The global economic crisis has eliminated 6.5 million jobs in the U.S. alone since December 2007. Even though it is the corporate elites that caused this crisis, they are receiving million dollar bonuses while it is working people that are filling the ranks of the newly unemployed.

Yet not everyone is taking this lying down. Despite this ferocious blow, the working class internationally is beginning to rediscover its courageous history of militant tactics to fight back against the attacks leveled upon them.

A number of countries have seen workers starting to struggle against the assaults on their jobs and lives through workplace occupations and other militant actions.

In France, in response to announcements of layoffs, there has been a series of “bossnappings,” in which workers refuse to allow their boss to leave a workplace until their demands are met or layoffs are rescinded.

At least 10 workplaces have experienced such actions. These include Sony, Caterpillar, 3M, and Lipton. One company even set up a course on how to avoid bossnappings and signed up eight businesses.

Such actions have gained wide support across the country, with an April poll finding that 45 percent of those surveyed came out in support of the bossnapping wave, while only seven percent actively opposed them! (Times (UK), 4/12/09) One French union leader summed up this mood: “Those who sow misery reap fury. The violence is done by those who cut jobs, not by those who try to defend them.”

While some may dismiss this as a purely French phenomenon, militant action is spreading across the globe. Most of these battles have been do-or-die situations in which the workers undertake defensive action in the face of massive layoffs and other head-on attacks. The occupation of Visteon car factories (formerly Ford) in Northern Ireland and Britain is a notable example.

At the end of March, 600 Visteon workers were given six minutes notice that they’d all be losing their jobs, with pitiful severance packages and reduced pension payments. Shaken but enraged, the workers defied anti-union laws and began what would become a seven-week-long occupation of the Belfast factory and a ‘round-the-clock picket of the factories in Basildon and Enfield.

The threat of a massive autoworkers’ strike and more plant occupations led to victory for the Visteon workers on May 18, with massively increased severance packages.

As Frank Jepson, one of the leaders of the occupation, put it: “Our victory shows that if you’re determined to make a stand you can beat the big companies. Six hundred workers beat Ford and Visteon. That’s massive, a real David and Goliath.”

In another case in Canada, workers at Aradco, an auto parts supplier for Chrysler, began an occupation of their plant in March. Workers began the occupation a week after the plant closed, having being offered a mere $200,000 severance package even though they were owed $1.7 million by the corporation!

This action resulted in a partial victory, as workers doubled the amount of severance pay the bosses were willing to give them before the occupation had taken place.

This phenomenon is not just confined to other nations, however. In the U.S., there was the occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory last December in Chicago. Members of United Electrical Workers occupied their factory after being told it was closing, while they were still owed over $1.5 million in severance and vacation pay.

Republic blamed the closure and their inability to pay workers on Bank of America, who refused to extend credit to keep the factory running despite receiving $25 billion in federal bailout money.

Additionally, it was found that the owners had actually planned to move the company to a non-union factory in Iowa and wished to get away with as much loot as would fit into their pockets.

After a six-day occupation, the Republic workers won their demands for severance pay, though Republic was shut down.

Bosses will continue these attacks. As these examples have shown, militant action by workers can win victories in the economic crisis and are a precursor to the mass struggle that will develop in future years.

But these actions have limitations. Because capitalism cares only about profit, we must challenge the fundamental basis of the system to prevent future attacks, by workers undertaking democratic control of their workplaces and conducting them for the common good rather than for profit.