The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is an international network of democratic, worker-controlled rank-and-file committees. It was formed to provide workers with the organizational means to unite across workplaces, companies, industries and national borders, independent of the pro-corporate trade union bureaucracies.
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There are now rank-and-file committees of autoworkers, educators, Amazon and logistics workers, postal workers, bus drivers, and many other sections of the working class.
Rank-and-file committees are of, by and for the rank-and-file workers, who have a different set of interests than management, the bosses, the politicians, and the trade union apparatus, who oppress workers in order to defend the profits of the ruling elite.
Contact us now to join a committee. If there is not already a committee in your workplace, industry or region, we will help you start one!
In his campaign announcement, Lehman called for workers to support his campaign, including by running as delegates for the UAW Constitutional Convention, which will be held from June 15-18.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being cut as the ruling class seizes on the artificial intelligence boom to eliminate vast sections of the workforce.
Tens of thousands of unorganized workers are demanding substantial wage increases to keep up with spiking rent, utilities and food costs.
The last-minute deal demonstrates the ruling class’s extreme sensitivity to and fear of the class struggle and its reliance on the union bureaucracy to suppress it.
An inquiry independent of Stellantis, the United Auto Workers (UAW) apparatus and state authorities is essential to uncover the truth, expose systemic safety violations and prevent future deaths.
Approximately 100 workers and youth attended the hearing, which was addressed by members of the IWA-RFC and Shamenia Stewart-Adams, the widow of Ronald Adams, Sr.
One year ago today, 63-year-old machine repairman Ronald Adams Sr. was crushed to death at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Complex in Southeast Michigan.
Stellantis, the United Auto Workers and Michigan safety officials continue to remain silent on the death of the 63-year-old skilled tradesman, even as full production at the engine plant has resumed.
The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) calls for a resounding No vote. Opposition must be mobilised demanding the removal of Ward, Walsh and the entire CWU Postal Executive who serve as Royal Mail’s enforcers.
The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee urges postal workers to vote “No” to the union-backed tentative agreements and “Yes” to authorizing strike action.
“Our mission is to unite postal workers worldwide to build collective power, protect our rights, and improve wages, benefits and working conditions through solidarity, transparency and democratic action to actively counter the efforts of the 1 percent.”
By calling off its work bans the AEU is signalling its willingness to force the state government’s offer through, further cutting real wages and doing nothing to address staff shortages and intolerable workloads.
With thousands of workers and young people marching to oppose Trump, the AFL-CIO and Democratic Party is trying to prevent this movement from evolving into a politically conscious challenge to oligarchic rule and the capitalist system that both parties defend.
Will Lehman, a rank-and-file Mack Trucks worker who is running as a socialist candidate for UAW president, is calling on workers to break the union's isolation of the nearly two-week walkout by 4,000 Harvard graduate student workers.
With the Trump administration continuing its massive assault on workplace safety and environmental protections, the American trade union bureaucracy issued boilerplate statements calling for increased lobbying and voter drives.
This is the text of a resolution introduced by UAW presidential candidate Will Lehman at a meeting of UAW Local 677 in Macungie, Pennsylvania.
The collapse of Spirit has priced millions of working class travelers out of air travel overnight—and it is only the first casualty of the fuel crisis triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The government’s decision not to rescue Spirit, on the absurd grounds that they did not “have half a billion dollars laying around,” is deliberate class policy aimed at making the working class pay for the war.
The May Day stoppage would have provided a platform to appeal beyond their depot—to bus workers and the wider working class.
Mid-May marks the contract expiration for 40,000 subway and bus workers and the end of the cooling off period for 3,500 rail workers, posing confrontations with the Hochul and Mamdani administrations.
Nurses and healthcare workers should reject the offer presented by the NZNO, which would slash wages and do nothing to address the staffing crisis in hospitals.
People with disabilities will be subjected to demeaning tests, aimed at kicking them off the NDIS or dramatically reducing the support they receive.
The cabinet has decided to massively increase military spending and correspondingly slash social spending. One “reform” will deliver a death blow to healthcare in its current form.
“These supports are not optional—they are essential to my daily survival, including help with eating, hygiene, dressing and maintaining basic safety and wellbeing.”
The struggles of teachers and students in São Paulo are part of a growing movement of the international working class against the austerity policies driven by the capitalist crisis and the effects of the war against Iran.
The decision was taken before teachers were given access to the full terms of the tentative agreement and before any meaningful rank-and-file review could take place.
The reported 28 percent pay rise offer reflects the fears of state and federal Labor governments that strikes in Victoria could become the starting point of broader action by teachers and others nationally.
The central fraud of this contract is that it conceals massive cuts just over the horizon. A new budget proposal for the next school year is expected in mid-May—days after the ratification vote closes.
The ALU could not simultaneously integrate itself into the orbit of the union bureaucracy and the Democratic Party while developing an independent movement of Amazon workers against the entire corporate and political structure those forces defend.
The death went unreported for a week before the online investigative outlet, the Western Edge, broke the story on April 13.
A core element of Amazon’s operations is the Delivery Service Partner (DSP) program—a sprawling network of nominally independent subcontractors through which Amazon controls the lives of hundreds of thousands of delivery drivers without, it claims, employing a single one of them.
A video uploaded to TikTok shows the warehouse doors being shut and locked as more than a dozen drivers tried to get inside.
Around 50 workers on site when the blaze erupted escaped without injury, but some were forced to literally run for their lives.
BP Whiting refinery workers continue their battle, as Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) locks out 1,700 USW workers.
An ethylene production plant at Mossmorran, Scotland has ceased production and started laying off its 400 strong workforce.
This is the second major incident at a US refinery in the past five months, following an explosion at the El Segundo Chevron refinery which rocked much of the Los Angeles area last October.
Miners’ struggle demonstrates the social power that must be mobilized for the social and democratic rights and against imperialist war.
The 110 miners who walked 180 kilometers to Ankara to demand payment of their unpaid wages and other social benefits were taken into custody on Tuesday.
Following the arrest of Independent Miners’ Union leader Başaran Aksu, miners have launched their march to the capital.
Ulaş Sevinç, leader of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal in Türkiye, released a video statement condemning the arrest of independent union leader Başaran Aksu.
Will Lehman, a rank-and-file Mack Trucks worker who is running as a socialist candidate for UAW president, is calling on workers to break the union's isolation of the nearly two-week walkout by 4,000 Harvard graduate student workers.
The more than 1,500 graduate workers who have walked out teach courses, run laboratories, and generate the research revenue that makes UIC function.
In a flagrant violation of democratic principles, the HAW-UAW bargaining committee has unilaterally called off plans for a spring strike, overriding a clear mandate from the membership
Picket lines went up April 21 at Harvard’s main campus in Cambridge and at Harvard Medical School, as graduate students indefinitely halted teaching, grading and research.
The ICFI and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties are advancing this initiative to begin and develop a global counteroffensive of the working class against the homicidal policies of the governments controlled by the capitalist ruling class, which are responsible for the worldwide catastrophe.
This resolution was adopted unanimously by the membership of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States at its Sixth National Congress, which was held online from July 19 to July 24, 2020.
The characteristic of every great crisis is that it lays bare the contradictions that have accumulated and been suppressed for decades. All that is backward, anachronistic, corrupt, and, in the most profoundly objective sense, absurd and even irrational in the economic organization, social structure, political leadership and dominant ideology of the existing society is brutally and comprehensively exposed. The pandemic is such a crisis.
This lecture by David North examines the causes for the betrayals of the trade unions in their hostility to the class struggle and socialism, and reviews the historical conflict between the trade unions and revolutionary Marxism. It was re-published in the 2014 book, The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished 20th Century.
