’t action
Vol. 84/No. 13 - April 6, 2020
Workers at Perdue chicken processing plant in Kathleen, Georgia, walked off the job March 23 to demand bosses clean, disinfect factory to defend them from coronavirus.

As the bosses and their governments at a federal, state and local level seek to manage growing depression conditions and impose lockdowns in the U.S. and elsewhere, working people are beginning to respond with protests and job actions. Starting with…


Cuban revolution addresses key questions facing workers

Vol. 84/No. 13 - April 6, 2020
Cuban workers and farmers, many having just learned to read and write through mass literacy campaign, sign Second Declaration of Havana, 1962. In face of U.S. imperialist attacks, they defiantly showed their support for Cuba’s socialist revolution, and for struggles for popular power throughout the Americas.

The First and Second Declarations of Havana: Manifestos of Revolutionary Struggle in the Americas Adopted by the Cuban People is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for March. The two declarations were adopted by million-strong assemblies of the Cuban…


Algeria rulers use pretext of virus outbreak to bar protests

Vol. 84/No. 13 - April 6, 2020
Demonstrators at Feb. 28 anti-government protest in Algiers. Placard reads: “The authority and its supporters are deadlier than the coronavirus.” After year of massive protests, military-dominated regime used justification of virus crisis to ban demonstrations March 17.

The Algerian government has faced weekly street protests for political rights across the country for more than a year. It has unleashed repression, offered cosmetic concessions and tried to sow divisions among demonstrators. Nothing it has done has prevented working…


Bosses track your ‘happiness’ by spying on your life

Vol. 84/No. 13 - April 6, 2020

Claiming they’re determined to bring “happiness” to their workers, bosses are increasingly intruding into their personal lives, supposedly to monitor how pleased they are with the company. The fact is, this is part of the bosses’ drive to speed up…



Working people in Cuba set the example for int’l solidarity

Vol. 84/No. 13 - April 6, 2020

“We have a revolutionary duty to fulfill, so we take our fear and put it to one side,” Leonardo Fernández, 68, an intensive care specialist, told Reuters in Havana March 21. He was meeting up with the brigade of 52…


Asarco strikers fight continues against bosses’ union busting

Vol. 84/No. 13 - April 6, 2020

“The strike lines are still up,” Alex Terrazas, United Steelworkers Local 937 union president, told the Militant by phone March 23. Terrazas, a worker at Asarco’s Mission Mine near Tucson, Arizona, was referring to the strike by 1,700 copper miners…


Workers need road forward to battle economic and social crises

Vol. 84/No. 13 - April 6, 2020
Workers, suddenly without jobs, line up for unemployment benefits in Las Vegas March 17. The virus outbreak triggered the coming depression, which has been looming for some time.

The coronavirus pandemic has precipitated the fastest fall ever on the capitalists’ stock markets the world over, posing the need for workers to organize and chart a road forward out of the unfolding economic and social crises. In the U.S.…



Maryland teachers rally for school funding, increased pay

Vol. 83/No. 14 - April 8, 2019

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Some 5,000 teachers and their supporters rallied at the state Capitol here March 11 demanding more funding for public schools, expanded prekindergarten programs and increased teachers’ pay. Organized by the Maryland State Education Association, the action brought…