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I found the news that the
Amazon Labor Union would pursue affiliation with the Teamsters Union troubling.
The ALU victory at the JFK site was among the most positive labor developments
of the century. Only months before workers at Amazon in Alabama had voted
against union authorization with the well-funded Retail Workers and Department
Store Union/UFCW even though President Biden had publicly urged them to vote to
unionize. The ALU won with no serious money or trained staff emphasizing a
constitution that limited officer pay to a maximum of 2 1/2 times the average
pay in the bargaining unit. (this is from the UE). They gave the members wide
latitude to make decisions by voting. They eschewed political endorsements that
focused on the egos of union leaders. This was a tribute to a relatively new
idea, "worker-led organizing." The tireless work and courage of
the work site organizing accomplished what money couldn't.
The success at JFK could
not be repeated. It was unclear to me that the JFK model continued to be
followed. Another Amazon union election in the following weeks featured Bernie
Sanders and AOC at a plant gate rally. As much I wished this was where workers
were at, it seemed the ALU had abandoned one of its tenets, the promise not to
focus on electoral politics. The ALU president, Chris Smalls appeared to pursue
a strategy of high-profile media events. I saw no continuation of the dedicated
workplace organizing needed to secure a contract with Amazon.
Smalls and his supporters
changed the ALU constitution to allow him to stay on as president until a
contract had been negotiated. This was challenged in court by opponents who
prevailed and an election was scheduled for this summer. The problem is that I
don't think the ALU has enough money or resources to conduct an election.
The ALU took in $735 in
dues. They received a $425,000 donation from the International Commission
For Labor Rights in New York City. The ICLR apparently has Solidarity
Center members on its board. My speculation about this is that the Biden
administration utilized the government-funded Solidarity Center to finance the
ALU experiment in unionization. It certainly was not an open-ended move to
indefinitely fund it. I believe the ALU is now insolvent and has no other
option but to pursue an affiliation.
The possibility remains
that the ALU course originally adopted could have prevailed. We won't know. The
vote on a Teamster affiliation will be interesting. I don't know who will
conduct it. Will Amazon be able to run another anti-union campaign? Will this
turn into a rerun of the authorization vote on grounds that Amazon is very
familiar with? The Teamsters are susceptible to the attacks employers commonly
utilize. I wonder how Shawn O'Brien will play at JFK?
***************
*Bob McKenzie, is a retired
UAW rank and file member and president of Ford local 879 in ST Paul MN. He
spent many years investigating the events at Ford’s Cuautitlán Assembly Plant
near Mexico City in 1990-91 where workers were attacked
violently by organized gangs. His research resulted in the Book El Golpe where
he details the collaboration between the AFL-CIO’s regional organization, AIFLD
(American Institute for Free Labor Development), the CIA (Central Intelligence
Agency), the US State Department, the Mexican government, leaders of the CTM
(Mexican labor movement) and Ford Motor Company management against a
democratic, rank-and-file, shopfloor-based organization of auto workers.
His findings are important reading for all workers, socialists and
activists if we are to build any serious links with workers
internationally. Brother Mckenzie's book detailing the events at the Ford
plant in Mexico City and the role of the CIA can be purchased at Pluto Press,
Barnes and Noble and other outlets. Kim Scipes reviews the book here.
I haven't seen this video above before but it is interesting. Three years after this video, Sean O'Brien was elected Teamster president in November 2021 as part of a coalition opposing the James Hoffa backed Steve Vairma. Teamsters For a Democratic Union (TDU) refers to this new leadership as "militant" and praised the result as a "landslide" Labor Notes, an organization with very similar politics to TDU, was also ecstatic.
Now TDU is not a militant organization by any means but certainly the assault on it by O'Brien in the video above has to be condemned. It shows how concerned sections of the labor bureaucracy are that O'Brien launches this attack, even encourages Trumplike threats. TDU is simply not that much of a threat as far as I can see, or have ever been.
Below is a short video I made in April when I read that TDU was announcing the new leadership of the Teamsters as "militant". After this election I asked as many Teamsters rank and file members I came across, many of them UPS drivers, what they thought of the new leadership. Overwhelmingly, the response was similar, no confidence at all that it would make any difference. A significant number were not even aware the leadership had changed. Now the members can be blamed to a certain extent for not taking the time and effort to keep track of things, but years of betrayals, concessions, bureaucratic manoeuvringhave led to this situation. And it's not just the Teamsters.
However wide a margin of victory, when 86% of the membership don’t turn in a ballot, the leadership’s mandate is left wanting.
Things are changing. In the aftermath of thepandemic,we are witnessing an upsurge in strike activity as the ranks of organized labor are forced to push back. There was no way after spending a couple of years telling workers how important we are and many having to work through the pandemic with great risk to themselves and their families, that this genie could be put back in the bottle. The present economic situation and increased inflationary pressure is also a contributor and this comes after decades of concessionary contracts. In addition, unorganized workers in the low waged industries from Starbucks to Amazon as well as some in the tech industry are confronting their bosses.
As for Labor Notes and TDU, I have had experiences alongside individuals from these organizations in the labor movement and have found a lot wanting there as well. Many of Labor Notes leadership were former union staffers or are among the lower ranks of the hierarchy. There is no doubt LN has the ability to pull together significant numbers of rank and file workers but my experience with them in the labor movement was that they would avoid a confrontation with the present right wing leadership. Many of the articles they publish are often simply reporting events rather than than pointing out the failures of the leadership calling them and their policies to account and offering a different approach. It has changed a bit but not much as far as I can see.
Here is the short video and comments I made in April this year about the O'Brien election and TDU's over the top praise for it. After that are a couple of links to earlier articles about DSA and Labor Notes and differences in approach that I have with these groups.
I disagreed with TDU's description of the election of Sean O'Brien to
lead the Teamsters as a "militant" change in leadership, even a
significant change, though they could be. I also have disagreed with
those that claim Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendant is a
significant difference when compared to the present leadership of the
AFL-CO of which she's a part.
Like the present leadership of
organized labor, Sara Nelson is committed to the Democratic Party and
has said nothing that would lead me to believe she is fundamentally
different to them on the important issues of concern to US workers. I
made this video in response to someone who suggested that I do not
recognize that union leaders like O'Brien and Nelson are fundamentally
different from the present class collaborationist, pro-management
leadership of today.
Richard Mellor Afscme Local 444, retired GED/HEO 4-11-22
The young workers at Amazon, and throughout the US, including places like Starbucks and the fast food super exploitative industry, are the voice of the future and are shaking up the organized labor movement. This is a very powerful, positive development and working class people union or otherwise must give support wherever we can.
But for those of us who have spent many decades as rank and file activists in the labor movement and most importantly rooted in the workplace and community struggles building working class power, history has taught us that with such victories there are many dangers.
The first of course is the bosses.; the capitalist class. And when we talk of capital we mean the state, the two political parties of capitalism, the police the judiciary and the all so important mass media that they control.
But there are other, more pernicious dangers, and those are some, not all, of the forces that will claim to be friends, that will offer their assistance. The right wing pro-market leadership of organized labor that view the established unions as employment agencies with themselves as the CEO's, will be eager to draw the new leaders in to their camp and along with them the millions of young workers that are a potential source of revenue in the form of dues money.
The present leadership atop the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Coalition are committed to the market and capitalism and the right of the bosses to own the forces of production and to profit from it. They do not oppose Jeff Bezos' right to own Amazon, they merely want him to be less aggressive, to treat his workers fairly. This is a utopian dream. Decades upon decades teach us this as workers.
There are also many left forces, again not all, that see themselves as the sole owners of the correct strategy and tactics necessary to take the movement forward, that see themselves as the educators of the working class, that rarely enter a dialogue with the working class or listen to what the working class has to say. They see their role only as leaders of the working class. Many of them have proved incapable of accomplishing what you have and certainly have failed to challenge the present leadership of organized labor whose concessionary policies have brought us this far.
Along with this, threats will come from conservative pro-market elements in the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party that is funded by Wall Street just like their Republican relatives. Different sections of the ruling class tend to one party, or the other, energy and oil for example with the Republicans, and tech and others to the Democrats. But as we saw with the defeat of Trump, the US elite uses both these parties to get their man or woman in to the drivers seat. The Democratic Party is the only political party to use nuclear weapons on urban communities.
As so called progressive Democrats like Bernie sanders who is a recruiter for the Democratic Party are sent to woo the new young leadership we are seeing arise today like the folks in the video, remember what that party is and its history. Remember that Nancy Pelosi, a representative of the real power in that party, reminded a naive young DSA member that "we are capitalist" and that the Democratic Party is capitalist. Brothers and sisters, we have suffered serious defeats over decades under Democratic and Republican Administrations alike.
We won the right to unionize by relying on our own strength as workers, our ability to shut down production and hurt them where it hurts most, profits.
These comments are not to lessen the importance of your victory, but only to warn you of the dangers from an old veteran of union, workplace and community struggles. Dangers will come from left and right. My feeling is that the youth of today are astute, are certainly street smart as they say. But the forces against you are very powerful and extremely devious. Always keep your feet rooted firmly in the working class and the communities that are ours.
I see that in France there are strikes throughout the country of Amazon workers; there is hope in the insane capitalist world where everything is for sale. In the meantime, thank you for your inspirational efforts that are
shifting the balance of class forces in the US and probably the world.
Here is a December 2021 interview with Sean O’ Brien, the new president of the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) after defeating Jimmy Hoffa and
his slate in the national election in October. The Hoffa regime ran the union
for 23 years. Hoffa is the son of Jimmy Hoffa who was killed and his body never
found. He is a lawyer by trade.
While it is positive that there has been a change in
leadership at one of the largest and most important unions in the US. It is
important not to get carried away here. In fact, it is worth reflecting on the
fact that the vast majority of Teamster members never bothered to vote, the
turnout was a mere 14%.After decades of
sell outs, concessionary contracts, and top officials lining their own pockets,
the rank and file of the Teamsters, and of organized labor in general are
clearly not convinced that much if anything will change.
Teamsters For a Democratic
Union, the reform group in the union is very supportive and also in
coalition with the Obrien team known as the OZ slate or Teamsters United.A major battle for Teamsters United will be
the United Parcel Contract (UPS) coming up in 2023 and also organizing Amazon
workers.
It is not insignificant that this election victory has taken
place in the midst of the pandemic which has revealed who are important or “essential” workers in society and this
has given workers increased confidence. This praising of the worker in the mass
media will make it difficult to put that genie back in the bottle.
There has been an uptick in strike activity within organized
labor and among the unorganized seeking to unionize so it’s not inconceivable
that an aggressive strategy in disputes could win some temporary reforms from the
bosses; workers are angry. The same is true of the unorganized as there have been increased
walk-outs and protests as some of the most exploited workers try to join or
form unions.
But a major obstacle in the way of a rank and file revolt
within organized labor has been the labor officialdom itself, and Sean O’ Brien
is part of that historical blockage. I don’t have to go in to detail again
here, but it is my view that what lies behind the betrayals and outright class
collaboration of labor’s leadership at the highest levels is not simply
corruption or their obscene salaries, but their view of the world; the former
are secondary features and consequences not causes. They believe the market is
the answer to all things and that there is no alternative to capitalism, so when
capitalism enters a profitability crisis, the union bureaucracy’s first move is
to bail it out. This view is enshrined in the Team Concept, called labor/
management cooperation, Quality of Life Circles, Total Quality Management
(TQM), Employee Empowerment, Employee Participation and more. It’s been a disaster
for us and any union opposition has little credibility if it doesn’t openly campaign
against it.
It is important not to dismiss why workers don’t vote in
national elections for capitalist parties and their representatives, or why
only 14% of those eligible voted in the Teamsters election. In both cases,
voting is not an exercise in civics, it is in order to improve our material
conditions. If that doesn’t work, people withdraw. Why pay union dues when dues
go up and wages and benefits go down.
If you listen to Sean O’ Brien in the interview above one
has to gasp at Sean Orr, the chair of DSA’s Democratic Socialist Labor
Commission (DSLC) reference to the new Teamster leadership as, “the militant O'Brien-Zuckerman Teamsters
United Slate” (my added emphasis) as there is little evidence that the term “militant” would apply here. This is the
result of DSA’s inexperience in the labor movement and its very middle-class
composition. As I wrote in a previous commentary, this political current,
isolated in the main from the rank and file of organized labor as most of the
self-styled socialist organizations are, and who don’t really orient to the
rank and file union worker, see in the slightest leftward shift (primarily in
rhetoric) in the entrenched bureaucracy as a revolutionary upsurge.
Sean O’ Brien says nothing about the Team Concept at all
other than to confirm that he will continue to practice it in politics
continuing his relationship with the Democratic Party. He will “energize politicians”“influence” them and local government
(Democrats). He even flew in the same plane with Biden’s Secretary of Labor
Marty Walsh, the Democratic mayor of Boston and former top union official. “Marty comes to this with a closeness to the
president-elect and an ability to get things done,” says American
Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Talk to some genuinely “militant” teachers about Randi
Weingarten. Obrien refers to yet another Democratic Party administration and
its president as pro-union despite knowing that under Democrat and Republican
alike US workers and our unions have been driven backwards. Carter used the
Taft Hartley against the mineworkers, Clinton threw people off welfare in to
union jobs without the same pay and benefits. In California we are in a one
party state the Democrats have such power, yet we have the same problems that
plague the rest of the country.
Only 6% of the private sector is unionized which is one of
the reasons why unions like the Teamsters and the UAW are orienting more to the
public sector which has around a 35% unionization rate and is considered easier
to organize. The union density is why the public sector is under such a savage
assault. I should add this as well, it is the decline of the public sector that
contributes immensely to the poverty and declining living standards of all workers
and even more so, the lack of opportunity in communities of color. See Tauré
Reeds book, Toward Freedom, The Case Against Race Reductionism for more on
this.
The main point is this interview with O’Brien is that there
is nothing new in it. He wants to change the law to make organizing easier he
says.In other words, get democrats
elected. Obama betrayed the union hierarchy not passing EFCA, the Employee Free
Choice Act. They were hanging their hat on his producing this as it meant less
work for them as getting out there and organizing workers using the real power
of workers on the ground could be avoided, and it would bring in more revenue
for the business. They see the unions as employment agencies with themselves as
the CEO’s.
O’brien prioritizes rebuilding the middle class (there’s no
working class in the US apparently). Organizing the unorganized. Negotiating great
contracts, educating workers; all the usual platitudes.
I want to clarify. I do not say there is no difference at
all between Democrats and Republicans. But on the main points they both will
defend the interests of capital and not labor. If O’Brien was anything of a
militant he would be raising the issue of the dire need for an independent
political party of the working class and threatening to campaign and build for
it among his members and the wider movement. Organized labor has the structure,
resources and money. There is no way forward for workers through the Democratic
Party.
I think he mentions the word strike once in this interview.
I am not saying that some reforms might be wrested from
Biden, or a Republican administration given the present climate and a little
more aggression than usual from the labor bureaucracy. Let us not forget that
in 2018, rank and file teachers/educators in West Virginia won a 5% raise against
opposition from the legislature, struck in a right to work state against their
own leadership’s recommendations and won a 5% increase for every state worker
involved in the strike or not. This and the fairly successful actions in
education that followed, mostly in Republican states, was not taken up and
built on by the trade union hierarchy for reasons I have outlined here, and in
the past, or by the Labor Notes organization and DSA that have some significant
resources but are both reluctant to openly confront the existing leadership or
in some cases occupy the lower ranks of it. In the case of DSA, my experience
has been that DSA acts as cheerleaders.
As for the Teamsters, I hope this change in leadership will
play a role in not only transforming this union but in transforming organized
labor as a whole and the balance of forces between labor and capital in US
society.
GED/HEO
3-29-22
I added this video of the debate between the two candidates for the Teamster presidency
from September 2021 to my previous
commentary on the Teamster election but this contribution is long enough
that I have decided to post a follow up and include the video of the debate
here but the reader might want to read the first part. I am 22 minutes in to
the video so far and have to say something. Like politics in US society as a
whole, these union leaders are united on one thing, Identity Politics. And the center of that that is “diversity”. They boast about how
diverse their executive boards are. This obsession with identity politics is
what dominates politics in general in US society and emanates from academia and
the petit bourgeois elements as a means of obscuring the class question and
talking about class issues and what they will actually fight for. Apparently, there
is no working class in the US, we are all middle class barring the rich and the
poor.
Steve Vairma, candidate of the Hoffa Teamster Power slate says
in answer to a question about organizing Amazon which both think is crucial,
that what they would do different to the failed organizing drive at Amazon last
year is that it’s important when organizing Amazon to have diversity and
organizers that “…look like the people
you are organizing.” Obrien didn’t
say anything really contradicting him because diversity, gender, color, race, religious
views, etc. is the crucial issue remember. Obrien did add that what is
different between him and his opponent is that the Teamsters needs to “negotiate strong contracts” with people
they already represent. Not “concessionary
contracts” he says because “why would
people want to join” a union like that?” The scene on the news of tired
negotiators, disheveled, sleepy eyed coming out of marathon negotiations at 2
am is crucial to convincing workers that their power is having the right
talker, the right lawyer speaking for them. I have been through three grueling
sets of contract negotiations and I can assure you that our rights, benefits
and material well-being is not won at the negotiating table, but they can be given
away there.
As I say, I was 22 minutes in to the video and that’s enough
for now, but I will return after I’ve had a few words with St. Jude the Patron
Saint of lost causes.
As
I mention in the original posting, at the slightest inkling of a shift to
the left (normally just electioneering) in the ranks of the right wing -bureaucracy
at the helm of organized labor, some self-professed leftists and left organizations
become overwhelmed with joy as they grasp for the slightest branch in the swamp
in which this bureaucracy dwells.
Teamsters For a Democratic Union and Labor Notes, perhaps
the most well known have both endorsed O’Brien and the “reform” slate as far as I can tell. I am not sure what TDU is but a
fighting, militant rank and file opposition in the Teamsters’ union it is not.
And while it is one thing to recommend to members that if these are the two
choices, one might be a slight improvement than the other, it is also imperative
to warn the membership to be cautious and point out why it’s just as likely
things will stay the same without pressure from below and that building a
genuine fighting rank and file opposition from the shop floor around a series
of demands reflecting what workers need, and a strategy for winning them, is
what is needed.
I was astounded to read this from DSA today:
“Decades of rank-and-file reform organizing by
Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), including members of DSA, paid off last
week when the militant O'Brien-Zuckerman Teamsters United Slate took charge of
the 1.3 million-member Teamsters union. The historic election is the beginning
of a new chapter for Teamsters who work at every choke point in the logistics
supply chain: trucking, rail, airline, ports, warehousing, and more. In
organizing meetings across the country, TDU members and other rank-and file
activists are making plans to build on the momentum from the election and seize
the opportunities ahead of us.”
I have to say, the Democratic Socialists of America leadership
that has selected leading figures from academia, Labor Notes/TDU, former officials
of the AFL-CIO and trade union bureaucracy and former left group gurus, to lead
its trade union work, continues the role of cheerleaders and helping hands to
the very same leadership that has brought organized labor to where we are
today.
One recent challenge to that entrenched leadership arose
where none of us would have predicted in a million years and that is the
teachers/educators strikes and protests
of 2018-19 that took place in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona and
other states, mostly Republican strongholds with right to work legislation. In
my view, the reason this occurred was that the trade union bureaucracy in these
states was weak or non-existent and they were overwhelmingly rank and file led.
Had this movement arisen in states where
the Democrats held sway, the union bureaucracy would have been able to crush
them.
If you do a search on this blog under the teachers, education, strikes or public education labels you will find a
lot of information on these developments as well as the massive teacher battles
in Puerto Rico. The organizations swooning over the defeat of the Hoffa regime
had the opportunity, given their resources to intervene in those teachers strikes,
link the movement together and expand it.
In Kentucky in particular, a huge opportunity was lost as teachers, parents and
allies fought hard against a right-wing pro-Trump state government. At one
point the teachers’ union leadership called a press conference attended by
leaders of Afscme, the Teamsters and SEIU and attacked the most militant forces
in that battle. The teachers’ union leadership also failed to link the battle
for their livelihoods and pensions with the communities of color, particularly in
Louisville, and their efforts to stave off a gang ordinance that gave the
police more power over the right to stop and frisk the youth in these communities.
This weakened the teacher’s efforts as well by abandoning a potentially powerful
ally.
On receiving the statement from DSA I thought it was a
satirical piece but alas. It’s real.
On March 22nd 2022,
the New leadership team of the Teamsters was sworn in after winning the
national election last October. Sean O’Brien, a former Hoffa ally and the head
of the opposition “OZ” slate will be
the new president of the 1.2 million member union. James Hoffa Jr and his, “Teamster Power” regime led the union
for the past 23 years.
There was considerable anger among United Parcel Services (UPS) rank and file
after they voted down a poor contract in 2018, but Hoffa was able to impose the
contract using a clause in the Teamster constitution requiring a two thirds
majority to reject a contract if the voter turnout is below 50%. This
contributed to the O’Brien victory along with two decades of concessions.
As is usually the case, there
is elation among some in the labor movement, particularly sections of the so-called
left, whenever there is even the slightest hint of a leftward shift in the
ranks of the stifling bureaucracy that sits atop organized labor. Sean O’Brien,
a long-time insider is now head of a reform slate apparently.
This scenario has played out
so many times before it’s hard to get too excited. John Sweeney and his “reform slate” that took the helm at the
AFL-CIO in the late 1990’s in the first contested election in a century,
threatened to emulate Martin Luther King and block bridges in the defense of his
members. He quickly shifted course to building them, not with organized labor’s
rank and file but with the bosses. He orchestrated a campaign of fear and
coercion that dragged Kaiser workers, mostly SEIU members, with the help of the
SEIU leadership, in to the labor/management Team Concept trap, against their
gut instincts.
We have had numerous saviors
in the labor movement that the big business press gives a lot air time to,
describing them as Firebrands, Young Turks and other fancy titles. Sara Nelson
of the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA,
AFL-CIO is the most recent. They generally fade from the limelight as quickly
as the capitalist press shone it on them.
Sean O’Brien sounds very
similar telling CNN in an interview that, “Fighting for workers is a
full contact sport. We call on every Teamster to put your helmet on and buckle
your chinstraps because the fight begins today.".
The UPS contract is coming up in 2023 and O’ Brien intends to “….make UPS an example,". A strike
at the company in 2023 would be the first national strike by the Teamsters in
25 years after the UPS strike in 1997 and of national importance. UPS is the largest trucking company in the
country and today employs about 327,000 workers compared to 180,000 in 1997
according to CNN.
Some Teamster History. A Good Read
Anyone that has experienced
the internal struggles within organized labor is very familiar with the brutal
atmosphere and vicious personal battles that take place between forces
competing for power. Opposition slates are often demonized, and in the Teamsters
have been threatened with violence. Personally, barring one time when an
intoxicated International VP called me at home and threatened me, I never
experienced threats all the years I was active in AFSCME as a socialist publishing
an opposition newsletter, the AFSCME Activist. There is more information on the AFSCME Activist and
why it folded here.
Every major union has a huge
army of full-time staff whose job it is to enforce the leadership’s concessionary
contracts on the membership and ensure no movement from below threatens the
hierarchy that employs them. Not being controlled from below, full-time staff
are more often than not exploited and at the mercy of the leadership that hires
them; they have to watch their mouths. As I have said many times, it is
impossible to change the concessionary course of organized labor by taking a
job as a full-time staffer.Under these
conditions, any of the staff under Hoffa would not have fared too well
supporting the opposition slate.
According to information sent
to this blog, the same day the O’Brien team were sworn in, 80 staff, including
25 IBT organizers were let go without notice, any kind of severance or early
retirement option. As one staffer put it, “The
OZ Slate decision seems to be motivated by politics and would be
considered an egregious action if done by any employer and it’s not a good
start from this union worker’s perspective. This is not the way to create
a strong union. This act is fractious and was done to send a message to
those who didn’t support or vote for the new slate of leaders.”
This is not unusual in unions.
My own former union AFSCME International, imposed, or attempted to impose a two-tier
wage system on its staff.
The truth is that Teamster
rank and file members have lost confidence that very little, if anything will
change. A weakness of the OZ slate victory is shown by the fact that the
overall turnout for the vote was only 14%, demonstrating skepticism among
members that O’Brien can deliver. The drop in turnout and collapse of support
in Hoffa strongholds shows that while the failed strategies of the business
unionists have lost significant support, many rank and file Teamsters do not
see a clear alternative to the previous leadership other than to swap one set
of labor bureaucrats for another. See
the IBT elections results here.
In the leadup to the
elections, both sides pointed to the need to organize workers at Amazon.
O’Brien promised a return to a more aggressive approach that has been a
strength of Teamster organizing in earlier decades, but militancy alone is not
enough to take on a goliath of capitalism like Amazon. The failure of
organizing drives at Amazon so far have not come from a lack of enthusiasm from
organizers or a lack of desire to unionize by Amazon workers, but from labor
leaders relying on a failed strategy of business unionism (that organizers must
carry out) and their failure to openly reject and campaign against the Team
Concept, the ideology behind the concessionary strategy that claims bosses and
workers have the same interests. The natural result of this philosophy is that
when capitalism goes in to crisis the immediate response from the union
hierarchy is to bail it out which means attacking their own members.
There is no indication that
Sean O’Brien and the OZ slate have abandoned this disastrous worldview. In
addition, O’Brien is closely linked with the Democratic Party and the Biden
Administration, in other words, the Team Concept in the political sphere. The
AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions has donated billions of dollars to this party
of Wall Street over the years with nothing substantial to show for it.
It would be one thing if
O’Brien arose as a reform figure in the midst of a major rank and file upsurge,
and internal struggles within organized labor and the Teamsters union in
particular; a scenario similar to the conditions that led John L Lewis, the
United Mineworkers’ president and a former hack of Samuel Gompers, to play a
progressive role for a period. But despite there being an upsurge in activity
inside and outside of organized labor in the US in the past period, it is not (yet)
a repeat of the huge upsurge in the 1930’s that led to the formation of the
CIO. One missing link is the presence of significant left and socialist forces
within the working class at the time, among the unorganized and organized
workers. The reader can view the debate between the candidates from September 2021 below.
We live in extremely volatile
times and there are without doubt rumblings within the ranks of organized labor
and the unorganized workers in the aftermath of the pandemic, including at
Amazon, Starbucks and other workplaces. It is impossible to say when and where
a major uprising of the US working class will arise and what issue will be the
spark, other than to say that it will.
And why is it the Left in the Unions Refuses to Confront them?
Some of my co-workers and my lifeline. The Picture for Oakland City Council Campaign 1996
Note: I previously republished a commentary on how a new leadership of the trade union movement will be built not by "professional" union staffers or organizers but by rank and file workers steeled through workplace struggles. This was published back in 2019 almost 18 months ago and is how the founders of this blog, which includes myself see working in the trade unions and how we explain how we got to where we are at. I hope rank and file union members will take the time to read it. RM
Richard Mellor
Editor Facts For Working People
8-22-19
Readers/followers of Facts For Working People blog are familiar with the
numerous commentaries we have posted with regard to how socialists should work
in the trade unions and in the workplace. We have addressed this issue on a
number of occasions with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members and
expressed our views on the decision by DSA’s leadership to contract out the
guidance of its union work to Labor Notes (LN). We consider that LN is
incorrect in its refusal to identify and provide an alternative to the policies
of the present leaders of organized labor in the US. We have tried to share our
different views and have an open and comradely debate on this crucial issue and
here are some links to these articles:
I am returning to this issue as I read a piece recently by Eric
Blanc who is a DSA member writing in defense of a resolution that the Bread and
Roses Caucus was planning to introduce at the DSA conference in Atlanta. Comrade
Blanc clearly supports and promotes the DSA leadership’s contracting out union
work to the LN organization. In FFWP’s opinion, this will hinder
efforts to transform our unions in to militant rank and file led organizations
and will fail to prepare young DSA members who are in unions, or class
conscious worker militants on the ground floor, for the conflict with the
present union leadership, the present bureaucracy, which opposes any genuine
rank and file movement from below.
While we have discussed this issue extensively on our weekly
conference calls, as one of the people who has written on this issue before, I
think it only fair to the reader that as a critic and also someone with strong
views about organized labor and how the rank and file can dislodge the
seemingly entrenched bureaucracy and its policies of class collaboration, I
should relate my own experiences that have shaped my views about the labor
movement.
When workers are offered advice about how we can fight on the job
and within the trade union movement it’s worth considering what we do when we
have a problem with our automobile, washing machine or our computer and we need
to have repairs done; we seek out people who have experience in doing such
repairs. We do not seek out people who have written books about doing repairs
if they have never done repairs themselves. So if we want to discuss the crisis
in the trade union movement and the various strategies activists and socialists
should adopt in our work in them, I believe it is reasonable to seek out rank
and file workers (staff and academics recruited by the labor hierarchy for
their skills are not rank and file) who have experience in fighting in the
workplace, in negotiating contracts, filing grievances, fighting racism and
sexism on the job and perhaps most important of all, building a real base among
our co-workers and the rank and file in the workplace that is crucial if we are
to openly challenge the present leadership’s policies.
I do not have degrees from famous universities. I have my GED. I
started working at a water utility as a laborer in 1976 and retired as a
backhoe operator. I was in AFSCME Local 444, a blue collar local for 29 years.
During this time I was an elected shop steward in my work unit. I was an
elected Executive Board member and also an elected representative to the
Alameda Labor Council AFL-CIO to which my local was affiliated. I held numerous
elected and unpaid offices in the local over 25 years.
I was elected as a delegate to Afscme DC 57 composed of numerous
local Afscme unions in Northern Ca. and a delegate to most of the Afscme
International’s bi-annual conventions from 1980 to 1998. I was also a delegate
to some of the California Labor Federation’s conventions during the 1990’s and
the Jack Henning years. I was in attendance at the National Rank and File
Against Concessions Conference in December 1985 amid a major strike wave. My
local struck for a month earlier in the year. This conference was wrecked to a
large extent by left sectarianism. There is a good account of this in Peter
Rachleff’s book, Hard Pressed in the Heartland. I was
elected to local 444’s contract negotiating team during three contracts
including during our strike in 1985.
I introduced and fought for resolutions on the need for an independent labor
party based on the trade unions at all these bodies usually introducing and
discussing issues first at my own local union’s (Afscme 444) membership meetings
and getting them endorsed there. More often than not I discussed the issue with
my co-workers on the job where our power lies.
With the endorsement of Local 444, I organized, along with others,
a public meeting for Tony Mazzochi to speak in 1989. Mazzochi, an official with
the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) was calling for a Labor Party
based on the trade unions. Myself and another 444 delegate Roger Martinezapproached Mazzochi at a Labor Notes
Conference and asked if he would speak on the need for a Labor Party at a
public meeting. He said he would if he got an invite from a union local, so we
had Local 444 invite him. I got numerous locals to endorse that meeting
including the Teamsters, SEIU, ILWU Local 6 and other Afscme locals. Here is a video of that meeting.
Mazzochi told us personally that it was the success of that meeting that pushed
him to form Labor Party Advocates. I was elected a delegate to the founding
conference of the Labor Party held in Cleveland in 1996 and introduced a resolution that was
passed by Local 444’s membership. Local 444 endorsed my candidacy for
Oakland City Council in 1996, some of my co-workers that supported me are in
the photo I have included. Due to my activity on the need for a
labor party based on the trade unions, there were a number of years when no
candidate, Democrat or Republican, could get an endorsement or money from Local
444.I got my local very involved in
International solidarity defending activists in South Africa, Israel/Palestine,
Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Britain and other countries.
I was trained as a steward on the job, not by labor experts or
political science majors or those that came in to the unions from universities or
were “sent in” by socialist
organizations, but by older black guys that had come up from the South, or
their parents had, on what they called the Kaiser Freedom Train. They did not
call themselves socialists or militants and were conservative in some ways, but
they were not afraid of a fight and they understood the importance of being in
a union and working class unity despite being victims of racial oppression in
society, on the job and in the labor movement. They had roots in places like
Beaumont Texas, Monroe Louisiana and Arkansas. When Afscme
International Executive Board mandated we affiliate to Afscme District Council
57 in 1980 or thereabouts, these old timers fought back. They did not like
being mandated to do anything by the big shots at the union’s national
headquarters in D.C., and they opposed the affiliation dues.
The younger generation eventually won the day and I was one of them, but
the old timers who had risked their livelihoods walking off the job and
founding a union many years earlier didn’t surrender easily. Irish, Black, Portuguese, Italian Americans, men and women, no Phd’s
among them, are the people who changed the lives of future generations at my
workplace and who trained me in my union work. I learned a lot from these
workers. We had a woman president in chief steward in the late 70’s early 80’s
who worked in the garage. Women mechanics were not common then and she was also
a lesbian. She was a real fighter and encouraged and helped me to stay
involved. It was not easy for these women in traditionally male trades.
I had major struggles with the leadership at the higher levels.
One was when I invited a guy from the Hormel strike in Austen Minnesota to
speak at the Alameda Labor Council. But the UFCW leadership had just abandoned
Local P9, pulled strike sanction and replaced the leadership with a more
compliant and employer friendly one, so the strikers were now pariah’s and the
delegates all fell in to line refusing to let him in. I eventually got him in.
I had the same experience when I took a group of black youth from my
neighborhood to the CLC after the Rodney King uprising. They wouldn’t let them
in (not affiliated) and I had to have a huge fight over it. I was demanding
that the council organize a mass rally in Oakland against racism, police
brutality and for jobs; I worked in those streets and we had a meter reader
almost beaten to death; the way to change that situation was for organized
labor to bring its potential power to the table.
I threatened to make a motion (gasp) and got them in but the liberal/lefts
helped ensure that nothing was done. My experiences with Labor Notes folks and
Communist Party members who were also delegates from locals, was similar. These
comrades never, ever challenged the leadership or opposed their policies in any
way at all for fear of them not getting the leadership’s support for their
activities. All sorts of excuses are used by these people to try and justify
not taking on the union leadership.
I was also a writer and editor of an opposition newsletter in
Afscme I called the Afscme Activist. It was published in 10 states to different
locals and had a growing subscriber base. Afscme Local 444, helped me get it
off the ground. You can get some information about this experience here.
It is from these experiences in the workplace fighting the
bosses and coming into conflict with the union leadership in doing so, that I
draw my conclusions about trade union activity, the crisis in the trade unions,
the fall in membership over the past decades, the stagnation of wages the
reduction of rights etc. I would like to ask my readers to keep this in mind
when they consider my views. Myself and a few others were not looking for
jobs in the management of the union bureaucracy.
So I ask, for myself and on behalf of Facts For Working People
blog, that our readers also consider the experience of the people, groups or
currents whose opinions I comment on here. Have they been active fighters on
the shop floor, in the workplace? Have they negotiated contracts, have they led
strikes, dealt with racism and sexism in the workplace and so on. Most
important of all, did they build a strong base on the ground floor, among rank
and file co-workers? This is crucial in order to wage a serious opposition to
the bosses and to the present leadership’s capitulation to them. It
is impossible to wage a serious struggle on behalf of the rank and file without
coming in to conflict with the present union leadership; they won’t allow it.
It is my experience that in many cases, the people from left
backgrounds who seek to advise the union membership do not have experience
on the shop floor. Working as part of the union bureaucracy, selected to do
such work by the union bureaucracy, is not working on the shop floor. In fact
it is a prerequisite to being selected for a job in the union bureaucracy by
the union bureaucracy, not to have led movements on the shop floor, not to have
built a fighting movement in the workplace or in the union rank and file.
As I comment here on some of the views and opinions and advice
being offered to union activists and DSA members by Brother Eric Blanc. I would
respectfully ask Brother Eric Blanc to give us his experience in the workplace
and in building a real base among the workers and dues paying members on the
shop floor. I would be interested in hearing of the struggles of other
university educated people who have come to work as full timers either as
staffers or “advisers” to the union
bureaucracy, with the support of the union leadership to give us their own
union experience.
I would suggest to the young DSA members who are now being
advised on how to do union work to ask those who give such advice to explain
their own experience as I do here. I think this is a reasonable request. I
would ask the young DSA members to ask this from Bother Eric Blanc and
also to those who work as writers and editors and organizers at Labor Notes or
Jacobin or other left publications. Ask any of them to share their struggles
with the present union leadership because such struggles can’t be avoided if
you are helping to build a genuine, fighting rank and file movement in the
unions. What is their record within the labor movement?
Comrade Blanc’s article is titled A Labor Strategy for the US: DSA Debates. The
approach he is promoting is outlined in an article, Rank and File Strategy written by Barry Eidlina DSA member who is an assistant professor of sociology at McGill
University and a shop steward for UAW 2865. I first met comrade Blanc when he
was a leader and student recruiter for Socialist Organizer, an organization that
had a very similar approach to the trade unions as Labor Notes which has always
gone to great lengths never to make an issue of, never mind oppose, the trade
union leadership’s responsibility for organized labor’s decline and influence.
I will only point out a few important aspects of Comrade Blanc’s
views that are fundamentally flawed from my perspective and the same approach
can be seen in all of the coverage of the labor movement from Labor Notes and
its writers and in the links I have provided here.
The idea, Blanc writes, is that “…..socialists’ central focus should be on identifying a layer of rank
and file leaders who can organize in the workplace on a day to day
basis”, and he points to the Rank and File Strategy and its “aim” which is to, “….reconnect the Left and labor through
developing a broad layer of militant, organic workplace leaders….”
I
have to say that in my decades of activity the “left”, socialists of various stripes that entered the workplace,
never were very adept at ‘connecting”
with workers at all with a few exceptions; just the
opposite. But for comrade Blanc and the Bread and Roses Caucus, it
appears certain socialists have the qualifications to identify rank and file leaders that can organize or build the
movement that can transform our unions. He gives as an example Jane
McAlvey who refers to these worker leaders that socialists will select as “organic leaders”. McAlvey is a former
SEIU staffer and labor strategist. Ms McAlevey is a Harvard graduate, a Phd and
was brought in to the labor movement by the AFL-CIO hierarchy as far as I can
see around the 1996 elections and the advent of SEIU’s John Sweeney. Sweeney
went very quickly from threatening to “block
bridges” referencing the methods of Martin Luther King, to building them,
not with the rank and file, but with the bosses through the Team Concept.
Blanc also supports connecting DSA members with staffing
jobs in certain “militant” unions,
an example of which he cites the United Teachers of Los Angeles. But the CTA
bureaucracy is no different to any other on the main issues and perhaps the
most important, mobilizing the potential power of the organized working class
in an offensive of our own. Yes some small gains were made in the LA Teachers
strike but more could have been won. LA, Oakland, Newark and other areas all in
the same union, strike separately. The NEA has 300,000 members in California
and the AFL-CIO some 2 million. To not draw on this potential power and
mobilize it is anything but militant; not mentioning it at all is disgraceful.
And from what I recall, LA mayor Garcetti was brought in to the process in LA
that shifted the balance of power to the management. Workers relying on our own
strength and power is rule number one if the bosses offensive against working people
is to be defeated.
The lesson learned from the West Virginia Teachers and Educators movement, is
that we can win but we have to spread beyond our own members’ immediate needs
and we have to violate the law and this means coming into conflict with the
union leaderships. LA had wide community support but there are also 800,000
workers affiliated to organized labor in LA and this power should have been
part of a militant strategy along with the community, after all, they are the
organized workers of our community. No individual locals can reverse the
present concessionary course the heads of organized labor have charted; there
is no point in us all belonging to the same organizations and not utilizing
that power on the ground.
But what jumps out at me in Eric’s promotional piece for Labor
Notes is his support of Labor Notes general policy of ignoring, or at best
obscuring the role of the labor leadership that stands in the way of any effort
to transform the unions in to democratic fighting organizations. Any thinking
worker/activist knows this. Comrade Blanc doesn’t ignore the leadership
completely as in the wake of the victory in West Virginia and successes of the
Teachers and Educators in other states, this has forced people and groups that
support his approach to allude to them, but very cautiously in order to not
suffer the consequences of being attacked by the union leadership. While having
to mention these rank and file Teachers and Educators movements which were
successful precisely because they defied and pushed aside their own
leaderships, something not advocated by Eric Blanc and LN, Eric Blanc
and LN covers for them.
Eric Blanc writes of the decline of organized labor’s influence
over the years and that, “the failed
orientation of most unions has contributed to this decline.”
The use of the term “unions” is
deliberate, disingenuous (this is the way educated people call each other
liars) and misleading. It is incorrect to speak of the “unions’ orientation” it is not the “unions orientation. It is the union leaderships’ orientation, and
the union leadership imposes this orientation on the membership of the unions. By referring
to the unions rather than the union leadership is to let the union leadership
of the hook. And what flows from this is that Eric Blanc ends up blaming the
rank and file membership, the folks who pay the dues, for a crisis that is
caused by the policies of the union leadership which he refuses to expose and
oppose. I explained why in a response to Labor Notes’ Chris Brooks
and his coverage of the recent failed UAW organizing drive at the VW plant in
Chattanooga. I wrote:
“…in this latest report Brother brooks
again, when raising failed tactics and strategies, refers to the UAW as opposed
to the UAW leadership. But the tactics are not developed by the UAW; they are
determined by the leadership of the UAW. The only way the unions will be made
into democratic fighting organizations and the unorganized will be organized,
is if we look at the policies of the union leadership as distinct from what is
in the interests of the union membership.”
Comrade Blanc repeats this “union ”phrase more than once. He writes: “Until we can push our unions out of the political rut they’ve been
stuck in for decades….” and refers to the failure of the UAW leaderships
organizing drive in Chattanooga as the “UAW”“crashing and burning in the South.” But
it is not simply that we have to “push”
our unions out of this political rut as he calls it. Most workers would
agree but he refuses to mention the real problem, that is the policies and the
refusal to fight of the present union leadership. This is what the
membership has to “push” aside. He
writes that the “UAW” is
crashing and burning in the US South. The leadership of the unions has led us
in to this political rut and has no intention, or plan for getting us out of it
and it is the leadership of the UAW that is responsible for the defeats in the
South. This Eric Blanc and also Labor Notes refuse to explain and oppose. It
is no small omission and it is not accidental.
Consider Eric Blanc’s description of the trade union leadership on
one of the rare occasions he mentions them. He describes them as “inefficient” as if the defeats they
have orchestrated are accidental, are the result of a collection of bumbling
fools. But the opposite is the case, they are very efficient in ensuring the
relationship they have built with the bosses based on labor peace comes under
no serious threat from below. They show their efficiency time and time against
as they sabotage militant strikes. Perhaps the most glaring example of this has
been the P9 strike when the local union leadership would not surrender to the
bosses the top union leadership removed the local leadership and put in one
that would surrender. There was no inefficiency there, they efficiently
enforced their own policies and crushed the strike.
Blanc correctly points out to the DSA membership that they cannot “replace ”the numerous resources
organized labor has. This is true. But he puts it this way, “DSA cannot replace the infrastructure,
experience, institutional memory, resources, legal protections, or connections
to the working class that the union
movement has — and has sadly failed to make full use of.” (my
added emphasis).
I’ll say this; I’ve been on hundreds upon hundreds of picket lines over 30
years where brothers and sisters with the picket sign in their hands have been told
by the full time officials that they are not to impede those crossing the
picket lines.* These are workers on strike for weeks and sometimes more on
basically 24-hour protests drinking coffee and eating donuts. Demoralization
sets in rapidly under this scenario. Please take the time to read the picket line rules the International Union ofOperating Engineers (IUOE) handed to striking members in the
recent crane operator’s strike in Western Washington State. I have seen less
stringent rules in Kindergartens. This approach should be condemned and
publicly so.
Workers in this situation often ask the same question, “why don’t we shut this place
down?” In most cases, union members know nothing about the
extent of the potential power the organization they belong to has, and the
leadership keeps this information from them. When I was on a picket line here
in Pittsburg CA when they were out for some 12 weeks I mentioned to them that
they were affiliated to the Contra Costa Labor Council with some 80,000 workers
affiliated to it. “Why won’t they
bring them out here?” a worker without a Phd, or college degree
and who wasn’t looking for a paid union position asked me. I
explained why the leadership not only never told them about the Labor Council
but also won’t bring the resources the labor movement has to the table. They have no alternative to capitalism so to mobilize millions of workers against the capitalist offensive can only lead to chaos from their world viewpoint.
Their only response is the Team Concept which argues that workers and bosses have the same interests. This philosophy is a catastrophe and behind what so many union members see as betrayals. As I wrote in an earlier post, when capitalism goes in to crisis, the present heads of organized labor move to bail it out at the expense of their own members living standards.
I was at the waste management picket here
in California when the officials of the Teamsters were there along with
management escorting the Teamster drivers across the trash sorter’s picket
lines because the leaders of both unions were in a pissing contest over
jurisdiction and organizational protocol. I know for a fact there are
socialists on the staff of one of these unions and not a word from them.The
drivers knew it was wrong though, they were visibly sickened having to cross
the line; it’s in a class-conscious workers gut that we don’t do that.
Do not misunderstand me, I recognize that confronting ones own leadership as
well as the employer is not easy and that is what class conscious socialists
who do not see themselves as the “educators”
of the working class can help with on the job and in the unions. But a
prerequisite is being open to learn from the working class through a dialogue
with the class and offering the skills they possess either through their middle
class backgrounds or university education or both at the service of the working
class in our struggle against capital. I should add that comrade Blanc refers
to the DSA being too male and white which is undoubtedly true, but an even
bigger problem is that the DSA is overwhelmingly middle class in its
composition and culture.
It is not an answer to this problem to advise, as is
being done to young DSA members, to volunteer as “picket captains” which is being done by some. This is not only
extremely arrogant to think that DSA members with no union experience can be
picket captains but if they do volunteer as picket captains it will be to carry
out the orders of the union leadership and help the union leadership keep the
strikers “in order”.
I have taken up many blue-collar workers in my own workplace and
in other unions when they have explained away the failures of the unions to
defend them or refusing to go on the offensive, by saying the leaders take bribes,
they’re in bed with the boss, or that they are criminals in the real sense of
the word and at worst Mafia. Sometimes, though not often, they will trash the
union as an institution but as most workers know, we would be in a bad way
without them. Some members will refer to them as “conscious traitors” What they will not do though, is refer to the leadership as “moderate” or “inefficient” as comrade Blanc does.
I would urge young DSA folks and other workers relatively new to
the organized labor and workers’ movement, to look in to the situation in
Kentucky. It was in this video that I first a
heard a teacher from Kentucky speaking on the situation there. She brought up a
very important issue and that was the need to link the teachers’ struggles with
the community and in particular the black community that faces additional
problems, overpolicing, stop and frisk, harassment and of course we are all
aware of the murder of black youth by police. It is indisputable that the
crisis in education affects black and brown communities to a much greater
degree. Recognizing this is not, as some right wingers claim, “identity politics”. One
related issue in Kentucky was a gang ordinance that was to be taken up in the
state legislature
As the unions with some influential people taking a lead,
mobilized the teachers to put pressure on the legislature with regards to
teachers issues, pensions for example, and were asking Louisville and Jefferson
County folks for community support, the folks affected most by increased police
power in the community asked that when calling in to the state, the unions and
teachers movement express their opposition to the gang ordinance. The union leadership refused to do this and influential figures in
the leaderships spoke against it. I wrote at the time:
“An influential
leader of the teachers' group KY120 defended her refusal to oppose the
bill on the grounds that she didn't want to “risk fracturing the nascent movement." and that after
discussing it, the mood was that if they started "muddying the water" it would weaken the movement. Of
course, the opposite is true. She is quite willing to fracture the movement by
refusing to recognize the extreme importance of opposing this bill for those
who would be most impacted by it. But not only would opposing what amounts to
racist legislation directed primarily at black youth strengthen the movement,
it would be a small step along the road to uniting the different constituents,
it doesn't muddy the waters at all, it clears them up.” I should stress that
whenever labor officials say that their “members”said this or did that or that the mood among the members was…., the
first question to ask them is what position the leadership took as this is a
crucial element that affects the mood and confidence of the rank and file.
The implication in the union leaders refusal to support the
legislation is that the poor whites in eastern Kentucky (Appalachia) are all
racists or ignorant and would not support it. She blames the members for her decision not to take the right position
on the gang ordinance.
Rather than strengthen the union by supporting the more militant
and forward thinking activists in and around Lousiville (a teacher described
the situation as a city taking on the state), when the teachers’ sick out shut
down the schools for six days in February and March this year, with the parents, teachers and allies
from the Lousiville area the central players, the trade union leaders came
together at a JCTA press conference in March 2019 to condemn the Louisville
leaders and parents. In other words, rather than strengthen the union and
oppose racist legislation, by helping the Jefferson County folks build their
influence and links across the state, they chose to weaken the union. Brent
McKim head of the Jefferson County Teachers Association was joined by leaders
from Afscme, SEIU and the Teamsters. The Afscme official blamed them for
costing “her” members
money. The Teamster official accused them of
"…pimping our people out and putting
their jobs in jeopardy," If they were as aggressive in dealing with
the bosses we would be in a better shape all round.
As I write here it strikes me even more that to refuse to oppose a
gang ordinance that would strengthen the state security forces in the black and
brown community on the basis that it would “muddy
waters” is a disgrace. And people wonder why they might be accused of
racial bias treating such an important issue as an irritant basically. There is a video of this conference here at WLKY
a Kentucky TV station and I urge folks to watch it. They are pretty efficient
you see when they want to undermine rank and file/community militancy.
I explain this situation
in a video I made at the time. It will give the reader useful
information about the Kentucky events which is important, particularly the open
attack on Jefferson County/Louisville folks by a section of the labor
bureaucracy and the failure of the unions and influential leaders to campaign
against the gang ordinance. Any class conscious workers, especially socialists
including the DSA leadership should condemn the Kentucky union leaders and the heads of organized labor nationally for their class
collaboration attacking rather than aiding the more aggressive and militant sector of the
struggle
The reality of it is that comrade Blanc’s understanding of the
trade union leadership, and those “experts” he orients to as this advanced
layer of politically driven individuals who can build the movement to transform
the unions, is to the right of the vast majority of the brothers and sisters
that pay the dues. The idea that “socialists”,
of his type I assume, can recognize and select “organic leaders” from the rank and file is a giveaway. Organic
leaders do not need selection by experts from academia, union staffers or the
lower rungs of the left bureaucracy that have not proved themselves qualified.
And by “proved” I mean a long history
of the struggle against the policies and practises of the present entrenched
bureaucracy which inevitably means building and being rooted in a solid base in
the rank and file and in the workplace.
Here is a list of Labor Notes staff: https://www.labornotes.org/staff and
we can see that it is definitely not composed of rank and file workers. They
are mostly employees or former employees of the labor hierarchy. Some occupy
positions in unions and that in itself is not a bad thing. But to judge their qualifications
in this situation and at this time in the class struggle in the USA one
has to have evidence that they have fought the long hard battles that are
unavoidable in the struggle to build rank and file fighting oppositions in the
labor movement. And I stress one more time, any thinking
class-conscious worker knows you don’t get jobs as staffers, whose role it is
to ensure the concessionary policies of the leadership are implemented, or
advisors to AFL-CIO presidents, SEIU presidents or top officials in any union,
with a known record of fighting for the rank and file in a serious way.
It was in the Battle of Seattle that the youth shut down the WTO meeting in
1999. Their activity and boldness had an impact on many of the young unionized
workers that were there and were drawn to the direct actions. This terrified
the AFL-CIO leadership who, like AFL-CIO head John Sweeney, were holding
candlelight vigils and such. When the dust settled and the US and global
bourgeois went after the youth with a vengeance at WTO meetings, the AFL-CIO union
leaders sent staffers in to the movement here in the US, many of them trendy
types with the right ideas on social issues that would appeal to the young.
They sent these people in with the same intention as they now use such people
in the aftermath of the teachers and educators struggles which shook the labor
hierarchy as it was mostly rank and file led, that is, they send them in to
temper this movement, to tame the movement, to ensure it doesn’t get out of
their control, undermine their support for the Democratic Party and their
accepted channels of protest which do not work.
One important lesson for young DSA members to recognize is the
labor hierarchy is not “inefficient”
and they are not “moderate” as
Eric Blanc describes them. They are very efficient when it comes to maintaining
the present course of the trade unions under their control. They are committed
to the defense of the system, of capitalism and will fight to keep it that way.
Conclusion
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". "Work With Capitalism, Not Against It". Why theLabor Leadership Surrenders to the Bosses
This is the contribution of Facts For Working People Blog to the
discussion of how to work to build a democratic fighting movement in the rank
and file of the unions and in the workplaces.Contribution to the discussion of how to make the unions a fighting
force, to develop a leadership in the working class which fights the bosses and
their capitalist system and their two capitalist parties, the Republicans and
the Democrats.
It is how we can organize the unorganized and also build a mass
workers party that can represent the interests of the working class not the
capitalist class. We hope that Brother Eric Blanc and also Labor Notes and
others will engage in this discussion.
There are various ways in which
undemocratic means can be used in the labor movement. One is to refuse to
discuss the different views as to how the movement should organize. FFWP hopes
that those who have different views from those expressed here will state these
views and so help the working class movement. Facts For Working People Blog is open
to sharing opposing views.
* I try to not use the term scabs anymore because, as has been the case historically
except with gangs organized by the employers to break strikes, those crossing
the picket lines are underemployed or unemployed workers. In the Toledo General
Strike in 1934, the unemployed were organized and joined the strike. The unorganized
and unemployed are basically workers that have been abandoned by the trade union
bureaucracy in the main. While we have to prevent those crossing from doing so,
we have to do it through class appeals and mass picketing and also recognize
that for many of them, the trade union has played no direct role in their lives
so we have to have an alternative and cannot remain passive members but play a
role in changing the present leadership and their policies.
