Postal workers buy time

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10 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 2016 by union members in September, show that the union also prevented more clo­ sures of Canada Post outlets. “We went into this round determined to achieve new collective agreements without roll­ backs and we succeeded,” CUPW said in a statement.

Despite this, pay inequity chiefly for women members remains. The union did, however, secure a review of the pay structure. “We negotiated a pay equity review process that will not get tied up for decades in the courts,” the union stated. “This pay equity process will be completed in 19 months, and our RSMCs [rural suburban mail carriers] will know the results quickly.”

According to CUPW’s research, Canada Post’s pay system—which allocates com­ pensation for suburban and rural work­ ers according to the number of packages the 13-nation U.S. imperialist-led ‘coalition,’ fall squarely within Syria’s right to self-determina­ tion. This includes Syria’s agreement to accept Russian air, naval, and related military support to accomplish the same end…. “Undoubtedly, the Russian capitalist govern­ ment of Vladimir Putin has its own reasons for accepting Syria’s invitation to intervene, including NATO’s increasing encroachment on its borders and the U.S. and European Union economic sanctions. Revolutionary socialists suffer no illusions that capitalist Russia can serve as Syria’s strategic ally in the present war. Indeed, the Putin government has consis­ tently and cynically offered itself as a mediator in the Syrian war, repeatedly proposing a ‘ne­ gotiated solution’ wherein all parties, including U.S. imperialism and its NATO allies, as well as the Saudis and others, will collectively decide Syria’s fate….

The article continued, “The Russian interven­ tion may well have prevented the overt march­ ing of reactionary jihadist/religious fundamen­ talist groups or other imperialist-allied forces into Damascus with a resulting Libyan-type chaos, anarchy, and bloodbath to follow. His­ toric tragedy has a habit of unfolding in a myr­ iad of forms—some less devastating than oth­ ers. Here we have a distinction, perhaps with a significant difference, in that the opportunities for future Syrian anti-capitalist struggles may become somewhat improved. “Antiwar and social justice fighters can best help to tilt the scale in favor of Syria’s people and future class-struggle fighters by building the most powerful U.S. movement possible demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. military aid and forces in all their manifestations from Syria. Removing the imperialist boot from Syria and the Middle East more generally best opens the door for the op­ pressed masses to resume their struggle. U.S. out now! Self-determination for Syria!” n delivered—disproportionately affects its female members. About 70 per cent of the rural and suburban group are wom­ en. On average, they receive nearly 30 per cent less than men in the urban unit for doing the same work.

Wage increases for rural and suburban workers—which make up about 8000 of CUPW’s members—would rise 1.5 per cent this year, and 1.5 per cent next year. For the larger urban group, which covers about 42,000 mail sorters and carriers, a one per cent wage increase was agreed for this year, followed by a 1.5 per cent increase next year.

Other key improvements for rural and suburban mail carriers include the rec­ ognition of seniority from the date of hire for workers who began before 2004, as well as the extension of the unit’s healthcare plan, ensuring RSMCs are entitled to the same paramedical services as their counterparts in the urban unit.

Essentially, the two-year agreements buy time for postal workers, while the Canadian government completes its re­ view of the future of the postal service, and the CUPW continues its popular campaign for postal banking, and a new fleet of electric-powered vehicles. For details see www.CUPW.ca/CanadaPost­ Review.

If the latest agreements are ratified, postal workers will soon be back in bar­ gaining, still facing a belligerent manage­ ment. During the summer Canada Post twice issued, and withdrew, lockout no­ tices. The federal government appointed two mediators. CUPW twice extended a 72-hour job action notice. So, the struggle continues. Solidarity with postal work­ ers remains a top priority for all who want to replace capitalist austerity with greater equality and good environmental stewardship. n ... Rasmea Odeh (continued from page 1: “Native people fight to stop Dakota pipeline”) about the trauma Rasmea continues to endure from the tor­ ture she suffered while in Israeli prison. … Judge Drain’s lat­ est ruling, allowing the government to put her through hours of interrogation from a hostile government expert, could en­ able him to again exclude this testimony, and thereby affirm the previous conviction against Rasmea. The prosecution has stopped at nothing to keep the fact of Israel’s well-document­ ed torture practices from consideration in Rasmea’s case, and it’s clear that they are intent on continuing to victimize her, and shielding Israel from scrutiny.”

Rasmea Odeh’s case in the U.S. is closely linked to the fate of Palestinian prisoners and detainees currently under Israeli military occupation. B’Tselem reports that as of the end of April 2016 nearly 6300 security detainees and prisoners were held in Israeli prisons.

USPCN, the Rasmea Defense Committee, and other support­ ers of Palestinian rights will be mobilizing throughout the Midwest to protest outside the court hearing in Detroit on Nov. 29, when government prosecutors will be challenging the expert defense testimony.

In a statement released Sept. 6, Jeff Mackler, Socialist Ac­ tion candidate for U.S. President expressed full support for Rasmea: “The continued prosecution of Rasmea Odeh is an outrage for all who oppose political repression and defend democratic rights. We stand up for Rasmea and all Palestin­ ian political activists and prisoners under continuous assault by the Zionist Israeli state and the U.S. government. We sup­ port and join in building the protest in Detroit on Nov. 29 to drop all charges against Rasmea.

“Our job as supporters of Palestinian rights in the U.S. is to mobilize to demand freedom for Rasmea Odeh, and beyond that, to direct our fire against massive U.S. military support, over $3 billion per year, to the racist, apartheid state of Israel, a state built and maintained on the brutal colonial oppres­ sion of the Palestinian people. We demand self-determina­ tion for Palestine.

“End All U.S. aid to apartheid Israel! For a democratic, secu­ lar Palestine. with the right of all Palestinian refugees to re­ turn!” n

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SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 2016 11 ... Mexico (continued from page 12: “Crime and punishment in Peña Nieto’s Mexico”)

Aristegui, who was in charge of making public the ex­ istence of the “White House,” and afterward was fired for it. Now bringing a lawsuit for “moral damage,” he is demanding millions of dollars of “compensation” from Aristegui for the prologue that she wrote for the book “Peña Nieto’s White House: The story that shook the government,” and demanding that the book’s pub­ lisher, Grijalbo, remove the prologue.

So, in fact there will be no punishment, and impunity will prevail, as it has always prevailed in the highest levels of the government. In that too Mexico is special. As in Spain, Brazil, and many countries, corruption is a congenital disease of capitalism, especially in its governments. But in many of these countries as well, the struggle against corruption sometimes has effec­ tive results and can appreciate as certain former rul­ ers are imprisoned. Not in Mexico; there are innumer­ able cases to prove it.

There is the scandal of Humberto Moreira, the ex-governor of Coahuila and ex-president of the PRI, ar­ rested in Spain a few months ago and freed immedi­ ately under pressure from the Peña Nieto government. At the same time, there are the scandalous cases of the two outgoing PRI governors of Veracruz and Chi­ huahua, who are publicly identified as being involved in dirty businesses that involve billions of pesos. And in the case of Veracruz, Javier Duarte is implicated in several infamous assassinations of journalists critical of his government. All indications are that they will go unpunished, thanks in no small part to the Peña Nieto government.

The crude, classist character of justice can be seen quite clearly in Mexico’s prisons, full of petty crimi­ nals and many innocent people caught up in a justice system that is also corrupt. Prisons that were created for populations three or four times smaller than what they currently hold. Cells designed for three or four prisoners that today are packed with 10 or 12 people, some of whom have to sleep tied to the bars. But also for a small minority there are cells that seem more like hotel rooms for stars.

CNTE: Igniter of the masses Since May, demonstrations beginning in the south­ ern strongholds of the teachers union, CNTE [Na­ tional Education Workers’ Coordination]—Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Michoacán—have spread all over the country with more or less force. The waves have reached all the way north, with demonstrations in Baja California, Sonora, and Nuevo León. It even reached Mexico City, where Local 9 of the SNTE [Na­ tional Education Workers’ Union], the largest union with around 100,000 teachers, began to mobilize.

The breaking point that caused the surge of protests nationwide was the Nochixtlán massacre [on June 19, when police opened fire on striking CNTE teach­ ers who were blockading a highway, killing 13]. The government had to give in, agreed to “negotiate” with the representatives of the teachers, and even saw it­ self forced to move its biggest piece within the teach­ ers’ union bureaucracy, the flashy leader of the SNTE, its general secretary, Juan Díaz de la Torre, propelling him to lead a “re-evaluation of education reform,” crudely trying to snatch away the banners of the dis­ sident teachers.

For its part, the most extreme section of the bour­ geoisie, that had been pushing for a no-holds-barred policy against the CNTE—a group called “Mexicans First”—along with business owners affected by the mobilizations, blockades, and occupations of high­ ways and railroads (hotel owners in Oaxaca, and min­ ing, automobile, and steel businesses) demand a gov­ ernment crackdown and proclaim in a manifesto, “We don’t want a government that folds its hands,” and openly call for the “use of force.”

All these movements, from an untimely trip by Peña Nieto to Washington to meet with Obama in recent days to the appointment of a new president of the PRI, a functionary completely unknown to the public, a technocratic government official (he was the direc­ tor of the Federal Electricity Commission), are the pal­ pable demonstration that in the upper layers of the establishment something very important is happen­ ing. And no wonder—the temperature of the crisis rises every day.

So July 26 arrived, 22 months after the Iguala massa­ cre and the disappearing of the Ayotzinapa students, the demonstration of the family members of the 43 students was held again and coincided with the start of several days of mobilizations that the CNTE and its allies had planned in 27 states and Mexico City, in which the various contingents got together to defend the rejection of the government’s educational reform and the demands that they have in their local areas.

Confronting the official “bargaining tables” at which the government wants to ease teachers’ unrest, the CNTE announced a meeting on Aug. 3 to discuss a “democratic education project” in which a combina­ tion of intellectuals and progressive academics who had declared solidarity with the protests would par­ ticipate, where they would present alternative pro­ posals to the government’s education reform.

On exactly that day, the representatives of the CNTE, after a break in negotiations, restarted the endless, exhausting series of talks, delaying tactics, and empty words with management, in which the government only delays, in hopes of overwhelming blows that put an end to the protests. The problem is that in Nochix­ tlán they knew what they were confronting, and that to put themselves at risk of even greater repression— perhaps even a new Tlatelolco—would be totally counterproductive.

But also the favored action of the leadership of the CNTE is becoming wearying, consisting of mobilizing and negotiating and then doing it all over again. It has taken them more than 20 years with these tactics. It is a vision that stays within the limits of trade unionism without having been able to forge a comprehensive independent strategy that displays totally and force­ fully the potential for struggle not just of education workers but of all Mexican workers.

It is on this strictly political level where we find the heart of the problem. The firm and intransigent strug­ gles of the CNTE teachers and their allies still have not led to the forging of revolutionary political objectives, despite the social context urgently demanding them. It is evident that today the level that the extraordi­ nary mobilization of primary and secondary educa­ tion workers has reached—for they are the ones who make up the rank and file of the CNTE—is inspiring many other groups, especially workers. But we must bring them together into a combined struggle.

For example, we must organize all of the teachers in order to form a movement that covers the entire country. This would mean a democratic restructuring of the leadership of the CNTE that would allow for the inclusion of representatives from the different move­ ments of the center and the north of the country that currently are not part of the CNTE. Or also address itself to the tens of thousands of workers in universi­ ties who are beginning to understand that the conse­ quences of this “education reform” will be devastating for them. Everything indicates that on the agenda in the next period is the preparation of overwhelming actions that have never been done in the history of Mexican work­ ers, especially the struggle for a national strike.

Presidential succession in 2018 Peña Nieto and the leaders of the parties are now preparing for the 2018 presidential elections. The situation of the PRI makes it almost a “mission impossible” for the nov­ ice politician Enrique Ochoa, the party’s new president, to know and ensure that the PRI’s presidential candidate will succeed Peña Nieto. But nor was the Mexican bour­ geoisie in a comfortable position before the disaster of the restoration of the Peña Nieto government. The other bourgeois party that it counts on, the PAN, isn’t exactly very pop­ ular in the hearts of the masses.

The PRD [Democratic Revolutionary Par­ ty] is dismissed as a major player—and its role is that of a satellite of the two main bourgeois parties, since it has remained in tatters after its shameless alliance with those in the Pact for Mexico, and above all for its nefarious role in the events in Iguala.

Subversiones Morena (National Regeneration Movement), the party of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is only supported by a minority of bourgeois groups, and it appears very difficult—in spite of its openly conciliatory poli­ tics—for it to gain the support of the more significant groups of the dominant class.

Up to now, the majority of the leadership of the CNTE has come from popular-front organizations and traditions, promoted by Stalinist groups and their offshoots (Maoists, Hoxhaists, etc.). In practice, this has meant that, without openly saying it, the CNTE’s orientation initially clearly favored PRD-style politics. Today, with the PRD’s resounding crisis, many are turning to López Obrador. But an alliance with More­ na will be the classic case of what Trotsky called— referring to the alliance of the socialist, communist, and anarchist leaders in the Spanish Popular Front in 1936—an alliance with “the bourgeoisie’s shadow.” Indeed, why should Mexican workers, instead of forging their own political alternative, independent and powerful, loyal to their own interests, support a party that subordinates them to “the bourgeoisie’s shadow?” Why continue with the traditional copying of bourgeois groups that characterized the workers’ movement in the 20th century, led by the nationalist leadership and Stalinist reformists like Vicente Lom­ bardo Toledano?

The CNTE, its allies, and the combination of indepen­ dent, socialist, and revolutionary groups that work in the movement of resistance and struggle against the policies of the Peña Nieto government and the rest of the bourgeois parties must prepare themselves be­ fore the next crucial challenges that they will confront very soon and begin to discuss and forge the anti-cap­ italist strategy that for the first time in the history of Mexico will allow the strength of its workers to rise up as the only democratic and independent alterna­ tive politics capable of liberating the people from the convulsive state of decline that they find themselves in today, as a result of the policies of violence, corrup­ tion, and repression of the ruling class.

The education workers’ fight has created the condi­ tions to put into effect this inspiring and revolution­ ary perspective in Mexico today. It is the task of the most conscious sectors and the vanguard to begin the efforts to reach this objective, bringing together meet­ ings and actions that work in that direction. n Speakers include: David Farrell (YSA), Hannah A. Holleman (Ecological Marxism), Charles Post (Origins of U.S. Capitalism), Alan Sears (Marxism and LGBTQI Liberation), Wendy Z. Goldman (Women, the State, and Revolution), Edmond Caldwell (Culture of the Paris Commune), Johnny E. Williams (State as a Social Con­ trol), Juan Cruz Ferre (Electoral Strategy in Argentina), Jeff Mackler, Socialist Action candidate for President.

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SOCIALIST ACTION Jorge Luis Plata / Reuters

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