Some Afscme Local 444 and East Bay Labor History

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Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

On the signers at the bottom of the flier. Marvin Cain is a long time friend of mine and a former co-worker. He was the president of my local for a while and always an active fighter on the job. Along with John Walsh he was one of the leading union activists in the maintenance department of the public utility where we worked. They were a pair to be reckoned with.

 

John Martin was once the trade unionist of the year at the Alameda Central Labor Council when he led HERE Local 28 which later merged with another HERE local to form 2850. He was not the average labor official at this level and fell out of favour with the hierarchy in no time.  He didn’t fit the mould in the long term. I remember the picket line at Fenton’s Ice Creamery back in the day, making a real effort to shut that place down. Too aggressive for the majority of the CLC. The much reviled Ignacio De La Fuente was also the most militant labor official in the council at one time. Igacio was tough. He was a BA for the Moulder’s Union. I have a lot to say about why he moved to the right and eventually became the Mayor of Oakland but maybe for another time. The CP delegates from the UC locals fawned over him as they were want to do, attaching themselves to any slightly left leaning labor bureaucrat until he fell out of favor (that’s another story). 

 

I assume Ignacio got David Bacon, the photographer in as a delegate as Bacon was clearly not a working moulder.  He never said one word the years I was in the ClC, certainly not one word of criticism that might lose him his seat. This was during a period when many strikes and battles were going on that the CLC could have played a serious role in were there a real left caucus in it that could push the dominant conservative bureaucracy to the left.

 

Like many lefty, liberal types they relish a labor credential to give them some credibility as labor fighters but they rarely have a base or have built roots in the rank and file of the unionised workers they claim to represent. They are generally brought in to the movement from above rather than being forced in from below by the ranks around some sort of program challenging the established concessionary policies of the hierarchy. This inevitably leads them to playing the role of left cover for the leadership as opposed to an alternative to it. So more often than not these left types occupy the lower ranks of the left bureaucracy. 

 

Some like Bill Fletcher a top labor bureaucrat and once a member of one of the multitude of so called socialist organizations like many of them are, ended up an advisor to AFL-CIO president Sweeney. You can’t get that position unless you’re safe, meaning no threat to the apple cart. Of course, we can all make mistakes and entering the higher union bodies without a base among the ranks based on a program that is a real alternative to the concessionary policies that have led to the present state of affairs is a big one. But to not admit those mistakes, to not learn from what was a false strategy for working in the trade unions to help others avoid them, and then to portray oneself as some sort of radical labor leader when you played a completely opposite role is worse.