The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.3           January 25, 1999 
 
 
`Caterpillar Wants To Crush Working People's Aspirations'  
The following is a letter by Rodney Garman, a leader of the "Blue Shirts" at the Caterpillar plant in East Peoria, Illinois, published in the June 9, 1998, Peoria Star Journal.

OK, so you're not a Cat worker or an automaker. You're a trucker or a teacher or a secretary or a doctor or a nurse. Maybe you've never even seen the inside of a factory. So why should the battle just concluded at Caterpillar mean anything to you?

Workers throughout the Cat chain fought for six and a half years against a contract that Caterpillar and the UAW were trying to force down their throats. They struck twice against it, twice voted overwhelmingly to reject it, and worked since 1995 without a contract to resist it. Finally after repeated betrayals by the union (international and local) and after winning back the jobs of the illegally discharged workers, on March 22 they voted to accept it. Why should the Cat struggle matter to you? Because the struggle at Caterpillar was a battle over the direction of our society. Cat's assault on its workers is part of the attack on all working people, whatever your job, wherever you live. Cat workers were fighting not just for themselves and their families, and for the generation of workers who are passing on and for the younger workers yet to be. Concessions demanded by Cat are designed to undercut the power of workers in the future.

Caterpillar's long-range strategy is one of the capitalist elite to crush working people's aspirations for a better world. The Cat struggle has shown that the whole system of elite power is the enemy.

Rodney Garman

East Peoria

 
 
 
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