International

US TV & film production staff vote for strike action

October 8, 2021

James Stokes, Leicester Socialist Alternative & theatre worker
Pandora Papers open the box on capitalist rich list

Matt Hirst, West Yorkshire Socialist Alternative
Abortion Rights Slashed in Texas: Free, Safe, and Legal Abortion Now!

September 6, 2021

Socialist Alternative
As Afghanistan is gripped by catastrophe – fight for the socialist alternative to British imperialism’s bloody legacy

August 20, 2021

Claire Laker-Mansfield
Prepare for mass protest at COP26

August 5, 2021

Connor Rosoman
We need your support — bottom up finances to take on the system

July 13, 2021

Sarah Wrack

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UPCOMING EVENTS

US TV & film production staff vote for strike action

On the 4th of October 2021, the US International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) made history, as the TV & Film Production division voted overwhelmingly to authorise strike action for the first time in the union’s 128-year history. With a turnout of 89.66%, 53,411 workers voted on the motion, with a yes vote of 52,706 – meaning a yes vote of 98.68%.

IATSE is a historically strong union, covering theatre, film, and television production staff – electricians, carpenters, riggers, welders, stagehands, and more. Thanks to the union, my American counterparts have strong job protections, including minimum crew calls that prevent producers from saving money by cutting staff from productions below a minimum safe level. Producers generally work with IATSE because of its high density of membership and the threat of losing an expensive production to industrial action, but in the most recent round of negotiations, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP)

announced that it does not intend to continue negotiations for a new agreement to replace the Producer-IATSE Basic Agreement. IATSE alleges that the AMPTP has failed to work with the union on addressing unsafe and harmful working hours, low wages, failure by productions to provide reasonable rest during meal breaks and between workdays, and the continued downward pressure on wages due to streaming media.

Perhaps the key demand being made relates to long hours. IATSE members report sleeping in their cars in between 16-hour days of filming because they fear road accidents due to exhaustion – rightfully so, as in the last year two IATSE members sadly lost their lives in exactly these conditions, driving home late at night exhausted from successive production days. After a particularly tough two years thanks to covid, workers in the arts are returning to work with a new resolution to achieve what many of us have been agitating for since, it seems, time immemorial; a better work-life balance and a more equitable deal. The key demands of a 10-hour overnight break (even under the EU working time directive, workers are guaranteed an 11-hour overnight break), a 54-hour turnaround on weekends (which would mean if you finished at midnight on a Friday night, you would not be on shift again until at least 6am Monday morning), and increased penalties for missed meal breaks, in an attempt to reduce the frequency with which lunch and dinner breaks are missed due to production overruns.

If IATSE does formally call for a strike, this would be the first strike in the US film and television industry since the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike, which lasted 14 weeks and saw international solidarity as unions around the world refused to provide alternative labour in support of the WGA picket. It is likely that if a strike were to materialise, producers would again attempt to continue production by hiring non-union labour to break the picket. I hope all of you will join me in wishing our comrades in IATSE a successful round of negotiations after this momentous vote, and in warning British producers (and American producers, such as Disney and Netflix, who film in the UK) that arts workers in Britain are paying close attention to this timely reminder of the old adage; there’s power in a union.

Photo credit: Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times
Pandora Papers open the box on capitalist rich list

The recent revelations of the Pandora Papers, following on from the release of the Panama and the Paradise Papers in 2016 and 2017, are the latest exposé of how the global capitalist elite move money around the world to avoid paying various taxes – highly controversial, but not illegal under capitalist laws.

The fact that this is the third set of papers to be released – and the largest of them (the head of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) termed the Pandora Papers as “the Panama Papers on steroids”) – again shows that under capitalism wealth is hoarded by the rich, while the working class have to worry about a rise in National Insurance, empty supermarket shelves or wondering how they will get to work with recent fuel shortages.

Indeed, the fact that over 300 public officials, including current or former heads of state and ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, are implicated in this puts a spotlight on how these tax laws are written, and the intentional loopholes that are left in place for the capitalist class to avoid paying vast sums of money in taxes. It’s estimated that up to $32 trillion is stored in offshore tax havens.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie have made use of these loopholes as has been revealed in this set of papers – purchasing an offshore company that owned a property in London, thus avoiding paying £312,000 in Stamp Duty, when most working class and young people in the UK wouldn’t even be able to afford to get a mortgage to buy a property and instead have to live in poor and sometimes dangerous rental properties.

King Abdullah II of Jordan has built up a global real estate empire with at least 14 luxury properties via a network of secretly-owned firms worth more than $100m, with one property in Malibu, California purchased for $33m. This is at the same time as when one in four Jordanians are unemployed and living in poverty. One Jordanian lawyer, Moayyad al-Majali, was arrested and fined in October 2019 for slandering the king when he asked the simple question “How much land does the king own?”. Clearly the capitalist class fear the anger that the revealing of their hoarding of wealth will create amongst the masses and do whatever they can to hide it and repress those who try to highlight it.

There are few, if any, countries that have not been named in these papers, from Brazil to the US, UK to Russia, France to Uzbekistan, and the revelations read very similar to the ones in the Panama and Paradise Papers, only the names of the individuals have changed. So the question remains, what will happen now? Will there be any change, or should we expect to see yet further leaks of this nature in the future?

Under the current capitalist system, then yes. These levels of tax avoidance and wealth hoarding are inherent in a system that takes wealth from the working class and gives it to the capitalist class, and they will likely wring their hands and blame it on a “few bad apples” like they have done recently with the Met Police over the murder of Sarah Everard. The truth is they do not want to upset the apple cart of capitalism. Mohamed Amersi, who has donated to the Tories and who funded Johnson’s campaign to become Prime Minister, advised on a telecoms deal that was later found to be a US$220 million bribe for the daughter of the then president of Uzbekistan. Johnson will not want to cut off important friends and donors like Amersi by taking actual action against these levels of tax avoidance!

Instead, we need to fight for a system of socialism, where the vast amount of wealth in society is expropriated from the millionaires and billionaires around the world and raise the standard of living of everyone in society, rather than living under capitalist oppression while the rich buy yachts, jets and property, without paying any taxes. If you agree and want to join in the fight for a socialist society, then join Socialist Alternative today!

We call for:
- Nationalisation of the banks and big companies under democratic workers’ control and management to end tax avoidance by the super rich – compensation paid only on proven need!
- A democratically drawn up plan of the economy to use the vast wealth and resources for human need not billionaire greed, such as building affordable housing for workers and young people.
- No trust in capitalist politicians to solve this issue! Build an international movement of the working class and poor to fight for a socialist world to end poverty and inequality.
Abortion Rights Slashed in Texas: Free, Safe, and Legal Abortion Now!

Article reposted from our US sister section – also called Socialist Alternative

By Grace Fors, Dallas – September 4

Virtually overnight, abortion is banned in Texas. Every one of the already-scarce clinics in the state has halted abortion services. Neighboring states like Louisiana and Arkansas are already seeing an increase in abortion patients from Texas. Millions of women are now terrified that if they want to terminate a pregnancy, they may be forced to turn to certain extremely dangerous “self-managed” abortion procedures.

This vicious attack comes after the Supreme Court denied an emergency stay on Texas’ archaic abortion law known as Senate Bill 8, allowing it to go into effect immediately.

Senate Bill 8 prohibits all abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected – typically between five and six weeks into a pregnancy. Between 85 and 95 percent of abortions take place after this time period – for most, this is before they would know they are pregnant. There are no exceptions for cases of incest or sexual assault.

If that wasn’t barbaric enough, what’s especially staggering about this bill is its mechanism of enforcement. While for years a dozen Republican states have passed similar “heartbeat” bills that have been halted by the courts, Texas’ law shifts enforcement from the state to private citizens. This law deputizes anti-abortion vigilantes who can now file civil lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone guilty of “aiding and abetting” an abortion, for a bounty of up to $10,000 per procedure. The burden of proof that someone “aided and abetted” an abortion is abysmal and even an Uber driver who took someone to an abortion appointment could be sued.

A Wake-Up Call

The threat of Roe v Wade being overturned has hung over our heads in recent years as an unhinged, religious zealot and an ultra-conservative sexual predator were appointed to the Supreme Court by Trump with no fightback from Democrats. Now that the highly undemocratic Supreme Court has shown its willingness to cave to right-wing, anti-abortion fanatics, the outlook for the upcoming Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, which will rule on whether states can ban abortion after 15 weeks, looks much more grim.

Numerous “trigger bills” have been passed by Republican legislatures that would take effect if the court weakens Roe, and the Texas ban is the loophole they’ve been praying for. Pro-life lobbyists are already reaching out to Texas groups for help drafting similar legislation and the blueprint from Texas could soon be exported to dozens of states.

While working people, and young women in particular, are enraged, there is a stunning lack of political leadership to channel 70% of Americans’ opposition to abortion restrictions into action. Major reproductive rights organizations have released TikToks, but issued no calls to action.

After a brief moment of shock and surprise at abortion being suddenly banned, it is clear to millions of people in Texas and across the country that mass protests and even a coordinated day of action is needed to fight back to defend reproductive and women’s rights.

Stand Up, Fight Back

We are staring down the most serious attacks on women’s reproductive rights in decades, however the situation is by no means futile. We can protect Roe and guarantee legal abortions nationwide, but it will require building a mass movement on the scale of the women’s movement in the 1960’s/70’s that won Roe in the first place. Roe v Wade was won in 1973 in spite of a conservative Supreme Court and President Richard Nixon. The country was rocked by mass mobilizations, strikes, and radical grassroots organizations engaged in direct action.

This is what we need today. Our movement will need to place enormous pressure on the Democrats who control the Presidency and Congress to act, as well as the Supreme Court who are gearing up to decide on Dobbs.

A month before winning the presidency, then candidate Joe Biden pledged to make Roe “the law of the land.” Two days after his inauguration, Biden doubled down on this promise to codify Roe v Wade, ensuring that the Democrats would pass legislation at a national level guaranteeing legal abortions. Now, as the rubber meets the road, and with control of the Presidency and Congress, Joe Biden and the Democrats have no excuse not to make good on this pledge.

We need to demand that the Democrats take action. Among many other unfulfilled promises, they’ve so far failed to enact a federal $15/hour minimum wage, enact sweeping climate legislation, protect union rights, raise the corporate tax rate, or restore federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Unless a mass movement is built and immense pressure is brought to bear on the Biden administration, we can add protecting abortion rights to this list.

The Democratic leadership should do whatever it takes to enact sweeping protections for abortion rights. They can act now to write Roe into law, but as we’ve seen they’ll use any excuse in the book not to act. We cannot give them an inch of room to get around this, we need mass protests and walkouts to demand that the Democrats immediately codify Roe. Progressives in Congress should use every bit of leverage they have to demand the establishment take action. On top of this, we need to be prepared for mass demonstrations and direct action directed at the Supreme Court as they prepare to make a decision in Dobbs. In determining the tactics for our movement we can look to the recent women’s movement in Poland for inspiration where women organized a mass strike to protect abortion rights.

Socialist Feminism Needed Now More Than Ever

Our struggle for women’s liberation needs to go beyond the question of access to free, safe, and legal abortion. This ban and others like it will impact poor and working-class women the most, imposing desperation on top of an already desperate housing crisis and childcare crisis. We need a socialist feminist struggle for free, high quality reproductive care including universal childcare, rent control and high quality, publicly owned housing. We need an end to health care profiteering and an immediate transition to Medicare for All. A socialist feminist struggle has to take up the struggle against racism, transphobia, and terror against immigrants as all forms of oppression serve only to divide the working class from one another.

Today’s generation of young women are not sold on “girlboss” glass-ceiling liberal feminism, and there is a deep hunger for fundamental change that puts a decisive end to the crises and exploitation we see all around us. Under capitalism, every gain painstakingly won by our movement, such as Roe v. Wade, can be rolled back by the ruling class. Winning genuine liberation from gender oppression will require channeling the anger at this rotten system into a mighty struggle for a socialist future.

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