Bosses begin wide layoffs

The report released by the U.S. Department of Labor Feb. 1 detailed a trend that many workers are already painfully well aware of. The capitalist bosses are cutting jobs and slashing payrolls, with a greater intensity, across nearly every sector of the U.S. economy.

The report disclosed a net loss of more than 17,000 jobs in the month of January. Small gains in low paying service sector and retail jobs were swamped by massive cuts in relatively better paid sectors such as construction and manufacturing. More than 28,000 construction workers and more than 27,000 manufacturing workers were laid off this past month, according to the Labor Department’s figures.

And the number of workers who have been unemployed for six months or longer has now reached nearly 1.4 million.

The numbers in this report are grim indeed, but the government’s tallies only represent a fraction of the actual number of layoffs that are taking place, and only offer a small snapshot of the growing number of unemployed workers in the U.S.

Many of the job cuts that are currently happening in industries such as construction and manufacturing are being targeted at undocumented workers whom the Labor Department does not include in its figures.

Millions of workers across the country are not counted in the official unemployment figures because the government claims they aren’t “actively seeking employment.” As chronic unemployment increases, more and more workers are failing to meet the government’s criteria for active job seekers, and are categorized as having “dropped out of the labor market.” The so-called official unemployment rate of 4.9 percent does not take any of these unemployed workers into account.

The workers that are being laid off are victims of the escalating war that the capitalist class is waging against the working class and oppressed. As the effects of the plummeting U.S. housing market and the chaos in global financial markets continue to wreak havoc on the capitalists’ profits, they are responding by intensifying their attacks on the workers and oppressed with mass layoffs, wage cuts, and the slashing of workers’ hours.

The massive layoffs and wage cuts benefit the capitalist class by reducing their labor costs during the economic downturn. The growth in the reserve army of unemployed workers benefits the capitalist class by lowering the wages that workers command in the labor markets. With more and more workers being forced to compete for fewer and fewer jobs, wages are driven down across the board.

As the job cuts continue to intensify, and the ranks of the unemployed continue to grow, the anger and discontent of the working class is growing in proportion. The capitalist ruling class is constantly attempting to neutralize this growing anger and discontent by pitting worker against worker.

Through deliberate and calculated campaigns of disinformation and racist demagoguery, the ruling class seeks to divide the working class. Racist blowhards like Lou Dobbs are paid by the ruling class to spout their vile nonsense, while the millionaire politicians vying for the 2008 presidential nomination promise to “stop the flight of our jobs overseas.” By telling workers that they are being laid off because their jobs are being stolen by workers overseas, or that they can’t find a job because immigrant workers have taken the jobs, the ruling class seeks to spread racism and have workers fight amongst themselves.

But these racist ruling class tactics are being challenged. Across the U.S., a growing number of workers are uniting to struggle against the real enemy, the capitalist ruling class. More and more workers are uniting to say that it is not the oppressed workers in developing countries who are taking their jobs. Rather, it is the greedy capitalist bosses and bankers who are cutting jobs and foreclosing on homes in efforts to save their own profits.

Any meaningful change in the lives of workers is dependent on the growth of this solidarity among members of the multinational working class. The ruling class trembles with fear at the thought of millions of workers united in a fight to replace the system of capitalist exploitation with socialism—a system that meets human needs, not the bosses’ greed. It won’t be long before the capitalists’ worst fears become reality.