Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
GED/HEO
1-29-23
The other aspect of any declining power, or a power whose
influence is declining in relation to other competitors, it that power becomes
ever more dangerous and violent’ like the cornered rat.
We see many examples of this. The last decades of British colonial power in
Kenya for example when the British ruling class knew their days were numbered
and they could no longer maintain the control over the colonized that they once
had. The example of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. They too knew the end
was nigh yet continued with some of the of the most fierce and brutal
oppression of workers and trade unions. It becomes pretty clear when we see the
final days why they kept Mandela alive, they knew they would need him at some
point as the regime could not last forever given the immense power and heroic
struggles of the Black South African working class. This sort of violence from
a declining power has been described to me as similar to a match after it has
been struck, yet it is brightest the moment before it dies.
I think Wolff explains these issues very clearly. I do not
agree with him though when he says of the 70's and 80's and US capitalism's
intensified war on workers and organized labor in particular, that "The Labor Movement felt there was
nothing they could do about this" assault. There was a lot we could
have done.
From the late seventies through the eighties there was what I would say was the
beginnings of a movement within organized labor to fight back and change the
balance of class forces in US society. The miners in 1978, PATCO strike in
1980, two Greyhound strikes, Eastern Airlines, TWA, AT and T and more. This
potential, this attempt to change the course of organized labor (the
UFCW/Hormel strike lasted a year) was crushed and years of decline and declining
activity in the form of strikes followed.
I was very excited at this development and took UFCW members from Local P9 that struck Hormel, in to my union and the community. MY union, AFSCME Local 444 adopted a family in Austin. In the initial stages at my Central Labor Council of Alameda the delegates were all gung ho about this development until the national union of the UFCW removed the leaders of local P9 and installed a compliant, concessionary crowd and the delegates all fell in to line. Many of them were not elected or even active members of the unions they represented. They were hired by the officialdom and therefore had no pawer at all to influence the ranks for fear of loosing their positions. This does not mean the leaders of P9 didn't make mistakes, but UFCW P9 was defeated (as were the other strikes) through a powerful combination of the bosses and the trade union leadership at the helm of the national unions and the AFL-CIO. The Team Concept at work.
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I urge folks to order that short book, a pamphlet really, Hard Pressed in the Heartland by Peter Rachleff. Peter was an active player in the Hormel/P9 strike and the book is worth reading. I attended a conference during that strike titled National Rank and File Against Concessions. It was a great development that could really lead somewhere and it was an exciting event. But it disappeared, it came to naught and I always wondered why. Peter Rachleff explains why this happened in his book and later on in my union activity I also witnessed the destructive role many, if not all of the self-styled socialist organizations play in the organized labor and workers movement in general. It is not an accident that these groups have failed to build a genuine left current in the US working class inside and outside organized labor
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