250 Million Workers And Farmers Strike Nationwide In India

India saw one of the biggest nationwide strikes by workers, joined by protesting farmers today. Several states saw a complete shutdown. Over 250 million workers across sectors participated in the strike, called by 10 central trade unions and hundreds of worker associations and federations.

Kerala, Puducherry, Odisha, Assam and Telangana witnessed a complete shutdown while normal life was partially affected in several other states as workers struck work and took to the streets, protesting against the “anti-worker” and pro-corporate policies and labour laws as well as the new farm laws brought in by the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata party government, among other demands.

A workers letter from BIC's factory in Greece.

The situation inside the BIC factory in Greece has hit rock bottom. At this point our health is at serious risk. With their stance, the employers are revealing in the cruellest manner that they have no regard for our lives when their profit is on the line.

Nothing has changed in the production process. We keep working with no room to swing a mouse lacking every means of protection (masks, gloves, etc.), putting ourselves and our families at high risk. The factory management not only chose to keep the factory open, but also to make the workers work overtime and to increase the production. They are acting as if nothing is wrong and are asking from us to be “calm” and “patient” without taking into consideration the risk they’re putting us at.

THE WORKING CLASS IN FRONT OF A DOUBLE THREAT - Defending Our Lives, Defending Our Rights

translated ftom Class March a left masss organsation of working people in Greece

The working class and the workers are in front of a huge and unprecedented challenge. The alarm declared by the system’s headquarters worldwide because of the corona-virus pandemic doesn’t have only the side of the immediate threat to health and lives of the masses. It also has the side of launching a round of intense attacks on labor and mass rights worldwide.

The system’s forces are already preparing for a new cycle of recession, another plunge of financial size. The blows received by entire branches due to the pandemic bans, in parallel with episodes of intensified economic competition, are sure to be passed on to the working class and workers everywhere in the world.

Marx Pays a Visit to Foxconn

Translation of an illustrated piece recently circulated among electronics workers in the Pearl River Delta, followed by a commentary by Victor Grant. The Chinese version (马克思来到富士康，他惊呆了！) was originally published last spring on WeiGongHui (微工荟 — “WeChat Union”), an independent platform of news and analysis by and for young migrant workers in southern China.

Clara Zetkin: Fascism

In Fascism, the proletariat is confronted by an extraordinarily dangerous enemy. Fascism is the concentrated expression of the general offensive undertaken by the world bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Its overthrow is therefore an absolute necessity, nay, it is even a question of the every-day existence and of the bread and butter of every ordinary worker. On these grounds the whole of the proletariat must concentrate on the fight against Fascism. It will be much easier for us to defeat Fascism if we clearly and distinctly study its nature. Hitherto there have been extremely vague ideas upon this subject not only among the large masses of the workers, but even among the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat and the Communists. Hitherto Fascism has been put on a level with the White Terror of Horthy in Hungary. Although the methods of both are similar, in essence they are different. The Horthy Terror was established after the victorious, although shortlived, revolution of the proletariat had been suppressed, and was the expression of vengeance of the bourgeoisie. The ringleaders of the White Terror were a quite small clique of former officers. Fascism, on the contrary, viewed objectively, is not the revenge of the bourgeoisie in retaliation for proletarian aggression against the bourgeoisie, but it is a punishment of the proletariat for failing to carry on the revolution begun in Russia. The Fascist leaders are not a small and exclusive caste; they extend deeply into wide elements of the population.

“We Rise Together, Homie”

An interview with Antoine Dangerfield, whose video of an Indianapolis wildcat strike went viral this week — and led to his firing. He doesn't regret it, though.

Interview by Micah Uetricht 

Source: Jacobin Magazine

 

US labor history is full of moments of tremendous drama and upheaval. That history is riveting stuff, but getting a raw, unfiltered view of the human drama of workers fighting their bosses on the shop floor, the place where the day-to-day confrontation between workers and bosses takes place (and occasionally boils over), is rare.

Which is what makes Antoine Dangerfield’s recent viral video a must-watch. A thirty-year-old welder in Indianapolis, Dangerfield worked for a construction contractor building a UPS hub. On Tuesday, he says that a small number of Latino workers (millwrights, welders, and conveyor installers, in his telling) working for a different contractor but in the same hub were ordered home after disobeying the orders of a white boss he calls racist.
In response, the entire group of workers — over a hundred, in Dangerfield’s estimation — walked out.

The Merthyr Rising 1831

The story of the 1831 uprising of workers in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. The struggle that (for some) used the the Red Flag for the first time in the history of the working class movement.



THE BACKGROUND
In 1829 depression set in in the iron industry
which was to last for three years. As a result Merthyr Tydfil Ironmasters made many workers redundant and cut the wages of those in work. Against a background of rising prices this caused severe hardship for many of the working people of the area and, in order to survive, many people were forced into debt. Often they were unable to pay off their debts and their creditirs would then turn to the Court of Requests which had been set up in 1809 to allow the bailiffs to seize the property of debtors. As a result the Court was hated by many people who saw it as the reason for their losing their property.
Against this background the Radicals of Merthyr, as part of the National movement for political reform, organised themselves into a Political Union in 1830 to lead the local campaign for reform. In November 1830 they called for demonstrations in Merthyr to protest against the Truck System and the Corn Laws. The campaign was actually supported by some local Ironmasters. William Crawshay of Cyfarthfa Ironworks and Josiah John Guest of Dowlais Ironworks, for example, both supported the campaign. By the end of the year 1830 the campaign had broadened to embrace the Reform of Parliament, and the election of a Liberal Government in Great Britain led to a bill being brought before Parliament to reform the House of Commons. The Bill was welcomed by the Merthyr Radicals as a step in the right direction, although it did not give Merthyr a Parliamentary Constituency and only extended the right to vote to the Middle Classes rather than the workers. In April 1831, however, the Bill was defeated in a House of Commons vote, the Government resigned and a new General Election was called to fight on the issue of Parliamentary Reform.