The Wall Street Journal had two small pieces on workers and the economic crisis yesterday. One was about US Labor and the attacks on public sector workers by the states. And the other was about similar attacks in France on French workers. As most of us are aware these days, this crisis is global and workers in the industrial countries in particular are facing a similar situation. In the former colonial world, the issue is mass starvation.
But while the employer’s offensive is similar in France and the US, the response from workers is considerably different; the title of the two pieces make this quite apparent.
USA
The WSJ informs us that the Governor of Illinois is proposing mandatory four-day furloughs for state employees. California has just passed a budget that has one day a month furloughs, something the Union leaders tout as a victory as the demand from the employers was two days initially. (It’s an old game the employers and Union officials play. The boss demands 20% cuts, the Union leaders offer 10% cuts and the bosses agree and the Union leaders announce a victory).
New Jersey’s Governor is asking workers to “forego” a negotiated 3.5% raise and furlough 60,000 workers for a “short” term this year. Apparently the Unions didn’t agree with this so the state treasurer went to the state’s Civil Service Commission and this body (I’ll bet there’s plenty of Democrats and Obama supporters involved in all this) enacted a “short term emergency rule” that allows the state to furlough them anyway; contract be damned. The state is not neutral is it?
Hetty Rosenstein, director of the Communication Workers of America says, “it’s not fair and it’s too much.” Here goes the game again, time for the boss to make smaller cuts and the deal can go through.
In New York, the state’s Governor David Paterson (another Democrat) also asked workers to forego their 3% raise and wants to furlough them for five days in the next fiscal year. A little bit of economic terrorism is applied to help workers decide in the form of threats to lay of some 9000 workers if they don’t accept the terms.
My former Union, AFSCME, is a paragon of patriotism and cooperation by setting a fine example. According to the Journal, Steve Kreisberg, director of collective bargaining for AFSCME said that Locals have agreed to forego wage increases. (Notice how Union official have very similar titles to officials in the corporate world, like Business Agent and director)
France
Let’s see what’s happening across the pond with those folks that the Bush clique told us are cowards. Well, first off the workers at GDF Suez’s natural gas terminals went on strike yesterday to protest their bosses getting stock options and for wage increases. (How uncivilized). Still, it seems that within hours the bosses “renounced” their options in what the WSJ calls a “spirit of responsibility”. (How civilized) They want to share their profits with the employees, the WSJ informs us. Suez agreed also to distribute 4.4 million free shares to its 200,000 employees around the world.
Also yesterday, the Journal reports that the workers at the US “conglomerate” (that’s a big, big company) 3M “released their boss after holding him for more than a day to protest planned layoffs. They freed him after the company agreed to Union demands..”
This is a US company. My oh my. US Union leaders tell us that we have to give up our hard won gains; there is no alternative, the situation demands it. What else can they do?
I do recall that there have been two general strikes in France in the last few weeks though you wouldn’t know about it if your only source of information was the tightly censored US mass media. It is quite clear why the bosses in the US demonize the French and keep this information under wraps. The French are a bad bunch; they would be a bad influence on US workers just like they were 80 years ago with those sit-down strikes that cottoned on over here and, forced GM to capitulate and accept a Union.
Brittany Spear’s behavior or Madonna’s adoption plans are a much safer bet.
But the US working class has a rich and militant tradition from the great uprising in 1877 or the struggle for the eight-hour day in 1886 to the Lawrence strike and the factory occupations of the thirties and the civil rights movement of the 50’s and sixties. This history and tradition has been severely weakened there is no doubt. The consciousness of the US working class has been thrown back. But the boss is our best ally in a way, they won’t let up.
There’s a positive side to this. At a meeting in New Jersey to discuss the cuts, the Journal described the following scene “The situation grew so tense at the crowded meeting in Trenton N.J that four members of the state’s largest public employees Union were arrested.” More of this is on the horizon and the combination of the Union bureaucracy and the Democratic Party that has been a formidable obstacle to a fightback will be cast aside at some point like rotten fruit on a tree that falls at the first strong wind.
But every victory against the capitalist class is temporary, just like the small gains the French workers made described here. Just like Union contracts, the first day after they’re signed, the employers violate them and try to take back any losses they incurred. As a movement develops to drive back the offensive of capital, to reform the system, such a movement will put forward independent candidates for election and a mass workers party will develop. Socialists and all anti-capitalists should not stand outside this process. But the system is rotten it cannot take society forward. Only by taking in to public ownership the dominant means of production, distribution and exchange under worker’s control and management is a secure and environmentally safe future possible---a mass revolutionary party rooted in the working class is necessary for this. This does not mean a political party of 25 who are known only to themselves or sectarian groupings standing outside of the working class, something that has been an obstacle to this process in the past.
Labor’s Militant Voice and Facts For Working People wants to work with others who agree with this analysis, accepts that direct action is a legitimate method of struggle and roots themselves in the working class which is the force that can, due to its role in social production, send the so-called free market in to the dustbin of history.
We are a small but growing group of activists. We have had some significant victories as we have assisted workers, tenants and others self-organize by relying on their own strength and the method of direction action in their struggles with various sections of the capitalist class from the slumlord to the city bureaucrat.
If you want to join us or work with us and are in LA, Chicago or the San Francisco Bay Area, contact us at:
LA Arturo 323-428-5711 or Julia 310-474-6729
Bay Area: 510-595-4676 email erin@bringdownbush.org
Chicago: email LMVchicago@yahoo.com
Toronto: 416-323-0620
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