Trade Union Leaders Appear to Offer the Same Old Recipe to Trump's War at Home

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

 

The image above is screenshot from Facebook. The texts says:

End workplace ICE raids, drop charges against David Huerta, and vote against funding the deportation machine. Stand peacefully against military force in our communities."

Here's the problem and why the labor hierarchy, including those at SEIU, are an obstacle to change and one of the reasons the right wing has gained ground and Trump is where he is. It’s in bold.

Huerta has been released which is good, and obviously who could oppose the statements the SEIU leadership makes in this posting about ICE and the general opposition to the militarization of our communities except racists, xenophobes and labor haters.

But there’s another side to it. The SEIU leadership is well aware that the Democratic Party is not seen as a viable alternative to the capitalist offensive by millions of workers and trade union members; the reality is, it is seen as part of the problem as well. It is actually a dishonest, sneaky way of arguing for a return to the status quo that brought us to this point.

 

Living standards and working conditions have been savaged no matter which of the two capitalist parties is in power. Conditions have gotten to the point that the leadership atop SEIU, and indeed the entire leadership of organized labor, can't call for a vote for this party by name so they leave the "Democratic Party" out of it and the worker is left with, just “vote” for change basically. 

 

The entire leadership of organized labor in the US is politically bankrupt and without the rise of a rank and file movement from below, armed with a program that responds to our most important needs for living a decent life, there will likely be further defeats down the road as the capitalist system of production is experiencing a global crisis of historic proportions and workers will be asked to pay the price.

 

The leadership of a major trade union like SEIU calling for the election of Democrats (that’s what it is) and simply calling for a vote for the “other” capitalist party with its dismal record is at this point a sick joke and an insult to workers. It’s not a serious alternative at all.

 

The U.S. Congress is a gathering of representatives of U.S. capital, among them, racists, Zionists, white Nationalists and other antisocial elements who are supporting a genocide. They are not the friends, or representatives, of working class men and women a they do not fear the heads of organized labor; they consider them allies of a sort, maintaining order among a vital sector of the working class in this country. There needs to be a recognition of this and a serious response to it. The Democratic Party cannot provide this response which makes the building of an independent workers' party based on our organizations and communities a vital issue.

 

Trump and his menagerie’s assault on immigrant workers, undocumented or not, is a conscious diversion from the real causes of our decades old decline in rights and living standards. It is necessary to not simply oppose the raids on working class communities and immigrant families, but to seriously organize against them. 

 

I was told today that working class immigrant communities are beginning to build community defense organizations to confront the raids. This is a critical move and should be broadened to include workplace defense committees and so on. In addition, it is crucial in situations like these to have a conscious strategy of appealing to the troops on a class basis, with leaflets and discussions where that is possible. As socialists put it, the military brass is from the ruling classes, but the troops are workers in uniform.

 

The mass media in the U.S. is very powerful and tightly controlled, but as we are witnessing with the Gaza Genocide, social media is more difficult to censor. The Internet is vital to market activity so shutting it down completely is more complicated. Plus, it is my view that the more aggressive the regime in Washington gets, the more anger it will generate. It is impossible to determine what the mood within the U.S. military is, not simply regarding these events domestically, but internationally as well. 

 

About 19% or 65 million people in the U.S. identify as Latino and the U.S. military has about the same percentage of Latino’s as members. Many of the people being victimized and arrested will have relatives in the military and many Latino’s will not take kindly to the rounding up of people overwhelmingly from this group.  It cannot be ruled out that behind the scenes, many U.S. military personnel will be discussing this situation among themselves and are questioning its validity. If the present situation is not stabilized we could well see some splits developing within the military itself. 

 

Now, I stress the SEIU leadership in these remarks and most of my writing, not because I have a fetish of attacking the trade union hierarchy as one leading member of one of the self -styled socialist grouplets claimed. I point them out because, unlike the writers at Labor Notes, or former Labor Notes writers like Chris Brooks for example, I am well aware it is not the dues paying members of the union that determine policy and strategy in these cases and during organizing drives or strikes; it is the leadership. So I don’t simply refer to “the Union” in these instances.

 

So, we should not let the heads of organized labor, a national organization with some 14 to15 million people in it, off the hook.  Workers in all major industries in the U.S. are organized. This potential power is kept in check by the labor hierarchy in league with the Democratic Party. This marriage of opportunity, or opportunism might be more accurate, has to be annulled.