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The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 17 May 2, 2016
(editorial)
Fight for pensions for entire working class
From the Central States Teamsters to coal miners across Appalachia,
workers are facing attempts by the bosses and their government to slash
the pensions they counted on for retirement. The bosses at Verizon talk
of “legacy” issues. That’s just a euphemism for their drive to cut
pensions and health benefits — one of the reasons 39,000 workers there
are now walking picket lines.
Cement and warehouse workers in Montreal and Teamster mechanics at
United Airlines have also been fighting bosses’ attacks on pensions.
All workers need to support these struggles. The Socialist Workers Party
stands shoulder to shoulder with these unionists, and with fast-food and
other workers who are demanding $15 an hour and a union. Most low-paid
workers have no pension or medical insurance and can’t survive on the
paltry Social Security benefits they get when they retire.
Defending hard-fought gains is essential. At the same time, the attacks
our class faces today illustrate why fighting for health care and
pensions company by company is a dead-end in the long run. Even at the
most profitable companies, what you think is a safe “nest egg” can
easily go up in smoke, when pension funds are “invested” in supposedly
sure stocks, bonds and other financial schemes and then the bubble bursts.
During the world capitalist economic expansion from the late 1940s
through the early 1970s, “good times made it possible for workers to win
modest but real wage increases and ‘fringe benefits’ without increasing
conflicts with the employers,” Jack Barnes, national secretary of the
Socialist Workers Party, notes in The Changing Face of U.S. Politics:
Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions. The union officialdom
largely “ignored the needs of unorganized workers … as well as the
political fight for health care and other social programs for the entire
working class.”
A 1985 SWP resolution in the same book points to “the need for the labor
movement to fight for social rights such as health care and adequate
pensions for all working people. These should be government-financed on
a nationwide scale, not tied to the bosses’ profits on an
industry-by-industry basis. The unions should take the lead in resisting
the continual drive by the government and employers to make meeting
these life-or-death needs the responsibility of individuals and their
families.”
A labor party based on the unions, organizing independently of the
bosses’ parties, would join the fight for government-funded social
security to safeguard the entire working class by protecting its most
vulnerable members. It would point the way forward to ending the rule of
a handful of capitalist families and establishing a workers and farmers
government, which would reach out to working people all over the world.
Related articles:
Verizon strikers: Time to say no to concessions!
Stand in solidarity with 40,000 strikers
Teamsters hold DC rally to demand halt to pension cuts
On the Picket Line
Protests across country demand $15/hour and union
Labor actions rise in China as bosses slash jobs, wages
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