At its meeting this week, the Western Sydney University (WSU) Rank-and-File Committee voted to send a message of support and solidarity to the Boeing Workers Rank-and-File Committee. As the message explains, university workers and students in Australia, like the Boeing workers, face the need to organise independent rank-and-file committees to fight the trade union apparatuses’ enforcement of corporate-government job destruction and the underlying agenda of war and austerity.

To join the WSU Rank-and-File Committee or discuss establishing rank-and-file committees at other universities, contact the committee at: rfc.wsu@gmail.com.

We are workers and students at Western Sydney University (WSU) who formed a rank-and-file committee earlier this year, initially to fight the pro-business restructuring and destruction of jobs and conditions at our university’s preparatory college.

As we have warned, the purge of staff at the WSU College has now become a template for the restructuring and elimination of thousands of jobs at universities across Australia as a direct result of funding cuts by the Labor government.

Having read about your struggle on the World Socialist Web Site, we decided to send a message of solidarity with the determined stand you and the 33,000 Boeing machinists are taking against the years of attacks on wages and working conditions.

Like you, we have formed a rank-and-file committee, totally independent of the trade unions, which are complicit in the corporate-government agenda.

We support your powerful seven-week strike and your 64 percent rejection last week of the second sellout contract proposed by the International Association of Machinists (IAM) leadership.

As the WSWS reported, the IAM’s latest contract proposal amounted to “an endorsement of a corporate dictatorship.” It not only did not make up for a decade of wage freezes, it failed to restore pensions stolen from you in 2014, and would have given the company the go-ahead for 17,000 announced layoffs.

Your vote is a real blow to the IAM and the Biden administration, which is relying upon the union officials to end the strike because it cuts across its support for, and arming of, the war against Russia, the Israeli genocide in Gaza and its plans for wider wars against Iran and China.

The IAM leadership never wanted your strike to go ahead and refuses to use the union’s $300 million assets to aid you. The miserable $250 weekly strike pay is intended to starve you back to work.

Boeing management, which has jettisoned basic safety standards in passenger airplane manufacturing, wants you to pay for its crimes and profits.

Your stand demonstrates the potential strength of the global working class and is a real blow against this giant corporation’s war profits and the US war machine. The shut-down of a major military contractor shows how the working class can halt the plunge into war.

Your October 3 statement—“Boeing machinists must unite with East Coast dockworkers to defend jobs and stop world war!”— points the way forward for class-conscious workers everywhere.

Our struggles can only succeed if workers organise independently of the union bureaucracies and fight for a world where human need, not profit, is the priority.

While you face ruthless enemies in management, the IAM machine and the Biden administration, you have even more powerful friends—the American and international working class.

Like Boeing workers, we confront unions that are responsible for imposing previous government cuts and that are implementing the agenda of war and austerity, including by restructuring universities to serve the needs of war economies.

We endorse the call made by the World Socialist Web Site in its October 24 Perspective: “After rejection of sellout deal, working class must mobilize behind the Boeing strike.” The tremendous social power of the working class must be organised through building the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) as a global rebellion of the rank-and-file.

As that Perspective states: “Workers can only fulfill their aspirations if they take political power in their own hands and marshal society’s resources to greatly improve the living standards of the world’s population and end social inequality, war and the threat of dictatorship.”

Archive link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22048345

By EDITH M. LEDERER
Updated 5:05 PM EDT, October 30, 2024

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22047845

By JAKE COYLE
Updated 4:05 PM EDT, November 1, 2024

This immense concentration of wealth inevitably renders any semblance of democracy almost useless, as the main decision makers are those who hold the biggest bag. “Whoever we elect as President is not going to make any difference because they’re managed by capital,” Phillips tells Scheer.

“They’re there to protect global capital. That’s what the American political system is about. That’s what the political systems in the West are about. They see capital as a vital interest of the West, and that’s why we have military bases all over the world to protect capital and to ensure that debts get repaid and that this capital continues to grow and expand.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22045792

By Saleema Gul
October 31, 2024

[This article contains the broadest range of viewpoints that I have seen on this issue. Definitely worth reading.]

The Supreme Court rejected Republicans’ request to block Pennsylvania officials from counting provisional ballots by voters whose mail ballots are rejected for technical flaws.

The high court order follows Wednesday’s order permitting a GOP-backed purge of Virginia voter rolls ahead of Election Day. The Virginia order was entered over dissent from the court’s three Democratic appointees.

In the Pennsylvania case, the state Supreme Court split 4-3 in upholding a lower court ruling that required the counting of provisional ballots submitted by voters who are told their mail ballots can’t be counted. “Provisional ballots exist as a failsafe to preserve access to the right to vote,” the state court said, noting that such ballots can only be counted if no other ballots from a voter are counted.

“The General Assembly wrote the Election Code with the purpose of enabling citizens to exercise their right to vote, not for the purpose of creating obstacles to voting,” the state court majority said.

A key swing state, Pennsylvania was decided by about 80,000 votes in Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Donald Trump and by about 44,000 votes in Trump’s 2016 win over Hillary Clinton. The 2024 race between Trump and Kamala Harris is also expected to be close.

https://archive.is/UW6Vv

A Philadelphia judge on Thursday paused a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s massive cash giveaways to voters in battleground states after the billionaire argued that questions about his political efforts should be resolved in federal court.

Philadelphia’s district attorney claimed a $1 million-a-day sweepstakes sponsored by Musk and America PAC, his pro-Trump group, violated state lottery and consumer protection laws. Late on Wednesday, Musk’s lawyers filed a motion to transfer the suit to federal court, and Judge Angelo Foglietta declined to block the giveaways in the meantime.

This likely means America PAC can continue giving out $1 million checks through Election Day next week. “American Justice FTW,” Musk tweeted after the hearing, which he skipped despite being ordered to attend.

BEIRUT, Nov 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. asked Lebanon to declare a unilateral ceasefire with Israel to revive stalled talks to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, a senior Lebanese political source and a senior diplomat said - a claim denied by Lebanon's prime minister.

But a unilateral declaration was seen as a non-starter in Lebanon, the sources said, where it would likely be equated with a surrender.

Hochstein told them that if Hezbollah unilaterally declared a ceasefire, he "could have something to present" to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a diplomatic initiative.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22012474

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22012472

from TheWire [online publication of Jewish Voice For Peace in USA]