Workers at the Volvo Truck Plant in New River, Va., Reacted with great indignation at the attempt by the United Auto Workers to end their powerful strike to undo previous concessions. On Friday, the union announced it had negotiated a provisional five-year agreement and ordered the 3,000 workers to break their picket lines and return to work on Sunday. She did not publish any details about the agreement.
The deal at Volvo was announced the same day the student assistants at Columbia University in New York City voted against a sell-out that the UAW-affiliated student union was trying to impose on them.
Volvo workers are determined to reverse the wage and benefit concessions that the UAW made in the last three collective agreements. The company’s profits are booming, in the first quarter of 2021 alone they were $ 1 billion.
An outraged worker wrote on the UAW Office 2069 Facebook page: “Almost 3,000 members are demanding answers. This is your job. That’s what you get paid for. We shouldn’t go back to work with a collective agreement that we don’t agree to. We did not vote in favor of the strike for no reason. Not so that it would be easy for the company and the UAW. We made SACRIFICE. WE WERE IN THE RAIN AND FREEZING. WE, THE MEMBERS, DESERVE IMMEDIATE INFORMATION. “
The strike at Volvo takes place a year after the pandemic started. Within that year, a third of the workers at the plant became infected, while Volvo CEO Martin Lundstedt pocketed $ 5.2 million in compensation. The UAW ensured that the plant stayed open without even enforcing the bare minimum of security.
Volvo workers are suffering the aftermath of a series of corrupt sell-outs negotiated by UAW officials. Some of these officials are implicated in the union’s massive corruption scandal.
On the same day the UAW tried to end the strike at Volvo, Columbia University student assistants voted against a sell-off of the UAW-affiliated Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC). The sale was rejected with 1,093 “no” – to 970 “yes” votes. This vote is a crushing blow to the credibility of the UAW and the GWC, which had put tremendous pressure on students to accept the sell-off. That way, she wanted to isolate the student assistants at New York University who had gone out of work earlier last week.
The students are fighting for a decent wage increase to offset the high cost of living in New York City. The UAW-affiliated Graduate Student Organizing Committee had tried from the start to keep the fight at the two universities separate and to end the work stoppage at Columbia at the time the lecturers at NYU picketed.
The struggle of the Volvo workers in Virginia and the New York students takes place against the background of a whole series of major industrial disputes in the United States.
- In Alabama, more than 1,000 coal miners at Warrior Met are continuing a strike that began April 1. Workers are determined to take back the concessions the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) made when the company emerged from bankruptcy. The miners showed impressive solidarity and determination when they rejected a sell-out by UMWA President Cecil Roberts by 1,006 votes to 45.
- Approximately 1,200 steel workers in five states are fighting against Allegheny Technologies Inc. (ATI). Although workers haven’t received a wage increase since 2014, the company is trying to force further concessions on them, including grossly inadequate wage increases and higher health care costs. The United Steelworkers (USW) union seeks to isolate workers at ATI and has a bankrupt strategy of calling the strike an “unfair industrial action”. At the same time, workers only get a meager strike pay of $ 100 a week.
- ExxonMobil threatens to lock out 650 workers at its Beaumont, Texas refinery from May 1. The company is asking United Steelworkers to put its collective agreement, which contains several concessions, to a vote before continuing its negotiations. The USW, on the other hand, does nothing to mobilize support for the workers. Instead, she is working with management on an “orderly” transition to a workforce of scabs to prepare for the lockout.
- In Massachusetts, 700 nurses from St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester are continuing a strike for adequate staffing keys. Nurses are resisting attempts by the Massachusetts Nurses Association to isolate and wear down the striking workers, despite widespread public sympathy and support.
- At the Oregon Institute of Technology, about 200 workers went on strike for a new collective agreement on April 26, after 92 percent voted in favor of it in a ballot. This is the first university strike in Oregon’s history.
- At the Tyler Memorial Hospital near Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania outside of Scranton, 84 health care workers are on strike against the grueling working conditions.
At the same time, teachers and auto workers are continuing their industrial struggles against the ruling class’ murderous pollution policies, which are forcing workers to continue working in unsafe factories and schools despite the uncontrolled pandemic. On Thursday, teachers in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, organized a sick-out strike against the school board’s relaxation of social distancing rules. Earlier this month, workers at the Stellantis manufacturing facility in Jefferson, Detroit, protested because the UAW and management had covered up Covid-19 cases at the huge facility.
These struggles in the US take place against the backdrop of a growing number of struggles by the international working class, including dock workers in Montreal, Canada, bus drivers in Manchester, England, and public transport workers in Karnataka, India.
The struggle of the workers is turning more and more into a direct rebellion against the corrupt and bureaucratized trade unions that function as executors of management and the capitalist elite. In more than a year since the beginning of the pandemic, the unions have not organized any resistance against the criminal policy of “herd immunity” or the massive state donations of money to the rich in a single country.
In order to organize a counter-offensive, the workers need new organizations that take into account the international character of the class struggle. The basis must be a program of uncompromising resistance to the demands of the ruling classes. Following the character of modern technology and communication, there is an objective need to coordinate their struggle across all industries, national borders and oceans.
In the US, UK, Germany, Sri Lanka and other countries have workers, with support from the World Socialist Web Site networks of action committees have already been established to exchange information and coordinate and organize struggles against corporate policy and capitalist governments.
To expand and continue this work, the WSWS and the International Committee of the Fourth International set up the International Workers’ Alliance of Action Committees (IWA-RFC). This will enable workers to coordinate their struggles globally, to fight for the closure of non-systemic production, support for the unemployed and all measures necessary to stop the pandemic. The ruling class refuses to do this out of national rivalries and the pursuit of profit.
The unification of these struggles, however, requires above all the building of a socialist leadership in the working class. We call on all readers of the WSWS to watch the recording of the international online May Day rally and to contact us.