This past weekend, class unionists visited the Weyerhaeuser workers picket lines in Lebanon, Springville, and Eugene, OR. While visiting, we distributed dozens of copies of The Workers Wildcat (Download Here).
The union and Weyerhaeuser resumed negotiations this past Friday, as the workers continue to hold the picket line in a struggle for better wages and healthcare. In addition to this, workers from other sectors have showed their solidarity by joining Weyerhaeuser workers on the picket line.
Since the last Weyerhaeuser strike in 1986 that resulted in a deal that included wage and benefit cuts after one of the unions accepted the deal offered by the company and split the strike, Weyerhaeuser workers have increasingly experienced an attack on their working conditions and standard of living. It seems the contracts since 1986, negotiated for by the union, have been getting worse and worse over the years which has culminated in the current strike. These attacks on workers’ conditions and livelihoods have taken place as Weyerhaeuser has amassed $2 Billion in profit and a Weyerhaeuser Executive has even acquired a multi-million-dollar yacht.
On October 5th, Weyerhaeuser workers begin voting on the contract that has been offered by the union and the company. Many of the workers are feeling dissatisfied with the union because of how little the contract being voted on addresses the reasons they went on strike and the length of time and pressure it took to get a strike going in the first place. Workers have also expressed a desire to fight for more, even if that means struggling for better conditions and wages outside the union.
The Weyerhaeuser strike is taking place as workers all around the world are struggling against the attacks of the Capitalist Class. Including Sysco workers in New York/Buffalo, rail workers in the UK who walked off the job, Argentine tire factory workers recently have been on strike, German Amazon workers on strike, and much more working-class action all around the world.
This is all taking place as a result of an international attack on the working class’s wages and working conditions. All in an attempt to make the international working class pay for the economic crisis produced by the capitalist class. By attacking wages and worsening working conditions, the capitalist class is enabled to extract a larger portion of profit from the working class and thus able to continue their regime of capital accumulation with increased ease. And amidst this economic crisis, the War in Ukraine rages on and continues to express itself as an imperialist war between the United States/NATO and Russia while these capitalist imperialist powers prepare themselves for a much larger war. For example, the United States recently held a U.S.-Pacific Island Country Summit in an effort to rally countries in this region for its side of imperialism in opposition to China.
Wars such as the War in Ukraine benefit no-one but the capitalist class. They serve a particular nation and its capitalist class by increasing its ability to accumulate capital and section of certain areas of the market.
With imperialist war afoot and attacks on the working class increasingly taking place, we as a class must take the struggle into our hands. And to avoid a similar situation to the one of the 1986 strike, we encourage Weyerhaeuser and all workers to form independent rank n’ file committees independent of the unions, in order to ensure our struggles can be advanced amidst capitalist attacks and crises.
