Labor struggle in the USA: the sleeping giant stirs

Spectre of Communism

This week on International Marxist Radio, Tom Trottier, a leading comrade of Socialist Revolution, the US section of the International Marxist Tendency, speaks about exciting developments in the labour movement in the United States of America!

After a long period of relative inactivity, the US working class is beginning to move. As the ongoing crisis of capitalism continues to worsen living conditions for the vast majority, workers in the US, as elsewhere, are looking to the mass organisations. This has taken the form of a significant growth of the trade unions, as the working class seeks to defend their standard of living against stagnant wages and rising prices.

It has also seen an explosive development of radical new unions, set up by fresh layers: Amazon workers, Starbucks workers, and so on. New leaders like Chris Smalls of the Amazon Labour Union, and a left-wing layer at the top of the Teamsters, are also being pushed forward and tested by events. Shawn Fain (mentioned in the episode, which was recorded a few weeks ago) has also been elected to the leadership of the UAW on a class struggle programme.

Given the dominance of the US as both an economic and an imperialist giant, the strengthening of the labour movement in the belly of the beast is of decisive importance for workers’ struggles internationally.