Tuesday, September 5, 2023

N.A.F.T.A. JOE BIDEN'S AMERICA: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!!! - Labor Day: Joe Biden Looks to Add Half a Million Foreigners to Workforce as 44M Americans Remain on Sidelines

Biden’s easy-migration policies are deliberately adding the foreigners’ problems to the lengthening list of Americans’ problems — homelessnesslow wages, a shrinking middle class, slowing innovation, declining blue-collar life expectancy, spreading poverty, the rising death toll from drugs, and the growing alienation of young people 


Labor Day: Joe Biden Looks to Add Half a Million Foreigners to Workforce as 44M Americans Remain on Sidelines

US President Joe Biden speaks during Labor Day celebrations in Philadephia, Pennsylvania, August 4, 2023. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden is projected to hugely boost the foreign-born workforce in the United States, adding about half a million to fill American jobs while tens of millions of Americans remain out of the labor market entirely.

Analysis from Goldman Sachs economists projects Biden’s ramping up the nation’s legal immigration system — which brings more than a million foreign nationals to the United States on green cards annually in addition to another million on temporary work visas — will add about 500,000 foreign workers to the workforce by mid-June of next year.

Monthly, the economists note, Biden is inflating the labor market with tens of thousands of foreign workers employers can hire, often at lower wages and with fewer benefits.

“… growth in the foreign-born labor force has accelerated by 50k to 160k per month this year, lifted by a surging foreign-born labor force participation rate (LFPR),” they write.

The ultimate result of adding millions of foreign workers to the workforce every few years, as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell hinted at last month, is “rebalancing” the labor market so as not to be weighted in favor of employees but instead employers.

Keeping wages down is part of that result as well.

“This rebalancing has eased wage pressures,” Powell said. “Wage growth across a range of measures continues to slow, albeit gradually.”

The projection comes as the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) recently revealed that, as of April, more than 44 million native-born Americans remain on the labor market sidelines — not including the millions of native-born Americans counted in monthly unemployment figures.

The decline in the native-born American labor force participation rate of the last two decades is juxtapositioned against a growing number of foreign-born workers in the workforce.

From 1960 to 2023, for instance, the number of native-born American men 16 to 64 years old not in the labor market increased by nearly 14 million. Over that same period, the number of foreign-born workers 16 to 64 years old in the labor market increased by 13.7 million.

The trend is most prominent among the nation’s working and lower-middle classes.

“… the share of U.S.-born men 20 to 64 without a bachelor’s shows a decline in labor force participation from 93 percent in 1960 to 87 percent in 1980, 84.1 percent in 2000, and 77.3 percent in April of this year,” CIS researchers Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler write.

Meanwhile, foreign-born men from 20 to 64 years old without a bachelor’s degree have seen their labor force participation rate decline since 2006, but it still remains higher than native-born American working-class men.

In April, 85.8 percent of foreign-born, working class men were in the workforce — nearly 10 percent more than native-born American working-class men.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here

The sad truth behind job growth in the American economy

According to Axios, a left-leaning publication, the only thing keeping the American economy afloat is the blessed presence of foreign-born workers…because those lazy Americans just won’t work. However, according to a study by Zero Hedge, Americans are losing their jobs like crazy, and only foreign-born workers are getting those jobs. Who to believe? Who to believe?

First, Axios:

Immigrants are joining the U.S. workforce at much higher levels than normal.

  • They're likely to account for roughly half a million new jobs over the next three quarters, per a new report from Goldman Sachs.

Why it matters: As the U.S. continues to struggle with a historically-tight labor market, immigrants are coming to the rescue of desperate employers — while also creating new jobs themselves.

By the numbers: Between the pre-pandemic month of January 2020 and July 2023, the immigrant labor force grew by 9.5%. That compares to a tiny 1.5% growth rate among the native-born.

Axios points to three factors behind the data: First, huge numbers of legal immigrants are getting visas. As I see it, that means the Biden administration is flooding the American economy with foreign-born workers.

Image: Short order cooks (edited). YouTube screen grab.

Second, foreign-born workers are, in fact, working, with their participation rate at 67% compared to actual Americans, who are at 62.2%. Third, baby boomers are retiring, and younger people are more likely to be foreign-born.

As Axios proudly states of immigrants, “We get the job done.”

The Zero Hedge article is behind a paywall, but Gateway Pundit summarizes the top line: It wasn’t just that American-born workers were lying around on couches smoking pot and playing video games, although, sadly, I’m sure that a lot were. It’s also that 1.2 million of them lost their jobs. Of those 1.2 million lost jobs, foreign workers replaced 771,000 of them.

Was it a direct one-to-one replacement? I don’t know. But it appears that 1.2 million Americans wanted to work, but their employers didn’t want them. Instead, a great many employers preferred 771,000 foreign-born workers.

Those statistics also probably tell only the tale of legal foreign-born workers. They don’t talk about the low-level workers (gardeners, janitors, etc.), who are often paid under the table, whether legal or not. I suspect that a lot of those jobs are now in the hands of non-natives, too.

As I alluded to above, there’s also a problem with young American workers. Many are not interested, with TikTok awash in videos of young Americans complaining about the intolerable burden of having to hold a job. These same young people are also graduates of high schools that focused hard on DEI and gender identity but forgot to teach them basic reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Many foreign-born workers still believe in the male-female binary and can do addition and subtraction. They may even feel that you can get through the day without lighting up a joint.

We are in a terrible mess. Our education system de-educates young people, leaving them unfit for work. Our social policies have led to negative population growth among native-born Americans. And the current administration is desperate to replace American workers with people who will be grateful to the political party that let them in and who invariably come from nations with governments that are some variation of leftist, so they’re receptive to the leftist way of doing things.


AFL-CIO Leader Backs Biden’s Wage-Cutting Migration Drive

biden's migration
RINGO CHIU/SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

The top leaders of U.S. labor unions expect to recruit President Joe Biden’s migrants and give Democrats the political power to force economic concessions from CEOs and investors.

Public concern about mass migration is not a pocketbook problem but is a “culture wars” distraction created by billionaires, said Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL–CIO.

She spoke in an August 29 address shortly before Labor Day:

For generations now, the richest people and companies in this country have divided us—along the lines of race, of gender, of sexual orientation, of immigration status. Even worse, they convinced us to divide ourselves. While we fought the culture wars with each other … they made off with billions of dollars that our hard work created.

“An [legal or illegal] immigrant does not stand between you and a good job — a billionaire does,” Shuler insisted, despite the reality that business interests favor worker-replacement migration, and despite her promise to push “culture wars” issues, such as abortion and library books.

Shuler did not use her speech to oppose the White House’s policy of bussing more cheap and compliant foreign workers into U.S. jobs, even though nearly all prior AFL-CIO leaders opposed migration expansions.

RELATED — EXCLUSIVE: Migrants Exit Bus to Philly Courtesy of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott

Matt Perdie / Breitbart News

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Her passivity ensures CEOs feel little pressure to either listen to unions, invest in labor-saving, productivity-boosting technology, or raise wages for their easily-replaced American employees.

The silence is notable because wages rise, families prosper, and politicians gain in the polls in the states where GOP officials resist migration.

“The immigrants with legal status are in high demand, and they know it … [and] they want top dollar,” said Murrie Mehrer, the owner of a small landscaping firm in Lakeland, Florida, where the legislature recently curbed the hiring of illegals. She added:

When you do find one, they want top dollar … [and] when you find someone that has all the credentials, get ready to pay them close to $200 per day.

“He used to pay painters $18-$20 an hour,” said a USA Today report on June 21 about the owner of a construction company in Naples, Florida. “Now, he’s paying $30-$35 … ‘I have to adapt,’ he said.”

The White House’s investor-backed jobs policy transports millions of wage-cutting foreign workers across the 50-state union line along the U.S. border.

“As our economy grows, we need workers that we just don’t have enough of,” White House manager Katie Tobin said in May 2023. “It is in our interest to bring people in and to stay competitive globally,” said Tobin, who was the senior director for transborder security on the National Security Council.

“The issue of immigration is how do we make sure that companies and businesses have the opportunity to employ people,” then-secretary Marty Walsh told Fox Business in December 2022.

Shuler is backing those corporate-backed cheap-labor migration policies. “We will turn out next year for President Biden in the most historic labor mobilization of our time!” she said.

The AFL-CIO policy statement on migration endorses economic migration and even amnesty:

The only way to stop the race to the bottom in wages and standards is for working people of all races, religions and immigration status [including legal and illegal migrants] to stand together and demand an end to policies that put profits over people. The entire workforce suffers when millions [of illegals] struggle to support their families without a way to speak up on the job, and ramping up fear in our workplaces [y immigration enforcement] only serves to increase exploitation.

Instead of deporting immigrants, we need to ensure that all working people have rights on the job and are able to exercise them without fear of retaliation.

Shuler backs the high-migration policies in part because she expects a political reward from Biden in exchange for accepting the massive replacement of older, sick, and alienated U.S. workers by younger, healthier, and indebted migrants.

RELATED: DC Mayor Pleads for Help, Calls on Nat. Guard, FEMA to Save City from Illegal Alien “Humanitarian Crisis”

Mayor Bowser / Facebook

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Biden’s pending reward is a larger role for the progressive-run unions in the companies that accept government spending, for example on climate-related spending programs. She said:

There are historic investments—trillions of dollars — coming down the pike, thanks to President Biden — an investment that is happening because our labor movement pushed for decades. That means MILLIONS of jobs. The question now is: What kind of jobs will they be?

We are organizing those jobs already. Up and down our coasts, where offshore wind is taking off. In the Deep South, where EV bus factories are being built. Making sure the standard is set: These are good union jobs.

Biden’s deputies are also rewarding unions by encouraging illegal migrants to join unions.

Yet Shuler said little about wage gains for union members or ordinary Americans.

Instead, she promised to achieve the progressive goal of reducing the wage differences among union members from the many different identity groups that progressives are creating and importing:

Remember those wage disparities [between identity groups] I mentioned? The union difference is what solves them.  It’s what cuts into that gender pay gap … A younger worker, an older worker, it’s better in a union. Black, White, Hispanic, AAPI, Indigenous, it’s better in a union. Immigrant or fifth generation American, it’s better in a union.  LGBTQ+. It’s better in a union. Unions are how we drive real, lasting change.

Union leaders are “going to be a 24/7, 365 political force” for progressive causes such as climate and abortion, she said, adding, and “our right to read the books we want to read.”

Her progressive alliance with globalist investors is sharply different from the view of young GOP leaders.

“This country has prioritized the importation of cheap labor,” including cheap legal immigrants, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl) said in his 2023 book, titled Decades of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America’s Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity.

Rubio continued:

Across this country today, the immigration system has been corrupted and exploited. And it began, as many of America’s problems do, with the fundamental shift toward a globalized economy.

But not every business could be exported, which meant Wall Street simply figured out how to import cheap labor, much of it [clarification, not all] coming from illegal immigrants. This was a slower, more subtle process. Sure, some politicians made a big deal about “jobs Americans wouldn’t do,” but otherwise the only outcry came from workers who found their wages stalled, benefits cut, and hours slashed until they could be replaced by someone willing to work more hours for less.

More often than not, it is about jobs Wall Street doesn’t want Americans to do because hiring Americans would require higher wages and better working conditions. To them, it is better to import cheap labor and buy off Americans with cash welfare programs provided by the government.

Biden’s policy of Extraction Migration has added at least four million foreign workers as it tries to reinflate the cheap-labor bubble.

That flood of migrants was urged and welcomed by business groups because it cuts Americans’ blue-collar wages and white-collar salaries. It also reduces marketplace pressure to invest in productivity-boosting technologyHeartland states, and overseas markets, and it reduces economic pressure on the federal government to deal with the drug and “Deaths of Despair” crises.

Biden’s easy-migration policies are deliberately adding the foreigners’ problems to the lengthening list of Americans’ problems — homelessnesslow wages, a shrinking middle class, slowing innovation, declining blue-collar life expectancy, spreading poverty, the rising death toll from drugs, and the growing alienation of young people


Massachusetts: Migrants Will Not Be Housed at Yarmouth Resort

Boston, MA - August 8: Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey held a morning press conference announcing significant action related to the state's emergency shelter system. (Photo by Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Migrants will not be housed at the Yarmouth Resort in Massachusetts after locals protested the move, which would have pushed out paying residents.

Over the weekend, reports surfaced that the offices of Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) told local officials in Yarmouth that migrant families will not be housed in the 80-100 rooms at the Yarmouth Resort.

The move comes after local residents strongly protested the push to house migrants at the Yarmouth Resort, which typically housed resident workers who paid weekly rent. Prior to the proposal, the Yarmouth Resort reportedly began to dramatically hike rent prices in order to push paying residents out, a claim that the owners denied. After initial outcry, the proposed rent hikes were dropped. Per the Cape Code Times:

The weekly rents at a Route 28 condo-motel where workers live may not be going up after all.

One of the owners of Yarmouth Resort has denied hiking weekly rates from $300 to $700, as of the end of July, and said notes to tenants announcing the increase were not approved.

“There was a communication gap. Somebody without final approval sent it out,” co-owner Ashok Patel said on Monday by phone.

“The protesters, mostly local residents, tell me they’re ‘horrified’ the state and hotel owners are forcing American citizens out of housing for illegal immigrants,” former news anchor Tim Dunn wrote on Twitter.

“With the protest growing, a local police officer has been staged near the scene to ensure peace and public safety. No signs at all so far of any disapproval of the protest, and mainly just honking horns passing by showing support for the demonstrators,” he added.

The migrant crisis in the state of Massachusetts has reached emergency levels, with non-profit organizations being stretched thin.

Right now, the non-profits that are in Massachusetts are stretched and so thin they cannot provide any more staff,” Democrat state Sen. Jamie Eldridge told CBS News.

Gov. Maura Healey even activated the National Guard to support the crisis.

“We’re grateful to the brave men and women of the National Guard for stepping up to help us ensure that every family in emergency shelter has their needs met,” Healey wrote.

Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.


llegal Immigration in the Rust Belt: Ohio Residents Say ‘Enough Is Enough’ After Death of 11-Year-Old Aiden Clark

CCSO/Littleton & Rue Funeral Home
CCSO/Littleton & Rue Funeral Home

Residents in Springfield, Ohio, are sounding the alarm over illegal immigration in their community as Breitbart News revealed that an illegal alien is accused of causing a school bus accident that left 11-year-old Aiden Clark dead on his first day of school.

Hermanio Joseph, a 35-year-old illegal alien from Haiti, has been formally charged with aggravated vehicular homicide in the death of Aiden Clark, who was on his way to his first day of school when his school bus was hit and ultimately overturned.

According to police, Aiden Clark was killed after being ejected from the bus. Joseph’s bail was increased to $150,000 this week. Joseph arrived at the United States-Mexico border in August 2022 and was released into the U.S. interior after being given a Notice to Appear (NTA).

Early last week, residents attended a city council meeting to express their anger, disgust, sadness, and concerns to local elected officials. A number of residents expressed outrage over the arrival of thousands of Haitian illegal aliens like Joseph in their community even as Mayor Warren Copeland sought to repeatedly interrupt them.

“I watched them come in on buses … I don’t know how they got them here and I don’t know who is responsible,” one woman said. “Did we become a sanctuary city? The people want to know.”

Elected officials said multiple times that the city is not a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. Some residents said they want to see a referendum on their local ballot to clarify that Springfield is not a sanctuary city.

“There are people who are here who are not native Springfielders … the disenfranchisement of people who were born here, have lived here, have raised their kids, have lived here for 30+ years, and I’m one of them, and we’re feeling disrespected,” the woman said.

Another woman took to the podium to say that her grandchildren were on the school bus with Aiden Clark.

“I’m not only here for [my grandchildren], I’m here for every child that was on that school bus,” the grandmother said. “… what are we going to do to stop this? … how many more children are going to have … to die or be hurt? My grandchildren will probably go through counseling for quite some time.”

“If it was your child … I would be pounding down the door saying ‘What are we doing?’ … it needs to be, if you break the law, you’re going back,” another woman said.

According to multiple residents who spoke, two Haitian illegal aliens were involved in crashes following the fatal school bus accident.

“We have kids that live in our neighborhoods,” one man told the council, complaining that Haitian illegal aliens are driving the wrong way down many streets in town on a daily basis. “Enough is enough.”

Other residents said the issue of illegal immigration goes beyond crime. Their other concern is the cost of housing and rents as landlords seek to take advantage of more demand by raising prices significantly — pricing out locals.

“We cannot afford it,” a woman said, explaining that her rent is being raised as a result of the arrival of Haitian illegal aliens and out-of-state landlords’ cash-grab scheme.

“Are we just letting these landlords take advantage of these people and charge them all this rent and raise our rents?” a man asked the council. “… I’m saying it is unfair to them as well.”

One resident with a local nonprofit said the illegal immigration to Springfield specifically from Haiti is wreaking havoc on their limited resources. In one anecdote, she said that translation costs for the nonprofit totaled $4,000 in 2018 but by last year, the costs had jumped to $344,000.

“This is not sustainable,” she said.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: 300 Migrants Stroll Across Biden Admin’s ‘Closed’ Border into Arizona on Labor Day

Nearly 300 Migrants are sheltered from the sun and guarded by Border Patrol agents near Lukeville, Arizona. (Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)
Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas

LUKEVILLE, Arizona — A single group of nearly 300 migrants walked through gates in the border wall welded open by the Biden administration west of Lukeville on Labor Day morning. The migrants eventually surrendered to Border Patrol agents at a nearby rally point. Breitbart Texas posted along the border in the small town and observed as Border Patrol agents prepared the migrants for transport to a Border Patrol processing center.

A sign warns of the dangers of encountering human smugglers and migrants crossing from Mexico and marching through the desert. (Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

A sign warns of the dangers of encountering human smugglers and migrants crossing from Mexico and marching through the desert. (Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

The large group consisted of migrants from a host of different countries including Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Peoples Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

According to a source within CBP, not authorized to speak to the media, the Lukeville area is one of the busiest crossing points in the Tucson Border Patrol sector for migrants from outside our hemisphere. These are labeled by the Department of Homeland Security Special Interest Aliens and include those from China and Mauritania. The migrants in Monday’s large group were detained by the Border Patrol at a rallying point on Puerto Blanco Drive near the Lukeville Port of Entry leading into Sonoyta, Mexico.

Migrants from the People's Republic of China and Several African Nations are guarded by Border Patrol agents as they await transport. (Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Migrants from the People’s Republic of China and Several African Nations are guarded by Border Patrol agents as they await transport. (Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Breitbart Texas observed heavily armed Mexican National Guard soldiers and State Police patrolling the border fence along the southern side of the border. The soldiers and law enforcement officers appear to be having little impact on the number of migrants crossing into the United States, according to Border Patrol agents in the area.

Mexican National Guard and state police stand by on the southern side of the border barrier. (Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Mexican National Guard and state police stand by on the southern side of the border barrier. (Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

The CBP source says flood gates in the border wall, opened annually due to the monsoon season, allow the migrants to walk freely into the United States with little resistance. Those gates will be welded shut soon as the season normally ends in mid-September. The source says the problem of migrant crossings in the area will not end once the gates are shut as migrant smugglers often cut the gates open or breach the border wall in other areas daily.

Breitbart Texas observed trash and debris on both sides of the border wall at one of the heaviest migrant crossing areas. In Mexico, the debris incudes discarded identity documents purposely left behind by the migrants as they enter the United States. Often, travel documents issued by Mexico’s National Institute of Migration are left behind to conceal the migrant’s travel pattern and identity according to the CBP source.

Acres of garbage found littered along the Arizona border wall near Lukeville, Arizona. (Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Acres of garbage were found littered along the Arizona border wall near Lukeville, Arizona. (Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

The processing of large groups of migrants surrendering, according to the source, is impacting routine patrols and is contributing to a rise in migrants who avoid capture. As reported by Breitbart Texas, 590,00 migrants have eluded apprehension and are labeled by the Border Patrol as “got-aways”.

In August, Border Patrol Agents in the Tucson sector apprehended nearly 49,000 migrants according to unofficial reports reviewed by Breitbart Texas. The Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector led the nation in migrant encounters for the month. The number is a more than 160% jump from the 18,506 apprehended in August of 2022.

Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol.  Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.

Labor Day 2023 and the eruption of class struggle

Labor Day is being celebrated in the United States today under conditions of an explosive growth of the class struggle throughout the world.

This holiday was established in 1894 in an attempt to separate American workers from their class brothers and sisters internationally. According to an act signed into law by President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, it was to be marked on the first Monday of September, about as far on the calendar as possible from May 1, International Workers Day, inaugurated by the International Socialist Congress in Paris in 1889 in honor of the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago of 1886.

The promotion of a national “Labor Day” was an attempt to perpetuate the claim that the United States was somehow exempt or disconnected from the development of the class struggle internationally. This conception of “American exceptionalism” was rooted in the belief that the social divisions on the surface of every society—and their relationship to the socialist movement—were of limited or no relevance to the United States, the “land of unlimited opportunity.”

The distinctive feature of Labor Day 2023, however, is that it coincides with the development of class conflict throughout the United States, which is increasingly heading towards an open confrontation between the working class on the one side and the pro-corporate union bureaucracies and the Biden administration on the other.

Broad sections of the working class are involved in the movement that is developing: auto parts and other industrial workers, nurses, teachers, municipal workers, graduate student workers, hotel workers, actors and writers and others. Significant sections of the American population who previously considered themselves “middle class” have become proletarianized, confronting the same questions of exploitation, declining wages and precarious employment as workers everywhere.

Tens of thousands of screenwriters and actors have been on strike for months, resisting the efforts of the entertainment conglomerates to starve them into submission. A further 88,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente are currently balloting on strike action across the US, seeking to overturn dangerous levels of understaffing and overwork. In the past year, teachers and educators have also launched powerful strikes, including 50,000 academic workers at the University of California system at the end of 2022, a strike by 65,000 school workers and teachers in Los Angeles in March 2023 and more.

There have been more than 250 strikes in the US so far in 2023, according to Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, already outpacing the number it tracked in 2021 and 2022. Significantly, the number of workers reported to have been on strike—323,000—has reached the highest level in nearly 20 years, with the exception of 2018-19, when a wave of wildcat strikes by teachers spread throughout West Virginia, North Carolina, Arizona and other states.

But the struggles which have taken place this year are only a pale reflection of the deep social anger that is building up among workers. If one were to add the many sections of workers who voted to authorize strikes but were sold out, the number of striking workers would be several times higher. In particular, nearly 340,000 UPS workers would presently be among the ranks of those on strike were it not for the efforts of the Teamsters bureaucracy to prevent a walkout and secure passage of a sellout contract on the basis of lies.

All eyes are now turning to the autoworkers. Contracts covering 170,000 US and Canadian autoworkers expire in less than two weeks. Autoworkers are determined to put an end to the wage and benefit tier system, stop the abuse of temporary workers and reverse many other concessions. But the auto companies, the UAW bureaucracy and the Biden administration are preparing to carry out a jobs massacre of historic proportions, which threatens the destruction of half or more of the jobs in the auto industry as it transitions to electric vehicle (EV) production.

Fearing the anger and opposition of autoworkers may escape its control, UAW President Shawn Fain has adopted militant-sounding rhetoric, seeking to head off a full-scale revolt. But Fain and the UAW bureaucracy have neither the strategy nor the intention to achieve any of the things they say they are fighting for.

In reality, the UAW apparatus is deepening its corporatist policies, i.e., the integration of the union bureaucracy, management and the capitalist state to suppress the class struggle and defend corporate profits. Its primary objective in the contract talks has been to secure the support of the Biden administration and the companies for its own privileged, institutional interests.

The development of the class struggle raises critical questions of organization and strategy for every section of the working class.

1. The rank-and-file rebellion against the union bureaucracies must be deepened and organized through the expansion of the network of rank-and-file committees.

The prevention, isolation and suppression of strikes and the imposition of pro-corporate contracts has been the essential function of the trade union apparatus for nearly 45 years. More than four decades have passed since 1979, when the first concessions contract was negotiated in the auto industry by then UAW President Douglas Fraser, who was elevated to Chrysler’s board of directors and oversaw tens of thousands of job cuts and wage reductions totaling nearly $40,000 a year in today’s dollars.

What followed has been an unending pattern of betrayals: the smashing of the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers strike with the assistance of the AFL-CIO trade union federation, the defeats of the 1983-86 Phelps Dodge strike, the 1985-86 Hormel strike, the 1991-92 and 1994-95 Caterpillar strikes, and countless others. As they led one struggle after another to defeat, the labor bureaucracies integrated themselves further and further into the state, abandoning any positive relationship to the class struggle.

In an earlier historical period, contract negotiations had been generally seen as the occasion to improve the conditions that workers faced. But for the last 40 years, the union bureaucracies have been exclusively concerned with eliminating past gains and extracting massive concessions from workers.

This process has continued up to the present, with economic data showing that wage increases for unionized workers continue to lag far behind non-unionized workers. Overall compensation for unionized workers rose 3.6 percent year over year as of June, while compensation for non-unionized workers rose 4.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Cost Index.

Among autoworkers, an explosive rank-and-file rebellion has emerged in recent years, as workers have sought to resist the efforts of the union bureaucracies to impose further concessions. They have voted to reject one UAW-backed contract after another since 2021, at Volvo Trucks, John Deere, and auto parts makers Dana, Detroit Diesel and Ventra. This rebellion has continued under Fain, with Clarios battery and Lear auto parts workers overwhelmingly rejecting multiple UAW sellout deals this year.

Last year, Will Lehman, a socialist worker at Mack Trucks, ran for UAW president on a platform calling for the abolition of the union bureaucracy and the transfer of all power and decision-making to workers on the shop floor. Despite the efforts of the bureaucracy to suppress turnout in the elections, Lehman won nearly 5,000 votes for his program. He ran as a supporter and proponent of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), an international network of militant workers organizations.

This network of committees, which already has developed local affiliates in the auto industry at GM Flint, Stellantis Warren Truck, Dana Toledo and other factories, must be broadened to every plant. In every struggle, workers confront in the trade union apparatus an instrument for isolation and defeat. The necessity for developing organizations that workers control, fighting for the transfer of power from the apparatus to the rank and file, is the precondition for a united fight against the ruling class and its state.

2. To fight the transnational companies, workers must adopt an international strategy.

Workers confront powerful corporate behemoths with vast resources stretching across continents. At the same time, globalization has vastly expanded the ranks of the working class internationally, welding workers together in a powerful and complex network of production. Moreover, the worldwide expansion of broadband internet, mobile devices, social media, automatic translation and other technologies now allows masses of workers to communicate with each other and coordinate their struggles in different countries to an unprecedented degree.

The past year has seen the emergence of militant workers’ struggles internationally, from large-scale strikes and protests in France against pension cuts, rolling transportation strikes throughout Europe, and mass anti-government demonstrations in Sri Lanka. In addition to US and Canadian autoworkers seeing their contracts expire almost simultaneously, contracts for 150,000 autoworkers and metal workers in Turkey also expire in September, and workers at Volkswagen are fighting a restructuring plan that threatens 30,000 jobs.

The International Workers Alliance of Rank and File Committees is at the forefront of the fight to break out of the isolation imposed by the bureaucracies and create a global network of workers that will develop the class struggle on the basis of an international strategy. Workers are increasingly coming to recognize that they are part of a massive global social force: the international working class. Workers in the US must reject every attempt by the ruling class and its representatives to pit them against their class brothers and sisters internationally, and instead appeal for the broadest possible support and collaboration from workers in Canada and Mexico, in Europe and globally.

3. A political movement of the working class against capitalism and for socialism must be built.

All the major issues workers confront stem from the crisis of the global capitalist system. The COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, high interest rates, and ongoing economic convulsions all reveal a socio-political-economic system wracked with instability.

The ruling class is engaged in a war on two fronts. Abroad, US imperialism is funneling billions of dollars a week to escalate its war against Russia in Ukraine, seeking to dismember Russia and plunder its vast natural resources. The war against Russia is taking place at the same time as Washington prepares for war against China, both of which threaten to spiral into a nuclear conflagration.

Within the US, the capitalists are prosecuting a war against the working class. The Federal Reserve, like other major Western central banks, has rapidly increased interest rates, seeking to drive up unemployment and weaken the ability of workers to fight for higher wages. The Biden administration, meanwhile, has relied on the union bureaucracies to block or isolate strikes and impose contracts with below-inflation wage increases.

The fundamental contradictions of capitalism identified by Leon Trotsky in the first decades of the 20th century remain the main barriers to the rational, progressive solution to any of the life-and-death issues confronting humanity: the contradiction between the objective development of world economy and the division of the world into rival nation-states, and the conflict between social production and private ownership of the means of production.

In the present autoworkers’ struggle, the corporations are insisting that their profit interests are incompatible with the demands of workers for higher wages, a decent standard of living and a secure retirement. If that is the case, then the corporate oligarchy has forfeited its right to privately own the auto industry and determine how it is organized.

In other words, the necessity for a socialist strategy arises out of the objective logic of the class struggle itself.

To make sure that workers’ interests take precedence, not private profit, a mass political movement of the working class is required. The Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International are fighting to build a socialist leadership in the working class to take political power and ensure that the needs of the vast majority of the world’s population, not the parasitic wealth and privileges of the billionaire oligarchs, determines how society’s resources are organized.

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