We can’t even curse at the scabs,” a striker commented to the WSWS team. “If you go to England they’re fighting in the streets. The real attitude of the Democrats to the strikers was highlighted by the dispatch of hundreds of police officers by Mayor Bill de Blasio to escort scabs around the city, and the setting up of metal barricades to cordon off picketers and support Verizon’s strikebreaking operations. Workers nodded their heads in agreement when White said the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, were the party of Wall Street, inequality and war. Instead the CWA and IBEW have promoted one Democratic Party politician after another, from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to Governor Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio. Its attacks could only be repelled, White said, by mobilizing the full industrial and political strength of the working class in the US and internationally. Verizon, he said, was a powerful, transnational corporation that enjoyed the full backing of both big business parties. White discussed the need for rank-and-file workers to take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the CWA and the IBEW, and break the isolation of their strike by reaching out to the broadest sections of workers throughout New York City. The determination of the Verizon strikers, who are engaged in the largest strike in the United States in years, stands in sharp contrast to the treachery of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), who have sought to isolate the strike and leave the workers at the mercy of management’s strikebreaking operations. As one striker in Astoria, Queens put it, “they want to turn the clock back to the Stone Age.” Verizon workers expressed their determination to resist Verizon’s attacks on their pension and health benefits, and its efforts to transform the workforce into low-paid and largely casual laborers with few or no rights. The five boroughs of New York City are home to nearly 9,000 out of 39,000 Verizon workers who struck company operations throughout the northeast and mid-Atlantic states on April 13. Socialist Equality Party (SEP) presidential candidate Jerry White and campaign supporters visited several picket lines in Manhattan and Queens, New York on Sunday, discussing with workers the issues at stake in their battle with the giant telecom company.
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