Reflections On Union Activity and Politics

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Trying to get all my old stuff in order before I move on. In 1996 I ran for Oakland City Council. I was endorsed and helped by my union, Afscme Local 444. I had to run at large as my own district was not up. Nate Miley was my councilor. He is now and has been for a long time on the County Board of Supervisors I think. It was an amazing experience and I had to learn some stuff as I went along.

Helping me was my campaign manager John Reimann, Terry, a Machinist can't remember his last name. Clement Sinclair a Jamaican brother who had a lovely very strong accent, Joanne Wong, John Martin of SEIU fame and once the labor unionist of the year at the Central Labor Council until it was obvious he couldn't be molded and wasn't o the same page and became a pariah for that. There were a few others I'd have to go look further to remember more.

There were guys like Mike Armas and others who helped and who came around canvassing in my East Oakland District. We had a pickup truck and signs and banners and went round as we talked to people at their doors and in the streets.

We did not expect to win, although Afscme's District Council 57 to which local 444 was affiliated endorsed me. Some delegates who hated me like the plague didn't have the principles to oppose it openly as the Council Director spoke in favor and Okayed it. He was feuding with the CLC at the time I think and this is another curse in the organized labor movement. I got about 6% of the vote. My friend and co worker's uncle, a black contractor also ran also. He was a decent guy promising more jobs for the community and attacking the addition to the Oakland coliseum not hiring local or using minority contractors. Jobs was a big issue and given his situation as a contractor he took many votes, working class black votes, that would have voted for me had he not been running.

We had hoped to build a working people's campaign, hence the name and that it would not simply run candidates, we just used that to get a voice. The Oakland Working People's Campaign would be a direct action group as we were already involved in direct action against slumlords in Oakland.

 

At the time or right after, we published a few issues of a newsletter and we called it The Flatlander. For those not familiar with the area, Flatlander was the perfect name as the freeway, the 580, divides the flatlands from the hills, the hood from the whatever we'd call it, and it is also a clear class divide with more middle class above the 580, nicer neighborhoods, not tons of liquor stores, I had three on the corner of my block, and so on. 

 

The higher up you go the local bourgeois would be likely to reside particularly in a place called Piedmont, a sterile city within a city. I will be 72 in a few weeks. I am and no so active but my union and political activity saved me in many way. I took my job as a shop floor rep seriously, I wanted to be in the forefront in the battle to defend my class on the job and in society and couldn't do it justice smoking weed and snorting coke. I survived the coke filled 1980's never lost my job. I am grateful to all the folks at work that supported me, I would have been out the door in a minute without a union and their support.

 

Looking back on this period, what is so unfortunate about working class politics in the area, aside from the usual refusal of the labor hierarchy to offer a unified alternative, is that despite there being thousands of individuals that consider themselves activists, socialists, anarchists, or anti-capitalists in one way or another, they couldn't, and still can't as far as I can see, even get together and agree on a candidate for office. Elections are an opportunity to challenge the established politicians and the established politics, to counter their ideology and propaganda. We were not trying to compete electorally but to use an election to build a grass root working class direct action movement.

Perhaps the most divisive force among left leaning organizations, I am talking about the self styled socialist groups of which there are many, is sectarianism. They all believe they have the right program and that their primary goal is to build their particular group in competition with others who think otherwise. There are many decent individuals that get burned out by these organizations. As the co founder of this blog, Sean O'Torain always said, there is something wrong with these organizations that there's more socialists outside of them than in. There is a reason these organizations have no significant influence in the working class whatsoever.

I was still in a group at that time though expelled soon after and that unshackled my mind as we used to say thanks to Martin Leggasick. And I accept I made mistakes along sectarian lines too but I believe it was the union activity in which I was embedded that protected me as I was always in activity with workers on the job, where the "rubber meets the road". I was drawn to that organization, that has morphed in to Socialist Alternative which itself has gone through splits like they all inevitably do, because, unlike almost all the others that were around, Labor Militant as we were called then, oriented to the working class primarily, and also helped me tremendously in two areas. One was the fight for reforms on the job which is important as it is through the struggle for reforms that we can find the path that will help us draw wider conclusions about society, and two, even fighting for reforms or gains on the job will inevitably bring a genuine fighter or any worker not accepting concessions in to conflict with the union hierarchy at the higher levels. 

 

This conflict with the union hierarchy cannot be avoided, they will not allow it. . Differences I have had, as have others, with Labor Notes and that organization's approach despite having very successful meetings, publishing some decent material and drawing many decent rank and file activists around them, is that they more often simply report on events in the struggle rather than offer a way forward and almost always ignore or refuse to point to the role of the union hierarchy in suppressing any movement from below that threatens the relationship they have built with the bosses based on labor peace. It is regretful, that the DSA leadership follows a similar path and has contracted out the union work of DSA to Labor Notes and individuals, many of them former labor bureaucrats and academics that write a lot about something they never experienced. There is more about these differences at DSA, Labor Notes and the Trade Unions

What started as a few comments for Facebook on some history I have had the privilege to participate in, has grown as usual. But that's enough for today