Verizon workers on strike but a victory will be elusive if the old methods aren't abandoned

So 45,000 Verizon workers, members of the CWA and the IBEW, went on strike yesterday in response to Verizon management’s refusal to back off some $1 billion in concessions that amount to about $20,000 per Verizon family according to the AFL-CIO.

After years of collaboration with the employers, driving down wages and eliminating jobs and benefits, the bosses feel very confident that  not much will change as far as the Union hierarchy is concerned  and they will get their way.   From what I can see in this early stage, the same failed strategies that have brought defeat after defeat are being repeated. I went to the AFL-CIO ‘s blog and read some early reports including from the Wall Street Journal and I see no evidence of any strategy arising that would turn around the succession of defeats and give backs that US workers have faced over the past period.

As we have raised before, (see the “public sector” or "Wisconsin" labels to the right) during the Madison Wisconsin events when 100,000 workers were on the streets, the trade Union leadership in conjunction with their allies in the Democratic Party made it perfectly clear that they had no opposition to the concessions their members were facing, only their right as leaders to negotiate them.

What appears so far is the same rhetoric and strategy. This strike is, “all about good jobs” says CWA District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton, “…companies like Verizon should be investing in rebuilding the American economy, not contributing to the destruction of good, middle-class jobs.” What do the bosses care about "good jobs"? They go to places like China and hire human beings for as little as they can get away with. There are no “working class” jobs in the US apparently as we are all middle class. The Union leadership have yet to let go of terminology that arose in the post war boom aimed at convincing workers that the US, unlike other countries, offered the opportunity for all Americans to climb in to the middle class.

The fact that even these “middle class” jobs never existed and certainly no longer exist for the vast majority of Americans escapes them as they cling to this always false but now ridiculous idea. The strike has been approved by a large majority of 91% as these workers, like so many of us, are being squeezed to the point of pauperism. “Were not going to take it” Bob Master, a CWA “legislative and political director” tells the Wall Street Journal. For the uninformed, it should be mentioned that a political and legislative director for an International Union would spend much of their time lobbying and hanging out with politicians. He or she would be a full time paid official and I would wager that their salaries and benefits will not be affected by the outcome of a strike and they will not be on strike pay during the duration of it. They generally do not have to live under the contracts they force on their members.

The approach then is to whine about good jobs that these Union members are losing. I remember raising in AFSCME before Clinton kicked people off welfare through the welfare to work program the need to fight for a $12.50 an hour minimum wage and a shorter workweek to create jobs, public sector jobs for the low waged and the unemployed. This was described as not “realistic” by many top Union officials until the folks kicked off welfare started being used to do our work. Suddenly, they were an issue. The present strategy of the CWA and IBEW leadership will be seen by most workers, (the 88% of us with no Unions) as being yet another example of the better paid and, up till now, more secure of us caring only about our own interests.

In this video, the CWA official quoted above describes strategies of the past-----elect a Democrat. There is nothing in his speech that reaches out to the vast majority of workers who would welcome a decent paying Union job. It would not inspire anyone. He says that the core of the CWA’s program is “workplace mobilization”, fine, but around what issues?  He means to go out and vote for candidates and a political party that most workers have abandoned long ago.  In this video below he is speaking at a TWU rally, trying to “fire people up” as they say; they treat us like children.  But there is not the slightest inkling from this man about the dismal failure of the leadership of which he is a part over the years and what we have to do to turn things around. The reason is that he accepts that concessions have to be made and this strike from their point of view is really about lessening the concessions----damage control is the goal.


The AFL-CIO blog says: "CWA and IBEW members say they are prepared to return to work after management demonstrates the willingness to begin bargaining seriously for a fair agreement. If not, CWA and IBEW members and allies will continue the fight. Says IBEW President Edwin Hill:
'We cannot stand by while one of the richest, most successful corporations in the world joins the race to decimate the middle class of this country...."

"We remain ready to meet with Verizon to work out a fair agreement, but at this point, we had no choice.'"  the IBEW president adds.  This is to assure the bosses that concessions are acceptable, but can they drop some of the most damaging ones?  The use of the term  "fair" by the Labor hierarchy is intentional, just like "good jobs" is or "justice" is. What is fair to one person is not fair to another. This is the game that is played time and time again, the bosses savage the workers, the Union hierarchy whines about being fair and how much money the CEO made or profit the company made etc, workers lose five weeks pay and maybe one or two issue swill be dropped. But more and more the bosses recognize that they have nothing to fear from the heads of organized Labor and refuse to budge.

"Verizon wants to freeze pensions, tie pay increases to job performance and make it easier to fire employees for cause" the WSJ writes. Along with this the company wants to eliminate the Martin Luther King and Veterans day holidays.

Bob Masters, the political and legislative director announcing to the world that "were not going to take it" is an insult to working people.  Not because he is not likely going to have to "take" anything but him and the leadership he is part of have ensured that their members have had to "take it".   Auto, meatpacking, transportation, communications, public sector, unionized workers in all these industries have had to take it because of the disastrous policies of the Labor hierarchy.  Their backing of Wall Street candidates and one of their political parties has been a disaster for workers and they will no doubt pour hundreds of millions of dollars in to their campaign for 2012.

The rhetoric that officials like Master uses for holiday speechifying doesn't frighten the bosses who know they won't mobilize the potential power of their members and the rest of the working class in a generalized offensive against them. They won't do this because they have the same world view as the bosses; they accept capitalism and the market and the idea that we have to compete with other workers; so mobilizing millions against the employers can only lead to chaos.

I know that some workers reading his will consider that I am being "negative" at a time when we should be positive.  But this is not a social event, it is a class struggle and in such a struggle some things work and some don't----I would love to be wrong and see a major victory here.   But history has shown that the collaboration with the employers on the job and in the political arena (known as the Team Concept) by Masters and his overly compensated colleagues, has led us to the brink of disaster.  It is obvious that 45,000 workers cannot stop the capitalist offensive alone.  To stop it we have to reject their arguments that concessions have to be made and go on an offensive of our own.  There are some 30 million people unemployed in this country and millions more in low waged jobs; this is a potentially very powerful ally but we have to speak to them as we must to the youth and all sections of the working class. If we don't the boss will use them as scabs.  And we speak to them not with platitudes and empty rhetoric but with a program of demands that will draw them in to our struggle.

We have suggested a program many times in previous blogs but every strike must be used to raise the issues facing millions of people, jobs for one which a 30 hour workweek with no loss in pay would help create.  A $20 per hour national minimum wage, federally funded education at all levels, health care, transportation, an end to foreclosures and the return of homes to those that they were stolen from and the dismantling of the US gulag, a prison system that incarcerates two million people, almost 50% of them African Americans, more than any other nation on earth. Take the banks and financial institutions under public ownership so capital can be allocated in a constructive social way not a destructive for profit way.  As I pointed out in an earlier blog, look at the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan ventures, all borrowed money and more borrowing to pay the interest etc.These are some of the demands we must make and fight for.  We demand what we need not what Wall Street and the theoreticians of capital tell us is realistic.

Mobilizing around a program that meets the needs of people and not wall Street and building for mass strikes, occupations and other direct action strategies to win it is what will break away from the present strikes (when they occur which is rarer these days and are more like 24 hour protests rather than attempts to stop production) where individual locals and workplaces are isolated and picked off by the bosses.  Out of such a movement and rooted in it, an independent political alternative can be built that will break the monopoly that the capitalist class has over the political life of the country. Simply taking this road, even if initially we don't go too far down it, will wring more concessions than the present damage control does and it would leave less disillusionment and despair in its wake, it would embolden and empower workers to fight back, give us a genuine movement to turn to and build.

The Labor officialdom will only take steps in this direction if threatened from a movement from below and then will try to derail it as they have with the Wisconsin events.  That's why those active in the Unions have to build opposition caucuses around such a program and strategy----one that works.