There are 15.4 million trade union members in the US. 11.5 million of these are affiliated to the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations. These workers are also organized into 51 state federations and over 500 central labor councils. The first of these are mainly state bodies and the second mainly based in cities. What an incredibly potential force this represents.
I want to give these basic facts so nobody gets the impression that when we on this blog call for the union leaders to act we are talking in abstractions. These union leaders control organizations with over 15 million members. Many of these workers are in the most essential sectors of the economy, transport, industry, health care, the government sector, in other words in positions where they can bring the economy to a halt or direct it in ways they feel would be best.
The silence of these union leaders on just about every issue is a disgrace and a crime. It is this silence which allows the corporations to dominate, their parties the Democrats and Republicans to rule, their capitalist and racist ideology to permeate just about everywhere. Think about the events of the past week around the racist attack on Shirley Sherrod. What did you hear from the trade union leadership? Nothing. These capitalist supporters with their 15 million members kept their mouth's shut. Think what they could have done.
Shirley Sherrod said it was not about black and white it was about poor versus the rich, about those who had access to power and wealth and those who did not. This was a brilliant outstanding message which is entirely in the interests of the working class, that is the membership of the trade unions. The trade union leaders should have taken their resources and driven it home. They should have taken up Shirley Sherrod's message and taken on the corporate capitalist media and its racist divisive filth.
Use your imagination. They could have organized through their full time apparatus and membership, through their state federations and labor councils, through their hundreds of millions of dollars of resources to have mass workplace meetings, mass meetings in the neighborhoods with the theme being that of Shirley Sherrod that it is not about race, but about working class unity to help all workers. And to put forward the program of a $15.00 minimum wage or a $5.00 wage increase whichever is greater, no lay offs, a program to build the infrastructure and schools, hospitals etc and provide jobs at union wages and benefits and no foreclosures of homes or family farms. And so on.
The trade union leaders could have built a mass movement on this basis. They could have organized millions more members into the unions and they could have ended the corporate monopoly of politics in the country by building a mass working peoples party.
But what did they do? I ask you to think? What did they do? I follow events pretty closely. But i cannot think of anything they did. So when the country was convulsed with the discussion over Shirley Sherrod, when the extreme right were vulnerable because they were caught out in their dirty forgery of Sherrod's speech, when a real opportunity existed to hammer the extreme right, the trade union leaders did nothing. They left their 15 million members completely inactive and immobilized. What a bunch!
As we continually say the trade union leaders have forfeited their right to lead. We must build new fighting leaderships around new fighting programs in the working class movement. And we must see that the 15 million force of trade unionists in this country is potentially the most powerful force in the country and every time its voice is not heard this is because of the cowardly pro capitalist policies of the trade union leaders. We the activists must build fighting oppositions and help the union movement speak and give leadership and end the corporate capitalist dictatorship that runs this country and replace it with a democratic socialist alternative.
Sean.
1 comment:
i feel very strongly about the fact that people are so underpaid in so many jobs.the media have alot to answer for.they pick on certain workers.they effectively put them on public trial.this should be a very private matter between boss and employee.they constantly talk about "bad teachers"in chicago.i have three small kids going to school in chicago.i have met several teachers along the way at meetings.they have all performed in a heroic manner in my view.why then should the media be demanding cut backs in education in some cases.we need better writers like sean and richard and all the others that contribute to this blog not better teachers
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