Winning Means Destroying the Profit System!

Bronx, NY, June 16 — As we go to press the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled in favor of the Stella D’Oro strikers. The ruling reinstates the workers to their old jobs with full back pay, holidays and benefits, and orders the company to resume negotiations for a new contract. This victory for the workers, who showed strength and perseverance over the ten month strike, was greeted by booming chants of “The workers united will never be defeated!” at a union meeting where the decision was explained.

Over the course of this strike the workers have had to battle virtually every aspect of the bosses’ state. Ten months facing the cops protecting the scabs, the removal of the picketers’ shelter, the harassment of militant workers by the District Attorney, and ten months battling through the court system. For the moment, the decision rolls back the pay and benefit cut imposed by the Brynwood venture capitalists who own the company. The bosses have 15 days to appeal the decision, so the strike continues. If the bosses eventually lose in court, they will still try to get concessions from the union, and the workers, now having gone this far, will have to keep fighting.

Fighting Bosses’ Racist and Sexist Divisions

Amid this battle the Stella strikers have shown the way to fight the ruling class by demonstrating the importance of multi-racial unity and fighting sexism. Early on, some of the male strikers were offered their jobs back, but not one took the bosses up on it. They risked losing their jobs to stay on the line instead of accepting a contract that left the women workers out in the cold. Only in this way can workers win — uniting black, Latin, Asian, white, men and women workers, fighting together against the same enemy, capitalism.

Rank-and-file workers from many unions have come out to support the Stella strikers. Train operators have saluted them as the subway cars rolled by on the elevated tracks passing the plant. Busloads of teachers, professors and students have marched to the plant gate. All despite the major union leaders not lifting a finger to build support. The Stella workers’ union, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers (BCTGM) International did not push the AFL-CIO for a national labor boycott.

Profit System = Bosses’ Robbery

As support has grown for the Stella D’Oro strike, two contradictions have defined it: workers versus bosses, and revolution versus reform. The capitalist profit system means bosses reap the value workers create, leaving us only a tiny fraction as a wage. Fighting for reforms means only fighting to “win” the strike, which at best means keeping a bit more of what we create (see cartoon), but maintaining the bosses’ ability to go on stealing profit from our labor.

In the struggle of workers against bosses, PLP fights for the whole working class seizing power from the bosses’ state — international communist revolution. This means workers controlling production for workers’ need, not for bosses’ profit. Winning a better contract at Stella can boost the morale of many workers beyond the Bronx, but unfortunately if capitalism is left intact the bosses will use their power to try to reverse these victories. Reform is a treadmill, generation after generation fighting to keep the little we have, and in the end the bosses rip off every generation after us.

As revolutionaries we define “winning” differently. Winning means more workers becoming life-long organizers for the working class to win the communist world we need. Our goal is not only a contract, it’s a growing workers’ movement and a Party able to abolish the profit system. This strike has been an opportunity to put PLP’s communist ideas into practice.

PLP organizers advocate militant strike action to stop production in the best fighting traditions of the working class, like the great Flint sit-down strike against GM in 1936-37 (see www.plp.org/pamphlets/flintstrike.html). A communist-led working class would bring much more power to bear. The last rally of 1,000 closed the Stella plant that day. Bringing mass crowds of workers to block the gates to stop scab production has given workers their best chance to fight the wage cuts.

Many workers in other unions are involved and showing their support. The millions of workers in the city could surround the Stella plant, as well as other workplaces, every day, stopping scabs and deliveries. One union staffer said in response: “But that would be a different country.” That’s the point. Only communist ideas can inspire us to build a mass of workers to win that different world.

What will inspire us to dig in, organize, and take the risks of real militancy? The real value of our revolutionary line is that it shows workers there is a future worth fighting for, whatever the risks — a world without bosses, a world run by workers. This has a long history in the communist movement, and PLP carries that today into the Stella strike and all workers’ battles. We invite and encourage all the Stella D’Oro strikers to join this fight for workers power, and become members of PLP.

The Stella strikers are fighting back hard against the bosses, when others are caving in without a fight. They are reading CHALLENGE, discussing the ideas, getting better organized, and digging in — following the Party’s approach of reaching out to other workers in the Bronx for support. Communists and non-communists are all learning a lot in this strike. PLP’s Summer Project among these workers will fight to expand our communist base and consolidate the gains made during this strike.