We are publishing here the report to the Eighth Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US) given by Tom Hall. The congress was held from August 4 to August 9, 2024.
That the continuing significant upturn in strike activity has led to zero growth in union membership is an indictment of the right wing character of the corporatist US trade unions.
Fain has gone almost overnight from presenting himself as a so-called “militant,” “democratic unionist,” spouting slogans like “eat the rich” and denouncing Trump as a scab, to announcing his willingness to collaborate with the most right-wing government in US history.
Trump set himself above the bank and energy executives on the panel, who groveled, flattered and praised him. But like every dictator, he speaks not only for himself but for a social class.
We are building a network of rank-and-file committees of workers in key industries and workplaces to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save lives, and prepare for a political general strike.
Postal workers, outraged at the betrayals of the trade unions, discussed what needed to be done now to protect jobs, which included unifying all sections of the working class in a common struggle against oligarchy and dictatorship.
USPS workers must link up with other sections of the federal workforce, with auto workers, logistics workers, and other sections of the working class, and with postal workers internationally facing the same threat of privatization.
The refusal of the Verdi leadership to organize a proper strike is directly related to its support for the government and its program of war.
Our wage dispute has taken on a new significance in recent weeks. In the face of rapid political changes, the wage struggle is developing into a power struggle.
In an interview Sunday morning Fain reiterated his support for the tariff and trade war policies of fascist President Donald Trump.
The United Auto Workers’ endorsement of Trump’s auto tariffs amounts to a declaration of support for world war.
The US auto giants are the most affected but every auto company in the world is impacted with major adverse consequences for American workers whom Trump, with the support of the trade union bureaucracy, falsely claims to be defending.
With this statement, the union bureaucracy makes clear that it is lining up with an out-and-out fascist-led government attempting to erect a dictatorship.
The World Socialist Web Site has received a large volume of correspondence from railroaders at BNSF, in response to an interview published earlier this year.
Some 16,000 workers at public transit operator BVG took limited strike action March 26-28 in support of their demand for a wage increase of €750 per month, while the Verdi union was entering closed-door arbitration with the employers, blocking any further strikes, despite mass support for all-out action.
“I write to you from Rome, Italy, where we postal workers have already lived through the catastrophe that now looms over you in the United States: privatization. I write not only in solidarity but in warning, so that you may learn from our painful experience and resist this assault with the full strength of an organized working class.”
USPS workers must link up with other sections of the federal workforce, with auto workers, logistics workers, and other sections of the working class, and with postal workers internationally facing the same threat of privatization.
In line with IMF demands, the government’s attack on workers’ allowances and its minimal pay increase are aimed at drastically slashing state expenditure.
The nurses union has kept its members on the job without a contract, despite growing demands for action over worsening conditions.
The HWU bureaucracy is attempting to turn one section of its membership against the rest. This divisive action must be opposed!
NZ’s right-wing government is exploiting the crisis of unmet need, caused by decades of underfunding of public healthcare, to divert tens of millions of dollars to private hospitals.
CTU officials, Mayor Johnson and the news media are conspiring to conceal the full impact of Trump's historic cuts on Chicago schools.
Cruz K-12 and Paz Elementary will close at the end of the year, while CTU works to prevent any opposition to the winding down of operations.
São Paulo teachers are fighting not only against the local allies of the fascist ex-president Bolsonaro, but also against the unions that have isolated and betrayed their struggles.
“In my area we’re dramatically understaffed and still being encouraged to teach more and more students. There are people on zero-hours contracts or who are being hired on 18-month contracts with no guarantee of renewal.”
Utterly opposed to mobilizing the social power of the working class against the giant corporation, the unions are promoting a diversionary consumer boycott, while urging workers to pressure Ottawa and Quebec City to intervene on their behalf.
If confirmed, the raid is an exposure of the Teamsters union, which covers workers at the facility and which openly backs Trump’s anti-immigrant racism.
This $2 trillion global behemoth applies the dictatorial principles of oligarchic rule: any effort by workers to challenge their hyper-exploitative working conditions is to be ruthlessly crushed.
The e-commerce giant has extended its reach into smaller markets and rural areas, a move that has significant economic implications for rural carriers and raises serious questions about the future of the United States Postal Service.
The 250 striking workers were given just 48-hours notice to vote on a lengthy seven-year contract that failed to meet their key demands.
On strike for more than three months, Marathon workers called for joint action to stop the cutoff of their insurance on December 13.
The working class in the metro Detroit area must come to the defense of the more than 250 Marathon refinery workers who have been on strike for three months.
After more than 10 weeks on strike, workers at Marathon Detroit Refinery are determined to win improved wages and stop subcontracting, healthcare cuts and dangerous work schedules.
Last month, the Trump administration nominated mining industry association executive Wayne Palmer to head MSHA.
Tahmoor workers’ livelihoods are tied up with the fortunes of GFG Alliance, a company that is wracked with crisis on an international scale.
This is a revolting crime of South African capitalism. Comparisons are already being drawn in the country to the Marikana Massacre of 2012, where police under the command of the ANC killed 36 striking workers at the Lonmin platinum mine.
The 111-day walkout by coal miners, which began on December 6, 1977, was a major strategic experience for the American and international working class.
The lawsuit, launched by the ACLU in California, alleges that the summary banishment by the University of California Regents was illegal.
Suspensions, banishments, withholding of diplomas, and demands for letters of apology are among the weapons used to attack freedom of speech.
The significance of the strike, and the police-state measures used to end it, are that they anticipate an even broader and more explosive confrontation between the working class, which is being forced to pay the cost of war, and American and world imperialism.
The UAW apparatus is a critical instrument of the Biden administration, which is relying on the discredited labor bureaucracy to hold back opposition to US imperialism’s wars for global domination.
The union is facilitating the destruction of a portion of its membership. This is the logical follow-up to the sellout contract agreed to by SAG-AFTRA after a lengthy strike last year.
We recently spoke to stuntwoman-actress Michelle Shock about the SAG-AFTRA contract and the general situation in the film and television industry.
When only a little more than a third of the membership bothers to vote in such circumstances, this has to be considered a vote of non-confidence in the union leadership.
The Drescher-Crabtree-Ireland leadership and the national board as a whole have proven themselves to be conscious agents of the corporate predators.
Striking London United bus strikers spoke to WSWS reports during their strike this weekend.
Last May, the union pushed through a 2.25 percent increase for a two-year agreement up to December 2021. Shepherds Bush was one of three garages that voted the deal down.
A driver from Norwood told WSWS, “It’s a really difficult time. Mortgages are going up and we have to work overtime to make ends meet. Without overtime you can’t survive.”
By Unite’s own admission, it has presided over four years of below-inflation pay deals. It now wants to impose another one.
The ICFI and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties are advancing this initiative to begin and develop a global counteroffensive of the working class against the homicidal policies of the governments controlled by the capitalist ruling class, which are responsible for the worldwide catastrophe.
This resolution was adopted unanimously by the membership of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States at its Sixth National Congress, which was held online from July 19 to July 24, 2020.
The characteristic of every great crisis is that it lays bare the contradictions that have accumulated and been suppressed for decades. All that is backward, anachronistic, corrupt, and, in the most profoundly objective sense, absurd and even irrational in the economic organization, social structure, political leadership and dominant ideology of the existing society is brutally and comprehensively exposed. The pandemic is such a crisis.
This lecture by David North examines the causes for the betrayals of the trade unions in their hostility to the class struggle and socialism, and reviews the historical conflict between the trade unions and revolutionary Marxism. It was re-published in the 2014 book, The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished 20th Century.
