Tag: Worker Action

For the story behind this video click here: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/…

Original article: http://socialistworker.org.uk/…

Though this is a British publication, by British socialists who don’t like to play much with the other socialists, I heartily concur with the sentiment of the article.  We know Obama’s signiture piece of legislative action was a sell-out to the health insurance industry.  We know that his bailout of the auto industry was done with the insistance upon dropping the workers’ right to strike action during the next contract and included draconian cuts in pay and compensation.  We know that workers are faring badly under Obama, and probably will continue to do so.

Strikes are the workers’ forge and anvil.  If we are to rebuild our economy, it will be done on the backs of the workers, not the bosses or politicians.  It’s time to, as the old song says, srike while the iron is hot.

Original article via World Socialist Web Site:

Some two million Greek workers participated in a general strike on Wednesday. The mass one-day action was called in response to austerity measures being imposed by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) government of Prime Minister George Papandreou.

Original article, subtitled Lee Sustar reports on signs of movement among the union movement’s rank and file, via Socialist Worker (US):

AFTER A grim year for organized labor, those committed to class-struggle unionism can find a few good reasons to be cheerful this holiday season.

Original article, by Séamus Loughlin, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

Ireland: Well over 250,000 Irish workers in the public sector were on strike on the 24th of this month. There would have been many more, but the unions guaranteed emergency cover including flood relief in the west, the midlands and the Shannon area and in Cork City. It’s a feature of every major strike, not just here, but throughout the world, that the well fed representatives of the bourgeois and particularly the mean spirited and greedy petty bourgeois attempt to criticise and attack the worker’s movement. These fine gentlemen and ladies are always the first to reach for the box of tissues as they weep crocodile tears about the poor and the vulnerable who they claim (wringing their hands in woe) are being let down by the strikers. The fact that the government have been slashing and burning public services for the last year and attacking the vulnerable seems conveniently to have been forgotten.

Original article, by Keith Jones, via World Socialist Web Site:

Toronto’s 24,000 city workers, now in their second week of strike action, have been the target of a concerted, venomous attack by Toronto’s corporate media.

When workers stand together, the oligarchy shudders.

Day after day, the Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Sun, and Star have churned out columns and editorials castigating the modestly paid inside and outside workers for “enjoy[ing] perks that others can only dream of”-perks like the “notorious” paid sick days that they “selfishly” refuse to give up.

Paid sick days are perks that others can only dream of? C’mon. If the writers at the papers don’t get paid sick leave, then they should be on strike, too!

Original article, by David Lindorff and subtitled How the Bosses are Undermining the Stimulus Program, via counterpunch.com:

Reports are starting to appear suggesting that laid-off or underemployed Americans, and the long-term unemployed, are losing patience with the Obama administration’s and Congress’ economic stimulus plan, which thus far has not done anything to arrest the growth of unemployment, now at close to 20 percent of the US workforce, at least as unemployment used to honestly be counted in the 1970s and early 1980s.