Socialist Action /June 2000
Why AFL-CIO Lost the China Trade Vote
In 1993, the AFL-CIO banked on the Democratic Party to block the passage
of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It passed anyway. This
year the AFL-CIO tops again turned to the Democrats to defeat the adoption
of a bill giving China permanent normal trade relations (PNTR). Labor officials
claimed that the proposed legislation would cost workers at least 800,000
jobs.
Democrats were persistently warned that unions saw the China bill as
a litmus test and if the bill passed, disappointed workers would "Remember
in November," that is, at election time.
Nevertheless, on May 24, Democrats from the White House to the Congress
once again turned their backs on their "labor friends." The PNTR
bill passed 237-197. Actually, it wasn't that close. Hours earlier a 294-136
congressional vote stymied a labor-backed effort to derail the pending trade
bill vote.
The earlier vote also allowed some of "labor's friends" to
see that their vote wasn't needed to pass the PNTR bill. That allowed them
to safely and cynically switch back to the unions' side.
There's no doubt that when the bosses have super-profits in their sights
(as in China), workers are in for a tough fight. But no one should think
that workers are as weak as the congressional NAFTA and PNTR trade votes
indicate.
The history of workers' upsurges during the Great Depression and in the
wake of World War II show that America's ruling class need not get its way.
More recently, the popular Teamsters UPS strike and Seattle anti-WTO street
demonstrations showed on a smaller scale the same thing. All of these examples
also demonstrated the strategic power of mass actions that are independent
of the ruling class and its political puppets who daily put Pinocchio to
shame.
The AFL-CIO asserts that it is championing workers' rights here and in
China in its attempts to defeat the China trade bill. It denies that it
is using workers' rights as a cover to hide a protectionist agenda to safeguard
certain domestic industries' profits, in hopes of saving U.S. workers' jobs.
But that's not believable, given the labor hierarchy's history of "Buy
American" campaigns, inter-union raiding, and today's talk of workers'
rights in one breath, and the bureaucrats' predictions of job losses in
the next.
Whatever its intentions, why doesn't the labor hierarchy use the class-struggle
methods that rebuilt the American labor movement during the 1930s to further
its aims? Why did AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney limit labor's protests
to lobbying, though admittedly more vigorous lobbying than is usual from
the labor officialdom.
What's wrong with the mass-action strategy that French and German workers
have used to win a shorter workweek and defend past gains?
The short answer is that the Democratic "friends of labor"
wouldn't tolerate it and its implicit social instability for an instant.
In other words, there can not be a successful fight against Corporate America
for even the narrowest of aims by organized labor, as long as labor is tied
to the Democrats.
Some would-be "friends" of the labor movement suggest that
concessions be made to labor, as a balm for union officials' hurt feelings
due to the China vote and undoubtedly to keep workers tied to the political
status quo. A New York Times writer ( Thomas L. Friedman) suggests that
politicians and corporate bosses sit down with organized labor and ask what
can be done to address labor's "concerns," short of compromising
Big Business's basic interests.
However, workers have won little and lost much from past labor-business-government
conferences and tripartite boards. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich proposes
scrapping the laws that allow firms to permanently replace strikers with
scabs (he calls them "replacement workers").
Reich's suggestion brings to mind the concessions made to labor during
World War II, in exchange for no-strike pledges. But organized labor's threat
to "Remember in November" hardly matches the bosses' wartime urgency
to keep workers militancy contained.
Only a real movement toward class political independence, probably fueled
by a general labor upsurge, will bring political concessions from the bosses.
But those concessions will likely be puny compared to what workers will
be aiming for by then. -CHARLES WALKER
Socialist Action /June 2000 |