Monday, March 1, 2021

Excerpt: The Freedom Struggle Is a Labor Struggle

From Michael Munk. Originally Published at the Black Agenda Report



 

Robin D.G. Kelley on race unity and division in the labor movement 

Thanks to Michael Funke for bringing this to my attention. -mm


Here's an excerpt:
" as we revisit the 1930s, the era we hold up as the heyday of interracial working-class radicalism, there are three things we ought to consider. The Left, and here I mean specifically the Communist Party, was different from other socialist parties up to that point in that it centered anti-racism.

Whatever the CP’s many faults and missteps, it generally resisted color-blindness, underscoring distinctive features of Black, Brown and Indigenous workers’ struggles, while refusing to forgive or explain away the racism of white workers. Second, the CP’s biggest mobilizations did not center on relief or jobs or trade union struggles but the defense of the “Scottsboro Boys,” nine young Black men falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama.

Third, the 1930s, the period we often describe as the U.S. left turn, was also characterized by rising fascism that drew a segment of the white working class into groups such as the Black Shirts, the Klan, the White Legion, and the American Nazi Party.

In other words, what often animates social justice or civil rights unionism are movements with a vision of justice, movements that are anti-fascist, anti-racist, and dare I say anti-capitalist (though embracing the latter doesn’t necessarily translate into embracing the former).

Where Organizing Succeeded

In the South, Black labor militants, many of whom were Communists, were the key to building the CIO in the region, even during the early stages of Cold War-era attacks on labor and the Left. Operation Dixie, the postwar campaign to organize the South, is usually seen as a total failure, but as Will Jones demonstrates, it succeeded where Black workers were in leadership positions — e.g. among Black lumber workers in North Carolina and Black tobacco and cotton-press workers in North Carolina, Arkansas, and western Tennessee.

Black workers built and sustained the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) campaign to organize sawmill employees in the South, in spite of unremitting violence from employers, allied businessmen and white workers, and the CIO’s best efforts to push race off to the side.

In Elizabethtown, North Carolina where in 1948 the IWA waged a militant strike against one of the largest lumber companies in the Southeast, it was precisely racial solidarity and Black community support that ensured their success.(1)

The largely Communist-led Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers of America (FTA) rested on the union’s ability to tap into a deep well of black community organizing and grievances centered around workplace conditions, wages, and racial discrimination. By 1947, FTA won 111 union elections, bringing some 15,000 workers into the union.

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, had become the epicenter of FTA strength in the region. Led by an extraordinary group of Black women, notably Moranda Smith, Velma Hopkins, Theodosia Simpkins, and Viola Brown, Local 22 had successfully organized workers at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

They fought for more than higher wages and better conditions; they promoted a Black radical vision that civil and human rights were inseparable from labor rights.
They protested segregation, fought sexual harassment at work, revitalized the local chapter of the NAACP, launched voter registration campaigns, set up worker education classes, and established a library stocked with volumes on African American history and political economy, and were largely responsible in 1947 for electing Winston-Salem’s first Black alderman, the Reverend Kenneth Williams.(2)

Collective Power Under Attack

The success of the left-led unions such as FTA, the International Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, the Farm Equipment Workers, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) among others, were strengthened by the 1945-46 strike wave, only to be bludgeoned by the state and corporate response to the postwar labor insurgency.

The collective power of labor, especially in cases of exemplary interracial cooperation, threatened to severely curtail corporate power, or worse for capital, usher in a new political order that would further regulate business, expand the welfare state, protect workers’ rights, and undermine corporate profits.

We all know what happened next: the war on labor ramped up in the name of fighting communism. Left-oriented labor militants were fired or deported or brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

The Taft-Hartley Act (1947) restricted workers’ right to strike; outlawed closed shops, secondary boycotts and “sympathy” strikes; imposed hefty fines on union officials who failed to oppose unauthorized strikes; prevented unions from contributing to political campaigns; and required union officers to sign loyalty oaths and affidavits affirming they are not Communists.

Those that refused to sign were the left-led unions — the unions that proved to be the most antiracist — for which they were summarily expelled from the CIO between 1949 and 1950"

Read it all at 

The Freedom Struggle Is a Labor Struggle

Thanks to Michael Munk for sharing this interesting history brought to his attention by Michael Funke. You can find out more about Michael Munk, his books and articles at his blog: https://ooligan.pdx.edu/book-author/michael-munk/

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