Payday Report: UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks Forced Out Amid Corruption Charges

Reprinted from Payday Report at PaydayReport.com

UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks Forced Out Amid Corruption Charges

 Mike Elk  Dec 18, 2025  0 Comments

Payday Report has learned that UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks has been forced out of the union amid a major corruption scandal. Multiple UAW staffers informed Payday Report that Brooks’ office at UAW’s Solidarity House had been cleared out and staff had been informed that he had left the union. 

The departure of Brooks came as UAW President Shawn Fain was preparing to face re-election next year, and the scandals involving Brooks were seen by many as a liability for Fain’s re-election prospects. It also comes just days before UAW Federal Monitor Neil Barofsky is expected to release a new report into a series of troubling purges of dissident union leaders. 

In addition to the removal of Brooks, Payday Report has learned that Fain has reinstated Rich Boyers as UAW Vice President for Stellantis. 

Brooks’ push to remove Boyers as UAW Vice President and the demotion of UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock precipitated a massive scandal that led the UAW’s federal monitor to accuse the union of breaking the law. 

Brooks had been a rising star within the labor movement, coming to prominence as a staffer for the Brooklyn-based publication Labor Notes. As a staffer at Labor Notes, Brook was a leading player in helping to elect Fain as president of the UAW in 2023. 

Purges of Dissident Union Staffers Backfire

After Fain took office, Brooks became Fain’s right-hand man and drew criticism from staff for instituting a series of controversial, loyalty purges. 

“ID those we can work with, move the program, ID those who need to be purged,”Brooks wrote in an email obtained by the Detroit Free Press in 2023. 

In the union, Brooks gained a reputation for ruthlessly purging anyone seen as dissenting from Fain’s agenda. A court-ordered, confidential survey of several hundred UAW staffers in November showed that 51% of UAW staffers feared retaliation if they spoke about problems within the UAW.

In April, UAW’s Assistant Director of Communications Rachel Gumpert, a well-known communications professional, resigned from the union, citing a culture of top-down retaliation within the UAW. 

“I cannot lose my integrity by continuing to work in a place where dissent is a termination worthy event,” wrote Gumpert in a facebook post published in late April. 

Gumpert went on to denounce UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks and UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman. Prior to their appointments to UAW top positions, neither of them had held any top leadership positions in any union. (See Payday’s 2023 piece “UAW Challenger Fain Purges Top Allies in Favor of Brooklyn Consultants”)

Brooks and Furman have become larger-than-life influencers in the labor media world due to their connections, made while working at the Brooklyn-based Labor Notes. (In a sign of their influence, even The Wall Street Journal did a profile of the duo and their close associate, labor lawyer Benjamin Dictor, titled “Three Young Activists Who Never Worked in an Auto Factory Helped Deliver Huge Win for the UAW”)

“There are 2 primary sycophants - outsiders there for 2 years, who never were members and never held leadership roles at any union in their lives prior - who have taken the keys to the car from the elected President and hijacked this amazing union for personal gain, attention and ego,” wrote Gumpert about Brooks and Furman. “Now, they’ve driven it straight off a cliff.” 

“The reason is inexperience, lack of intelligence, arrogance, and hubris,” wrote Gumpert. “It’s heartbreaking to see a righteous union with 100 years of righteous struggle be co-opted by two egomaniacs, who aren’t from it and have no real relationship to it or its membership.” 

Brooks also engineered the demotion of UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock after she raised questions about a $500,000 no-bid contract being given to a DC firm with little experience in union campaigns. 

However, her delays angered Furman and UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks, a native of Chattanooga, who had taken a lead role on the Volkswagen Campaign. 

Brooks, who made $187,000-a-year as the UAW’s Chief of Staff according to federal records, had been angered that Mock refused to reimburse him for purchasing pizzas for Volkswagen workers since Brooks could not present a receipt. 

Brooks was also upset that he was not approved by Mock for an enhanced corporate credit card that would have allowed him to charge up to $12,000 a month without union pre-approval. However, Brook’s position was not listed in federal guidelines as one of the positions eligible for the enhanced corporate credit card. 

Both Brooks and Furman had garnered a reputation as “hatchet men” in the labor movement, willing to smear union dissidents. Court documents filed in Pittsburgh revealed that Brooks had been involved in an attempt to smear sexual assault whistleblowers while employed by the NewsGuild in 2020. 

Emails, text messages, and sworn statements obtained by the federal monitor show that Furman and Brooks took a lead role in drafting the Special Compliance Report to oust Mock, who is Black. However, given the controversial nature of both Brooks and Furman, who are white, Fain got Region 1A Director Laura Dickerson, a Black woman, to present the report at the International Executive Board meeting as if it was an investigation that she personally undertook. 

The UAW’s federal monitor, Neil Barofsky, found that the UAW President, Shawn Fain, intentionally misled the UAW’s rank-and-file about who authored the report. 

“As further evidence of retaliatory intent, Fain made statements to the Monitor that confirmed his intent to deliberately conceal his commanding role in the effort to remove Mock’s departmental responsibilities,” wrote UAW’s federal monitor Neil Barofsky in court documents filed in federal court in Michigan yesterday. 

Further attempting to conceal what occurred, the UAW refused to release the minutes of the executive board meeting to the rank-and-file as required by the UAW’s constitution. 

In addition, for more than a year, the UAW refused to release documents to the federal monitor relating to Mock’s dismissal. After finally winning a court battle for more documents, Barofsky ordered the union to reinstate Mock with full responsibility for the departments that she previously oversaw. 

In a report expected to be released tomorrow, Barofsky is also expected to order the UAW to reinstate Vice President for Stellantis RIch Boyers. 

Following the release of documents that raised questions about the demotion of Mock in September, Marni Schrader resigned as UAW Compliance Director. The resignation came after UAW Federal Monitor Neil Barofsky accused Schrader of propping up false charges in retaliation against UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock in a successful effort to demote her. 

Now, Brooks is the second top UAW staffer to take the fall for purges and punishment of dissidents within the UAW. 

The moves to reinstate Boyers as UAW VP and dismiss Brooks as UAW Chief of Staff come as Fain prepares to run for re-election. The scandals around the demotion of Mock in her role as Secretary-Treasurer and removal of Boyer had hurt Fain. 

Brooks has also overseen a series of dramatic and unexpected defeats of the organizing department of the UAW. 

Two years ago, the UAW announced a massive effort to unionize non-union employers following the publicity it generated during the “Stand Up Strike.” So far, though, the UAW has failed to come up with much tanticipated victories after winning at Chattanooga Volkswagen in 2024, with 72% of workers voting in favor of the union. 

In May of 2024, after filing for a union election with more than 70% of workers signed up at Mercedes in Alabama, the UAW lost the election by a margin of 44%-56%. In August, the UAW won a narrow vote at BlueOval Kentucky by a margin of 526-515, with 41 ballots still currently being challenged, a margin that many union organizers said was too narrow at a time when other unions are winning at similar manufacturing plants by much larger margins. 

The recent lopsided, more than 2-1, defeat of the UAW at a Hard Rock Casino in Rockford, an employer where two other unions won easily earlier in the year, raises troubling questions about what is happening inside the UAW. The union has faced massive turmoil and infighting, leading many veteran organizers to leave, to be replaced by much younger, inexperienced organizers. 

“They value loyalty above all else, and that’s why they are losing,” one UAW organizer told Payday Report.  

With the dismissal of Brooks as UAW Chief of Staff, Fain can claim that he’s heard the complaints of UAW staffers and members and changed things. 

“Brooks was a liability for Fain,” one long-time UAW staffer told Payday Report on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “Now, Fain can go out and pick someone as Chief of Staff, who’s more politically popular and can help with his re-election bid. Brooks thought he could purge everyone, but, in the end, he got purged himself.” 

Photo Credit: UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks (Chattanooga Times-Free Press) 

It's going to take a bit of time. But the fightback Against the Gangsters in the White House is Growing

 

Richard  Mellor

Trump and co are clearly on the defensive. They have a lot of options to disrupt and display presidential power. That's what having this office can do. But, contrary to what a lot of people are arguing, we are not in a fascist society and the Trump regime is not a fascist regime.

We are starting from a low level. We have not seen a mass movement since the Civil Rights movement in the 50's and 60's. We saw an uptick in labor struggles in the 1980's with some mass strikes and in the case of the P9 strike at Hormel, flying pickets and attempts to shut down other plants like the 1930's. We had two greyhound strikes that took on a mass character as well as a strike at Eastern Airlines that drove the company in to bankruptcy.  Unfortunately, the trade union hierarchy tried to paint this as a victory But how is a whole group of workers losing their jobs a victory? The head of Eastern, I think his name was Lorenzo, simply moved his capital. These people don't lose like we do. What should have happened was the taking over of that airline and the entire industry under workers control and management.

These battles in the eighties were defeated through a powerful combination of the trade union hierarchy and the bosses. In the nineties we had the Pittston Miners strike, another strike that could have been won and I remember Jacky Stump running as a write in candidate for office put forward by the miners. This strike was defeated not becasue we are weak but because the trade union leadership are supporters of the market and capitalism and when capitalism enters a crisis they immediately move to rescue it, at the workers expense. 

In the same mid nineties there was a huge labor battle in Decatur Illinois, three strikes and a lockout. Workers lost that too. You can read about that in many places, here's a quick link.  Dan Lane who I have known a long time and Early Silbar were very involved in that battle. I think maybe Navdeep Singh was as well. Earl was there as a supporter as he has been of other workers' struggles all his life. 

There are too many opportunities when workers rose up against capital to mention, but the Battle in Seattle is one. In 1999 when the US bourgeois overconfident as they can be at times, agreed to a WTO meeting in Seattle. There were massive protests with some 50,000 unionised workers involved, many of them younger workers. The Anarchists and socialists and other radicals were participants in a mass protest that shocked the US and global bourgeois. The global capitalists responded in following WTO meetings with extreme violence and one young worker was killed in Genoa. 

Finally, so as not to go on too long and also because I am only writing from memory here, not referring to my notes or books for the period, we had occupy in 2011 and I have to mention the educators strikes in 2018-19. These were strikes that took place in mostly red states (Republican led) where unions are illegal and striking is illegal. Those events were the largest number of strike days in 30 years. 

This movement terrified the union hierarchy, in the teachers' unions and the AFL-CIO in general and what could have been a springboard for a major uprising of organized labor was lost. In two contract disputes after those battles, in Oakland and LA, it was back to normal. I think it's fair to say that the unofficial strikes in the red states, against the trade union leaders position, could not have happened and did not happen in a similar way in Oakland and LA where the bureaucracy was more powerful and entrenched. They were able to contain the movement and prevent the mood and militancy of the red state strike within a framework that is acceptable to the bosses and in particular their friends in the Democratic Party.

That's it.

Will The AFL-CIO Leadership Back the Billionaire for California Governor?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

11-20-25

 

I just paid a visit to the AFL-CIO website not expecting to see much that would inspire me and, sure enough, my expectations were realized. As the capitalist offensive has reached Defcon 4 under the sexual deviant Trump, the first headline that stands out is a call to “Get it Done For American Workers.” The headline refers to the Protect American Workers’ Act which is in Congress and, according to the AFL-CIO leadership, will, “…restore collective bargaining rights to more than one million federal workers.” after Trump’s Executive Order took them away.

 

The AFL-CIO leadership, those folks that have given billions of dollars of their member’s money to Democratic Party candidates over the years, along with resources like precinct walkers and staffers for phone banks, managed to get 218 legislators, Democrats and Republicans, to sign a petition that will require Congress to vote on the Act.

 

Workers’ living standards and rights are being savaged on a daily basis, and in response, the action the heads of an organization with 14 million people affiliated to it and whose member have their hands on the levers of society, recommends  that we call our representatives and pressure them to vote for the Protect American Workers’ Act. They graciously provide the number and a form we can fill out that will make it easier. They are truly in another world.

­

Collective bargaining rights are important. The right to a union and to have our representatives meet with the employers on our behalf was a huge step for working class people that arose during the rise of industrial unionism and the formation of the CIO in the 1930’s. There were three general strikes in 1934 and the mass sit downs culminating in the 44-day occupation of the GM plant in Flint Michigan, thousands joined the communist party and much of the legislation that followed was the politicians simply codifying what US workers had already won in the streets, workplaces and communities of America. 

 

When you force your oppressor to yield a little, you recognize it and build upon your own strength, you don’t don’t thank them for their kindness. But crediting politicians and the so-called democratic process for the gains of the 1930’s is the necessary alternative to the truth, that workers’ power, us relying on our own strength and the willingness to challenge laws that restrict workers’ rights is what led to the New Deal. Roosevelt saved capitalism from itself.

 

The excitement about a piece of legislation that may or may not be passed is the labor hierarchy hoping for a respite, pleading with the bosses’ and their political parties to be a little less aggressive. And bargaining rights, which gives the labor officialdom a seat at the table, has for years meant them bargaining away our rights and material wellbeing. When the system goes in to crisis as it always does, the trade union hierarchy sees it as their role to bail it out. And it is to their members and the working class as a whole that they turn.

 

In the Wisconsin events 0f 2011 when 100,000 surrounded and occupied the state capital, the two main demands from the labor bureaucracy’s point of view were bargaining rights, without which they wouldn’t have a job, and dues checkoff where the employers collect union dues through payroll. This saves the union officials’ work or having to interact with their members in a serious way and the employer can drop it any time they like depriving the union of funds.

 

Despite this history, according to the AFL-CIO’s own figures, more than 70% of Americans support the right to join a union. 

I’ll add this, if the unions were winning serious material gains, or even fighting for them utilizing the potential power of the organized working class to punish profit taking, millions would be drawn to the labor movement. Mamdani’s election shows what talking about issues that really affect people actually does. When the AFL-CIO leadership’s support for Starbucks means nothing but the well-worn statement “We stand in solidarity with..” and a Democrat joins the picket line for a photo op, or we are given the phone number of a legislator, no one takes them seriously. 

 

In addition, organized labor has the resources and social power to run our own candidates. I read yesterday that the tech billionaire, Democrat Tom Steyer is running for governor of California. He’s going to make sure the corporations pay their fair share, break up the monopoly of the power utilities and ensure, “California remains the place people come to start businesses…..” because that’s why people come here.  He will also launch the largest home building program in the history of California and make California a top ten state for public education.

 

I will say with conviction that no worker with a brain in their head will believe this for one minute; you can’t do both. It is nothing new. Promises like this from rich people and in this case a billionaire, and what is just political chicanery, is one of the primary reasons for the rise of Trump. More importantly, it is the primary reason some 100 million people don’t bother to vote in national elections. 

Only one in four registered voters voted for Trump. It is not stupidity, apathy or ignorance that stops people from participating in the electoral process. Voting is not an excersize in civics, if our material conditions continue to decline no matter which party is in power; why vote. The same applies to union membership. If dues go up and wages down, why pay them?

 

The reality we are facing is that more than a century of the domination of the two capitalist parties over US political and economic life is over.

 

In my view though, the US population is not as right wing as the mass media would have us believe. A poll by Gallup in 2023 found that, 63% of US adults agreed that “the Republican and Democratic parties do ‘such a poor job’ of representing the American people that a third major party is needed.” 

 

A Pew poll in 2021found 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

 

As opportunity knocks once again for working people and in particularly organized labor, we can bet that if Steyer is the Democratic Party’s choice, the labor officialdom will support him. Three million workers are affiliated to the California Labor Federation AFL-CIO, almost 800,000 to the LA Labor Federation and that’s the best we can do; a billionaire savior. 

 

I was a delegate to the California State Labor Federation’s biennial conference in 1994 and, as I often did, introduced a resolution on the need for a Labor Party from my local. Executive Secretary John Henning, an excellent speaker criticised the Democratic Party in his introductory remarks, but opposed the resolution. Here is what he said:

 

"The two party system can't give relief because capitalism in large finances both parties.  In one way or another.  We may say it finances the Republican Party more.  But have you ever known Democrats en masse to turn down the enticements of capitalism?....... We were never meant to be beggars at the table of wealth.  We were never meant to be the apostles of labor cannibalism on the world stage.  We were meant for a higher destiny.  We were never meant to be the lieutenants of capitalism.  We were never meant to be the pall bearers of the workers of the world." 

 

Politically, the trade union officialdom functions as the representatives of the Democratic Party inside the workers’ organizations. 

 

I am an optimist as I believe that as a result of the clashes between capital and labor in wider society that are ahead, organized labor will also find itself engulfed in internal struggles of its own and new, likely younger leaders will emerge out of these battles.

 

The capitulation of the present union hierarchy who are the beggars at the table of wealth to use Henning’s words, has set us back years and ensured that the coming battles will be quite unpleasant to say the least. But history shows us that the working class will not go meekly to the gallows. 

Ewan MacColl, Laborers and the Efforts to Obscure the Class Struggle.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

11/18-25

 

I posted Roberta Flack singing The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face to Facebook a few days ago. It has to be one of the most beautiful love songs ever written. The man that wrote it was Ewan MacColl, an English folk singer and Communist Party member. He also wrote, Dirty Old Town. And many other songs about working class life. He wrote the love song for Peggy Seeger, Pete Seeger’s sister and they eventually married.

 

I had a Ewan MacColl album a long time ago, or folk album at least, can't remember exactly, and I liked the song in the video above. The reason was it reminded me of the term labourer and that I was a labourer, both in factories and fields. At the time I had not long left a job laying sewer mains with Irish laborers in the Oxfordshire countryside. I was in teenage love with this farmers daughter once, what we'd call the rural petit bourgeois. When her father got wind of that he put a stop to it right quick.

 

I’m pretty sure on my first passport it said, labourer under “profession”. There was no shame in this although it was clearly seen as a low rung on the ladder in the British class system. I think my US wife’s parents must have had a fit when she brought home this guy who was not only a labourer, but an unemployed one; but they were always kind and accepting of me. I wasn't a skilled tradesman, no university education and if I went to the labor exchange they’d ask me what I was looking for, they'd tell me what labourer positions might be available. Normally though, one would just wander on to building sites or walk in to a factory to see if they had any openings.

Back in the 1980's when I was a delegate from my union to the Alameda County Central Labor council here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I noticed how language was changing. Organized labor had lost many battles throughout the 1980’s due to the refusal of the labor hierarchy to mobilize a generalized fightback against the employer’s offensive and efforts at labor/management partnerships gained traction. The hope was they might convince the boisses' to be less aggressive.

 

So there was a lot of talk about changing the culture, the adversarial culture between labor and capital that is portrayed as simply a matter of choice, as opposed to it being an integral part capitalism and class society. In its place, the Team Concept culture, that workers and bosses are partners, members of the same team, began to get a real hold.

 

There was a culture war on language. The term “worker” was being replaced by “team member” or “Associate” and similar terms that were meant to obscure the inherent antagonistic relationship between employers and workers, the buyers of labor power and the sellers of it.

 

Janitorial became “environmental services” and a Janitor, a “custodian” or at best, an environmental engineer.  I was in a store once and I saw this employee on his knees stacking a lower shelf with goods. I got his attention and he strained a bit as he looked up at me, a clear sign getting up and down was hard for him. He was an older black man and I noticed it said on his coveralls that he was an associate.

 

“You’re an associate are you?” I said with a wry smile. He got it and replied, “Yeah, but they don’t pay me mfu&%*in’ associate's wages”.

 

In 1995, after John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO in the first contested election in a century, he initially threatened some militant changes and initially talked of using direct action, blocking bridges like Martin Luther King. His first VP Richard Trumka boasted in 1995 that, “…the era of union busting, contract trashing and strike breaking is at an end.

 

Well that didn’t last long and, Sweeney went from blocking bridges to building them, not with the rank and file of the organization he headed, but with the bosses. One of his trusted advisors as president of the AFL-CIO was Bill Fletcher who is considered by some to be a militant labor activist, but he was, for the most part, an important member of the labor bureaucracy in this period. In other words, art of the problem from the dues payer's point of view.

We know what we are no matter all the attempts to convince us we are something different. I remember being insulted when I first came to the US and someone told me I was middle class. I never had any aspirations to be middle class, I am a worker. It shows the inherent fear the ruling class has of the working class that it has convinced millions of workers they are not workers. And the labor bureaucracy have embraced this deception.

Adding this later, but as it was over 50 years ago I might be mistaken above and the song might have been this one below but I couldn't find Ewan MacColl singing it.

 

I’m not a bible type, but one of my favorite quotes (I don’t know too many) is from Job: “Man is born to labor and the bird to fly.”. Job must have had an honorable job himself 

 

Most importantly, don't lose sight of the fact that labor is the source of all wealth----------mental and physical. Embrace it.

UK Politics: Your Party Success Includes A Campaign Against Bureaucracy

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana

From Steve McKenzie

Branch Secretary of Bexley (London) UNITE Community Branch*

 

There has been a disturbing trend over the last few days. Almost everybody I have asked if they have signed up to Your Party answers in a similar way. 'After last week, I'll see how they perform first' 

The damage caused, by what was seen spat between Corbyn and Sultana, appears to have resulted in a fairly serious setback. 

They were the face of the split, the real cause was the bureacratic power grab, with those who really pull the strings attempting to get control of the email list, and future financial control.

This is a similar way as a bureaucracy gets control in a trade union, first they seize control of the executive, and through that control of the financial arrangements and recruitment committees. 

Centralisation, a top down approach, nepotism and cronyism has led to serious allegations of corruption in some unions.

Bureaucracy means subordinating the interests of the work to the interests of one’s own career. It means focusing the attention on places and ignoring the work itself.

 

This has always been the modus operandi employed by most bureaucrats in both the industrial and political wings of the Labour movement.

The debilitating effect on our movement is there for all to see, for anybody who scratches beneath the surface. It has had a devastating effect.

Unions not providing a basic service, shedding members at an incredible rate of knots, mired in corruption, the appalling, and some say terminal decline of the Labour Party. The methods of these elements who have already damaged our unions, left their fingerprints all over the recent spat in Your Party. 

 

As we struggle to get Your Party off of the ground, we must rid ourselves of these methods and the elements that practice them. Instead of a top down bureaucracy we want democratic accountability and genuine membership control. Read the previous piece on this subject here.

 

*UNITE, the  has community section that allows non-members from the community to pay 50p a week dues and receive some assistance. 

FALKIRK SHOWS TRADE UNIONS URGENTLY NEED TO MOBILISE AGAINST THE RACIST FAR RIGHT

Richie Venton

Scottish Socialist Party

8-16-25

 

FALKIRK SHOWS TRADE UNIONS URGENTLY NEED TO MOBILISE AGAINST THE RACIST FAR RIGHT 

We live in an increasingly volatile and polarised society.

END THE GENOCIDE 

In Glasgow yesterday, the thousands marching against the ongoing genocide and conscious starvation of men, women, children and babies in Gaza was, by all accounts, the biggest in months. 

The SSP were proudly present, as we have been since day one, arguing for an end to the genocide, to Labour's arms sales and SNP arms subsidies, supporting mass struggle for peace through socialism in the Middle East.

FALKIRK 

By stark contrast, those of us in the SSP who joined the peaceful protest - initiated by Falkirk Trades Union Council - outside the Cladhan hotel housing refugees and asylum seekers in Falkirk, were faced with an ugly mass of racist bigotry across the narrow street. 

At a peak, we had around 250-300 anti-racists protecting the "hotel"- its workers and those who've sought sanctuary from wars and civil wars - from attack by a crowd whipped up into a frenzy by fascist and other far-right groups. 

The alarming fact is that at their peak, those screaming "send them home", "stop the boats", and singing "Rule Britannia" numbered 800-1,000. 

It was allegedly called as "a peaceful protest" after an asylum seeker was convicted of rape and jailed. 

This inexcusable, heinous crime was latched onto to brand ALL asylum seekers, refugees and people of colour as rapists and paedophiles by unscrupulous far-right and fascist actors - including 'Tommy Robinson', UKIP's Nick Tenconi, and fascist grouplets like Great Britain National Protest. 

Some of the local people who joined this demo may well have concerns about women's safety, but where were they when Women's Aid and other services were being cut?

Where did they protest against the most common of all crimes against women – r
ape, assault and murder by men in their own family, usually a husband or partner? 

At the very start of the demo, a few shouted about Grangemouth and the threatened closure of Alexander Dennis - issues the SSP has spearheaded campaigning on in the streets of Falkirk, calling for nationalisation under workers' control to build clean electric buses for free public transport - but which the full weight of the trade union movement has yet to take action on, which would answer the genuine concerns some locals were expressing. 

But yesterday, they were part of a baying mob, some of them giving Nazi statues, chanting the fascist National Front's slogan of the 1970s, "there's no black in the union jack". 

 

In amongst this crowd were those holding banners with a skull pierced by a bloodstained dagger, saying "Kill Them All, Let God Sort 'em Out" - hardly a peaceful message! Hardly a message of concern for women and children's safety! 

The lumpenised sections on this demo screamed abuse at women stewards on the entirely peaceful anti racistdemo, calling them "c*nts", and described all of us as "paedos". 

 

It took great courage by all those of us who stood for hours, holding the line against likely attacks on the Cladhan hotel, but we did - despite the paltry police presence, with at first only half a dozen police separating the rival crowds.

If we hadn't held the line, the hotel and people within it would have been attacked, with unthinkable human costs. 

TINDERBOX OF ANGER 

This is a harsh reminder of the deep damage done by capitalist crises - including housing shortages, service cuts, job losses in Grangemouth and Alexander Dennis, and grinding poverty - and the unforgivable scapegoating and racist incitement, not just by Reform UK, UKIP and fascist grouplets, but also Starmer's Labour. 

They've created a tinderbox which flares up with the likes of a horrible rape incident, targeting all those fleeing wars and persecution for racist attacks and potential injury and death, as angry mobs are incited to target the "hotel" they're cooped up in for ages, as the government fails to deal with their asylum applications. 

Yesterday's events in Falkirk were possibly the ugliest I've witnessed since our battles against the fascist street fighters of the 1970s. 

However, the fact yesterday's crowds didn't just overpower the substantially smaller anti-racist demonstrators is further evidence they were overwhelmingly NOT fascist street fighters, but an angry, downtrodden crowd who've had their anger channeled into racist bigotry, blind hatred of people who had nothing to do with shoddy housing, benefits cuts, totally inadequate services and other privations. 

As we chanted a few times, "Profit is the enemy". 

A WARNING TO THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT 

Falkirk should be treated as a wake-up call to all trade unions (the STUC included) and socialists that we need to build a positive, working-class socialist alternative in communities ravaged by capitalist attacks, regardless of which 'mainstream' political party is in office. 

Otherwise they'll be prey to the baying mobs and cheap racist slogans of far-right outfits.

The SSP will continue to help resist the poisonous antics of the far right, and call on the full power of the organised trade union movement to be mobilized in demonstrations in the likes of Falkirk, to build unity against poor housing, service cuts (including those for women and children), against closure of Alexander Dennis, and for a positive socialist alternative, with massive wealth redistribution away from the millionaires who hoard it to the millions who need it.

We need a sharp, socialist, class appeal to people most affected by the crisis of capitalist rule, to break them from the millionaire demagogues of the far right, who want to divide us and rob us of even more wealth. 

UNITE against racism! 

UNITE against poor housing, service cuts, violence against women, job losses and poverty! 

For working-class unity and socialist change!

 

https://membership.scottishsocialistparty.org/join_us/

#falkirk #FarRight #FightRacism #endpoverty #WorkersUnite #solidarity #SSP

Trump Furious as AFL-CO Leadership Goes on Offensive

Source

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/Ged

8-8-25

 

Some years back in the early 2000’s my friend and fellow union activist, Roger Martinez and I walked in to our monthly membership meeting. As soon as we got through the door we noticed two guys sitting there who we didn’t recognize.; they certainly didn’t look like any of our blue-collar brothers or sisters.  Our conversation went something like this:

 

“Who do you think those two are Rog?”

 

“They look like a couple of lawyers to me, Rich”

 

“Yeah, that’s what I think”, I reply

 

“They’re either a couple of lawyers or staffers from the International Union.” Says Rog.

 

Well we were half right. They were staffers from the AFL-CIO, and they were there to get our local, Afscme 444, on board with the AFL-CIO’s latest campaign titled; “The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride: "On The Road to Citizenship". The term “Freedom Ride” was in deference to the Freedom Train movement of the 1960’s in the US South., but in 2002 buses would be carrying immigrant workers. Other than that, there was no significant similarity with the past.

 

The idea was to cross the country traveling through working class communities culminating in rallies in Washington DC and New York City. The initiative was started by the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (H.E.R.E.), now H.E.R.E./UNITE, in order to, “….counter anti-immigrant bigotry and xenophobia in the wake of 9/11.”, according to UNITE’s website. It should occur to any serious political activist or trade unionist that being able to explain to a worker in Cleveland why their job went to Mexico and what a worker/union response to it should be, including why it’s in our interest to defend immigrant workers, would be first on the agenda. Unfortunately not.

 

The AFL-CIO’s resolution on the campaign is here. H.E.R.E. represented hotel, restaurant and other workers in the hospitality industry and many of them are immigrants as anyone who has stayed in the big hotels in Las Vegas or other US cities would know. So the union had a vested interest in pushing immigration reform and getting the wider labor movement to support it. This industry has contributed greatly to the percentage of US workers in organized labor. It’s all about revenue which is what members’ dues is.

 

After the two staffers’ presentation there was some discussion. Both Roger and I opposed supporting this campaign as it was presented to us. We distanced ourselves from one member whose opposition was from the right and a touch xenophobic. We explained that while supporting immigrant rights and countering the bigotry and fear of immigrants taking our jobs is essential, the campaign needed to have a program and set of demands that can appeal to all workers on a class basis rather than moral appeals for fairness and respect for immigrants’ rights.

 

We pointed out the failings of a bus tour or freedom ride through middle America for immigrant rights where thousands of jobs had been exported to Mexico and other countries where human labor power was cheaper and democratic rights weaker. In many industries, the immigrant population was beginning to replace native born workers as a cheaper option. This was occurring not because immigrants are more “willing” to work for less as the mass media always frames it in order to denigrate the native worker as lazy and spoiled, the immigrant worker, often limited by language as other issues is more desperate. 

 

An example was the meatpacking industry. Twenty years earlier with the defeat of the Hormel Strike,wages and the conditions in the meatpacking industry continued to worsen. Injuries to workers increased as belt speeds were increased and workers looked for better options. In order to maintain the supply of bodies, meatpacking companies in the mid-west, “…recruited illegal workers in Mexican villages and brought them north. Nebraska state officials estimated that illegal migrant workers represented 25% of the meat packing workforce.” Sharing The Pie p 68 by Steve Brouwer.

 

It was a serious mistake to organize a bus tour through many US working class communities with immigrant rights as the only theme, when these workers had their jobs exported to Mexico or they were replaced at half the wages by Mexican or other workers from our southern border (Canadians are in no rush to work here). Surely, this would do more to strengthen anti-immigrant feelings than build solidarity and class unity between immigrant and native born workers. Any person with an ounce of sense would understand that.

 

But the purpose of that bus tour in 2002 was not to strengthen or build the organized or unorganized workers’ movement. There is nothing further from the minds of the strategists atop the AFL-CIO. That’s why there were no demands that would appeal to the average worker to get involved in anything. Even those that sympathised with and supported favourable legislation to protect and guarantee immigrant rights would hardly take to the streets for that. 

 

The resolution from the AFL-CIO supporting the campaign in 2002 makes it clear that the goal of the mobilization, “…was meaningful legislative reform in Washington, D.C……” In other words, pressure the Dems to pass a law here and there. That’s it.

 

I am reminded of these experiences as I came across the AFL-CIO’s latest bus tour campaign launched a month ago at union headquarters just down from the White House, (closer to their friends and safer ground, far from the folks who pay the dues). The new bus tour is titled, “It’s Better in a Union: Fighting for Freedom, Fairness and Security” bus tour. Wow! The strategists atop organized labor have got a gem there. Not sure many workers will take to the streets, miss the PTA meeting, extra overtime work needed to pay the child care for that one even though we know we’re better off in a union than working non-union in most cases.

 

  “It’s ‘Better in a Union’ bus tour is officially bringing union power to a city near you!” says the AFL-CIO in its announcement as the, “…bus tour will crisscross the nation to amplify workers’ voices on our fights to organize….”

 

Political Activity

Let’s be clear here. The heads of organized labor have no intention of mobilizing the potential power of their members in order to counter the offensive of capital that will continue with Trump.

 

The Freedom Bus Tour 22 years ago and the bus tour today is simply an attempt by the labor hierarchy to get their Democratic Party friends in to office and return to the status quo of a somewhat less aggressive administration than the present one.

 

The split that took place in the AFL-CIO back in 2005 that led to the Change to Win Coalition caused much excitement among the liberals but that split was over the same issue, organizing and drawing more members in to organized labor giving it increased clout at the ballot box. In other words, it was all about electing Democrats to office and organized labor has given the Democratic Party billions over the decades and is unequivocally pro market and pro-management.

 

But this support for the other Wall Street party has undermined labor’s leadership even further and is one of the main factors in the rise of Trump. The disgust with the two parties of capitalism is so deep that the union leadership’s support has to be carefully couched within obscure phrases. This has been ongoing. I was at an Afscme International Convention back in the 1990’s when I first started noticing that open support for the Democrats was not so prevalent and was replaced by the need to elect candidates that support “working families” no matter the party though that’s pretty much always Democrats. The term working class here in the US is avoided like the plague.

 

At the announcement for the super militant Bus Tour last month leading up to Labor day, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, “rallied the crowd around how a union contract gives workers the freedom, fairness and security”. “And the answer is not a political party—the answer is not more of the broken status quo—the answer is a good union job!”, she added.

 

Why Won’t The AFL-CIO Leadership Form a Party?

 

The answer to that question is fairly simple. As things stand, the folks that sit atop the AFL-CIO, an organization with 14 million members in it and whose members could, with little effort bring the US economy to a halt, can always blame politics in general or the Democrats in particular when they turn on us. For the labor hierarchy to venture in to the political arena with an independent party of our own based on our organizations and our communities, it’s a tricky situation; such a development would inspire millions of workers as the two parties of capital are so despised but it would also mean they would have to produce the goods and the labor leadership is wedded to the market, capitalism, profits and the right of the boss to make them at our expense. So they dodge the bullet any way they can including forcing concessions on their own members.

 

This does not mean we should give up on our unions. We should not, as some socialists and leftists argue, abandon these organizations that our ancestors built through great sacrifice and struggle, without a fight. Part of the campaign against the class collaborationist policies of our own leaders is like the wider struggle for reforms in society as a whole. The conclusions workers draw from such a struggle for reforms is that they cannot resolve the crises that we face in capitalist society or the unions. What workers learn in the struggle for reforms is that we have to change society. We have to usher in a new era.

 

I have been out of the labor movement battles for 20 years or more but I cannot accept that the bureaucracy is so entrenched there is no possibility of movement at all; they are like rotten apples on a tree that seem to be firmly fixed but the slightest breeze dislodges them without effort. We need to provide that wind.

 

If you are in a local union in particular and are an elected, rank and file leader (not a paid staffer) and you are not engaged in this internal struggle to take control of our organizations then you are not doing your job.