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UWOC Demands: Jobs or Income Now

By VVAW

It doesn't take much to see that unemployment is hitting a record-breaking high in the US with nowhere to go but up. The economy, like a broken-down Ford Edsel, is rapidly falling apart and heading into an ever-deepening crisis. Massive unemployment, like the runaway inflation we are now experiencing, is just one of the result of this crisis. Both of these are an out-and-out attack on the US working class: attacks launched by the bloated little men sitting in the directors' offices of places like General Motors, Chase Manhattan and IBM. Working hand-in glove with their front men in government, these pigs are trying to shift the burden of the crisis of the imperialist system onto our backs.

But we know, and all working people in the US know, that it wasn't us who created this crisis. We are not to blame and we'll be damned if we'll pay for it! When the bigshot bosses tell us there is no work what they really mean is that there is no work that they can make a profit from! So, we end up with no jobs and just a few months of unemployment benefits that can hardly pay the rent. And after that, no benefits at all. Tough? Sure times are hard. But hard times mean fighting times and working people everywhere aren't taking unemployment lying down.

A growing movement of unemployed workers, led by groups like the Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee (UWOC) is doing something about it. A fighting workers' organization, UWOC has 4 basic demands it is organizing around: EMPLOYED/UNEMPLOYED--SAME CRISIS, SAME FIGHT! WE WON'T SCAB AND WE WON'T STARVE! UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE FOR ALL PERIODS OF UNEMPLOYMENT! JOBS OR INCOME NOW! Relying on the united strength of the masses of unemployed worker, UWOC is taking its campaign into the streets, into the unemployment offices and to the plant gates and linking the struggle against unemployment with the struggle of all working people facing speedups, low wages, miserable working conditions and harassment.

When the ruling class tells us to "bite the bullet," UWOC's response is FIGHT, DON'T STARVE! And as ever larger numbers of unemployed workers join the struggle for JOBS OR INCOME NOW! This is exactly what's happening--in Boston, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Seattle and a lot of other cities.

Uniting and fighting back together is the last thing the ruling class wants to see us doing. In their newspapers, like the Detroit Free Press, they tell us to fight the "laid-off blues" by using our spare time to exercise and really "get into shape." Well, we're going to get into "shape" alright: but by exercising our muscles in uniting workers and other people all over the US to fight back against the rich. Working people make everything in this country--the cars, house, food, everything. Yet here we are with no jobs and going without. There ain't nothing right about a system where our kids are getting hungry and our houses are getting cold. We don't have any choice--we have to fight back. As one of the UWOC demonstration chants puts it: UNEMPLOYMENT AIN'T NO JOKE, GIVE US JOBS OR THE CITY'S GONNA SMOKE!