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Vol. 80/No. 16 April 25, 2016
(SWP campaign statement)
Solidarity with Verizon strikers!
The following statement by Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party
candidate for vice president, was released by the SWP National Campaign
Committee April 13.
Today I walked the picket line with Verizon workers in Philadelphia,
forced on strike by the bosses’ drive to increase profits. I urge fellow
workers to do likewise, and to organize solidarity for the nearly 40,000
Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers members from New England to Virginia. Their fight is
our fight!
Verizon is notorious for its relentless attacks against workers and
their unions. They have slashed the number of union workers nearly 40
percent in the last decade, pushing more work on those who remain and
outsourcing to nonunion contractors.
The bosses forced strikes in 2000 and 2011. This contract expired in
August 2015 and the bosses have refused to budge. They won concessions
last time and now want more — higher health care costs, cuts in
pensions, job speedup, forced transfers for weeks at a time, and deeper
inroads against the union. They call some 80,000 retired workers “legacy
problems,” whose benefits should be slashed. Meanwhile, the company made
$39 billion in profit over the last three years.
Workers here and around the world face attacks as the crisis of
capitalist production, trade and profit rates deepens. The bosses want
us to pay for their crisis — in jobs, wages, social benefits, life and
limb.
Our most powerful weapon is our ability to stop production by militant
mobilization, and to win solidarity. A fighting example can spur new
labor organization and determination.
Verizon bosses say they have already trained thousands of scabs to cross
the picket line. And they’ll use all the weapons at their command — the
cops, court injunctions to limit pickets, and slanders in the
big-business media.
For decades union officials have told workers to look to capitalist
politicians, not our own class power. The working class needs our own
party, a labor party based on the unions, to mobilize independent of the
bosses and their parties.
A labor party would be a tribune of the people and mobilize to defend
all our struggles, from strikes to protests against cop brutality and in
defense of a woman’s right to choose abortion. It would carve out a road
to fight to take the power out of the hands of the capitalist rulers,
form a workers and farmers government and join the fight for a socialist
world.
Support the Verizon workers!
Related articles:
Help Socialist Workers Party get on ballot and campaign
We need to overthrow the dictatorship of capital’
Communist League in UK: No road to ‘fair capitalism’
SWP: Workers control needed for nuclear safety
Verizon workers strike against concession demands
Australia gov’t presses attack on construction union rights
On the Picket Line
Union: Amtrak rail worker deaths ‘totally unacceptable’
One-day strike opposes job cuts at Calif. warehouse
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