Left: this relationship has brought the UAW's membership from over one million members in 1987 to under half a million today. It is the cause of all the betrayals.
This blog has raised some of the issues we feel the Occupy Wall Street movement must take up if it is to avoid being isolated from the majority of the working class which would derail the building of a mass working class movement. But we also recognize the tremendous significance of this movement. It has set the 1% on the defensive. It has shifted the onus for the crisis from workers and the poor, to the hedge fund managers, speculators and other unproductive members of society. The OWS movement has shown that mass defiance of the law is a necessary component of the struggle against capital.
Some workers that I spoke to, from unemployed Oakland youth to older Unionized workers were inspired by yesterday’s turn out at the Port of Oakland and this is positive. The Labor hierarchy is also beginning to pay a little more attention to the movement which is a good and a bad thing depending on how those in the movement relate to this intervention and where their Labor outreach is directed.
For those young people or non Union workers who are part of this direct action, defiance of the law movement and are coming in to contact with the Labor hierarchy for the first time it is worth considering the UAW leadership’s approach to the non Union auto plants. This was in the news last week as the heads of the UAW are not significantly different in their views to the rest of the heads of organized Labor.
The UAW leadership had “vowed” to name one of the non-Union plants as its target for an organizing drive but the Wall Street Journal reported last week that things have changed. * The UAW leadership announced last Wednesday that they, “Still hope to woo workers but decided against taking a combative approach with the companies. The UAW’s Secretary Treasurer, the leader of the organizing drive announced a few months ago that when it comes to targeting and naming a particular non-Union plant “No other priority is more important”. All workers know that you can't avoid a fight if you represent the interests of working people; they bosses' won't allow it.
The geniuses atop organized Labor like Bob King at the UAW charter what the WSJ refers to as a ”two pronged course”. One of Bob King and the UAW leadership’s prongs aims to convince “trans-national” companies that, “The Union could be an effective business partner by ensuing improved quality and productivity.” The Wall Street Journal writes. "Business Partner" consider what this means. It couldn't be any clearer, with this approach the workers' fate is sealed.
The second prong will “assure workers that their needs would be better addressed by a Union on the plant floor.” but this is negated by the first prong.
The first UAW prong has been under way as this Union with a rich and militant past has, “asked all foreign auto-makers with U.S. output to agree to a set of principles…” for Union elections. These principles would bar either party from attacking each other during organizing drives which would mean the bosses would allow the Union to “present its case to workers”. Union officials are begging employers to allow this as they as the case they want to present is the bosses’ case; they want to make the bosses argument for them. Workers have to tighten our belts, help the boss remain competitive in the marketplace and give up wages, benefits and any workplace protections that impede the bosses’ ability to produce cars cheaper and more profitably than their rivals. We are, after all, "business partners." New hires or future workers, hell with 'em. They can't vote in a contract not yet being hired so stick 'em on a lower wage rate so the bosses' can make more profit.
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| Proof enough that the policies aren't working |
So the second prong, the meeting workers’ needs prong, seems to be missing; replaced with a help the boss out prong. The UAW leadership has been in the forefront of this strategy helping the auto bosses eliminate wages and conditions that were once the benchmark for the US blue-collar worker. These conditions that were won through years of heroic struggle and sacrifice are being handed back to the bosses in the interests of competition and the market. The future generations are being sacrificed on the alter of profitability.
But none of the non-Union plants have agreed to this polite request from the UAW leadership for self restraint despite threats of being labeled “a human rights violater for failing to treat workers properly.” from Bob King and Co. The auto bosses have rejected the request for self -restraint as they don’t really need to have the Union hierarchy send in its representatives to make their argument for them to the workers. They can hire their own propagandists.
The WSJ makes the point that this is a real defeat for the UAW as King and the leadership has stated in the past that for the UAW, winning more autoworkers from the non-Union plants is “critical to its survival”. “It’s a retreat” says Gary Chaison, an industrial relations professor.
It is indeed a retreat and the leaders of the workers organizations in the U.S. are finding little room for manoever as they find their backs on the edge of the precipice. The concern for them is not so much their immediate financial and security needs as they set themselves up quite comfortably including in their retirement years. But their Kowtowing to the bosses has only increased their aggression and the way the likes of Bob King see it, their reason for existing may soon be in jeopardy. The heads of organized Labor opposed Wisconsin's effort to eliminate bargaining rights because they wouldn't have a job. They were not opposed to giving up their members living standards, they just wanted the right to talk about it. "Please don't take away our revenue base" they beg the employers. After all, aren't they the CEO's of a business? The Unions are just an employment agency to them with their role being to provide Labor power to the bosses at competitive prices.
Why would workers be drawn to a Union when the leadership of that organization states publicly that its policy it is to help out the boss and avoid any confrontation with them? We don’t need economics degrees or to become like the “official Labor experts” to recognize the flaws in that strategy.
What I describe here is the approach of the entire top leadership of organized Labor. It is based on their acceptance of the Team Concept and no individual activists or reform group among the ranks or so-called progressive officials can reverse this disastrous course without at the very least, openly and publicly rejecting and campaigning among the rank and file of Labor against the Team Concept.
Lastly, this idea that neutrality pacts can be signed with the employers during organizing drives disarms the workers who know better. The bosses are never neutral. It is yet another attempt to avoid a confrontation with them on the part of the Labor Hierarchy. A confrontation inevitably means drawing the troops in to the battle and the danger of the troops getting out of control terrifies the Union heads more than the boss does for reasons we have explained many times before on this blog. Once such an agreement is made, the boss who has the control of our worklives in the workplace can exert their pressures while the workers are forbidden to publicly go on the offensive due to some ridiculous pact; the class lines are obscured, we are all neutral in the workplace. I will close here with a quote from a young man (he was young at the time) who worked for a Union as part of its organizing drive program:
“The Union I work for has many locals, but the number is shrinking as a result of the international's policy of pushing locals to consolidate their memberships along industrial lines. They want to have big locals that represent single industries in entire regions and so that they can concentrate their resources on increasing "market share."
I t would be great to see a broad opposition develop within this union -- while I have learned a good deal about the nuts and bolts of organizing in a working class context, I also have learned the ways in which the union's organizing policy can really miseducate workers. I'm on a team of 4 organizers organizing a large employer. My Union, as you may know, has a neutrality agreement with this employer. All the flyers and leaflets we put out have to be run by a censor of the employer. Right now I am collecting quotes and pictures from workers in the departments I'm responsible for to be put on a "Vote Yes!" flyer that will be mailed out. Naturally some workers want to put things like "This company just cares about the bottom line, while we care about a good work environment and caring for patients. A union will help us take back some power from management." I have to tell these workers, who I've won the partial confidence of and have been working with for more than a month now, that they can't write that because it violates the Agreement between the union and management!
The "Agreement" (it's always spelled in caps) also takes away the workers' right to strike, picket, sick out, or in general mobilize, for years. The current contract negotiations, which will occur between tens of thousands of workers and management, are blanketed by a no-strike agreement and will leave the workers' fate up to the hands of an arbitrator. The company violates the Agreement all the time -- sometimes even firing workers trying to organize, sponsoring vote-no committees, etc, but we can't violate the agreement, ever, at the orders of the organizing directors. These are all reasons that I've decided to leave, I feel dishonest organizing people under this wretched agreement... I'm glad that the Union is expanding -- organizing is definitely the orientation of the organization -- but the organizing occurs in a very bureaucratic way which often utilizes the workers more as extras than as the central actors of the process. I'm glad that workers are getting a union, but I don't want to be complicit in selling them out or misleading them.”
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