The Freedom Road Socialist Organization stands in solidarity with the 1400 workers of UE Locals 506 and 618 who have been on strike against Wabtec Corp since June 22, 2023.

Members with the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Locals 506 and 618, who build locomotive engines for Wabtec Corporation in Erie, Pennsylvania voted down the company’s last, best and final offer on June 22 and have been out on the picket line now for over two months.

The workers are striking to win wage increases, better vacation scheduling and more environmentally friendly production. However, some workers have reported that the most important issue that led to the walkout was the right to strike over grievances. Striking over grievances used to be common, but now it’s nearly unheard of in the United States.

Although fighting for the right to strike during a contract is rare, it is an important tool for class struggle unionists. The ability to strike over grievances is powerful. UE has a long, proud history of class struggle unionism, making it an outlier in history and a beacon for labor militants wanting to build a union movement capable of challenging our oppressors. UE’s pamphlet “Them and Us Unionism” published in 2020 draws a clear line in the sand between workers and the capitalist class.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization is proud to raise our fists in solidarity with the 1400 members on the picket line in Erie. Many of us are trade unionists leading fights on the shop floor every day. We hope that all workers, union or otherwise, join us in standing in solidarity with the strikers from UE. Talk to your coworkers about the courage displayed by these workers and encourage your union to send messages of support and donations to the strike fund. A united working class can accomplish anything. When we fight, we win!

#EriePA #UnitedElectricalWorkers #Strikes

The protests that have swept our country since the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in May have put the issue of police violence front and center. The labor movement has a special responsibility to speak out on this issue. Too many of our members have experienced violence and harassment from the police due to nothing more than the color of their skin. All workers who struggle for a better life are threatened when the police are used to violently suppress protest. And just as our country is starved of needed social services due to a bloated military budget, state and local services are underfunded due to overspending on increasingly militarized police forces.

We join the call to “defund the police.” What does it mean to defund the police? It means reducing police budgets so we can invest in the economic development and social services that are needed to make all communities safe and prosperous. We need more social workers, mental health professionals, child advocates, sexual assault specialists, and other workers who are actually trained to respond to the types of crises that all too frequently fall to police. The feasibility of such an approach is clear in the fact that nearly every other industrialized nation spends less on police, more on social services, and has lower crime rates.

We also need massive investment in preventing the conditions that lead to crime. We live under an economic system that purposefully makes people unemployed in order to keep wages low — it is official government policy to raise interest rates if the unemployment rate gets “too low.” The grinding poverty of unemployment and low-wage jobs is often concentrated in communities of color and rural areas, especially those that have suffered deindustrialization. Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that some desperate people turn to breaking the law to provide for themselves and their families. The only way to address this problem is by, as we declared in 1991, “restructuring our economy to provide decent jobs at a living wage for all.”

Policing has its roots in institutions that were established to control workers, enforce white supremacy, enable colonialism, and protect the wealth of the capitalist class: slave patrols, “Indian constables,” and the hiring of armed men by governments and corporations to control workers and break strikes in coal fields and industrial cities. The first state police force, the Pennsylvania state police, was created at the behest of mine and factory owners to suppress organization in the coal mines and iron factories and was modeled on the U.S. occupation forces in the Philippines.

Bosses continued to use police, the National Guard, and privately-employed company guards to violently suppress the labor movement through the mid-20th century, with hundreds of workers killed during the organizing drives and strikes of the 1930s. In what came to be known as the “Memorial Day Massacre” in 1937, police opened fire on a peaceful march of striking steelworkers on the south side of Chicago, killing ten and injuring nearly one hundred workers and supporters. Public outrage over the massacre, which was captured on film by Paramount Pictures, helped make this the last large-scale killing of striking workers in the U.S., but did not prevent police from violently attacking picketers — including many UE members — during the 1946-47 strikes that consolidated industrial unionism in the electrical, auto and steel industries .

Even when the police are not being used to violently attack strikes and protests, their role is to protect the employers’ property, not strikers’ rights — in other words, to protect capital from labor. During UE Local 234’s 2017 strike against Fairbanks Scales in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, police backed up management’s aggressive attempts to bring trucks through picket lines, and in Locals 506 and 618’s 2019 strike against Wabtec in Erie, Pennsylvania, it was the police who enforced the injunction against mass picketing.

If police violence against picket lines is less common today than in the past, the same cannot be said for police violence against those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Under the guise of “law and order,” anti-worker politicians have sought to divide the working class by portraying Black people as violent and subhuman, who must be suppressed by police violence. Black people are two and a half times as likely as white people to be killed by the police, with Indigenous and Latino people also significantly more likely than white people to be killed by the police.

In the wake of the protests following the 1991 acquittal of four white Los Angeles police officers who repeatedly beat Black motorist Rodney King, UE’s General Executive Board declared that “we demand increased federal funding to our cities and states for jobs and social programs to eliminate the economic devastation” that fueled the uprising. Instead, the decades since have seen a bipartisan consensus that the way to deal with social problems is to direct funds — and, increasingly, military equipment — to the police. The share of municipal budgets allotted to police departments has risen consistently over the last four decades, with police now accounting for between 20 and 45 percent of cities’ discretionary spending.

In 2014, after the killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, the UE board noted that “Local police departments are being transformed into municipal armies, equipped and deployed for combat, which treat residents as ‘the enemy’ rather than as the constituents whom they are committed to protect and serve.” Just as our bloated military-industrial complex leads to unnecessary wars and military interventions overseas, police forces that are too well-funded and too well-armed have come to be seen as the solution to all of the problems in our communities. As the saying goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and too many others are not the result of “a few bad apples” — they are the product of an institution rooted in the violent control of working people and BIPOC communities. Small scale reforms, outlawing police practices that should never have been allowed in the first place, are nowhere close to a full solution. Reforms have been heralded many times before, none of which have seriously dented the systemic problems in American policing.

Most police are drawn from working-class families. However, they then become part of an institution that is used for racist and anti-worker purposes. We understand and support the right of any group of workers to organize, but as long as the organizations formed by police use their power to defend violent and racist practices — and as long as police are used to further the interests of the employers instead of those of working-class communities — we cannot consider their orders, associations or “unions” to be part of the labor movement. These organizations have colluded with racist and anti-worker politicians to obtain contracts that effectively make prosecution of most law-breaking by police almost impossible — something none of the rest of us can negotiate. Some have been used to give cover to far-right white nationalists who have made their way onto police forces. Police are given a power that no other worker has, the right to use lethal force, and with that power must come high levels of accountability. When they feel like they can do whatever they want, they are a threat to all working people, and especially to BIPOC communities, whose voices have historically been ignored.

The recent protests have been large, multiracial, insistent, and composed largely of the working class, including UE members. They have been held not only in big cities, but also in small towns across the U.S. Many protesters, especially younger people, understand the connection between racist police murders and the role of police in suppressing the working class. The Movement for Black Lives and other organizations involved in the protests have broad pro-worker agendas. We encourage all UE locals to support the protests and to consider holding solidarity actions in the workplace, whether it is taking a knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, wearing stickers or buttons, or otherwise engaging their members in this critical issue.

It is in the increasing numbers of working people who are willing to engage in aggressive struggles for justice that we find hope for the future of our country, and we urge all in labor to join in this movement.

#UnitedStates #Labor #PoliceBrutality #PeoplesStruggles #UnitedElectricalWorkers #GeorgeFloyd

La Crosse, WI – 75 workers at Aramark Laundry Services staged a walkout during peak work hours on July 31. Members of United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 1121, the workers have been in contract negotiations for several months and have been stonewalled by management.

While the workers have taken bold steps in that time frame, including lunchtime rallies and a march on the boss to deliver a petition, this is their first shutdown of production for a prolonged period. Workers are demanding higher wages, paid sick days and no new wage tiers.

The rally was led by the local’s bargaining committee, along with supporters from nearby UE Locals and regional leadership. The rally was followed by a loud and energetic march around the property, with chants of “Who are we? UE!” and “No contract? No peace!”

Aramark’s industrial laundries are notorious for their low wages and unsafe working conditions. Many workers complained about work areas with temperatures reaching above 100 degrees during the hot summer months. Despite these brutal conditions, Aramark is a multi-billion multinational corporation, with their La Crosse facility servicing some of the most profitable companies in Wisconsin.

“We work for a 21st century sweat shop,” said Local 1121 leader Charlene Winchell. “Aramark is richer now than they have ever been. They are making billions of dollars with all of our hard work. We deserve a slice of the pie.”

When local president Jay Jamesson asked the rallying workers if they were willing to strike to meet their demands, a wave of hands shot up across the crowd. Negotiations are expected to continue this week.

#LaCrosseWI #UnitedElectricalWorkers #Aramark #Strikes

The Ukraine Crisis and the New Cold War

On February 22, the elected president of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup which was supported by the Obama administration. Since then, the country has been torn apart and violence has escalated. On May 2 in the southern city of Odessa, supporters of the new unelected Kiev government, including members of the violent extremist Right Sector party, surrounded peaceful, unarmed anti-government protestors who had taken refuge in the city’s main union hall. The right-wing crowd then set the union hall on fire, and 46 people died by being burned alive or jumping to their deaths trying to escape.

We are troubled by this horrific atrocity, and by the fact that mass murder was committed by burning a union hall. We are concerned about the conflict in Ukraine, by the massing of Russian troops near Ukraine’s eastern border and U.S. and NATO troops and planes in neighboring Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which signal the return of the Cold War and the threat of a much hotter war.

A defining period in the history of UE was our union’s courageous opposition to the Cold War. At the end of World War II there was great hope among union members and other Americans for a continuation of FDR’s New Deal, with progressive social and economic policies including national healthcare, expanded Social Security, and progress against racial discrimination in employment. What we got instead was the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act and the Cold War. Military spending, including the nuclear arms race, continued to trump all other priorities. Local conflicts all over the world were treated as global showdowns between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. In the name of “fighting communism,” the U.S. sided with the French and British colonial empires against independence movements, and backed many brutal dictators against their own people. The 40-year-long Cold War included some very hot wars – notably Korea and Vietnam. The CIA organized coups that overthrew democratic governments that dared to disagree with the U.S. government or corporations. On the domestic front, the Cold War was a massive attack on civil liberties and an effort to wipe out organizations, including UE, that refused to enlist in the Cold War.

UE said the U.S. government should direct its resources toward making life better for its own people. UE favored negotiations to resolve differences between the U.S. and the Soviets, and to end conflicts such as Vietnam. UE said the arms race robbed human needs on both sides of the Cold War divide. As UE President Albert Fitzgerald often said, “You can’t have guns and butter.”

The Cold War supposedly ended with 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, which had been composed of the USSR and its Eastern European allies. A key event was the 1990 agreement between the U.S., West Germany and the Soviet Union allowing the reunification of Germany. In those negotiations, President George H.W. Bush promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO – the U.S.-led anti-Soviet military alliance – would not expand any further east than Germany.

Yet despite that promise, and despite Russia and its former allies no longer having communist governments, NATO has moved steadily eastward toward Russia. NATO now includes the former socialist states of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as three former republics of the U.S.S.R. which border Russia – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Two more former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia, have been promised eventual NATO membership. NATO is now clearly an alliance against Russia, sitting on Russia’s doorstep.

In late 2013 the U.S. began expressing hostility toward Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and sympathy with the often violent anti-government protestors in Kiev. Yanukovych was not an exemplary leader – we now know that he’d been feathering his own nest – but he was elected in a fair election, and the U.S. supports many governments that are more corrupt and undemocratic than his.

What made Yanukovych a target for regime change was his decision in November to reject harsh loan terms from the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) – including the kind of pension cuts and austerity that have driven Greece into poverty. Yanukovych instead accepted a more favorable offer of economic aid from Russia. His proposal that Ukraine have good economic relations with both Russia and the EU was rejected by the EU and the U.S., which wanted a Ukrainian government hostile to Russia.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland met in December 2013 with Oleh Tyahnybok, head of the far-right Svoboda Party. In a 2012 resolution the European Parliament had called Svoboda “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic” and appealed to democratic parties in Ukraine “not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.” In May 2013 the World Jewish Congress labeled Svoboda “neo-Nazi” and called for the party to be banned. Svoboada leader Tyahnybok has called for ridding Ukraine of the influence of “the Moscow-Jewish mafia.” Svoboda is also anti-gay, anti-black, and hostile to equal rights for women.

But since the overthrow of Yanukovych, Svoboda holds four cabinet ministries in Ukraine’s “provisional government” (including deputy prime minister.) In a Feb. 4 conversation caught on tape, Nuland and the U.S. ambassador to Kiev discussed who would get which positions in the new government, including cabinet seats for Svoboda.

In Europe since the end of World War II, there has been a political taboo against allowing fascist and neo-Nazi parties into any government. The Obama administration has now broken that taboo and allied our country with fascists in Ukraine. According to German media reports, about 400 elite mercenaries from the notorious U.S. private security firm Academi (formerly Blackwater) are taking part in Ukrainian military operations against anti-government protesters in southeastern Ukraine. News that Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden has joined the board of directors of Ukraine’s largest private gas company adds the element of conflict of interest. Obama’s policies toward Ukraine and Russia have significantly increased the chances of military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, the world’s two nuclear superpowers. This threatens world peace.

It is unclear whether the presidential election conducted on May 25, under conditions of near-civil war, will help to defuse the crisis in Ukraine.

We reaffirm UE’s historic position. We favor peace and friendly, equitable economic relations between nations. We favor negotiations rather than military confrontation to resolve disputes, including this one. We believe the countries that defeated Nazism in World War II, including the U.S. and Russia, should work together against any resurgence of racism, anti-semitism and fascism in Europe.

Bruce Klipple, General President

Andrew Dinkelaker, General Secretary-Treasurer

Bob Kingsley, Director of Organization

May 27, 2014

#Ukraine #AntiwarMovement #UnitedElectricalWorkers #USImperialism #Europe

The unions include the Chicago Teachers Union, with 30,000 members; Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Locals 73 (25,000 members) and Health Care Illinois/Indiana (80,000 members); and the United Electrical workers Western Region, a smaller union but very important. This is the union that includes the workers who famously occupied Republic Windows and Doors in 2008 and the same factory, now called Serious Materials, in February of this year.

Joe Iosbaker, Executive Board member of SEIU Local 73, moved the resolution to endorse in an executive board meeting. He proposed that they unite behind the main slogan of the march, “Jobs, Housing, Healthcare, Education, Our Pensions, the Environment: Not War.” President Christine Boardman spoke in favor, saying, “This is a very important march and I want to see a big contingent of our members out there.”

Sarah Chambers, Executive Board member of the Chicago Teachers Union, introduced the motion to their House of Delegations.

Commenting on the Local 73 endorsement Iosbaker said, “I’ll be proud to see my union brothers and sisters marching against the NATO/G8 agenda of war on the poor in the interest of the rich.” Local 73 was an early supporter of Iosbaker and 23 other activists who are being attacked by the FBI and Department of Justice for their anti-war and international solidarity efforts.

The text of the resolution against the 2012 NATO Summit adopted by Chicago Teachers Union follows:

“Whereas, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exists for the purpose of making war against nations and groups that the 1% deems at odds with its interests, and has been directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and

Whereas, public sector employees, reeling from reduced state and federal revenues due to economic contraction, war and tax cuts for the wealthy, have been especially hard hit; and

Whereas, NATO as a vestige of the cold war, continues to fight unjust wars throughout the world even though the cold war has ended; and

Whereas, military budgets and expenditures have taken money from education, social services, healthcare and other needed programs causing hardship to the American people and causing a loss of jobs;

Whereas, people should be put before profit; money should go to jobs, education, pension, healthcare, housing and the environment, not war;

Therefore Be It Resolved, that this body goes on record as expressing its opposition to the NATO summit being held in Chicago May 2012; and

Further Be It Resolved, that we call on our members to mobilize and join the planned permitted march to be held on May 20th 2012; and

Be it Finally Resolved, that CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) submit a workshop proposal to the People’s Summit on May 12th-May 13th to education people on our vision and to unite with organizations and individuals who dissent from the global vision of NATO.”

#ChicagoIL #AntiwarMovement #UnitedElectricalWorkers #ChicagoTeachersUnion #NATOSummit #ServiceEmployeesInternationalUnionSEIU

Defend Our Civil Liberties

Despite positioning himself as a supporter of civil liberties during the 2008 campaign, President Obama has chosen to largely embrace rather than reject the sweeping changes made during the Bush regime, including the so-called Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) amendments, as well as executive orders and legal opinions. These greatly expanded the ability of government agencies to spy on and disrupt law-abiding residents and organizations in the U.S.

UE has warned for years that when the government is given powers of domestic surveillance and “counterintelligence,” it can and will use them against ordinary, innocent Americans, particularly those who speak out against government policies, and especially those who represent a credible power base, such as the labor movement. We saw this during the McCarthy period in the 1940s and 1950s, when the combined forces of the federal government, big business, and their business-union co-conspirator