Workers' Liberty

The day before Barack Obama completed his first year in office, the new president received a startling rebuke. In an upset special election right wing Republican Scott Brown beat liberal Democrat Martha Coakley 52% to 47% for the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat. Exit polls showed that this wasn’t an endorsement of Brown’s conservative views, but a protest over what most saw as Obama’s softness toward Wall Street and the mess over his healthcare legislation.

From the US socialist group Solidarity

Students all over Europe — and, indeed, the world — are planning a wave of high-level direct action as part of the Global Week of Action, called by the “International Students Movement”.

Barack Obama’s decision to cancel US plans to build a missile defence base in the Czech Republic and Poland has raised again the issue of America’s attitude to the Iranian regime. Part of the aim of the missile cancellation was to enlist Russia’s co-operation in stopping Iran’s nuclear programme.

Any large national convention attracting over 1000 delegates and 2000 guests like the 11.5 million-member AFL-CIO gathering in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 13-17, is necessarily well-scripted and choreographed. This is to be expected.

The big change for black Americans was World War 2. Men went to fight and found that they got respect.

Zanon victory; US union recognition law setback; Korean occupation ends; Chilean miners' strike

Gordon Brown and David Cameron have been posing as champions of the National Health Service against the rabid outcry by US right-wingers.

In 1954, President Truman called for the creation of a national health insurance fund to be run by the federal government.

Martin Donohue recommends Democracy is Power, from the Labor Notes rank-and-file organising project in the US.

More redundancies are expected in coming weeks from the big telecommunications equipment manufacturer Nortel.

Two Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) locals [branches] went on strike on June 22: ‘outside workers’ (including rubbish collectors, parks employees and sewer and water-main workers) and ‘inside workers’ (daycare workers and clerks amongst others). Between them, this amounts to 30,000 CUPE members, of which about 24,000 are out on strike. The rest are classified as essential workers.

The Peace and Freedom Party of California - which is the only socialist party on the ballot, with 60,000 registered members - has called a conference on 1 August to try to form a new socialist and working-class alternative across the USA in 2010.

Martin Donohue recommends The Troublemaker’s Handbook by Labor Notes

Founded in the USA in 1979, Labor Notes is rank and file union organising project and best known for its monthly newsletter. It also organises conferences attracting over 1000 rank and file union stewards, and published pamphlets and books.

It is fortunate for the Iranian regime that it has a loyal network of supporters outside its borders, prepared to defend it against the “terrorists” as the Iranian opposition are now known. Some of the most outspoken defenders are not, as one might expect, brother clerics but… people on the “liberal” and “socialist” left.

America is a centre-right nation. Or so the pundit class in America tirelessly insists.

The crisis in the US car industry is leading quickly to savage attacks on working class pay, conditions, jobs and pensions. When Chrysler went bankrupt recently its assests were sold to a new entity headed by Fiat. As part of the deal Chrysler workers were offered “control” over the company. But, as the following comments from US journal Labor Notes, show these auto workers are being taken for a ride.

Throughout the twentieth century there were periods of class struggle that saw workers occupy factories and workplaces: in the 1920s in Italy; in the 1930s in France, the USA and elsewhere; in France in May 1968. And in Britain in 1973-75 there were over 100 occupations over job cuts.

The inauguration of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States of America, is a source of intense hope for a great many American workers. More people than ever before, including more people from Afro-American and Latino backgrounds, turned out to vote for Obama in the November 2008 elections.

GUADELOUPE: The French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe has been rocked by a general strike — a total shut-down of shops, supermarkets, schools and public services.

In May 2006, readers of Voice: AIGA Journal of Design were offered an unusual glimpse into current liberal-trade union thinking.

In May of 2006, readers of Voice: AIGA Journal of Design were offered an unusual glimpse into current lib-lab thinking. The online publication for "the professional association for design" finds an audience largely among American commercial artists, art-directors, and "brand consultants," an ambitious crowd unlikely to humble itself anywhere near a picket-line (except perhaps when crossing one). It is therefore revealing that contributing writer David Barringer's "New U? Unions have an Image Problem"—the title itself a giveaway—should figure so inconspicuously as just another case study in its parent sheet. Here we learn that US labor's pains stem principally not from any internal malignancy or crippling neoliberal policy, but from an inability to reinvent and market itself as the Latest Thing.

Every now and again, American workers issue a blunt reminder to the bosses, and to themselves, that the steady and moderate tone transmitted by their nation's great public-relations dream-machine can never fully lull them to sleep.

In an article on the US website TomDispatch, writer Mike Davis sees three reasons for thinking that Obama is unlikely to do anything like Roosevelt's "New Deal". Click here.

Workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago (who are organised by as small “rank and file oriented” union, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of) have now approved an agreement with

The crisis in the auto industry is about many things: the possible collapse of General Motors, Detroit gas guzzlers, auto emission standards, the environment, and the need for mass transportation, among others. At the centre of it all, however, is the struggle between management and the workers, that is, between capital and labour....

The choice of expression “New Deal” is of course not accidental. It is quite explicit in the report. The authors state: “Drawing our inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s courageous programme launched in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929, we believe that a positive course of action can pull the world back from economic and environmental meltdown.” They also draw on “a succession of left leaning politicians” as well as Roosevelt, Leon Blum and Clement Attlee.

In recent months the idea of a “Green New Deal” has become an ubiquitous answer to the current economic and environmental crises. Barack Obama has alluded to it. The TUC has backed the idea.

Having spent his career documenting American post-Second World war history it was perhaps inevitable that Oliver Stone would want to make a film about George (Dubya) Bush. But the film feels more like a duty than a pleasure — work undertaken to “make the record”, to get printed on celluloid a representation of this at once ridiculous and very dangerously powerful man.

The history, politics and struggles of the rank-and-file Minnesota Teamsters in the 1930s provides countless examples of how effective socialist leadership can transform the working class movement.