Labor History: The Real History of the New Deal: Reform From Below

Just listen to the commentary and the bias in reporting.

A friend shared a Robert Reich article with me criticizing the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who spoke at a public event recently blaming the “progressive era” and I assume progressives. For the “worst crimes of the 20^th century” Reich is correct to take Thomas up on this but then goes on to praise Theodore Roosevelt and his grandson Franklin D Roosevelt as the forces behind the progressive era. I respond to this false argument below, it is propaganda really in order to negate the role of the US working class in changing history.

 

The Real History of the New Deal: Reform From Below

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444 retired

Robert Reich, one of the architects of NAFTA, invokes the New Deal while leaving out its most important dimensions — the explosive class struggle that actually forced Roosevelt's hand. Liberal labor leaders and Democrats love to cast Roosevelt as the friend of the working man, the hero who saved capitalism from itself. The real story is more uncomfortable for them.

The legislation of the 1930s — the National Recovery Act of 1933, the Wagner Act of 1935, the WPA and the broader social legislation of the era — was the capitalist class codifying what workers had already won in the streets and workplaces of America. Roosevelt didn't lead the working class. He managed the crisis it created.

The Ground Shifts

After the 1929 crash, industrial production collapsed by 48% between 1929 and 1933. The early strikes of the period were led by the American Federation of Labor, but the AFL was a craft union federation with little interest in industrial workers, who were considered unskilled and unorganizable. John Lewis's United Mine Workers stood as the major exception. Those early strikes were defeated.

The Depression ground people down, and radicalism filled the vacuum. The Communist Party organized in auto and steel, led rent strikes in working class neighborhoods, and recruited thousands. It was building a base in the most strategic sectors of the economy.

Then came 1934 — a turning point in American labor history that deserves to be remembered the way July 4th is remembered, and isn't.

Three general strikes erupted that year. In Minneapolis, 40,000 workers took to the streets in a truckers' strike led by organizers who would go on to found the Socialist Workers Party. They battled police in pitched confrontations and won. In Toledo, workers struck the Auto-Lite plant — and critically, the unemployed joined them on the picket line, refusing to be used as scabs against their employed neighbors. The left-wing Lucas County Unemployed League was central to that solidarity. In San Francisco, longshoreman Harry Bridges led a general strike that shut the city down. Socialists and Communists played leading roles in all three. All three won.

Legislation Follows Power

It was in the aftermath of this upheaval that Roosevelt passed the Wagner Act in 1935, guaranteeing private sector workers the legal right to organize. This sequence matters. The law didn't create the movement — the movement created the conditions under which the law became necessary.

The AFL, shaken by events, made a belated attempt to organize auto workers. But its craft union structure was incompatible with industrial unionism. The break came dramatically when John Lewis — heading what was then the Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL — punched the Carpenters union president and walked out. The CIO was born. Lewis, a shrewd tactician whatever his politics, used Communist Party activists as his organizers. At the CIO's height, roughly 43% of its affiliated unions were led by CP supporters. Critically, the CIO had no color bar. Black workers joined in enormous numbers, and the impact on Black working class life was substantial and lasting.

Flint

In 1936, workers took on the world's largest corporation. General Motors had vowed it would never recognize a union. It paid workers in company scrip. Workers lived in GM-owned houses and bought from GM-owned stores. It was a company that owned people's lives.

On December 30, 1936, workers occupied the Fisher Body plant in Flint, Michigan. Sit-down strikes spread across GM facilities throughout the country, echoing the great French sit-downs of that same year. The occupation lasted 44 days. Women organized a network outside the plant walls, passing food through windows and holding the line against police. The GM bosses were reluctant to storm the plants — the workers were sitting beside the dies and tooling, and could destroy them. The Michigan governor threatened to send in troops. The workers' response was unambiguous: if soldiers came in, the blood was on his hands and they were prepared to die.

GM capitulated. The UAW was recognized. It remains one of the greatest victories in the history of American labor.

The War and What Came After

The economic crisis deepened again in 1937. What ultimately rescued the capitalist system was not the New Deal but the Second World War — at the cost of 57 million lives.

Roosevelt was an astute ruling class politician. He forced GM to retool its factories for war production — a private corporation compelled by the state to produce what the state required. During the 2008 financial crisis, the same logic applied when the government effectively nationalized large sections of the financial industry, calling it "conservatorship" to avoid the political freight of the word. The lesson in both cases is the same: through public ownership and democratic control over production, societies can produce what people need rather than what generates profit. That is the fundamental contradiction the New Deal exposed without resolving.

The Lesson

Twenty years after Flint, the gains of the civil rights movement followed the same logic. Legislation came from pressure in the streets, in the churches, on the buses and at the lunch counters — not from the goodwill of politicians. Politicians responded, sometimes reluctantly, to power they could not ignore.

That is the consistent lesson of this period. Legislative gains that benefit working people come from organized power from below. They are then managed, institutionalized, and where possible, defused by those above. Understanding that sequence clearly is the beginning of not being fooled by the next Robert Reich who invokes the New Deal while burying its actual history.

For Further Reading

• Sit-Down — Sidney Fine
• Labor's Giant Step — Art Preis
• Strike! — Jeremy Brecher
• Poor People's Movements — Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward

Minnesota Labor Leaders Talk Organizing Lessons as Strike Movement Goes National

Minnesota Labor Leaders Talk Organizing Lessons as Strike Movement Goes National

 Mike Elk  Jan 23, 2026  0 Comments   

From Payday Report

Tomorrow, tens of thousands of workers in Minneapolis are expected to take to the streets in a mass general strike. The “Day of Truth and Freedom” has been endorsed by all the major labor organizations in Minnesota. Every major school and cultural institution, as well as hundreds of restaurants and small businesses, are expected to close.

Likewise, Payday Report’s Strike Tracker has documented at least 215 solidarity actions around the country tomorrow. Labor leaders in Minneapolis hope tomorrow’s strike becomes a model for how labor and community leaders around the country respond to ICE attacks on their cities at any time.

On Tuesday, CWA Local 7520 President Kieran Knutson talked to Payday Report and our readers about how the Minneapolis General Strike movement emerged and what is next. He emphasized that he hopes that Minneapolis shows other cities how to fight back when ICE comes to occupy their cities.

(Watch Knutson talk lessons for the labor movement here)

Knutson says that the idea of a general strike emerged when SEIU Local 26 proposed a mass day of action to a group of progressive unions. SEIU Local 26, whose members are largely immigrant janitorial workers, sought help from other unions in fighting back as their members took a beating from ICE raids.

“After Renee Good was killed, I think a lot of us said, we have to move. We have to do stuff now,” Knutson, whose CWA local was the first union to back SEIU Local 26’s call, told Payday Report.

He says Minneapolis labor learned from the mass walkouts following George Floyd’s murder by police in June 2020, when more than 600 strikes occurred in the month after Floyd’s death, according to Payday Report. 

“[The Twin Cities labor movement] has an experience with struggle and an experience with relating to social movements that emerge from the community, and as they emerge from the community, they infect the workplaces. And if the unions are listening, the unions can become a part of it as well,” says Knutson.

The strikes after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 were not traditional labor strikes in the sense that they weren’t called by unions. Many of them were called organically online by workers simply walking out. Also, many small businesses closed in solidarity with the protest, creating energy that led to a citywide shutdown.

(For more on the 2020 strikes after the murder of George Floyd, check out Payday Report’s seminal piece “How Black & Brown Workers Are Redefining Strikes in the Digital COVID Age”)

Technically, it's illegal for unions to call for a strike, so unions are referring to it simply as a “Day of Truth and Freedom”. However, immigrants' rights and community groups do not face those restrictions. Posters around the Twin Cities have urged, “No Work, No School, No Shopping Jan 23rd.”

“Flexibility is important. I also think having initiative and decentralizing the campaign, letting different people put their own sort of stamp on it, is just a normal way movements exist,” says Knutson.​

Already, hundreds of restaurants, bars, and grocery stores have announced they will close in support of the strike movement.

“There's a big part of [the small business community] that is sympathetic to us, in part because they, so many restaurants have lost their kitchen staff because people are hiding,” says Knuston. “I think small businesses that are going to get on board, that's good. It helps create the sort of environment in the city of the city shutting down.”

More than that, with many business leaders in the city backing the strike, it puts pressure on employers not to retaliate against or fire workers who do take off on Friday, January 23rd.

“I think a lot of them are not going to want to be the poster child for the enemy of this movement,” says Knutson. “If somebody fires somebody for the strike, fucking put their name up there, and there's a good chance they will be going out of business soon, or they are going to be paying a big cost for what they're doing.”​

The strike also features an element of consumer boycott, with organizers telling supporters not to go to school, not to go to work, and not to shop. In particular, the groups are singling out Target, which has faced criticism for cooperating with ICE. Target is one of the largest employers in Minneapolis, with naming rights to the city’s baseball field and NBA/WNBA arena.

Knutson thinks that going after major employers like Target and Home Depot, which have been cooperating with ICE, could create opportunities for unions to organize them.

Many labor leaders in Minnesota are excited about the possibilities of what the strike could inspire, not just in their state but nationwide. Already, more than 215 solidarity actions have been organized across the nation, according to Payday’s Strike Tracker. More cities could see strikes if ICE attempts to occupy them, as in Minnesota.

Already, the May Day Strong coalition is calling for a massive mobilization and strike on May 1st against ICE and the Trump Administration.​

“On May 1st 2026 we need to take what the people of MN are going to do this Friday January 23 to the entire country,” says Neidi Dominguez, a veteran union organizer, Executive Director of Organized Power In Numbers. “We are not going to work, we are not going to shop, and our kids won't go to school that day.”

Knutson says that organizers in Minnesota are looking forward to what their strike could mean for changing their labor movement, but as new tactics emerge, they will constantly have to evaluate them.

“This isn't just a one off. What I want it to be is something that delivers a blow and shows how serious we are, and provides some lessons for us learning in terms of building the movement, but also provides some ideas about how to take the next step,” says Knutson. “And what does the next step look (like), what does it take to shut down the cities for a sustained amount of time?”

Some Afscme Local 444 Memories: The 1985 Strike

Below is an early memo from our bosses after we struck. When we walked off the job our strike was an illegal one. Just as it was illegal for the old timers to have walked off the job when the union was formed. I was on the negotiation team and recall us sneaking away every time we saw process servers approaching. I think the Ca Supreme Court legalised the strike during the period we were out. 

Barring the lab at SDI and perhaps other individuals, our sister union Afscme 2019 did not honor the picket lines. While as individuals we have responsibility to make decisions that are not easy, I blame the leadership of 2019 and in particular, the leadership and reps  from our District Council.  I remember asking a couple of the women from 2019 who we're still working and both of them told me that the advice from the DC 57 rep when they asked her what they should do, twas that they follow their conscience.

Now that's a slick one. If it were simply a matter of one's individual conscience, why would we need a union and make decisions collectively. And we certainly wouldn't need a full time rep from a higher body to which we paid a significant amount of money. to tell us that. It's an absence of leadership. I remember one of the first big fears for the membership was a letter from the employer telling us that medical benefits would end at the end of the month, certainly implying that. This is a serious issue here in the US where we have no national health care system to speak of and especially when you have children or babies. It's a form of economic terrorism and shows how important a state retirement system is and a national health care system with care at the point of demand.

So many US workers fall for this argument that smaller government is better, that comes out of the mouths of the enemies of the working class; the bosses' their political representatives, and right wing influencers and their individualism and "I made it on my own" garbage etc. When politicians are talking about smaller government, they are not referring to defence spending, defence contracts and other hand outs that people like Musk and the corporations get. They are talking about public health care, transportation, education and so on.

  Richard

PDF of this memo here

 Republished from the UK Socialist Website Left Horizons

Huge day of action shakes France

24 September 2025Posted by Editor

By Greg Oxley

Since the fall of the Bayrou government on the September 8, France has been in turmoil. After the massively supported day of protest on the 10th, the historic attendance of 610 000 at the Fête de l’Humanité (a yearly political and social event organised by the French Communist Party, PCF) from the 12th to the 14th, the day of strikes and demonstrations on the 18th was another outstanding success.

Trade union demonstrations were organised in more than 250 urban centres around the country, with a total attendance of somewhere between 800 000 and a million people.

Besides the official marches, countless rallies and gatherings took place outside workplaces, schools and universities. Workers listed their grievances and declared their hostility to Macron’s vicious cuts in public spending and attacks on workers’ rights.

This movement demonstrated beyond doubt that the most powerful force for organising and mobilising the people is still the trade unions.  Historically, trade union membership in France has been lower in percentage terms than in many other European countries.

Nonetheless, they can call upon enormous social reserves, beyond the card-carrying membership. Besides those who actually took to the streets, millions more supported the movement, showing once again that austerity policies – this time involving close to €44bn of cuts in public expenditure – are profoundly unpopular.

Instability and paralysis

Constitutionally, President Macron can hang onto power until 2027, but the next two years will be fraught with instability and governmental paralysis. Macron does not have a majority in the National Assembly (parliament). He has the power to dissolve the National Assembly, but he is not likely to do that, because it would undoubtedly result in a further weakening of his position.

This is not the first time major demonstrations against government policy have taken place in France. In the past, the strategy of the government was simply to bide its time, allowing the workers to march through the streets, chanting their chants, blowing their horns and waving their banners for a few weeks, and then pass the contested laws once the movement had died down.

In the present circumstances, however, this is not possible, because of the parliamentary impasse. The pro-Macron members of parliament are caught between those of the left parties on one side and the nationalist right on the other, and therefore cannot pass any measures without the support of one of these oppositional blocks.

Abolition of two bank-holidays – dropped

So it was with the Barnier and Bayrou governments, and so it will be with the newly appointed Lecornu government. Lecornu has dropped the abolition of two paid bank holidays, which figured in Bayrou’s budget proposals. But otherwise, his policy is essentially the same, and will most probably suffer a similar fate, with a vote of “no confidence” bringing the government down.

Overall, the situation in France could be characterised by growing social instability at the bottom of society and institutional instability at the top. However, this instability does not, in and of itself, solve anything for either of the contending classes. Even if Macron is prevented from applying this latest raft of austerity measures, this will not ease steadily declining living standards and working conditions.

Modern capitalism is incompatible with the social conquests of the past. Government measures are one thing, but the economic realities of the profit system, constantly eroding  the real value of wages and wearing down the remaining safeguards against poverty and despair for millions of people, are another.

On the demonstrations, it was clear that many workers and young people understand this reality. They can see that they need to fight not only Macron, but also the systemhe represents. This is an idea which is also present in the speeches and publications of the PCF and La France Insoumise.  However, neither of these parties – at leadership level – have been capable of addressing this crucial question in their programme and policy.

Economic problems weighing down working people

If the most pressing social and economic problems weighing down on the working people cannot be resolved under capitalism, then we need a policy that strikes at the root of the power of the capitalist class, and that root is private ownership of industry, of banking and finance, of commerce and technology.

Call it what you will: nationalisation, socialisation, collectivisation, but what needs to be done is to take the control of all the main levers of the economy out of the hands of the capitalists and place them under the democratic control of working people. Only then can the production and distribution of wealth be organised for the public good, rather than for the profit and greed of an all-powerful minority.

Unless the labour movement recognises this necessity, unless it stands clearly and unequivocally for the expropriation of the capitalist class, whether it be in France or any other country, the left parties and the trade unions will be powerless to resolve the problems caused by capitalism. They will effectively confine themselves to fighting a losing struggle against the consequences of the system rather than against the system itself.

That is why, in France, we have a situation that amounts to a stalemate, wherein, despite all of Macron’s difficulties, neither side can inflict a decisive blow to the other. This stalemate is fraught with danger. People want and need change. They need solutions.

If the left cannot provide it, many of them will turn to the nationalist and xenophobic forces on the extreme right. This process is already underway in France, as it is in many other countries in Europe.

Greg Oxley is editor of the French Marxist website La Riposte.

AFSCME DC 33 Strike: Media Brings in Academia to Convince Workers The Deal is Best They can Get

Richard Mellor

AFSCME Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

July 18, 2022

"It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow--the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more...Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must be done to make people accept this reality" (Business Week 10-12-74). Written at the very same time the conditions that led to the post-WW2 economic boom came to an end.

 

I posted an earlier commentary on the strike of municipal workers in Philadelphia, PA that ended ten days ago when the leadership of AFSCME District Council 33 reached a tentative agreement with the city.

 

There was considerable displeasure with the contract, even from the president of DC 33 Greg Boulware himself. DC33 represents numerous public sector workers including 911 dispatchers, sanitation workers, and medical examiners. But, as I wrote earlier, it is the sanitation workers that are key given their crucial role in keeping the city free of trash.

 

According to reports, the voting began on Monday of this week and lasts until the 20^th. I visited DC33’s website just now and can’t find any information about the ratification vote or the strike at all. As I pointed out in the earlier posting, suggestions by the president and the mass media that the workers could vote against the contract and be back on strike by the weekend, cannot be taken seriously. It’s very difficult to get workers back out once we’ve been led back in without seeing what was agreed to. A strike is a serious event and always a sacrifice for those that engage in it.

In addition, what motive is there if the leadership doesn’t present an alternative with a strategy and tactics for winning a better deal?  To be honest, there is no information on DC33’s website and certainly nothing about the possibility of going back on strike because the leadership has no plan if it’s voted down. Going back in is similar to these cooling off periods they use to head off steam and end strikes that the leadership know they have no real strategy for winning.

 

But what I want to point out here, is the role of the academic in the video above. The big business media, the role of which is to propagate pro-market, anti-union propaganda, drags in this academic to legitimize the capitulation of the union leadership and portray the deal as a victory. 

 

The academic, a Professor Francis Ryan, is a labor historian from Rutgers University and he thinks the contract is a good deal. He’s been “…..researching Philadelphia unions for years.” the news anchor tells us. One would think the professor would learn something that would help him lead to more accurate conclusions than he expresses here.

 

He can’t though because he won’t be invited again. This entire segment of local news is directed at any of the workers that might be tuning in. The esteemed management spokesperson, I mean professor, makes it clear, and it must be clear as he’s a professor of labor history at Rutgers: “I think that overall it is a good deal it is something that in today's political climate there is no money coming from Harrisburg, no money certainly coming from Washington, DC.”

 

How many times, my brothers and sisters out there on the picket lines and in the workplaces of America, have we heard that now is not the time, that the climate is not right, there is no money. The professor is just another mouthpiece for the big capitalists and the rotten clique that occupy the U.S. Congress. He’s not the only academic I have had to listen to in this mold; Harley Shaiken, a UC Berkeley professor, is another one.  There are alternatives in academia that would have a completely different analysis but CBS won’t seek them out.

 

The professor is there to put a lid on any ideas the workers have about escalating the conflict. And he is right that it is all they can get. It is all they can get if the leadership----and leaders do have responsibility-----continues to use tactics and an approach that has failed time and time again. They do not fight to win. 

Individual locals are left to fight global capitalism alone and none have that power. Behind the scenes it is the billionaire investors in real estate, technology, shipping, and other major industries along with their representatives in the two capitalist parties that control municipal bodies like Philadelphia City Council, not the voter.

 

On DC33’s website it boasts being affiliated with AFSCME International, my former union, with 1.6 million, members.  AFSCME is the union that “offers solidarity without conformity”, the site says, an obscure statement surely. Aside from the affiliation with a 1.6 million member organization, there are some 666,000 union members in Pennsylvania according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Where does solidarity begin and end? It has to be national and international if we want to drive back the capitalist offensive.

 

From the get go, the city used the courts to undermine union power and worker solidarity through injunctions, and the police, to enforce them. The union leadership whines about this and calls it unfair pleading with the bosses to be less aggressive and so on. Did they forget what Biden did to the rail workers? Or, what the bosses have done to us since the building of the first workers’ organization? Unions weren’t built by lawyers or filing lawsuits. Unions were illegal and they were built by challenging anti-worker laws on a mass scale, not meekly obeying them.

 

There are some 14 million workers in the U.S. who are organized in unions. This includes major industries and a public sector workforce that is close to 35% organized. Both political parties have been undermining that potential power and Trump will continue down that road apace.

 

The DC 33 strike had a lot of public support. On the Council’s website it points out that there is growing support for unions. But here’s the problem. The present leadership of organized labor is not prepared to mobilize the potential power of their members to actually win a strike, one that would win major concessions from the bosses in general.

 

The professor is right that there is no money coming from the state capital or the federal government. But that does not mean there is no money. The U.S. taxpayer has been fleeced of hundreds of billions of dollars in the market driven conflicts in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine alone. Never mind the trillions spent in the disastrous defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. is awash with cash. Forbes points out that the 400 richest people in the US are “……worth a record $5.4 trillion, up nearly $1 trillion from last year.”  

 

U.S. military spending represents about 12 percent of the US federal budget for fiscal year 2025. And from 2020 to 2024, the last five-year period for which full statistics are available, private firms have received $2.4 trillion in contracts from the Pentagon.That's approximately 54% of the department’s discretionary spending of $4.4 trillion. The military offense contractors are raking in the profits. Even Elon Musk, the world's richest man, gets rich through taxpayer money and federal contracts.

 

Now, the reporter in the above video says that her full interview with the professor is at CBSPhiladelphia.com, but I didn’t find it. So maybe he points out what I do here, that there’s no shortage of money. It's simply spent elsewhere like never ending predatory wars, or in the bank accounts of the parasites in finance that do no work, but I doubt it. I am not a professor and I have no degrees, but like most workers we are well aware that if we stick together, if we unite, we can win. However, in this class struggle, we face a war on two fronts: one is against the bosses and their efforts to profit at our expense and the other is against the pro-market policies of the present union leadership. 

 

Because they worship the market and consider profit sacrosanct, the strategists of organized labor are incapable of mobilizing the potential power of their members and the working class as a whole in defense of our material well being. The danger of such a development getting out of their control is terrifying to them. At best, they view the unions as employment agencies with themselves as the CEO’s. They will, and they have, used the army of staff at their disposal to suppress any movement from below that threatens this relationship they’ve built with the bosses based on labor peace and teamwork.

 

Instead of organizing our power that is based in the workplace and our ability to bring the U.S. economy to a halt, the labor officialdom boasts of the growth and the millions of members they have merely as a source of revenue which contributes to their salaries, but also as a voting bloc. Their relationship with the Democratic Party is based on being able to turn out votes at election time and organized labor has donated billions to this party over the years and provides the ground forces for precinct walking and phone banking. AFSCME provided some 40,000 troops for Walter Mondale's failed presidential bid back in the 1980’s.

 

Organized labor has the resources to run our own candidates, to have our own party. A Pew poll in 2021 found that 87% of Americans believed that the government should play a role in ensuring clean air and water; 64% said it should ensure health insurance for everyone, and 43% said it should provide high-speed Internet access (WSJ 8-13/14-22). And the millions that have opted out of the electoral process altogether is a reflection of the disgust workers have with the two parties of Wall Street. Voting for the lesser evil, in any situation, is not inspiring to say the least. 

Meanwhile, let’s see what the DC33 workers' response to the tentative agreement is in a day or so. 

And I’ll end this commentary with a statement from some US workers 180 years ago:

"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."

 

-1840's appeal from New England laborers. Philip Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192

AFSCME DC 33 Strike Over. Have the members seen the Tentative Agreement?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

8-12-25

 

A quick comment on the Afscme strike in Philadalphia.

 

The strike by 9000 members of Afscme District Council 33 in Philadelphia ended last Wednesday after union leaders accepted the city’s last offer. The union represents numerous public sector workers including 911 dispatchers, sanitation workers and medical examiners. But it is the sanitation workers, garbage collectors and their crucial role that brought the full weight of the courts down on the strikers.

On the first day of the strike the city with a Democratic mayor had a judge order 911 dispatchers back to work to, “avoid delays in emergency response times and public health”, that back to work order also applied to water department workers. Another city injunction, “…prohibited DC33 picketers from blocking or obstructing access to municipal buildings”. Another court order prevented striking sanitation workers from “gathering in groups of more than eight, or standing within 10 feet of city property (which includes sanitation centers), or engaging in behavior deemed as intimidating or harassing.” This like the 1880’s folks.

Old Biden set a great precedent here with the rail workers didn’t he folks. The bosses use all the institutions at their disposal to crush strikes and the workers movement.  We need to take note of that.

What use is a strike that doesn’t stop production or the daily activity of business? But we’re used to these types of work stoppages organized by the moribund, class collaborators that are in control of our unions. Strikes today are simply 24-hour protests which get a little old after you’ve been out there for any length of time watching people cross your picket lines. The union hierarchy is very generous with coffee and donuts. Then when we are being effective and actually accomplish what strikes are supposed to accomplish, halt production, out come the injunctions followed by the batons.

One has to shake one’s head, or in modern lingo SMH, when representatives of the bosses’ institutions, their political parties or their media get their judicial system to intervene to smash a strike out of concern for the health and safety of the population as a whole; our access to medical care or water for example. In the US hundreds of thousands of people, workers and the poor, die through the lack of any decent health care system; the US has the worst health care system and the most expensive of all the industrialized countries. Do a little research and see how many “Americans’ in the Navajo nation have no water or electricity, never mind jobs.

I don’t know how many times I lied to my supervisor (and some of them knew I was lying and were OK with it) when I was sent to shut off water to a single mother with children who couldn’t pay the bill. The powers that be learned that promoting people in to management positions that came out of the trenches was not a good strategy.

The members of DC 33 went back to work immediately but still, as of this writing, have to vote on the contract which will take place next week. Many workers are unhappy with the tentative agreement that includes a 3% wage increase a year for three years. The union had demanded 8% a year over three years then, in the face of management’s intransigence retreated to 5% a year. According to the Philadelphia Enquirer, Members of DC 33 earn an average annual salary of $46,000, $2000 below the city’s “living wage”

The strike had considerable support among the public despite the inconvenience.
“Sanitation workers are providing ‘public infrastructure necessities’ and should get more than the “bare minimum,”, South Philly resident Ronald Jones told  BillyPenn, a local Philadelphia news outlet. Others agreed:

“I think a temporary in convenience for most of us worth it for those who deserve to be paid because they're not being paid enough to do a job that's a dirty job that nobody wants to do.” Says one of the residents in the video above.

“I know what it is to work and then your money can’t [be sufficient for] you to live,” another woman says, “So if they have to do what they have to do, then they have to do what they have to do. Like they have to come up with a solution. The city has the money, give them the money.”

The president of District Council 33, Greg Boulware is also unhappy with the contract and that the management threatened to take more after he made a concession on wages. He blamed the management for using the courts to break the strike as “bad faith”. One would think he might launch a ferocious attack on them but the further up the union hierarchy management ladder you go, the more they push the negotiations process as a gentleman’s exercise in problem solving and after all, we are on the same team as the boss. There is no such thing as good faith when it comes to this class conflict over the wages and working conditions of working people.

One might wonder why on earth the union leadership would end a strike and the workers return to work when the members have not yet seen the tentative agreement the leadership has accepted and had the chance to vote on it.

Here’s why that is the scenario. Even though the DC33 president suggests that if the members vote the tentative agreement down they might go back out on strike, it is highly unlikely and the president knows it. It’s hard to get that momentum back and union officials use this tactic all the time in order to get workers back on the job. Even so, on what basis will they go back out? What is in it for them? The leadership completely folded in the face of the bosses’ aggression so there’s likely little confidence that if they sacrifice more time, money and material well being they’ll get anything better. I won’t say it can’t happen but it’s unlikely. 

Why would the DC33 president be surprised that the boss went to the courts to render the work stoppage ineffective as a response to a very reasonable wage demand from the union? Does he not know what Biden did to the rail workers?

The leadership of DC 33 simply capitulated. They have no answer to this aggression and the boss knows it; they likely gave money to the mayor who is a Democrat. The employers throughout the nation do not fear the trade union leadership. They have learned over the past decades since the 1980’s when there was an attempt by some sectors of organized labor to counter the capitalist offensive under Carter and then Reagan, that our leaders will not fight to win.

There are some 666,000 union members in Pennsylvania according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I have been a retired Afscme member for 20 years but I think DC33 was the second largest District Council in the country. But what is the point of all this structure, if the potential power of this organized sector of workers is not mobilized against the employers? The Afscme, and the entire leadership of organized labor refuse to mobilize this power except when it’s time to get their friends in the Democratic Party in to office. 

Individual locals even major unions cannot beat the employers in isolation. They argue that the laws are against us, that if they do this or do that the courts will respond and take our treasuries or threaten jail time. Well unions were illegal and we had to violate anti-union laws to get them. Trump doesn’t care about the damn law. The railroad workers had every right to strike back in 2024 so Biden went to the legislature with Pelosi and got the US Congress to pass the paw to make their legal strike illegal overnight. No problem “reaching across the aisle” that day.

There was considerable tension between some of the strikers and the cops after the injunction to ban more than 8 people gathering within 10 feet of a site. After the injunction the police told picketers not to stop that resulted in some back and forth. From WHYY.org

“Then, a law enforcement officer with a sheriff’s badge handed out the court order and read it out loud to an increasingly rowdy crowd, who started shouting back, questioning their authority and sometimes swearing loudly.

“I understand your position, but we can’t let nobody in or out,” said one man who appeared to be a union striker but refused to identify himself.

As a crowd grew, then shrank before retreating across the street, phones were pulled out to record the situation.

“The cops get overtime,” somebody in the crowd shouted.

“We got families, we got kids. What the f—-?” said another person. “We’re not moving. Come on, let’s get serious.”

It’s the same old story and one of the reasons, despite the positive views on unions, that so many members are angry at the refusal of their leaders to go on the offensive. Workers end up on picket lines for weeks with very little to show for it.  The major cause for this capitulation in the face of the employer’s war against workers is their view that workers and bosses have the same interests, are on the same team. This is embodied in the Team Concept through management labor partnerships, interest based bargaining, quality circles and various other labor management join cooperation.

It’s no wonder worker are cautious about going out on strike. More often than not the worker is prepared to fight but the union hierarchy is not. We are faced with a war on two fronts. One is against the employers, but the other, a much harder one, is against the concessionary policies of our own leadership.

Sara Nelson: We Can’t Wait For Mayday!

Listen here.

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

4-15-25

 

Sara Nelson, the International president of the Association of Flight Attendants AFL-CIO, has been in the news lately making the point that organized labor, and working people in general, are facing some of the most vicious attacks on our living standards in the modern era. This comes after Biden, Pelosi and the US Congress took away the rail workers’ right to strike with emergency legislation in December 2023. Despite the seriousness of such an assault, it was met with no serious opposition from the folks atop the AFl-CIO.

 

On more than one occasion, Sister Nelson has raised the need for a General Strike as a response to the Trump’s efforts to eradicate bargaining rights for workers, firing workers at will and driving organized labor back to the conditions that existed prior to the rise of the CIO in the 1930’s. 

 

In 1934 there were three major general strikes although they were not national; Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco. These were followed by the sit downs and factory occupations in auto culminating in the great 44-day Flint occupation in 1936-37; this should be labor’s fourth of July. Much of the social legislation we have today was a response to that movement as legislators codified what workers had already won in the streets and workplaces of America.

 

Sadly, labor history is not taught in the schools the way it should or at all in most cases as the U.S., despite the negative elements, racism, exclusion of women and so on, has a rich, militant, history workers should be proud of. 

 

In this clip, where she raises the need for a General Strike again, Sister Nelson also turns to labor history, a more recent but no less important section of it. In the 1980’s there were some huge strikes after Ronald Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). This was the early period of the neo-liberal era. Carter had begun with the deregulation of the airlines and Reagan took the baton and ran with it. Thatcher continued the assault in the UK.

 

The strikes in the 1980’s were an effort to counter this offensive of Reagan and while mistakes were undoubtedly made by the leaders of the unions that struck, UFCW Local P9 at Hormel for instance hooking up with Ray Rogers and his corporate campaign, these strikes were not defeated because organized labor was weak or the bosses strong, they were defeated primarily due to the failed strategy, or lack of it, from the heads of the AFL-CIO. Sister Nelson is right to raise them and there are a few documentaries about the Hormel strike in particular. Young workers, members of unions in particular should review that history.

When Reagan fired those 11,000 workers and banned them from working in their industry for life, the AFL-CIO leadership should have named a date for a 24-hour National General Strike and in the interim, through the state federations, central labor councils and district councils and other resources that unions have, held meetings to organize and build for it reaching out to working class communities as well. 

 

With next to no response from the AFL-CIO, leadership, the employers had the green light and continued their offensive as workers and unions were cowed by the Reagan war. It wasn’t until the teachers and educators strikes of 2018-19 that strike days lost rose significantly. 

 

Given the capitulation of the leadership of the AFL-CIO in the face of the capitalist offensive over the past decades, it’s not likely Sister Nelsons call will be met with much action, but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have made it or that rank and file union members and individual locals should sit on our hands. We are in the dawn of a new era, a historical shift in relations between the powers and the nations of the world. 

Sara Nelson’s comments are a world apart from UAW leader Shawn Fain’s anti-union embrace of Trump and his Tariffs that pit worker against worker, each joining with our class enemies in their competition for control over the world’s resources and profits. Equally so for my former union (Afscme) leadership’s strategy in the face of the Trump/Musk onslaught, “Now is the time to act! Call your representative and tell them to stop the billionaire tax breaks and save public services.”  Really? This approach has been tried and failed with disastrous consequences, one of them being an exit from the electoral process altogether and a shift to the right by many workers including union members.

 

There are millions of workers and individual union locals that would support Sara Nelson’s call, but it has to be organized and that is highly unlikely, though not impossible given the anger that exists and the nature of the present period. 

 

What Can We Do?

If you are in a local like I was that had a very democratic internal life, you can introduce a letter or resolution supporting Sister Nelson’s call urging the AFL-CIO Executive Board to take it up and act on it by selecting a date ahead for a 24-hour one day national stoppage as a first step. 

 

Copy it to Sara Nelson and the AFA, your Central Labor Council, State Federation and District Council if you have one and urge them to send it out to their affiliated locals. Make it public in your newsletter or publication. The discussion alone will be positive as will the response whether it’s passed or not. It will not be wasted time.

 

I haven’t been active for 20, years or more but there must be thousands of locals and millions of members that would support this. Don’t be put off by organizational details used by staffers whose job it often is to stifle or supress any movement from the rank and file that threatens the relationship the labor hierarchy has built with the employers based on class cooperation (the Team Concept) and labor peace.

 

Naturally we can’t just call for a strike of any kind without demands. What do we want?

 

Any movement should oppose the assault on immigrants and our civil liberties---the right to protest and speak against government policy at home and abroad. But demands in such a situation should speak to the immediate needs of the millions of Americans in particular whose living standards are being savaged.

 

Sixty-three percent of U.S. adults currently agree with the statement that the Republican and Democratic parties do “such a poor job” of representing the American people that “a third major party is needed.”, according to a Gallup poll. Workers have no political voice and we need a political party of our own based on the unions, our community organizations and working-class communities in general

 

Most Americans want better public services and,  more sustainable transportation choices, not more highways.  

 

And 62% of Americans Agree US Government Should Ensure Everyone Has Health Coverage

 

And 64% of Americans believe the government should have a role in the housing market. Housing is a basic necessity and the private market is unable to address many Americans' affordability concerns."

 

Workers in the US are crying out for leadership that is willing to stand up and act on our behalf and Sara Nelson is a lone voice at a time when the heads of organized labor should be speaking in a loud, angry collective voice.

 

There was an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal in January titled, What The People Want and What They Don’t and it is worth reading as it gives a fairly honest account of the general mood for change in US society and that not everyone is on board with the degenerate Trump’s agenda.

 

It points out that Americans:

 

“… oppose seizing illegal immigrants from churches, hospitals or schools, or deporting parents if it means separating them from their children who were born here as citizens.”

 

Also:

 

“Here’s what the majority of Americans don’t want Mr. Trump to do: use the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals, punish reporters for writing stories he dislikes, pardon people convicted of committing crimes on Jan. 6, 2021, replace civil-service workers with political appointees, impound funds appropriated by Congress, or use force to stop protests against him. Nor do they want their new president to eliminate the Education Department, make childhood vaccinations voluntary, withdraw from the Paris climate accords, expand into Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal, or rename the Gulf of Mexico the “’Gulf of America.’”

 

A member of one of the multitude of self-styled socialist organizations that vegetate on the fringes of the labor movement once accused me of having a policy of attacking the trade union leadership. This was just to cover his own group’s refusal (they had some members in unions) to challenge their class collaborationist policies; the Team Concept being the main expression of it. I couldn’t have survived and gained some respect from other delegates in my Central Labor Council* with such an approach.  When I disagreed with the leadership’s policies I spoke out and when I agreed I supported them. Isn’t this supposed to be as American as apple pie?

 

Rather than ignore Sara Nelson’s call for a general strike or refuse to give it any credibility (after all it has been raised before without any follow up by various labor officials) let her know through your organization that she has your backing.

 

We Can’t Wait For Mayday!

 

*For those readers of Facts For Working People abroad. The Central Labor Council, or Labor Council is the county arm of the national AF-CIO. Local unions have to strikes “sanctioned” by this body in order to receive support. The state organ is the State Federation. In Califorinia, the California Labor Federation represents 2.3 million workers. The Los Angeles County Labor Federation has 800,000 members. That most workers are unaware that they belong to these organizations is the fault of the leadership, not the members.