Union Election & Washing the Bosses' Car

I recently got nominated to run for President of my local union and have been discussing a whole slew of issues with other carpenters. With around 20-25% of our Local out of work, the primary issue is jobs. But under capitalism there’s not much a small Local union can do to undermine the blow of 14.5 million workers unemployed. In our campaign we have raised the issue of shutting down non-union jobs with mass picketing and the need to challenge the existing labor laws which have contributed to the decline in union membership.
As unemployment rises, with it tensions among ourselves, as workers, have increased. We have attempted in our flyers to bridge the gap in particular between Latino and non-Latino workers. A lot of Latino workers aired their grievances with the union refusing to deal with them in Spanish. When our Wildcat Strike Caucus won the Executive Board elections back in 2000 we immediately instigated Simultaneous Spanish translations at our Union Meetings. On our flyer, we stand for the right of workers to deal with the union in their own primary language.
On a recent phone call discussion with a candidate for the Executive Board, another carpenter who is also out of work, this issue hit a nerve with the worker. “You know, English is supposed to be this country’s language. I’m fed up with carpenters who come out to the job who can’t speak it. You tell them to do something and they get it wrong ‘cause they can’t understand you.”
I paused. “Well, workers who can’t do the job get laid-off, why does it bother you?” Then he explained how he worked for a company where immigrant workers were allowed to make mistakes because they were working on the bosses’ house or getting paid less hours than they were working. “Well there’s two issues here, surely.” One is the language issue. The other is the contract. The boss, it seems, is exploiting the vulnerability of the worker that doesn’t speak English so as to undermine the contract. If a worker is violating the contract and can’t be talked out of it, then we should bring them up on charges. But, who’s to blame here? Surely not the immigrant worker who left their family to come to foreign country to put food on their table, but the boss who’s screwing everyone within hand’s reach.
So we can do one of two things: help our fellow worker be able to better communicate with his sisters and brothers or get rid of the boss. Short of a revolution, I suggested, getting rid of the boss would be difficult. Most everybody needs some English skills to survive in this country, but more importantly the worker needs to see the union as his/her defender or at least ally.
The union has the resources. We pay $1.25 an hour into our union as dues. Our union is sitting on a huge pile of cash. We need to use up some of our resources to strengthen the union: the union now prints most everything in English-Spanish (since the Wildcat strike), job dispatch needs to be done in the two languages too and there should be a professional translator at union meetings. Why? Because this severe recession has created a situation that bosses nationwide are seeking to exploit. People are hungry, people are worried-sick about keeping their jobs and the bosses are seeking to incrementally take back everything we’ve gained in the past. One route they will use is dividing us. Black against White. English-speaker against Spanish-speaker. If we play their game of fighting each-other instead of the boss, ultimately will be all end up washing the bosses’ car.