FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA, November 16—Today Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members from Washington, D.C. and PLP transit workers from New York City joined hundreds of workers in support of the 23-day Cinder Bed Road strike of 130 transit workers. The decision to strike is  a historic one, since the last time workers went on strike was in 1978.
Along with our study group members we are continuing our participation in the path breaking strike of mainly immigrant workers against Transdev, a private transit company, by helping picketing at the Cinder Bed Road garage and bringing revolutionary communist literature and ideas to many workers.
At today’s rally, a PLP member and former president of Local 689 of the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union (ATU) called for all 8,000 Metro (D.C. transit) workers to prepare to strike in solidarity, to a rousing chant of “If we don’t get it, shut it down!”
Two PLP members briefly blocked a scab bus at a traffic light to the delight of the assembled workers, declaring, as the song goes, “that there’s vampire bats and sewer rats, there’s pubic lice and crabs, but the lowest form of life on earth is the slimy [Metro] scab.”
Break the bosses’ laws
Union leaders have discouraged stopping scabs due to legal concerns, but the workers were happy to see us take the lead in this action. The workers were right in supporting our “illegal” action. The bosses control the politicians who pass laws to keep workers powerless. We must learn to break these bosses’ laws as we organize a movement to get rid of the entire capitalist system. Next time we should get more workers to join us.
Metro transit workers (Local 689) are contractually barred from striking, but the Cinder Bed strike is legal (also ATU 689 members) because Metro contracted out the Cinder Bed garage to the Transdev Corporation. Transdev operates in five continents and 20 countries and is known for brutal attacks on the wages, benefits, and working conditions of public transit workers across the globe. “Bus operators, utility workers, and mechanics at the bus garage are fighting for a pay and benefits package comparable to that of workers employed by Metro who perform the same jobs”(The Washington Post, 11/13).
 Another similar Transdev site in Virginia, the Fairfax Connector, with 600 workers (organized in Local 1164 of the ATU) is set to go on strike as well on November 30.
 But both strikes will be ineffective unless the main regional Metro union prepares to shut down the entire transit system in solidarity. Metro’s contracting out is a scheme by the bosses to undercut the livelihood first of one group of workers and then all workers.
Fight racist divisions
Communist PL’ers in the union are struggling with their fellow workers to organize strike preparation and sharper action against the transit bosses. But even more importantly, we are showing that even militant class struggle is not enough because the bosses will use every trick in the book to divide workers by race, immigration status, and anything else they can figure out to keep all of us exploited and under their thumb.
Several workers that we’ve met on the picket line have agreed to receive CHALLENGE and get involved in revolutionary politics. Let’s build the Progressive Labor Party so that we can free our class from capitalist, racist exploitation by smashing the capitalist state and building communism!