Vol. 76/No. 33      September 10, 2012

The Socialist Workers Party candidates for president and vice president, James Harris and Maura DeLuca, are among recent “blood money” contributors to the Socialist Workers Party Capital Fund.

Blood money is a term communist workers use to describe bribes from bosses, which often come in the form of so-called bonuses and are designed to get us to accept speedup, wage cuts, grueling hours, concession contracts and dangerous working conditions.

Before beginning the campaign, DeLuca worked at Kawasaki in Lincoln, Neb. She sent in a check for $50.40 with the following note: “I got this one last blood money attendance bonus before leaving the company.”

The donation from presidential candidate Harris is part of a class-action settlement with the Hormel company. “It’s been so long since the suit was filed that I can’t remember the exact circumstances,” Harris noted, “but the $420 is definitely blood money.”

Naomi Craine, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in Florida, and Bill Arth in Los Angeles were part of the same settlement. Craine sent in $872.80, noting she is not “quite sure which of the unpaid time they chiseled from our pay this is supposed to compensate for! But in the nearly three and a half years I worked at Farmer John (Hormel), they cheated us out of much more.”

“There was a suit filed by some workers over break times, meal breaks, don and doff, etc,” explained Arth, who sent in $108.18. “We were fighting for a contract at that time. United Food and Commercial Workers officials negotiated a settlement that ended up being used as a bribe to get the workers to accept a bad contract.”

Blood money donations are a political cornerstone of the Capital Fund, which finances long-range work of the party. To make a contribution, contact Militant distributors listed on page 10.

—EMMA JOHNSON