A U.S. Workers’ Action Program for 2017
The following is a proposal for an action program to be submitted to the Labor Rising Against Trump organizing event for December 8th in Berkeley, CA. This action program stands as a political program of struggle for the entire working class against Trump, the bosses’ political parties and the capitalist system:
FOR LABOR ACTIONS FROM MLK’s DAY TO INAUGURATION DAY AND BEYOND
Rallies, teach-ins, forums, and one-day work stoppages will not defeat or end the war on workers and specially oppressed peoples and nations which the capitalist class has hired Trump to carry out.
The global capitalist crisis is deepening and the planned switch from neoliberalism and globalization to isolationism and trade protectionism will not resolve the capitalists’ crisis because it will not counter the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Either the profitability of capital is restored by destructive wars and attacks on wages or a new economy based on human need not profit will be established by labor and its allies. Labor needs to counter the bosses’ class war with its own historic program, strategy and class struggle tactics to create a society in which workers, the oppressed and all species can survive.
Trump promises to resolve the crisis in favor of the bosses by deepening the attacks already launched by the Obama- Bush-Clinton regimes on public services, education, immigrants, Muslim people, and the Black and Brown communities. Trump’s billionaire-friendly appointees, the the same folks who stole your homes, are committed to degrading your wages, your working conditions, and the protections for the water and air. His appointees are against protecting the environment and workers’ safety and health. They are committed tools of rentier and finance capital.
All enemies of the working class, self-determination and the environment are arrayed against indigenous America at Standing Rock. They were stalled by occupations and demonstrations that united the struggle for Treaty Rights with environmental defense supported by allies and a veterans brigade. This united direct action points the way forward. This battle is not over, nor is it limited to the Dakotas. Labor must break with the master class’ anti-environmental agenda.
To win, workers and oppressed peoples need to engage in prolonged/indefinite general strike actions across the U.S.A. against the rule of the capitalists. To prepare and build winning strikes, we need to democratize our unions. Forms of workers democracy, such as active steward committees, action committees, factory, field and office committees and mass structured workers/oppressed assemblies are the building blocks that we need to establish in all public and private sectors workplaces, in the schools and universities, the formal and informal community centers and in the streets to occupy and administer these facilities. Even after General Strikes workers will need to engage in occupations and work-ins to maintain workers control. Building an effective fighting movement of the workers and oppressed can only happen through workers’ democracy, with elected and accountable leaderships subject to immediate recall.
Our movement needs to advance transitional demands that can break the grip of the capitalist media and the bosses’ worldview over the masses of workers who suffer feelings of powerlessness, disenfranchisement and fear economic insecurity, and fear of the national security state, and who suffer racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim terror.
To unite labor and its allies and defeat the political and economic rule of the bosses, the 0.1%, the capitalist class, our program must include:
1) End attacks on undocumented workers! Free all detained undocumented workers! End the ICE deportation raids! Full employment and citizenship rights for all workers! End super-exploitation through working class solidarity across borders, we demand: Same work, same contract, same wages and working conditions! Open all the borders. Capital crosses borders at the click of a mouse; we defend the right of all workers to cross the borders and seek work and establish their homes without restrictions and arrests or deportation. Revive the underground railroad and labor defense guards to protect immigrant workers, families and youth.
2) Abolish the prison industrial complex! End the racist war on drugs which is really a war on the poor! Justice for all victims of racist cop terror! Turn the mobilizations for justice into organizing and mustering to form up Labor Black and Brown Self Defense Guards and tribunals! Build Labor Black and Brown strike actions to bring murdering racist cops and vigilantes to justice! For mass labor-centered mobilizations to stop the fascist KKK and Nazis, to include “alt-right” neo-fascist and organized white supremacist groups! Labor needs to expel the cops and prison guards unions from the labor federations! Free Mumia Abu Jamal, Free Leonard Peltier, drop all charges against Rasmea Odeh. Free all political prisoners.
3) Defend and advance the gains of the women’s movement. Fight for free, accessible quality abortion and women’s medical and reproductive services. Extend and provide paid FMLA rights for all workers. Free 24 hour child care. End pay disparities and discrimination in employment, academia and housing!
4) Full democratic rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Create safe spaces and sanitary facilities for LGBTQ people. Labor needs to fight anti-LGBTQ violence in society and any discrimination at the hiring halls and in the workplaces.
5) Free quality public education for all! For open admissions! Provide stipends based on need! From pre-school to graduate school, provide free, high quality education and enough classes for everyone. Seize the endowments. Defeat privatization of education. No voucher for private or religious schools! Defeat the Democratic/Republican/ Gates/Buffet/DeVos charter school drive! Down with the political appointees, elected officials, and state-imposed trustees who strangle our colleges and school districts! For student, faculty, staff, and workers’ community control of education! Abolish the Regents!
6) For free quality healthcare from cradle to grave for all through socialized medicine! For our families to have health care, the profit system must be driven out of medicine! Nationalize the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry with no compensation to the major shareholders under democratic workers control.
7) Open the Books: workers demand to open big oil’s books and those of all major carbon burners to expose profits from pollution. Expose business, national security state, intergovernmental secrets! Down with all whistleblower laws. Free Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden! Hands off Julian Assange!
8) Defend and Extend Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Welfare! Restore social services and benefits for the poor, seniors, children, and the disabled. No one should be homeless, hungry or go without medical services or education. Feed, house, and educate the people! For a 100% TAX on all WAR PROFITS!
9) Full Employment at a living wage at prevailing union rates for all who are willing and able to work. To end unemployment and the squeeze on workers’ wages, we demand a sliding scale of wages and working hours: 30 hours’ work for 40 hours’ pay! Share available work–reclaim advances in productivity from the expropriators! Organize unions of the unemployed! Demand the passing of Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)! No layoffs, furloughs, or speed-ups!
10) Trillions of dollars for immediate emergency public works programs! When banks and corporations plead poverty in the face of workers’ reasonable demands for jobs, fair pay and full benefits, we need to fight for the nationalization, under workers’ control without compensation, of failing enterprises and the commanding heights of industry and finance. Production needs to be rationally planned and retooled to provide public transportation and energy infrastructure that obviates the need for resource extraction and the commensurate waste of petroleum. Immediate nationalisation without compensation to pay for ending emissions and all other measures needed to reverse climate change. Social production must be planned and coordinated under workers’ control as a step toward staving off the environmental disasters threatened by climate change. Build for an emergency national congress of all workers in struggle.
11) The working class is international! Workers have no nation! Labor needs to stop the bosses’ wars and military adventures. The rise of the China/Russia bloc challenges for the right to exploit the semi-colonies, so the west accelerates the war drive, putting inter-imperialist war on the horizon. A labor-led, anti-imperialist anti-war movement is required to defeat the class enemy of all workers, the national capitalist class at home. The defeat of imperialism is a victory for workers and the oppressed of the world.
12) Close SOUTHCOM, AFRICOM and CENTCOM, disband NATO and SEATO. Abolish the National Defense Authorization Act. End military aid to Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and all oppressive regimes. US forces and proxies out of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Close foreign bases, dismantle the ballistic missile systems, disarm nuclear warheads, about face the Pacific Pivot. For enlisted workers in the military to form Service Persons Unions and a Come Home Now movement.
13) Fight for the political independence of the labor movement and the working class! To achieve the above demands, workers, oppressed peoples, immigrants and students need to break with the Democratic and all capitalist parties (Greens, Republicans, American Independent, and Libertarian) and build a multi-racial, multi-ethnic fighting Workers’ Labor Party based in the trade unions, alongside unorganized workers and the unemployed, together with the communities of color, immigrants and the LGBTQ community. A fighting Workers’ Labor Party will be a tribune of the people. Only a Fighting Workers’ Party committed to defeating capitalism by revolutionary means and founding a workers’ government based on democratic workers councils and a workers militia can establish a rational socialist plan for human needs to win these demands.
14) Build a new workers international to create a socialist world to stop capitalist exploitation, war and climate destruction!
Communist Workers Group (USA), Email: cwgclasswar@gmail.com, http://www.cwgusa.org/
Labor Donated, 12/11/2016
