Vol. 73/No. 22      June 8, 2009

In the face of the deepest economic crisis in the memory of most working people, the wealthy ruling class and their Democratic and Republican party politicians are waging a counterrevolutionary assault on the conditions of life of the working class. They want working people to pay the tab for the capitalist economic crisis. Working people need to unite and fight for immediate demands that protect our interests as a class.

The Socialist Workers Party candidates urge working people to fight together around these demands:

• Guaranteed unemployment compensation at union scale for every worker until they find a job.
• An increase in the federal minimum wage to union scale.
• A federally funded crash public works program to put millions to work at union scale to build schools, hospitals, roads, and public transportation.
• No cuts to medical benefits for anyone laid off from their job—guaranteed lifetime medical care and retiree pensions for all.
• Immediate and unconditional legalization of undocumented workers.
• An immediate halt to all home and farm foreclosures.
• An immediate end to all income taxes on workers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says that to balance the state’s budget, he must stop all state welfare payments, cut off health insurance to working-class families, end in-home care for the elderly, stop cash grants to college students, and lay off thousands of workers. He says that working people are responsible for these cuts, because we did not support ballot propositions in the May 19 special election. He says that he is just doing his job.

But “balancing the budget” is simply a set of code words for making working people bear the weight of the economic crisis. There is plenty of money. California pays out tens of billions in interest to its bondholders. As California Treasurer Bill Lockyer said “short of a thermonuclear war” the wealthy California bondholders will be paid in full. In short, the interests of the billionaire bankers, real estate developers, and industrialists are always ahead of the interests of the working class. If working people lose our jobs, our homes, our schools and health care, well, that's just tough luck.

In California official unemployment already hovers around 11 percent and is expected to rise. In reality this figure is much higher because the bosses' government does not count so-called discouraged workers or most immigrant workers without papers in its statistics. This is not a California crisis. It is national and international with tens of millions of working people worldwide being thrust into conditions of unemployment, malnourishment, and with poor to no health care. Political power must be taken out of the hands of the tiny capitalist minority by a proletarian revolution. Then we can begin to reorganize society from top to bottom in the interest of working people.
 
 
Related articles:
Thousands rally in L.A. against education cuts
Unionists at N.Y. hotel stop work over wages
North Carolina teachers protest wage cuts  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home