On Saturday, May 25, the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) hosted a meeting titled \u201cMobilize the working class to defend the University of California (UC) strike against genocide!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 200 people registered for the meeting, including UC workers and other workers from the railroads, the auto industry, public schools and healthcare. The wide-ranging discussion connected the struggle against the genocide in Gaza and the attack on peaceful protests with workers\u2019 struggles against mass layoffs and other cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WSWS writer Tom Hall began the meeting with a report that stressed the importance of the protests and the strike by academic workers, who are members of United Auto Workers Local 4811. \u201cWhat makes the strike which began this week at the University of California so important is that it poses the entry of the working class into the struggle as the basic political force\u201d against war and attacks on free speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He continued: \u201cAs horrible as it is, the genocide in Gaza is only one front in the emerging Third World War.\u201d This also includes the US proxy war in Ukraine and advanced plans for war against China. Hall also connected the attack on campus protests with the arrest of anti-war socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk by the Ukrainian state security services and urged attendees to join the campaign for his release<\/a> .<\/p>\n\n\n\n On top of expanding the strike immediately to all 10 UC campuses, Hall called on workers to build rank-and-file committees to establish lines of communication and prepare nationwide and globally coordinated actions. The decision of the union bureaucracy to limit the strike to a single campus\u2014now set to expand Tuesday to UCLA and UC Davis\u2014\u201cexpresses the class function of the union bureaucracy, which works on behalf of management and the government to suppress the working class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He ended the report by urging, \u201cOnce you leave this meeting, you have to take action yourself. Speak to your co-workers about what you\u2019ve learned here. Start building committees at your own workplaces. Don\u2019t wait for the leadership to be provided by others. It can only be provided by you, by the workers themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the opening report, Tamino, a member of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Germany, reported on the government crackdown<\/a> on anti-genocide protests by university students in Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tamino explained that the government responded to a protest at the Free University by mobilizing hundreds of police. At Humboldt University, the police responded to the occupation of a campus building by \u201cbrutally dissolving the peaceful blockade, whereby one person even became unconscious and had to be medically treated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The global crackdown, he explained, is \u201cabout suppressing every opposition to the genocide in Gaza and the German government\u2019s war policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If today critical students are being beaten down, tomorrow it will be striking workers and other opponents of war. We are therefore calling on all workers to defend the students at the universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like in the US, the German trade unions fully support the genocide in Gaza and do everything to suppress any opposition. The German metal workers union (IG Metall) even has a cooperation agreement with the German arms industry. Workers must therefore organize themselves independently of the trade unions in rank-and-file committees and unite internationally to beat back the attacks on democratic rights and stop this insane war policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Early on in the meeting, one worker asked how the UAW leadership justified the so-called \u201cstand-up\u201d strike tactic of only calling out a fraction of the membership and how workers could counter it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In response, Will Lehman, a socialist autoworker who ran for president of the UAW in 2022<\/a>, explained that the \u201cstand-up\u201d strike is designed to isolate workers and impose a defeat, as was the case in the auto strike last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lehman noted, \u201cThe UAW is not informing any other members, including autoworkers, of the strike that\u2019s going on [at UC].\u201d He added, \u201cThe idea that any one of us is fighting alone, when we\u2019re paying dues to this organization, and when there is an overwhelming strike authorization \u2026 by 79 percent [to strike] \u2026 the idea that the UAW is conducting any sort of struggle is ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following up on Lehman\u2019s report, Hall reviewed numerous meetings between UAW President Shawn Fain and President Biden, including public appearances where the union threw out anti-genocide protesters or worked with riot cops to shield \u201cGenocide Joe\u201d from protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also explained how Fain himself came to power as the result of a federal intervention into the UAW. A federal monitor oversaw a rigged election in which the turnout was reduced to 9 percent, and hundreds of thousands never even got ballots. Voter suppression<\/a> was particularly intense against UC and California State University academic workers. \u201cActually, one of the main reasons for this was that another person who was on the ballot \u2026 was Will Lehman,\u201d who ran on a campaign of \u201crank-and-file committees and abolishing the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat was totally out of bounds, as far as the ruling class was concerned. They need this bureaucracy, with some semblance of credibility, in order to play the role that it\u2019s seeking to play.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He concluded:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The question of the transfer of power from the bureaucracy to the rank and file is not just a tactical question. It\u2019s a strategic and a political question, because it\u2019s bound up also with a fight against \u2026 the two pro-war parties which this bureaucracy serves. Connected with that is also the fight of the working class against capitalist exploitation and against capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Workers from other industries connected their own experiences with those of students and academic workers, especially the role of the government and the pro-corporate union bureaucrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n William, a member of the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee, spoke about the contract fight by 120,000 railroad workers in 2022. Despite the vote by 95 percent to authorize the strike, the railway union bureaucrats kept workers on the job even after legal anti-strike restrictions expired. This bought the Biden administration and Congress crucial time to pass legislation to pre-emptively ban a national rail strike<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it came time to put the screws to the working class, there was no opposition. They held hands, and they enacted legislation to ban our strike. Joe Biden, despite all of his big talk about being the most union-friendly president ever, signed that legislation into effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n