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.
The outcome of the war will be determined by the development of the class struggle in the United States itself—in Detroit, New York, Los Angeles and other major working class centers.
The fascist president heads a government of, by and for the financial oligarchy.
The first month of 2026 has seen the eruption of major social struggles in the US, with mass protests against ICE killings and dictatorship developing into a growing, class-based strike movement.
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.
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.
It is the capitalist system that produces tragedies like the death of Ronald Adams Sr., a system that operates in the interests of the ruling class, which derives value and profit from the labor of workers.
Shamenia Stewart-Adams delivered powerful remarks to the public hearing on the death of her husband at the Dundee Engine Complex.
The WSWS continues to receive statements of support from workers across Canada for Will Lehman’s campaign for the presidency of the UAW in the United States. Lehman is running as a socialist on a program to abolish the union bureaucracy and place power back in the hands of workers on the shop floor.
The meeting called on educators, students and workers to move similar resolutions denouncing the US-Israeli assault on Iran and the Albanese Labor government’s participation in it.
Every refinery worker has a direct stake in defeating BP’s demands, which would pave the way for oil companies to dismantle national bargaining altogether.
Public anger must not be diverted, nor our independent organisation blocked against renewed attacks on jobs, terms and conditions and the crippling workloads imposed by those responsible for a wrecking operation.
Workers describe widespread support for a March 25 strike at GM’s Silao Complex in Mexico as they demand a 20 percent increase in wages.
Knopf, a father of three and grandfather of eight, was killed after a press machine activated while undergoing routine maintenance and pinned him against equipment.
The bitterness expressed by workers is rooted in the outcome of the 2008 American Axle strike, which lasted 87 days and ended in a devastating concessions agreement imposed by the UAW, with wages slashed to as low as $10 an hour.
In the works council elections that took place between 2 and 4 March at Europe's only Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide near Berlin, the IG Metall suffered a crushing defeat.
The Trump administration's Non-Domiciled CDL Final Rule, which took effect March 16, is a major new stage in the fascistic attack on immigrant workers and the entire working class.
Rail, Maritime and Transport union General Secretary Eddie Dempsey insists a “workable solution” can still be found with TfL, having buried the fight for a shorter working week by members across London Underground.
A tram fire in the Sydney CBD highlights ongoing safety and reliability problems with the city’s increasingly privatised public transport network.
Around 5,300 Lufthansa pilots embarked on a warning strike March 12, including for the first time the pilots of regional subsidiary Cityline.
The well-attended picket lines showed healthcare workers are determined to fight against ongoing attacks on their working conditions and living standards. But the role of the union bureaucracy has been to undermine this growing movement, isolating different sections of the workforce from each other.
The union halted the struggle at its strongest point, isolating workers and paving the way for concessions on wages and staffing.
In spite of the nurses’ powerful position, the 41 day strike ended with a betrayal, demonstrating the need for rank-and-file committees to take struggles out of the hands of the union bureaucracy.
The six-month strike by 750 hospital nurses and case workers in Grand Blanc, Michigan, has come to a fundamental crossroads.
The four-day strike of San Francisco educators, the first in 50 years, contains critical lessons for workers seeking to defend public education.
The California Teachers Association (CTA) has kept some 80,000 teachers across the state working under expired contracts under its fraudulent “We Can’t Wait” campaign. LAUSD educators must form independent rank-and-file committees and mobilize teachers across the state in a general strike against war and in defense of public education.
The meeting called on educators, students and workers to move similar resolutions denouncing the US-Israeli assault on Iran and the Albanese Labor government’s participation in it.
The statement calls the UAW apparatus “complicit” in political repression at the campus and urges that rank-and-file workers take control of their own struggle.
A video uploaded to TikTok shows the warehouse doors being shut and locked as more than a dozen drivers tried to get inside.
Detroit, the historic center of the American car industry and home to large immigrant communities, is increasingly in the crosshairs of Trump’s immigration gestapo.
A new and far-reaching wave of mass layoffs is sweeping the United States, marking a decisive escalation in the ruling class’s assault on the working class.
Amazon announced a second round of job cuts Friday as part of its goal of laying off 30,000 employees.
BP confirmed it intends to continue to operate the largest refinery in the Midwest, producing 440,000 barrels daily of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
The contract would have led to 100 fewer union workers and wider use of contract workers, $8-$10 hourly wage cuts, the closure of the environmental department, attacks on seniority and implementation of AI with no job protections.
Every refinery worker has a direct stake in defeating BP’s demands, which would pave the way for oil companies to dismantle national bargaining altogether.
For the second contract in a row, following the 2022 deal reached at the start of the Ukraine war, the United Steelworkers bureaucracy is seeking to impose what amounts to a war contract on refinery workers.
Workers were given less than 48 hours to decide whether to immediately accept redundancy or take six weeks’ unpaid leave in the hope that the mine is quickly sold.
The Turkish miners’ wildcat strike and occupation in İzmir, defying state oppression, is part of a growing radicalization within the working class on an international scale.
The miners have halted production to demand payment of unpaid wages, enforcement of promotion rights, retroactive contract benefits, guaranteed seniority and severance protections, and genuine health and safety measures.
There is still no official explanation for the tragedy, but mine owner Polymetals has been allowed to proceed with business as usual, as if nothing had happened.
Around 40,000 UC workers in United Auto Workers Local 4811 voted overwhelmingly to strike, but have been kept on the job by union officials nearly two weeks since their contract expired on March 1.
This 28-day “cooling-off” period functions as a de facto state injunction in response to workers’ demands for open, transparent bargaining.
Together, they constitute an extraordinary and coordinated intervention by Trump, aimed at intimidating opposition and reasserting state authority amid a rapidly intensifying class struggle.
This strike vote is unfolding amid a rapidly escalating and explosive wave of working class opposition across the United States, raising the potential for a general strike.
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.
