More on Organized Labor's Response To Jeffrey Pretti Murder and Minneapolis Event

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

1-28-26

 

I posted a commentary to this blog last night on the ongoing state violence against the people of Minneapolis in the wake of the murder of Jeffrey Pretti by the Trump Administration’s neo fascist militia. I felt compelled to write something after seeing a Facebook post pointing out that the head of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey has issued a statement supporting some of the demands that the movement has put forward. The post is here.

 

I had little time to write last night for numerous reasons, one being my life has changed as I am a carer for a family member. But I was so disgusted with the McGarvey statement I had to say something.  I needed to be careful because as pathetic as the statement is, I did not what to be seen undermining what is support of a kind from the head of an organization that has tremendous potential social power. 

 

If you read yesterday’s post you will see that AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler has released a very similar statement. There was likely some collaboration here as labor bureaucrats at this level are careful not to “go off half cocked” as a delegate at my Central Labor Council yelled out once after another delegate seconded a motion I made.*

 

The pressure not to upset the apple cart held me back, after all, the class war is exposed for all to see in Minneapolis and our side is making some serious headway.  But I spent more than thirty years as a rank and file union activist and my anger increased the more I thought about the issue; I had trouble sleeping.

Then I woke up this morning, grabbed my phone next to the bed to check some of the headlines and see a video clip (above) of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar being attacked at a town hall meeting she was hosting.

 

This was too much for me. Watch what happens when this small woman, a Muslim Somali woman, has something sprayed in her face; she doesn’t hesitate to go after the attacker. I love this woman’s courage in the face of racist and sexist attacks from the degenerate serial sexual predator in the White House. I do not support her party but she is incredibly brave in the face of racist, sexist and religious bigotry. 

 

The most powerful figure in the world, like a child with new toys, the man who wants to build a resort over the bones of hundreds of thousands of genocide victims in Gaza, has launched a major assault against the American people centered at the moment in Minnesota.

 

And in response to this, two of the most powerful (potentially) union officials in the country representing 14 million workers in crucial industries, can do, is announce that they “mourn” the murdered victims of Trump’s fascist militia and support a call from a murdered victims union for an independent, transparent  investigation, and for accountability at every level. They are appealing to the US Congress and legislators to investigate themselves. 

 

These trade union officials are complicit in the sense that they refuse to build and use the resources they have, to defend working people under siege. Their pathetic response to this violence should be called out for what is, shameful.

 

The reason for this harmless gesture from organized labor’s leadership is easy to understand when we look at NABTU’s president Sean McGarvey’s resume. I pointed out in my earlier commentary that McGarvey idolizes one of the most powerful representatives of capital and enemy of working class people, the retired Nancy Pelosi. He proudly claims that Pelosi, “….has always been a working-class warrior.” She earned her working class warrior badge, McGarvey says, “growing up in Baltimore.”, where her father was Mayor. It’s very common for the children of established Congressional politicians and children of mayors of major industrial centers to hang out on the streets with the rest of us; that’s what freedom’s all about.

 

McGarvey’s resume reads, “Sean chairs the Democratic Treasurers Association Labor Council and co-chairs labor-management committees of the American Petroleum Institute, American Chemistry Council, Southern Company-NABTU LMCC, and the Nuclear Power LMCC. Sean has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration”. From the NABTU website.

 

The union hierarchy is linked to the Democratic Party, and through it, big business interests in general.  This is particularly the case with the building trades that receive huge government contracts. These leaders at the highest level consider the unions as employment agencies with them as the CEO’s. They are, as De Leon once said, The Labor Lieutenants of capital.

 

I have consistently argued that the union rank and file are in a war on two fronts, one is against the offensive of big business and the other against the pro-market pro-capitalist policies of our leadership, the latter is the more complex one.

 

There are many decent leaders in smaller union locals and no doubt among the lower levels of the bureaucracy, but the rank and file of organized labor cannot avoid a confrontation with the present leadership over the direction of our organizations. It is impossible to deny that among many rank and file members these pathetic responses from top officials will anger them, will be seen as merely an attempt by the top dogs to cover their asses; to appear to be doing something. 

We must make it clear to these layers, some who have given up and others who have been influenced by right wing views that there is an alternative, a movement from below that relies only on our own strength and our independence from big business and its two political parties. Where there’s a vacuum, if the left doesn’t fill it, the right will. 

 

The points I made in the earlier post about building on what the people of Minneapolis and others around the country have learned in struggles against an increasingly repressive state and forming community/labor defense committees in other areas, rank and file union member activists on the ground can take these experiences in to their union bodies and unite workers along class lines; the immigrants being attacked now are our class allies not our enemies; we wouldn’t hang out with the likes of Pelosi. 

 

Those of us with some experience in the internal battles to transform our unions in to the fighting organizations they need to be have learned the hard way that the present union leadership will not take these steps and where they can, will place obstacles in our way; they are too wedded to the Team Concept and any movement from below will sever the relationship they have built with sections of the capitalist class based on class collaboration and labor peace.  They are also very aware it will most likely cost them their jobs and their obscene salaries.

 

*The sin committed here is that a second means the issue can be discussed on the floor.