HOME  E-DEMOCRACY 98  E-DEBATE WEB MN-FORUM

Thomas Fiske      Response 11

Question 11: What are the top challenges facing your campaign in the coming weeks?

My campaign is part of the fightback of working people in this
country. For this reason it faces the same obstacles as the
working-class in its efforts to wage defensive struggles against the
takebacks demanded by the bosses.

Among these obstacles are the divisions created among workers by
the different ways the bosses treat us. The most basic division
among workers is that between employed and unemployed since we are
forced to compete for the available jobs. Today in Minnesota
unemployment hides in the form of underemployment - the vast creation
over the last eight years of "economic recovery" of low-wage
temporary, part-time, and even full-time jobs which are insufficient
to support the families of the people who work them.

To decrease the competition for jobs and to offer a measure of
relief I propose a shorter workweek with no cut in pay. This would
create millions of good-paying permanent full-time jobs. A goal of
the recent strikes against GM and US West has been for a shorter work
week. In the US the length of the average workweek has increased
dramatically over the last eight years at the same time average real
wages for working people has dipped!

Another important division among working people is caused by the
discrimination in hiring and promotions by the bosses against women
and oppressed nationalities. To combat this I support affirmative
action with quotas.

A third division is the result of the special oppression working
people face in Third World countries, who have taken the worst blows
of the worldeconomic crisis. My campaign supports the cancellation
of the Third World debt, which sucks vast sums of blood money through
the interest on the money owed to banks and governments in the
imperialist countries.