workers participated in a "Rally for Jobs Now" in Washington April 26. The demorstrators marched along a two-mile route from the Capitol to Kennedy Stadium, where the rally was held. The demonstration had been initiated by a group of unions in the New York City area, particularly the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers (AFSCME). It was sponsored by the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO. (See INPRECOR, No. 23, April 10, 1975.) More than half the demonstration was made up of workers from the greater New York City area, District 37 of AFSCME mobilizing the largest contingent. Other large contingents came from the International Union of Electrical Workers, District 1199 of the Hospital and Health Care Employees in New York, District 65 of the Distributive Workers of America, the United Federation of Teachers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, the United Auto Workers, and the United Steelworkers of America. At least half of the demonstrators were women, a reflection of women's increased role in the U.S. labor movement. As many as one-third of the participants were Blacks, the sector of the work force 30 international capitalist market is having effects within the countries of the East, which some people had claimed would be an island of sanctuary. These effects are not of the same scope for all countries: while the Ussk, which commands an abundance of raw materials, is resisting well, Hungary, which-is totally deprived of raw materials, has been strongly affected. For more details on this problem, see the article by Ted Harding in INPRECOR, No. 16-17, January 16, 1975. 7. "Piece Work, " by Miklos Haraszti, is banned in Hungary. A German translation has just appeared ("Stücklohn, " Rotbuch Verlag, Berlin) and a French translation is in preparation. that has been hardest hit by unemployment. (Unemployment of Blacks is estimated to be more than 20%; among Black youth it is more than 30%.) An AFL-CIO statement distributed at the rally enumerated the labor bureaucracy's "program" for dealing with the deteriorating living standards of the American working class: full employment through measures like public works projects, expansion of mass transportation, "genuine" tax reform, lower interest rates, and a national health insurance program; also included was the chauvinist demand for restrictions on "low-wage imports, " a reference to the import of inexpensive consumer products, mostly from Asia. Many of the demonstrators, however, raised more militant slogans, most of them variations on the theme of "jobs for all." The Puerto Rican Socialist party, a far-left organization based in both Puerto Rico and the United States, carried banners denouncing attacks on "illegal aliens. " Some of the uniors, notably District Council 37 of the Distributive Workers and Local 1199 of the Hospital Workers, carried slogans opposing U.S. aid to the Thieu government, which was still hanging on at the time of the rally.
The speakers at the rally consisted solely of labor bureaucrats and dignitaries from the Democratic party, a fact that was not especially appreciated by many of the demonstrators. The chairman's introduction of the war criminal Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson's vice-president, as a "friend of labor" was widely greeted by boos and catcalls. In fact, Humphrey never did get a chance to speak. Just before he was introduced, some young people began to move onto the stadium field. The crowd soon swelled to the hundreds and converged on the unprotected speakers' platform, heckling the invited "guests." The rally then dissolved into confusion and was declared ended by the labor bureaucrats in charge. It had lasted less than one hour. The disorganization of the rally reflected both the positive and the negative features of the action in general. The large turnout, its overwhelmingly proletarian composition (with the heavy representation of Blacks and women), and the determined mood of the participants marked a big step forward for the labor movement as a whole. The April 26 demonstrafion was the first antigovernment political action organized on a national scale by the trade unions in decades. If thus represented the beginning of a turn in the American political situation, the beginning of working-class action beyond the level of the individual factory in defense of living standards. On the other hand, the right-wing character of the cont'd. from pg. 32. tionary Marxist Group), sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Québec. This well organized and militant contingent became a pole of attraction for many women who are rapidly becoming politicized. This is the fruit of an independent women's movement, a new factor in the political scene in Québec, which has been developing for several months. Another important feature was the scope of the mobilization of the far-left groups. The main contingents were formed by the Maoist groups En Lutte (In Struggle), Parti Communiste Canadien (M-L) (Canadian Communist party, Marxist-Leninist), and the Movement Révolutionnaire des Etudiants du Québec (Revolutionary Movement of Students of Québec), os well as the Groupe Marxiste Révolutionnaire. Also present were the Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière (Socialist Workers League, part of the LSA/LSO, Canadian section of the Fourth International), the Communist party, and various immigrant groups (Haitians, Chileans, Spaniards).
official program and the composition of the speakers' list reflected the present incapacity and unwillingness of the American trade-union bureaucracy even to develop its own political vehicles, let alone genuinely defend the interests of the class. The rally was called by sections of the bureaucracy essentially because of the anger of the rank and file at the current recession, which is generating heavy pressure on union officialdom to do something. The inaction of the American trade-union leadership in face of the present attack on the living standards of the workers has been absolutely unique in the major imperialist countries. Some sections of the bureaucracy are now becoming afraid both of a spontaneous response by the rank and file that could escape their control and of potential threats to their own positions of privilege, which depend to some extent on the rank-and-file workers' viewing the trade unions as useful instruments with which to defend themselves. This sentiment, however, is not at all unanimous. George Meany, the head of the AFL-CIO, who boasts that he has never walked a picket line in his more than eighty years, was invited to speak at the rally and refused. April 26 represented a beginning of organized working-class response to the recession in the United States. It heralds the potential that exists for much broader action, and there is little doubt that future actions of its type will be even more difficult for the labor bureaucracy to control. • The assembly at Paul Sauvé Center, attended by nearly 10,000 demonstrators, began with a moment of silence in honor of the martyrs of the Vietnamese revolution. But the assembly had been poorly organized by the trade-union leaders, and it soon degenerated into a picnic, concrete perspectives being lost in torrents of beerWhile the FQ and the CSN made security on the job their central May Day theme, the CEQ used the occasion to produce and distribute several thousand copies of its "May 1 Manual, " which is designed to transform the traditional courses into denunciations of capitalist education. The theme was: "For a day in the service of the working closs." As a whole, the May 1 workers demonstrations in Québec showed that the Québécois proletariat stands in the vanguard of struggle in North America. However, only the internationalist solidarity of all North American revolutionaries will be able to prevent the isolation of the Québécois revolufion and to protect the gains of the revolution throughout the continent.
32 Editeur responsable: René Groslambert, 34 rue Nothomb, 1040 Bruxelles/Imprimerie spéciale de l'editeur.
Québec was the only country on the North American continent where there were mass demonstrations of the working class on May Day. For the third year in a row, the Québec union federations called for the organization of big street demonstrations. In fact, it was only in May 1973 that the Québécois workers joined the rest of the world workers movement in celebrating May 1, which until then had been considered a "Communist" holiday. The aim of the demonstrations that year was clear: to free the leaders of the three trade-union federations who had been imprisoned by the Bourassa government after the general strike of May 1972. Shortly after that demonstration, the Québécois government released the three prisoners. The following year the workers movement launched the battle for indexation (the sliding scale of wages), which was the theme of the May 1, 1974, demonstrations. That battle ended in a partial defeat for the working class; labor contracts compensating the workers for the rising cost of living were This year, because of some particularly spectacular accidents in chemical and metallurgical plants and in the construction industry, and especially because of the strike of the asbestos miners, who are struggling for better hygienic conditions on the job, the leaderships of the union federations decided to call for May Day demonstrations around the theme of security on the job. Many workers went on strike May 1, along with other workers who had already been on strike -such as the stevedores, postal workers, and asbestos miners. In Montréal there were many work stoppages in the cardboard industry and in some hospitals and metal factories. The students and professors of several CEGEPs (Collège d'Enseignement Général et Professionnel, vocational schools) and secondary schools stayed away from class to
MAY DAY