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Message of solidarity from the
Workers International Vanguard League (South Africa)
To the subway workers of BART
and the members of the California SEIU
Today (20 Aug 2009) is the 4th day of a national strike on the railways in South Africa; the commercial and industrial machinery of the capitalists have been dealt a heavy blow. All the ugliness and treachery of the union leaders rises to the surface when the capitalists lose a few pennies. The union bureaucracy don't care that all workers have had their pensions slashed by the equivalent of $1000 (our pensions are all invested on the stockexchanges which means that JP Morgan Chase and other Wall street gang members can dip into our pensions to save them from falling profits); they don't care that inflation for workers is at 15-20% locally while the demand that the browbeat workers to fight for is a measly 13% and then they eventually sign for a lowly 8%. In other words, the union leaders act as the agent of the bosses within the workers movement.
On the 28th June this year a military coup against the government of Honduras; now, the government of Honduras were no angels, being themselves agents of the ex-United Fruit company, but who played the game of controlling the masses by giving some concessions to workers. You may ask what has Honduras got to do with our struggles; there is a US military base in Honduras and it now emerges that the President Zelaya was first flown to the US base in Honduras before being shunted out to Costa Rica, in his pyjamas. In other words the Obama regime were fully complicit in the coup. The lessons that we can draw for the world working class is that the crisis of capitalism is so deep that even the usual methods they use to control the working class is not sufficient as they know that as they need to attack the gains of the working class more and more, there will be increasing resistance. Obama comes to Ghana with the smiling face of peace but after he left we heard that Africom (US military command for Africa) will be set up there. Thus we have increasing police and fascistic methods against us.
The hugely militant strike of the municipal workers in South Africa recently forced the government to give a 13% wage increase but was sold out by the union bureaucracy as the strike was gathering momentum. The union bureaucracy were compelled to call a strike but did nothing to mobilise all the forces to win the battle. The railway strike was due to start while the municipal strike was on, so the union leaders quickly signed an agreement for the municipal workers and the first day of the national railway strike, the union used the bosses to send notices to workers that the strike had been called off. The railway strike only restarted this week and then a section of the union leaders signed an agreement for some railway workers to go back to work, agreeing to only 8%. The rest of the railway workers are now isolated but even with them on strike, the impact is huge. When the Cosatu leaders (their union signed first to end the strike, while the smaller independent union is still on strike) came to address workers, they were booed and could not even speak. Workers were angry: why do you come to us when you have already signed? what is the point? Now workers are mobilising in both the municipal and railway unions to remove their union leaders and replace them with real fighters who are accountable to workers and who do not have alliances with the bosses. Now workers realise that they need to set up broader strike committees to watch over all discussions with the bosses.
Across the United States, workers are looking for a way forward; really the only way is to organise and fight. The rate of pay anywhere in this capitalist world is, in the final analysis, determined by the resistance of the working class. How long are you going to allow the Wall street gangsters and their agents in our ranks to walk all over you? We look up to the heroic tradition of the early years of the CIO. You can give a lead to the working class in the US as well as the rest of the world. Let it be known that the blood and sweat of millions of workers in Africa is what subsidises the capitalist class and even to an extent, your own lifestyles.
We call on you to organise and rise up. How long will you allow the super-exploitation of the working class of the world continue? Take the spark of the heroic railway workers from South Africa into the imperialist heartland; it is your proletarian duty. We face the same system and cannot be free unless the American workers takes control of the wealth that they produce.
We are proudly part of vanguard working class fighters in Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brasil, New Zealand, and in the United States that have come together in the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction. We support your struggle. Workers of the world unite; we have nothing to lose but our chains!