No Cutbacks, No Layoffs!

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SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1991 5 the Health and Hospital Workers Union, told the crowd, as it gathered on the steps of the Capitol.

"These cuts will bring catastrophic devastation to neighborhoods," said Paul Webster, spokesman for the New York Black and Puerto Rican caucus. Among the areas that are to be cut the deepest are programs in healthcare, housing, education, and transportation. These will fall hardest on New York's Black, Latino, and other oppressed minority populations.

"This is the largest protest in American history against an American governor by people of color," claimed Shakoor Aljuwan, coordinator of the rally. "Not even during the height of the civil rights movement did any mass of people march against the governor.

DC 37 members, who recently received a measly 2.25 percent wage increase, were there. Public Employee Federation members, who have been forced to take a "wage deferral" (i.e., a pay cut of 10 percent) were present.

Black and Latin youth marched; many of them will be forced to leave school if required to pay the proposed $500 per semester increase at state schools. Seniors, AIDS activists, and antiwar activists also added their voices.

Pandering to big business While the federal government is bailing out the savings and loan bankers to the tune of $300 billion and paying for the massive war budget, federal aid to New York City is being siashed. In response, Cuomo has chopped off $4.6 billion in aid to New York municipalities, wreaking further havoc on New York City's tottering schools, healthcare, and transportation system.

Speakers at the Albany demonstration did not just confine themselves to calls for increases in federal aid. Particular emphasis was placed on Cuomo's pandering to big business in the form of slashed taxes for banks and corporations.

According to a study released by State Senator Franz Leichter's office, income from 1980 to 1988 rose 68 percent for the state's richest 5 percent, while their tax bills fell 27 percent. During the same period, middleincome residents took a 26 percent fall in income and a 14 percent increase in taxes.

Meanwhile, the Fiscal Policy Institute reported that overall state tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals totaled 3.2 billion in 1990.

Reinstitution of previously cut taxes on the rich would result in the state recouping $7 billion in revenue. But seriously taxing the rich at a time of economic crisis for the banks and corporations would betray the very forces who are the Democratic Party's most important backers. Instead, Cuomo has proposed a highly regressive sales tax on cigarettes and gasoline.

In New York City, Dinkins has sought to fortify the city's credit rating by cuts in family-planning clinics, the child welfare administration, and cuts in programs that treat children with drug problems. At the same time, he has called for 6000 new police on the streets.

Dinkins has outlined a $60 billion capital program for his administration, which will enrich underwriters and institutional investors as it further crowds out money for social services. Dinkins plans to triple interest costs during his administration. This amount is more than all the city funds spent last year for medical assistance, public assistance, child welfare, homelessness and AIDS put together!

A labor-community coalition Earlier in the week, on March 16, over 250 activists attended a conference at the headquarters of District 65 of the United Automobilie Workers to discuss building a "labor-community coalition" to fight budget cuts in the city and state.

The conference was attended by representatives of numerous antiracist, labor, community, abortion rights and antiwar organizations.

An important feature of the coalition, according to co-chairperson Miriam Thompson of Local 259 of the United Automobile Workers, is a campaign for tax justice. Emphasis is on progressive taxes, instead of the present system in New York State, where a worker who makes $27,000 and a real estate magnate who makes $27 million pay the same income tax!

Included in the proposal are calls to tax the rich (those with incomes over $100,000), eliminate tax exemptions for luxury development, and tax elite nonprofit organizations like Columbia University.

The proposal has recently won a hearing in the New York City labor movement. It has been endorsed by Local 1150 of the current 6 percent inflation rate.

What about their "promises?"

It seems a long time since Cuomo declared in his inauguration speech that the 1990s were going to be "the Decade of the Child" in New York State. Many who supported Dinkins and Cuomo in the last election were some of their most vociferous opponents in Albany on March 2.

But in instituting these cutbacks, these politicians have not betrayed their program. Nor have they "forgotten" their promisesas some would have it. In 1989, even as Dinkins was making his biggest pledges to working people who supported him, banker Felix Rohatyn was moving to endorse him on the grounds that Dinkins was the candidate best able to lure working people into accepting the sacrifices ahead.

In Albany, on March 20, a popular sign carried by demonstrators was "Who Elected Wall Street?" But in a sense, whenever we vote for Democrats and Republicans-the twin parties of the "permanent government," as Fitch put it—we are electing Wall Street.

Taxation policy regarding the poor and the rich is but the tip of the iceberg. Intimately linked with the question of taxaton is the whole system of production for profit, in which every day the poor grow poorer and the rich grow richer. The problem is the capitalist system.

Labor and the oppressed need their own party. We must mobilize independently of the Democrats and Republicans if we are to effectively fight the forces behind the cutbacks and layoffs-let alone build a positive alternative to war, racism, unemployment, and union-busting.

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rally for striking Daily News workers. The ranks took strike more OF NEW YURK UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICE AGAINST Nov. 14, 1990, solidarity than the bureaucrats.

GUILIN for striking NEWSPAPER GUILD OF NEW YORN UNEAR LADOR PAN ranks took strike seriously Continental, Hormel, International Paper, Pittston, Eastern, Greyhound, etc.) have all involved the new norm for capitalism's antilabor strategy: either union-busting through permanent replacements (and continued operation under non-union conditions), or closing down operations entirely.

Of these strikes, only Pittston can in any way be called a victory. Through the militancy of the union ranks, with the active

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TRIKE George Cohe