Steelworkers rally in Gary Indiana. It's not enough. |
By Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Here we go again. The United Steel Workers (USW) leadership is in negotiations as the contract covering 30,000 workers at US Steel and ArcelorMittal is set to expire September 1st. I don’t like having to accept this, but unless and until the inescapable rank and file struggle against the present leadership’s traitorous pro business policies results in a regime change atop organized labor we are about to see another setback.
Here we go again. The United Steel Workers (USW) leadership is in negotiations as the contract covering 30,000 workers at US Steel and ArcelorMittal is set to expire September 1st. I don’t like having to accept this, but unless and until the inescapable rank and file struggle against the present leadership’s traitorous pro business policies results in a regime change atop organized labor we are about to see another setback.
The
USW leadership had an opportunity earlier this year to reverse course when it
struck refineries; well, struck some refineries. I wrote back then, “The USW represent workers at 65 U.S. refineries that produce
approximately 64 percent of the oil in the U.S. but has only struck nine plants
(see
my previous post). The remaining plants are on 24 hour rolling
contract extensions but can be called out anytime. But as long as workers
passively wait at refinery gates on ineffective picket lines as negotiators try
to make a deal, the outcome does not look good.”
That
was one of many, many opportunities lost, too many in fact. It was quite
obvious the USW leadership was unwilling to wage a real fight. It is this
crisis of leadership that has accelerated the decline in union membership and in
wages and benefits that took workers decades and heroic struggle to win.
The
steel bosses have already begun to terrorize US Steel and ArcelorMittal workers
in to submission prior to the their contract’s expiration. US
Steel has announced it will close permanently some facilities in Alabama
laying off 1100 workers. Another company, Allegheny Technologies, (ATI), has locked
out 2000 of its workers in six states as USW negotiators were still at the table. The company wants to take away guaranteed hours,
and increase workers’ contributions for health care, payments that the union
says would be close to a 300% increase.
The ATI bosses claim that the negotiations were stalled and have brought
in scabs. This is without doubt a plan hatched by all the steel companies.
Unlike the union hierarchy, these people bring all their forces together in
their war against workers, including the police the courts and their media.
The
latest update on the ATI lockout on the USW leadership states: “A week into the ULP lockout, there have
been no new contract talks with ATI’s management and there are currently no
negotiations scheduled. ATI apparently seems more interested in bussing
out-of-state replacement workers into our facilities than they are in bargaining
a fair contract with our union. The USW remains available to meet with
ATI management to continue bargaining and reach a fair and equitable
agreement.”
This
doesn’t inspire much hope that things have changed at all. Yes, I would say ATI
is more interested in bringing strikebreakers than bargaining a “fair” contract. They have learned
through years of experience from a co-operative labor officialdom that they
have no need to bargain at all. They are
not afraid of the union leadership. They must chuckle at the last statement in
the paragraph above, the union officials prostrating themselves before them.
They can do this as their living standards are never really affected, they don’t
have to work under the concessionary contracts they force on their members.
As
their brothers and sisters at ATI remain locked out, union officials organized
a number of rallies at US Steel and ArcelorMittal facilities in a “Week of Solidarity” for a “fair” contract. Using the term fair is how the labor leadership avoids making any clear demands at
all as their position at the table is concessions. Leo W Gerard, the USW
president, assured the steel bosses that nothing has changed in their
bargaining strategy announcing on the union’s website that “We
recognize that this is a difficult time for the steel industry…..,”. He
goes on to make the usual point that these are good jobs and its important that
we keep them. Can’t they just be a little nicer?
Commodity
prices have been dropping and steel is no exception so the bosses are not lying
when they say they are having a hard time. Lakshi Mittal the primary owner of
ArcelorMittal is having a hard time of it. He has been relegated to the world’s
82nd richest man from the number 6 spot on the
Forbes 500. He’s only worth some $12 billion now. Maybe he will have to
sell that $128 million residence in London or even worse, the $130 million home
he bought there for his daughter. Those
rotten steelworkers have no compassion.
Both
US Steel and Mittal have embarked on a little bit of pre contract expiration
date terrorism; “US Steel announced last
week the closure of a blast furnace at its Fairfield Works near Birmingham,
Alabama and the layoffs of 1,100 workers. This followed the announcement by
ArcelorMittal,, Sharon Jones wrote in a piece on the World Socialist Website today
As
Ms. Jones points out, the steelworkers contract expires at the same time as the
contract that covers 140, 000 workers at Ford, General Motors, and
Fiat/Chrysler. But there is no indication that the union hierarchy has changed
its approach or abandoned the Team Concept philosophy. The power is potentially there but for the
union leadership using it can only lead to chaos, after all, profits are
sacrosanct. What is the point of belonging to a national organization (the AFL-CIO) if individual unions are left to fight what is actually organized global capital on their own. We can't win that way.
We
see the same approach time after time, the union leadership undermining the
potential power of organized labor despite the historically low unionization
rate. We saw it here in the San
Francisco Bay Area transit workers strike where bus operators, eligible to
strike with their brothers and sisters in light rail and in the same unions,
helped to break the strike by working across their lines at the direction of
their leadership. Three other public
sector unions were also eligible to strike at the same time and refused to do
so.
The
time for endless protests and complaining has passed. The bosses are confident after decades of
concessionary contracts offered them by the union hierarchy that they will not
lead a fight. We have argued on this
blog many times that the rank and file cannot avoid the struggle to overcome
this obstacle of our own leadership. This dam must be breached.
Rank
and file opposition caucuses must be built in the unions in opposition to the
Team Concept which would mean breaking from the Democratic Party that is the Team Concept in the political sphere and committing to the fight against austerity and organizing the
unorganized. There are huge explosions
taking place throughout the US against environmental degradation, racism,
sexism, police brutality and the incarceration of millions of our youth,
especially black and brown youth. There is rising anger at the massive
investment of public funds and reaping of profits in the military industrial
complex and its wars.
Any
serious rank and file opposition caucus committed to fighting for union members
must also build direct links with all these movements in our communities,
throughout the country and the world if we are serious about changing this
situation. The silence of the present leadership on most of these issues is
deafening. The organized working class should be in the forefront of all these
struggles offering our financial and organizational resources and using our
position as a crucial element in the functioning of the economy and making profits
in order to broaden our movement and throw back the austerity agenda of the 1%.
A
good start would be less sports and more politics.
No comments:
Post a Comment