Affichage des articles dont le libellé est John Catalinotto. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est John Catalinotto. Afficher tous les articles

01/01/2023

JOHN CATALINOTTO
2022, the year when the working class in the USA woke up

John Catalinotto, 31/12/2022

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The working class in the United States in 2022 burst into action. Warehouse workers at Amazon, baristas at Starbucks, prisoners, coal miners, nurses, teachers, graduate students organized. Some went on strike.

NYC nurses, december 2022

Will we in 2023 see ever sharper clashes between workers in the United States and the imperialist ruling class? Remember that these billionaire owners of U.S.-based monopolies and banks still dominate the dollar, the weapons and the word. Their politicians, bureaucrats and generals who serve them control the Treasury, the Pentagon and the police. Their media hacks and bought intellectuals wield the most effective propaganda machine in history.

That workers in the belly of the beast might wage class war seems impossible. Yet in 2022, class struggles took place that were unseen in decades. Public opinion grew more favorable toward unions than in the last half century. A mood for confrontation grew as people’s lives grew less stable.

A Gallup Poll in August showed that 71% of the population approved of labor unions. That’s up from 48% in 2008. It’s the highest since 1965, when over 30% of workers belonged to unions (now it’s about 10%). This happened despite constant anti-union propaganda over that same half century.

Youth, marginalized workers

On Jan. 1, 2022, there was only one unionized Starbucks coffeeshop — in Buffalo, New York. By Dec. 9 of 2022 there were close to 270 stores whose workers approved unions. Amazon Labor Union scored a historic victory by organizing the first Amazon warehouse ever in the U.S. on April 1 in Staten Island, New York. The ALU ran an impressive multilingual, multicultural, campaign that reached all the workers and won more than half to the union. In both anti-union monopolies young workers predominate, most never in unions before.

The massive U.S. prison population is even more marginalized. Yet in Alabama, 25,000 majority-Black, incarcerated people at 17 separate prisons withheld their labor in protest from Sept. 26 to Oct. 2. They condemned murderous conditions in the jails, where they are forced to work. In their letters from the inside, organizers signed themselves “Alabama’s slaves” and said that the strike is “in protest of the continued institution of neoslavery.” (tinyurl.com/2bk43x3a)

In the fall of 2022, more than 18,000 education workers fought either for a union or improved contracts. This included graduate students at the University of California, Boston University, Northwestern, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Alaska and Yale. At the New School, a college in New York City, adjunct instructors  held a three-week strike and won a contract plus substantial back pay. Adjunct instructors have no job security or protection and, like graduate students, are the super-exploited workers at the big universities.

Over 3,000 members of the Boston University Graduate Workers Union (BUGWU) celebrated a 98.1% election victory for their union on Dec. 7. Some labor researchers have characterized the 1,414 to 28 vote as “the most lopsided NLRB election win **ever** by a bargaining unit [of] more than 1,000 people.” (In the U.S., to form a union, workers must win a vote managed by the National Labor Relations Board.)

Traditional unions

The mood of struggle spread from the unorganized to workers already in unions. One sector was the unionized nurses, members of the New York State Nurses Association. They were asked by their union leaders to authorize a strike against New York’s private hospitals. The vote pledges to go on strike if the existing contract expires before they reach an agreement with hospital management. This Dec. 22, about 14,000 of the 17,000 NYSNA nurses had already finished voting. Some 98.8 percent voted to authorize the strike. This near unanimous vote is unprecedented. But nurses have been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 and other epidemics, hospitals have cut staffing to save on wages, and nurses have been forced to work hard for long hours, under conditions dangerous to them and to the patients. Now the nurses are angry, united, and believe they can win.

Railroad workers of all different crafts had been pushed to the wall by the railroad bosses, and their many unions went to the brink of a strike. This involves the freight trains, which carry enormous amounts of goods vast distances. The workers move the same freight as they did in 1990 with about a third the work force. This creates enormous profits for the owners. The freight trains consist of hundreds of wagons. Only two engineers co-pilot the megatrains. The bosses want to cut that number to one, a dangerous step. On top of this, the railroad workers get no sick days.

Railroad workers rarely strike. A federal law allows the government to intervene to stop strikes. It has done this in the past. Transportation of goods is essential to the national economy. This Nov. 30 the Joe Biden administration forced the unions to call off the strike. Biden and the Democratic Congress provided no additional sick leave. The Democrats pretend to be pro-labor. Biden’s anti-labor action exposed the role of the president and the Democratic Party as enemies of the working class, just as the Republicans are.

Moment of truth

The prospect for worker upsurge still confronts many obstacles. Corporations have already bitterly opposed the workers through brutal union busting. They harass workers, fire some, bring court cases against unions. Capitalist owners and investors are desperate to pile up more profits within a system in perpetual crisis. And workers face a government that is on a war drive, feeding arms to a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and sending warships to the coast of China. Few weapons are more effective in combating worker solidarity than a patriotic propaganda campaign.

How workers in the U.S. will react as the economic and war crisis deepens is hard to predict. For those of us in the U.S. who despise war, imperialism and all capitalist exploitation, there is no choice but to encourage the new combativeness among workers and help build solidarity among the entire working class.

17/07/2022

RENÁN VEGA CANTOR
NATO exploits Picasso’s anti-war ‘Guernica’

Renán Vega Cantor, El Colectivo, 7/7/2022
Translated by John Catalinotto

The author is a Colombian historian

Now it turns out that NATO, a criminal organization par excellence, is using ‘Guernica’ as a symbol of its wars of aggression against the world, where the blood and pain generated by the fascist forces in the small town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, is multiplied.

This group posed in front of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ painting included Queen Letizia of Spain, Jill Biden of the U.S. and 14 other ‘First Ladies’ of ‘world leaders’ attending the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid, June 29.

The photo is outrageous, although at first glance it appears harmless: A group of women are posing, and in the background is “Guernica,” Pablo Picasso’s iconic anti-war painting. What is behind this seemingly innocent and banal photo?

To understand, it is necessary to discuss who the women in the photo are and what was happening when it was taken. Because let’s remember there is no text — in this case it’s all visual, just a photo — without a context that might allow us to understand it.

In the photo are women linked to European or North American power. They are the “First Ladies,” who met in Madrid on the occasion of the NATO Summit in early July. They were summoned there by Spanish Queen Letizia Ortiz.

That is to say, they are women who accompany the presidents and prime ministers of the member countries of that military alliance that serves U.S. imperialism. The NATO meeting spoke precisely not about peace, but about war.

In this context, the photograph is an apology for war on the part of the women linked to NATO power. Considering the circumstances, the image of Guernica has been dragged through the muck.

Guernica is a universal icon that denounces the barbarities of war in general and the fascist aggression suffered by Spain in the 1930s in particular.

31/12/2021

JOHN CATALINOTTO
La classe ouvrière des USA est-elle à la veille d'une nouvelle vague de syndicalisation ?

John Catalinotto, 31/12/2021
Traduit par
Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala 

Les travailleur·ses de trois entrepôts d’Amazon ont lancé des campagnes pour former un syndicat dans cette entreprise gigantesque qui emploie plus d'un million de travailleur·ses rien qu'aux USA. Les travailleur·ses de deux cafés Starbucks à Buffalo, dans l'État de New York, ont obtenu une représentation syndicale lors d'un vote.

Des manifestations ont été organisées aux USA, en Europe de l'Ouest et au Bangladesh le 26 novembre - ce que l'on appelle le Black Friday - dans les entrepôts d'Amazon pour réclamer les droits des travailleurs et les droits syndicaux. Les actions se sont concentrées sur les travailleur·ses de la logistique aux USA et en Europe, et sur ceux·celles de la production textile au Bangladesh.

D'autres actions sont prévues pour le 12 janvier, jour de l'anniversaire du  patron centimilliardaire d'Amazon, Jeff Bezos, et pour l’anniversaire de Martin Luther King Jr., qui est un jour férié fédéral (https://supportamazonworkers.org/jan12/)

Manifestation à Times Square, le 22 décembre. Photo Workers World 

 Cela peut sembler être un petit début. Pourtant, cela a déjà fait naître l'espoir de millions de travailleur·ses et de milliers de militants syndicaux aux USA que quelque chose de grand est en cours. Cela a fait naître l'espoir chez les organisateurs de travailleur·ses d'inverser le déclin des effectifs syndicaux au cours des 68 dernières années.

Certaines voix, parmi les communistes et les syndicalistes, et parmi les observateurs des médias capitalistes, ont évoqué l'histoire de la montée en puissance du syndicat industriel CIO dans les années 1930 et se demandent si une nouvelle vague ne serait pas en train de se produire.

Le New York Times et le Boston Globe, par exemple, ont fait des gros titres sur la campagne de syndicalisation chez Starbucks et Amazon, évoquant les années 1930. Le Times rapporte normalement les nouvelles du travail dans la section « Business ». La plupart des articles portent sur des grèves perdues ou des divisions entre travailleur·ses de base et dirigeants syndicaux.

JOHN CATALINOTTO
¿Está la clase obrera usamericana al borde de un nuevo empuje sindical?

 John Catalinotto, 31/12/2021
Traducido del inglés por
Sinfo Fernández, Tlaxcala

Los trabajadores de tres centros de distribución de Amazon han iniciado una campaña para formar un sindicato en esta gigantesca corporación que emplea, solo en USA, a más de un millón de trabajadores. Los trabajadores de dos cafeterías Starbucks en Buffalo, Nueva York, han conseguido representación sindical en una votación.

Amazon y los partidarios de los sindicatos celebraron protestas en USA, Europa Occidental y Bangladesh el 26 de noviembre -el llamado Viernes Negro- en los almacenes de Amazon para exigir los derechos de los trabajadores y los derechos sindicales. Las acciones se centraron en los trabajadores de la logística en USA y Europa, y en los trabajadores de producción textil en Bangladesh.

Hay previstas otras acciones para el 12 de enero, fecha del cumpleaños del centimillonario jefe de Amazon, Jeff Bezos, y para la festividad de Martin Luther King, Jr. (https://supportamazonworkers.org/jan12/)

 

Manifestación en  Times Square, Nueva York,  el 22 de diciembre.
Foto
Workers World /Mundo Obrero

Puede parecer un pequeño comienzo. Sin embargo, ha despertado ya las esperanzas de millones de trabajadores en USA y de miles de activistas sindicales de que algo grande está en marcha. Ha suscitado las esperanzas de los organizadores de trabajadores de que se invierta el descenso de la afiliación sindical de los últimos 68 años.

Algunas voces, entre comunistas y sindicalistas, y entre observadores de los medios de comunicación corporativos, han hablado de la historia del auge del sindicato industrial CIO en la década de 1930 y se preguntan si podría estar llegando una nueva oleada.

The New York Times y The Boston Globe, por ejemplo, han informado de la campaña de organización de Starbucks y Amazon con grandes titulares y han mencionado los años treinta. El Times informa normalmente de las noticias laborales en la sección de negocios. La mayoría de los artículos son sobre huelgas que se perdieron o sobre divisiones entre los trabajadores de base y los líderes sindicales.

En el otoño de 2021 los trabajadores sindicalizados de USA hicieron más huelgas que en décadas. En las grandes huelgas de los fabricantes de cereales Kellogg's y de los tractores y excavadoras John Deere, los trabajadores en huelga obligaron a los dirigentes de sus sindicatos a continuar con las huelgas después de que estos últimos hubieran llegado a acuerdos con la patronal.

30/12/2021

JOHN CATALINOTTO
Is the U.S. working class on the edge of a new unionization drive?

John Catalinotto, 31/12/2021

Workers at three Amazon locations have opened drives to form a union in this mammoth corporation that employs over one million workers in the U.S. alone. Workers at two Starbucks cafes in Buffalo, N.Y. have won union representation in a vote. 

Amazon and pro-union supporters held protests in the U.S., Western Europe and Bangladesh on Nov. 26 − so-called Black Friday − at Amazon warehouses to demand workers’ rights and union rights. The actions focused on logistics workers in the U.S. and Europe, and textile production workers in Bangladesh.

Other actions are planned for Jan. 12, birthday of the centi-billionaire top boss of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and for the Martin Luther King, Jr holiday. (https://supportamazonworkers.org/jan12/)

Demonstration in Times Square, Dec. 22.  Photo: Workers World/Mundo Obrero

This may seem like a small beginning. Still, it has already raised the hopes of millions of workers in the U.S. and thousands of union activists that something big is underway. It has raised the hopes of worker organizers that of reversing decline in union membership over the past 68 years.

Some voices, among communists and unionists, and among observers in the corporate media, have spoken of the history of the upsurge of the CIO industrial union in the 1930s and are asking if a new wave might be coming.

The New York Times, The Boston Globe, for example − have reported the Starbucks and Amazon organizing drive with big headlines and mentioned the 1930s. The Times normally reports labor news in the business section. Most articles are about strikes that were lost, or splits between rank-and-file workers and union leaders. 

In the fall of 2021 unionized workers in the U.S. struck more than they had for decades. In the big strikes at Kellogg’s cereal manufacturers and John Deere tractors and bulldozers, the striking workers forced their unions’ leaders to continue strikes after leaders had reached agreements with the bosses.