WASHINGTON, D.C. — The battle against the Metro transit bosses and sellout union leaders is heating up.  PLP members at Metro used a union-called town hall meeting for workers and riders “to get input” to expose the sellouts and have radical conversations with fellow workers about the need for communist revolution.

 Party members testified that a strike at Metro would help all D.C. area workers, including Metro riders, resist today’s racist offensive against workers. Those statements from both Metro workers and riders got the loudest applause of the meeting, and helped build an attitude of rebellion that opens the door for building the PLP at Metro and throughout the community.

Although support for a strike to resolve our contract dispute is wide spread among riders and drivers, the union leadership is strongly opposed to any work action by members of ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 689.

Since strikes by transit workers in D.C. are illegal under the bosses’ laws, the union president is afraid to lead a strike.  She fears it would bankrupt the union and she would wind up in jail. Without a plan to win a strike, many workers are afraid of losing their jobs if it fails.

Many workers have illusions about what a strike can accomplish.  Some believe that if we strike, the bosses will be on their knees begging us to come back to work.  This is an unlikely scenario. They will try to hit us hard, and we must be prepared to hit back!

PLP’s job is to help people overcome their fears of a strike as well as give a realistic estimate of what it takes to advance our interests under current conditions.

Part of helping workers overcome their fear of striking is having a party organization which has the support of the workers and a plan to move forward.  Most of the groundwork for this has been done. Now it is time to consolidate this base into the Party by helping our brothers and sisters gain a clear vision of a lifetime struggle to destroy capitalism and replace it with OUR power, workers’ power.

A strike will not end the bosses’ domination of us, but a strike can give us good training in how to fight. Workers are terminated all the time without just cause at Metro.  There is no reason to expect Metro would not attempt to continue these policies during a strike.  The difference is that we will be fighting back in a mass way to advance our goals. Through sharper struggle against the bosses, we will be able to see the need to build a new kind of society where workers collectively run things  — communism — so that we can get off the treadmill of constant attacks from bosses.

For a strike to be successful, strengthen the union, and build greater class consciousness, the racist divisions that exist in our union must be overcome.  Black, Latino, Asian, and white workers standing side by side in a fight against the bosses will be a strong signal of our ability to win against the bosses in the long run.

Brooklyn, NY, June 26 — “What do we want?! BENEFITS! If we don’t get it? SHUT’EM DOWN!”

Hundreds of black and Latino hospital workers militantly chanted, sang and danced in a picket line surrounding Brookdale Hospital CEO Bruce Flanz’s house in this rich, mostly white town, about an hour north of the hospital’s site in Brooklyn. The picket was organized by Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a local representing over 260,000 mostly black and Latino hospital and home healthcare workers in New York City. The workers were responding to Brookdale’s violation of its labor contract, which has forced the 3,500 hospital workers onto a more expensive health insurance plan in a racist, sexist campaign to break worker militancy and, ultimately, decertify 1199.

When Progressive Labor Party members spoke with Brookdale workers as they arrived to board the buses that morning, we met with very positive reactions. Almost every worker took a CHALLENGE, and we came away with more than a half dozen contacts. Since then we have followed up with them to plan meetings. As some of our new friends later told us, several Brookdale workers took stacks of papers on the buses with them, distributed them all, and held discussions about the Brookdale article (CHALLENGE 6/6) on the bus trip there and back.

The picket around the CEO’s house was highly militant. At the sight of the CEO’s sprawling house, the racist contrast between the living conditions of Brookdale workers and the bosses was blatantly obvious. One disgusted worker, her young daughter with her, yelled, “We’re fighting just for this [contract] when these people live like this?” Another woman worker began spreading a chant to burn down the boss’s house, before being discouraged by union marshals. The loudest and most popular chant, quoted at the top, was a call-and-response for the hospital to shut down.

Scabs Watch Out!

Class hatred for the bosses was stoked even further at the discovery of a scab standing in the CEO’s driveway, a man known only as “Martinez.” The workers crowded the edge of the property, taunting Martinez to step closer “so we can get a piece of you,” but the police and union marshals got the pickets moving again as the scab Martinez smugly raised his middle finger. A hospital worker from Jamaica warned: “Don’t you dare step back into Brookdale! I’ll be waiting for you!”

Over the past six months, Brookdale workers have shown a lot of bravery in the face of the bosses’ attacks. According to our friends inside the hospital, supervisors have been spying on workers who are organizing fight-backs. We’ve learned of two instances of spontaneous work stoppages across many hospital departments. Three weeks ago, according to several EMT and paramedic friends, the New York City Fire Department issued some unusual orders: no patients were to be brought to Brookdale. Last week, bosses at the cash-starved hospital suggested that another round of layoffs is imminent, a move that would criminally worsen an understaffing crisis.

While Brookdale workers have amply demonstrated their class hatred, the struggle’s outcome will be determined by the political line of their leadership. This is where Local 1199 represents a dead end. The sellout essence of the 1199 misleaders, from President George Gresham on down, betrays their militant appearance. Workers frankly admitted that while they want to strike, they don’t trust 1199 to support them. Some said defiantly that they should strike, “union or no union.” But apart from their spontaneous work stoppages, they have yet to follow the example of the Stella D’Oro workers, who took the lead in 2008 and spearheaded an 11-month, anti-sexist strike.

Brookdale’s workers need a mass base of support to battle their racist, sexist bosses. While 1199 talks tough and bills itself as the “largest local in the world,” it refuses to mobilize its quarter-million members in New York City in these workers’ defense. Recently the union leadership began talking about the need to get rid of Flanz and his entourage, to pave the way for a takeover of Brookdale by state officials. But these officials are the same “saviors” who have cut billions of dollars from health care and closed eight hospitals in New York City alone!

Boss-Union Hack Gang-Up

In reality, boss Flanz and hack Gresham are on the same side. Although they haggle over contract details in a show of collective bargaining, their argument is confined to how much can be taken from the workers in the current economic crisis, and how fast. Under capitalism, both bosses and unions serve one overriding goal: the exploitation of workers to generate maximum profits. The brutal workings of this system are most obvious when it targets black, Latino, and women workers, as at Brookdale. Through this super-exploitation, the capitalist ruling class pushes down wage and benefit levels for all. 

PLP’s message of fighting back is spreading, evidenced by the enthusiastic response to CHALLENGE and the many contacts we’ve made. These embryonic leadership collectives will serve the interests of the working class instead of playing off their fears — the strategy of 1199 and other unions, whose job is to keep the capitalist status quo in place.

PL’ers and CHALLENGE readers around New York City have been circulating petitions and flyers to spread the word about Brookdale. In days following the picket in New City, one friend of PLP was conducting blood pressure screenings in another borough. He made available a stack of anti-racist leaflets that denounced the Brookdale bosses. One person getting her pressure checked read the leaflet and exclaimed, “My sister works for Brookdale! What can we do here to help?” She took several leaflets and contact information was exchanged. Wherever we are, we can meet people and deepen our ties.

PLP fights for both the short-term and long-term interests of the working class. By strengthening CHALLENGE networks while we build support for the Brookdale workers in our own workplaces, we are both sharpening the local struggle and moving toward our ultimate goal, a communist revolution.

To combat a growing host of global warring enemies, U.S. rulers increasingly require loyalty, both from international allies and from the masses at home. This wartime need underlies the rotating episodes of two ongoing “true-crime” sagas: the cases of Dominique Strauss-Khan, the ousted head of the International Monetary Fund, and Whitey Bulger, the Boston gangster recently captured after 16 years on the lam.

In both cases, the capitalist media boasted of “proof” that U.S. courts protect the downtrodden from the mighty and inexorably punish the guilty. But make no mistake. The bosses aren’t merely distracting workers with media circuses here. These cases have implications far worse than these two criminals’ misdeeds.

Manhattan D.A. Vance Uses Strauss-Khan Assault to Serve U.S. Imperialism’s Class Interests

On May 14, IMF boss Strauss-Khan was arrested for sexually assaulting a New York hotel housekeeping worker, a story that grabbed headlines around the world.

But on July 1, New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. declared there were “too many inconsistencies” in the hotel worker’s testimony. Saying he now “had no case” against Strauss-Kahn, Vance freed him from house arrest and returned his bail money.

But Vance’s flip-flopping had accomplished U.S. rulers’ goal: It forced Strauss-Kahn’s resignation as head of the IMF. Why? Strauss-Kahn’s original sin was pushing for a new currency to replace the dollar as the IMF instrument for indebting poor nations. This proposed “basket money,” originally designed as a combination of the dollar, the British pound, the euro, and the Japanese yen, would now expand to include China’s yuan. Beyond devaluing the U.S. dollar (by enabling countries to buy the new currency instead of U.S. Treasury bonds) and thereby threatening the dominance of the U.S. ruling class, the new currency would also enhance the influence of China, the United States’ chief economic rival.

Vance is no Johnny-come-lately. He’s a chip off the old, imperialist block; his father, Cyrus Vance, Sr., was the Secretary of State who helped President Jimmy Carter draft the “Carter Doctrine” in 1980. This policy declared Mideast energy a “vital U.S. interest” to be defended by military force, laying the groundwork for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While there’s no evidence that Strauss-Kahn was a victim of a sting, his inability to keep his pants up — following a long line of similar “indiscretions” — was a gift that U.S. bosses used to eject him from the IMF, check his assaults on the U.S. dollar, and damage his chances to become the next president of France.

French President Sarkozy Cozies to U.S. War-makers, Arms Libya Rebels Following Strauss-Kahn Flap

Now U.S. rulers have sharpened their focus on “coalition-building.” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner blessed the choice of French economist Christine Lagarde, a member of Sarkozy’s pro-U.S. Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP), to run the IMF. Lagarde had for years headed the law firm of Baker & McKenzie, a leading U.S. imperialist force in the Middle East and North Africa.

Steve Dunaway, of the Exxon Mobil/JP Morgan Chase-controlled Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think-tank, spelled out Lagarde’s latest pro-U.S. duties: “She has to demonstrate that the IMF will not automatically rubberstamp European decisions and be a convenient piggy bank to help Europe finance the debt crisis in some euro-area countries” (CFR website, 6/29/11). Sarkozy called the selection of this U.S. stooge “a victory for France.”

Immediately following Lagarde’s coronation, Sarkozy began flying arms to the anti-Qaddafi, U.S.-leaning Libyan rebels. These shipments go beyond the UN’s resolution on Libya but delight Obama and the Pentagon.

Freeing Strauss-Kahn supposedly humiliated Vance and allowed French rulers to save face in the eyes of the world. No longer would superpower U.S. bosses hold the 2012 French presidential elections hostage. But despite having to reverse himself, Vance’s push for a premature indictment will help war-bent U.S. imperialists at the French polls. It has clearly weakened the Socialist Party’s challenge to Sarkozy, whoever their candidate may be. “Strauss-Kahn’s possible return has thrown the Socialist party’s primary race into disarray” (Guardian, UK, 7/3/11).

The critical back story is that Strauss-Kahn’s Socialists oppose French integration into NATO’s U.S.-dominated military command. Incumbent president Sarkozy had rejoined this coalition in 2009, also to the delight of Obama and the Pentagon. By arresting Strauss-Kahn and then releasing him, DA Vance did maximum damage to Sarkozy’s Socialist Party adversaries without making Strauss-Kahn a martyr, which might have drawn anti-U.S. (and anti-Sarkozy) forces out to vote.

What gets lost amid the sensational headlines is how Strauss-Kahn’s sexism exemplifies the pervasive attacks on women under this system.  The IMF is a huge force for the oppression of working-class women worldwide; women are doubly affected by the austerity measures forced upon the most exploited countries. These women are super-exploited by the lowest incomes and murderous medical “care.” They are victimized by mass rapes in imperialist-inspired wars over diamonds in central Africa.

Regardless of Strauss-Kahn’s future, or which ruling-class faction calls the tune at the IMF, this is the hard law of capitalism: maximum exploitation for maximum profit.

While the Strauss-Kahn circus has played out on a worldwide stage, U.S. rulers have pitched the Bulger drama to a domestic audience. On June 22, the FBI at long last collared fugitive gangster and “rogue” FBI collaborator Whitey Bulger. Bulger had served as an FBI informant and was protected by his handlers even as he was accused of 19 murders, a fact that has given this police-state agency a black eye for two decades.

On one level, the hype over Whitey’s capture forms part of a ruling-class effort to publicly rehabilitate the bungling, corrupt FBI and win greater support for the burgeoning wartime U.S. police state.

On a deeper level, busting Bulger represents a profound shift from the ideology of the 1970s. While U.S. capitalists still rely on racist big-city police departments, and still protect KKK-Nazi groups to mislead white workers, they’ve needed to shift their emphasis from locally-oriented gutter racism to massive, patriotic, national racism and global genocide, often under the leadership of black politicians like Obama and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

Whitey and his “legit” politician brother, Billy, reached the height of their power at the end of the Vietnam War era. As part of a Defense Department shutdown after the war, the main Rockefeller-led liberal bosses wiped out thousands of better-paying jobs in redundant shipyards in South Boston, Charlestown, East Boston, and Quincy.

The predominantly white workers there quickly turned against liberal Kennedy & Co., their former protectors. No longer able to win over workers with federally-sponsored employment, the liberals set the Brothers Bulger to organizing white workers to blame — and fight — black workers. Liberal Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., who lived in a lily-white Boston suburb, provided the tinder: school desegregation.

Desegregation is, of course, a good thing. But Boston’s liberals turned it into a school-shutting vehicle to divide the local working class. Billy Bulger, Democratic Party president of the Massachusetts State Senate, made anti-busing speeches, while Whitey fed drugs to racist thugs. This was the anti-busing crowd our Party fought and smashed in 1975, in our genuinely anti-racist Summer Project (see plp.org).

Now the liberal war-makers need white South Boston enlistees willing to take orders from Obama and their black sergeants to kill Arab and Asian workers. (This facade of a “multi-racial” power structure masks U.S. rulers’ continuing racist super-exploitation of black workers through higher rates of joblessness and imprisonment — along with worse pay, education, medical “care,” and housing.) They require allegiance to a national patriotism, not to a two-bit racist ward boss or drug lord.

So the Bulger Klan is essentially history. Whitey now faces the rest of his life in jail. Meanwhile, brother Billy had been bought out of politics by Governor William Weld with a cushy academic job as president of the University of Massachusetts. But Billy was forced to resign after it emerged that he’d recommended a corrupt FBI agent (Whitey’s in-house protector) to be Boston’s police commissioner. Now he stews in retirement (on a $200,000 annual pension.)

The Strauss-Kahn and Bulger sideshows aim at getting workers to kill and die for U.S. imperialism, against our class interests. We have the opposite goal: to expose and attack the sideshows’ billionaire puppet-masters. Alongside building our communist party, PLP, this is an essential step toward the revolution that will ultimately eradicate the profit system and the wars it ceaselessly spawns.