It’s Game Time For the AFA’s Sara Nelson

Nationalize the airlines, redesign the transportation industry

 

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

8-7-20

The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO, the main national body of organized labor in the US, held it first contested election in its history in 1995 when John Sweeney defeated Tom Donahue for the president’s spot. Sweeney was president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) at the time and Donahue was the former Secretary Treasurer under the moribund Lane Kirkland who retired. Joining Sweeney at the top was Richard Trumka, the present president of the AFL-CIO and formerly the leader of the United Mineworkers.

 

There was much fanfare at the result. A New Voice for labor was the rallying call and Sweeney created a new position to be filled by Afscme’s Linda Chavez Thompson, a Latina who would become the first non-white in a senior AFL-CIO post. This is revolutionary stuff in the world of identity politics. The Sweeney, Trumka Chavez slate were swept to power on a program of reform claiming that Labor could not continue to fight, "...only defensive battles." and promising to make the AFL-CIO the , "....fulcrum of a vibrant movement, not simply a Federation of constituent organizations."  The reformers made it clear, "...we cannot wait for change in the political climate to provide us with the opportunities to grow.  We must first organize despite the law if we are ever to organize with the law."

 

“AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney has encouraged new thinking about the way labor unions operate and organize, and he has placed a number of progressive leaders in positions of power.”, wrote Steve Proffitt in the LA Times (October 10, 1999), “These young Turks are redefining the role of labor unions in today's service and knowledge economy……” my added emphasis.

 

Sweeney went on to talk about blocking bridges in the Martin Luther King tradition but in a very short time ended up building them, not with the rank and file of organized labor and the working class as a whole, but with the employers through the Team Concept. So the “New Voice” for labor turned out to be the same old voice singing the same old tune.

 

When the Battle in Seattle at the WTO meeting broke out in December 1999 there was a permitted union march alongside some 40,000 others protesting globalization. The radicalized youth had some influence on the younger union rank and file and eventually the meeting was cancelled. It was a great shock at the time and the police responded with extreme violence. When the younger workers were battling cops Sweeney was busy praying at a candlelight vigil. New Labor indeed.

 

The Young Turks turned out to be anything but. I was still active in the unions at the time. I would assume the liberal writer Bill Fletcher was among them as he held a position in the SEIU hierarchy and was an advisor to Sweeney when he became president of the AFL-CIO. But there were others and one I recall in particular was Amy Dean. Dean was the head of the South Bay Labor Council based in Silicon Valley, a “…5-foot, 3-inch fireball…” wrote Steve Proffitt in the LA Times article.  The liberals loved her and she would have been popular with the Labor Notes leadership who gave her a platform as one of the experts the uneducated rank and file member could speak to about how to organize and build our unions. Dean co-authored a book called The New New Deal so she must be an expert on workers and workplace struggles right.

 

Anyway that bright star went in to a black hole. I don’t know what Ms. Dean is doing now. She formed some non-profits and as far as I know from her website, as of 2014 she was a Senior Consultant, of a Management Assistance Group describing herself as a, “…leadership development and organizational transformation consultant…”. Her husband, Randy Menna, was the founder of some software development company.

 

Another firebrand began to burn bright around this time and that was Andrew (Andy Stern. Stern became president of SEIU in 1996 after Sweeney won the AFL-CIO election. The capitalist media loved him and lauded him with praise, Business Week, Time, CNN, CBS, he had it all; they weren’t afraid of him, he was their new shining star, a visionary. "We like to say: We use the power of persuasion first. If it doesn't work, we try the persuasion of power" he told the WSJ in 2008. He’s big in the hedge fund industry these days.

Sara Nelson AFA President

 

I am reminded of this thread in the organized workers’ movement as there is a new savior now, President of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA/CWA) Sara Nelson. If you have no history with this trend I can understand why an idealistic young DSA’er interested in unions or a student who correctly sees the 14 million members in unions as relevant, would be attracted to Sister Nelson. She has spoken out against big business and speaks out strongly in defense of all workers.

 

Admittedly, capitalism is in the midst of its worst crisis since World War Two and in some ways greater given the global reach of the pandemic. And Sister Nelson’s rhetoric is welcome. She points out correctly that workers have learned a great deal during this crisis. It has brought from our gut in to our consciousness what we already knew, whose labor is essential in society and whose is parasitic. In an interview with The Nation in March, Nelson stresses, “I have never seen the airlines work with us more closely than they have during this time to put in place mitigation factors and equipment on the planes.”. The airline industry investors are aware that they need the organized workers on their side and their industry as Nelson points out is 80% organized.

 

Nelson tells the Nation that this is not going to be like 2008. “It is a crisis that working people are simply not going to allow to be put, once again, on our backs. In fact, we are coming for blood this time. No more stock buybacks. This is about putting in place a system that actually cares for people, that actually works for people.”

 

The AFA has joined with other unions in calling for direct payments to workers to keep them at work. In a video she made on March 16^th Nelson said: "No taxpayer money for CEO bonuses, stock buybacks, or dividends; no breaking contracts through bankruptcy; and no federal funds for airlines that are fighting their workers' efforts to join a union." There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these reforms but if she is counting on the Democratic Party to guarantee rules and regulations are upheld, and that this party will put in “…place a system that actually cares for people, that actually works for people.”, she is misleading workers and her position as a leader seriously trying to make changes is in jeopardy.

"Today we will save our industry and our jobs, tomorrow, our neighbors," Nelson said. "And in the weeks and months to come, our future."

 

This is not new, it’s been said by labor leaders before Sister Nelson. As activists and labor activists serious about changing the unions and wanting to build a just world, an alternative strategy and tactics has to be laid out. We have no political party of our own and this Nelson ignores as far as I can see which can only mean she has no intention of breaking with the marriage of death the trade union hierarchy has with the Democratic Party. She has even been suggested as a running mate for Biden. One fan is Doug Parker, the CEO of American Airlines who likes it when unions and corporations “work together”. Parker said of SaraNelson, “I think Sara would be a great choice.  She’s smart, she’s tough, she’s forward thinking and she cares about people.  She’s very good at bringing together people who have diverse interests in order to get transactions done, and she makes sure she gets work done on behalf of the people she represents.”

 

One would hope Sara Nelson rejected such praise from an enemy of working people and instead engage in an open struggle within organized labor to break the present leadership’s grip, to break from the Team Concept, the passive protests that strikes have become and to link all struggles together including those outside of organized labor in the communities and so forth

Instead of working with the billionaires that own the Airline industry to get “their” industry back on track and save it from the effects of the market driven pandemic, the call for taking these essential industries, and the dominant industries in society in to public ownership has to be raised. This pandemic has strengthened the confidence of the working class, it has had a huge effect on consciousness and as an important nationally recognized labor official, Nelson, like any of us, is involved in the struggle for the consciousness of the working class. Arguing that we are all in this together is not a good start.

 

We have seen numerous work stoppages and strikes during this pandemic. There will be many more battles over the horizon as the younger, mostly unorganized workers in particular continue the struggle in the face of the bosses’ efforts to make them pay for this crisis. It is not going to be easy for them to raise taxes, cut services and so on after this; but they are forced by the system to make workers pay. Sara Nelson and any of those like her will either be dragged along with this movement or get left behind or even worse, move to suppress it in order to save capitalism from itself.

 

And this is the problem, in fact there are two problems that lead many genuine socialists and anti-capitalists in the unions along this dangerous path. It is the position of the present union hierarchy that whenever capitalism goes in to crisis they move to bail it out. Having no alternative to capitalism, seeing the market as the answer to all things, this is the only road out. To mobilize the immense potential power of their own members can only lead to chaos, so concessions have to be made.  The members have to be “realistic”. This will be a hard sell after Covid-19.

 

This refusal to fight as I always argue, is not just due to corrupt individuals or character flaws although these things exist. It is a political question, it is how they see the world. Facts For Working People explained it this way some time ago:

 

“As the last century drew to a close, the Wall Street Journal produced a centennial edition. This included a segment titled - "Events that Helped Shape the Country". It explained that in 1893 there was an economic slump that left half the membership of what was then the main union federation, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), unemployed. The AFL was composed overwhelmingly of craft unions (skilled trades).  Samuel Gompers was the leader of that federation. Under his leadership, and against the background of that economic slump, the AFL made a decision as to what its general policy should be towards U.S. capitalism.

Here is how the wall street journal reported this decision. "The AFL led by Samuel Gompers votes against adopting socialist reform programs....Gompers believes that U.S. labor should work with capitalism, not against it, and that the AFL’s  proper concerns are wages and hours and better working conditions".

 

This view remains the dominant ideology of the labor hierarchy today and any serious reformer must address and oppose it.

 

The other important flaw alongside the view that capitalism can be made human and environmentally friendly is not seeing that the working class is the force and the only force that can change society and can govern society. The vast majority of us are workers whether we are employed or not. Within this class there are many sections and marginalized forces that make up the whole. Nelson talks of solidarity, this is the solidarity we need not a solidarity with our bosses, with the US ruling elite.

 

And we cannot build that world she alludes to without international solidarity and international organizations. Our problems cannot be solved within the confines of the nation state.

 

Great social shocks and crises put all individuals and groups to the test. Sara Nelson is facing the most important one of her political life. She’s off to a bumpy start.

 

Further reading on this subject:

Book Review: Jane McAlvey's A Collective Bargain
A Fighting Union Leadership Will be Built by Rank and File Activists

 

See more under the labels on the right side of this blog.
Labor Notes, DSA, Unions

Airlines Want More Taxpayer Money to Pay Wages, Safeguard Profits.

Striking Airline Workers last year. We're all in this together now?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable.  Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves.  It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich."  *

Back in March, US airlines received $25 billion from the US taxpayer under the $2.2 trillion stimulus deal known as the “Cares Act”. This money was intended to keep the Airlines afloat for the summer by covering their labor costs. They also received, $25 billion in loans and loan guarantees. One of the conditions for the hand out was that the Airlines were barred from laying off, or to use the media’s euphemistic terminology, furloughing employees. This ban ends October 1^st 2020.

Well, the airline bosses and their investors are coming back for more money and are disappointed in the Republican proposal for the next coronavirus aid package there’s that there’s no money in it for them. Hence the resort to a dose of economic terrorism. If they don’t get it they will be laying off thousands more workers. American Airlines says it will have to lay off 25,000 workers and United Airlines some 36,000 if the taxpayer won’t pay their wages. United Airlines told its pilots that until a vaccine is available things will not improve much and the airline’s original plan to layoff about one third of its pilot workforce in 2020 and 2021 won’t do the job without taxpayer money.  Alaska has threatened to layoff 35% of its workforce.

American allocated around $11.9 billion toward buying back its stock over the past five years and paid out more than $1 billion in dividends during this same time period. Meanwhile, American’s chairman made over $11 million in salary in 2019 and other executives another $20 million. Investors in the airline industry, what amounts to a form of mass transportation on a continent, claim that it will be 2024 before the global air traffic returns to anything like they were before the coronavirus hit.

It’s always interesting to look at the language the unknown figures behind the scenes in this particular field use when making public statements.  All the talk from the airline investors through those that manage the business, never mentions profits. They need help to “prevent” thousands of job losses. They are desperate to “avoid cuts” “We hate taking this step, as we know the impact it has on our hardworking team members.”, says one executive. Some team the workers are on where they never control the ball.

The airlines are hoping that workers will leave through early retirements or as they put it “on their own”. Thousands of workers have left “on their own” at Southwest Airlines for example but one has to laugh at the language again as it implies there was no external pressure, nothing happening in the outside world or the economy that would cause thousands of workers to just leave their jobs “on their own.”

One can only imagine the uncertainty and fear that many workers must be experiencing in this crisis. Beyond this, the huge stimulus will have to be repaid and the future is one of further concessions and attacks on US workers. All the talk of essential workers and heroes is pretty nauseating as these very same workers have been abused and denigrated for ever. Nurses and other professionals in the health field aside, these heroes are in positions we are all encouraged to avoid. They are reserved for the poor, the immigrants and so on.

Airline bosses are hoping that the union leadership will agree to concessions to try to save jobs and there is no indication that they will not. When capitalism goes in to crisis, the labor hierarchy’s immediate response is to bail it out.

Aviation unions representing pilots, flight attendants and mechanics are all supporting an extension of the aid for another six months. In a letter from the unions to Congress in June they called for another $32 million for “passenger airlines cargo carriers and aviation contractors.” “This is the simplest and fastest way to maintain Congress’ historic commitment to keep aviation workers on payroll.”, the letter said.

Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) made an appeal on social media in March:   "We have told Congress that any stimulus funds for the aviation industry must come with strict rules that includes requiring employers across aviation to maintain pay and benefits for every worker," Nelson said in the video. "No taxpayer money for CEO bonuses, stock buybacks, or dividends; no breaking contracts through bankruptcy; and no federal funds for airlines that are fighting their workers' efforts to join a union."

Nelson is regarded as a left winger in organized labor but, like all of them is wedded to the Team Concept stressing workers and bosses have the same interests. “We’re all in this together, there is no difference” she says in the video as she appeals to national pride and how important this industry is to all of us carrying our troops and so on. Congress must protect our paychecks she says.

Airline-catering providers, security companies, ground handlers and cleaning services got $3 billion of the Cares Act to cover pay and benefits for workers through the end of September with the same conditions----no layoffs. But numerous contractors that laid off or furloughed some 9,000 people since the Cares Act was passed received some $728 million in funding. https://www.wsj.com/articles/stimulus-money-for-airline-contractors-comes-under-scrutiny-11596044969

Yes we’re all in this together.

And Sara Nelson is placing our salvation and economic interests in the hands of the billionaires and millionaires in the US Congress. Even if we take the name of the legislation, the “Cares Act”. It has two different meanings. Workers care about wages, jobs, security etc., and investors that own the airline industry care about profits. There have been other top labor officials that liberals and sections of the left in the unions have gone gaga over, Amy Dean was one as was SEIU’s Andy Stern.  Always looking for a savior except the organized power of the working class.

Joining with airline executives and the investors behind them under the “all in this together” canopy is a guarantee that union members and the working class and taxpayers as a whole will suffer. After workers saved US capitalism from itself in 2008 bailing out the auto industry being one example, the end result was that Ultimately, the government lost about $11.8 billion on its investment in the auto makers.

I have done a fair bit of flying and have nothing but respect and admiration for the flight attendants. They work non-stop taking care of their customers and working through various time zones that can be very stressful. I remember when the airline industry forced concessions of them and attendants, (mostly women) found themselves in some areas, having to apply for welfare. Others who had planned to retire had those dreams dashed.

Not much of an “all together” attitude there. Sarah Nelson who has gained some respect for her outspoken views and sounding quite militant, is in danger of ending up as they all do, participating in the attacks on their own members, by relying on the Democratic Party and Congress, a direct result of the Team Concept and the view that there are no differences.

It is absurd that the taxpayer, the working class which is most of us, are borrowing billions of dollars that we will hand over to a ruthless bunch of wasters so that they can keep the business and pay our wages. After the Great Recession the hatred and anger at the super rich and the government was very strong. Here we are bailing the system out again and the heads of organized labor are reminding us that there are no differences among us; bankers and hedge fund managers, are no different to waiters and welders.

This is the time for any labor leader that claims to be heading in a new direction to call for the nationalization of the airline industry. If we are paying the wages why don’t we collectively own the company?  In the UK, workers have shown that they want the re-nationalization of the major important industries, mail, rail, water and do on. In the US we never hear any alternative views only pro-market propaganda from representatives of the two big business parties and their candidates. In the debates we only hear carefully scripted questions and answers from the two big business parties, I recall Jill Stein getting arrested trying to get in to the debates some years ago.

Our postal service is a public agency and an extremely efficient one if we are talking about serving the majority of the population rather than providing profits for a minority that don’t work. Many fire departments, the TVA, are public so are social services despite being savaged by privatization to a great extent. Public services like public jobs are overwhelmingly positive.

Nationalizing a major industry within the framework of a capitalist economy is not the be all and end all of it, only a small step but an important one as it undermines the propaganda that the market and the private sector is the only means of organizing society. Relying on our own collective strength and applying it through a direct action fight to win strategy, and building our own independent political party is the path the US working class must open up ahead.

*1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellows to abandon the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people's problems.  Philip Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192

Fired after thirty years. Taken back with a 40% wage cut and no health benefits.

Wall Street. The center of the capitalist criminals and crooks which brought the US and world economy into collapse and threw hundreds of millions more people into starvation. A sane society would put a high fence round it and hold them all in isolation for the rest of their lives.

I hope I live long enough to see the scum of the ruling class that run this country dealt with in the way they deserve.

My companion's best friend is in her fifties. She worked for the same major corporation for over thirty years. Last month they called her in and fired her. She was devastated. Her husband is not working. Her daughter's marriage had broken up and she and her husband had just put the down payment on a small condo for her and her young son. My companion's world was in pieces.

Then last week the corporation called her in again. And they rehired her. But they rehired her at 40% less wages and no health benefits. It was just a vicious tactic to get her to accept this drastic cut in her living standards. For a couple of weeks she thought she had no job, no wages, no benefits. She was terrified. Then they "offered" her a job again, but at 40% less wages and with no benefits. The idea was that after terrorizing her she would see this as better than nothing. She is back at work again on the corporations new terms.

This is pure unadulterated corporate terrorism, capitalist terrorism. This corporation threatened this poor woman with destitution and terrorized her into accepting a savage reduction in her living standard. The money they saved they put in their pockets and arrogantly laughed all the way to the bank. Capitalism is a system based on terror.

The union leaders!!!!! Capitalism has its so called war on terror. Capitalism's war on terror is a war to dominate its rivals worldwide, to secure resources internationally, to drive up into central Asia and surround China and Russia and to repress any opposition at home. See the recent FBI raids in Minneapolis and Chicago. The union leaders support this so called war of capitalism on terrorism. They should reject unconditionally any support for capitalism's so called war on terror.

They should exclaim the fraud and class interests of capitalism's so called war on terror and explain they want no part of it. That they oppose it. Then from this launch their own war on terror. That is launch a working class war on capitalism's terror against the working class. This would mean not a job to be cut, not a wage or benefit to be cut, not a house to be foreclosed. Instead a minimum wage of $15.00 an hour or a $5.00 an hour increase for all whichever is the greater, free education, health and child care, an affordable decent home for all. A program of public works to build homes, schools, roads, the infrastructure, develop environmentally sustainable economic projects end all wars and occupations. This would create millions of new jobs.

This can start the war against the terrorism of the capitalists. This can begin to mobilize the working class into action. The pathetic boot licking of the union leaders of the capitalists and their system sees them paralyzed and unable to take on the capitalists. They think there is no alternative to capitalism so they go along. Union activists, left and radical activists, we have to organize together to build opposition in the unions and workplaces and communities to the refusal to fight of the union leaders. A strong opposition in the unions and workplaces which threatens the control and power and perks of the union leaders is the only thing that will move at least some of the union leadership to fight.

Sean

UAW Local 2244 meeting erupts as anger at job losses and the Union leadership's failure to combat them breaks in to the open

This is a clip from UAW Local 2244's January membership meeting where the issue of layoffs was discussed. General Motors pulled out of the partnership with Toyota at the onset of the financial crisis and Toyota has since stopped production. Some 4700 people will be out of work come April 1st. This is a glimpse of what is to come in the trade Union movement as years of anger at the failure of the trade Union leadership to defend worker's rights and their outright collaboration with the employers rises to the surface.