Workers' money down the toilet!

[redstar2000]

AFL-CIO Doubles Spending on Political Efforts

In labor news, the executive committee of the AFL-CIO has decided to double how much it spends on political efforts instead of renewing its focus on new union organizing. The decision splits two of the major union leaders in the country: AFL CIO chief John Sweeney and Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union. Stern has threatened to pull SEIU out of the AFL-CIO and launch a new workers movement if the AFL-CIO doesn't engage in more union organizing. He criticized the AFL-CIO's decision Wednesday to increase its budget for political and legislative activity from $45 million to $90 million. Stern along with Teamsters chief James Hoffa unsuccessfully led an effort for the AFL-CIO to shift $35 million of union funds into new union organizing efforts. Stern said "I don't think there is a plan for organizing. I do not put much faith in elected officials of either party." Sweeney argued in favor of increasing the union's political work. He said "Unless we change the anti-worker policies that are destroying good jobs and stop the forces -- from the National Labor Relations Board to state governments -- that are rolling back workers' rights, we can't win gains for workers."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/03/1524203

Wonder why fewer and fewer American workers are even interested in trade unions at all?

What's the point in paying dues to a union that not only doesn't fight for you but takes your money and hands it over to a fucking pack of corporate politicians?

Why call these outfits "unions" at all?

They don't act like unions.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[codyvo]

I agree many large unions are bought out by management and some of the leaders are very corrupt but their are some unions that stuck to their guns and are still fighting for what is right, like the verizon union.

[Sabocat]

I would agree that in appearance, some of the unions like the Communication Workers (Verizon and the rest) have struck and hung in there for demands, but the workers still for the most part are encouraged to take mediocre deals offered to them.

After the firing of the PATCO (air traffic controllers) and the lack of response by the AFL-CIO I think it's been pretty obvious where their interests lie. In my mind, that officially killed organized labor (at least AFL-CIO unions).

Currently look at the pathetic deals workers are being asked (and taking) from the airline industries. Reduced wages, longer hours, less benefits, cancelling of pensions, etc, etc.

Where is the AFL-CIO in all of this? No where to be seen.

The AFL-CIO and the NLRB are nothing but bosses control mechanisms.

[Paradox]

They are a part of the AFL-CIO, but what do you think of the UFW?

http://ufw.org/

[Zingu]

There is always the IWW....

[Anarchist Freedom]

Not in america most workers here are UAW/Bush lovers.Then again im in michigan and The ford plant is about a mile or 2 from my house.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2005, 10:01 PM
There is always the IWW....
No, in fact, the IWW is not a union, and has not functioned as a union for decades - when was the last time the IWW, or any of these "revolutionary union" outfits, conducted a strike, or represented a substantial fraction of the workers in any workplace? Sometime in the 70s or 80s there was some strike at a movie theater they sometimes talk about....the most rotten of the AFL-CIO unions has a lot more fight in it than that.

In fact, the IWW and similar groups are political sects, little different from those which claim to be parties.

In contrast, the AFL-CIO unions are in fact unions, and do in fact act like them, organizing workers who conduct strikes and other fightbacks against the bosses.

That remains true no matter how rotten the leadership gets.

Even in the best of times - say the 30s labor upsurge - it wasn't that the leadership was better than today. Certainly not in its support to the Democrats, and its opposition to independent working-class political action.

Rather, the ranks were more conscious and mobilized to fight.

And however weakened and housebroken the unions have become, compared to that 30s peak, they remain stronger in a number of important respects than before that time. The organization of a fair bit of the mass production industries, the many workplaces organized by one union rather than several craft unions, the ending of the AFL's racial exclusion policies.

All that was broken by the rise of the CIO and other labor fightbacks in the 30s, and the post-WWII strike wave....which came out of the existing unions, the AFL, not out of any "revolutionary union" much less from those middle-class radicals who wholly disdain the working class as "sheep." It came out of an existing union movement which was, if anything, worse than today.

And the conservative stranglehold of the bureaucracy is weaker, compared to the situation during the long prosperity of the 50s through the 70s. At that time it was possible to hope for a gradual improvement in wages and "fringes" without much need to fight for 'em, as a byproduct of capitalist prosperity and the U.S.'s nearly unchallenged post-WWII domination of the world market. That's over; everyone knows that the bosses are sending us to the wall and it's necessary to find a way to fight back.

It's inconceivable, for example, that even the labor officials could take a position as pro-war as George Meany once did toward a war as unpopular as Vietnam. The contrast is even greater, I'm convinced, among the ranks.

The hard part is how, and the failure to show - by example - how is the real reason why many workers are reluctant to join unions. Not primarily the bureaucracy's electoral policies or even priorities.

What do you do if the company decided to close down your workplace, as Wal-Mart recently did with a Canadian store where employees chose to organize a union? How can you win a strike in the face of the threat of replacement by scabs? Etc.

Disgustapated:

After the firing of the PATCO (air traffic controllers) and the lack of response by the AFL-CIO I think it's been pretty obvious where their interests lie. In my mind, that officially killed organized labor (at least AFL-CIO unions).

Yeah, I've heard that a million times from union fighters....not killed, of course, they're in touch with reality, but that the great retreat and weakening started there.

Lemme suggest this cliche is a bit off, and the Chrysler bailout earlier is a better place to start....where workers voted to cut their own pay, in order to save "our company." A problem and challenge that's still with us.

All these problems can only be solved by the workers, in the course of the fight....nobody can contribute to solving them except by joining those fights.

Not by identifying with the anti-union sentiment which unfortunately some workers hold...and certainly not by complaining about dues, which every boss anti-union outfit, like the "National Right to Work Committee", also does. There's nothing progressive about such complaints.

Heck, even the use of dues for "political action" is a point of special attack for the "Right to Work" people....they argue workers' organizations shouldn't concern themselves with politics.

Now, I'll give Redstar the benefit of the doubt and suppose that he doesn't agree with the "Right to Work" people on that - or does he, given his anti-electoralism? Anyway, if he's arguing for independent working-class political action rather than the current policy of supporting one of the bosses' parties, I agree 100%. Sweeney's right that politics can't be ignored, while the state's being used as an instrument of unionbusting. But his approach has brought no results in that respect, nor can it, since both parties are enemies of workers...and can be counted on to promptly ban railworkers' strikes, for example.

The article's got a certain significance in relation to that...many leftists hailed Sweeney's election a few years back, believing in his rhetoric about organizing.

But in fact, the Sweeney faction was all about shoring up the labor bureaucracy's declining influence in bourgeois politics. Incidentally, part of that has been a shift away from giving money directly to Democrats' election campaigns and towards organizing the AFL-CIO's own "get out the vote effort"...no different in principle of course, still for an employers' party. But a small factual correction from something Redstar seems to assume ("hands it over to a fucking pack of corporate politicians").

Anyway, the truth is that the AFL-CIO and most affiliated unions haven't specially increased their priority on organizing, even though the bureaucracy is clearly worried about its declining dues base. There are a couple exceptions, like the Carpenters, which have actually expanded as they've begun organizing mostly-Latino drywallers and other construction workers. But mostly, there'll have to be some upsurge from the ranks before some section of the bureaucracy, feeling the pressure, begins to take a more fighting policy.

A new CIO, as Redstar - perhaps more accurately than he intended - put it in another thread.

[Sabocat]

What do you do if the company decided to close down your workplace, as Wal-Mart recently did with a Canadian store where employees chose to organize a union? How can you win a strike in the face of the threat of replacement by scabs? Etc.

How do you win a strike in the face of the threat of replacement by scabs? The way it was always done and to to some degree is still done today. By violently protesting the scab workers, and by sabotaging the workplace and or work sight.

Even recently in Boston, when a contractor used scab labor to wire a new building hi rise project, the local electrical union went into the building at night and cut all the wiring the scabs had put in, costing close to a million dollars to the contractor/builder, and delaying the project for months. In the long run, they ended up using the union electricians to wire the job.

About 20 years ago, the Steelworkers Union, when confronted with scabs at a DOD Airforce Forging plant, would routinely shovel steel chips into the machinery to down it so that it couldn't be used. The company would have to erect "watchtowers" at the gates, and the scabs would get bussed into the plant. Due to the added cost, and loss of production, (the scabs were not able to produce with the same quality and quantity) the company would always capitulate and go back to the bargaining table. The result was, that in this particular plant, the workers were the highest paid steelworkers in the state. Since those days, the union leadership has softened and have accepted concessions that have basically scaled back salaries, vacation, pension and the like.


Yeah, I've heard that a million times from union fighters

Union fighters? LOL

With regards to the Patco strike, if the AFL-CIO had backed them up, they could have shut the whole country down. Airlines, Trucks & Freight, etc. etc. What do you think the odds are that they would have stayed fired if the entire AFL-CIO union membership had struck in solidarity? By allowing the government to fire the union members, they proved that they were indeed a toothless tiger.


No, in fact, the IWW is not a union, and has not functioned as a union for decades - when was the last time the IWW, or any of these "revolutionary union" outfits, conducted a strike, or represented a substantial fraction of the workers in any workplace?

Here come the Wobblies!

In a labor battle with roots dating back 100 years, independent truckers and Starbucks employees are now joining the wild and contentious Wobblies.

On a fog-soaked December morning, near an Interstate 5 offramp on the outskirts of Stockton, about a dozen men huddled in a loose circle. Some wore the traditional long beards and Sikh turbans of their native India. The younger men were mostly clean-shaven and sported brand-name windbreakers. To the north was a truck dealership. To the south, shrouded in the fog, was a dog-food factory.

The men spoke animatedly in Punjabi and then broke up, shuffling around the empty lot, talking on cell phones and killing time. Occasionally, a taller man would call them together again for another meeting.

This is what a wildcat truckers strike looks like in the Stockton Valley.

These were independent, short-haul truckers, mostly recent immigrants from India. Although they own their own trucks and technically are self-employed, these drivers usually contract exclusively with one company and depend on that company for all of their work. In this case, the company is Kach Transportation.

But, for three days in December, none of these drivers hauling for Kach went to work. And the company couldn’t move goods from the area rail yards to the stores and warehouses in the surrounding communities, like Stockton, Sacramento, Modesto, Woodland and points in between.

Read the rest (http://www.kinkosworkersunite.info/node/54)

Solidarity News, Strikes, and Alerts:

* starbucksunion.org - Starbucks Workers Union (IWW).
* bordersunion.org - Borders Books Workers Union (UFCW Local 789).
* kinkosworkersunite.info - Kinkos Workers Unite (Independent).
* wholeworkersunite.org - Whole Foods Workers Unite (Independent).

Link (http://www.iww.org/)

[workersunity]

that is why we need people to get into them and infiltrate them, talk to the union members and tell them the truth

[redstar2000]

More on business unionism...

Or maybe we should just call it "the union business".

Andrew Stern & Company (the "progressives") have another card up their sleeve...a scheme to appoint the leadership in city or state "labor councils".

Here are some quotes from Chris Chafe, Chief of Staff and Political Director at UNITE HERE, made on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" program...


Interviewer: I'd like to ask Chris Chafe. Criticism of your side from some progressive members of the labor movement is that you are pushing centralization of bigger unions, less autonomy by the local central labor councils, and more top-down structure. On one hand, you're pushing for more grassroots organizing; on the other hand you're pushing for a much more of a top-down structure of decision-making within the labor movement and stifling, in effect rank and file democracy. What's your response to that?

Chafe: I would disagree completely with that critique. Let me explain why. I think we have -- in our group we have, in the leaders of many of these unions, their local leadership are the leadership of many of the state federations and the central labor bodies. So they are a key component of our grassroots strength. I think we want to see a stronger state federation or area labor councils, as they're called in some places, or CLCs. We want to see, if you look at what has worked --

Interviewer: But you want them appointed, the leaderships appointed by the national body?

Chafe: I think that's still being debated. I think that’s being debated. I think the fundamental disagreement here is that we believe -- yes, we believe there has to be much greater coordination. We need to have greater clarity about key campaigns that we work on together that become a clear priority. And obviously, the political work and the organizing work that's done and mobilization work that's done to support those campaigns is our goal. I don't think there's absolute agreement in any of these different camps about what happens at the end of that process, in terms of the structure, but we believe strongly that you need to have stronger locally based and state based operations in the states where you know we're going to have campaigns and growth, and where you know we have to have political strength and capacity.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/10/1518251

I think it's "still being debated" too...as in "can we get away with this?"

So even if Stern, Hoffa & Company break away from the AFL-CIO and set up a new federation, and even if they make a serious effort to organize unorganized workers, and even if they are successful at doing that, what will they have organized them into?

Stern, Hoffa, et.al, seem to desire a "better" business unionism...and not a real labor movement at all.

It all reminds me of a board meeting at Microsoft or Intel; a squabble over profit-maximizing strategy.

The AFL-CIO is "losing market share" and "something must be done".

Maybe they should hire Jack Welch. :lol:

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Morpheus]

The AFL-CIO supports US imperialism too and helped out right-wing "unions" in Venezuala fighting against Chavez.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2005, 04:55 PM

What do you do if the company decided to close down your workplace, as Wal-Mart recently did with a Canadian store where employees chose to organize a union? How can you win a strike in the face of the threat of replacement by scabs? Etc.

How do you win a strike in the face of the threat of replacement by scabs? The way it was always done and to to some degree is still done today. By violently protesting the scab workers, and by sabotaging the workplace and or work sight.
Yeah, that's fine, depending on the tactical situation, but not a panacea. There is no panacea. No tactic that is good in all situations, certainly not a guarantee of victory.

If you take action to stop production, you will face cops, injunctions, even the National Guard. Beating them requires solidarity from other workers. "Be violent" is not an answer in and of itself; it's necessary to make it a fight of the whole working class, or as much as possible, not just one workplace.


About 20 years ago, the Steelworkers Union, when confronted with scabs at a DOD Airforce Forging plant, would routinely shovel steel chips into the machinery to down it so that it couldn't be used.

In the past 20 years, the employers have learned a little....like locking out workers before contract expiration, to prevent sabotage. It's a tactic, not a magic bullet.

And of course none of this answers the problem: what if the company says take concessions, or we close the plant? Yes, I know, full pay til the last day. That's a good policy. But again, not magic. A lot easier to say than to do. And doesn't keep the plant open.

This stuff is hard. The most grueling and most complex political activity I was ever involved with was a 9-month strike in 1992. It's a lot harder than ordinary propaganda work, party organization, protest demonstrations, you name it. I think I did pretty well overall, but I know I and other people made mistakes, and those mistakes had consequences for strikers and the strike.

A lot of dilletante leftists like to pop up and say, Do X, Y, and Z. Sometimes there's truth in their cookbook recipes, but it's not that simple, and really, only people involved in the struggle can have the detailed knowledge to say for sure what tactics are best in a particular struggle.


What do you think the odds are that they would have stayed fired if the entire AFL-CIO union membership had struck in solidarity?

That kind of fantasyland talk lets the AFL-CIO leadership off the hook for things they actually could do. I.e. they couldn't organize that kind of general strike if they wanted to.

Yes, the PATCO firings were a turning point, both in terms of the federal government greenlighting blatant unionbusting, and the labor officialdom's feeble response. Where I disagree is, I think the retreat started even earlier. The Chrysler concessions were worse than Patco, too...in that there was no fight at all. That set a pattern for the worst kind of retreat, where workers voted to cut their own wages and benefits. Which has been seen a fair bit at the airlines recently.

From Disgustapated's link:

Over the summer, the Kach drivers, and the vast majority of short-haul truckers in the Stockton Valley, recently joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies. The union says it has signed up around 220 of the 350 or so independent truckers working in the area.

Not bad for a union that was considered extinct 10 years ago.

I stand corrected. Apparently my knowledge of the IWW was out of date.

Still, a lot more strikes and other labor actions occur through AFL-CIO unions.

[refuse_resist]

The AFL-CIO are worthless and supporters of imperialism. It's no surprise they're against the Bolivarian Revolution and against Chavez. That just shows their true bourgeois nature. They have a long history of racism, chauvisnism, bureacracy and ties to the government during the anti-communist purges of the 1940s.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2005, 09:29 PM
The AFL-CIO is "losing market share" and "something must be done".
Accurate. They're not doing this under pressure of a large fightback among the ranks, buut to serve their own bureaucratic interests.

The SEIU and most of these opposition-faction unions are not being specially successful at organizing either.

And they're all going in for merger mania, ignoring industrial lines, like some farcical version of the old Wobbly slogan..."One Big Dues Base."

Article about the merger of UNITE and HERE, two of the unions in the opposition caucus (http://www.themilitant.com/2004/6830/683059.html)

An interesting exception - (http://www.themilitant.com/2001/6529/652950.html)the Carpenters, which left the AFL-CIO some time back, are being successful at organizing. Perhaps the situation of the bureaucracy was so desperate that they had to do some things right in order to survive at all.

[workersunity]

i was in the UFCW local 99 for about a year, and might i say they are a bunch of fucking pussies, a new contract was to be voted on, and this new one basically fucked everyone over, and yet 84% voted for it, screw that i voted for the strike, but there are pussies out there, damn it sucked

[Sabocat]

Here's a good article with regards to the AFL-CIO and all the infighting currently taking place.

Crisis of labor bureaucracy dominates US union summit
By Shannon Jones
31 March 2005


The AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting held February 28-March 3 in Las Vegas highlighted divisions within the leadership of the labor federation over the allocation of its dwindling resources. The American unions are reeling from decades of membership loss that have reduced the rate of private-sector union organization to the lowest level since 1901.

On the very eve of the meeting, the AFL-CIO failed in another attempt to organize a Wal-Mart location. A five-year United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) drive to organize a group of Wal-Mart employees in Loveland, Colorado ended ignominiously. The workers voted 17-1 against the union. The AFL-CIO has yet to organize a single store owned by Wal-Mart, the largest US employer.

The Executive Council voted by a two-to-one margin to reject a proposal by a group of unions, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Teamsters, the UFCW, the Laborers International Union, and the merged needle-trades, hotel and restaurant workers union, UNITE/HERE, to increase funds for organizing by reducing member unions’ payments to AFL-CIO national headquarters. The majority faction, headed by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, went on to pass a counter-motion allocating 50 percent of federation dues to political and legislative action. The main import of this measure is to increase the AFL-CIO’s already substantial financial support to the Democratic Party.

Underscoring the disquiet within the labor hierarchy, the opposition motion was endorsed by unions representing some 40 percent of the membership of the AFL-CIO. Talk continues of the SEIU and other unions leaving the AFL-CIO and setting up an alternate labor body.

John Wilhelm, president of the hotel and restaurant division of UNITE/HERE, has indicated he may challenge Sweeney for the post of AFL-CIO president at the federation’s convention next July.

At the previous AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting, held in November of 2004, Andrew Stern, head of the SEIU, the largest AFL-CIO affiliate, called for a drastic restructuring of the federation, including the consolidation of the current 60 international unions into 20 or fewer. He said such moves were needed to free up more funds for an organizing drive to reverse the hemorrhaging of union membership.

Opponents charged that Stern’s proposal was undemocratic, with some threatening to pull their unions out of the labor federation if Sweeney gave in to the SEIU’s demands.

Following the November meeting, Stern decided to fold up his opposition group, the New Unity Caucus, in order to forge an alliance with the Teamsters, which, while opposing some of the SEIU’s proposals, indicated agreement with many of its goals. At the Las Vegas meeting, the SEIU supported a resolution moved by the Teamsters calling for increased spending on organizing through a rebate of dues from the center back to member unions.

The council meeting was acrimonious. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stern and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) President Gerald McEntee got into a “curse-filled shouting match.” The immediate issue was the competing claims of the SEIU and AFSCME for the right to organize some 50,000 child-care workers in Illinois. The workers are not state employees, but they care for about 200,000 low-income children through state grants. Governor Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, recently announced that the workers would be allowed to unionize.

In February of this year, AFSCME filed a petition with the state of Illinois that delayed the certification of 20,000 child-care workers who had signed cards authorizing the SEIU to be their bargaining agent. McEntee justified the move by declaring, “We’re the largest child-care union in the United States. That is our core industry.”

The incident underscored the degree to which inter-bureaucratic struggles over “turf,” rather than principled differences over policy or tactics, divide the leadership. It also highlighted the degree to which the AFL-CIO is dependent on the patronage of the Democratic Party to maintain its dues base among public sector workers.

What is facing the AFL-CIO, whatever the outcome of the internal dispute, is a substantial downsizing, as the organization shrinks its apparatus in the face of dwindling resources. This was underscored by the decision of AFL-CIO, in the wake of the Executive Council meeting, to announce staff cuts of 80-100 people, about one fourth of the current personnel at the federation’s Washington DC headquarters.

Circular arguments

The respective public positions of the two bureaucratic factions represent two sides of a classic “Catch 22” argument. The forces headed by Sweeney insist the AFL-CIO can reverse its organizational decline only by electing more supposedly pro-labor Democratic politicians. The group headed by Stern of the SEIU and Hoffa of the Teamsters, on the other hand, claims it is impossible for the AFL-CIO to succeed in electing more Democrats unless it reverses its membership decline.

The circular character of this discussion prompted the LA Weekly to comment, “Indeed, much of the Executive Council meeting focused on an increasingly bizarre debate between those union leaders who argued that labor’s future lies in expanding its political program and those who argued that the future belongs to those who organize. When pressed, leaders on both sides of this debate readily acknowledge that labor needs to do both. Indeed, John Wilhelm, who heads the hotel division of UNITE/HERE, had stated at a forum in Los Angeles in February that he thought the Federation’s political budget should be doubled—though when that proposal came before the union presidents in Vegas, he voted against it, since it made no provision for increasing organizing. The unreality of the debate was further underscored by the fact that the Teamsters’ proposal, if enacted, would augment the organizing budgets of the major unions by less than 10 percent.”

The arguments on both sides are hollow and unprincipled. No one in the leadership is able to state the obvious—the perspective that guides the AFL-CIO is bankrupt. Both Sweeney and the opposition start from the basic premise that the fate of the labor movement is tied to the success of the Democratic Party. However, the AFL-CIO’s embrace of the Democratic Party expresses not the interests of the working class, but the pro-capitalist and nationalist orientation of the labor bureaucracy.

It is telling that neither Sweeney nor his opponents has attempted any serious assessment of the dismal failure of the presidential campaign of Democratic candidate John Kerry, on which the AFL-CIO lavished $150 million.

Kerry ran a right-wing campaign, supporting the war in Iraq and refusing to seriously address the issue of social inequality. In the wake of the election, the Democrats are lurching further to the right, providing the votes needed to confirm Bush’s reactionary cabinet appointments and backing blatantly pro-corporate legislation, such as the new bankruptcy law and new restrictions on class action law suits. Prominent Democrats, such as New York Senator Hillary Clinton, have called for more troops to be sent to Iraq and made overtures to the Christian fundamentalists.

Impotence in the face of globalized production

The AFL-CIO’s inability to chart a viable course for the working class reflects its nationalist orientation and defense of the profit system. The unions have proven powerless in the face of global corporations that are able to shift production to low-wage areas all over the world.

The only answer to globally mobile capital is for the working class to adopt an international strategy. However, the AFL-CIO is incapable of doing this. It is by virtue of its history and program, and the privileged petty-bourgeois social layers comprising the union bureaucracy, a national organization tied to the interests of American capitalism and the American state.

As a national trade union organization, officially and organically hostile to socialism, the AFL-CIO depends for its dues income on keeping jobs within the United States. Thus the American labor bureaucracy has responded to the rise of transnational corporations by deliberately working to reduce labor costs within the US, i.e., assisting US-based companies in driving down wages and benefits and squeezing more production from fewer workers, in order to induce corporations to retain production within the US. This is the essence of all declamations from union leaders about “saving American jobs” and making American labor more “competitive.”

The result is a race to the bottom, with the AFL-CIO seeking to underbid workers in Japan, Canada, Europe, Mexico, etc. On this basis, any international solidarity between workers of different countries who are exploited by the same transnational corporations is blocked and subverted. More often than not, US union leaders pursue this reactionary, anti-working class policy with the aid of flag-waving chauvinism and heavy doses of racism and xenophobia.

The AFL-CIO has resolutely opposed any political break with the two parties of big business. It has worked to keep the US working class under the political domination of American capital, primarily through its alliance with the Democrats.

When the crisis of American capitalism, which erupted to the surface in the 1970s, led the ruling elite to launch a massive assault on the living standards of the working class—an attack that was organized through the policies of Democratic and well as Republican administrations—the AFL-CIO abandoned any support for militant struggle and instead offered its services to help impose draconian cuts in jobs, wages and working conditions.

It deliberately isolated and sabotaged scores of bitter labor struggles against wage-cutting and union-busting throughout the 1980s, beginning with its betrayal of the 1981 strike by the PATCO air traffic controllers, and adopted the program of corporatism—uniting with management in a “partnership” to “save” American jobs by slashing labor costs.

This policy of unlimited class collaboration was the means by which the trade union bureaucracy sought to defend its own narrow and selfish interests, in opposition to the needs of the workers it nominally represented. In helping the employers destroy jobs and drive down wages, the AFL-CIO bureaucracy sought to demonstrate to management its continued usefulness. At the same time, it sought to offset the fall in union membership by directly seeking the patronage of the employers and the state.

Union leaders went onto company boards of directors and obtained positions on employer-funded labor-management committees. Unions attempted to obtain bargaining rights, not by fighting to maintain and increase wages and benefits, but by assuring employers that they would help impose substandard contracts that ensured higher rates of productivity and improved profits.

These policies have undermined the long-term viability of the AFL-CIO as an organization. Entire areas of the country—former auto and steel union strongholds such as Detroit and Pittsburgh, the West Virginia and Kentucky mining areas, and many more—have been devastated by closures and layoffs carried out with the collaboration of the union bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy’s betrayals, its shameless collaboration with management, its corruption and contempt for democratic procedures have succeeded in alienating masses of workers from the AFL-CIO.

The 1990s provided an unanswerable refutation of the union leadership’s present claims that the answer to labor’s protracted crisis is the election of a Democratic president. Despite the election of Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992, and the speculation-fueled economic upturn of the mid- and late-1990s, the unions were unable to recover any of their membership losses. Meanwhile, social inequality increased to the highest level since the 1930s, while workers’ wages and living standards barely kept pace with rising living costs. By 2000, the rate of union organization had fallen to under 14 percent, compared to 15.8 percent in 1992.

The election and re-election of Bush came as a further blow to the labor bureaucracy. It expressed the deepening crisis of US capitalism, which is impelling the ruling class to destroy all vestiges of the social reforms won by the working class during the twentieth century.

Union bureaucracy’s income threatened

The unions are facing attacks that directly threaten the income of the bureaucracy, such as the decision of the Bush administration to weaken the bargaining rights of unions at the Department of Homeland Security, and moves to impose similar measures at the Defense Department. Right-wing Republicans are pressing to illegalize the card check system, which makes it possible to win bargaining rights without a certification election.

Newly elected Republican governors in Indiana and Missouri have revoked collective bargaining rights of some 50,000 state workers, and in Oklahoma, the Republican-controlled state legislature has passed a law taking away the right of municipal workers to organize.

The income of the trade union bureaucracy is being further undermined by the ongoing attacks on pension funds, spearheaded by the airlines and now spreading to auto and other sectors of the economy. The administration of employee pension funds has historically provided a significant source of perks for the union hierarchy.

The impotence and despondency of the AFL-CIO leadership before these corporate and government attacks are reflected in recent comments by officials on both sides of the current dispute within the union hierarchy.

“We’re in deep trouble,” declared the UNITE/HERE official and prospective AFL-CIO presidential candidate, John Wilhelm. From the Sweeney camp, McEntee of AFSCME lamented, “These are the darkest days I have ever seen for American workers across the United States.”

The answer proposed by Stern and other opponents of Sweeney to focus more energy on organizing is nothing new. The same stereotyped discussions have been repeated by the AFL-CIO leadership for years.

The AFL-CIO has devoted millions of dollars to organizing with very little to show for it. When Sweeney took office in 1995, there was talk of new members flocking to a revitalized AFL-CIO. Nothing of the kind happened. If anything, the loss of membership has accelerated. Now Sweeney finds himself faced with a challenge by a protégé from his old union, who uses many of the same phrases Sweeney used to unseat his predecessor, Lane Kirkland, as AFL-CIO president.

The AFL-CIO is reaping the harvest of its betrayals. Despite the deepening social crisis, the AFL-CIO cannot attract the support of the mass of workers, especially younger workers. The AFL-CIO’s failures at Wal-Mart, for example, come despite the fact that the giant retail company is notorious for its low wages and abuse of worker rights.

Indeed, why should Wal-Mart employees or any other workers have confidence in an organization that produced a disaster like the recent Southern California supermarket strike-lockout. There, after a record 19 weeks on the picket line, workers were forced to accept huge concessions, including a cap on employer contributions to medical insurance and lower starting pay and benefits.

The feud within the leadership of the AFL-CIO is not a harbinger of its reawakening, but a further manifestation of its irreversible decay. Whatever the outcome of the factional struggle, the result will not be the “reform” of this organization, but another stage in its collapse.

What is required is the building of a new political movement of the working class, based on a socialist and internationalist program and entirely independent of the Democratic Party. This entails an uncompromising struggle against the moribund AFL-CIO apparatus and the establishment of new, genuinely democratic rank-and-file organizations in the factories and work locations.

Link (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/afl-m31.shtml)

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31 2005, 05:11 AM
What is required is the building of a new political movement of the working class, based on a socialist and internationalist program and entirely independent of the Democratic Party. This entails an uncompromising struggle against the moribund AFL-CIO apparatus and the establishment of new, genuinely democratic rank-and-file organizations in the factories and work locations.
I can only be glad they've come to this conclusion, because when these folks (formerly known as the Workers' League) related to the unions and various strikes, they played a thoroughly disruptive and damaging role....they even showed up on the picket lines outside an occupied Pittston coal processing plant with a lawyer, threatening to sue the UMWA...at the same time the bosses had levied huge judgements against the union....strikers at Dombey ran 'em off the picket line because of their attempts to creat e divisions.....

[OleMarxco]

Most workers don't know that they actually agree with the communist party withouth knowing it, perhaps they even pretend to hate it fed by Capitalist brainwashing. Unions and Company CEO's should stay seperated! There's enough corruption in the world already, BAH! ;)
So sayeth I.

Plus, there's too much "buffer"-unemployment - Especially in Dot Com Companies. As like Timothy Leary would've said it.. "Drop in, Tune out, Slide away"...eh..uh...or something to that extent. Meh, nevertheless! Alot of companies just play around and exchange workers for cheaper foreign workers or just obsolote a factory here and there so workers withouth rights and withouth a union to trust gets just thrown around like a hot meatball, floating endlessly around the working market being a kind of "jack-of-all-trades" worker. HAH! That's atleast the case here in Norway...sometimes. But most have a permanent job...if they're lucky, that is.

[viva le revolution]

There is no such thing as the worker's trade union anywhere in the imperialistic states.A trade union is designed solely to look after the worker's interest, however nowadays trade unions are a way of controlling the workers and ensuring compliance through false representation.
These so-called trade unions function to make sure production is not interrupted no matter what the cost.
In america trade unions are key supporters of Christian-fascism.Their leaders are staunch bush-lovers although his policies ensure that the industrialist stays rich and the worker continues struggling through tax cuts for the rich and less pay and pension for the worker.
The trade unions are not in the worker's interest. Only in a socialist/communist society can the worker hope for real representation and rights!

[rebelworker]

Union structure is (everywhere)flawed in that it needs to negotiate to survive. In more developed Imperialsit nations the surplus wealth robbed from the third world is used to buy off first world workers. The major problems with the unions is there a political natureand supporting the democrats is not political its just an attempt to smooth over class conflict, deal with it in the courts with nice "labour laws" so the beurocracy of the unions can keep there jobs.

The economic reality is shifting very rapidly though, on the ground workers everywhere are increasingly loosing the megar gains made in the past. With a centralised leadershoip structure the Big Unions are out of touch woith the rank and file. SEIU could be in a good spot to turn labour back towards a fighting movement, they potentially represent the new American working class, precarious low wage service workers, stuff that can't be downsized or sent overseas easily.

The problem again is centralisation, the fight will be difused by the time it reaches the leadership level, Its interesting how much of a Bolshevik aproach to unionism the stern/teamsters gang have. Replace the elected local leadership with apointed party hacks... Fuckin disgusting.

In many cities fighting workers networks are foarming, Montpellier downtown workers Union, Southstreet Union(phili), Workers Soldarity Network(montreal), there are a few other good examples of where old winning tactics like flyingsquads, industrial or cross shop organizing and just plain political membeship development all under a non hierarchical directly democratic structure, are starting to bring the fight to the bosses, inside our outside a union, bypass the beurocrats and go for the goods!!

Good old fashion class struggle anarchism, ahhh I love it.

In solidarity,
(Just one of many)rebelworker

[Social Greenman]

And what are trade unions anyways? Labor fakers in the bureaucracy because of their statements that capitalists are naturally entitled to be the industries' owners and workers' bosses, their statements that capitalists are entited to the profits that they extract from the workers, their annual support for capitalist politicians, their support for flag-waving nationalism.

http://newunionist.org/DE_LEONIST_STUDY_COURSE.ht


Increasing worldwide competition in the 1970's and 80's and an ever increasing supply of labor eager for the opportunity to work under any conditions, lessened the importance of the union's role of providing disciplined workers. Capitalists demanded concessions and changes in work rules which they saw as hampering competitiveness.

The destruction of the air traffic controllers union, PATCO by Ronald Reagan in 1981 served as warning to other unions to stay in line. Now, because of their lack of solidarity and experience in carrying on with the class struggle, present day union bureaucrats give the capitalists little to fear.

There is, however, plenty to fear from the rank and file. We must never forget that regardless of the misdirection of the union program, the rank and file will come through when it becomes critical. Time and again, working people have shown their spirit, usually dragging their leaders out to fight against the injustices. Caterpillar and Boeing are two of the latest examples of workers taking on powerful well financed corporations. Boeing workers "won" most of their demands, while the Caterpillar workers lost a bitter and long strike, and went back to work with just about what Caterpillar offered earlier.

In both strikes, the workers were more militant than their unions. In Boeing's case, the union advised its workers to sign, but the rank and file threw the contract back and told the labor bureaucrats to go back and re-negotiate. Boeing just happened to be caught in a situation where they were already behind on delivery of orders. Their customers were threatening to cancel and take their business to competitors. So Boeing gave in to the workers, at least temporarily. In this age of cutthroat competition, these workers (not their union) won an unusual victory. It should cause some of them to question just what their union should have been doing.

Strikes ending in defeat, such as against Caterpillar, are the norm today. Workers must restructure their unions and start to build a unified national and international movement. Otherwise, multinational corporations with plants all over the world have only to divert the orders to their other plants, and "starve" out the workers.

Procapitalist unions as we have shown are not the only kind of unions in American history. Socialist Unions have existed too, - unions with the specific goal of organizing for Socialism! In 1895 the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance openly accepted the class struggle and its implications. Ten years later it was merged into the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), another union which accepted as its "great historical mission" abolition of the wage system, capitalism! It projected the principles upon which a rebirth of class conscious unionism is bound to rise.

And why not again build a socialist union like the Worker's International Industrial Union. I often wonder why this was not re-organized after 1924. This Socialist union should rise again.


Preamble to the Worker’s International Industrial Union (W.I.I.U.) Constitution

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the toilers come together on the political field under the banner of a distinct revolutionary political party governed by the workers class interests, and on the industrial field under the banner of One Great Industrial Union to take and hold all means of production and distribution, and to run them for the benefit of all wealth producers.

The rapid gathering of wealth and the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands make the trades union unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class, because the trades unions foster a state of things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. The trades unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These sad conditions must be changed, the interests of the working class upheld, and while the capitalist rule still prevails, all possible relief for the workers must be secured. That can only be done by an organization aiming steadily at the complete overthrow of the capitalist wage system, and formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Also a new economic model should be discussed and a time frame to implement it after the revolution that would end capitalism once and for all.

Social