USA
International Worker / Issue 02 Saturday 1 Jan 2005
The left in the US electionsMost of the left of the United States divided its position in the last elections between support for the Democrat Kerry and for others more to the left, like Ralph Nader or Leonard Peltier. Absent was even the trace of a class struggle candidate or propaganda campaign, that is, that centered on the need for an independent workers party. Although it could be alleged that the fact reflects the objective political backwardness of the working class m… Read more
International Worker / Issue 02 Saturday 1 Jan 2005
Bush’s ‘mandate’Bush came out of the last US elections convinced of having won a 'mandate'. In full-blown pseudo-religious drunkenness, the expression used should be understood in a 'divine' sense. On the other side of the table, some of the opposition got to the point of seeing the emergence of fascism. In reality, the elections have functioned as an artificial respirator for a worn out government, whose contradictions and limitations could be seen… Read more
International Worker / Issue 06 Tuesday 4 Apr 2006
Delphi, GM and the US crisisT he political exhaustion of Bush is already a recurring theme in the press worldwide. The yanqui government finds itself on the defensive on all terrains. It painfully drags behind it the ball and chain of Iraq and its disastrous actuation in New Orleans, in the aftermath of Katrina, while the denunciations of the “scandals” and official corruption have become an everyday affair. In early February, Paul Pillar, the CIA's most important Middle… Read more
International Worker / Issue 06 Tuesday 4 Apr 2006
Delphi workers at Ohio plant authorize strike<!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> DETROIT - Members of Delphi Corp.'s second-largest union have voted to authorize a strike if a bankruptcy judge decides to cancel the auto supplier's labor contracts, a union leader said on Friday. The International Union of Electronic Workers-Communications Workers of America at a Delphi suspension parts plant in the Dayton, Ohio, suburb of Kettering. Loca… Read more
International Worker / Issue 06 Tuesday 4 Apr 2006
NEW YORKTransit workers reject slave labor contract
I n late February, the New York transit workers union rejected the Metropolitan Transit Authority's call for binding arbitration with the bosses. This variation emerged when, on January 20, the workers themselves rejected with a massive vote the agreement with which the bureaucracy had lifted the general strike that had paralyzed transit last December. In this agreement, the workers had been able to break the bosses plan to inject a two-tier syste… Read more
International Worker / Issue 06 Tuesday 4 Apr 2006
General Motors-DelphiTHE WORKERS ORGANIZE, MOBILIZE, DEBATE... AND ARE ALREADY VOTING TO STRIKE!
T he bourgeois press reports that “About 8,500 hourly electrical workers at Delphi Corporation will begin voting Thursday on whether to authorize a strike against the auto parts maker if its existing labor contracts are thrown out in bankruptcy court.” ( The Dow Jones Newswire , February 23, 2006). A picket set up on the occasion of the International Auto Show in Detroit on January 8 mobilized 700 people, with the organized participation of… Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
FORD, DELPHI, GM, NY TRANSIT WORKERSNew tendency in the US working class
W orkers at Ford are organizing to demand a recount of the vote which according to UAW leadership gave a slight 51% approval of the latest sellout over employee payments for health insurance, but which was fraught, according to many who participated in it, with irregularities ( Detroit Free Press , December 24, 2005). The workers have presented a lawsuit to prevent approval of the UAW-Ford agreement. The same deal was 'approved' by a 61% vote in GM in Nov… Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
Guantanamo: Hunger strike in hellGuantanamo is hell itself. Several hundred prisoners —without trial or charges— are literally stored under infra-human conditions. It is a concentration camp par excellence of yanqui imperialism. An unsustainable situation which has already been going on for years and which has even provoked an innocuous “warning” from the UN. Under the brutal conditions in which they find themselves, subjected to daily tortures, a group of pri… Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
NEW YORK TRANSIT STRIKEEnding with behind the scenes agreement
THE RANK AND FILE WERE NEVER CONSULTED
F or all its whining, the bosses depict a pretty picture for themselves in the wake of the New York transit strike. They paint the picture of a weak, indecisive union leadership and a lack of public support for the strike. “On Wednesday morning, Roger Toussaint's closest advisers encouraged him to face his difficult circumstances. The workers in Mr. Toussaint's union, who had brought the city's transit system to a halt, were incurring fines and public… Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
Regime crisis in the United StatesD ick Cheney, Vice President of the United States, saw himself obliged to suspend a Middle East tour and return to Washington in a hurry in order to prevent a budgetary cutback the government considered “crucial” from sinking in the (majority Republican) Senate. With the vote of the Vice President, the government achieved an antagonistic 51-50 vote which allowed it to avoid the humiliation of a defeat brought about by its own party. B… Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
The bankruptcy of the yanqui automakers and the workers“ F ord announces its plan”: to fire 30,000 workers and to shut down at least ten plants ( Detroit News , 7 Dec). A few days later, General Motors had announced the “firing of more than 30,000 workers and the closing of plants” ( CNNMoney.com , 21 Nov). Delphi, the largest autoparts manufacturer (a spin-off from a division of GM), already in the process of bankruptcy (Chapter 11), also made the headlines when the spokesman of the au… Read more
International Worker / Issue 04 Friday 16 Dec 2005
The AFL-CIO splitsA FALLING OUT IN THE BUREAUCRACY
T he AFL-CIO held its 25th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention July 25-28 in Chicago. The highlight of the convention was the split of three of its largest unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the United Food Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). Together with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC), which quit the AFL-CIO in 2001, they formed the Change to Win Coalition (CTW). Unite… Read more
International Worker / Issue 03 Tuesday 2 Aug 2005
Pension Funds Collapse in the United StatesM any news agencies carried the The Washington Post (12 June) article entitled “Human Toll of a Pension Default”, referring to the effects of the elimination of the United Airlines pension fund upon workers. Showing the photograph of Ellen Saracini, widow of pilot Victor J. Saracini, who died when his flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the article added: “Now she stands to lose more than half of… Read more
International Worker / Issue 03 Tuesday 2 Aug 2005
USAGeneral Motors threatens to eliminate 25,000 jobs
PROSPECTS FOR AUTOWORKERS' FIGHTING BACK
O n June 6 General Motors (GM) Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner told the annual meeting of GM shareholders that the company would close plants and eliminate 25,000 jobs by 2008. He said that GM had to reduce labor costs, preferably with the agreement of the United Auto Workers (UAW), but unilaterally if the union leadership refused to cooperate. He demanded that healthcare costs be reduced for both current and retired workers. Wagoner&#… Read more