Millions of workers in France have been on strike to protest the anti-worker policies of the Macron government. Sign reads “Let’s Revolt!”
Workers Tell Capitalist Government, “Don’t Mess With Us!”
By Nath Clarke
Current French President Emmanuel Macron, who puts the interests of bankers and big business above the people, announced plans to gut Social Security, affecting millions of people across the country. The Yellow Vest movement and many unions have been struggling against his policies (cuts to public spending, increased taxes for the poor, and tax cuts for the super-rich) for over a year. Working French people are not done fighting back against cuts to Social Security, public hospitals, and aid for poor families.
After the government announced plans to reform retirements, several of the most powerful unions offered an ultimatum on December 15th: scrap this law or feel the rage of the people. Since December 3rd, the teachers’ union, the train workers’ union, the bus drivers’ union, the hospital workers’ union, the truckers’, the EMTs’, the airport workers’, the refinery workers’, the firefighters’—and even the lawyers’— unions have issued a call to strike.
The rage of the people is a force to be reckoned with: in Paris, public transportation has come to a halt; only every third train is running across the rest of France; entire refineries have been shut down as their workers walk out. Although the government and corporate media are claiming these unions are just lazy or that these reforms will not affect restaurant workers, cashiers, and other workers in the private sector, nobody is fooled.
Nico, a trucker from the Corbières in Southern France, said that although the strikes have made getting around difficult, he understands that these folks are fighting for everyone. Macron’s reforms will mean that Social Security is a fixed rate. In a country where inflation is constantly on the rise, this will affect all workers, particularly women and folks who earn inconsistent salaries throughout their career.
Edouard, a landscaper who has been going to Yellow Vest protests since last year, told the Workers Voice:
“The government is trying to change the entire system so that different careers get access to different monthly sums based on their supposed societal value. Meanwhile, senators and other politicians will keep their own separate social security system—which receives 1.4 billion euros of funding every year. Cops will also maintain a more beneficial retirement, as France has slowly devolved into a police state under a state of emergency; cops are maiming protesters every week in order to maintain order, while nurses, teachers, servers, and countless other workers are left to starve…This reform is just an attempt to make more money off a system that works perfectly fine… except that it doesn’t generate enough profits for the super rich.”
At the protest on Thursday the 17th, hundreds of thousands of working class folks chanted: “This is democracy,” “Less money for the bankers, more money for the people,” and “Macron, we won’t slow down ’til we stop this reform.” The French government is nothing without the working people whose labor produces all the wealth. It’s the people’s money, and when we unite and fight, we always win.
Workers’ pensions are under attack in the U.S. In 2014, the Obama administration proposed and Congress passed a new pension law that allows multi-employer pension plans (for example, trucking and construction) to cut pensions for current retirees.
Years ago, pension funds were put in a guaranteed account with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal program ensuring that funds did not go bankrupt. Now employers put pension funds in 401K funds controlled by Wall Street speculators. These speculators profit from investments they make using pensioners’ money, but when the stocks fall, pensioners lose money.
Like the workers in France, we must take to the streets and demand an end to these attacks.
The 2014 pension law allows plan trustees to cut benefits for retirees in order to save the funds they manage from bankruptcy instead of requiring the PBGC to take them over. This ensures that bailout funds are reserved for Wall Street, not workers. Under the new law, 150-200 multi-employer plans covering 1.5 million workers will be drained over the next decade. Retirees, widows, and widowers and domestic partners whose benefits are reduced are banned from filing a lawsuit to challenge the legality of these reductions.
Due to low wages, less job security, and insurmountable debt burdens, workers in the U.S. are retiring later and later in life, only to face declining retirement incomes. In 2017, the median income of retirees age 65 or older was just $19,352.
On top of this Trump & Co. are threatening social security. All this proves that the U.S. government serves Wall Street financiers, not workers. In France, millions of workers and family members have shut down the country to defend their pension laws. Like the workers in France, we must take to the streets and demand an end to these attacks.
Workers picket outside of Instacart headquarters in San Francisco on September 5, 2019, to demand a $15/hr minimum pay rate, ane nd to employer tip theft, and a line-item breakdown of earnings and expenses.
Instacart is the Uber of grocery shopping. It is a delivery service where customers order through a digital grocery list. Orders are shopped, checked out, and delivered by workers like Vanessa Bain of Palo Alto, California.
Vanessa Bain (VB): I used to work in education and was experiencing burnout. Around four years ago, I decided that I needed to do something different. Things were decent for the first 6-7 months. I was making more money working less hours than I did when I was teaching. I wasn’t coming home totally drained, which was a new feeling for me. I loved it at first.
Around September of 2016, they told us they were going to be taking tips out of our apps. Tips accounted for about 50% of my income. I was devastated, and I knew that I couldn’t take this lying down. I typed “#BoycottInstacart” into Instagram and found somebody else who was thinking like me, and we started organizing together. That was my entry into organizing.
Overcoming the obstacles of organizing in the gig economy
VB: There are a lot of obstacles to organizing in the gig economy:
1) We’re misclassified as independent contractors, so we have no protections under the National Labor Relations Act. This also means we’re not entitled to a minimum wage, overtime, rest, and meal breaks. We’re not entitled to draw from programs like workers compensation, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance.
2) The other major hurdle is that we have no centralized workplace. When organizing typically happens, you’re organizing with people in close proximity who you see on a regular basis. Instacart shoppers and Uber drivers are an atomized workforce. There could be a month or two months at a time where you don’t run into someone else who’s doing the same work. The infrastructure that is necessary to organize in a meaningful way is intentionally absent.
The companies want to pit us against each other and call it the hustle and say that we’re our own boss and our own CEO. This is bullshit. They don’t want us to see ourselves as coworkers who could fight back together. Camaraderie breeds collective action, unionizing, and feeling like we’re interconnected. That interconnectivity between folks and the feeling of being accountable to your fellow worker is incredibly important for organizing. The way in which they are implementing this structure is new, but this is centuries’ old bullshit that was regulated away in decades past, but they’re finding ways to bring it back.
Workers Voice (WV): Capitalists would like to see the whole economy go in this direction. They want to radically increase exploitation, thus increasing their profits. So venture capitalists just threw money at startup companies like Uber and Instacart.
VB: Totally. And none of these are profitable business models. In a nutshell the gig economy is a Ponzi scheme. Not to sound conspiratorial, but that’s really what it is.
Vanessa uses the internet plus face-to-face organizing WV: How did you face the challenges?
VB: Our organizing is necessarily going to be a hybrid of doing things in person and doing things digitally because we don’t have a centralized workplace. We don’t have a break room, for example. We have to create the equivalent of that online, but not everybody is plugged into social media, so how do you organize? You’re going to have to do it in person. We’re lucky that we do have some sense of shared workspace in grocery stores.
Instacart workers have carried out four walk offs since 2016 VB: Our very first walk off had a couple hundred participants. When we started organizing I don’t think we had the intention of continuing to do this. We did walk outs in 2016 and 2017 and 2019. We did a work slowdown in 2018.
The company has caved to some worker demands, but they are still on the offensive.
VB: Historically, when we do an action, the company gives it about a month and then implements our demands, acting as though it had nothing to do with our action. They don’t want to seem as if they’re responding to worker grievances because workers will see that this works, and we should keep doing it.
The last time they responded by cutting pay. We had a quality bonus, a measly $3 that we were paid for each order when customers rated their experience five stars. It seems like a small sum of money, but a batch can pay as little as $7.00 when you’re shopping and delivering for three customers, so $3 is a big deal. When they cut the quality bonus, it disproportionately hurt people who had done this the longest and were the best at their jobs because it is ostensibly a performance bonus.
Solidarity between shoppers and customers VB: This outraged a lot of customers. So that was like a secondary boycott. Customers were on Twitter and FB sharing the hashtag “DeleteInstacart.” Instacart’s tactics backfired. Instacart is nothing without shoppers and customers. Pissing off both is really a bad business tactic.
I think that solidarity between customers and shoppers is natural because Instacart is just a software program, but we’re the face of it. Customers have more loyalty to the human being than they do to the company that employs them. And if we’re unhappy, customers know.
Instacart began as a luxury service but it’s becoming more of a service that is oriented toward people who are located in food deserts, no transportation, or people who are disabled and house-bound. We provide a vital lifeline. I saw so many instances of people saying, “I can’t leave my home,” “I can’t go to a grocery store,” “I’m house-bound,” or “I have chronic fatigue and I can’t lift things.” But they are still extending solidarity by boycotting.
2020 should be a lit year for labor WV: How do you view the strength of the U.S. labor movement right now and in the coming year?
VB: 2019 has been pivotal year for labor. There’s been an explosion of raw energy and cross-sector solidarity. People from all different types of organizing have expressed solidarity. Some are white collar workers who are well compensated, but they are still organizing in their workplaces because they don’t want the technology that they’ve built to be contracted out to the Department of Defense and ICE. They don’t want the technology that they’ve built to be used to oppress people and contribute to climate change.
I’ve been organizing for three and a half years now and I never felt more optimistic than I do now. And I think that we’re gonna see expansion of a lot of the organizing that has sprung up. I think it’s gonna get bigger, and more powerful. Our problems are rooted in capitalism itself.
A lot of current organizing is rooted in the understanding that capitalism is unsustainable. A lot of the problems that we’re struggling with are inherent to capitalism. At some point, capitalism must go. I’m inspired, and I hope that other people can share in that optimism and can feel like when they look at what Instacart workers did in their organizing, they think, “If this person can do it, then I can do it,” and reach out to one another.
The day that we kicked off our walk off, the Google walkout organizers called us and expressed solidarity. They offered an infrastructure that they had available, and we didn’t. They lent their expertise in areas that we didn’t know much about.
I think it’s going to be a lit year for labor! I’m 33. I think that the tides are changing. I think that people are feeling more empowered and emboldened to take bold action.
The workers and transit riders of Kansas City, MO, have won a major victory: soon, all public transportation there will be free. In 2016, the city started a streetcar that was free to all riders. Now, bus rides and other forms of public transit will no longer cost workers $1.50 per ride. Kansas City is now the first major U.S. city to offer a fare-free system. Meanwhile, the New Orleans RTA continues to underserve the working people of New Orleans with inadequate services for locals and unnecessary lines for tourists. The workers of Kansas City have proved that public transportation can serve the people, not the business community. We must organize in our cities to demand access to a free, efficient mass transit system. Our livelihoods as working people depend on it.
One of two explosions caused by Sewerage and Water Board in December 2019.
By Sally Jane Black
The Sewerage and Water Board has in the past month caused two explosions, one in the French Quarter and one at the Carrollton plant in Uptown, where two workers were injured. They have considered pouring waste into the river. They have been charged with not paying payroll taxes to the IRS, and they continue to send excessive bills to workers in New Orleans. This is on top of the criminal neglect they have subjected the city to for more than a decade, culminating in repeated flooding, billing issues and cut-offs, boil advisories, and—inevitably—more scandals to come. After claiming the drainage basins were clear for years, they found not one, but two entire cars clogging one of the canals.
These failures would be funny if they weren’t hurting workers. But every flood means someone’s home or transportation is destroyed. Every boil advisory means health risks for the elderly, immune-compromised, and children. Polluting the river would mean ecological disaster in a city already overwhelmed by toxic air, soil, and water. The broken billing system leaves workers unable to pay bills and keep the water on. No one can even predict whether their water will be turned off or not. And the fines and fees for the lost payroll taxes will be passed on to the rate-payers.
The S&WB should serve the people, not the rich. The New Orleans Workers Group demands that the bosses at the Sewerage and Water Board be held accountable and charged for their assault on the workers of New Orleans, and that billing be suspended until a reasonable system is in place. All outstanding debts by working class residents should be canceled. The bosses at the S&WB cannot continue to punish the citizens of New Orleans for their own incompetence and greed.
The Walle Corporation is a sign and label-making firm founded in New Orleans in 1872. On December 6, the company’s new owners announced they are shutting down their Harahan factory, leaving 101 workers jobless.
These workers are the victims of financial predators. Only a month ago, Walle was taken over by the Fort Dearborn Company, a label-maker based in Chicago. Fort Dearborn is controlled by a private equity firm called Advent International, which has been buying up similar firms across the U.S., cutting jobs and closing operations left and right. This is a common story in today’s economy.
Private equity firms are companies that produce nothing. They specialize in buying up and “restructuring” other businesses (laying off workers to increase profits). Sometimes this is done to resell the company at a higher price, but often the intention is merely to shut the company down and take the wealth that has been generated by the workers. This is what happened in October when Bayou Steel filed for bankruptcy and closed its plant in LaPlace after being acquired by the private equity firm Black Diamond.
Harlan County miners show the way
Workers in this situation can learn from the recent resistance of miners in Harlan County, KY. After being laid off by coal giant Blackjewel, these workers set up camp on the railroad, blocking the transport of coal that they had mined.
Initially, Blackjewel was not even going to pay the wages they owed, but their militant actions (which involved union and non-union workers, as well as support from transgender activists and others) resulted in the workers getting $5.5 million in back pay.
Workers at Walle should claim their right to the Harahan factory
Walle employees in Harahan could occupy the facility, preventing the products of their labor from being hauled off, especially if they are supported by the broader community. They can demand that the factory stay open, run by a democratic assembly of the workers. This has worked many times in recent history. After financial troubles began rocking Argentina in 2001, workers took over many businesses, including hotels, factories, and waste collection services. By 2014, as many as 311 businesses across the country were occupied. Workers can, and do, run things without parasitic bosses.
The New Orleans Workers Group is willing to organize and stand in solidarity with any Walle Company workers who want to fight. We must dare to struggle and dare to win!
On Oct. 12, the Hard Rock Hotel under construction collapsed, killing three workers and injuring dozens more. Anthony Magrette, Quinnyon Wimberly, and Jose Ponce Arreola were murdered by corporate greed. Horrendously, three months later, two of their bodies are still in the ruins of the toppled building. Longtime resident and metal worker Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma was illegally deported to Honduras to prevent him from testifying about the conditions that led to the collapse. Ramirez witnessed that workers had reported hazards to the bosses who continued the work anyway. The city has done nothing.
Quinnyon & Jose: The Forgotten Ones Not Recovered By Tommie Wimberly, Sr.
Two hard working men supporting their families
Making an honest living with dignity
Went to work one Sunday cause of loyalty
Working inside of an unstable building that collapsed because of negligence
caused fatal injury
Two men dedicated to the careers they possessed
Who deserve honor from the people their talented hands have blessed
Left their homes one morning not knowing they would not return
Now lost under rubble and the city leaders claim they are concerned
Everyday saying recovery is their “number one priority”
As each day passes by it seems recovery
Is just talk
No action. No accountability.
Another week has passed and the talk of recovering the bodies is fading away
Family and friends are wondering:
“will this be the search and recovery day?”
Waiting for officials very patiently
To recover the remains of those hard-working citizens
who deserve a proper burial with dignity
I would like to apologize for the injustice that happened to you all
For working inside an environment that caused those floors and walls to fall.
Honor New Orleans Sanitation Workers with Higher Wages, Better Conditions, Respect, Union Rights
By Sanashihla
Memphis and New Orleans are cities with rich traditions, culture and histories of resistance to oppression. Both cities have ports to the Mississippi river. Both cities have a high population of Black people suffering from poverty. Both cities have had workers who died from unsafe work environments, neglect, and abuse of power. It’s time for workers to rise and fight!
Time for all workers to stand up
On February 1, 1968 two Memphis based sanitation workers, Robert Walker and Echol Cole, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning truck.
On October 12, 2019 three New Orleans construction workers, Jose Ponce Arreola, Quinnyon Wimberly, and Anthony Magrette were killed during the collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel. Construction continued despite workers having voiced concerns about bent beams and flawed materials being used during construction.
Had the Hard Rock workers in New Orleans not been denied union rights, they could have forced the bosses to address the safety concerns or walked off the job without punishment and with pay.
However, due to the greed and disregard for the workers, the bosses and city officials in both cases put dedicated workers’ lives in jeopardy. The bosses know workers need paychecks, even under unsafe situations. They push the workers because they know that other business owners are pressing them for rent or charging them for food and all other necessities for daily survival. This puts workers in a bind.
History has lessons for us today
After almost two weeks of getting no response from the city about the 1968 death of the two Memphis based sanitation workers, 1,300 Black men from the Memphis Department of Public Works went on strike for improved safety standards and better wages.
The Memphis workers of 1968 had a union. And because they were organized and had learned the lessons of a previous strike, they were able to gain necessary support. The strike became not only part of the union struggle but the national fight for civil rights. Memphis sanitation workers were Black, and the bad conditions they faced were also a byproduct of racism.
The working class cannot and will not wait for anyone else to come save us
Workers in New Orleans face the same conditions. But most workers here do not have a union. In order to improve conditions, workers must get organized on all fronts! The business owners know that a union would have had the power to do something about the safety concerns expressed by the workers. A union could have saved lives. But they don’t care. We workers must care, get organized, and fight back!
Our power is our labor and organizing
From Memphis to New Orleans, the words of Dr. King’s very last speech should inspire us today: “The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya: Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee—the cry is always the same: We want to be free!”
Dr. King believed in the power of the people. He believed in the power of organizing, and the organizing of power. The real power is in our labor and what we decide to do or not do collectively with that labor! Dr. King emphasized, “we don’t have to live like we are forced to live[…]When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.”
Cuts to Food Stamps, Medicaid, Workers Rights Will Hurt All Workers
One social program after another is being cut. Overtime and safety laws are being gutted. Millions of people are losing food stamps, others Medicaid. Threats are made to completely cut Medicaid and Social Security. Trump is moving to kick people off of disability benefits. Millions are imprisoned for slave labor or thrown into migrant prisons. Meanwhile, more than $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) is handed out to ultra rich war profiteers who have bribed politicians into slashing taxes for the ultra rich.
The purpose of these attacks is to make all workers poorer. The capitalist class wants more and more people to be desperate to accept jobs for low pay.
This will bring down the pay of all other workers. It’s a race to the bottom unless we fight back.
Every one of the social programs we once had were won by workers fighting for them. Some go back to the massive movement of workers in the 1930’s when workers won unemployment insurance as a benefit to all workers. Capitalist politicians—both Democrat and Republican—have sought at every turn to wipe these out, treating unemployed workers as criminal “welfare recipients” while the lazy rich get tax credits galore.
44% of the U.S. workforce makes less than $18,000 a year, and millions more are barely above that. Yet the 1% have amassed incredible fortunes, and the gap gets worse every year. Both Trump and the majority of the Democratic Party are funded by these greedy, disgusting people.
If you still have a job with survival wages, it may feel okay to turn your back on cuts to the poorest workers. But this is a wakeup call: they are coming after you, too.
Solidarity of all workers needed to fight back against the capitalists
In France today, millions of workers have shut down the country to stop the theft of their pensions. In Chile today, millions are saying no to austerity. This is true around the world.
Massive worker protests are needed in 2020
Every worker and community organizer can circulate a petition calling on working-class communities, unions, and activists to support the call for a massive protest. Don’t depend on an election or politicians—unite and fight.
Petition: Time to Unite and Fight! To Unions, Community Groups, Activists:
We, the undersigned, are joining the call for the millions of workers to unite and fight against low wages, cuts to social programs, pension theft, and for a stop to endless wars and the destruction of the planet.
The United States is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Malcolm Suber
For more than two decades, the U.S. public has been treated to annual MLK marches that repeat the mantra from the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. King pronounced his dream that the U.S. would be a country where one day his four little children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The racist white ruling class annually cites this vague dream as a measure of the progress that Black people have made in this country. This has prevented us from evaluating the entire scope of continued Black oppression in the U.S.
Dr. King kept moving and organizing after the March on Washington. His vision also began to grow beyond the fight for civil rights for the oppressed Black nation. By 1967, Dr. King had studied national liberation movements around the globe and had concluded that his duty went beyond the fight to reform racist U.S. domestic policies. Perhaps the best example of his growing consciousness was his speech “Beyond Vietnam,” delivered at the Riverside Church in New York City. This is a speech that the ruling class does not want you to hear and study.
By 1967 the war in Vietnam was gaining the attention of everyone, and millions of anti-war protesters hit the streets demanding an end to U.S. carnage of the Vietnamese, who were trying to gain national independence for their homeland. These mass marches were inspired by the civil rights struggle.
In 1967 the war was at its peak, with about 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. The U.S. would drop more bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia than were dropped in all of Europe during WWII. This objective situation forced
Dr. King to conclude that the U.S. was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
King saw the U.S. war on Vietnam as an enemy of the poor.
The ruling class and its press condemned King for speaking out against the war, threatening to cut off funding for the civil rights struggle. But for King, standing against racial and economic inequality meant exposing how the military-industrial complex had become an essential part of capitalist exploitation. King saw the war as an enemy of the poor. He saw the army using poor Black and white young men as cannon fodder to pursue the aims of U.S. imperialism. King said Vietnam was an unjust war meant to continue the domination of Western capitalist governments over colonial peoples.
King’s stance on the Vietnam war applies to U.S. imperialism’s present policy of forever war spread across multiple countries from its more than 800 military bases around the world. The ruling class formula for its forever war doctrine comes directly from lessons it learned in Vietnam: drone strikes instead of mass bombings; volunteer soldiers instead of draftees; censorship of images of mangled bodies returning from the battlefronts; and unquestioning reverence for the military.
The Pentagon-sponsored mantras of “thank you for your service” and “support our troops” go hand in hand with the ruling-class attempts to prevent the revival of a mass anti-war movement. This movement would demand cutting the military budget as well. King would join us today and urge us to rebuild the anti-imperialist, anti-war movement.
We ask that you honor Dr. King by joining our freedom struggle to end the rule of the capitalist class and to close all U.S. bases around the world.
