Victory to the Moncure Plywood Workers Strike!

North Carolina

SEPTEMBER 21—Facing down a new plant management that has a history of busting unions, the 114 members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local Lodge W369 are on strike at Moncure Plywood in Chatham County, North Carolina. Spirits are high among the striking workers, who walked off the job on July 20 after bosses tried to impose mandatory 60-hour workweeks and other anti-union measures in contract negotiations. Workers Vanguard salesmen visited the picket lines during a trip to the area for our annual subscription drive. One black striker told WV that this struggle was about rights, not money, adding: “Even the slaves got a day off.” Already long hours at the plant are made worse by the dangerous working conditions, including the lack of ventilation, missing saw guards and accumulation of combustible dust.

While production at the plant is reportedly down, it remains open. According to an IAM W369 representative, management has recruited scabs, including from among Latino immigrants, and lured some 40 former members of the union back to work. In a plant that was 60 percent black and 30 percent Latino before the strike, bosses have stated that they will not hire any more black workers. With immigrant workers under siege in North Carolina and elsewhere in the South, including through government workplace raids, management views these workers as vulnerable and easily intimidated into opposing the union. Meanwhile, a noose was provocatively hung near the pickets. This demonstrates that championing black rights and fighting for full citizenship rights for all immigrants are key to mobilizing labor’s power in struggle against capitalist exploitation.

For weeks, deputy sheriffs harassed the striking workers. The role of the cops is to defend the bosses’ profits and rule. The same forces of the capitalist state, historically backed up by Klan terror, uphold the “right to work” laws that have kept North Carolina open shop and largely non-union. Instead of launching a campaign to organize the unorganized, the pro-capitalist officials of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win trade-union federations preach reliance on their “friends” in the capitalist Democratic Party. Electing Democrats, who are representatives of the class enemy, is an obstacle to the way forward: hard class struggle. Victory to the Moncure Plywood workers strike!