61% of college students have to take out loans to pay for their education; for many of these students, their debt becomes a lifelong burden. In total, over 44 million people in the US owe more than $1.5 trillion to various loan providers. The majority of this debt has accrued over the last decade.
Since 1987, the number of students enrolled in public and private institutions has almost doubled. In this time, costs have more than doubled. Students often have no choice but to accept these loans, sometimes with fluctuating interest rates that go as high as 25%. Once out of school, students are discovering that wages aren’t high enough to live, much less service their debt.
Parasitic loan companies have a record for making the repayment process as difficult as possible, charging fees for payments and forcibly holding back payments to extend the debt. As loan company Navient (changed from Sallie Mae as lawsuits piled up) admitted in court in a rare moment of corporate honesty: “there is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumer.” These words sum up the industry, cold and unwavering in their pursuit of maximum profits.
It should be no surprise that more than 3,000 students default on their loans every day. The ultra-rich shareholders at Navient do a service to their fellow capitalists when they saddle workers with the distraction of never-ending debt. They count on the constant harassment by debt-collectors and the threat of wage garnishments being enough to keep people in line. They count on us always running on the hamster wheel to avoid poverty, with little time to consider a future beyond debt bondage. They expect that we’ll suffer our debts in private while we’re denied jobs because of our credit scores. But there are 44 million of us! We must unite to demand a cancellation of all student debt! Education should be free; other workers have won this right across the world. It’s time we catch up! Cancel the debt!
Citing low unemployment, Trump boasts that the economy is booming under his leadership. Is this really true? Unless you’re counting the profits of the ultra-rich, no.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) determines the official unemployment rate by taking a telephone poll. If you’ve worked just one hour during the week of their poll, you count as employed. Excluded are more than 2.3 million workers locked up in jails, prisons, and detention camps across the country.
Add to this more than 5.2 million people who currently want a job but have not looked for work in the last 4 weeks. Usually these are merely discouraged workers, but according to the BLS, they have “dropped out of the labor force.”
Economists who continue to take the unemployment rate at face value wonder why wages have barely budged. “Full employment” ought to enable workers to bid for higher wages. If the bosses deny a pay raise, the worker can easily take another job—or so the theory goes.
High paid economists might learn a thing or two from talking to workers. As it turns out, low-wage, temporary, and part-time jobs make up the largest growing sector in the economy, continuing a trend of the last thirty years. A recent study by the Brookings Institution found that more than 44% of U.S. workers make less than $18,000 a year. 36% of the workforce has to work more than one job to get by.
These conditions typify the most recent phase in a global class war in which the capitalists have, with few exceptions, outmaneuvered workers for control over the world’s factories, farmlands, mines, etc.
Capitalists want governments that guarantee them labor as cheap as they can get it, whether that means cutting social programs or enslaving workers. Whenever they succeed in installing governments for this purpose—whether by coups, invasions or bribery—they advance their goal of pitting workers against one another in a global race to the bottom.
We workers have the power to turn the tide. The capitalists depend solely on the labor of the international working class for their profits. Our labor makes the world run. Workers in the United States need to realize that our well-being is bound up with the well-being of the workers of the world. For this reason, we need to come to the defense of any nation that resists the domination of our shared enemy—the ultra rich bankers and bosses who want nothing more than to grind us down so that they can live it up. Workers should treat the borders of every nation that resists U.S. imperialism as they would a picket line.
All workers have the right to a safe and reliable job that allows them time to care for their communities. But we’re going to have to fight to get it; the first step is to know which side you’re on.
Minimum Wage Has Increased in 46 States It’s time Louisiana workers get paid $15 an hour! Raising the Minimum Wage will Raise the Wages of All workers
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.”
