Long Live International Wokers' Day!

May Day 2008: Long Live the Peoples’ Struggle!
By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

May 1st, International Workers Day, is a day of struggle. Around the world, working people will march against imperialist war, to defend the rights of immigrants and to fight to protect their jobs and communities. Here in the United States, May Day has been reborn as millions of Chicanos, Mexicanos and Central Americans, as well as other immigrants and their supporters, have poured into the streets to demand legalization, and an end to raids, deportations and militarization of the border.

Some of the largest protests for immigrant rights have been in Chicago, the city where May Day was born. On May 1, 1886, U.S. workers, many who were immigrants from Europe, struck for the eight-hour day. After a clash with police in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, four leaders of the workers movement, three of them immigrants, were executed. In honor of the U.S. workers fight for the eight-hour day and the anger at the executions, May 1 was declared International Workers Day.

May Day is a day to fight the system that brings ever-greater riches to a few while the vast majority of working people labor for less and less. Families are losing their homes right and left while the CEOs of the big banks that designed and profited from the bad loans walk away with tens of millions of dollars. Corporations are stepping up their layoffs while raising their prices, putting a double squeeze on working families. Now more and more state and local governments are cutting funds for schools, healthcare and the poor while billions are poured into the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq and war in Afghanistan have killed hundreds of thousands and forced millions to become refugees. The U.S. military is supporting a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing and building walled ghettos in Iraq in a vain attempt to divide and conquer the Iraqi people. The United States and their NATO allies are losing ground in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is trying to increase their troops to prop up the corrupt and inept government set up by the Bush administration.

During the primary elections campaign, the Republican candidates have shown their true colors in calling for even more extreme attacks on immigrants in the United States. At the same time the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) have mounted a growing number of raids on workplaces and even public parks to spread terror among Chicanos, Mexicanos and Central Americans who bear the brunt of attacks on the undocumented. Right-wing anti-immigrant forces have been working at the state and local levels to harass and intimidate immigrants.
Recession, war and immigrant bashing are symptoms of the monopoly capitalist system we live under. A system where the devastation of New Orleans and Mississippi are still not healed, a system that continues to plunder the earth, pollute our skies and oceans and threatens the entire world with unchecked global warming. It is a system that ultimately must be replaced by one that serves peoples’ needs, not profit: a socialist system.

May Day is not just a day to remember wrongs done, it is a day to be inspired by those who continue to fight no matter what the odds. From Palestine to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan, the people are fighting U.S. and Israeli occupation and their puppet military regimes. From the Philippines to Columbia, the armed struggle against U.S.-backed governments of local oligarchs is intensifying. More and more countries are refusing to bow to U.S. domination of their countries, especially in Latin America where Cuba and Venezuela are but the tip of the iceberg of a growing movement for independence from the Yankee empire.

Here in the United States, struggles are also growing. For the first time in many years, more workers are joining labor unions. At the same time there are victories in electing new leadership that will fight for workers interests and not just cozy up with the bosses. The massive protests against the unjust prosecution of Black students in Jena, Louisiana, show the ongoing struggle of African Americans and other oppressed nationalities. Students on campuses from coast to coast are organizing and speaking out against the war, with a revitalized Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) taking the lead.

Over the past few months a record number of people have turned out in primary elections and caucuses, especially in the Democratic Party presidential campaign. This upsurge represents not only a rejection of the Bush administration’s policies of war, racism, service to the rich and powerful, but also the attraction of electing an African American or a woman to the nation’s highest political office. While the Freedom Road Socialist Organization supports a vote against the Bush and the Republican Party’s right-wing agenda, we know that a President Obama, and even less, a President Clinton can meet the people’s needs.

May 1 is a day to march. It is a day to build the fight back of the working class and the oppressed nationalities: Latinos, African Americans, Asian, Arabs, and Indigenous Peoples. These two forces can be seen in the last two years, where Chicanos, Mexicanos, Central Americans, and their allies, most of whom are workers, have revived the tradition of mass marches on May Day.

Long Live International Workers Day!
Legalization, not Raids and Deportations!
Stop the War, Withdraw All Troops Now!
Protect Our Homes, Schools, and Services, Make the Rich Pay!
Build Fighting Unions, No to More Concessions!

See Also:
Chicago: Huge Immigrant Rights march planned for May 1
Los Angeles: Mobilizing for May 1 Immigrant Rights Protest
Minnesota: March for Immigrant Rights May 1st

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On the Conflicts in SEIU

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Labor Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

On the Conflicts in SEIU

Take a stand for class struggle unionism, union democracy and solidarity

By the Labor Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Over the past months, two conflicts have been heating up involving one of the most important unions in the U.S. - the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). It is important to understand the issues at stake. These are our thoughts on what the key issues are and what approach we think workers should take toward these conflicts.

One conflict is internal to SEIU, in which SEIU’s 150,000-member United Health Workers-West has spearheaded a rank-and-file movement within SEIU against the increasingly business-unionist direction of the national union; the second is fighting for more internal democracy in the union. They say they will bring proposals to SEIU’s national convention this summer for ‘one person, one vote’ for offices in the international union, including the presidency.

The other conflict is between SEIU and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), with the flashpoint being a deal SEIU reached with the management of the Catholic Healthcare Partners hospital system in Ohio.

SEIU and CNA/NNOC have had conflicts in other states too, such as Nevada. In Ohio, SEIU had reached a deal with the management of the Catholic Healthcare Partners hospital for nurses to have a quick election under unusual rules where the employer petitions for the union that it wants to be voted in (in this case SEIU), without requiring any workers to actually sign cards saying they want that union. In the face of this agreement between SEIU and hospital management, CNA/NNOC actively encouraged the nurses there to vote against SEIU, which caused SEIU to back out of the elections. Now both unions are actively and publicly denouncing each other in the sharpest terms while actively working to undermine each other.

This conflict came to a head on Saturday, April 12 at the Labor Notes conference in Dearborn, Michigan, a gathering where over 1000 progressive, rank-and-file union activists from hundreds of unions around the country met at a conference to 'put the movement back in the labor movement.'

In an incident on Saturday night of the conference, during the dinner banquet, hundreds of SEIU staff and members came in buses and crashed the conference to protest the presence of CNA president Rose Anne DeMoro - though she had actually canceled her appearance there and just sent a message to the conference via video.

The SEIU protesters came in to intimidate and disrupt the most important conference for progressive rank-and-file labor fighters in the country. They engaged in pushing and shoving anyone in their way, forcing their way into the hotel where the conference took place and then trying to muscle their way in to disrupt the packed dinner reception. At least one union sister was dealt with a head injury.

SEIU’s action at Labor Notes was beyond the pale. The escalation to attempted mass intimidation and physical confrontation against hundreds of rank-and-file progressive union activists must be condemned.

These points put forward our basic orientation on the struggle within SEIU and the conflict between SEIU and CNA/NNOC. We encourage comments and dialogue on how honest fighters in the labor movement can make sense of these conflicts and push the unions forward to fight for workers’ interests.

1. We support the reform movement in SEIU. We support their call for ‘one person one vote’ on contracts, bargaining committees, local officers and international officers, including the president.

2. SEIU has been moving more and more toward business unionism. For example, in their deals with the nursing homes, in which they signed no-strike pledges, allowed the owners to choose which homes would be unionized and pledged that the union wouldn’t criticize the treatment of workers. Andy Stern says that class struggle unionism is a thing of the past - we don't agree.

3. Regarding Ohio: We don’t support what CNA did in their ‘vote no’ campaign at the Catholic Healthcare Partners hospitals. On the other hand, what SEIU did there - using an employer petition to the Labor Board for an election without the involvement of workers, and in which the employer identifies their preferred union - is a terrible direction for the labor movement.

4. SEIU and CNA have gone to war with each other. This is destructive and we don’t support the actions by either side that weaken the labor movement.

5. A mob of staff and workers forced their way into the Labor Notes conference in order to disrupt the speech by Rose Anne DeMoro, head of the CNA. Their pushing and shoving resulted in at least one person having to be taken to the hospital after falling and hitting her head. Also, an SEIU member was seen lying on the sidewalk with blood from a head wound. DeMoro had already canceled her speech in order to avoid provoking SEIU; SEIU knew she had canceled and they carried out this physical assault on the conference anyway. Labor Notes is the largest gathering of progressives in the labor movemen, and everyone knows it. What SEIU did at the conference has to be condemned.

6. Workers need to organize and fight against the attacks from the capitalists. Unions that help do that are doing the right thing. Unions that don’t fight against the attacks on workers need to be challenged by their members and changed. Leaders that won’t change should be replaced. Class conscious workers don’t want their unions to fight each other in these scorched-earth turf battles.

http://www.frso.org/about/statements/2008/seiuconflicts.htm

Eyewitness Detroit:

SEIU rank and file leader blasts attempt to disrupt Labor Notes conference

Detroit, MI - Six busloads of SEIU staff and members attempted to force their way into the Labor Notes conference here, April 13. The attack, which injured several trade unionists, was a part of the what the SEIU International calls a ‘war’ on the California Nurses Association.

Podcast

Hear Fight Back!’s interview with Joe Iosbaker, member of the SEIU Local 73 executive board, who was present during the assault.

http://www.fightbacknews.org/2008/04/seiulabornotes.htm

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