As CHALLENGE goes to press, the struggle between imperialist factions and their capitalist allies in Ukraine remains in flux. After three months of increasingly militant protests exploded late in February, Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s Russia-leaning President, was ousted from power and driven from the capital city of Kiev. Armed workers seized the president’s opulent palace, a monument to the bosses’ greed. Yanukovych, charged with “mass murder” in connection with the shooting of dozens of protesters, is now camped among his supporter in Eastern Ukraine. The country’s parliament has set a new presidential election for May, and politicians tilting toward the European Union (EU) dominate the field. All of the top candidates are also allied with local fascist forces. (See box.)
The next phase of this conflict is unpredictable. Civil war — and the potential splitting of Ukraine into two or more states — remains conceivable, especially if Yanukovych can marshal support in his eastern stronghold. Another possibility is intervention by Russia, where the capitalists represented by President Vladimir Putin can ill afford to lose Ukraine from their economic and military sphere of influence.
All of these scenarios hinge on the competing interests of imperialist super powers and the local bosses who represent them. In the absence of a revolutionary movement for communism, none of them will serve the interests of workers in Ukraine, the region, or the world. (See editorial, page 2.)
Independence for the Rich
The protests in the Maidan, Kiev’s central square, were sparked when Yanukovych canceled a pending trade agreement with the EU in favor of a closer alliance with his Russian patrons and Putin’s plan for a Eurasian Economic Union. These protests built on deep anger at the dire conditions for workers throughout Ukraine.
Soon after the country voted its independence during the last days of the Soviet Union in 1991, wealth became concentrated among a handful of oligarchs, the group of entrepreneurial businessmen who made immense profits during Ukraine’s transition from state capitalism to a market-based economy. By 2008, according to the Eurasia Daily Monitor, the country’s 50 richest oligarchs controlled 85 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. The social safety net was shredded. Real wages dropped by nearly two-thirds. Today, about one-third of the population lives below the poverty line. The health system is a shambles, with adult death rates among the highest in the world. Government corruption is everywhere.
With life so miserable under the sway of the Russian imperialists, there is much talk in Ukraine of revolution. But many workers mistakenly look to Europe or to the local fascist opposition to solve their problems. The EU offers nothing but more misery for the country’s working class. If the EU and the International Monetary Fund replace Russia in propping up Ukraine’s hyper-inflated economy, the aid will come with strings attached — the same austerity policies that have ravaged workers in Greece and Spain. Changing imperialist rulers is not revolution.
Energy and Opportunism
The conflict in Ukraine has been reported in the U.S. bosses’ press as a battle for democracy, Western values, and freedom from autocracy and Russian domination. Politicians from Republican Senator John McCain to President Barack Obama cheered on the demonstrators as they occupied government buildings, hurled firebombs at the police, killed several cops and captured many more. Obama went so far as to threaten sanctions against the Ukrainian government if it failed to reverse recent legislation restricting demonstrations.
What’s really going on here? Ukraine has long been of vital interest to the Russian bosses, before and after its nominal independence. Its eastern provinces were once the Soviet Union’s breadbasket, and millions of Russians settled there after the famine of 1933. Russian remains the first language for many in that area, which generally supported Yanukovych in previous elections.
In this light, the effort led by German and U.S. rulers to pull Ukraine into the EU is an attempt to weaken Russian imperialism while exploiting the country’s workers and fertile agricultural land. Opportunities for energy profits loom large as well. The U.S. backed Shell Oil’s agreement last year (with Yanukovych) to explore recently discovered shale gas deposits in Ukraine. Successful exploitation of these reserves, estimated at four trillion cubic feet of gas, would allow Ukraine to reduce its energy dependence on Russia. Current plans by Shell and Ukraine include exports to Western Europe by 2020, a direct challenge to Russian imperialist domination of energy in this region.
The opposition Euromaidan movement (see box) is pro-EU and wants to de-emphasize Ukraine’s historic relationship with Russia. Its proponents include former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, released last week from prison and now a likely candidate for president in the May election. Timoshenko is a multi-millionare, a rank opportunist who maintained strong relations with Putin in the past but now backs the U.S. and European capitalists competing for dominance in Ukraine.
Only communist revolution, not fascist-led revolt, can meet workers’ needs. As workers rise in revolt and rebellion throughout the world, we must build an international communist party, the Progressive Labor Party, to organize a revolution and smash capitalism once and for all.
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Nazis Running the ‘Euromaidan’ Opposition
The opposition to the deposed Yanukovych regime is a coalition of three political parties called “Euromaidan,” named after its pro-European Union (EU) stance and the central square in Kiev (the “Maidan”). One is the right-wing, pro-capitalist Fatherland Party headed by multi-millionaire Yulia Timoshenko, modeled after European Christian Democratic parties. Another is the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform, which is aligned with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union Party.
The third party, so closely linked to the other two that they hold joint press conferences, is the outright fascist Svoboda, a neo-Nazi outfit that received over two million votes in the last parliamentary elections. This is the group that toppled the Lenin statue in Kiev, replacing it with the black-and-red Nazi occupation flag from World War II. Svoboda and the paramilitary neo-Nazi Pravy Sector are the political descendants of western Ukraine leaders who sided with the Nazis during World War II.
These fascists spearheaded the recent street demonstrations with Molotov cocktails, paving stones and iron bars. They led five thousand people in storming the regional administration building and took control of arms depots.
Svoboda’s bastion is in Galicia, to the west, where they have organized large celebrations in memory of World War II Nazi collaborators and the Nazi Waffen SS (storm troopers). The party has taken power in small localities there, instigating a reign of terror jointly with other fascist groups, assaulting Jews and working-class fighters.
Svoboda and Pravy Sector attract the most racist and reactionary elements of Ukrainian society. They are being given free rein by the other opposition parties, and this fascist-tainted alliance is unreservedly backed by the EU and U.S. imperialists.
CHICAGO, IL February 21 — Close to 1,000 transit workers have been fired by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) over the last two years, the vast majority being black workers. Most were members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 241, on the bus side. Tim Stovall was a member of ATU Local 308, on the train side. In 2010, Tim was falsely arrested for selling marijuana while on the job. The racist police lied and said he had a prior conviction and that he had pled guilty to a felony in the past. Tim filed a grievance and provided documentation to prove that the police were lying. The Grievance Committee voted to take his case to arbitration.
Then Local 308 President Robert Kelly (salary $134,000/year), who was fired for stealing about 20 years ago, convinced the Grievance Committee to change its vote and deny Tim an opportunity to fight for his job. At the membership meeting, Kelly only read the racist police report, and based on that, the membership voted not to arbitrate. The best Robert Kelly could do was to offer Tim a $9/hr. job (barely a third of the regular pay rate) in the 2nd Chance Program for ex-felons, even though Tim was never convicted of a crime (and the program has since been disbanded). Our union leaders belong in jail!
What happened to Tim Stovall is not an isolated incident. We have been under attack from the CTA bosses and their junior partners in the ATU leadership for over a decade. Workers are being fired for one safety violation and accelerated discipline allows the company to treat a minor incident as if it were one in a string of major accidents. These attacks mirror the racist budget slashing of the Cook County Healthcare System and public education. The bankers and real estate developers are making billions while millions are out of work and millions more are under-employed working for poverty wages.
The “war on drugs” has always been a lie, a war on workers and youth that has filled the prisons, disenfranchised millions and forced black and Latino youth into dead-end poverty-wage jobs. We will continue fight to get Tim Stovall’s job back. And while we do, we will build the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party in the bus garages and train yards. A measure of our success will be to have CTA workers march on May Day with PLP!
Washington, DC, February 20 — Today Muriel Bowser, a DC city council member and board member of Metro/WMATA (the DC Regional Transit Agency), held a hearing about getting Metro to change its policy on background checks. Thanks to PLP members, friends and many workers, the issue has gotten sharper throughout the city and politicians like Bowser feel they must address it.
Several people testified, some who work at Metro or others who have tried to get hired. One mechanic testified that he and his co-workers are very concerned now about what will happen if they have to take leave of more than 90 days and go through a background screening when they come back. Another, a contractor who for years built Metro bridges, tunnels, and railways, said that he has not had work from Metro since the new policy went into effect because of his record, which is decades old.
A lawyer from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund testified that his organization is currently representing four people in cases related to this issue and is willing to take on more. She highlighted the racist effect of the policy, excluding more black and Latino workers than others because they are arrested and convicted at higher rates.
Racism is endemic to capitalism; that is how the bosses divide and superexploit workers to maximize their profiits. In a communist society run by workers, the economic and political basis for racism will be demolished.
Two union officials showed up. The current Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 president testified that her union opposed this policy from the beginning (even though she did not fight Metro when they changed to the stricter policy in 2011). She again avoided mentioning the racist character of Metro’s background check policy.
A former president of the union and PL’er testified that the policy was racist in its differential impact on black and Latino workers. The policy, he argued, was implemented without any investigation or study to see if ex-offenders were more or less likely than others to commit crimes while at work at Metro, and was simply a biased racist policy that had to change.
The vice president of the union echoed what we’ve been hearing from Metro workers for months: to the riders, the face of Metro is black, and now the Metro administration seems to be trying to change this while stigmatizing the current workforce. In fact, in an area where 50.1 percent of the population are black, Metro hired only seven D.C. residents out of the 1,300 people it hired in 2013!
When Bowser questioned the head of the DC Department of Employment Services (DOES), he testified that DOES was warned by the federal Department of Labor not to work with agencies that have discriminatory practices. So even the U.S. Department of Labor seems to suspect that Metro’s background check policy is racist.
Finally, Bowser called Richard Sarles, the General Manager of Metro to speak. He argued that Metro has to protect its riders (including children and handicapped riders) and that only violent offenses automatically disqualify someone from working at Metro. Like much of what he said, this is a lie, and is directly contradicted by the testimony that workers had submitted. He admitted that Metro has no data to prove that workers with criminal records are more likely than anyone else to commit crimes on the job.
It’s clear that the Metro board and management are feeling the pressure. We need to keep up the fight, and not get distracted by politicians like Bowser. She may have called for the hearing, but we are the ones who made it happen.
Los Angeles, February 25 — At a Progressive Labor Party forum attended by about 30 workers and students, the stark statistics of deportation sparked discussion on the role of racism in immigration policy under capitalism. In the U.S., undocumented Latinos are more likely to be deported than undocumented Asian or European immigrants, by a factor of 8-16 to 1, depending on what countries are compared.
The absolute number of deportations jumped sharply in 1997, following a law signed by President Clinton appropriating more money to immigration enforcement. The next major increase in deportations came with the creation and funding of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) under the Homeland Security Dept. in 2002, under Bush. Under Obama, deportations have been pushed higher still. As of now, Obama has deported two million people — more than all previous presidents combined. “Removals” of long-time U.S. residents now outnumber those turned back at or near the border.
U.S. workers face unemployment, reduced wages and benefits, and police harassment and brutality. U.S. bosses are trying to direct workers’ rage away from themselves and against immigrant workers, claiming they’re “stealing our jobs.”
The bosses even try to divide undocumented immigrants against each other. Obama and some congressional Democrats promote the Dream Act, legislation that would provide a path to permanent residency for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children. They would have to be of “good moral character,” have lived in the U.S. for at least five years, have a high school diploma, and go to college or join the military for at least two years. To apply for permanent residency, they would have to obtain a bachelor’s degree or, in typical cases, serve an additional four to six years in the military, creating a large pool of war-ready soldiers. So far, no version of the federal Dream Act has passed.
A participant in the forum said that the Dream Act would improve the lives of some undocumented immigrants, and asked whether PLP supported it. A Party member responded that we don’t support plans of any section of the capitalist class, but we do participate in reform movements such as the “Dreamers.” Within those movements we fight alongside those who want the reform, at the same time trying to win them to fight for communist revolution.
It is PLP’s goal to win these students and workers to see their future as members of the working class, united to fight against the capitalist class’s racism and exploitation and to organize for a future where differences in skin color, national origin, language and culture are meaningless, where people are valued for their commitment to organizing a communist society.
NASHVILLE, TN, February 20 — Much is being written about the loss suffered by the UAW in the union election at the Volkswagen (VW) assembly plant in Chattanooga, TN. The plant is one of only three non-union VW plants in the world (the other two are in China). This campaign was the key to a strategy of organizing a number of foreign-owned auto plants, including BMW in South Carolina, Mercedes in Vance, Alabama, and Nissan in Canton, MS. (The State of Mississippi passed three anti-union laws just days after the VW vote, targeting the UAW Nissan campaign). The UAW has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), challenging the interference of Tennessee’s top elected officials, but that could linger for years before it is resolved.
The election reflects just how far down the road to fascism the U.S. has travelled, and how workers are caught in a crossfire between right-wing, Tea Party union-busters and a union leadership that sees its main job as guaranteeing the bosses’ profits.
VW and the UAW signed a neutrality agreement, where the company agreed not to oppose the union campaign and the union agreed to “maintain VW’s competitive advantage.” In other words, the UAW promised to maintain the same anti-union advantages that the right-wing politicians gave to VW in the first place! This was the result of many trips to Germany to meet with the company and with IG Metall, the German metal workers union.
There was a very active union committee inside the plant. VW workers from around the world were brought to Chattanooga to meet with workers and show international solidarity for their campaign. The union was confident. Yet, on the 77th anniversary of the victory of the Flint Sit-Down Strike, which won union recognition at General Motors after a 44-day plant takeover, the UAW lost the VW vote 712-626. A swing of 44 votes would have changed the outcome.
Along the way, the UAW ran into what John Logan (Director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University) called, “a firestorm of interference” from a fascist coalition led by Grover Norquist. In an openly racist appeal to the mostly white workforce, billboards referred to the United Auto Workers as the United Obama Workers, and pictures of abandoned Detroit factories were displayed as the work of the UAW.
One racist group even compared the union campaign to a Civil War battle in Chattanooga where the Union Army was defeated. “Let’s stop them again,” was the message. Anti-union town hall meetings were held in the area and the top elected officials threatened the loss of jobs if the union won. These threats, made during the voting, are the basis for the UAW’s NLRB challenge to the election.
This reflects one of the fault lines in the U.S. ruling class, the anti-tax, anti-union billionaires, led by the Koch brothers vs. the liberal rulers who want to maintain some safety net and raise the minimum wage. This struggle reflects that, at least for the moment, the more open fascists have a mass base and a plenty of clout in the South.
But even more important, convincing workers that bosses and workers have the same interest, and our security lies in the bosses being fat and rich, is also leading the workers to fascism. In a period of growing imperialist rivalry, trade wars and the growing threat of shooting wars, unity with the bosses will lead to going to war against other workers to guarantee markets and profits for “our” bosses.
The fact is, workers and bosses have nothing in common! The bosses profit from our exploitation. We can only secure our future by abolishing wage slavery and building a communist world, where we produce for the needs of our class, not the profits of the shareholders. We should view these organizing campaigns, from auto to fast food workers, as opportunities to sharpen the class struggle and to win more workers to PLP.
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Bowing to Bosses Brings UAW to the Brink
The UAW has been collaborating with the auto bosses for over 60 years, especially in the 1970s, again in the financial crisis of 2008 and the auto bailout of 2009.
Anti-Asian Racism Rampant
The more U.S. auto bosses were threatened by international competition, the more the UAW came to their defense. Instead of “Workers of the World, Unite,” the slogan was “Buy American!” In the 1970s, anti-Japanese racism was rampant; local unions would charge $1/shot to smash an imported Japanese car with a sledge hammer. The racism hit a fever pitch when a young Chinese student, Vincent Chin, was beaten to death in a Detroit bar by two Chrysler employees who thought he was Japanese! Foreign cars were banned from UAW parking lots, and tires slashed.
Meanwhile, the UAW forced through billions in wage and benefit concessions to help U.S. bosses compete against the “foreign competition.” While factories and union halls closed, the palatial UAW/GM Training Center was being erected on the Detroit River. The threat moved from opposing imports to Asian and European auto bosses building factories in the U.S., mostly in the South, where they still enjoy a huge labor cost advantage. The UAW has failed to organize any of them. The union became so tied to the auto bosses that they would share their fate.
Then in the economic crash of 2008 and the auto bailout of 2009 the UAW agreed to the “restructuring” of the industry, meaning that 70 years of hard won gains would be wiped out for new workers. As the UAW shrunk from 1.5 million members to 380,000 (only half of that manufacturing), the union became the target of the growing anti-union Right to Work (RTW) movement. With the GM, Ford and Chrysler (Fiat) contracts expiring next year, over 50 percent of the UAW membership is in RTW states, including Michigan (60 percent if Ohio goes). When these contracts expire, union membership will be voluntary. Thousands of new workers, doing twice the work for half the pay, with diminished health care and no pensions, may very well leave the union.
