THE Communications Workers of America Executive Board has endorsed the youth-led Occupy Wall Street Movement.
Occupy Wall Street youth campaigners have joined CWA members demonstrating for jobs at Verizon and Verizon Wireless, and CWA members are to join the demonstrations to focus public attention on the impact of Wall Street’s greed on ordinary Americans. The organised working class and the masses of youth are beginning to come together.
The CWA said of the ‘Occupy’ movement: ‘The 700,000 members of the Communications Workers of America strongly support the Occupy Wall Street Movement. It is an appropriate expression of anger for all Americans, but especially for those who have been left behind by Wall Street.’
It added: ‘The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are spreading throughout the country. We will support them and encourage all CWA Locals to participate in the growth of this protest movement.’
The movement says that it is defending ‘99% of the US population against the wealthiest 1%.’ That this is a revolutionary task is obvious.
The attractive power of the movement of youth is also becoming obvious. Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), says of Occupy Wall Street: ‘It has brought into sharp focus a reality that cannot be denied.’
He added: ‘Corporate greed is responsible for harming the lives of millions of working people and unemployed people.… A small group of firms, banks, and corporations now hold trillions worth of our collective wealth and assets. That money should be invested in job creation on a massive scale and used to rebuild countless lives damaged by the recklessness that caused the recession.’
Jim Gannon, a spokesman for the Transport Workers (TWU) said: ‘We view the protests as young people who are articulating the same kind of things that we’ve been trying to articulate… they’ve really thrown a spotlight on issues that are bothering people, especially bothering workers like our members.’
Meanwhile, Verizon Communications workers who abandoned their two-week strike in August have resumed picketing and are expected to resume their strike action.
At the same time ILWU longshoremen are picketing and blockading the port of Longview near Seattle in a very determined defence of their jobs.
Meanwhile, the crisis of US capitalism is sharpening and with it the numbers of the jobless, and the homeless, workers and youth are growing rapidly. The demands of the bosses and their political frontmen for tax cuts for the rich and for the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid are adding gallons of fuel to the flames.
The masses of youth, the most revolutionary section of the working class, are being driven forward by the crisis, and are inspiring the trade unions into joining the struggle to break the stranglehold that the bankers and the bosses have on the USA.
Workers are absolutely disgusted with the failure of Obama and the Democrats to win even minimal concessions for the vast numbers of the US population who are suffering under the crisis of capitalism. They consider that while they voted for Obama all they got was Bush!
The US trade unions are now being forced into major struggles in state after state, while the Democratic Party is stabbing them in the back at every turn.
There is only one way forward for the masses of workers and youth.
The trade unions must break with the Democratic party and set up a Labour party that will use the power of the unions to fight for jobs and to house the homeless. It must stand a candidate at the next presidential election on a socialist programme both at home and abroad.
At the same time the most conscious workers and youth must establish a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International to provide the leadership that will be necessary to carry through the American socialist revolution.