It's Time For Organized Labor's Ranks To Join The Movement

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I remember suggesting to a friend that had I been one of the GM workers on strike last year I would have been so disgusted with yet another poorly run strike. The strike was the longest auto strike in 50 years as GM dragged some 48,000 GM workers out for six weeks with precious little show for it in the end.

Team Concept
The entire leadership of organized labor is wedded to the Team Concept which means basically that the employers and workers have the same economic interests; we are on the same team. The union leadership’s disastrous strike strategies and organizing policies that have led to one defeat after another flow from this philosophy including the GM strike last year. It is impossible to build solidarity with other workers or the rest of the working class when the dominant ideology is one that places the workers and the bosses in the same camp.

We can’t build solidarity with workers we are in competition with.

Last year’s GM strike made a few minor gains for the workers but it also cost them around $1bn; it was another defeated strike in the wider sphere of things. And anyone that has been on strike knows, the term “strike happy” used by the bosses and the mass media they control, is sheer propaganda. Holding back our labor power is a huge and risky sacrifice.

The strike cost GM more, but they never lose like we do, and more often than not, if we have a victory and these are rare these days, it is future generations that benefit the most. On the other hand, auto could have been the catalyst following on the heels of the huge teachers/educators strikes of 2018-19.  The strike stopped production at more than 30 GM factories and slowed production for auto parts suppliers in the US and Mexico, costing the company anywhere from $50 million to $100 million a day. Vox News.

Defeatist strategy
Rather than strike the big three auto producers at once, GM, Ford and Chrysler Fiat, the UAW leadership decided to strike only one. The other plants were in full operation and the disastrous jointness policies at Chrysler Fiat were still functioning as far I know. This is in line with the Team Concept, so the UAW leadership’s strategy is not a “Fight to Win” strategy at all. It is an effort to let off some steam from within the ranks and hopefully get a crumb or two from the boss. There is never any effort to include the rank and file who are left on picket lines for weeks on end with lots of coffee and donuts as exhausted negotiators are seen in the media coming out of marathon sessions at 2.00 Am. Strikes today, with the exception of the teachers’ strikes in 2018-19, are not much more than 24 hour protests at best.

This is why the UAW leadership refused to strike all three auto companies, because it raises the stakes, it’s a step to unleashing the real potential power of the rank and file and who knows where that might lead. It places the present leadership in an uncomfortable position between themselves and their teammates on the other side of the negotiating table. It threatens the arrangement they have with the bosses based on labor peace.

During the refinery strike a few years ago it was legal for the union to have shut down all 65 refineries but the leadership decided on just 9. The same method applies, the object is not to hurt the employer. In the last analysis, the leadership supports capitalism, worships the so-called free market and when it goes in to crisis, its first instinct is to rescue it and that means turning on their own members. Many rank and file workers blame the betrayals on criminal behavior (corruption) and perks flowing from bad character flaws. These things are relevant but the main problem is how the labor leadership sees the world and that they have no alternative to capitalism and the market.

I am reminded of this event as I see that a federal judge threw out GM’s lawsuit against Chrysler Fiat.  The suit accused GM's rival of bribing union officials so that these officials would help, in one way or another, in reducing Chrysler Fiat's labor costs giving it a competitive advantage.

The judge said that if GM received any injury due to activity it would be “indirect” and he went on to say, according to the Wall Street Journal, and this is what really struck me,  “the primary victims were rank and file UAW workers who would have received lower pay from any attempt by Fiat Chrysler to lower labor costs.” GM suffered only “competitive costs” the judge said. The judge thought it was a waste of time and encouraged the top management of both corporations to work it out.

Workers may draw the conclusion that the state, and a judge is a representative of the state, has a great concern for workers, that we can rely on the state to defend our interests, when its representatives are indicting corrupt union officials and throwing out lawsuits because it was the workers that were harmed rather than the company. Nothing could be further from the truth of course. While it is one of the great betrayals of the working class to use the union for personal gain and to collude with the bosses, we must oppose the state interfering in the inner dealings of a trade union; that is the rank and file's business.

If the power of the workers in the auto strike had been brought to bear on such an important industry. If the refineries in the aforementioned strike had all been shut down. If the docks were closed on both coasts and in all these instances this immense economic power of working class people demanded real changes like a shorter workweek, massive investments in social infrastructure, for jobs, free transportation, health care and so on, then this very same judge would be issuing injunctions declaring such actions illegal and at some point, terrorism. The actions would face not only the courts, but the police, the media and the National Guard. Austerity is always imposed by force.

Endless defeats, declining living standards and corrupt officials along with a rank and file kept in the dark and held back, by a stifling bureaucracy, has contributed to a great extent in the shift to the right among many union members and certainly the election of the degenerate Trump. The US working class has long ago withdrawn from the electoral arena faced with assaults from both capitalist parties, Republicans and Democrats. For others, Donald Trump was a f&*k you to the status quo.

Like the GM strike where GM workers bore the brunt of the sacrifice, individual locals are left alone to challenge the bosses and no attempt is made to link workplace strikes with rental and housing issues, gentrification, and community battles. In the example I'm introducing here, the other two auto companies were left alone.  The organized labor movement should be in the forefront of the fight against police violence and racism because all workers are harmed by racism, but the fear of the potential power of their own members terrifies the heads of organized labor as much as it does the bosses. Unfortunately, because of this approach, we are often seen as only being concerned with issues that affect us, our workplace, our benefits.

Look at Kentucky last year. There is a Ford and a GM plant in Kentucky, all union members. There is massive poverty in Eastern Kentucky and in Louisville along with police violence, gentrification and so on. Teachers and parents shut down the schools in early 2019 and around the same time there was a blockage of railroad tracks leading from a mine as miners demanded pay that was owed them that went on for weeks. The Louisville labor council has some 50,000 workers affiliated to it. The situation was ripe for building a wider movement against these attacks on workers and the poorest members of society but there was no effort made by the labor leadership or any other significant force as far as I could tell to link these struggles together. The teachers' union leadership even refused to openly oppose a gang ordinance that gave the police more power in the poor communities specifically targeting youth of color. Leaders of SEIU,the Teamsters, the KEA (NEA) and Afscme publicly attacked teachers at a pressconference that called in sick in early 2019 closing many schools.

More than a year later we have witnessed the most significant social upheavals certainly in my lifetime. It has been inspiring and powerful. But movements have to have direction, strategy, and as always, they will be infiltrated by various elements vying for leadership, from opportunists to well intentioned and not so well intentioned liberals and so on, not to mention provocateurs.

It is important to remember that every minute of every day the enemies of working class people are figuring out how to drive the present social movement back and disarm it.

It is inevitable that organized labor will be engulfed in the struggles that are ahead. This has been a long time coming, but a merging of these forces and the power of the organized working class in crucial industries will change the balance of class forces in our favor. Lets not let another opportunity pass us by.