Portside

Organizers expect retail employees in more cities to join the work stoppage, which follows the country’s first-ever coordinated Walmart store strikes last October, and a high-profile Black Friday walkout November 23. Like Black Friday’s, today’s strike is being framed by the union-backed labor group OUR Walmart as a response to retaliation against worker-activists.

From stopping wage theft to organizing carwasheros, victories have come from meeting workers where they live.

Backed by security forces, bosses at Arabtec - a massive construction firm with interests across the oil-rich Gulf states - ended a strike on Monday, but the fallout continues as more workers are receiving deportation orders. The strike ended after management refused to accept demands for increased wages from people earning about $200 a month to complete mega-projects in 40 degree Celsius heat.

We talked with Michael about the contemporary crisis and the possibilities of overcoming it, about the experiences and contradictions that characterized the societies of “real socialism” in the 20th century, and also about the possibilities of building a socialist alternative that would not be limited within the boundaries set by similar attempts in the last century.