Leaflet written for the TDU (Teamsters for a Democratic Union) 2025 Convention. PDF of this leaflet available here.
It’s time to remove reactionary anti-immigrant union leaders, break with the capitalist political parties, and build towards the general strike!
“Social issues are all well and good, but protecting illegal immigrants that come into our country to commit crimes and steal jobs, that’s a tough pill to swallow.” -Sean O’Brien
The working class in the United States is under siege. Wages are being crushed while corporate profits soar to record highs. Workers face unaffordable rents, medical debt, and job insecurity, while billionaires add billions every week to their fortunes. Across industries, from logistics to healthcare, from auto plants to warehouses, bosses are using automation, union-busting, and subcontracting to squeeze every ounce of profit from our labour. Strikes have been isolated, contracts watered down, and inflation has stolen our raises before the ink was dry. The current leadership of the unions, instead of coming together to mount an actual defense, continues to kowtow to the class of the bosses in isolated struggles, as workers’ quality of life is deteriorating daily.
These attacks are not isolated; they are part of a coordinated class offensive. The assault on immigrant workers is central to this strategy. When the ruling class whips up racist hysteria, it is not to “protect jobs,” but to divide the working class and keep wages low for everyone. The same politicians who criminalize migrants are the ones slashing social programs and breaking unions. Every deportation, every ICE raid, every anti-immigrant law is an attack on all workers, meant to terrorize a section of our class and make the rest easier to exploit. There can be no class unity without full solidarity with immigrant workers. Union leaders who do not understand this basic fact can only ever act as pawns of the exploiter class, not the defenders of the workers they claim to represent.
While our class suffers, the leaders of major unions such as Sean O’Brien are busy cozying up to both capitalist parties. O’Brien’s flirtations with Republicans and Democrats alike show that he has no faith in the independent power of the working class despite his rhetoric. These parties, one hiding behind “progressive” slogans and the other behind nationalist ones, are two arms of the same capitalist system. They exist to defend profit, not people. Decades of “lesser evil” voting and lobbying have only weakened our movement. It is time to abandon electoralism and rebuild labour as an independent, fighting force.
Real change will not come from ballots or backroom deals; it will come from the shop floor, from coordinated strikes, from the collective power of millions of workers acting together. The time has come to prepare for a general strike: a nationwide work stoppage that unites union and nonunion, native-born and immigrant, employed and unemployed, in a single movement against the capitalist class. Every struggle, from warehouse workers demanding fair pay to nurses fighting for staffing and service workers demanding dignity, must be linked together in solidarity and common purpose if workers are ever to recover the ground they are constantly losing in the United States and across the world.
At the upcoming TDU convention, we call on workers to join in the fight to transform our unions from passive lobbying groups that at best only ever organize small regional and weak strike actions, into real instruments of class struggle. Let us fight to align contracts, remove “no strike clauses” from our contracts in Teamster locals across the United States, forge alliances with organized workers across all industries, unions and borders, and reject the leadership that trades away our power for political access. The working class has no common interest with its exploiters, and no future under their parties. Our power lies in our unity, our strikes, and our refusal to be divided.
Our program begins from a simple truth: the working class and the capitalist class have no common interests. Every advance for the bosses comes at the expense of workers, and every gain for workers must be fought for. We stand for unions that act as instruments of class struggle. We call for uniting all sections of the working class, including immigrant and oppressed workers, in a single fight against exploitation. This means organizing the unorganized, tearing down wage tiers, rejecting no-strike agreements, and linking every battle – UPS, Amazon, healthcare, education, and logistics – into one movement that can build toward a general strike against the entire capitalist system.
These steps are necessary because the existing leadership of the labor movement ties workers to the bosses and their political parties, leaving our class divided and powerless. The only way forward is to break from both the Democrats and Republicans, to end illusions in electoral solutions, and to fight independently on the basis of class power. The Class Struggle Action Network exists to unite militants around this perspective, to coordinate action.
Solidarity with all workers.
Abolish the bosses’ grip on our unions.
Prepare for the general strike.
Victory through class struggle!
JOIN THE CLASS STRUGGLE ACTION NETWORK! We build cross-union solidarity to strengthen the defense of the entire working class.
