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Hundreds
of working-class activists are expected to gather in Dearborn, Mich.,
April 11-13 for a conference with the theme “Rebuilding Labor’s Power.”
Organized by the widely read monthly Labor Notes, this event is the
latest in a tradition of such conferences, with topical themes, held
every two to three years since the 1980s.
Labor
Notes presents itself as a source of news and education at the service
of those putting “movement back in to the labor movement.” While their
current obviously has a point of view on labor activities—they describe
themselves as troublemakers, using a slingshot as their logo—their
conferences are not decision-making bodies. No coordinated plan of
action is expected to emanate from Dearborn.
Past
gatherings have focused largely on issues of union democracy and
trade-union tactics—particularly shop-floor struggles. Prior
conferences have provided useful exchanges of experience for those
trying to build adversarial unions along these lines, and the coming
one will undoubtedly provide much more of the same.
When
Labor Notes was founded in 1979, emphasis on such issues seemed
logical. Some successful battles were still being waged against
employer demands for concessions. Important shop-floor resistance met
early attempts to impose “lean manufacturing” transformations in
industry. Teamsters for a Democratic Union, New Directions in the UAW,
and the New Directions caucus among New York City transit workers, offered
promise of bringing democracy to some of the most authoritarian unions.
Such
struggles continue, of course, and deserve attention and support. But
the relationship of forces and terms of engagement in the U.S. class
struggle have been drastically altered since 1979:
•
The massive restructuring of manufacturing and transportation,
escalating in the 1980s, along with later massive off-shoring of many
more jobs after NAFTA, physically eliminated many major bastions of militant
unionism. The new globalization of capital also brought to the
bargaining table credible threats of further job loss to back up
demands for more give-backs. Recently, bankruptcy laws have been utilized
effectively by bosses to cancel existing union contracts.
•
New Directions in the UAW and TDU suffered sharp reverses after some
short-lived victories. Worse yet, when candidates supported by New
Directions came to power in the New York transit union, the union leadership soon degenerated into a new
bureaucracy, not worker democracy.
•
Saddled with the union bureaucracy’s ill-fated postwar choice to keep
basic benefits tied to employer contracts, runaway costs of health care
and defined benefit pensions can no longer be sustained through collective
bargaining by even the historically most powerful unions–such as the
UAW.
`•
And most recently, growing awareness of the depth and urgency of the
global-warming crisis has called in to question the viability of
millions of union jobs. With no vision of how to work for a green
economic conversion that maintains decent jobs, many union bureaucrats
line up with corporate polluters, becoming part of the problem rather
than the solution.
Not
to pile it on, we also have to note that the worst of these defeats for
labor have come during “good times” for the American economy. We now
face a likely major recession.
Despite
this sorry picture, socialists, of course, continue to believe that
trade unions remain indispensable to defending and advancing the
interests of workers under capitalism—and even beyond, in a transition
from capitalism to the ultimate goal of a truly classless society.
But
it is clear that the present organized labor movement in the United
States is in mortal danger. Where
unions are not being smashed they are withering away. Surrendering past
gains in vain attempts at “partnership” with the bosses makes them
appear useless to the unorganized—and a growing number of their present
members as well. While troublemakers with slingshots still have a role,
much more is needed to halt and reverse the decline of the only class-based
mass organizations in this country.
The
coming conference looks more promising in expanding scope. The keynote
speaker is Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses
Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. CAN is the biggest
and most successful of the handful of American unions that could be
described as adversarial rather than dedicated to “partnership” with
the boss. In these bleak times
for labor they have won a number of impressive organizing and contract
settlement victories.
But
they’ve also done a lot beyond the workplace. They mobilized in
California to win, and then successfully defended, legally mandated
patient-to-nurse staffing ratios. They have been early and staunch
supporters of the Labor Party and US Labor Against the War.
Now
they have stepped up to the plate to take on building a mass national
social movement to win single-payer health care in the United States.
They will find, and have found, allies across the country already
working on this issue. For example, the Single-Payer Action Network of
Ohio, launched several years ago at the initiative of the Ohio State
Labor Party, has 15 functioning local chapters around Ohio, and is
supported by dozens of community and faith-based groups as well as over
50 unions.
Another
worthwhile feature in the coming conference is the participation of Les
Leopold, in his capacity as author of a recently published biography of
Tony Mazzocchi, “The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor.”
Discussions
around this book inevitably lead to issues such as welding alliances
between labor and environmentalists, and building an independent working-class
party organically connected to organized labor—both quite relevant to
today’s challenges. The scheduling of a workshop on “Labor and
Environmental Coalitions” is a further modest step in the right direction.
Readers
of Socialist Action and Labor Standard attending the conference can
learn much about the present state of the activist wing in the labor movement.
And the current represented by these publications has something to
offer in the discussion about rebuilding labor’s power.
This
socialist current is part of historical continuity in the labor
movement going back to the days of the early IWW, the Trade Union
Education League of the 1920s, and leadership of the 1934 Minneapolis
Teamster and Toledo Auto-Lite strikes.
More recent activist participation include the Right to Vote
Caucus in the United Transportation Union in the Seventies, the P-9
Support Committee for Hormel strikers in the Eighties, the launching of
the Labor Party in the Nineties, and the formation of US Labor Against
the War in 2003. The collective memory of these activities is a
precious asset for today’s discussions.
An
important component of the labor strategy heritage of the SA/LS current
is the creation of a class-struggle left wing within the broader labor movement.
A resolution adopted by our “ancestors” shortly after they were
expelled from the Socialist Party in 1937 still seems quite relevant:
“The
need of a nationally connected left wing in the American trade-union
movement is the most urgent problem in that field today. … Without a
left-wing movement standing on the militant platform of the class
struggle, the trade-union movement in this country is doomed to the
demoralizing effects of class collaboration and the dead-hand control
of the reactionary union bureaucracy.”
They
made clear that they didn’t consider their own small group to be the
left wing: “Progressive groups should be conceived of not only as
fields of recruitment for the revolutionary party, but as the means of
setting in motion the largest number of workers at a given time for the
advancement of a left-wing position and left-wing leadership.”
While
organized socialists are an even smaller grouping in the unions today
than they were in 1937, there are a number of forces that qualify as
potential candidates for a class-struggle left-wing as envisioned by
the pioneers. These include:
•
Unions—such as CNA, UE, and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee—that
have strong adversarial positions.
•
Nontraditional formations such as the now numerous worker centers.
•
US Labor Against the War.
•
The Labor Party.
•
Opposition groups such as Soldiers of Solidarity and Future of the
Union.
•
Local groups like the St. Paul Labor Speakers Club.
And,
of course, activists around Labor Notes.
It
would be premature to launch yet another new formal structure to try to
bring these forces together. Expanded
discussions around the Labor Notes conference will be helpful. Even
better, collaboration in action around projects such as the Guaranteed
Health Care campaign of the nurses; solidarity campaigns; antiwar actions;
environmental initiatives; and struggles against racism and for
immigrant rights will offer further opportunities for building trust
and confidence required for launching a more structured left wing.
For
more information on the Labor Notes conference: www.labornotes.org/conference
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