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Vol. 82/No. 02 January 15, 2018
(front page, editorial)
No worker has to die!
“The unions are important not just for pay but for safety,” Pete
Batteast told a memorial meeting in honor of his father, a steelworker
who was killed on the job in March.
The number of workers killed or injured on the job — from steel and
construction to mining and oil refining — is rising, a direct
consequence of the bosses drive for profits.
All work can be performed safely. It won’t happen by relying on the
bosses or their government. Workers need control over production and job
conditions. Above all this means using the collective power of the union
ranks to enforce safe conditions.
In the late 1960s and 1970s coal miners organized to carry through a
revolution in their union and to force the coal bosses to accept safety
committees in the mines with the power to shut down production over
unsafe conditions, including coal dust. Black lung declined more than 90
percent from the 1970s to the mid-1990s.
The bosses never accepted this incursion on their power to put
productivity and profit before all else, and succeeded in pushing the
union back. By 2015 only 21 percent of miners worked in union mines.
Without union protection, black lung returned with a vengeance — the
rate among miners with 25 years on the job today is double what it was
in 1999.
The stronger and more militant the unions are, the safer conditions will
be, not just for the workers on the job, but for society as a whole.
The bosses try to divide working people — employed against unemployed,
Black against Caucasian, immigrant against native born, old against
young, women against men. The unions need to be at the forefront of
fights to unify the working class and win allies among farmers, ranchers
and all who face the wrath of the propertied rulers. Champion the fight
for amnesty for immigrant workers, against police brutality, for women’s
right to choose abortion, for a government-funded public works program
to put millions to work at union wages.
Workers are willing to fight, but all too often union officials divert
our struggles into support for one or the other of the capitalist
rulers’ parties — the Democrats and Republicans.
Workers need our own independent working-class political party and
course of action to fight the rulers’ assaults.
Through struggle, we can transform ourselves — as workers and farmers
did in Cuba when they overthrew the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in
1959 and took control of their own destiny. We can take political power
and reorganize production to satisfy human needs, not capitalist
profits. This is the road to a society based on human solidarity where
no worker has to die on the job. This is the road of the Socialist
Workers Party. Join us in this struggle!
Related articles:
Bosses push for profits fuels rise in job deaths
Deaths on the job go up for third year in a row
Amtrak, gov’t seek to cover up bosses’ role in Wash. derailment
Fla. rail worker fights firing after speaking out on safety
‘Unions are important not just for pay, but for safety’
Truckers on strike across Russia face gov’t attacks
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