As Clarios strike ends second week:
Lessons of the 1984-1985 AP Parts strike in Toledo
The 285-day strike by Toledo AP Parts workers was the longest in the history of the city and bears important lessons for autoworkers today.
Shannon Jones•
Labor history
Video: Gary Tyler reflects on his frame-up and the fight for his freedom at solo art exhibition in Detroit
In this video, Socialist Equality Party Assistant National Secretary Lawrence Porter spoke with Gary Tyler, who spent 42 years in Louisiana’s Angola penitentiary for a crime he didn’t commit.
Lawrence Porter•
Gary Tyler, then and now: From class war prisoner to artist
Gary Tyler, a class-war prisoner from Destrehan, Louisiana, was framed up at the age of 16 for a murder he did not commit and incarcerated for nearly 42 years. He is now an artist and mentor of ex-prisoners.
Lawrence Porter•
“They had an outsized influence because they had an outsized ambition”
Interview with author Ahmed White on the historical significance of the Industrial Workers of the World
Ahmed White, of the University of Colorado Law School, is the author of Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers.
Tom Mackaman•
Tom Mackaman•
Tom Mackaman•
Shannon Jones, Marcus Day•
James Brookfield•
Tom Mackaman•
Latest articles
Backing Trump’s funding cuts, Georgia Republican says children should work instead of getting free school meals
Republican Congressman Rich McCormick proposed in an interview that free school lunches be removed from schools and children be sent to work for low wages. Bans on child labor were hard-fought battles of the American labor movement.
•Andy Thompson
Jimmy Carter and the 1977-78 coal miners strike
The 111-day walkout by coal miners, which began on December 6, 1977, was a major strategic experience for the American and international working class.
•Jerry White
Stalinism in the writing of American labor history
A new biography of West Coast longshoremen’s leader Harry Bridges
Any historical appraisal of Bridges, the most notable Stalinist labor official in US history, raises important historical questions for workers today.
•James Brewer, Tom Mackaman
“As a playwright, I have a responsibility to the world I live in”
A working class drama at the Theatre Factory in Istanbul: Ekrem the Communist
WSWS reporters recently conducted an interview with the artistic team at the Theatre Factory, which focuses on the class struggle and social issues.
•Our reporters
School year begins with teachers’ set to strike across Europe; Nurses and the disabled protest in Iran; South African municipal workers in City of Tshwane continue pay strike despite intimidation
Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa
As new school year begins, teachers plan strikes over cost of living and education budget crisis across Europe; nurses protest pay, workload and redundancies and the disabled protest cost of living crisis in Iran; South African municipal workers in City of Tshwane continue pay strike despite union calls to return to work and state intimidation
•
A warning to autoworkers: Why the Fain administration is promoting former UAW President Douglas Fraser
Fraser, who was president of the United Auto Workers union from 1977 to 1983, oversaw the destruction of 57,000 Chrysler jobs and cuts in annual wages of the equivalent of nearly $40,000 per worker in today’s terms.
•Jerry White
Students, workers, mark Uruguay's Day of Student Martyrs; Multiple strikes continue across Ontario
Workers Struggles: The Americas
Demonstrators marched at the University of the Republic to commemorate the killing of student Liber Arce by Uruguayan police while salt miners and Toronto grocery workers are among those continuing strikes in the Canadian province of Ontario.
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As Clarios strike ends second week:
Lessons of the 1984-1985 AP Parts strike in Toledo
The 285-day strike by Toledo AP Parts workers was the longest in the history of the city and bears important lessons for autoworkers today.
•Shannon Jones
What filmmaker Ken Loach makes of The Spirit of ’45
Loach’s conception of the working class is closely bound up with the nationalist straitjacket imposed for so many decades by the Labour and trade union bureaucracy.
•Stefan Steinberg
Class struggle at Caterpillar: Lessons from the past
The sellout deal that the UAW is attempting to impose at Caterpillar is the latest in an unbroken chain of betrayals by the UAW based on its bankrupt nationalist and pro-company orientation.
•Shannon Jones
Spain: 5,000 doctors continue strike in Community of Madrid, joined by doctors in Valencia; West Bank: Palestinian teachers strike over pay; South Africa: health and public sector workers walk out for pay increase
Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa
Doctors on strike since January in Community of Madrid, Spain, joined by medics in Valencia demanding improved pay and staffing levels; Palestinian teachers in West Bank into second week of pay strike while protests continue over government-backed murders of Palestinians; South African health workers walkout over pay joined by some public sector workers defying government interdict
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“They had an outsized influence because they had an outsized ambition”
Interview with author Ahmed White on the historical significance of the Industrial Workers of the World
Ahmed White, of the University of Colorado Law School, is the author of Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers.
•Tom Mackaman
Book review
Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers
The greatest testament to the IWW’s influence was provided by the extraordinary lengths the American ruling class went to destroy it.
•Tom Mackaman
Video: SGP chairman pays tribute to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
Against the pro-war SPD, Liebknecht declared that, “The main enemy of the German people is in Germany: German imperialism, the German parties of war and German secret diplomacy.”
•Christoph Vandreier
Congressional strike ban against railroaders
Labor historians’ “open letter” to Biden falls on deaf ears
Instead of clarifying workers on the basic class and historical issues at stake in the present struggle, the letter provides political cover for Biden.
•Tom Mackaman
Eugene V. Debs and the struggle of railroaders
Debs’ life—from locomotive fireman, to trade unionist, to socialist candidate for American president, to class war prisoner—holds crucial lessons for today’s workers.
•Tom Mackaman
Film Review
The Wobblies (1979): What the IWW means for the working class today
The film’s most remarkable, and moving, aspect is that its dialogue is carried forward almost entirely by former rank-and-file members of the IWW.
•Tom Mackaman
An interview with Mark Kruger, author of The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland
The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke with Mark Kruger about his new book, the 1619 Project, and the current state of American politics.
•Douglas Lyons
Tentative agreement announced in Kellogg’s strike
The lessons of the International Committee’s 1995 global struggle to defend jobs at Kellogg’s
As workers at Kellogg’s plants in the US prepare to vote on the rotten tentative contract agreement being pushed by the BCTGM they should take note of the critical effort to organize workers internationally in defense of jobs and conditions at Kellogg’s that was launched by the International Committee in 1995.
•James Brookfield
How US capitalism established the modern two-party system of bourgeois rule
American capitalism has systematically disenfranchised the poorest and most exploited sections of the working class.
•Fred Mazelis