Verizon strike is further evidence we have to have an open struggle against our own leadership

What were they out for now?

We don’t hear too much about the Verizon negotiations since the strategists at CWA and the IBEW led 45,000 members out on strike for, er----wait a minute let me rush over to the CWA website and find out for sure------oh, here it is, for “a fair contract” and “unreasonable demands”.  No wait.  It’s more than that, CWA says the strike, “forced Verizon to reset its bargaining position, extend the contract and agree to negotiate in good faith.”

I’m going to leave that alone for a minute it’s too confusing.  The reality is that the leadership of the IBEW, CWA and the entire AFL-CIO have orchestrated yet another setback that they are painting as a victory.  I wonder how much pay they lost. It is criminally irresponsible when you think of it, taking people out on strike for nothing. As Gary Chaison a professor of industrial relations at Clark University explains, “When you go on strike, you’re playing your biggest card, you’re really ratcheting up the pressure.”

Under normal circumstances this is true but the present state of affairs with regards to the leadership of organized Labor is beyond normal, it is a state of extreme dysfunction.  The leaders of the workers’ organizations in this country (and throughout the world) cannot imagine life without the bosses competition and profit and will do whatever they can to help them out, at their members’ expense of course. 

Big business politicians and run of the mill academics are to the left of the trade Union leadership at the highest levels.  Even the super rich like Warren Buffet are more in tune with the anger in society and the dangers of social upheaval if the rich don’t cough up a few shekels.  Taking hard working Union members out on strike without any serious demands of our own and taking them back again two weeks later is criminal and will, as the professor points out, “..have the effect of easing pressure on Verizon management, while they can continue business as usual.”

Every worker knows this to be true in our gut. We don’t need a Phd in Labor history or economics to see the pathetic consequences of this strategy. As one CWA member Jim McCarthy, put it, “They (Verizon) had time before the contract expired to bargain with us.” “We have leverage when we’re out on the picket lines, and this just hands it right back to management.”

Even the CWA website admits that the strike had an effect,  “Verizon tried to downplay the impact of the walkout on its business, but customers and workers reported big backlogs and delays in FIOS installations and repairs.”  “Ok we’re hurting them, now don’t ask for anything specific and let’s go back to work”.

This strategy is so clearly flawed and will lead to another defeat. But why do they continue to apply the same old worn out policies?  So many Union members will argue that the top officials, or even lower level leaders that do not openly challenge these policies are corrupt; they are taking money or “in bed with the boss” is a common theme.   But while there is corruption and the obscene salaries and luxurious lifestyles that separate the top leadership from the dues paying member matter, this is not the dominant cause of their pro-employer policies. They are corrupt ideologically----this is the problem.  They see no alternative to capitalism or the market.  The boss has the right to own the factory, the hedge fund manager has the right to earn $5 billion in a year betting that hard working men and women and small business people will be so overcome by the system they’ll default on their mortgages. Consequently when the system goes in to crisis they have to help it out.  As workers and Union members we naturally resist reductions to our living standards, wages and conditions that we have won over years of struggle. 

To give this anger organizational expression threatens this world-view of the Labor leadership that is based on Labor peace and helping the bosses compete. It threatens to throw chaos in to their midst.  The way things are is the only way things can be despite history teaching otherwise so they have to hold back the ranks, keep them at bay and certainly keep expectations low.  That’s why they never demand anything but abstractions, “fairness”, “justice” good “middle class jobs”.  After years of snatching potential defeats from the jaws of victory for the employers, the bosses are very confident and are going a little to far for the Labor leadership’s comfort zone.  They are moving to eliminate the right to bargain entirely as well as dues check off which directly affects the bureaucracy and is a source of funds for the Democratic Party.  Without the bosses collecting the Union dues for them and having a legal compulsion to bargain, the hierarchy faces the unemployment line.

The Union leadership’s line is for good “middle class jobs” and the CWA website praises the support of the working public, “Public support also put tremendous pressure on Verizon, as passersby waved and honked in solidarity with workers, joined them on the picket line and delivered ample supplies of food and water to picket sites.”

CWA pres and friend

But the comments in the media from Larry Cohen, CWA’s president are as bad as those by Bob, “good housekeeping “ King, president of the UAW whose Union is in negotiations with the Ford Motor Corp. “..members could return to the picket lines if significant progress isn’t made” he tells the Wall Street Journal. This criminal viewpoint can only come from the mouth of someone who doesn’t sacrifice anything in these circumstances. From what I understand Cohen earns over $200,000 a year and don’t forget the expense account. Striking is a serious business for the dues payer and not some game.  Getting the original mood back is not so easy.

As far as support from the public and other workers goes, car honking and bringing water and donuts to picket lines is good but what will win is strike solidarity.  That means spreading the strike and generalizing the demands in order to build community involvement; which will inevitably mean violating anti-Union laws and injunctions. What the Labor leadership means when it is talking about preserving “middle class jobs” are the jobs of their members who pay their obscene salaries.  But they refuse to even defend their own members so there is no possibility that they can offer the 88% of the workers who are unorganized any real gains. Cohen admits this when he says that the Union achieved its initial goal which was “compelling Verizon to consider the Union’s demands for job security and to look at promoting a rise in workers’ health care expenses.” “We believe there’s an opening here to bargain effectively” Cohen says.

Well anyone that hasn’t been in a coma for the last 25 years knows that the boss ”looking” at something or “bargaining in good faith” means nothing.  I wish I could say otherwise but we have witnessed yet another setback for Union members and working people in this country.

A young guy who described himself as a “leftie” and with a group called “Answer” criticized me for raising this crisis of leadership that exists in our organizations. It turned out he ended up blaming the rank and file which is all you can do if you ignore the leadership’s role entirely.  I emphasize their role not because of any fetish about leadership but leadership does have consequences.  In times of heightened struggle leadership is crucial.  While the rank and file bears responsibility and that responsibility is to build opposition caucuses within organized Labor based on a program of demands that meets our needs and the needs of our communities as opposed to a set of damage control concessions aimed at helping out the boss; the major reason we have lost so much ground is the role of the leadership and their collaborationist policies.  If we don’t clarify this, many members can draw the conclusion that it the main reason is the weakness of organized Labor in relation to the bosses and this is not the case, despite the decline in organized Labor’s membership.

My issue with the leadership of our organizations is a difference over methods and practices and not personal things.

If we leave the role of the leadership out as some do, it does a disservice to the membership as the issues are not clarified and different points of view on how to approach these struggles heard.  Steve Early’s articles on the strike at Labor Notes or the Answer Coalition’s piece on the strike here  are common of a lot of left forces within organized Labor who act, willingly or not, as a cover for the disastrous policies of the present hierarchy. Brother McCarthy’s assessment above of the negative effect of going back to work under these conditions is absolutely correct and should be raised openly within the movement.

If we consider that the US has two million people in prison, overwhelmingly for petty theft and often drug related crimes.  And if we think long and hard about the fact that almost half of these are black folks, there is a catastrophe in this country that all workers and Union members need to address.  The violence and anger that we see occurring during protests and resistance of the youth and particular the black youth at the horrific effects of free market policies on their lives is understandable.  These are our youth, the youth of our class, of working class people. I remember in 1996 when I ran for Oakland City Council on a campaign for a $10 an hour minimum wage, some folks who attended a debate I had in Rockridge, a middle class fairly well off area of Oakland complained that there were increased robberies from “poor people coming “up here “and breaking in to cars.  The answer to that is not more cops, not more prisons, but more jobs and pay. The answer is a future.

In every strike, every Labor dispute, this war against the youth and in particular the incarceration and killing of young black men must be raised. It is the right position to take but more importantly it is in our self-interest to join forces with all victims of the market.; the disabled, the elderly, the immigrants undocumented or otherwise. It is the only way we can win.

Some of us that contribute to this blog and are retired or former Union members and activists believe that it is inevitable that the social explosions we are seeing around the world in response to the capitalist offensive will occur with a vengeance here in the US.  We also believe that in preparation for this it is necessary to build a united front direct action movement that can intervene in these events and help the movement advance around a program of basic demands including some that we have mentioned in earlier blogs, like free education, jobs, a shorter workweek, health care, and end to the wars abroad, a $20 an hour minimum wage, equal work for equal pay etc.

If you are a Union member or an activist that thinks similarly and would be interested in exploring the possibility of getting such a movement off the ground or at least talking about it, send us an e mail at: we_know_whats_up@yahoo.com