THE BIDEN PROPAGANDA MACHINE ON JOBS..... ALL LIES!
Devastating Layoffs Lead U.S. Economy Into Unimaginable Challenges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDbWKHFpyd8
Chuck Schumer Suggests DACA Amnesty Needed to Spike U.S. Population as Nation Hits Record 331.9M Residents
Then, to add insult to injury, like clockwork, right after the midterm election scam-o-rama, Senator Chuck Schumer had an epiphany, because suddenly we're "short of workers," and the only way to fill out those ballots for Democrats...er..."have a great future" is to grant amnesty (read: voting rights supporting leftists) to "however many" illegal invaders there are in the country.
Brooks: Government Intervening in Rail Talks Creates Same ‘System Is Rigged’ Hazard of Bank Bailouts
On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that the federal government intervening to prevent a rail strike will give companies an advantage in negotiations and creates a moral hazard like the bank bailouts in 2008 and will cause people to think “the system is rigged.”
Brooks said, “I’m a little — not that I’m singing solidarity for every — every morning, but, basically, the government took away the workers’ right to strike or their ability to strike. And that imbalances the negotiation going — if the railroad companies think, oh, well, the government will step in and take away the ability to strike, then that alters how they’re going to negotiate. And so it alters the balance. So, I worry a little about the — sort of the moral hazard of government stepping in. And, it, somehow, it reminds me, in sort of an inverse case, I thought the bailout of the banks in 2008 was the right thing to do. Nonetheless, it is clear that the moral hazard, the way the government behaved had long-term moral and cultural effects on this country, because people thought, the system is rigged. And if workers decide, if we lose the ability to strike, then the system’s a little rigged against us, and that could lead to some level of cynicism and distrust.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Railroad Workers Get Railroaded Again
The United States have a lot of railroads — big national lines and short regional lines, freight railways that share their track with commuter lines, lines designed with high clearance for container stacktrains. And while there are still a few tycoons in the world, the days of the railroads being the shining monuments to a single millionaire's fortune are long past; many of our railroads, like most big corporations nowadays, are publicly traded and are therefore owned and controlled by the nameless, faceless fund managers of Wall Street.
To have all these railroads, you need a lot of employees. Here, too, there have been changes over the years. In the 1800s, you needed a whole crew of engineers, of brakemen and firemen, to stoke the engine and keep the trains moving. Modern equipment has reduced the need for such crews; most trains now have just two men in the front locomotive, with a few unmanned locomotives behind, and perhaps hundreds of boxcars, tankcars, and other railcars in tow. Just two men...and some of the railroads lobby the government every day for permission to reduce that number to one. Just one man in charge of a mile-long train.
Almost all of the USA's 135,000 railroad workers belong to one of twelve railway unions, and these twelve unions have been working on negotiating a new contract for just shy of three years now. Yes, three years.
As normal extensions went beyond anything acceptable, and the risk of a massive national strike approached, the Biden-Harris regime first kicked the can past the midterms by forcing union votes on the employers' latest offer, which roughly half the members then rejected. And then, when they realized that a national strike on the heels of the critical Georgia Senate runoff might be just as embarrassing, they put it in high gear: Democrats in the House and Senate supported the White House plan to force this same contract on the railroad employees, so they could claim an accomplishment — averting a costly and crippling nationwide strike — before the runoff, in order to get Senator Warnock a six-year term.
But was it such an accomplishment, really?
By essentially ending the negotiations and shoving this offer down the unions' throats — which four unions rejected outright and which only barely passed the ones that ratified it — the Democrat leadership in Washington sided with management (which really means with Wall Street), directly against the rank and file.
"But," we are told, "there were no other options!"
Is that true?
These union members have an unusual job, unlike most others in the American economy. The nature of railroad work is that employees are stuck on a train for days at a time, far from home. That doesn't sound strange to a white-collar audience; many of us in the business world travel for work a couple weeks per month. We live with it. But we business "road warriors" know that we have our weekends, or at least our Friday nights, Saturdays, and maybe Sundays, to spend with family. And when we're not traveling, we know we're home in the evening. In short, even those of us with rough schedules at least have some days and nights that are always sure to be free.
At many railroads, the employees have no such certainty. They have generous vacation and personal time, yes — but they need to book it at least four weeks in advance. Other than such pre-booked and approved vacation time, employees can arrive home from a four-day run, go to sleep thinking they're free for a couple days, and wake up to find they need to head out again immediately.
So for 55 years — yes, 55 years — they have been trying to get some sick time into their contracts — not in search of more paid time off, but in search of an ability to stay home when they have the flu or go to the doctor when they sprain an ankle or their child has an abscess or the baby has an ear infection, without getting written up and threatened with dismissal.
And for 55 years, the union reps have been happy to accept a little more money for their employees instead of tackling this scheduling challenge. Now it's happened again, and the rank and file understandably feel cheated — not just by the employers, but by their own union reps, and by their government.
"But there were no other options!" we are reminded, again and again.
But is that true?
The government has almost unlimited power to manage and change railroad employment law. Let's consider what the government could have done, but chose not to:
- The government could have postponed it yet again, forcing more negotiations, forcing progress on the scheduling issue. They chose to force this undesirable contract on the workers instead.
- The biggest threat is that if one rail union struck, which wouldn't be so crippling, all eleven of the others would immediately strike in support, which certainly would be crippling. But the government could have made that Bismarckian strike escalation illegal. They chose not to.
- If the government was going to meddle this way anyway, they could have added some reasonable protection into the contract, to go halfway on the sick day question, such as to allow workers to repurpose some of their existing paid time off as unexpected sickness/bereavement absences. No more time, just protection from dismissal for it. They chose not to.
No one doubts that if there were a nationwide rail strike, it would be crippling to the economy. But why does the Biden-Harris regime care so much about this particular kind of economic damage, when it couldn't care less about the countless other kinds of economic damage that it has itself inflicted, directly and incessantly, ever since the day it arrived on the scene?
The Biden-Harris regime has caused an international energy crunch by stagnating petroleum and natural gas production in the USA. The Biden-Harris regime has caused a global inflation crisis, through massive inflationary spending bills, from COVID checks to college loan bailouts, from infrastructure pork to the Green New Deal (deceptively renamed the Inflation Reduction Act). The Biden-Harris regime gave away tens of billions of dollars in military equipment to the Taliban in Afghanistan and is blowing up billions of dollars more in such equipment every month by sending it to Ukraine. Our armed forces' equipment needs to be replaced, adding to the unaffordable spending of our bankrupt government.
The Biden-Harris regime proudly boasts that it has averted the damage of a strike — because the Democrats were able to use the almost unlimited power they have in rail regulation to put their jackboot on the neck of the railway workers and say, "You will take this contract, and you'll like it."
Read the headlines. The mainstream media are happy to give Biden the credit for this dubious accomplishment.
But do the mainstream media ever apply the same standard to the regime's other actions, and properly blame these people for the massive inflation, food shortages, skyrocketing gas pump prices, and general economic havoc they have wrought?
Of course not. That would take honest journalism, and the mainstream media long ago proved themselves to be anything but honest journalists.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available on Amazon.
Image via Public Domain Pictures.'
Capehart: Rail Workers ‘Had No Leverage,’ and ‘Law Needs to Be Changed’
On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Washington Post Associate Editor and MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart stated that the law allowing the government to prevent rail strikes must be changed because rail workers didn’t have the leverage that other workers do.
Capehart said that it’s good for the country that the strike was averted and that the strike had to be averted, “But the issues that the rail workers were about to strike over are not insignificant. Paid sick leave is something that they need to discuss. That’s something that is not an unreasonable ask, especially when rail companies are sitting on billions upon billions of dollars in profits last year. But the workers had no leverage, unlike, say, fast-food workers or other workers around the country, for whom a strike is that leverage point to get what they want and what they need.”
After New York Times columnist David Brooks said he worries about the moral hazard of the government intervening, Capehart stated, “But that’s why you need to — this law needs to be changed. It’s not like the president and Congress said, well, we’ll just make you take it just by fiat. The law says that that’s what they — they have the power to do that. So, to do what you’re saying, David, they need to change the law to give those rail workers the opportunity to strike.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
“The political parties don’t represent the people”: US workers furious after Biden signs bipartisan anti-strike legislation
The Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee has announced an online rally this Tuesday at 7 pm Eastern/ 4 pm Pacific time to oppose Washington’s imposition of a contract that workers rejected to block a national strike. Register for the event here. All supporters of the railroaders are urged to attend.
Send in your statement of support for the railroaders! Email the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee at railwrfc@gmail.com or fill out the form below.
On Friday morning, self-declared “pro-labor” President Joe Biden signed into law a dictatorial bill passed by Congress to impose a national rail contract which tens of thousands of railroaders voted to reject.
After the resolution passed the Senate on Thursday, Biden boasted that he “negotiated a contract no one else could negotiate.” Biden falsely claimed that the contract was “so much better” than “anything” railroaders have “ever had.”
In justifying imposing the carrier-friendly contract against the will of workers, Biden repeated carrier and union talking points portraying the 24 percent wage increase as “historic.” In fact, spread out over five years, and after workers have gone three years without any pay raises, this amounts to a cut in real wages after inflation is factored in.
Biden acknowledged that the bill did not include a single day of paid sick leave. Democrats, led by Bernie Sanders and three House Democrats who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, used a sham proposal to add seven days sick leave to save face and posture as friends of workers even as they facilitated passage of the bill imposing the contract. They knew the sick days proposal passed in the House had no chance of being passed in the Senate and crafted it in a manner to ensure it would not hold up enactment of the anti-strike measure.
Biden, after signing a law imposing a contract without sick days, lied through his teeth, saying he would “continue the fight” to get paid sick leave, adding it was something he had been at “a long time.”
Asked by a reporter when railroaders could expect to see paid sick days, Biden replied with a wry smile, “When Republicans see the light.” In other words, never.
Democrats would, however, continue to pin the blame on Republicans alone.
In an editorial published Thursday, the pro-Republican Wall Street Journal hailed Biden for “keep[ing] the trains running,” paraphrasing a notorious quote in praise of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
The rapid move by both parties to impose the contract and block a strike has shocked and angered workers across the country. The Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee has received many statements of support over the last 48 hours from workers in other industries.
“I’m not a railroad worker, but a non-union machinist,” one wrote. “And I still support your fight.” He added that he would support a wildcat strike against the contract if one were to break out.
Another wrote: “No matter the hardship a shutdown of the distribution network may impose on me, I support you guys. The only way the working class is going to get their fair share of the pie is to shut down the government.
“The political parties have been corrupted and no longer represent the people. You guys do what you need to do.”
Mary, a retired General Motors worker from Flint, Michigan, said: “Railroad workers and all rank-and-file workers deserve justice, pleasures, peace, and perks for themselves and their families just like those at the top. Where will the world be without the rank-and-file, the ones who are abandoned, used and abused? Sounds like slavery to me!
“It sounds like the officials of the rail unions are the same. They refer to the rank-and-file as ‘brother’ or ‘sister,’ but don’t mean it at all. They reek of favoritism and nepotism, with their six-figure wages, with cushy air conditioned offices. They feel and are treated like they are better than the ‘real’ workers, the manual laborers, with the huge gap between their wages.”
A young GM Flint worker said that “railroad workers standing up for themselves will send a ripple effect throughout the working class.” He continued: “It sends a message to all workers who wish to stand up against the government. Enough is enough! The working class is the majority and must unite with their brothers and sisters if we wish to live a sustainable and fruitful life.”
He added that the “railroad workers’ fight is not only for themselves, but will set an example for all working class people to not allow the government to walk all over us. Enough is enough. History is being reversed. Situations and rights that have been fought for and put in place are being stripped away. But we are the power and the ones who can change it! They are nothing without us and we must unite with our brothers and sisters to demand a comfortable life.”
Railroad workers who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site were furious.
Asked to comment on Biden’s signing of the anti-strike legislation, Tony, a signalman, told the WSWS that Biden was “full of crap,” and the agreement was “not a great deal for railroaders.”
“It is not ‘pro-labor’ denying us our right to strike,” Tony said, adding that it was “very, very disappointing.”
“The unions, Congress and whoever else pushed it to Christmas,” he said. “I don’t think [Biden] is a friend of labor, I think he is in it for the money… I think the whole thing is very, very, corrupt.”
Tony said a co-worker he spoke to following the Senate vote was “extremely angry.” While his coworker feels that many railroaders will continue to do their job, the “quality of work” will suffer given that the contract does nothing to alleviate inhuman schedules or add paid sick days.
As for himself, Tony said, “The retirement is the only thing keeping me in at this point. I have given my life to this company, a call comes in, whether I am at a basketball game, birthday. I was even called out once on Christmas while my son was unwrapping gifts. It’s like ‘sorry son, I gotta go.’”
Derek, a veteran carman from California, said, “The way everything went down... It was all planed out and staged by every party involved!” He added that the failure of the sick days amendment in the Senate was “proof that these senators are bought and paid for.”
Asked if he agreed with Biden’s statement that the contract was “so much better” than “anything” he’s “ever had,” Derek replied, “F*ck no! Because I am a yard employee, we are affected the most.”
Derek explained that the tentative agreement includes the imposition of the Automatic Bid Scheduling system. The system will eliminate “bumps” for yard workers, which was one of the few ways workers could add flexibility and a modicum of planning to their schedule.
One worker told the WSWS that forcing the contract through Congress “is complete and utter horsesh*t. ‘Pro labor’ is not all it’s cracked up to be.” The worker said the experience “basically just proved the farce of the [Railroad Labor Act] and collective bargaining in general.”
John, a railroader from Nebraska, told the WSWS that the signing of the anti-strike legislation was proof that “they are taking power from the workers.” He said it was “unjust, not giving us an ability to get a fair deal.”
“Why even have a union if they just settle for anything that puts money in their pockets?” he correctly asked.
As to the role of Biden and the Democrats, John said they cared “nothing for the workers.” He added, “It’s all just a magic show along with smoke and mirrors.” The “unfair” and “unjust” contract left railroaders with “scraps,” he said.
Another railroader told a WSWS reporter: “As I stated multiple times, this isn’t about what is best or even good for the employees. This is clearly about profit. Profit over safety and investing back into your company. Pure corporate greed at its greatest. Class I railroads spend millions and millions of dollars in campaign funds so they will get what they want.”
“I will guarantee you that all of them [shareholders and CEOs] have had a raise in the past three years,” he added. “Not to mention their bonuses. It is pure greed and the purpose is to bust unions. If you think it’s going to stop with railroads, then you better think again. We work tirelessly on call 24 hours a day, every week, every month. Never knowing when we will be home to try and be a positive role model for our children. Through pandemics and all weather conditions.
“And this is a president that says he supports unions and blue collar workers. Not to mention he stated about a month ago he got the contracts all settled. But today [he] signs an anti-strike [bill].”
Another railroad worker said the “the pro-union president” and the “pro-Democratic union” are “all take and no give.”
Another worker wrote: “There are 120 thousand [railroad workers] keeping 300 million of us alive. Get what you deserve. We’re behind you. The line must be drawn here. This far. No farther.”
Democrats move to ban rail strike, impose settlement opposed by workers
The vote by the House of Representatives Wednesday morning to ban a nationwide rail strike and impose a White House-backed settlement on 120,000 rail workers is an historic political event. The Democratic Party, which controls the House and drove the vote, has openly displayed its class role as the instrument of corporate America against the working class.
The Biden administration looked on in horror as rail workers voted to reject the settlement it had devised in collaboration with Wall Street, the rail corporations and their union servants. Now this government, which prattles endlessly about “freedom” and “democracy” around the world, is moving to ruthlessly suppress the democratic rights of the rail workers. According to the White House and Congress, workers do not have the right to vote on the terms of their employment, or the right to strike if the corporate bosses refuse to make an acceptable offer.
The mantra repeated by the Democratic and Republican politicians and the corporate media is that a rail strike must be prevented because it will damage “the economy.” No such argument has been made to stop profit-gouging by the oil companies, or factory shutdowns, or the slashing of wages and benefits by corporate employers, all of which certainly damage the economic interests of working people.
By “economy,” the representatives of big business mean “profits.” Wall Street signaled its approval by rising sharply following the House vote.
The rail bosses claim they cannot afford to meet the demands of workers, even elementary necessities like paid sick leave, available to 78 percent of all US workers according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These claims of poverty are ludicrous, coming from the most profitable industry in America, controlled by the banks and billionaires like Warren Buffett. The rail bosses can pay, but they do not want to.
That is because the issue is not just the immediate interests of the rail companies, but the entire class strategy of the American bourgeoisie. This strategy has been based on continuing the inflation of asset values—stocks, bonds and other paper holdings—while suppressing any wages movement in the working class.
The monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, clearly expresses this class strategy. The Fed has systematically raised interest rates this year, citing as its main concern the tightness of the labor market, which would ordinarily find expression in a rise in wages. The Fed is using higher rates to promote a recession, increase unemployment, and thus counteract any wages movement in the working class.
A breakthrough by an important section of workers, such as in rail, would threaten to trigger a far wider offensive by the working class, whose rising militancy has been revealed in contract rejections and in strikes by university workers, health workers, transport workers and sections of industrial workers.
This class necessity explains the remarkable speed of passage of this anti-worker legislation, which was publicly proposed by Biden on Monday evening, passed by the House on Wednesday morning, and set to be discussed by the Senate Democrats at a Thursday lunch. The ban on a rail strike is likely to become law by the weekend.
Only two other pieces of legislation have achieved such rapid passage in recent years: the rescue plan for the banks and corporations, enacted in March 2020 at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic by congressional Democrats and Republicans working together and signed into law by Donald Trump; and the emergency military and financial aid to Ukraine, rushed through this year to bolster the US-NATO war against Russia.
Congress is an impenetrable barrier when it comes to enacting legislation that would in any way support the democratic rights and social necessities of American working people. But when it comes to the key interests of the American ruling elite, at home and abroad, the supposedly deadlocked Congress reveals itself as a swift and savage instrument of class rule.
In the 2020 campaign and after, Biden proclaimed himself the most “pro-union” president in history. By that he meant he would rely on the apparatus of the AFL-CIO to control and discipline the working class and compel it to accept the dictates of big business. But Biden, like the corporate elite which he serves, has concluded that the rail union bureaucracy will not be able by itself to suppress the movement of the rank and file. Hence the need for the unfettered use of state power against rail workers.
The Democratic Party’s entire House leadership—the retiring trio of octogenarians, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn, and their chosen successors, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar—backed the bill.
The vast majority of the Democratic Party’s “left” wing voted for the anti-strike legislation as well, including Pramila Jayapal, chair of the House Progressive Caucus; Ro Khanna, former chairman of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the media celebrity and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. None of them spoke in the debate, presumably hoping to escape notice and preserve their progressive credentials in order to continue to scam the working class.
While the bill passed the House by 290-137, virtually all the members, Democratic and Republican, supported imposing the terms set by Biden’s Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) and banning a strike. The Republicans, however, were up in arms over a second bill, offered by the Democratic leadership to provide a fig leaf for the strikebreaking bill, by adding seven days of paid sick leave to the terms set by the PEB. The debate on the strike ban revolved entirely around the sick leave plan, which Republicans characterized as a “poison pill.” A majority of them opposed the strikebreaking bill as a show of opposition to the sick leave plan.
Speakers for both parties lauded the terms set by the PEB, using language that went beyond even the lies rolled out by union officials in their campaign for ratification. One Republican congressman described the PEB plan as providing “very generous” provisions for health care and wages which were “going to set an average wage and benefits compensation level at more than $160,000 a year.” Another said that by the end of the four-year deal, “the average wages for rail workers will reach $110,000 per year with total compensation averaging $160,000.” He concluded, “It's unthinkable that the four railroad unions are holding the nation economically hostage.”
In decades past, the suppression of rail workers has followed the terms laid down in the anti-democratic Railway Labor Act of 1926, which effectively stripped workers in that industry of the right to strike, a prohibition later extended to the airlines. Workers are tied to their jobs through an elaborate process of negotiation, mediation and federal intervention, which ends either with an agreement on industry terms, enforced by the pro-corporate unions, or an agreement dictated in Washington, by a PEB or Congress, and accepted by the unions as an unalterable fact.
This reactionary ritual has been disrupted by the growth of rank-and-file militancy and especially by the emergence of a new form of working class organization, the Rail Workers Rank-and-File Committee, established with the assistance of the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party. This committee has played the leading role in mobilizing and organizing opposition to the contracts and uniting rail workers across trades and companies. Hundreds of workers have attended its online meetings and many have joined in public protests against the PEB deal, including pickets at rail facilities.
The vote by the House of Representatives demonstrates that rail workers face a struggle, not just against the huge rail corporations and the ossified bureaucracy of 12 rail unions, but against the capitalist government of the United States. This means they are engaged in a political struggle, in which the central task is to break with the political straitjacket of the corporate-controlled two-party system.
These enemies are uncompromising in their ferocious hostility to the rail workers, but they are operating from a position of weakness while the rail workers occupy a position of enormous strength. This stems not only from their critical position in the US and world economy, but from the tremendous support and sympathy they will arouse from other workers from the very first moment they take the road of independent struggle for their own class interests. A rail strike in America would become a beacon for workers around the world.
The central issue is for rail workers to understand the realities of the present confrontation. The rail bosses and the Biden administration are weak, but conscious of their weakness. That is their advantage.
Rail workers do not sufficiently understand the strength of their own position, and that is their disadvantage, reinforced by the deliberate sabotage of the old and outmoded union organizations. This struggle must go forward through the development of new forms of organization, rank-and-file committees in every workshop and railroad terminus, and through the development of a new political leadership among rail workers, based on a socialist program.
Bernie Sanders, DSA play crucial role in passing anti-strike law against railroaders
On Thursday afternoon, the US Senate voted by a margin of 80 to 15 to impose the terms of a national rail contract that tens of thousands of workers voted to reject. The vote in the Senate followed the law’s passage Wednesday in the House of Representatives.
The law—which does not even include the fig leaf of seven paid sick days that was narrowly approved as a separate measure in the House—is a major assault on the democratic rights of all workers in the United States.
While Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief, the vote resolves nothing from the standpoint of railroaders. Workers still have not agreed to anything, and they cannot accept as legitimate a dictatorial vote based on the “right” to override workers that Congress has arrogated to itself.
To a far more direct and open degree than before, workers are locked in a fight against the capitalist state itself. To the extent that anything “positive” has come out of this, it is that the vote completely exposes all factions of the political establishment.
This includes the self-described “most pro-labor president in American history,” Joe Biden. But a critical role was also played by the pseudo-left factions of the Democratic Party, including Senator Bernie Sanders and the four members of the House who are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The pro-company, anti-worker, dictatorial measure could not have passed in the form that it did, with the speed that it did, without their support.
On Tuesday, House Democrats introduced a separate resolution, originally drafted by Sanders in the Senate, to add seven paid sick days on top of the contract they were imposing. This was a sham aimed at providing political cover. It had no chance of reaching the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. Even if it did pass both houses, it would do next to nothing to seriously address workers’ demands.
Before the vote on the sick days resolution, three out of four DSA members of the House joined with the vast majority of Democrats to vote in favor of imposing the contract, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Defending her vote, Ocasio-Cortez later nonsensically claimed that her vote to block a strike and impose the contract was cast in order to allow Democrats to fight for sick days in the Senate.
The Senate, after voting to reject a Republican proposal to extend the deadline into February, voted down the sick days proposal, as expected, in a near party-line vote, with Democrat Joe Manchin playing his assigned role of joining with Republicans against his own party.
Sanders’ defeated proposal in the Senate was framed as an amendment to the anti-strike bill, whereas the House proposal to add sick days was voted on separately. This means that, because both houses passed identical legislation with respect to the question of imposing the contract itself, the bill went immediately to Biden’s desk without delay. Any delay would have been completely unacceptable to the ruling class, which was demanding the contract be imposed immediately, well before the December 9 strike deadline.
The most significant element of the voting in the Senate was the expedited procedure, worked out in negotiations involving both parties and the White House, which required the unanimous consent of all 100 senators. If either Bernie Sanders, the “progressive” Elizabeth Warren or anyone else had objected to this, the vote would have been delayed.
In other words, Sanders’ support was decisive, under conditions in which the outcome of voting was known in advance. Not only that, he was a principal architect of the parliamentary maneuvering through which it was passed.
Sanders and the Democrats are cynically using the Republican opposition to sick days to posture as friends of workers after they voted to impose the contract by an even wider margin than the Republicans, many of whom voted against it for factional reasons. But even the New York Times, the house organ of the Democratic Party, could not avoid admitting the obvious.
“In a statement that perfectly captured the yawning gap between Democratic Party rhetoric and behavior,” Times editorial board member Binyamin Appelbaum observed in an opinion piece, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced railroad companies as rapacious profiteers who ‘have been selling out to Wall Street to boost their bottom lines, making obscene profits while demanding more and more from railroad workers.’ Then, just one sentence later, she announced that House Democrats would stand with the profiteers.”
There was no such admission, however, from Jacobin magazine, which functions as a mouthpiece for the DSA. Following the House vote, but hours before the Senate vote, it rushed to publish a comment with the triumphant headline: “Democrats Were Dithering on Railworkers’ Rights. The Left Just Forced Their Hand,” written by Branko Marcetic.
Marcetic’s entire column was devoted to creating an absurd narrative whereby the intervention of Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, et al. had, through brilliant and principled politicking, succeeded in shifting the entire political establishment to the left. After this pretense was exploded less than 24 hours later with the Senate vote, Jacobin discreetly moved the article from its lead spot to far down on the front page.
Exposed in the process is the entire political function and outlook of the pseudo-left. There is nothing socialist about them. They are an important element of capitalist political control over the working class. Using empty populist demagogy, they serve to corral and defuse opposition from below, provide a “left” cover for the Democratic Party as it lurches further to the right, and keep workers trapped within the confines of capitalist politics. To be blunt, they could not give a damn how many railroaders are pushed into early graves by brutal attendance policies.
Their politics reflects the outlook and defends the interests of a privileged section of the middle class, which includes in its ranks substantial elements of the union apparatus itself.
The DSA, Labor Notes and other pseudo-left groups unconditionally defend the union apparatus, which in the rail struggle and every other struggle has played a critical role in suppressing, diverting and blocking the efforts of workers to oppose the corporations. Against the initiative of railroad workers to form the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which has played the leading role in mobilizing opposition, the pseudo-left responds with undisguised hostility.
The pseudo-left, in opposition to genuine socialist internationalism, is nationalist, pro-war and pro-capitalist. What predominates within these layers is an intense struggle for access to privileges. A central feature of this brand of politics is the use of racial and gender politics, both to deflect from the more fundamental issue of class and as a lever to jockey for positions among themselves.
Therefore, the pseudo-left is deeply hostile to the working class, whose fight for equality threatens to abolish, not redistribute, privilege. Having said “A,” they will also say “B.” If the state injunction against the railroad workers is defied by the workers themselves, the next step for the ruling class will be physical repression, arrests and violence. The pseudo-left will back that as well.
The entire political system, including both its right wing and nominal “left,” is revealing itself as an instrument of class rule. The shabby maneuvering over sick days cannot conceal from the working class the significance of what has taken place. Workers will begin to draw sweeping conclusions. By its own actions, Washington has shown to workers that they cannot fight for even their most minimal demands within the existing framework.
They have unwittingly made a powerful argument for social revolution in the United States. For this, workers need real socialism, not the fake socialism on offer from the pseudo-left. This means the fight for the political independence of the working class and the fight for a workers’ government which organizes society in the interests of human need, not private profit.
What Biden and Congress’ move to ban railroad strike reveals
The move by Washington to override a clear vote by railroaders to reject a White House-brokered contract and impose it unilaterally is a major assault on the basic democratic rights of the working class. It is also a strategic experience, the lessons of which workers must learn.
After three years of endless rounds of government-mandated mediation, imposed on railroaders by the anti-worker Railway Labor Act, and after an earlier settlement that the government and union bureaucracy sought to enforce in a vote subject to endless delays and marred by serious irregularities, workers were finally set to launch a national strike on December 9. Workers face brutal employers who refuse to budge on essential and basic demands, such as paid sick leave (workers currently have none at all) and scheduling that allows them to spend time with their families.
Instead, the Biden administration and Congress are moving rapidly to ban strike action and impose the deal. Biden announced Monday night that he would seek congressional intervention, and he met with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. A vote in Congress, where the move is supported by the leadership of both parties, could take place as soon as Wednesday morning.
The struggle of the railroaders to win their demands has proved two fundamental elements of Marxism, which lay at the heart of its theory of the class struggle.
First, it demonstrates the correctness of the labor theory of value—that the source of all society’s wealth is the labor of the working class, and the source of profits is the surplus value extracted from the exploitation of workers. This is the economic source of exploitation in capitalist society.
Earlier this year, during arguments before a federal mediation board, the railroads arrogantly argued that railroaders’ labor “did not contribute to their profits.” But Monday, 400 business groups penned a letter demanding Congress act to prevent a strike, warning of apocalyptic economic consequences if railroaders stopped working.
In the United States, the most socially unequal of all the advanced economies, cults of personality are developed around celebrity billionaires, who are promoted as “job creators.” But all of these people are socially useless. The country can function without them—but not without the railroaders.
It is no accident that the most profitable industry in the US is also home to some of the worst working conditions. Through continuous job cuts, forced overtime and other methods, massive levels of surplus value are pumped out of railroaders’ labor by the hedge fund managers and billionaires who own the industry. This profit in turn finances stock buybacks and other speculative and parasitic activity.
Second, it proves the character of the state as an instrument of class rule. “The executive of the modern state,” Marx wrote more than 150 years ago, “is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”
Both parties are coming together with record speed to force through an agreement rejected by workers. Even the civil war atmosphere in Washington, where the bulk of Republicans supported an attempted coup to keep Trump in power, has so far proven to be no barrier to bipartisan unity.
No other piece of major legislation in recent memory will have been passed so quickly in Congress, perhaps save two: the CARES Act bailout in 2020, which shoveled trillions of dollars to Wall Street and the major corporations in the opening phases of the pandemic, and the bills to fund the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Even when at each others’ throats, the Democrats and Republicans come together on critical issues to American imperialism and the capitalist ruling class.
President Biden, who has assigned himself the pretentious label of the “most labor-friendly president in American history,” claims with nauseating hypocrisy that he regrets imposing the contract, but that it is necessary to protect “working families” who would be hurt by a strike. But this supposed danger could just as easily be resolved by imposing terms favorable to workers.
Instead, Biden has explicitly rejected any amendments to the contract. In the name of “protecting working people,” Biden is enforcing a managerial dictatorship on working people.
What Biden and Congress really mean when they speak of protecting the “economy” is protecting profits. These must be defended at all costs. Even a semblance of retreat is intolerable because it would encourage further opposition in the working class.
The bourgeois state is not, as reformists habitually assert, a neutral arbiter of social conflict. It is an instrument that upholds the political dictatorship of the capitalist class.
In imposing the dictates of the corporations, the Biden administration has relied on the critical services of the trade union apparatus, which is entirely complicit in the anti-democratic conspiracy against railroad workers. From the beginning, it sought to undermine workers’ initiative and delay as long as possible. It was the unions that pushed for the appointment of the Presidential Emergency Board, which is the basis for the contract that Biden is now trying to impose.
The union apparatus tried unsuccessfully to impose the agreement through voting that made a mockery of democratic procedure, while delaying a confrontation in order to strengthen Congress’ hand. They used the threat of a congressional injunction as a weapon against workers to try to convince them to accept the deal on the grounds that nothing else could be done.
The union apparatus is not only an extension of management; it exists as an industrial police force for the capitalist state.
While the legislation would be the first time Congress has intervened against a national rail strike since 1991, it is not simply a repeat of the past. It unfolds under conditions of massive social, political and economic crisis.
Biden’s request for congressional intervention is the beginning of the end of his attempts to camouflage his class policy and avoid open and premature confrontations with the working class, through the use of the union bureaucracy. This strategy is foundering against the immense alienation and hostility that workers feel towards both the union apparatus and the government.
There is a growing movement for the development of rank-and-file organizations through which workers can fight for their interests independently of the trade union apparatus. Among rail workers, this has taken the form of the Rail Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which has played the leading role in mobilizing and organizing opposition to the contracts across trades and companies.
At the same time, the campaign of Will Lehman for UAW president, based on a program of abolishing the UAW apparatus and transferring power to the shop floor, has found broad support among rank-and-file workers.
The congressional intervention, however, demonstrates the critical importance of the independence of the working class. This means not only breaking the straitjacket of the union bureaucracy, but also establishing the workers’ political independence. Workers are completely disfranchised by a political system that functions as an instrument of class rule of the bourgeoisie. Workers need their own political program, corresponding to their own historic interests, which collide with and are destined to abolish the profit motive.
Workers are being confronted with the need to take political power into their own hands and restructure society on socialist lines, reorganizing it according to human need, not profit. This is the most fundamental lesson of the congressional intervention.
WHY ARE ALL BIDEN'S CRONY BILLIONAIRES DEMS FOR OPEN BORDERS? IT'S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED.
Chuck Schumer Suggests DACA Amnesty Needed to Spike U.S. Population as Nation Hits Record 331.9M Residents
Then, to add insult to injury, like clockwork, right after the midterm election scam-o-rama, Senator Chuck Schumer had an epiphany, because suddenly we're "short of workers," and the only way to fill out those ballots for Democrats...er..."have a great future" is to grant amnesty (read: voting rights supporting leftists) to "however many" illegal invaders there are in the country.
Stronger than expected US jobs report sparks calls for further interest rate hikes
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 263,000 new jobs created in November, significantly higher than the projection of 200,000 jobs. The official unemployment rate remained steady at 3.7 percent, a low level by historical standards.
The rise in the number of new jobs comes in the face of continuing efforts by the US Federal Reserve to drive up the unemployment rate and trigger a recession through sharp increases in interest rates. Stocks fell on the news, reflecting expectations that the continuing growth in jobs will prompt the US central bank to continue its program of interest rate rises, which have already driven up rates 3.75 basis points since March. This is despite the fact that the 263,000 new jobs added in November was the lowest monthly total in two years.
The Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates again in December. It had been expected that the rate rises would begin to taper off. However, in light of this week’s jobs report, there is now speculation that the Fed will impose another sharp increase.
In remarks Friday, President Joe Biden hailed the jobs report, declaring that “we continue to create jobs,” before adding that things “are moving in the right direction.”
What he meant by that he did not elaborate, but the deliberate policy of the White House and the Fed is to drive up the unemployment rate to weaken the working class and undermine the ongoing strike movement for higher wages.
To this end he is enlisting the support of the trade union bureaucracy to prevent strikes and block wage rises. This was highlighted by Biden’s direct intervention in the rail struggle, where he has signed strikebreaking legislation passed by Congress and supported tacitly, if not openly, by the unions to impose below-inflation wage increases and virtually unlimited forced overtime.
The negative reaction by the corporate media to the latest employment numbers was based on the premise that the decline in job creation was not deep enough, thus illustrating the antisocial character of the capitalist system. In the view of finance capital, higher levels of unemployment are a positive good, increasing the competition among workers for jobs and helping to drive down wages and boost corporate profits.
The jobs numbers prompted Bloomberg News to write, “This is exactly the wrong report at the wrong time,” expressing the concerns of Wall Street that the relative availability of jobs will encourage workers to press wage demands in the face of still-surging inflation.
One analyst Bloomberg cited lamented, “It will not have gone unnoticed by Fed officials that average hourly earnings have steadily strengthened over the past three months, exceeding all expectations, and the absolute wrong direction to what they are hoping for.”
For the ruling class, the so-called fight against inflation is in fact a fight against the working class. Wall Street is determined to use the highest inflation rates in many decades to further slash workers’ living standards. While supposedly “excessive” wages are being blamed for price rises, average hourly wages have increased only 5.1 percent from one year ago, well below the current inflation rate, which stands at near 8 percent after peaking at over 9 percent.
The major job increases last month were in leisure and hospitality and health care and education, sectors that tend to have lower rates of pay. Meanwhile, manufacturing jobs fell for the first time in over two years.
Despite the continuing overall jobs growth, there are increasing signs in the form of job cuts that the interest rate increases are having their intended effect of slowing the economy. Overall employment last month actually fell in warehouse, retail and transportation.
Recently, a number of retailers and tech companies have announced sweeping layoffs, including Walmart, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook parent Meta and Google, cutting thousands of white-collar jobs. Amazon alone cut 10,000 jobs, 3 percent of its workforce, mostly in the field of human relations, not warehouse. Meta is cutting 13 percent of its workforce, or 11,000 positions.
Others announcing major job cuts include at home food delivery service DoorDash, which plans to cut 1,250 workers, or about 7 percent of its total payroll. Social media company Snap Inc. is cutting 20 percent of its workforce, and cable streaming channel AMC Networks says it is cutting 20 percent of its US workforce.
However, despite the cuts, the unemployment rate has remained steady as the number of workers looking for jobs continues to be depressed due to the impact of the pandemic. The labor force participation rate, a measure of the number of workers actually working or looking for jobs, fell in November to 62.1 percent, down from 62.4 percent in August. The numbers are well below the pre-pandemic normal.
In remarks earlier this week at the Brookings Institution, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell defended his program of interest rate hikes, cynically invoking the devastating impact of inflation on workers. He declared, “Right now people’s wages are being eaten up by inflation.”
He went on to assert, “But if you want to have a sustainable, strong labor market, where real wages are going up right across the wage spectrum, especially for people at the lower end, you’ve got to have price stability.”
In fact, the measures the Federal Reserve is taking are aimed at blocking workers from seeking higher wages to offset inflation, guaranteeing the further impoverishment of broad sections of the population already suffering under the impact of three years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Powell went on to concede that the declining numbers entering the workforce were due largely to the pandemic, stating, “Some of the participation gap reflects workers who are still out of the labor force because they are sick with COVID-19 or continue to suffer lingering symptoms from previous COVID infections.” He also referenced COVID-related early retirements, which, he said, “might now account for more than 2 million of the 3½ million shortfall in the labor force.”
The entire premise of the Fed policy is based on the lie that inflation is being driven by “excessive” wage increases. This is empirically untrue, since price rises are well above the growth in wages.
In reality, inflation is a product of the irrational and socially destructive response of capitalist ruling elites all over the world to the COVID-19 pandemic. At every point, the ruling class has prioritized short-term profit interests over human lives.
The result has been a catastrophic drop in life expectancy, the sickening and disabling of significant sections of the population, and the disruption of supply chains and production.
The funneling of trillions of dollars of public money to prop up the financial markets and fill corporate coffers, as well as massive spending on the US-NATO war in Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia have served to further stoke price rises in basic commodities. Now this money has to be clawed back from the working class.
Against the lineup of the Biden administration, Congress, the unions and the banks, the working class must advance an independent program and strategy based on the socialist reorganization of society, establishing the principle of production based on human need, not profit.
Fed chief Powell spells it out: workers are its chief target
The chairman of the US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell has made his most explicit statement to date on the aim of interest rate tightening. It is to increase the supply of labour by creating unemployment to push down the wage demands that have erupted in the face of the highest inflation in 40 years.
In a speech delivered at the Brookings Institution yesterday, entitled Inflation and the Labor Market, he made it clear that the Fed regards even the nominal wage rises of workers over the recent period—all of which fall below the inflation rate—as too high. This is because they have “been growing at a pace well above what would be consistent with 2 percent inflation over time.”
Emphasising the need for a return to a “balance” between the supply of labour and demand, Powell said that a “significant and persistent labour supply shortfall opened up during the pandemic—a shortfall that appears unlikely to fully close anytime soon.”
The main takeaway from the speech, so far as the financial markets were concerned, was the indication by Powell, tacked on to the end of his remarks, that the Fed could ease back on the size of its interest rate hikes as early as the next meeting of its policy-making body in two weeks’ time.
He said because interest rate increases affected the economy with lags, the full effects of the rapid tightening had so far yet to be felt.
“Thus, it makes sense to moderate the pace of our rate increases as we approach the level of restraint that will be sufficient to bring inflation down. The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting.”
Wall Street celebrated at the prospect of cheaper money. The Dow rose by 700 points, the S&P 500 jumped 3.1 percent and the interest-rate sensitive NASDAQ finished up by 4.4 percent.
Powell’s remarks appear to be a concession to elements within the Federal Open Market Committee who want to see a slowing in the pace of rate rises.
According to the minutes of the November meeting, which increased rates by 75 basis points for the fourth time in a row, there was considerable support for an easing while the effects of one of the most aggressive tightening cycles in decades were assessed.
“A slower pace in these circumstances would better allow the committee to assess progress toward its goals of maximum employment and price stability,” the minutes said.
But having made a concession on one side, Powell came down firmly on the other saying the timing of any moderation was less significant that the questions of how much further the Fed would need to go.
Powell is very much an adherent of former Fed chair Paul Volcker who imposed record interest rates in the early 1980s—devastating the US economy in what was an onslaught against the working class.
“It is likely that restoring price stability will require holding policy at a restrictive level for some time. History cautions strongly against premature loosening of policy. We will stay the course until the job is done,” he concluded.
The “job” has got nothing to do with bringing down prices per se. It is directed at slowing economic growth and increasing the supply of labour by creating unemployment, as Powell’s comments on labour supply during his speech made clear.
He said projections from the Congressional Budget Office revealed a shortfall in labour supply of around 3.5 million—the result of slower population growth and a lower labour force participation rate.
Some of the drop in the participation rate was due to the effect of COVID infections and the impact of Long COVID and an increase in retirement. “Excess retirements” now account for around 2 million of the labour market shortfalls.
“The data,” he said, “so far do not suggest that excess retirements are likely to unwind because of retirees returning to the labour force,” he said, noting that older workers were still retiring at higher rates.
The second factor was the slower growth in the working age population due to a combination of a “plunge in net immigration and a surge in deaths during the pandemic” probably accounting for 1.5 million “missing workers.”
In this situation, the only way the labour market can be brought back into so-called “balance” is by slowing the economy and pushing up unemployment.
Powell made this clear several times in the course of his speech.
The policy stance of the Fed was to “slow growth in aggregate demand” allowing supply to catch up with demand and restore the “balance,” bringing stable prices over time. “Restoring that balance is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth.”
Emphasising this issue, he said: “For the near term, a moderation of labour demand growth will be required to restore balance to the labour market.”
On the specific issue of inflation, Powell noted that “core services,” other than housing, and covering a wide range of services from health care and education to hospitality, constituted more than half of the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index. This index excluded price rises due to food and energy.
This category, he said, could be the most important for understanding the future evolution of core inflation. “Because wages make up the largest cost in delivering these services, the labour market holds the key to understanding inflation in this category.”
On the interconnected issues of the “tight” labour market and wages, Powell was explicit. There were still about 1.7 job openings available for every person looking for work and there had only been “tentative signs moderation of labour demand.”
Some measures of wage growth had turned down recently, but the declines were “very modest” and “still leave wage growth well above levels consistent with 2 percent inflation over time.”
Summing up, he continued: “Growth in economic activity has slowed to well below its longer-run trend, and this needs to be continued.”
Powell’s speech underscores the central issue emphasised in the analysis of the World Socialist Web Site.
This is that in every struggle, over wages and working conditions, workers are facing a front comprising the corporations, the Biden administration, the courts, and the capitalist state, including its financial arm, the Fed, for which the trade union bureaucracy functions as the policemen enforcing their dictates.
Then, to add insult to injury, like clockwork, right after the midterm election scam-o-rama, Senator Chuck Schumer had an epiphany, because suddenly we're "short of workers," and the only way to fill out those ballots for Democrats...er..."have a great future" is to grant amnesty (read: voting rights supporting leftists) to "however many" illegal invaders there are in the country.
What's more, Mexico generally benefits from shipping its surplus uneducated population to the states to take the pressure valve off the potential for unrest. Corrupt Mexican officials often reap "fees" from letting illegal migrants from other countries as well as their own pass through their territory. MONICA SHOWALTER
Migrant enclaves already are at the top of the U.S. lists for bad places to - 10 of the 50 worst places in America to live according to this list are in California, and all of them are famous for their illegal populations. MONICA SHOWALTER
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