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| The Associated Press A BART police officer covers one of the two people that were struck and killed by a moving BART train along Jones Road in Walnut Creek, Calif., on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2013. (AP Photo/The Mercury News, Dan Rosenstrauch) |
TRUCK DRIVERS, BUS DRIVERS, BART WORKERS:
JOIN FORCES TURN THE TIDE!
MANAGEMENT ARROGANCE KILLS WORKERS! THIS IS WAR!
WE CAN IGNORE IT AND DIE OR FIGHT AND DEFEAT THEIR
MURDERERS BLOODY REIGN!
HOLD MASS MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS THAT
REJECT TAKE AWAY BARGAINING!
BART, AC
TRANSIT, OUT OF CONTRACT UNIONS AND LOW WAGE WORKERS UNITE TO INITIATE THE
INDEFINITE GENERAL STRIKE!
Today the leaders of the Labor Councils, the ATU and SEIU are more
defined by their membership in the Democratic Party than by their commitment to
workers interests. Following the deaths
at BART yesterday they offer candle light vigils and say MOURN DON’T
ORGANIZE! THIS IS HOW THEY DEMOBILIZE
THE POWER OF THE STRIKE!
THE
KILLING OF SCAB WORKERS SHOWS MANAGEMENTS DISREGARD FOR ALL WORKERS BECAUSE
THEY ASK YOU ALL TO SCAB!
Working class troubadour Joe
Hill is remembered both for his martyrdom in the cause of labor in the face of
the firing squad his message was the exact opposite! DON’T
MOURN ORGANIZE!
Union leaders have negotiated
away both catch up COLA’s and the decades definition of pension and medical
benefits. This is not a “blunder” or
tactical “mistake” but the manifestation
of their role as adjuncts and cattle herding assistants to the Democratic
politicians . This is where and how the
labor leadership enforces the bosses plan.
They claim their alliance
with the Democrats is the only strategy because they can not strike and will
result in jail time and fines! We say
that is true only if the strike loses!
Any labor leader who does not think they look good in an orange jump
suit is not worth the polish on his shoes!
Labor can only win if it is politically independent of the capitalist
parties. Political independence will
open the road to the smashing of anti-strike laws by labor action.
SMASH ANTI-LABOR LAWS THROUGH SOLID UNITED SOLIDARITY STRIKES!
AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL!
Like the AFL-CIO and Change
to Win tops our local leaders are Democrats first and union members second and
they think this is normal. This is why
they cannot fight the bosses consistently.
ASK: which side are they really on?
They have no intention to
fight the anti-labor Taft Hartley laws which bans solidarity and general
strikes. The moment the bosses mention
going to the judge to seek injunctions or politicians threatens legislation
against essential service strikes they make concessions. Bans on strikes for
“essential services” will ultimately be used against nurses, sanitation,
transit, firefighters, and even the mighty ILWU at the docks. THE ONLY WAY TO DEFEND THE RIGHT TO STRIKE IS
TO STRIKE!
The Democrats are the party
of the bosses lock stock and barrel and the BART strike has them working
overtime, their federal mediator got the union leadership in line but the Board
of Directors representing local big business needs to make its dictatorial
authority felt. But equity demands the
rank and file reject the TAKE AWAYS
Obama’s pawns accepted. TIME TO
HOLD MASS MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS AND RECALL THE LEADERS!
A militant class struggle
union is built of necessity and today that necessity is felt more than
ever.. To discern what the correct
tactic for victories is requires a militant working class independent political
program; a program developed in mass workers assemblies and tested in the fire
of class war. The workers need their own
party to advance their historic program.
Such a party would draw the revolutionary
implications of the crisis and build its program accordingly.
FOR STRIKE COMMITTEES THAT
ESTABLISH LABOR/COMMUNITY WAGE AND PRICE COMMITTEES THAT DEFINE A LIVING WAGE,
FIGHT FOR AND ENFORCE A SLIDING SCALE OF WAGES AND PRICES!
The strike was forced upon
us by the BART board and the Democratic Party. As a practical matter this
necessitates sorting out and removing the professional Democrats from all
elected and appointed union and labor council posts. Make no gamble on leaders with feet in two
class camps. Striking locals need strike committee leaders who are elected and
recallable and directly responsible to mass meetings of the rank and
file.
The rank and file needs to
directly control all negotiations and the strike preparations such as
self-defense and legal training for pickets, organization of flying picket
squads, and mass public meetings, rallies and marches. Meetings and marches should be held in all
communities of the working class and oppressed.
This will require a frank discussion of defense against victimization of
any and all workers’ meetings and actions at the hands of the bosses’ police,
including the need to defend working class political prisoners and victimized
union militants like Brother George Figueroa.
We need to make the rehiring, reinstatement and retroactive pay for
Brother Figueroa non-negotiable!
They made victimizing him their example; we need to make his
restitution our example!
Fighting
for full employment is the key to self defense through class unity:
The capitalists cannot
deliver full employment and as a matter of philosophy in the present day do not
want to deliver it. It is when stock
prices soar that it has proved possible to wage their austerity assault against
labor because they have the happy
circumstance of an official 7.5% unemployment; which plays a major role
permitting them to continue their uninterrupted attack on workers. While our
class suffers this high unemployment between 2009 and 2011, the richest
Americans grabbed an additional 7% of the total wealth of the nation.
MAKE CAPITAL PAY FOR FREE QUALITY
MASS TRANSIT, EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE AND PENSIONS! The
bosses make us pay in blood to come to work for them, for the education they
require of their workers, for the health care we need to come back to work each
day and our pensions as deferred wages either in their plans or social
security!
In this circumstance, unlike
those who call for a ‘tax the rich’ campaign which delivers more treasury
monies to the bosses pet politicians to spend on the bosses pet projects, we
maintain that transit should be free, free and quality health care should be a right
as should education, and a pension to guarantee dignity in old age with
guaranteed COLA’s. To achieve the full
employment concretized in the demand ‘Jobs for All,’ a movement of the entire
class will fight for 30 hours work for 40 hours pay. This is necessary so as to employ all the
able and prevent the erosion of workers’ ability to feed and house themselves
and their offspring. These demands
correspond to what would be part of the program of a Fighting Workers’ Labor
party. We advocate such a party. We know we need it.
Fighting Workers’ Labor Party would set as its
goal and never be diverted from its historic mission to form a workers
government. This government would break,
suppress and utterly replace, in a word, smash the political dictatorship of
capital which today gives the BART directors all the power of the state and its
institutions to use against you.
Make no mistake we are at
war. This is a class war. It can only be resolved with the victory of
one side or the other. Our task is to
unite our class around our demands and the objective needs of the most
oppressed and exploited for their economic, social and political
liberation. This war will not be won in
the ballot box or via legislation it will be won in the streets, on the picket
line and mass assemblies of workers and
the oppressed or not at all!
Communist Workers Group – USA (CWG-US):
Subscribe to Class War (Paper of the
CWG-US)
10/21/2013, Labor Donated
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