Vol. 77/No. 8      March 4, 2013

Union officials told members they were suspending their strike indefinitely, based on the premise that one of the Democratic Party candidates for mayor this November would get elected and then fulfill vague promises to “revisit” the question of job security and wages.

As they return to work, the school bus workers will need to look out for each other and use their unions to defend themselves against bosses’ attempts to fire union stalwarts and go after job security, wages and working conditions.

From the outset, the workers and their union faced a determined offensive by the city administration, transportation bosses, courts and big-business dailies.

A battle is lost but the bosses’ war on workers continues. The propertied rulers have no solution to the worldwide crisis of capitalism. Protection of their economic interests amid the stiffening competition among them drive the capitalists’ attacks against our living standards, unions and very dignity.

The episodic resistance by workers today faces two challenges: the discouraging effects of persistently high unemployment and the weakness of our basic combat organizations, the unions. The former is why workers need to fight for a government-funded jobs program to put millions back to work. The latter is the result of decades of misleadership and a “strategy” hinged on seeking “common ground” with the bosses and support for their political parties, most often the Democrats, in exchange for promises of reciprocity.

In addition to relying on our own collective power to advance our interests against those of the bosses, working people need our own political voice, our own political party independent of the two capitalist parties.

It’s through the working-class struggles and union battles to come that workers will gain experience, learn who our real friends and enemies are, become confident in our own capacities. This is how we will forge a class-struggle leadership and transform our unions into fighting instruments that champion the interests of all working people—organized and unorganized—in the economic, social and political arena, and transform ourselves in the process. And it’s along this fighting road that our unions can become schools for revolution that advance the struggle for a workers and farmers government.
 
 
Related articles:
NYC school bus union officials suspend strike
Anti-labor outfit targets bus workers’ union
On the Picket Line
 
 
 
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