Speech to Korean Workers and Japanese, German and US International Delegations

Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, Seoul Regional Council Offices

Seoul, Korea
November, 14, 2016
My name is Erek Slater. I am a ten-year veteran Chicago public bus driver. My coworkers have elected
me to be their union shop-steward and executive board member of the Amalgamated Transit Union,
Local 241. I have been asked to say a few words, but first I have to make clear that I do not here speak
for any organization these are my own views.
I was illegally fired from my job as a city bus driver in February for my union and political activity. I
want to share with you some good news: Our union recently won a victory returning me back to work.
In addition to the support of hundreds of workers and unionists in the United States, I want to thank
those who wrote statements and sent solidarity pictures internationally from Korea to Brazil to France.
I want to particularly thank the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (Seoul Regional Council) and
The Korean Federation of Public Services and Transportation Workers Unions.
On Saturday, I was privileged to participate in the mass-mobilization of hundreds of thousands here in
Seoul. The working people of Korea are showing the world how to organize and fight!
A few words about my coworkers:
About 100 maintenance workers and 600 bus operators work at my bus garage in Chicago. Along with
about 7,000 transit workers, we safely move 1.5 million people every day. Each of us are leaders of our
families and leaders in our communities.
However, we are under constant attack by the city rulers and their appointed managers. We are
disrespected, harassed and forced into extremely dangerous working conditions. Some of our main
concerns are [in no particular order]:
1. Lack of respect, especially from management, for the hard, complex and important work we do.
2. Making us pay more for retirement.
3. Forcing us to pay more for less health care.
4. Dangerous sleeping and work schedules. Not enough time or safe locations to use the washroom.
5. Two-tiered working conditions: part-time vs. full time workers doing the same work with
dramatically different working conditions and pay (similar to irregular vs. regular work in Korea).
6. Violence from the legitimate anger of the passengers, the too-high bus fair and a massive cut in
government services for people with mental and physical disabilities, the homeless, and the poor.
7. Repetitive stress injuries and a criminalization of workers who try to take time off work to heal or
help our family.
8. Massive surveillance of our work alongside punitive and excessive discipline policies.
We are currently working under a contract that expired in 2015. Our last contract saw significant
increases to our health care costs. Now the bosses want to extract more concessions from us as they try
to smash our unions.

We must mobilize to lead our working-class communities to turn back these attacks while fighting for a
massive expansion of public transportation (and other social needs) where thousands of unemployed
workers are hired for front-line jobs at union-scale pay and benefits.
I want to say a few words about the current situation in the United States. However, first it is important
to briefly discuss the modern history of the US workers movement.
The workers movement rose in strength during the aftermath of the great depression to the point where
the bosses were afraid the workers would take control of the country. The bosses used their state
(courts, cops, media and military) to jail union leaders and revolutionists. World War Two was used as a
pretext for this and other anti-democratic measures against workers. What was left of the leadership of
the union movement charted a course of worker submission to the bosses: binding workers to legal
frameworks that weakened our ability to use our collective power. The United States main
competitors industrial production was largely destroyed from the war and the US bosses made huge
profits. They were able to temporarily buy off a generation of workers with relatively better pay. Since
that time, our working and living conditions have been systematically lowered with relatively little
effective resistance by organized labor. During this period, the workers movement has forgotten many
of the lessons learned when it openly fought the bosses power over us (with important exceptions,
such as the civil rights movement). This is why US workers have so much to learn from Korean
workers and our shared struggle.
A few words about the current situation in the US:
The global attack on working and living conditions, labor-protections and democratic rights is also
going on in the United States. Our public needs, such as housing, healthcare and public transportation
are being cut. Our work is made harder and more dangerous. Our real take-home pay has been lowered
for generations.
Resistance to these attacks has developed into national struggles such as the fight against police
violence and mass-incarceration, the fight against racism and immigrant-hatred and the struggle for a
living-social-wage.
I was asked to say a few words about the Fight for 15 and a Union struggle:
About 9 of 10 workers in the US do not have a union. Millions of US workers have been forced into
temporary, part-time or irregular employment. Fast-food and other lower-paid workers have been
assisted by the Service Employees International Union to struggle for US$15 an hour, regular full-time
work-schedules and a union. A number of cities and states have raised the minimum wage to $15,
although in most cases this is delayed over several years and many categories of workers have been
excluded. Union recognition has been harder to win.
Since the great sit-down strikes of the 1940s and 1950s, unions have shrunk in size and power as bossfriendly union officials have refused to mobilize the ranks and told workers we cannot do anything
ourselves other than vote for boss-politicians. The fight for a higher minimum wage as well as the fight
for similar working conditions across the working-class helps to unite working people, however the

current official labor leaders in the United States are currently not willing to organize and unleash the
self-activity and militancy of the working class. This tension between the ineffective strategies of labor
officials and the burning needs of workers has created a crisis within the labor movement that has
partly burst out in the Fight for 15.
A few words about US politics:
Donald Trump is the new elected US President. When given two poor choices, many workers voted for
Trump. The great majority did not do so because they support his anti-woman, anti-black, antiimmigrant or anti-Muslim attacks. The majority of workers voted for Trump despite this rhetoric. The
Clinton campaign, the Democratic Party and the union-officialdom that supported them offered very
little to us but more of the same attacks on our living and working conditions. Many of the US rulers
preferred an Obama-type of candidate to project a false image of enlightenment to cover their
hypocrisy and imperial aggression internationally. Now the gloves are off.
The recent demonstrations of thousands in many US cities protesting the election of Trump are a
warning to the ruling class: if you try to attack us there will be resistance.
Now all branches of the US government (House, Senate, Presidency and soon the Supreme Court) are
controlled by the Republican Party section of the boss-class. The Republican party represents nearly
identical class-interests as does the Democratic Party, however, it often pushes a more direct and open
confrontation with the working class.
The super-wealthy rulers of United States do not want to do what the crises of capitalism forces them to
do: attack the working class and provoke our resistance, organization and reopen the potential of
building an alternative to their unjust rule over us.
The US is similar to Korea in at least this way: a third mass-party does not currently exist. In the US,
both parties of the bosses are in crisis. There is no pro-capitalist labour or socialist party to let off the
steam of the class-battle. Bernie Sanders is a reflection of this. Both Sanders and Trumps antiestablishment rhetoric show there is a huge opening for working-class mass-action politics towards
building a government in the United States of, by and for working people. If we do not, there is a real
danger the rulers will return to fascism or world-war to try to save their system and their unjust rule.
A few words on the connection between working people in Korea and the United States
On Saturday, the organization of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions was impressive. Your
mobilization was much larger than the second opposition political party. You show by your disciplined
struggle that working people are able to lead Korea!
However, the US empire will not respect the right of the people of Korea to choose your government.
One of the first acts of President-Elect Trump was to call President Park Geun-hye to make clear that
the 28,000 US troops stationed here are at the service of maintaining the rule of the hated Chaebol
super-wealthy families of Korea.

The working class of the United States, together with workers across the world, can force the removal
of these military bases from this region. The US working class can make the political price so high that
bloodying your legitimate government may be prevented. We have done it before: in 1945 when US
troops and their families back home said, No! to attacking China. We did it in the 1970s alongside
the military victory of the people of Vietnam: US soldiers revolted as did many in the United States.
It is vital that working people in the United States understand the struggle of the people of Korea and
that we take an active role in our mutual emancipation. The organizations of working people in Korea
and in the United States urgently need to develop direct ties of communication, education and shared
struggle.
For several generations, the United States has been a center of imperialist domination. The US rulers
have recently made a turn towards renewed economic, diplomatic and military domination of the
peoples of East Asia and the Pacific. These provocations endanger the whole world. The working class
of the United States has no objective interest in this domination of other working people. Ultimately,
our future is the same as yours: we must link arms internationally to overcome the epoch of capital and
build a new world society.