Labor and DSA Leadership Ignores the Mood, Offers No Alternative in 2020

Desperate days: Organized labor's leadership pushing a political party on workers who long ago abandoned it.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Member DSA

Yesterday’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal makes a strong effort to boost the morale of the US ruling class with statistics about the decline of union membership in the US explaining to its readers the reason  why, “….fewer workers want to join unions.”

Last year, union membership fell once again to 10.5% of the labor force----it was 20.1% in 1983.  In the private sector unionization has fallen to 6.4% from 16.8% in 25 years.  The reason for this, according to the Journal, is that unionized workers are just too well off in every way, better wages, better pensions, living the good life and it’s hurting business. It’s an honest admission from one of the major journals of US capitalism  (We live in a capitalist economy by the way) that the future they envision is one in which the living standards of US workers is driven down to the level of our sisters and brothers in Vietnam, China, and so on.

Despite decades of declining wages, working conditions and cuts in public services, US capitalism and the unelected gang that run society, is still not satisfied and blame us, the worker, for the decline in US manufacturing and the reason the low waged US service sector has become so dominant. There is no doubt that the ability to buy a human being’s life activity very cheaply in countries where workers have few rights, especially the right to organize, has attracted US manufacturers in search of profits. But it is not so much the price of our labor power that has caused this drop in manufacturing as a percentage of the economy as it is the productivity of the manufacturing sector on the one hand and industry innovation and technology on the other. In finance, speculation, coupon clipping, and other parasitic activity, capitalists have found a better home to park their capital, one from which it can be extracted quite readily.

Without the public sector there would be a mere 6.4% of the US working class in unions as opposed to 10.5% in 2018 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the public sector has also been under attack and, as to be expected, the percentage of public sector workers in unions, until recently about 35% of the workforce, also fell to 33.9% in 2018. These attacks on workers have occurred under Democratic and Republican rule alike.

The motive for the WSJ editorial was Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden’s first campaign speech and subsequent endorsement by the International Association of Fire Fighters, a sector of the working class that might be called the labor aristocracy. Joe Biden is being touted as the representative of the blue collar, and mainly white working class. Here in the US, long time capitalist politicians and even billionaires themselves can don a baseball cap, maybe curse a bit, and for a minute or two at election time be considered a friend of the working class, with the help of organized labor’s hierarchy of course.

The supporters of this blog have stressed that US capitalism is in a severe political crisis. The era in which two capitalist parties, Republicans and Democrats, dominated US political life for over a century or more is over. Yet despite the decline in union membership, we have witnessed the past two years a surge in labor activity and work stoppages from a sector of the working class and in parts of the country that surprised everyone, perhaps even the participants themselves, and that is in public education and in mostly Republican controlled right to work states.

What can only be described as a huge surge in strike/work stoppage activity has sections of the US ruling class worried and has also shaken the conservative, pro-market labor hierarchy as this increased class struggle was overwhelmingly rank and file led and violated anti-union legislation. This concerns the trade union leadership at the highest levels as serious resistance to the bosses’ offensive threatens the relationship they have built with them based on labor peace and helping capitalism in crisis.

Last year there were 20 major work stoppages involving 485,000 workers, according to the BLS-------- the highest in 33 years.  The largest of these was in Arizona involving 81,000 teachers and staff totaling 486,000 workdays lost. The second was Oklahoma with 405,000 days lost. Stoppages occurred in other states, West Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado, North Carolina etc. This year, teachers with community support shut down the school system in Kentucky for six days. Facts For Working People has numerous reports and articles on these events here  and here.  There were also major education strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland  CA.

Read: What Arizona Did to Build a Movement

There were also other strikes, notably in the hotel and service industry. There was a strike of crane operators in Western Washington State that had the potential to build on the movement the teachers and education workers began but it was restricted to a local affair with narrow objectives by the officialdom. More on this and the restrictive rules on picketing here.  When we take in to account that we are ten years in to an upswing and increasing economic uncertainty, a political crisis can turn quite rapidly in to a social one.

The officialdom atop organized labor will do what they can to save capitalism from itself at the expense of their own members and the working class in general. But in the coming recession or slump, bailing the system out will not be so readily accepted after the 2008 bailout. 

It is also clear that what started in West Virginia has ignited a mood among workers that you can win and the obstacle of our own leadership can be overcome.  These stoppages, noted in BLS statistics, occurred in Republican right to work states because of the relative weakness of the trade union leadership and its grip on the official bodies. In states where the labor bureaucracy is stronger, more entrenched, their policy of working “with capitalism not against it” would have stunted or held back the rank and file movements. It is this world view, that capitalism is the only possible system of production and that the working class cannot govern society, that leaves the trade union leadership with no alternative except to help the system when it goes in to crisis.

Politically, US capitalism is in a bind. Some 100 million bailed out of the last election cycle and both its parties are in crisis. The trade union hierarchy as well as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) will also be faced with problems as the left wing of the Democratic Party appeals to many of the young people who sense that changes are occurring and many consider themselves socialists of one type or another. There has not been so many articles and commentaries about socialism in the US mass media in my lifetime. The mood is such that the ruling class is forced to address it.

DSA nationally has come out and endorsed Bernie Sanders but while some local unions will support Sanders, the leadership of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Coalition (does it still exist?) will support the Democratic Party pro-capitalist machine candidate. It will be an “anybody but Trump” affair.

But within DSA there is not full agreement on support for the Democratic Party no matter who the candidate is. With more than 50,000 members and an estimated 70,000 by 2020, DSA could and should abandon its support for the Democrats and where it can, help build the already existing movement, draw all the forces resisting austerity together and run candidates out of it including for President and Vice President in 2020.

Unfortunately, it’s become obvious that the DSA leadership has contracted out its union work to groups like Labor Notes and others who while having the resources to provide considerable help and assistance to workers in struggle refuses to openly challenge and campaign against the present concessionary policies of the trade union hierarchy. They refuse to conduct a struggle with the present class collaborationist labor leadership for the consciousness of the working class inside organized labor and without.
Read: DSA, Labor Notes and the Trade Unions
This does not help prepare the new fresh young people that have joined DSA, those in unions in particular, for the inevitable conflict they will arise with the leadership over policy. Facts For Working People does not have a principle of confronting or opposing the trade union hierarchy’s policies or Labor Notes. It is an objective reality that is forced on any activist wanting to transform our unions and drive back the bosses’ offensive.  It is a difference in approach to the problems we face. One that works and one that doesn't.

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