For Labor Notes. The Labor Leadership Does Not Exist.

Union members show support for UAW Drive

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I have just read the most recent Labor Notes article about the UAW union drive at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga Tennessee.

I have to say that the first thing just jumps out at me, is there is not one mention of the UAW leadership in this organizing drive. In fact, there is as far as I can see, no mention of the UAW leadership at all. It appears that the UAW only has members.

I do not have a lot of time at my disposal but I am compelled to respond to this article, written by Chris Brooks, a staff writer at Labor Notes. Brother Brooks includes many quotes from workers about the horrible conditions a the Chattanooga plant going in to great detail and this is useful information although it is not new information for those workers in non-union workplaces as well as those in organized ones. Most workers are well aware that company doctors are, yes, company doctors and protect the interests of the employer.

Brother Brooks also refers to the failed organizing drive at the plant in 2014. No mention at all about the UAW leadership’s role in this defeat.  But in the 2014 drive the UAW leadership’s strategy is one of the main reasons for the defeat. In 2014, the UAW leadership signed a neutrality agreement with Volkswagen.  They also refused to join with local union and community activists preferring a go it alone approach as Micah Uetrich explains in his excellent al Jazeera piece on the election.

I wrote at the time: “It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that coming in to the notoriously anti-union South to unionize workers would be made a lot easier by joining with local folks and community organizations. But it get’s worse. In the deal with the VW bosses, the UAW hierarchy and their staff were given permission to visit VW workers on the job in the break rooms. In return they agreed not to visit workers in the privacy of their own homes without a prior invitation. Uetrich points out the importance of home visits compared to break room visits:”

“But house visits from union organizers to workers are essential to successful union drives. There is a process of telling stories, answering questions and overcoming fears that has to take place through genuine relationship building long before workers are ready to vote for a union. Those relationships are built through a level of intimacy and frankness in conversation that can't be replicated in a passing conversation in a break room. The UAW organizing staff surely knows this; but why they decided not to push back against VW’s insistence on no house visits is a mystery.”

I would differ here with this author in that there is no mystery. The reason the UAW leadership didn’t push back, or push at all, is the same reason the entire leadership atop organized labor doesn’t push back. To push back means a struggle. It also means organizing the membership, the community, the rest of the labor movement, the unorganized etc. To mobilize this potential power against this capitalist offensive can only lead to chaos as far as they are concerned. They have no alternative to capitalism, no place to take this movement and when push comes to shove they capitulate. There is nothing the present labor leadership fears more than a mass conscious movement of their own members.

The successes of the teachers strike/protest movement is due to it being a rank and file led movement  that basically by-passed the official leadership, and that the movement was more than willing to violate laws. The entire organizing strategy that in most cases reached out to other workers in education to janitorial and other staff, and even to Charter School teachers is the polar opposite to what the trade union hierarchy has been doing in the past period. A strategy that has led to one defeat after another. The established leadership in these recent education struggles did, in some cases,  offer important support, but clearly tailed the rank and file. And while they cannot ignore this movement and are forced to now claim that "strikes" work, why they worked in this instance is not stressed.

Posts on the education struggles can be found by going to the education, teachers, and public education tags on the right of this blog.

So Chris Brooks, who is a labor organizer for Labor Notes, mentions the failed union drive of 2014 yet says nothing about why it failed. And as in the article mentioned here, he doesn’t just absolve the UAW leadership of any responsibility for the defeat, he doesn’t mention them at all.  This is staggering to say the least.  So his comments are really a review of events. I don’t know Chris Brooks and have nothing personally against him but I am very familiar with Labor Notes and many of the people behind it and I know many of them claim to be socialists and this is not enough for individuals or organizations that make such claims, including the need to transform our unions.  At best, Labor Notes' approach  is simply to report on or write reviews of events.

Brother Brooks comments on Boeing and how that company and others have relocated to the South. But Boeing is another example of how the union hierarchy crushes any movement from below that threatens the relationship they have built with the bosses based on labor peace. There are too many examples to consider here but whether it’s the UAW, the SEIU, the Steelworkers, the Hormel and other strikes of the 1980’s any of them, when the bosses, or to be clearer, capitalism enters in to crisis and moves to shift that crisis on to the backs of the working class, in this case, their own members, they help them out.

We have commented many times on this blog about the difference in approach to union work between those of us around Facts For Working People and other forces in organized Labor like Labor Notes and as it stands at the moment, the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America of which I am a member. It is not possible if an individual or organization claims to stand for the transformation of our unions in to the serious, rank and file led militant organizations they need to be without being drawn in to a conflict with the present leadership. It is not an accident that Labor Notes rarely, if ever, and in this example, Chris Brooks, writes about a major dispute between an employer and a labor organization and never mentions the leadership of that organization. It is not a mistake. It is a conscious decision to avoid getting in to an open conflict with the present union hierarchy. This in itself is a failure of leadership.  One of the major problems is that the vast majority of full time staff at Labor Notes is union officials in one way or another. The reader should ask what are they doing as officers (many of them are) in their own unions?

Unfortunately, the leadership of DSA has contracted out its union work to Labor Notes and others that have this approach. It leaves the rank and file member disarmed. It fails to help the rank and file member that wants to reverse the disastrous course that the present leadership has chartered so far based on class collaboration and concessions. It doesn't help the rank and file build a real fighting alternative.

Labor Notes should be congratulated for its organizational efforts and bringing together thousands of rank and file workers at meetings and conferences. But that is not enough.  To think that we can change the present situation, build a serious fighting labor movement with a fight to win strategy and the labor hierarchy will sit back and do nothing, is nothing less than utopian and to be honest, a betrayal intentional or not. The road to hell is paved with good intentions as the saying goes.

Here is an article about one of the struggles at Boeing: https://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2017/02/boeing-workers-reject-union-whose-fault.html

Here are some articles explaining the differences (that we should discuss openly and in a comradely fashion) in the approach to union work between Facts For Working people and left forces like Labor Notes, the leadership of DSA and others.

DSA: Democratic Discussion on Union Work Essential

DSA, Labor Notes and the Trade Unions