Construction Worker Solidarity With All May Day Strikes
Construction workers are a part of the mightiest section of society: the industrial working class. As productive workers we create the roads and buildings that allow the rest of society to exist, to do culture, politics, science, religion, etc. Yet like the rest of the working class, we find ourselves constantly having to fight to protect our livelihoods. As essential workers all over the country raise struggles over safe working conditions and adequate pay, they are becoming familiar with the day to day struggle of the construction labor movement. For decades we have seen our wages and benefits either stand still or decrease because of the growing power of the banks, developers, and contractors that dominate our industry. The wider public suffers from the power of these capitalists as the working people are priced out of being able to afford housing in cities where skyscrapers flood rental markets. As gentrification and a crisis of affordable housing spark mass outrage at the billionaires who profit from the misery of the working class renters, the construction labor movement finds an ally against the same enemies that aim to increase profits by undermining unions, exploiting immigrants, the poor, and formerly incarcerated people for cheap non-union labor.
Decades of class warfare by the rich have led us to a situation in a pandemic where the richest country on the planet has been disgracefully unprepared to disburse unemployment benefits, provide universal healthcare, housing for the homeless, protection and hazard pay for essential workers, and relief for unions. Under the ruling class of capitalists to whom nothing but profit is sacred, states are competing against each other and the federal government for protective and medical equipment. The antidote to this death spiral is the solidarity of tens of millions of working people. On this historic May Day, labor resistance to the deadly greed of capitalists is rising from the service and retail workers organizing against the corporate giants that are more concerned with profits than human life in this crisis: Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, Target, Walmart workers are striking across the country.
The key to defeating the power of the ruling class is a united front of workers across every sector and industry, from construction workers, to teachers, to service and retail workers, doctors and nurses, transportation workers, logistics workers, etc. Only class struggle will close the explosive gap between productivity and wages that has created billionaire wealth and massive poverty and homelessness in the century that was supposed to be a leap into the future. When workers, tenants, and the unemployed forge unbreakable unity we can achieve the kind of labor movement that brought the country to its knees a century ago when May 1st became an international workers’ holiday through the bloody struggles it took to create unions. When this power becomes the law of the land, there can be peace, safety, and prosperity for the many instead of corporate bailouts, war, and vulnerability to existential threats to humanity. Building Trades for Workers’ Democracy calls on the entire labor movement and all our allies in society to boycott companies exploiting their workers during this pandemic until the demands of the strikers are met! We have a world to win, and only our chains to lose.
