pauljpoposky
23rd May 2009, 22:01
Why we need Fighting Unions, NOW!
by Paul Joseph Poposky
In The Transitional Program, written by socialist revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, the first few sentences explain that the world political situation as a whole is mainly characterized by the crisis of leadership of the working class. Trotsky then goes into some detail explaining how the cowardly and opportunistic character of the many historic leaders of the labor movement has lead to one defeat or incomplete victory after another. The sit down strikes and factory occupations of the 1930's and the decades that followed may have won important concessions from business all around the developed world; yet even on the verge of these victories the leadership of the labor federations (the CIO in the United States) and the workers' parties and organizations (the social democrats, anarchists, and labor party leads) did everything possible to put the breaks on the workers' movement and dampen revolutionary pressure from below. These corrupt leaders and officials, elected and entrusted by the workers to represent and to LEAD us, have instead betrayed us in some of our greatest historic moments of struggle and potential triumph. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the betrayal of the French workers in 1968.
However, workers need not look only to historic events for examples of the inaction - or outright betrayal! - of the labor movement leadership. Our present worldwide "Great Recession" is demonstrating to many the flawed, ill "logic" of our current leaders' strategy of "jointness" and "corporate unionism" (labor-management "partnerships"), concessions in the name of profitability, "shared sacrifice" and even "class harmony". For example, the leaders of the UAW have wasted decades opposing calls from the rank and file for militant action and encouraging the members to accept one concession after another in the name of "maintaining corporate profitability". The reasoning goes something like "what's good for the company is good for the workers" or "if we don't give the bosses what they want, they'll go someplace else and take our jobs with them or go out of business".
Another example, perhaps far-more disturbing, may be found in the 2005 Change to Win split with the AFL-CIO. Andy Stern, president of SEIU and a leader in the Chang to Win federation, lead the split criticizing the AFL-CIO's supposed "outdated" and "doomed" philosophy that the bosses & owners are not on the same team as the workers; they are, in fact, inherent adversaries with fundamentally different interests. But don't tell that to Stern, who calls for a new "win-win" strategy aimed at fostering "cooperation" between bosses and unions and, according to SEIU Members Active for Reform Today opposition-organizer Zev Kvitky, will "transform the trade unions into a series of customer service centers for hearing grievances, thus dis-empowering the rank and file and using methods that are antithetical to the labor movement..." (Unity and Independence, Feb 2009).
The strategy of labor-management partnership and concessions in the name of profitability have done nothing to improve the lives of workers or advance our movement. Labor leaders who cling to the notion of concession bargaining are bankrupting the unions and the workers they represent, and serve only to soften the blows corporate management have been raining down on organized labor for decades. Also, it must be pointed out that each concession sets a dangerous precedent and opens the door for the boss to demand the next concession and the next one after that, on and on and on... This is actually the very strategy that the bosses often use in making their demands for concessions from workers. How long before all the inches we surrender to the bosses add up to a mile? One cannot help but be left asking the question: why is it that the boss is making the demands here and we, the workers, are the ones conceeding? Isn't the union supposed to work the other way around? Aren't we then literally giving away the very gains our parents and grandparents generation struggled for? Aren't we giving away our childrens' futures? If "helping the company" through concessions is such a good idea why shouldn't we all "choose" to work for minimum wage and without benefits, breaks or any safety standards at all; wouldn't that help the company out even more, make our jobs even more secure?
The current labor leadership is not playing an independent role in the struggle of labor against capitalist exploitation. What we need is rank and file pressure on our leaders to take militant action to confront the bosses and their political support in the bosses' parties. If leadership is telling us that they are not willing to lead or to organize the actions that can lead us to victory then the rank and file can push our movement forward through militant action and independent organizing; if necessary, independent of the labor leaders themselves. The workers at Republic Windows and Doors, Visteon, Aradco and the FRETECO (Venezuelan occupied factories) have shown the way for workers around the world, occupying their workplaces and absolutely stopping production or liquidation of assets. Just think of what workers could accomplish if we were to shut down our local and national capitals, like the Teamsters historically did in Washington, D.C., while simultaneously stopping production and work across the board through sit-ins and solidarity strikes...
If governments have enough capital to bail out the banks and insure the corporate profits of key industries, supposedly to "protect jobs", then there is more than enough funding to keep factories and workplaces open and keep workers paid and working. But the capitalists will never voluntarily make this choice, preferring instead to use tax dollars to keep on financing their own parties and lavish lifestyles and insure their own personal profits. Laws and reform are only the legal reflection of the movement and struggle of classes which shape the relations of society. Only the workers themselves, struggling together against their exploiters as a class, can win immediate reforms as well as the more fundamental changes that really matter.
The rank and file can take initiative by demanding NO MORE concessions, NO to labor-management partnership and NO political support for the bosses' political parties. Instead we need our mass organizations to focus on demands that move us forward, like a complete break between labor and the Democratic Party and the formation of an independent mass Party of Labor. Such a party can fight, without reservation, for demands such as the Employee Free Choice Act and the repeal of all anti-labor laws, the complete nationalization of industry as part of a rationally planned economy to meet human need - NOT profits! - under the democratic control of the workers, guaranteed housing, free cradle to grave education and union hiring and training halls in every community, full employment at a living wage for all and a single-payer, socialized national healthcare system (the only truly universal healthcare!), protection of the environment and the outlawing of all forms of discrimination.
The stakes for workers in the United States and around the world today are, without a doubt, as high as they've been in over a generation. With over 5.1 million jobs lost to the recession in the US since 2007 and hundreds of thousands more disappearing each month, and many never coming back, countless millions of workers in the US and worldwide are losing their homes, benefits and possibility of retirement, and many their very lives. As another great organizer and leader of the movement once said, "life teaches". While times are tough for us all, many workers, through their own experience, are beginning to come to the same conclusions that this is a time when it is crucial that we hold our heads high, our fists clenched, and fight alongside each other for our mutual interests. We, the workers of the world, need leaders who are willing to lead on a fighting program, leaders who will not bow down or sell-out to the enemies of labor and the captains of industry & exploitation. United on a fighting platform with leadership equal to the task, we can win!
by Paul Joseph Poposky
In The Transitional Program, written by socialist revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, the first few sentences explain that the world political situation as a whole is mainly characterized by the crisis of leadership of the working class. Trotsky then goes into some detail explaining how the cowardly and opportunistic character of the many historic leaders of the labor movement has lead to one defeat or incomplete victory after another. The sit down strikes and factory occupations of the 1930's and the decades that followed may have won important concessions from business all around the developed world; yet even on the verge of these victories the leadership of the labor federations (the CIO in the United States) and the workers' parties and organizations (the social democrats, anarchists, and labor party leads) did everything possible to put the breaks on the workers' movement and dampen revolutionary pressure from below. These corrupt leaders and officials, elected and entrusted by the workers to represent and to LEAD us, have instead betrayed us in some of our greatest historic moments of struggle and potential triumph. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the betrayal of the French workers in 1968.
However, workers need not look only to historic events for examples of the inaction - or outright betrayal! - of the labor movement leadership. Our present worldwide "Great Recession" is demonstrating to many the flawed, ill "logic" of our current leaders' strategy of "jointness" and "corporate unionism" (labor-management "partnerships"), concessions in the name of profitability, "shared sacrifice" and even "class harmony". For example, the leaders of the UAW have wasted decades opposing calls from the rank and file for militant action and encouraging the members to accept one concession after another in the name of "maintaining corporate profitability". The reasoning goes something like "what's good for the company is good for the workers" or "if we don't give the bosses what they want, they'll go someplace else and take our jobs with them or go out of business".
Another example, perhaps far-more disturbing, may be found in the 2005 Change to Win split with the AFL-CIO. Andy Stern, president of SEIU and a leader in the Chang to Win federation, lead the split criticizing the AFL-CIO's supposed "outdated" and "doomed" philosophy that the bosses & owners are not on the same team as the workers; they are, in fact, inherent adversaries with fundamentally different interests. But don't tell that to Stern, who calls for a new "win-win" strategy aimed at fostering "cooperation" between bosses and unions and, according to SEIU Members Active for Reform Today opposition-organizer Zev Kvitky, will "transform the trade unions into a series of customer service centers for hearing grievances, thus dis-empowering the rank and file and using methods that are antithetical to the labor movement..." (Unity and Independence, Feb 2009).
The strategy of labor-management partnership and concessions in the name of profitability have done nothing to improve the lives of workers or advance our movement. Labor leaders who cling to the notion of concession bargaining are bankrupting the unions and the workers they represent, and serve only to soften the blows corporate management have been raining down on organized labor for decades. Also, it must be pointed out that each concession sets a dangerous precedent and opens the door for the boss to demand the next concession and the next one after that, on and on and on... This is actually the very strategy that the bosses often use in making their demands for concessions from workers. How long before all the inches we surrender to the bosses add up to a mile? One cannot help but be left asking the question: why is it that the boss is making the demands here and we, the workers, are the ones conceeding? Isn't the union supposed to work the other way around? Aren't we then literally giving away the very gains our parents and grandparents generation struggled for? Aren't we giving away our childrens' futures? If "helping the company" through concessions is such a good idea why shouldn't we all "choose" to work for minimum wage and without benefits, breaks or any safety standards at all; wouldn't that help the company out even more, make our jobs even more secure?
The current labor leadership is not playing an independent role in the struggle of labor against capitalist exploitation. What we need is rank and file pressure on our leaders to take militant action to confront the bosses and their political support in the bosses' parties. If leadership is telling us that they are not willing to lead or to organize the actions that can lead us to victory then the rank and file can push our movement forward through militant action and independent organizing; if necessary, independent of the labor leaders themselves. The workers at Republic Windows and Doors, Visteon, Aradco and the FRETECO (Venezuelan occupied factories) have shown the way for workers around the world, occupying their workplaces and absolutely stopping production or liquidation of assets. Just think of what workers could accomplish if we were to shut down our local and national capitals, like the Teamsters historically did in Washington, D.C., while simultaneously stopping production and work across the board through sit-ins and solidarity strikes...
If governments have enough capital to bail out the banks and insure the corporate profits of key industries, supposedly to "protect jobs", then there is more than enough funding to keep factories and workplaces open and keep workers paid and working. But the capitalists will never voluntarily make this choice, preferring instead to use tax dollars to keep on financing their own parties and lavish lifestyles and insure their own personal profits. Laws and reform are only the legal reflection of the movement and struggle of classes which shape the relations of society. Only the workers themselves, struggling together against their exploiters as a class, can win immediate reforms as well as the more fundamental changes that really matter.
The rank and file can take initiative by demanding NO MORE concessions, NO to labor-management partnership and NO political support for the bosses' political parties. Instead we need our mass organizations to focus on demands that move us forward, like a complete break between labor and the Democratic Party and the formation of an independent mass Party of Labor. Such a party can fight, without reservation, for demands such as the Employee Free Choice Act and the repeal of all anti-labor laws, the complete nationalization of industry as part of a rationally planned economy to meet human need - NOT profits! - under the democratic control of the workers, guaranteed housing, free cradle to grave education and union hiring and training halls in every community, full employment at a living wage for all and a single-payer, socialized national healthcare system (the only truly universal healthcare!), protection of the environment and the outlawing of all forms of discrimination.
The stakes for workers in the United States and around the world today are, without a doubt, as high as they've been in over a generation. With over 5.1 million jobs lost to the recession in the US since 2007 and hundreds of thousands more disappearing each month, and many never coming back, countless millions of workers in the US and worldwide are losing their homes, benefits and possibility of retirement, and many their very lives. As another great organizer and leader of the movement once said, "life teaches". While times are tough for us all, many workers, through their own experience, are beginning to come to the same conclusions that this is a time when it is crucial that we hold our heads high, our fists clenched, and fight alongside each other for our mutual interests. We, the workers of the world, need leaders who are willing to lead on a fighting program, leaders who will not bow down or sell-out to the enemies of labor and the captains of industry & exploitation. United on a fighting platform with leadership equal to the task, we can win!