Workers' conditions and struggles

Looking Back at Class War in the 1970s: Fifty Years Since the Strike at Imperial Typewriters

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On 1 May 1974 a group of thirty to forty, mainly women workers out of a total of around 1,600 employees at Imperial Typewriters in Leicester joined the May Day workers rally. It was not then a Bank Holiday. (It would be four years before that moveable feast was introduced by Labour’s favourite left-wing MP, Michael Foot.) Nor was this a ritual walk-out by a bunch of trade union stalwarts.

The Big Three and the False Union Perspective

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(We share here our translation into English of a stellar article by the comrades of Barbaria ( a group based in Spain. This article goes over last fall’s strike in the “Big Three” auto-manufacturing giants in the US: General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford. While examining this strike involving nearly 50,000 workers, the comrades from Barbaria cover how it comes in the context of capitalism’s...

Turkey: Massacre of Mine Workers in Erzincan

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As the crisis of capitalism deepens and the world drifts towards another war, more dangerous and brutal working conditions are making massacres of workers in the workplace commonplace. · In Erzincan, nine workers were buried under cyanide-laced soil in a landslide that occurred as a result of the stacking and clustering of mined soil in a mine.

Misplaced Enthusiasm: On the Auto Strike in the USA

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(We share here the translation ( of a document on the conclusion of the recent UAW autoworkers' strikes, written by a comrade from our sister organization in Italy. You can read the leaflet that we prepared for the struggle here ( Like the UPS struggle, on which we wrote here ( this is another struggle taking place in a key industry for capital in the US as it prepares to go to war.

Lessons from the Strike Wave

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The wave of strikes which erupted in Britain in June last year have mostly ended in defeat overseen by the unions. Trade union membership continues to decline and it’s easy to see why. Although consecutive governments have attacked the rights of workers to organise, to strike and to picket, the unions have proven themselves both unwilling and unable to fight against this legislation, enforcing it...

Cost of Living Crisis = Capitalist Crisis

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Wage cuts, precarious jobs, collapsing health service, school buildings falling down, inflation, widespread poverty and deprivation experienced by large swathes of the country – that’s the state we are in. Of course, the government is not interested in solving these issues. Both parties have become too lazy or incompetent to even pretend to help, preferring instead to compete over idiotic...

USA: Renewal of Workers' Initiative is Real

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The working class stirs back into action the world over. In China, factory workers’ resist their confinement in dormitories by employers, while workers push back in France against pension reforms. More recently in the US, labor actions in the logistical, automotive, and media sectors of the economy all attest to a new phase of the class struggle.

To Throw a Wrench in the Bosses' Plans, We Need to Take Control of the Struggle!

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(IWG flyer for distribution during the auto-workers’ strike.) · Utilizing deceit and dirty tricks, the individuals that are supposed to defend the auto-workers’ interests are the first to betray them… · The “stand up strike” is not new. It is simply a new name for the “rotation” strikes that are practiced in Europe and at odd times in the USA.

The Real Fight is Yet to Come

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Over the last year, the working class in the UK has been engaged in the largest strike wave in decades. There have been struggles on the railways, in hospitals, in schools and universities, at various bus companies around the country, as well as on oil rigs and refineries, among firefighters, workers in Amazon warehouses, and other sectors.

Balloting on Tentative Agreement at UPS: Workers' Mobilizations in the USA are Subordinated to the Exigencies of Crisis and Rearmament

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It has been a long time since the unions jettisoned the mass assembly, preferring to militate in the murky waters of the secret ballot. Via the latter, 340,000 workers will accept or reject the tentative agreement between August 3 and August 22. IBT local unions have endorsed it by a vote of 161-1. Our comments regarding the details of the agreement will be circumscribed, but it is apparent “the...

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