Manifesto from Labor in MN

==Intro==
For most of you it is a confusing time. What's down, should be up and
what's up should be down.
To clear your muddled minds I offer this brilliant piece of work so
that it show the way for an elightened America.
How we got where we and why we got there is explained. This piece is
a little long but one must know the history and theory clearly. Study
this piece and you will know what to do in the difficult times that
we face in the next few years.
Rowdy Russ Hanson.
The Truth in St. Paul.
==A Working Class Emancipation labor bulletin==
October, 2006
Throw out the union bureaucrats, betrayers of the workers!
Labor must take the road of class struggle!
===by Fred Bergen===
The partial general strike of May Day, 2006 showed the way forward for
the labor movement in the United States. The strikers were immigrant
workers, most of whom were not represented by any union. The
reverberations of the political force and unprecedented mobilization
of
May 1 are still being felt. But in order for the demands of the
immigrant workers and their allies to be achieved, the current
reformist
and pro-capitalist leadership of the labor movement must be thrown out
and replaced with a leadership that is committed to the class struggle
and democratically accountable to the rank and file.
An unstable, polarized economic and political situation
In 1936, during the deepest and most politically volatile economic
crash
yet experienced by US and world capitalism, establishment economist
John
Maynard Keynes spelled out imperialism' s life-support strategy for
the
coming century: a permanent war economy paid for by government
borrowing. The Great Depression was signaled by the catastrophic
stock-market collapse of October, 1929, but the market collapse was
only
a symptom of a crisis of overproduction that wreaked havoc on the
capitalist economies of the world. In the planned economy of the
Soviet
Union, where capitalism had been abolished, economic growth continued
steadily, despite the abuses and mismanagement of the Stalinist
bureaucracy that had strangled Soviet democracy.
Karl Marx explained that the technological innovations that capitalism
is constantly applying to increase labor productivity, and thereby
profits, inevitably lead to periodic crises in which the masses of
workers and poor people are unable to buy back enough of the
commodities, products of their labor stolen from them by their bosses,
with the wages that the bosses pay them. This is the meaning of
overproduction. Factories grind to a halt, mass layoffs devastate the
cities, food, housing, and basic necessities are destroyed or put
off-limits while millions go hungry and homeless, and the noble words
of
peace treaties and international accords crumble into dust as
imperialist governments mobilize their armies in a mad scramble for
new
colonial markets to overcome the overproduction crisis. Small
investors
and pensioners are ruined, and the biggest of the big banks and
monopolies gobble up bankrupt properties to strengthen their positions
for the next economic cycle.
Keynes understood that overproduction was at the heart of capitalism's
crisis. Unlike Marx, who analyzed capitalism so he could arm the
workers
with the theoretical and organizational weapons to overthrow the rule
of
the bankers, bosses, and landlords, Keynes searched for ways to extend
the life of a dying system. He advised the imperialist governments to
finance the debt of the capitalists in overproduction crises with
large
government spending projects.
Liberal followers of Keynes hope that these spending projects would be
for public works like education, health, and infrastructure. But they
can't wish away the fact that the world's imperialist governments are
in
a constant struggle for hegemony over the oppressed countries in
Africa,
Asia, and Latin America, and whichever government falls behind in the
doomsday arms race will lose the cheap labor, captive markets, and
monopolies on raw materials from its oppressed colonies. Keynsianism
is
therefore the official ideology and theory of the military-industrial
complex. But the Keynsian permanent war economy only postpones
capitalism's systemic crisis, and makes it all the more catastrophic
when it finally breaks out. Keynes himself understood this, and he is
famous for his answer to questions about the long-run implications of
the massive government debt caused by his deficit-spending strategy:
speaking for the parasitic class he dedicated his life to advising, he
said, "in the long run, we're all dead". But his dark, cynical
prediction applies equally well to the billions of workers and
peasants
worldwide, unless we organize to end capitalism's mad march toward
fascism and war.
Throughout the past year, the capitalist media in the US has obsessed
over the prospect of a collapse of the "housing bubble". The US
capitalist economy is running on fumes. The national debt is at over
eight trillion dollars [1], consumer debt (credit cards, mortgages,
tuition and car loans, etc.) is over two trillion dollars [2]. When
will
the lords of Wall Street and the other imperialist banks call in their
loans? The problem for the capitalists is that they can't pay the
workers enough to pay the rents and home mortgages back to them. When
a
capitalist raises wages, he not only loses profits, he loses ability
to
invest those profits in productivity- increasing technology or in
money-making real estate. He stumbles and falls behind in the race
against his fellow exploiters. His backers and partners demand a
higher
return, or his head will roll. The speculative base of the US economy
is
the reason why the financial markets watch indicators of "consumer
confidence" so closely: if the economy were organized around providing
for actual human needs, instead of generating profits, it would not be
vulnerable to crises when workers realize that their wages are not
enough to cover their costs of living. But this is not possible under
capitalism.
Nor will the capitalists willingly freeze or lower rents and mortgage
debt (in effect, increasing wages), because to do so would be to take
a
loss on their real estate investments, the very same part of their
fortunes that they hope will safeguard them through periodic
overproduction crises during which they are forced to abandon or sell
productive factory and warehouse capacity at a loss. Obviously,
something has to break.
And when it breaks, don't expect rents to go down. A major aspect of
the
systemic crisis in the real estate market is that while rents have
gone
up (the average rent for urban workers has increased 134% between 1980
and 2005), [3] the return on investment for landlords, measured by the
inverse of the price-to-rent ratio, has been declining [4]. In other
words, the banks are grabbing a bigger share of landlords' profits. So
when the landlords feel the pinch of the loss on their investment in
the
apartment buildings themselves, combined with the shrinking profit
margins from their tenants' rents, they will need rents to rise in
order
to pay their debts and stay profitable. The big banks, using their
powerful influence in the legislatures and city halls, can be expected
to help the landlords squeeze more out of their tenants in order to
protect their own investment in the landlord's mortgage debt.
Meanwhile,
about 3 million people are homeless in the US every year [5], and
housing reformists estimate that a full-time worker would need a wage
of
$15.78 per hour to afford a modest two bedroom apartment. [6]
As with the housing market, which many capitalist economists think
could
push the economy over the edge into its next collapse, so with every
major problem confronting society, the capitalists have no answer but
to
make the workers and oppressed people pay for the collapse of their
speculative adventures with lower wages, union-busting drives, and the
massive fraud being committed by the bosses on the retirement pensions
of workers in the airline and auto industries.
The Iraqi adventure deepens imperialism' s crisis
US imperialism' s quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan looms over the
whole
political and economic situation. The war is unpopular among the
masses
of workers and poor people, measured both by opinion polls [7] and the
unwillingness of youth to enlist in the military. Despite the
Pentagon's
$4 billion per year recruiting budget and the poor job prospects for
high school graduates, the military has had to turn to a de facto
draft,
indefinitely extending the tours of duty of currently enlisted
soldiers
with the universally- hated "stop loss" orders.
Democratic critics of the Bush administration' s war in Iraq attack
Bush
from the right. In an August 1 press release [8], House Democratic
party
leader Nancy Pelosi said, "Under President Bush ... our Army could not
respond to a crisis. ... [T]his failure to maintain military readiness
is unacceptable and dangerous." Democratic Senator Jack Reed called
for
more military spending, saying "The Administration must provide
necessary funding to the Army and the Marine Corps to reset and
recapitalize their equipment before the readiness of these forces are
decisively compromised. And, they must do this without the budgetary
gimmicks that they have consistently employed to avoid the hard
choices
of funding our soldiers and continuing to support our domestic needs."
Neither higher military spending for newer military technology, nor a
more intensified recruiting campaign, can overcome the fundamental
strategic problem faced by US imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan: its
forces are tired and demoralized, while the resistance fighters enjoy
broad popular support that grows with each revelation of imperialism'
s
atrocities.
The Democrats offer no way out of the crisis: their program is fight
imperialism' s wars with more brutality and more troops
The quagmire of the US occupation is increasingly turning the generals
toward the savage tactics of 21st century total war against the
civilian
population of Iraq and Afghanistan, exemplified by the rape of the
Iraqi
city of Fallujah by the US generals in 2004. This was a monstrous
crime
that history will remember along with the bombings of Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, Tokyo, and Dresden, as incontrovertible proof that the most
depraved and menacing terrorist threat facing the people of the world
is
US imperialism. In the first televised presidential debate of 2004,
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry criticized Bush for
hesitating in his initial assault on Fallujah in April, saying "What I
want to do is change the dynamics on the ground. And you have to do
that
by beginning to not back off of the Fallujahs and other places, and
send
the wrong message to the terrorists. ... You've got to show you're
serious in that regard." [9]
Kerry and the Democrats have repeatedly criticized Bush for not
supplying enough troops to occupy Iraq, and for not invading or
menacing
other countries. The millionaire cable executive Ned Lamont, a darling
of the "anti-war" liberals who defeated Bush's favorite Democrat,
Senator Joe Lieberman, to win Connecticut' s Democratic primary, told
the
readers of the Wall Street Journal [10],
"Our national security has ... been weakened, because we stopped
fighting a real war on terror when we made the costly and
counterproductive decision to go to war in Iraq. ... [T]he bottom line
means everything. ... I am a fiscal conservative and our people want
their government to be sparing and sensible with their tax
dollars. ...
We start with the strongest, best-trained military in the world, and
we'll keep it that way. ... [W]e'll get stronger by changing course.
We
must work closely with our allies and treat the rest of the world with
respect. We must implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission
[11] ..."
But neither the Democrats nor the Republicans dare to try the remedy
that is being whispered by all the military officers, the
reinstatement
of the draft. Behind platitudes about supporting the "volunteer
military" (when there is nothing voluntary about joining the military
because there are no good jobs available, and no other way to pay for
higher education), the politicians of both capitalist parties fear
that
the cure offered by conscription would be worse than the disease. They
know that if the draft unmasks the completely coercive and unjust
nature
of this rich man's war to hundreds of thousands of new working-class
conscripts, the level of resistance within the military ranks, which
is
now confined to a small number of brave individual resisters and has
an
overall social-patriotic and reformist political character, could grow
into a mass movement with more radical goals.
Thus, US imperialism has nowhere to turn but to increase the
oppression
and exploitation of the working class at home, to make the workers pay
to extricate it from its disastrous military adventures abroad and
collapsing economic bubble at home. We have already seen how the
domestic front of the "war on terror" means a rollback of the
elementary
rights gained by the workers to pensions, social security, and union
contracts. The mounting debt from the permanent war budget is used by
both Democrats and Republicans to justify undermining Social Security
and Medicare. In 2002, it was then-Homeland Security director Tom
Ridge
who intervened to break the back of the ILWU West Coast dockworkers,
threatening a Taft-Hartley injunction and intervention by federal
troops. "Homeland Security" was a convenient pretext for the
union-busting bosses at Chicago's O'Hare airport for the mass firing
of
latin@ workers in 2002, including Elvira Arellano, who has now become
a
symbol of resistance to the racist, unjust anti-immigrant laws. It was
Iraq-hardened troops who were sent by Bush and Kathleen Blanco, the
Democrat Louisiana governor, to "shoot to kill" the stranded survivors
of Hurricane Katrina - an ominous lesson for the reformists who refuse
to call for the defeat of US imperialism, and instead seek to build
popular-front coalitions around the demand to "bring the troops home".
Look what they were brought home to do!
Both wings of the capitalist party - the Democrats and Republicans -
are
committed to defending US imperialism and its interests in the Middle
East. They both confront the same problems: a fundamental weakness of
the domestic economy, based on speculation, debt, and Keynesian
government spending, the worldwide popular resistance to their efforts
to grab new colonies to offset the crisis (Afghanistan and Iraq) or
intensify the exploitation of old colonies (much of Latin America, and
the militant labor movement in South Korea, for example). Their
differences are that the Republicans basically defend Bush's failed
tactics in the Iraq war, using racist and nationalist demagogy, while
Democrats use racist and nationalist demagogy to criticize the Bush
administration' s war plans from the right: primarily Bush's
inability to
intervene militarily against Iran, North Korea, and other isolated
holdouts against the US capitalists' dreams of uncontested world
domination.
Except for a scattered offering of socialist candidates, the upcoming
congressional elections will not offer the workers and oppressed
people
in the US a chance to voice the growing opposition to the war in Iraq.
On the contrary, despite the efforts of some Democratic candidates to
capitalize on anti-war sentiment, we predict that the aftermath of
this
November's elections will be an intensified and barbaric offensive by
imperialism in Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly against new targets
such
as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, Somalia, Korea, or even China,
combined
with a fierce round of union-busting, layoffs, and racist terror
against
blacks, latin@ immigrants, and other oppressed nationalities on the
domestic front.
Whichever capitalist party gains control of Congress must first make
good on its campaign promises, not to the millions of workers and poor
people, but to those who bankrolled their campaigns and put them in
office: Wall Street, the banks, and the big industries. Whichever
party
this is, it will mean imperialist war abroad and war against the
workers
and oppressed at home. The presidential election of two years ago
provides the model. While the election results were inconclusive, and
quite possibly stolen from black voters by corrupt and racist Jim Crow
politics in Ohio, they gave Bush and the Democrats the mandate to
launch
the greatest crime of the Iraq war so far: "Operation Phantom Fury",
the
bipartisan rape of Fallujah in November-December of 2004.
The Communist Party USA published a statement in the People's Weekly
World on September 2 [12], as part of their campaign to "Take Back
Congress," which calls on "a mighty united front of every section of
the
people being hurt, in the first place labor, African American, Latino,
women and youth voters" to put the Democrats back in control of
Congress
in the 2006 elections, in order to "defend democracy". Even the
Stalinists of the CPUSA can hardly support the Democrats with a
straight
face anymore, and have to justify their support for war hawks like
Marine Corps officer and senator John Murtha by explaining that "Even
Democrats who don't seem so different from their Republican opponents
will shift the balance in Congress". But when even the current
standard
bearer for the imagined "progressive" wing of the Democratic party,
Ned
Lamont, is criticizing Bush for not opening new fronts in the "war on
terror", this hardly seems plausible. The same issue of the PWW hails
the AFL-CIO's decision to give an unprecedented $40 million of union
members' dues to the Democratic Party election campaign in 2006. [13]
If the Democrats, taking advantage of the growing popular hatred for
Bush and the political support of the union bureaucrats, are able to
take back Congress this November, it will be a mandate for them to
carry
out their program, the program of the bankers, bosses and landlords -
as
Ned Lamont promised to the Wall Street Journal, an "entrepreneurial
approach" of cutting the budget (meaning, cutting social programs that
benefit workers and poor people), winning the "war on terror"
(meaning,
more Fallujahs in Iraq and more imperialist war in general), and
"economic recovery" (on the backs of the workers, such as the recent
announcement by Ford Motor Co. of ten thousand more firings).
Whichever
party wins Congress this November will have to respond to the
unavoidable realities of the capitalist market and the undeniable
demands of the party's capitalist backers for a way out of their
crisis.
Labor must prepare for this inevitable confrontation: the stakes could
not be higher.
Gearing up for the police state
US imperialism, facing disaster in its current military campaigns in
Iraq and Afghanistan and economic stagnation at home, is like a
wounded
beast: lashing out desperately against even the slightest provocation.
To the police state that is still being fortified with more
anti-democratic powers five years after the pretext of the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, it doesn't matter if the enemy is a revolutionary
movement or the most tame kind of pacifism and reformism, that in the
final analysis props up imperialist rule: Guant�namo Bay, Abu Ghraib,
and the shadowy world of "extraordinary rendition" are imperialism' s
rehearsal for ruthless repression against all dissent on the domestic
front.
The cruel and arbitrary repression that the police state has long
practiced against blacks and other oppressed nationalities in the US
is
beginning to be employed against even the most mild kind of political
dissenters. Liberal environmentalists have been the targets of
a "Green
Scare" that included wiretaps, grand-jury investigations, police
infiltrators, and turncoat informants. The foolish acts of a few
middle-class environmentalist vandals have been used to bring
extraordinary repression down on a harmless reformist movement. The
Department of Defense has been monitoring Quaker meetings. [14]
Members
of the Green Party, a failed capitalist party that campaigned for John
Kerry in the 2004 presidential elections, find themselves on
government
"no-fly" lists. [15]
The wild overreaction of the government to these minor threats is a
symptom of its unstable position. As part of the working class,
immigrants, especially the large populations from Latin America, are a
much bigger potential threat to bourgeois rule. Latin@ workers are a
combative layer of the US working class. Immigrants are especially
concentrated in low-wage service sectors of the work force [16] due to
racist laws that discriminate against immigrants and non-English
speakers. These sectors have an even lower unionization rate than the
already low rate for US industry [17], and because of this and other
obstacles latin@s have a lower unionization rate than black or white
workers. [18] On the other hand, latin@ workers have, on average, the
most to gain from union membership: the average weekly wage of a
latin@
union member is $224 per week higher than the average non-union wage,
a
difference of nearly 50%, while for the working class population as a
whole, the union wage increase is only $179 per week, or 29%. [19] The
higher union wages also reflect the fact that despite the highly
publicized "Justice for Janitors" campaigns and others like them,
unions
remain concentrated in higher-skilled and white-collar job
classifications, especially government jobs. Nevertheless, it is a
commonly held belief among professional union organizers that latin@
workers are more willing to join unions and participate in organizing
campaigns, despite the personal risks involved.
Especially when it needs to impose cutbacks on the working class in
order to extricate itself from its systemic crisis, US imperialism can
little afford to allow the combative spirit of the latin@ workers to
spread to broader layers of the working class. This motive, along with
the super-profits that can be gained from the intense exploitation of
immigrants, is what is driving the bipartisan campaign of racist
persecution against immigrants. And it is in this area that the
anti-democratic tendency of US capitalism in decline toward police-
state
repression is starkly revealed. From the deployment of armed military
patrols to the border, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of
immigrants every year who cross in harsh, remote desert areas, to the
budgeted construction of 40,000 new prison cells for captured
immigrants, to the construction of a fortified wall on the Mexican
border, police state repression is already a reality for millions of
latin@ workers. The immigration bureau of the Homeland Security
bureaucracy alone employs 15,000 agents and staff to spy on immigrants
in over 800,000 "alien cases", and kidnaps and deports over 383 people
every day. [20] As it runs into the built-in collapse of Keynes' "long
run" prognosis, the government that murdered Chicago Black Panther
Party
leader Fred Hampton in his sleep on December 4, 1969, will not
hesitate
to turn this immense repressive apparatus against anyone, "citizen" or
not, that it considers a threat.
May Day and the labor movement
The combative spirit of latin@ immigrant workers was boldly
demonstrated
on May 1, 2006, when they went on a one-day general strike to protest
HR 4437, proposed legislation that would have increased state
repression
against immigrant workers and their families. The strike shut down the
country's major meat-packing companies, California's central valley
agricultural zone and other farming areas, truck transport at the port
of Los Angeles, and Goya Foods. Thousands of businesses in the tourism
and food service industries were shut down or severely restricted.
Small
businesses in latin@ neighborhoods of major cities closed for the day,
and millions of workers filled the streets of every major city and
many
towns in the US to protest the racist attacks on immigrants.
This was not the first massive, spontaneous explosion of protest
against
anti-immigrant racism. In 1994, the Republican governor of California,
Pete Wilson, pushed Proposition 187 onto the state ballot, a ballot
initiative that sought to mobilize the ultra-right racist vote for
Wilson's re-election campaign by blaming cuts in health care, public
education, and other services on immigrants, demanding proof of
citizenship to receive public services, and requiring teachers, social
workers, and medical workers to report suspected illegal immigrants to
the INS. Throughout the fall of 1994, hundreds of thousands of
immigrant
students and their supporters held massive walk-outs to protest Prop.
187, especially in Los Angeles. Most public school teachers and many
other social service workers were strongly opposed to the
proposition -
one LA teacher told the an interviewer on National Public Radio, "My
job
means nothing if there are people in my school who are going to turn
kids over to the INS.". Over one thousand teachers in Los Angeles
alone
pledged to disobey the law. [21] Unions, including the California
Teachers' Association and the AFL-CIO of California, declared their
opposition to the ballot initiative. But they never mobilized their
rank
and file members to struggle against the racist law. Instead, they
formed a coalition, "Taxpayers Against 187", along with bourgeois
lobbying organizations and the Sheriff of Los Angeles county (we
suspect
that the LA cops, remembering the lessons of the LA rebellion against
racism two years earlier, feared being associated with such a
blatantly
racist law). Taxpayers Against 187 campaigned on the premise that
there
were more efficient ways to oppress immigrants: "Sure there's an
immigration problem," said Joel Maliniak, the organization' s
spokesman,
"But the answer is to strictly patrol the border and strictly enforce
laws about hiring illegals". [22]
The attempt by the labor bureaucrats to position themselves as
reliable
friends of of the police and the anti-immigrant racists demobilized
the
mass struggle against Prop. 187 and helped the measure to win in the
1994 elections. Instead of taking the side of the workers and
oppressed
and leading the fight against this racist law, the labor bureaucracy
backed the Democratic challenger to Wilson, Kathleen Brown, who
opposed
187 because she thought using federal police and military forces
against
immigrants was a more reliable method than relying on nurses and
schoolteachers to rat on their patients and students: "What we really
need is for the Federal Government to properly police our border and
enforce laws already on the books." [23] President Clinton answered
her
call when he launched Operation Gatekeeper in October of 1994, the
military occupation of the Southwest border that has caused the deaths
of over two thousand immigrants since then.
The strike of May 1, 2006 was an expansion of the militant defensive
struggle against Prop. 187 to a nationwide level. Again, the spark was
an odious, racist legislative proposal, HR 4437, that would have
threatened millions of immigrants, and even "legal" residents who
helped
immigrants in one way or another, with arrest, imprisonment, and
deportation. HR 4437 was an integral part of the bipartisan campaign
to
whip up a mass national chauvinist hysteria in support of US
imperialism' s wars following the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001. Again, latin@ workers and youth boldly took to the streets,
shutting down major corporations and school districts. And again, the
labor bureaucracy stabbed them in the back. Instead of backing the
strike, the union leaders ignored it. When it became clear that the
strike was going forward despite the massive raids staged by the
government on April 20, they rushed in, not to mobilize their members
with anti-racist, working class demands, but to neutralize the
movement
and contain it within limits acceptable to the bosses.
"Comprehensive reform" vs. full citizenship rights: how labor
bureaucrats betray the workers
The militant fight-back mood of many latin@ workers presented the
union
bureaucrats with some thorny rhetorical choices: how to fake
solidarity
with the workers while pledging their loyalty to the racist,
capitalist
state? They needed a slogan that meant nothing, that could allow them
to
pretend to support immigrants rights while still backing the same
racist
Democratic party, and the answer was "Comprehensive Immigration
Reform".
It's hard to find any politician who's against "Comprehensive
Immigration Reform". President Bush, addressing a racist anti-
immigrant
rally on the Texas-Mexico border, said, "I'm going to talk today about
comprehensive immigration reform. ... There's an important debate
facing
our nation, and the debate is, can we secure this border and, at the
same time, honor our history of being a land of immigrants? And the
answer is, absolutely, we can do both. And we will do both." [24] When
supporters of Elvira Arellano, the Mexican worker and labor activist
famous for her courageous resistance to the government's attempts to
deport her, asked the Democratic Senator from Illinois, Ricard Durbin,
to intervene in her case, he refused, citing the need
for "comprehensive
immigration reform". [25]
The AFL-CIO leadership clarified what it meant by "comprehensive
immigration reform" in a March 1, 2006 resolution [26] adopted in San
Diego. The resolution had nothing to say about ending the racist
police-state repression against immigrant workers. Instead, it
complained that "the lax enforcement of labor and employment laws has
given too many unscrupulous employers the economic incentive to
recruit
undocumented workers, and has penalized those employers who abide by
the
law because it has put them at a competitive disadvantage. "
While the AFL-CIO leaders promote the illusion of the capitalist state
as an even-handed mediator between immigrant workers and their bosses,
the fact is that enforcement of laws against the hiring of
undocumented
immigrants means raids, kidnappings, and deportation for the workers.
Labor "law enforcement" for the bosses' government means enforcement
of
the Taft-Hartley act, a law that violates the 1st amendment protection
of free speech and the 13th amendment prohibition of involuntary
servitude, by banning strikes. When the government threatened to send
federal troops to break the ILWU Pacific coast longshore workers'
union
in 2002, that was their kind of "enforcement" .
The resolution asks the imperialist government to be kinder to its
subjects in the colonized world, concluding with "Reform of
immigration
laws must consider the root causes of migration, and must take into
account the global economic policies, as well as U.S. foreign policy
that are pushing workers to migrate. Without rising living standards
abroad for workers and the poor, the pressure for illegal immigration
will continue. U.S. foreign policy, as well as trade and globalization
policies, must be grounded upon a coherent national economic strategy,
as described in An Economic Agenda for Working Families, adopted at
the
AFL-CIO's 2005 Convention." This ridiculously utopian document [27]
hopes that the United States and the other imperialist powers will
"replace 'free trade' agreements with fair trade agreements that
protect
fundamental workers' rights."
The March 1 resolution reveals that "comprehensive immigration reform"
has nothing to do with full citizenship rights for all immigrants:
despite calling the land of slavery, Jim Crow, death row, and the
Minutemen a "nation of citizens", the AFL-CIO does not propose
citizenship rights for anyone: it limits its demand to "[r]eforms
[that]
must provide a path to permanent residency for the currently
undocumented workers who have paid taxes and made positive
contributions
to their communities. " In other words, the racist status quo! And
who,
may we ask, is to determine which immigrants have paid enough taxes
and
made sufficient "positive contributions to their communities" in order
to get on this "path"?
Yet this patriotic moralizing is the constant refrain of the labor
bureaucrats. AFSCME president Gerald W. McEntee issued a statement on
April 10 [28] supporting "comprehensive immigration reform" which
said,
"AFSCME calls on Congress to pass legislation that will allow
hard-working immigrants to earn their citizenship. " Terrence M.
O'Sullivan, general president of the Laborers' Union, told the
National
Press Club on January 19, 2006, that "comprehensive" reform was
"essential for business and commerce", and bowed before his police-
state
masters to endorse the deadly militarization of the border, saying "To
be sure our borders must be secure. ... It is not honest or fair to
simply ignore the 11 million undocumented workers who are already
here."
That is, a "path to citizenship" for workers that are here today, but
tough luck for immigrants facing racist "border security" tomorrow.
The March 1 resolution claims to oppose the "guest worker" provisions,
but the very same resolution proposes that the bosses be allowed to
determine immigration laws and quotas to suit their own needs: "We
recognize that our economy may face real labor shortages in the coming
years ... [W]e should focus on a meaningful solution that guarantees
full workplace rights for all workers, both foreign-born and native,
and
also permits employers to hire foreign workers to fill proven labor
shortages." The same paragraph that promotes the empty promises
of "our
democracy" for immigrants shows that the AFL-CIO leadership believes
that the bosses should decide who should be allowed to immigrate to
the
US - in other words, only as the invited "guests" of their exploiters.
The position of Change To Win, a federation that broke away from the
AFL-CIO in the summer of 2005, is even worse, if only because Change
to
Win explicitly supported the alternative to HR 4437 that was backed by
Bush and the Democratic Party, the Hagel-Martinez bill, S. 2611.
Change
To Win chairwoman Anna Burger praised the reactionary police-state
measures in Hagel-Martinez, saying "The ... bill will improve our
national security by strengthening our borders with more personnel and
more advanced technology to prevent illegal immigration. " Advising
the
government on how best to enforce its racist laws, she says, "We
should
not squander our enforcement resources arresting and detaining
dishwashers, janitors, farmworkers, and nursing home or construction
workers." [29]
When President Bush gave his 2006 State of the Union speech to
Congress,
calling for "stronger immigration enforcement and border protection
[and] a rational, humane guest worker program that rejects amnesty,"
[30] Burger thanked him, saying, "The President ... addressed the
issue
of immigration reform. And we welcome an approach that combines border
security with a respect for immigrant workers. ... America needs
comprehensive immigration reform that creates order, takes control of
our borders, sets out a path to legalizations and citizenship and
raises
standards for all workers." [31] How can the government combine deadly
armed patrols hunting down immigrant workers in the desert
with "respect
for immigrants"? It's simple, when, to the capitalist government and
its
lackeys in the union bureaucracy, "respect" is just another empty
phrase
in hypocrisy's cynical vocabulary.
Their words and their deeds
The May Day strike jolted the political situation in the US with a
powerful shock. It sealed the defeat of the ultra-racist Sensenbrenner
bill, HR 4437. But it takes more than a one-day general strike to stop
the imperialists' racist war against the workers in the US. This
requires an organization that can unite the workers of all
nationalities
around a program of demands that links the struggle for the most
elementary measures of justice and dignity to the struggle against the
capitalist state of oppressors and exploiters. As we have shown, far
from mobilizing broader layers of the working class for their common
interests in solidarity with immigrant workers, the labor mis-leaders
rush to sell themselves, and the workers they treacherously
misrepresent, as reliable partners of the US capitalists. The most
important part of the labor bureaucrats' class-collaboration ist
platform
is their support for the Democratic party. Their first and last
motivation is to turn every episode of working class struggle away
from
an independent direction and toward the next Democratic party election
campaign. And so it was with the immigrants rights movement of 2006.
The Service Employees union and UNITE-HERE (the hotel, restaurant,
laundry, and textile workers' union), both members of the Change to
Win
federation, have joined with a gaggle of reformist lobbying groups to
form the red-white-and- blue "We Are America Alliance," to promote -
you
guessed it - "comprehensive immigration reform". The WAAA produced
thousands of placards for immigrants rights rallies on Labor Day
proclaiming, "Today we march, tomorrow we vote". The WAAA's "Democracy
Summer" campaign promises to bring one million new immigrant voters to
the polls in November. "The message in Spanish to Congress that 'today
we march, tomorrow we vote' was as American as balloons popping at a
political convention. For organizers of those nationwide
demonstrations
over changes to immigration law, ma�ana dawns with the Nov. 7
elections.
Whatever action Congress may take, activists are pledging to mobilize
1
million new voters from newcomers to the USA," says the USA TODAY in
an
article featured on WAAA's website. [32]
Who can immigrants, that is, those who are not denied their voting
rights, vote for? The AFL-CIO and the SEIU have endorsed Lt. Colonel
Charlie Brown, a Democrat, for California's fourth Congressional
district, whose campaign says:
"Charlie believes that in order to adequately address the illegal
immigration problem, we must first secure America's borders with more
agents and greater deployment of security technology. Charlie also
believes that addressing the root cause illegal immigration begins
with
enforcement of employers who knowingly hire illegal labor and
encourage
lawbreakers. Finally, Charlie opposes amnesty, and believes that
illegal
immigrants who are already here must be fined, punished, and put at
the
back of the line." [33]
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi from California, endorsed by the
AFL-CIO and the SEIU, attacks Bush from the right:
"The record is clear: for more than five years, the President has
failed
to secure our borders and to enforce our immigration laws. Republicans
in Congress have abetted that failure by repeatedly underfunding the
border patrol, refusing to hold the President accountable, and
fighting
among themselves to destroy real immigration reform.
Seven times over the last four and a half years, House Republicans
rejected Democratic amendments to increase resources. Had the
Republicans not rejected all these amendments, there would be 6,600
more
Border Patrol agents, 14,000 more detention beds, and 2,700 more
immigration enforcement agents than there are now." [34]
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat endorsed by the AFL-CIO and the
SEIU, calls for the "orange card", a torturous new system of spying on
immigrant workers. We'll let her explain this new system, but it has a
familiar Democratic Party refrain: "get to the back of the line."
"[A]ll undocumented aliens who are in the United States as of January
1,
2006, would immediately register a preliminary application with the
Department of Homeland Security. At the time of the registration, they
would also submit fingerprints at the U.S. Customs and Immigration
Service's facility so that criminal and national security background
checks could commence immediately. ... It would also create a more
precise registration system that would allow the immediate inflow of
information into the Department of Homeland Security to be processed
electronically ... This would be the first step.
Under the second step, petitioners would submit a full application for
an orange card in person by providing the necessary documents to
demonstrate their work history and their presence in the United
States.
Their application would also require that they pass a criminal and
national security background check that would be carried out based on
the information and fingerprints from the preapplication; they
demonstrate an understanding of English and U.S. history and
Government,
as required when someone applies for their citizenship; they have paid
their back taxes; and they would pay a $2,000 fine. ...
If the application is approved, each individual would be issued what I
call an orange card. I selected orange because the color had no
connotation I could think of. This card would be encrypted with a
machine-readable electronic identification strip that is unique to
that
individual. The card itself would contain biometric identifiers,
anti-counterfeiting security features, and an assigned number that
would
place that individual at the end of the current line to apply for a
green card. ... It would become their fraud-proof identifier, complete
with a photo and fingerprints. ...
The third step is that on an annual basis, each individual who applies
for an orange card would submit to DHS documentation either
electronically or by mail that shows what they have been doing in that
year, the work they have carried out, that they have, in fact, paid
their taxes that year, and whether they have been convicted of any
crime
during that year, ... and they would pay a $50 processing fee. These
three steps, plus the required wait at the back of the green card
line,
clearly indicates that this is not an amnesty program.
The legalization in the orange card must be earned, and it must be
earned over a substantial period of time. It would be available to all
who are here from January of this year.
... assuming there are between 10 and 20 million undocumented aliens
already in the United States who would have to pay a $2,000 fine, if
10
million came forward, that alone would raise $20 billion. ...
[T]his amendment will ensure that individuals who apply to this
program
remain productive and hard-working members of their communities. The
amendment requires that individuals must work for at least 6 years
before they may adjust their status. Realistically, from what we know
about the number of green card petitioners legally waiting in other
countries for their green card, it is much more likely that they would
have to wait a longer time before the process is completed. Again,
this
is not amnesty. ..." [35]
In New Mexico, the AFL-CIO endorses Democrat Governor Bill Richardson,
infamous for his support in 1999 of the racist persecution campaign
against Chinese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee, and for his declaration
of a "state of emergency" on the Mexican border in August of 2005 in
order to fund more troop deployments to the border. The AFL-CIO and
the
UFCW also endorse Janet Napolitano, the Democratic governor of the
neighboring state of Arizona, who joined Richardson's racist border
provocation.
Also in Arizona, Jim Pederson, the Democratic challenger (endorsed by
the AFL-CIO) to Republican Senator Jon Kyl, says he will "will work
across party lines for comprehensive immigration reform". [36] Just
what
does "comprehensive immigration reform" mean to Pederson?
"Compel the federal government to pay the $217 million owed Arizona
for
incarcerating foreign nationals and expand the State Criminal Alien
Assistance Program (SCAAP) program, which provides grants to border
states that bear the brunt of Washington's failed policies. ...
Improve
coordination and intelligence- sharing between federal enforcement
efforts and state and local law enforcement. ...
Recruit, hire, and train at least 12,000 new, highly-qualified Border
Patrol agents over the next five years. ... Expand the capacity for
detention facilities for foreign nationals. ...
Undocumented workers would be eligible to participate [in a guest-
worker
program] if they pay a fine, undergo a criminal and security
background
check, and pay back taxes. ... After six years, guest workers would be
eligible to apply for permanent residency, provided they pay a fine
[another fine?!], learn English, and successfully complete a series of
U.S. civics courses. After five additional years, they would be
eligible
to apply for citizenship. " [37]
For a revolutionary workers party
The workers movement has no hope of advancing when it is tied to the
Democrats, a capitalist party that represents interests completely
alien
to the multinational working class. The union bureaucracy is the chain
that binds the working class to the Democrats and thus to their
enemies,
the bosses: not only because union members and other workers might
trust
the union presidents to be looking out for their interests, but
primarily because the conservative union bureaucracy prevents the
unions, and the millions of organized workers they represent, from
forming the base of a mass workers party.
The reformists, such as Socialist Appeal and Socialist Organizer, call
for a labor party [38], because they choose to ignore the fact that
the
US labor bureaucracy, despite the many defeats handed to it by the
bosses in the past 25 years, is not moving leftward and away from its
class-collaboration ist politics: every indication shows that it fears
the class struggle more than ever. There is a labor party in the US,
and
even its most fervent boosters among the reformist socialists admit
that
it is in a sorry state: formed in 1996, the party has not yet run a
single candidate in its ten years of comatose existence. Its own rules
prevent it from presenting candidates unless an overwhelming level of
support is guaranteed before the campaign has even begun. Who ever
thought that the point of political campaigning was to gather support!
The Labor Party's extreme timidity at upsetting the apple cart of
Democratic Party politics stems from the fact that this party is not a
party of the laboring masses and their most militant and radical
elements. It is a party of their bureaucratic misleaders, the labor
lieutenants of capitalism. As a party of the labor bureaucrats, the
Labor Party will not be an instrument of the workers struggle to
remove
them, and thereby to break the chains binding them to the bosses - in
fact, the Labor Party flatly refuses to interfere in "internal" union
affairs. [39] What the working class urgently needs is something
altogether different: a revolutionary workers party that fights for a
break with the capitalists and their parties. This can not be done
without a revolutionary upheaval inside the unions that throws out the
dead weight of the union bureaucracy and brings the masses of workers,
organized and unorganized, into a class struggle against the bosses
and
their government. There must be a party to lead this struggle. A party
based on the union bureaucracy can't throw out the union bureaucracy,
it
can't break with the Democrats, and it outright admits it! If only its
"socialist" supporters were half as honest.
Centrists won't fight the labor bureaucrats
The majority of self-proclaimed socialist groups have a position on
the
labor bureaucracy that can be summed up as "critical support" - and
when
push comes to shove, very light on the criticism and heavy on the
support. We revolutionaries do not give one ounce of support to the
labor bureaucrats, because they are the representatives of the bosses
within the workers' organizations. We will defend them against the
bosses' anti-democratic union-busting attacks, which are actually
aimed
at the rights of the rank and file, while at the same time insisting
that only a revolutionary leadership can reverse US labor's losing
streak.
The common refrain among the centrists and opportunists, who want to
take leftist positions without isolating themselves from the union
bureaucracy and the comfortable world of "progressive" non-profits, is
that the mighty tide of an upsurge in the workers' struggle will, so
to
speak, "lift all boats". In the May 5, 2006 Socialist Worker, Lee
Sustar
measures out varying amounts of praise and criticism for the union
tops,
and tries to make a positive example of the March 31, 2006 press
release
[40] issued by Teamsters President Jim Hoffa, because he criticizes
the
guest worker program proposed by Bush and the Senate
Democrats. "Hoffa's
position falls far short of amnesty," acknowledges Sustar (the ISO
doesn't support full citizenship rights for all immigrants, only
amnesty, which leaves the question of equal democratic rights
unanswered, and tacitly accepts the racist criminalization of
immigrant
workers). Damn right it's far short. In fact, Hoffa's superficial
opposition to guest worker programs is an accidental result of the
Teamster leadership's anti-immigrant national chauvinist politics, and
just like his opposition to NAFTA based on national-chauvinist
anti-immigrant demagogy, it is poisonous to the working class and the
labor movement. Sustar concludes that "[Hoffa's position] does reflect
the fact that millions of immigrant workers are on the move. And when
it
comes to deciding labor's position on immigration issues, that is what
will matter most." Socialist Worker's pollyannish belief is that as
long
as the workers are "on the move", things will work out in the end.
This
is a dangerous misconception. If there is to be a victorious upsurge
in
the workers struggle, it must consciously aim to sweep out these
fakers
and betrayers, because the bureaucrats are firmly anchored to the
capitalist bedrock.
While today it conceals its chauvinist position against Mexican truck
drivers under a gloss of paternalistic concern, the racist position of
the Teamster leadership has not fundamentally changed since the time
when they, along with the entire AFL-CIO, fought against NAFTA on a
basis of racism and chauvinism, claiming it would "steal American
[sic]
jobs". The August 2006 issue of the official Teamster magazine carries
an article by Charles Bowden entitled "Holding The Line" [41] (against
Mexican truckers). The article warns that new "NAFTA Highways" mean
that
"Mexican truckers will deliver the freight and freely drive all U.S.
highways." It accuses Mexican truckers of drinking and driving, and
buying the services of prostitutes, all in a patronizing tone that,
while acknowledging that the Mexican truckers are "pawns in a game",
clearly wants no Mexican truckers driving on US roads. And in a
union-bureaucrat refrain that should be familiar to our readers by
this
point, it demands that the capitalist police step up "enforcement"
against Mexican drivers: it demands more drug, alcohol, and safety
inspections for Mexicans. After decades of the "war on drugs" bringing
racist cop terror to black and latin@ ghettos across the US, Socialist
Worker is setting up a union leadership that calls for more "anti-
drug"
enforcement against Mexicans as a positive example!
This is no way to fight imperialist capitalism. We revolutionaries
oppose "free trade" agreements that trample on the rights of workers
and
poor farmers, because it is the corporate lords of Wall Street, not
Mexicans, who are taking away everyone's jobs. The solution is to
organize the unorganized and fight for full citizenship rights for all
immigrants, neither of which the Teamster leadership will do because
of
its treacherous accommodation to the national chauvinism of the US
capitalist class.
We should not be surprised that the International Socialist
Organization' s Socialist Worker overlooks this point, because it is
the
same ISO that backed the union-busting "green" lawyer Ralph Nader for
President in 2000 (and again in 2004), even when he aligned himself
with
the ultra-right racist Patrick Buchannan and offered himself to the
Teamster leadership as a more national chauvinist alternative to Al
Gore, promising to hoe a tougher line against normalizing trade
relations with China. [42]
The California supermarket battle and the New York transit strike
Aiming to cash in their profits from a round of mergers and
consolidation in the supermarket industry, the Albertsons, Safeway,
and
Kroger chains conspired to break the United Food and Commercial
Workers
union in southern California in 2003. Safeway, which owned the Vons
and
Pavillions chains, offered a poisonous contract to the UFCW members:
drastic cuts in health care and retirement benefits, and the
institution
of a two-tiered wage and benefit system, with new hires getting a
worse
deal than those hired before the new proposed contract. The workers
went
on strike on October 11, 2003. Albertsons and Ralphs (owned by Kroger)
locked out their workers in solidarity with their fellow capitalists.
The chains admitted that they shared profits with each other to
weather
the strike and lock-out.
This defensive labor struggle gained wide support in the multinational
working class of southern California and the entire US. The UFCW
members
were workers in one of the lowest-paid industries in the country, and
they were fighting to defend health care and retirement benefits that
every worker knew were under attack. Solidarity actions against the
huge
supermarket chains were organized across the country. But the union
bureaucrats of the UFCW, the AFL-CIO (of which the UFCW was then a
member), and the other unions stabbed the strike in the back. Faced
with
their greatest fear, the mobilized power of their own members, they
acted to starve the strike and make peace with their corporate
masters.
Two weeks into the strike, the UFCW leaders stopped picketing at
Ralphs
and urged people to shop there, as a show of "good faith" to the
company
that was locking out the UFCW's own members and sharing its profits
with
Safeway. [43] The union leadership did everything it could not to
endanger the profits of the national grocery chains. It never sought
to
extend the strike beyond southern California except with isolated and
ineffectual "informational" pickets. In another suicidal gesture of
"good will", the UFCW leadership called off pickets at the supermarket
warehouses, [44] ending a successful alliance with Teamster truck
drivers, and allowed these strategic choke-points of the supermarket
chains to operate, supplying scab goods to the retail stores. Then
just
before Christmas of 2003, the UFCW leadership took a stab at the
striking workers' morale by cutting strike pay from $275 per week to
just $100, all while UFCW local and international tops continued to
pull
in six-figure salaries. The UFCW put millions of dollars of
concessions
on the table, offering to make the workers pay $150 to $200 each per
month for health benefits, but the supermarket chains smelled blood
and
demanded more: Safeway wanted $1 billion in savings over the three
year
contract. The strike dragged on, sabotaged from the start by the
class-collaboration ist union bureaucrats, until the bankrupted and
exhausted members voted on Sunday, February 29 to end their strike,
giving in to nearly all of Safeway's greedy demands.
The defenders of the union bureaucracy had a lot to cover for after
this
terrible defeat. Workers World called the strike a "heroic example for
all labor". "Bravo to the 70,000 Southern and Central California
grocery
workers, a work force that is 60-percent women and almost 50-percent
people of color, who endured a strike/lockout for nearly five months,"
writes Workers World's John Parker. [45] At least he didn't call for
an
encore! The article uncritically reprints UFCW President Doug Dority's
hypocritical eulogy to the strike he helped to murder, and hails the
"unprecedented unity ... from other unions". If there was so much
"unprecedented unity" and "heroism", why was the strike such a
disastrous failure? The only unity that the labor misleaders
demonstrated was their unity with the bosses.
The defeat of the 2003-2004 grocery workers strike showed that the
UFCW
grocery workers had no revolutionary organization that was capable
taking the strike out of the hands of the union bureaucrats and
mobilizing the power of all of organized labor to defeat the greedy
schemes of the grocery giants. The possibilities demonstrated by the
cut-off of the supply warehouses showed that a stronger strike, and a
better outcome, was possible. But the union bureaucrats refused to let
it happen. Parker places the blame on on the supermarket bosses and
the
government, which sent a "mediator" to intervene against the union. If
an army is defeated in battle because its generals refuse to arm their
troops, is the enemy to blame? Parker's conclusion teaches us nothing,
but more importantly from the perspective of the Stalinists at Workers
World, it lets the labor bureaucrats off the hook.
The ostensibly Trotskyist newspaper, Socialist Action, took a more
left-wing line on the supermarket defeat, placing the blame squarely
on
the sell-out union bureaucrats "[UFCW members] were betrayed from day
one by a hardened bureaucracy that is skilled at maneuver and
deception
but still fearful that a resurgent membership might see through their
pretense and take union power into their own hands to fight the bosses
until victory," wrote SA's Jeff Mackler. [46] Socialist Action's
actual
practice in the unions, however, reveals that this position is nothing
but empty fake-Marxist posturing.
In the December, 2000 leadership election of New York City's Transport
Workers Union (TWU) local 100, Socialist Action, along with most of
the
reformist left, supported the "New Directions" slate, headed by Roger
Toussaint, as a "reform" alternative to the corrupt leadership of
local
President Willie James. But the New Directions slate, including SA
supporter Marty Goodman (who now sits on the TWU local 100 Executive
Board), showed early on that they might have offered new faces for the
union bureaucracy, but no new direction. New Directions was motivated
by
the shameful endorsement of racist police-state Republican Rudy
Giulliani for Mayor by the TWU 100 old guard, but it did not offer a
socialist alternative, which effectively made ND the Democratic Party
slate. ND came to power, not by honestly fighting for a class-struggle
alternative to the disgusting corruption of the TWU 100 bureaucracy,
but
by dragging their own union into the capitalist courts, inviting the
courts and the cops to do their dirty work for them, to the detriment
of
the TWU 100 membership. ND sued local 100 in 1994 for $12 million, and
got a court order forcing the union to mail its election leaflet. Leo
Schwartz writes in Socialist Action:
"The [TWU 100 corruption] scandal deepened when an ND supporter, in an
April 27 letter to [New York State] District Attorney Robert
Morgenthau,
requested a financial investigation of the local in light of the Mack
findings. The letter led to an ongoing U.S. Department of Labor audit
(with a promise not to indict!) and an investigation by the TWU
International.
In June, after a Local 100 Executive Board spending review committee
was
repeatedly stonewalled, ND - using the threat of legal action -
obtained
copies of union officers' credit card charges." [47]
This kind of union-busting behavior by so-called "reformers" is to be
expected of a faction that is an unprincipled amalgam of ex-
socialists,
fake-socialists, and plain-old opportunists. But SA's endorsement of
the
traitorous union-suing tactics of New Directions shows that, far from
organizing a fighting vanguard of union militants in TWU local 100 to
"take union power into their own hands to fight the bosses until
victory," SA took the opportunist shortcut of joining an unprincipled
combination that invited the bosses' government to fight their own
union! We revolutionaries say, cops and courts, hands off our unions:
labor will clean its own house!
In the Fall of 2005, the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority
(MTA), the owner of the city's bus and subway services which serves
as a
lucrative slush fund for the city's real estate and financial barons,
demanded that the members of TWU 100 accept a two-tiered contract full
of give-backs to the bosses: raising the retirement age to 65,
imposing
pay deductions for the pension plans, and a deadly work speedup plan
of
cutting out conductors, making "one person" trains. The white
billionaire city fathers were itching for a confrontation. On December
8, governor George Pataki threatened to bring in the national guard to
drive the subways and buses, and the New York Post blared the threat
on
its front page the next day. The TWU membership, 34,000 mostly black,
Caribbean, and latin@ workers who were already sick of the dictatorial
and racist practices of the MTA bosses, refused to take the contract.
Defying New York's union-busting Taylor law, they walked off the job
at
3 AM on December 20, 2005, and within hours their strike demonstrated
the awesome potential power in the hands of the workers: New York was
paralyzed, gridlock snarled Manhattan's streets that were not closed
off
by the city authorities, and the city government estimated that it
lost
one billion dollars in sales taxes in three days.
The bosses bared their fangs: On December 20, State Supreme Court
judge
Theodore Jones found TWU local 100 in contempt, and fined the union
one
million dollars per day. The capitalist press pulled out all the stops
to whip up a racist lynch-mob frenzy against TWU 100 and its black
Caribbean president, Roger Toussaint. "Throw Roger from the train!"
screamed a front-page editorial in the December 21 Daily News, which
openly incited to lynch-mob murder of the union's president. "Jail
'Em!", bellowed the front page of the December 22 New York Post. But
support for the transit workers remained high in this city of
immigrants
and oppressed workers who knew first-hand the racist, repressive
forces
that the TWU members were challenging.
TWU International President Michael O'Brien crossed the picket line
even
before the strike began, warning Local 100 that the international
union
would not support their strike. And in the Brooklyn courtroom on the
morning of December 20, lawyers for the TWU international sided with
the
state's attorneys against local 100, disavowing any support for the
strike.
By bringing the city government to its knees with a solid, powerful
strike, the TWU members won the battle, but Toussaint and the New
Directions leadership handed them a defeat. At union rallies, the TWU
100 leadership put cop "union" president Pat Lynch on the platform as
a
"labor ally", when he represented the city's thugs who were enforcing
the union busting Taylor law against the strikers and would throw
Toussaint himself in jail on April 24, 2006.
Abandoned by the Democratic Party and his fellow union bosses, and
under
threat from the cops that he posed as his "friends", Toussaint and the
majority of the TWU 100 executive board called off the strike on
December 22. The rallying cry of the strike was "no contract, no
work,"
but the TWU leadership, without consulting the members, sent the
workers
back to work without a contract, snatching a defeat for the workers
from
the jaws of victory.
Workers World endorsed Local 100's leadership's strike-stopping
betrayal. A lying article by Milt Neidenberg began with "The 34,000
members of Transport Workers Union Local 100, led by President Roger
Toussaint, decided to suspend their powerful three-day strike today."
[48] The 34,000 striking members were never allowed to decide, and
their
rejection of the contract offer that resulted from the cancellation of
the strike indicates their widespread discontent with the bum deal
that
the union tops' betrayal left them!
Socialist Worker demonstrated its illusions in the union-suing wannabe
bureaucrats of New Directions when it drew up another indecisive
"critical support" balance sheet on the TWU 100 strike: their
editorial
writes "many workers are understandably bitter at Toussaint, who
ousted
the union local's old guard for its failure to carry out a strike
threat
in 1999, but who then broke with his allies in the union's reform
movement and squelched opposition. The organization of rank-and-file
activists over many years was strong enough to pressure Toussaint into
calling a walkout, but not to take the initiative when the struggle
was
cut short." [49]
Socialist Action took advantage of the bureaucrat-engineer ed defeat
for
TWU local 100 by tying itself up in another unprincipled, opportunist
alliance of union bureaucrats that sought to ride a wave of member
anger
at the Toussaint leadership, without offering anything better. SA
supporter and TWU 100 executive board member Marty Goodman, along with
Socialist Worker, supported a faction, variously named "Transit
Workers
for a Just Contract", the "Vote No Coalition", and the "Committee for
a
Better Contract", which included Bush and Pataki supporter, and Local
100 vice president, Ainsley Stewart, who voted against the strike in
the
first place! [50] Socialist Worker approvingly quotes this labor
traitor
in a January 27, 2006 article by Hadas Thier. [51] The opportunistic
maneuvers of these fake socialists only weaken the struggle to build a
militant working-class vanguard in the labor unions.
Throughout the strike, the anti-communist Proletarian Revolution and
its
Revolutionary Transit Worker group posed as militant opponents of the
sell-out bureaucracy of Toussaint and the other union tops. But RTW
too
gave "critical" support to the union-suing New Directions slate. Eric
B.
Josephson, the leader of the RTW faction, wrote in issue number one of
Revolutionary Transit Worker:
"I voted for ND and urged other TWU members to do so - but not to
trust
ND for a second. They have long been Division leaders ... but they
haven't consistently tried to mobilize the ranks in any Division.
Rather, they call in the anti-worker courts, D.A.'s, and other agents
of
the capitalists' government to prosecute the workers' union. ...
Let's Put New Directions to the Test
In voting for ND, I solidarized with the ranks' desire to throw out
the
old guard and clear the way for further struggles. In no way does this
mean any let-up in my hard and consistent opposition to ND's
opportunist
leadership. They are now on the hot-seat. They can no longer excuse
themselves from working for a militant fightback by blaming the old
guard's obstruction. Transit workers will expect results, and I intend
to help keep the pressure on ND. As Track Division Vice-Chair, I will
be
able to do so more effectively. ...
We got rid of one bureaucratic obstacle. Now we have to prevent ND
from
becoming a new entrenched bureaucracy. By placing demands on ND to
defend the union and putting forward a strategy of mass action to
fight
the bosses, I aim to show that the real alternative to bureaucratic
betrayals is to build a revolutionary leadership which puts workers'
interests before the capitalist system and fights for socialism." [52]
New Directions had already been tested, and they already failed the
test, when they unmistakably demonstrated their union-suing ways.
Josephson admits this, ignores it, calls for a "critical" vote for the
union-suers, and then this "revolutionary" claims that by "keep[ing]
the
pressure on" the capitalist ND bureaucrats, and "placing demands" on
ND,
workers can "prevent ND from becoming a new entrenched bureaucracy" .
But
ND proved they were bureaucrats even before they were elected: the
most
pathetic kind of bureaucrats, bureaucrats without titles.
What is the union bureaucracy and how do we fight it?
Leon Trotsky, the co-leader with Vladimir Lenin of the Bolshevik
revolution of 1917, wrote that "In all countries the proletariat is
racked by a deep disquiet. The multimillioned masses again and again
enter the road of revolution. But each time they are blocked by their
own conservative bureaucratic machines." [53] We should not forget
that
the trade union movement in the United States was born out of mighty
workers struggles. There has been no natural degeneration of the
capacity of workers in the US for revolutionary struggle, as some
cynical middle-class defeatists claim. There is nothing "naturally"
conservative about the US working class, especially since it is
constantly being refreshed by immigrants, women workers, and youth,
and
our class has as little to lose and as much to gain as ever from
throwing out the bosses. The inevitably deepening crisis of US
imperialism, outlined at the beginning of this pamphlet, only makes
the
objective conditions for workers more urgently favorable to socialist
revolution. So why are the workers still bound to their exploiters by
the chains of a conservative, racist, and pro-capitalist leadership?
Is
it simply poor choices on their part? Is it only because not enough of
them have been exposed to the correct brand of socialist propaganda?
There are deeper material causes to the phenomenon of the union
bureaucracy, which point to the correct strategy for revolutionaries
in
the trade unions and the workers' movement as a whole.
With each cycle of boom and bust, peace (for the purpose of re-arming)
and imperialist war, economic and political power becomes ever more
concentrated in the hands of a few super-rich imperialists, their
banks,
trusts, and monopolies. As the monopolistic tendency of late
capitalism
becomes more pronounced, the workers organizations, which previously
could make some gains with purely economic strikes by making their
bosses vulnerable to the competition from rival capitalists, find
themselves up against monopolists who only fear one enemy: the
workers.
What rival bus or subway line could threaten the Metropolitan Transit
Authority when it was paralyzed by the December 2005 strike? When the
supermarket workers went on strike in California, the "rival"
mega-chains, beholden to the same imperialist banks that financed
their
debt from the supermarket mergers and acquisitions that created them,
clearly saw the union as a bigger threat than the other chains, and
banded together to break the strike. The era in which a reformist
leadership could secure major gains for the workers has ended. Either
the workers have to aim for it all, mobilizing the entire class to
decisively and permanently defeat the forces of state repression that
the monopoly capitalists array against them, or settle for nothing.
This
presented an equally stark choice to the reformist leaders of the
workers organizations. As Trotsky wrote in Trade Unions in the Epoch
of
Imperialist Decay, a manuscript he was unable to finish before he was
killed by a Stalinist assassin,
"Monopoly capitalism does not rest on competition and free private
initiative but on centralized command. The capitalist cliques at the
head of mighty trusts, syndicates, banking consortiums, etcetera, view
economic life from the very same heights as does state power; and they
require at every step the collaboration of the latter. In their turn
the
trade unions in the most important branches of industry find
themselves
deprived of the possibility of profiting by the competition between
the
different enterprises. They have to confront a centralized capitalist
adversary, intimately bound up with state power. Hence flows the need
of
the trade unions - insofar as they remain on reformist positions, ie.,
on positions of adapting themselves to private property - to adapt
themselves to the capitalist state and to contend for its cooperation.
In the eyes of the bureaucracy of the trade union movement the chief
task lies in "freeing" the state from the embrace of capitalism, in
weakening its dependence on trusts, in pulling it over to their side.
This position is in complete harmony with the social position of the
labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy, who fight for a crumb in
the share of superprofits of imperialist capitalism. The labor
bureaucrats do their level best in words and deeds to demonstrate to
the
"democratic" state how reliable and indispensable they are in peace-
time
and especially in time of war. By transforming the trade unions into
organs of the state, fascism invents nothing new; it merely draws to
their ultimate conclusion the tendencies inherent in imperialism. "
The few examples we have presented in this pamphlet should help to
convince the reader that, for the workers and oppressed, such an
adaptation - the ritual displays of patriotism, the participation in
the
bosses' racist and chauvinist campaigns against blacks, immigrants,
women, gays, or other scapegoats, the perennial hope in the Democratic
party or would-be capitalists like the Greens, is not only a betrayal
of
our fellow workers: it is a fool's errand, which will only increase
the
misery and exploitation of all workers.
We ask all workers and militant youth who agree with our perspective
to
join us and fight for our program within the trade unions, by
ruthlessly
exposing and fighting to throw out the labor bureaucrats who chain our
unions and our class to the capitalist enemy.
1. For union democracy! All positions in the locals, the international
unions, and the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federations to be chosen by
free elections by majority vote of the membership. No union official
should be paid more than the average wage of the union members. For
the
unconditional right to recall union officials at any time, by majority
vote. For the unions to be governed by committees of delegates
elected,
mandated, and recallable by the members at any time.
2. Break with the bourgeoisie and its parties! No more union money and
union endorsements to capitalist politicians - Democrats, Greens,
Republicans, or any other party or candidate that makes peace with the
exploiters and oppressors. They don't speak for us! No interference of
the state's agencies, courts, or police in union affairs, even under
the
cover of fighting "corruption" : labor will clean its own house! No to
the co-opting of unions and union democracy by state agencies and
boards, fake "dialogs" with the bosses, employer managed charity
organizations, or capitalist "non-profit" foundations.
3.Organize the unorganized! For a massive organizing drive in every
sector of industrial, agricultural, and service workers, directed by
regional and industry-based democratically- elected rank and file
organizing committees. Turn to the women workers, the youth, and all
the
oppressed: they have the least to lose and the most to gain, and will
be
the fiercest fighters in the coming struggles.
4. Unleash labor's power to defeat imperialism; for the formation of
workers' self defense guards! The union bureaucrats strive to sell
themselves as model bourgeois patriots, supporters of imperialism' s
wars
and police state. Use the power of workers strikes and boycotts of war
cargo to smash the imperialist war drive! Instead of singing praises
to
the class enemy's military and police forces, organize and arm
workers'
self defense guards to build powerful picket lines and smash the
racist
and fascist provocations of the Minutemen and the KKK.
5. For a revolutionary leadership of the trade unions, committed to
the
overthrow of capitalism through socialist revolution! "Democratic
unions
in the old sense of the term, bodies where in the framework of one and
the same mass organization different tendencies struggled more or less
freely, can no longer exist. Just as it is impossible to bring back
the
bourgeois-democrati c state, so it is impossible to bring back the old
workers' democracy. The fate of the one reflects the fate of the
other.
As a matter of fact, the independence of trade unions in the class
sense, in their relations to the bourgeois state can, in the present
conditions, be assured only by a completely revolutionary leadership,
that is, the leadership of the Fourth International. This leadership,
naturally, must and can be rational and assure the unions the maximum
of
democracy conceivable under the present concrete conditions. But
without
the political leadership of the Fourth International the independence
of
the trade unions is impossible." [54]
---------
Endnotes:
---------
1. US Treasury Bureau of the Public Debt,
http://www.publicde bt.treas. gov/opd/opdpenny .htm (cited on Sept. 9
2006)
2. US Federal Reserve Bank Statistical Release on Consumer Credit,
September 8, 2006.
3. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index
data (CPI-W data set) available at http://www.bls. gov/
4. Based on the analysis in the San Francisco Federal Reserve bank's
Economic Letter, "House Prices and Fundamental Value", by J. Krainer
and
C. Wei, October 1, 2004. In the event of a sharp decline in real
estate
prices, landlords who bought property closer to the peak of the real
estate bubble will see a decline in the market price of their
property,
while their profit of rents collected minus mortgage payments paid to
the bank will not improve: it is more likely to worsen in a time of
general economic decline, due to the inability of tenants to pay.
5. National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Key Data
Concerning
Homeless Persons in America, July 2004
6. From the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Out Of Reach 2005,
the figure is the wage necessary so that no more than 30% of income is
spent on the average fair market rate for a two-bedroom apartment.
This
is the national average, and figures for many cities are even higher.
7. A CNN poll conducted between August 30 and September 2, 2006 found
that 58% of adults in the US oppose the war in Iraq.
8. Press Release by Pelosi and Reed: Democratic Defense Experts Charge
Administration With Degrading Army Readiness, Aug. 1, 2006
9. From the transcript at http://www.debates. org/pages/ trans2004a.
html
10. Ned Lamont: "The Democrats Mean Business: Washington Needs an
Entrepreneurial Approach". Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2006.
11. The 9/11 Commission report recommended that all people in the US
be
required to carry a biometric identification card, and called for the
prohibition on CIA and military spying on US citizens to be abolished.
These and other gestapo-style measures prompted even the
ultra-reactionary pundit William Safire to criticize the 9/11
Commission
report on the opinion page of the July 26, 2004 New York Times. But
apparently they're a-okay with "anti-war" Ned Lamont. We dare not
speculate what this fan of government repression and US military might
means by "treat[ing] the rest of the world with respect."
12. Vol. 21 No. 13, pgs. 17-18.
13. In the front-page article "Labor's election plan: Turn up the
turnout!" by Roberta Wood.
14. American Friends Service Committee press release, December 19,
2005,
"Quaker Organization Calls for End to Government Spying".
15. David Lindorff, "The No-Fly List". In These Times, November 22,
2002.
16. The 2005 Current Population Survey data from the U.S. Census
Bureau
reports that 22.8% of foreign-born workers in the US are employed in
the
service sector of the economy, compared to 15.2% for native-born
workers.
17. Union members make up 11.6% of workers in service occupations,
only
4.3% in food services, 11.1% of building maintenance employees, and
just
3.9% of farm workers, compared to 18% for production, transportation,
and material moving occupations, according to the 2005 Census Bureau
CPS.
18. Of any nationality, black workers are the most unionized, at 15.1%
unionized versus 12.2% for whites and 10.4% for latin@s (US Census
bureau C.P.S.)
19. Current Population Survey, US Census Bureau
20. ICE Office of Detention and Removal fact sheet,
http://www.ice. gov/pi/news/ factsheets/ dro050404. htm
21. Source: Transcript of All Things Considered, Nov. 1, 1994.
22. B Drummond Ayres, Jr., "The 1994 Campaign: In California; A Ballot
Proposition Gives Voters the Opportunity to Influence National
Immigration Policy". From the Sept. 25, 1994 New York Times.
23. Ibid.
24. White House press release, August 3, 2006, "President Bush
Discusses
Comprehensive Immigration Reform in Texas".
25. From the senator's "Statement Regarding Elvira Arellano" of August
15, 2006, available on-line at http://durbin. senate.gov/ record.cfm?
id=261747
26.
See http://www.aflcio. org/aboutus/ thisistheaflcio/ ecouncil/
ec02272006e. cfm
27.
See
http://www.aflcio. org/aboutus/ thisistheaflcio/ convention/
2005/upload/ res_5.pdf
28. See http://www.afscme. org/press/ 493.cfm
29. Change To Win press release of March 29, 2006, "Statement of
Change
to Win Chair Anna Burger on the Immigration Reform Bill Approved by
the
Senate Judiciary Committee"
30. From the transcript at http://www.whitehou se.gov/stateofth
eunion/2006/
31. From the February 1 statement available at
http://www.changeto win.org/for- the-media/ op-eds-articles- and-
speeches/ statement- of-anna-burger- on-the-president s-state-of- the-
union- speech.html
32. Martin Kasindorf, "Immigrant groups' aim: Turn marchers to
voters".
From the August 14, 2006 USA TODAY.
33. "The Values of a Leader" from the Charlie Brown campaign website,
http://www.charlieb rownforcongress. org/wp/?cat= 4
34. From the August 2, 2006 press release: "GAO Testimony Confirms
Republicans Failed to Protect the American People". Available on-line
at
http://www.democrat icleader. house.gov/ press/releases. cfm?
pressRelease ID=1730
35. "Senator Feinstein Urges Support For New Orange Card Immigration
Plan", see http://feinstein. senate.gov/ 06releases/ r-orange-
card0522. htm
36. "Securing Our Border and Getting Results: A Proposal to Reform US
Immigration Policy" by Jim Pederson, April 20, 2006. Available at
http://www.pederson 2006.com/
37. Ibid.
38. The program of Socialist Appeal calls "For a mass party of labor
based on the unions to power with class-independent and socialist
policies". Socialist Organizer says "The reason revolutionary
socialists
support the formation of a Labor Party in the U.S. is that the
working-class cannot move forward on the road to its emancipation from
capitalism without first breaking from its political subordination to
the twin-parties of Capital by forming its own political party."
39. See "Frequently Asked Questions about the Labor Party", available
on-line at http://www.thelabor party.org/ a_faqs.html: "Does the Labor
Party support or endorse candidates or caucuses within local or
international unions? No. It is Labor Party policy NOT [their
emphasis]
to interfere in the internal affairs and politics of individual
unions."
40. "Teamsters Call for Responsible Immigration Legislation" ,
available
on-line at http://www.teamster .org/06news/ nr_060331_ 1.asp
41.
Available on-line at
http://www.teamster .org/resources/ members/Teamster Magazine/
06August/ nafta.htm
42. See Stephen Greenhouse's June 22 article in the New York
Times, "THE
2000 CAMPAIGN: THE GREEN PARTY; Teamsters, Wooed by Gore, Will Get
Together Today With Another Suitor, Nader"
43. See Nicholas Grudin's article "Union Pulls Ralphs Pickets: Leaders
Hoping to Divide Grocers" in the LA Daily News, November 1, 2003, pg.
N1
44. See Nicholas Grudin's article "Teamsters Resume Warehouse
Delivery"
in the LA Daily News, October 25, 2003, pg. N1
45. March 11, 2004 edition of Workers World, "As heroic example for
all
labor: Grocery workers stood firm in health care fight".
46. From the March, 2004 issue of Socialist Action, "Bitter Defeat 4
California Grocery Workers".
47. From the October, 2000 issue of Socialist Action, "TWU Rebels on
Verge of N.Y. Union Takeover?"
48. From an article posted on the Workers World website on December
22,
2005, "Transit workers end strike". See
http://www.workers. org/2005/ us/twu-dec22- update/
49. "What We Think: Unnecessary concessions mar gains in NYC transit
strike: A glimpse of labor's power". From page 3 of the January 6,
2006
Socialist Worker, available on-line at
http://www.socialis tworker.org/ 2006-1/570/ 570_03_LaborsPow
ers.shtml
50. See the February 7, 2006 Village Voice article by Tom Robbins,
"Toussaint's Transit Trauma: Union big walked a tightrope between
enemies abroad and at home", available on-line at
http://www.villagev oice.com/ news/0606, robbins,72099, 5.html
51. "Anger at givebacks in NYC deal: Transit workers reject contract."
See http://www.socialis tworker.org/ 2006-1/573/ 573_16_NYCTransi
t.shtml
52. Eric B. Josephson, "After Local Elections - Let's Put Our New
Leadership to the Test", Revolutionary Transit Worker no. 1, January,
2001. See http://www.lrp- cofi.org/ TWU100/RTW/ 1/test.html
53. From the Transitional Program, 1938.
54. Leon Trotsky, Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay,
1940.