Rehire the Namibian Rossing Miners Leaders! Down with Union Busting!
In a union-busting attack, the China National Uranium Corporation Limited (CNUC) has recently fired 10 union leaders of the Rossing branch of the Mineworkers Union of Namibia (MUN). For workers internationally, and in particular those in the extraction industries, the union busting attacks on the Rossing miners are a frontal assault. It is in the interest of the Ranks of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), the National Union of Mineworkers (UK), the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of South Africa, the FSTMB of Bolivia, and workers everywhere to solidarize with the Namibian Rossing miners in their fight against the bosses of Chinese capital.
Rossing miners had won wages and conditions under Rio Tinto, the previous owners, through years of class struggle–only to have these hard won wages and conditions sheared from them by the new Chinese management. This could happen to you! When the bosses take back wages and benefits from one group of miners or workers anywhere in the world it creates pressure on Capitals to do the same everywhere in the industry in order to remain competitive on the world market. This was an ABC understanding in the CIO days and arguably even as late as the 1970s Yablonski days. But we hear nothing from Brother Trumka. The AFL-CIO has abandoned international labor solidarity a long time ago. A fighting class struggle labor leadership would be organizing militant international solidarity with the Rossing miners! REHIRE THE MINERS NOW!
No anti-Chinese chauvinism! Namibian workers! Unite with and organize Chinese immigrant workers into your union! We warn that there is rising anti-Asian violence across the U.S. and this is antithetical to working class solidarity. This violence is rooted in racism and the anti-Chinese chauvinism finds fertile soil in perceived Chinese origins of the COVID pandemic. This was a lie spread by Trump, no friend of labor by any stretch! We call for international labor actions in solidarity with the fired Rossing miners and against anti-Chinese chauvinism in any form!
But we want to warn union members in the United States to express our solidarity without supporting the Democratic Party war drive and ‘pivot to the Pacific’ rerun of the Biden administration’s war mongering against the Chinese people and the People’s Republic. The threat of inter-imperialist war with China is increasing and supported by the “two” capitalist parties. We see the Chinese regime as a competing imperialism defending the profit extraction operations of their capitalists everywhere, exploiting miners exactly like U.S. imperialism and the firms whose names appear on your paychecks. United front actions require serious militant workers to consider and not avoid the class nature of the Chinese state, when a state-owned enterprise is the oppressor of workers, both in China and abroad. This can be a principled debate within a united front fighting the victimization of Namibian miners.
What is China?
Serious militant workers debate the class nature of China, the importance of the 1949 revolution to free China from the control of western imperialism, the subsequent rise and degeneration of the revolution, the turn toward “market socialism’, the restoration of capitalism and the emergence of Chinese imperialism. The left internationally debates the trajectory of China: is it still a workers state or a degenerated workers state? Has capitalism been restored yet? Is it, or is it not imperialist? Regardless, we should be able to agree that socialists, communists and trade unionists need to come to the defense of the Namibian miners as they suffer the squeeze for profit by the new owners who present themselves as communists. Which side are you on?!
Capitalism is a global system and the working class is an international class.Workers in Africa have the same shared class interests as Chinese workers and U.S. and all other wage labor. We fight against our own ruling class, the main enemy, just as we fight against world imperialism. The fight against world imperialism requires uniting the international working class in struggle across national borders.
An injury to one is an injury to all!
Build mass demonstrations internationally to defend the Namibian miners! Strike if the new boss won’t relent!
Rehire the Namibian mine union leaders! Stop CNUC union busting!
Workers of the world unite!
