SWP: Join the fight to defend jobs, wages, safety
https://themilitant.com/2020/09/19/swp-join-the-fight-to-defend-jobs-wages-safety/
BY LAURA GARZA
Vol. 84/No. 38
September 28, 2020
Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy speaks to
Alexis Santiago Avila, at Farmer John packinghouse in Los Angeles Sept.
14. “People want their voices to be heard,” he said of demonstrations
against cop brutality, but “violence in the protests is a problem.”
MILITANT/JOSEFINA OTERO
Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy speaks to
Alexis Santiago Avila, at Farmer John packinghouse in Los Angeles Sept.
14. “People want their voices to be heard,” he said of demonstrations
against cop brutality, but “violence in the protests is a problem.”
LOS ANGELES — How can we change worsening working conditions, combat
cuts to our hours and deal with rising prices? These questions were at
the center of discussions among meatpackers, retail workers and
farmworkers when they met the Socialist Workers Party presidential
ticket — Alyson Kennedy for president and Malcolm Jarrett for vice
president — during the candidates’ tour of Southern California in early
September.
“We have work, but many people don’t,” farmworker Fernando Muñoz told
Kennedy in Oxnard, a town in an important agricultural area. Muñoz is
paid $13 an hour but was working only 1 or 2 days a week when he was
first called back from a three-week layoff. Now he gets up to 40 hours
per week, as opposed to 50-plus before the pandemic.
“We think there should be a union in every workplace,” Kennedy told him.
She described her visit to the Yakima Valley in Washington state, where
she learned about the fight waged by fruit packinghouse workers. “The
bosses provided nothing to protect workers from the spread of
coronavirus, so they struck even though they didn’t have a union. Their
fight won some of their demands and built their self-confidence. Now
back at work, they are fighting to build a union, an example for all
workers.”
Muñoz got a subscription to the Militant and a copy of Red Zone: Cuba
and the Battle Against Ebola. The book explains how the Cuban Revolution
sent more than 200 volunteer doctors and other medical personnel to West
Africa to help fight the deadly virus. Their actions showed the kind of
men and women only a deep-going socialist revolution can produce.
Paula Sixto, also in Oxnard, told Kennedy she injured her hand at a
packinghouse job, where she said “conditions are very unjust and workers
don’t have enough money for rent and bills.” Sixto has carpal tunnel.
She listened closely as Kennedy described how the fight for safer
working conditions was part of the strike by fruit packinghouse workers
in Yakima Valley.
“Sometimes the line speed is slower and sometimes it is faster,”
Carolina Cabrera told Jarrett when he and Kennedy spoke with workers
during a shift change at the Farmer John meatpacking plant in Vernon.
Cabrera has worked at the plant for eight years.
Speedup endangers workers
“Using union power is the only way to control line speed,” Jarrett
replied. “We need for workers to get together to wage a fight for
control of production, including all aspects of health and safety.”
Daniel White has worked at the plant for three years. He told Kennedy
that at the beginning of the pandemic workers “had to double up on work
time, because too many were getting sick.”
The plant was one of several in the Vernon area where workers faced
outbreaks of coronavirus. The government had given meatpacking bosses
the OK to increase line speeds, pushing workers ever-closer together.
Delegations of workers at Farmer John pressed bosses for improved
conditions, winning some gains but only in parts of the factory.
“Trump knew about the virus and did nothing,” White said.
“If Biden gets elected there will be no difference,” Kennedy replied.
“Our campaign is for a labor party, because neither the Republican nor
Democratic Party represents working people.” A labor party would
organize workers in our millions to fight for our interests.
Jorge Cordon, who has worked at the plant for 18 years, told Kennedy he
supported establishing unions in every workplace, but said a lot of
workers won’t “because of the corruption.” Kennedy said that in the
course of standing up to bosses’ attacks, workers can transform unions
into the fighting tools we need. We are the union, she said, and we can
use them to change our conditions.
Alexis Santiago Avila told Kennedy he has been in the U.S. for 18 years,
but still only has a work visa. “Our party supports amnesty for
undocumented workers,” she said. “This is needed especially in the
fields, where workers are paid lower wages.”
They also discussed the fight against police brutality. Kennedy said she
joined protests to press for charges against the cops who killed Breonna
Taylor, Elijah McClain and many others. “People want their voices to be
heard,” Santiago said, “but the violence in the protests is a problem.”
This question was taken on by Jarrett at a campaign forum a few days
after two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies sitting in their patrol
car were shot by an unidentified person. “My campaign condemns the
shooting of the cops, and those who showed up at the hospital,” blocking
entry to the emergency room where the cops were being treated, chanting
“We hope they die!”
Jarrett said, “This hurts all those who want to build a working-class
movement,” one urgently needed today to fight for protection from the
deepening capitalist crisis, and to organize workers to defend our
common interests.
For information on how to get involved in the SWP campaign, contact a
campaign office.
Solidarity with Dominion grocery workers in Canada!
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, issued
this statement Sept. 15. The strike being waged by retail workers at
Dominion stores in Newfoundland, Canada, members of the Unifor union,
against cuts in wages and full-time jobs is in…
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More workers face rising hardship and uncertainty about the future today
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WORKERS NEED A UNION MOVEMENT IN EVERY WORKPLACE. The Socialist Workers
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unions to defend the interests of all working people. We need to fight
growing employer attacks on our…
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Robert G. Ingersoll
“Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never
inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the
Church does neither.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll,