MCKINNEY, TEXAS, AUGUST 23 – Employer negligence, supported and reinforced by capitalist governments through mechanisms such as employer-favored contracts, has now resulted in one worker losing their life on the job. The tragedy occurred in North-Central Texas, where a 57 year old UPS driver lost his life due to extreme heat, marking the second death of this kind in the region. This is the consequence of the absence of immediate health and safety measures, and of the intensification of labor in the name of increasing the profitability of capital.
UPS workers recently voted on a contract which, as New Worker pointed out, leaves the workers at the mercy of their employer, regardless of the union’s claim to the contrary. In other words, they will continue to pay with their lives before they see the implementation of any measure that keeps them safe. This death was a crime, an act of social murder by UPS.
Once more we are shown that capital grows from the blood of the working class. UPS joins Starbucks, Amazon, and thousands of other businesses characterized by employer terrorism enabled by the policies of the bourgeois parties. Republicans and Democrats have the support of employers and the trade union leadership.
In order to put an end to this social murder, workers must stand up more decisively against the employers, the bourgeois parties, the trade union leadership, and all the mechanisms that serve them. We must demand and enforce protection, hygiene, and safety measures, to be established immediately. We must reject “social dialogue” with the employers and instead fight back to assert our rights, reorganizing the working class movement through the class-oriented trade unions. Such a fight serves to weaken the Democrats and Republicans, as well as the social democratic parties, while also strengthening the role of the communists. The workers must put themselves at the head of a large movement for workers’ power, so that governance of society is placed in the hands of the majority.
