Friday, December 08, 2006

Good News for a change ?


Good News for a change ?

If you were to Google search for "migrant workers" or "East Europeans", on the Scotsman or BBC websites you will find a lot of disgusting racist emphasis on incoming workers to the U.K.

Scare stories abound about "our jobs" being under threat from fellow workers .The newspapers and media are full of loaded information telling us about this problem.
In the workplace derogatory comments about the incomers being "white Pakis",are not uncommon,indicators of prejudice,and antipathy which seems to know no bounds.

There is no question that the capitalist class will use every trick in their sordid book of tricks to drive down labour costs,but trade unionists, never mind socialists, should be alive to this and alert to the solution,in the short term,the class struggle, which is to make common cause with their fellow workers, taking on the employers and confounding their tricks.

Instead of spinelessly castigating their fellow workers from foreign lands,saddling them with responsibility for the native workers slavishness and capitulation to low wages, they should be making common cause,extending the hand of friendship and expressing solidarity with them to drive wages up.

This article link here from Duncan Campbell,whom I know is a pro-worker journalist, in a recent Guardian,sums up better what I have been trying to say.
"Poles are bringing many skills to this country. One of the most valuable could well be their much-needed involvement in the union movement and the part they play in providing just the kind of solidarity that many employers had hoped was now unfashionable."

I will only,add to this that the long term solution is Marx's one,of socialism/communism when he said to "Inscribe upon your banner the abolition of the wages system"

Unfortunately some workers will have to get up off their knees enough, to stop grovelling to the boss class, enough to be class conscious trade unionists, before they even begin to be socialists.

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