[Suntzu]

The strike got very little media coverage on the U.S. side.

[ckaihatsu]

The strike got very little media coverage on the U.S. side.

Yeah, I'm seeing a *trickle* now, at Google News, searching for 'Matamoros strike' -- good thing the WSWS takes up the slack. This momentum is just *beginning* -- !

[Rancid]

I still see zero mention from all reputable media, both Spanish and English saying anything about auto parts.

The auto companies in their conference calls are making no mention. The last time there was a REAL parts shortage, they made strong mention of it to explain production slowdowns.... no mention here....

World Socialist whatever news is garbage.

[ckaihatsu]

I still see zero mention from all reputable media, both Spanish and English saying anything about auto parts.

"Reputable" media...!

x D


You mean *corporate* media.

Are those maquiladora-type factories in the North American automobile supply chain, or aren't they?

[Rancid]

Are those maquiladora-type factories in the North American automobile supply chain, or aren't they?

With those particular factories, it's not clear.

I'm not seeing any news of parts shortages in business news sites. They woudl be all over this if it were true. Stock traders want all the information ASAP.

[Sivad]

"Reputable" media...!

x D

I'm sure he meant repudiable media, characterizing the corporate media as "reputable" would be extra fucking at this point.

[ckaihatsu]

I'm sure he meant repudiable media, characterizing the corporate media as "reputable" would be extra fucking at this point.

That's pretty funny -- 'repudiable' media. I'll be remembering that...!

[Sivad]

I've not seen anything outside of these obscure socialist websites make any mention of this.

I just looked up the local news paper in Matamoros (I speak/read spanish). I see no mention of this strike. You would think this would be big local news.

I'm looking up Brownsville local news. I see nothing here either.

You can start breaking out the conspiracy theories of a massive media blackout now.

The strike is now confirmed to be very large with 45 factories and more than 25,000 workers striking. I just searched for it on google news and it has only been covered by a few small local papers in the us media. So there was a media blackout, no doubt about it. A strike that big in Mexico should have easily made the front page of every major paper in the country.

You should maybe consider whether your worldview might be a bit too naive and simplistic because you were just way off on this one, like way way way waaaay the fuck off. You were ridiculously fucking wrong and you were totally condescending and dismissive and just obnoxious about your absolute wrongness. You should probably tone it down until you at least figure out what planet you're living on because media blackouts aren't even controversial, nobody disputes that corporate media blacks out major stories on a regular.

[ckaihatsu]

[ckaihatsu]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/0 ... a-f12.html


Mexican union apparatus, government scramble to suppress growing strike across Mexico

By Andrea Lobo
12 February 2019

A second wave of wildcat strikes continues to expand in Matamoros, Mexico, and is beginning to spread across the country. Sparked by the tens of thousands of workers at 45 maquiladora plants who rebelled last month against the pro-corporate trade unions, tens of thousands more are launching their own struggles after workers in Matamoros won a 20 percent wage increase and a $1,700 bonus.

Inspired by the initial wave, 20 additional maquiladora plants in Matamoros that were not initially on strike began their own wildcat strike last Tuesday and were joined by workers at the Coca-Cola bottling plant, three supermarkets, trash collectors and workers from other sectors.

The wildcat wave is spreading throughout the country.

Last Thursday, 680 workers at a General-Mills plant in the city of Irapuato of the central Mexican state of Guanajuato launched a four-day wildcat strike against two unjustified firings and called for the establishment of a new contract with paid vacations and improved conditions. Negotiations are ongoing.

Hundreds of teachers in the southern state of Michoacán continue to strike and block crucial railways to demand a total of $311 million in owed bonuses. As unsuccessful negotiations extend with the government, the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) union has publicly “dissociated” itself from workers that continue the blockades, which threaten critical auto exports to Asia.

Meanwhile, workers at the five national campuses of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UAM) are entering their tenth day of a strike to demand a 20 percent wage increase, while opposition is reportedly growing against the union leadership.

As the strike wave grows in Mexico, the ruling class is warning of a “contagion” and carrying out a brutal counter-attack in Matamoros. The local maquiladora association, Index, announced last week that companies have fired more than 1,500 workers who participated in the strikes and that they plan to layoff 25,000 more within three years.

Among Matamoros workers, the most common subject on workers’ social media groups—aside from getting rid of the unions—is fighting to defend those fired and to protect against the threats of mass layoffs. At Trico Componentes, which already agreed to the demand of a raise and bonus, workers are discussing new strikes against the non-payment of the bonus.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/yxgw0Nz8W1I[/youtube]
Matamoros workers support SEP demonstration against auto layoffs

At the same time, the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and the ruling Movement for National Regeneration party (Morena) have dedicated themselves to supporting the trade union apparatus in order to prevent the strikes and contain the growing wave of struggles.

The actions taken by the AMLO administration leave no room for doubt about its pro-corporate role. On January 25, the day the initial wildcat strikes were set to become “legal,” the federal sub-secretary of labor and the federal representative in Tamaulipas, openly speaking in the name of the president, requested a 10-day deferral of the strike while threatening workers with “unintended consequences.” On January 27, Morena Senate leader Ricardo Monreal made calls to the local union and its backers to end the strike.

This was complemented by the deployment of the state and federal police and navy and army soldiers to harass striking workers. Moreover, the Associated Press reported on February 1 that the AMLO administration “actively discouraged the Matamoros union from seeking the pay increase.”

The trade union apparatus has in turn responded to the growing upsurge of the class struggle by mobilizing across the country seeking to prevent strikes and to rapidly negotiate sellout deals.

For instance, inspired by the Matamoros strikes, about 6,000 auto-parts workers in the city of Ciudad Victoria, near Matamoros, threatened to strike for several weeks demanding a 30 percent raise. Last weekend, however, the trade union canceled the strike and imposed a mere 16 percent increase.

Last night, Proceso reported that the trade union confederation CROC in the nearby city of Monterrey was using pamphlets to lure non-unionized workers at Walmart demanding raises like those in Matamoros to become affiliated with the union instead of launching wildcat strikes.

Reforma also reported yesterday that maquiladora employers in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, are expressing growing concerns that the strike wave will spread there.

As a result, the same forces dispatched to Matamoros to quell the rebellion are being sent to Juárez. Omnia reported last weekend that publications have appeared on social media aimed at workers in Ciudad Juárez calling for those interested in joining the strike wave to communicate with labor lawyer and Morena activist Susana Prieto and the pseudo-left outfit Political Organization of the People and the Workers (OPT).

Prieto and the OPT have worked together during the last week in Matamoros, visiting each plant and promoting the creation of a new, “independent” trade union. The OPT activist accompanying Prieto, Luis Carlos Haro, has presented himself as a representative of an “independent and democratic” trade union from San Quintín, Baja California, that forms part of the National Union of Workers (UNT).

A warning must be made to workers. These forces seek to provide a new façade to the same trade union bureaucracy to subordinate workers’ independent initiatives to the dictates of the corrupt union structures, the government, and, ultimately, the ruling class and imperialism.

The UNT leader, Francisco Hernández Juárez, told El Economista in an article published November 8 that the position of the 200 unions he leads is that “there are no conditions for a new trade-union organization, but there are conditions for a common trade-union agenda” with the established trade-union confederations CT, CROC, among others, which would entail “respecting the purpose of each union.”

A former national deputy of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Hernández recently claimed the presidency of AMLO “is one of the best things that has happened to the country in recent years,” and backed the candidacy of fellow trade-union leader Napoleón Gómez Urrutia as a Morena senator. While in the senate, Gómez Urrutia continues to lead the Miners Union, affiliated formally with the main Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the United Steelworkers (USW) in the US, IndustriALL, Unite Here and others.

The strike wave in Mexico is part of a resurgence of militancy among workers internationally, after decades of suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions. Everywhere, the ruling class is seeking to buttress the anti-worker and nationalist trade union organizations to prevent workers from joining their struggles as part of an international movement against capitalism and for social equality.

Yesterday, 5,600 Denver teachers started their first strike in 25 years, continuing a wave of strikes by tens of thousands of teachers across several US states against decades of austerity and privatization.

Similar to the struggle in Matamoros, Mexico, this strike was triggered by wildcat strikes in West Virginia, Arizona and Oklahoma organized through social media and in rebellion against the trade unions.

The only way forward for workers across Mexico, North America and internationally is to fight to build their own rank-and-file organizations and to link their struggles across sectors and borders to build a political movement independently and against all trade unions and other organizations and parties of the ruling class, for socialism.

Copyright © 1998-2019 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[Sivad]

[Sivad]

Yesterday, 5,600 Denver teachers started their first strike in 25 years, continuing a wave of strikes by tens of thousands of teachers across several US states against decades of austerity and privatization.

I have mixed feelings about the teacher strikes, I am militantly pro-labor but I hate state run industrial education. Those teachers need to be striking for abolishing state education and not just trying to protect their place in the system, teachers are as bad as cops in that respect.

[ckaihatsu]

I have mixed feelings about the teacher strikes, I am militantly pro-labor but I hate state run industrial education. Those teachers need to be striking for abolishing state education and not just trying to protect their place in the system, teachers are as bad as cops in that respect.

It's a good point, and I happen to agree. These things are on the gradient of the political spectrum, so of course teachers strikes should be supported, hopefully for better state-run industrial education, and definitely against *privatization* of the same, which is even worse.

And, we can't blame *any* workers for wanting to protect their place in the (capitalist) system, and for collectively striking to get better wages and benefits for themselves.


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals [CORRECTED, 170602]

Spoiler: show

[Sivad]

hopefully for better state-run industrial education, and definitely against *privatization* of the same, which is even worse.

There's a difference between privitization and corporatization, I'm fully in favor of a voucher system that would allow a range of choices from homeschooling to not for profit private schools.

And, we can't blame *any* workers for wanting to protect their place in the (capitalist) system

When the work they're doing is creating tremendous social dysfunction then yeah, we certainly can blame them for contributing to the problem. Industrial education is on par with the war on drugs and mass incarceration as a cause of social degradation.

[Rancid]

There's a difference between privitization and corporatization, I'm fully in favor of a voucher system that would allow a range of choices from homeschooling to not for profit private schools.

The problem with not for profit private schools is that people will find a way to game the system to bleed more money out of the public. The school will just hand out overinflated contracts to companies for things like maintenance and lunch supplies. I could see a scheme were the owner of a not for profit school, also owns the food delivery company the same school uses. Shit like that would have to be rooted out. I doubt it can be effectively rooted out, which is why I'm not sure it's a good idea to even have not for profit private schools.

Many local governments fail to do stop these sorts of conflicts of interest as it is. There's no reason to believe they would bother to act to stop one related to these schools.

Look at any city's city council, and you'll notice that most of them own land, and buy up land in areas that are being voted on for zoning and permits. City council people are all dirty slime balls, and no one holds them accountable.

[Sivad]

The problem with not for profit private schools is that people will find a way to game the system to bleed more money out of the public. The school will just hand out overinflated contracts to companies for things like maintenance and lunch supplies. I could see a scheme were the owner of a not for profit school, also owns the food delivery company the same school uses. Shit like that would have to be rooted out. I doubt it can be effectively rooted out, which is why I'm not sure it's a good idea to even have not for profit private schools.

Many local governments fail to do stop these sorts of conflicts of interest as it is. There's no reason to believe they would bother to act to stop one related to these schools.

That wouldn't be an issue if the parents controlled the funding and the administration, they would know exactly where the money was going.

[Rancid]

That wouldn't be an issue if the parents controlled the funding and the administration, they would know exactly where the money was going.

Yes, I agree.

[ckaihatsu]

There's a difference between privitization and corporatization,

Hmmmm, no, there *isn't* -- corporatization *implies* privatization, since there are no corporations that are part of government (the public / state sector).

I'm fully in favor of a voucher system that would allow a range of choices from homeschooling to not for profit private schools.

Well I'm *against* block grants myself, which is what educational vouchers implies. It's too hands-off, and is just an end-run around public schooling, towards *privatization* of education at public expense.

Remember that profits are a *cost*, and there's nothing that says the commodification of education, with the bribe of profits to the private sector, makes education any better. Public funds should instead go directly to the costs of providing education, which can readily be done by the government. Ditto for health care, etc.

When the work they're doing is creating tremendous social dysfunction then yeah, we certainly can blame them for contributing to the problem. Industrial education is on par with the war on drugs and mass incarceration as a cause of social degradation.

Reforms can only go so far. It's no wonder that much of today's public education feeds into the prison-industrial complex and the preparation of wage-slaves for the capitalist economy when that's what adult life is all about under the capitalist state's socialization. Sure education could be a lot better but at least now there's Wikipedia and YouTube, along with other d.i.y.-enabling digital learning resources.

[Sivad]

Hmmmm, no, there *isn't* -- corporatization *implies* privatization

Yeah but privitization doesn't necessarily imply corporatization. I spelled that out in my response, small community run cooperatives and home schools aren't corporatized education.

since there are no corporations that are part of government (the public / state sector).

Yes there most definitely are state corporations.

Well I'm *against* block grants myself, which is what educational vouchers implies.

No it isn't, individual vouchers issued directly to parents are not block grants.

It's too hands-off, and is just an end-run around public schooling, towards *privatization* of education at public expense.

see above.

Ditto for health care, etc

I don't want government run healthcare either, I would prefer publicly funded healthcare in the form of individual vouchers that can only be used with member controlled not for profit health cooperatives.

It's no wonder that much of today's public education feeds into the prison-industrial complex and the preparation of wage-slaves for the capitalist economy when that's what adult life is all about under the capitalist state's socialization.

That's what it's about under *state* socialization.

[ckaihatsu]

Yeah but privitization doesn't necessarily imply corporatization. I spelled that out in my response, small community run cooperatives and home schools aren't corporatized education.

Ehhhh, I can't get on board, because I do support *standards* for any schooling, like a 'core curriculum'. I saw a video on 'unschooling', which is certainly enlightened, but I don't think those decentralized approaches are rigorous-enough when it comes to the content. Here's my framework for all matters academic (art - literature - cooperation / competition [social history] - social science - science):


Humanities - Technology Chart 3.0

Spoiler: show

Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show

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Yes there most definitely are state corporations.

Okay, name one.

No it isn't, individual vouchers issued directly to parents are not block grants.

Block-grants-to-parents, then.


---

It's too hands-off, and is just an end-run around public schooling, towards *privatization* of education at public expense.

see above.

The vouchers are meant to be 'spent' at privatized charter schools, right? Then it's *privatization*.

I don't want government run healthcare either, I would prefer publicly funded healthcare in the form of individual vouchers that can only be used with member controlled not for profit health cooperatives.

Okay, you did mention non-for-profit before, but I'll have to say that such is *contrived* since the private sector will always want to *commodify* whatever industry, whether health care or education, etc.

That's what it's about under *state* socialization.

No, you can't just square the blame solely at the state, because it's just doing the demands of big business interests since the whole system is one of capitalism / profit-making. Even as a legacy of populist / reformist campaigns, social services like education are going to increasingly reflect the dictates of *business*, especially as such gets increasingly *privatized*. The state is a *capitalist* state, so it will tend to have a culture that *accommodates itself* to big business interests, such as with doing privatization in the first place.