Election that Never Was; Votes we'll never cast!

US Election Special Issue
Class Warrior, journal of the Liaison Committee of Communists.
Vol 2 No 1

USA: Workers need a program that fights for a Clean, Planned, Socialist economy!

The Pullman Strike was a national rail workers strike in the U.S. in 1894 by the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the big railroad companies and the federal government.

Two conferences on the future of Railroad Safety were convened, first in Richmond CA on March, 14, with a follow up on the 21^st in Olympia Washington. In the spectacle of the American left a list of endorsers including various syndicalist, socialist, and environmentalist NGO’s, CBO’s gathered under the banner of safety with little else to unite them. Some advocated for letter writing to politicians for better conditions, some told us “all you need is love”, while the Richmond Progressive Alliance and it leader “Third Camp” Mike Parker from Solidarity and Labor Notes, who in the last Mayoral campaign withdrew and threw his and the RPA’s support behind long term Democratic Politician Tom Butt, brought the popular front to this conference in the guise of a “non” political opening statements by the spokesperson for the Democratic Mayor. Despite advocacy for general strike and social revolution from the floor the main gist of the conference was on the issues of safety, logistics and trade union solidarity with active participation from Tesoro refinery steel workers who were still on strike.

The common sense and good trade unionist instincts of Rail Road workers long trapped in conservative craft unions has birthed the Railroad Workers United (RWU). RWU adopted the following principles of good industrial trade unionism, Unity of All Rail Crafts, An End to Inter-Union Conflict, Rank-and-File Democracy, Membership Participation and Action, Solidarity, No to Concessionary Bargaining.   The attack by the transport industry bosses on labor including the unsafe demand for one man crews, long trains and long hours has increased the other hazards inherent in rolling stock with bomb like loads of chemicals and fossil fuel products. The failure of the craft unions to united workers around their interests has resulted in back biting and general weakness by dividing the various categories of RR workers.   

In the face of the failure of the craft unions the movement toward industrial unionism that the RWU represents is progressive, long overdue, and cannot be won unless the workers embrace class struggle methods to fight anti-labor laws which prevent rail strikes, general strikes and secondary—solidarity–strikes. This requires that the rail workers unions unite and declare their class political independence from the twin parties of the bosses who indoctrinate the union leaders and the membership into submission to the anti-labor laws and into the regular political activity of supporting the “labor friendly” candidate.

Even militant industrial trade unionism cannot win unless it breaks the chains to the Democratic and Republican parties and this requires a political fight which the syndicalist IWW supporters of the RWU are dead set against. The IWW members explicitly tell RWU members that they do not need their own workers party.   Prominent IWW/Occupy leader Elliot Hughes was overheard in the lunch line telling workers they do not need a labor party. Despite the attendance from Soc Alt, Speak Out, Socialist Workers Party and the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee only the Communist Workers Group advocated for class political independence, to challenge the labor bureaucracy for leadership with class struggle methods and for a workers party that fights for a workers government, to much applause and waving red flags (IWW leader Steve Ongerth was the time keeper waving the red flag).

Read On

Bankrupt IAM international leadership betrays Boeing Workers

 

In yet another significant major defeat for organized labor, the top leadership of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) in secret negotiations with Boeing, reopened the contract and shoved through a vote of the membership to accept devastating concessions.  Devastating not only for the Boeing workers but for all workers who look to their unions to protect defined pensions and wage packages. The contract was not even set to expire until 2016, and despite the fighting spirit of the membership demonstrated by an initial overwhelming NO vote, the IAM leaders bowed down to Boeing’s blackmail threat to move future production to as yet non-existent, non-union plants, in areas lacking the skilled labor force needed to construct the 777X, This sell-out contract will eliminate the defined pension plan in 2016. Workers will pay large increases in medical premiums and will receive a paltry 1% yearly raise.  Boeing new hires will need 20 years plus employment to reach the maximum pay grade, more than three times what it takes now.  The contract will extend to an indentured servant-like eight years from 2016 to 2024, with workers bound hand and foot to a no strike clause.

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BART UPDATE: Labor needs a strategy of political independence in order to win strikes and smash austerity!

Many leftists and working class militants are confused about why labor ends up on the losing end of nearly every confrontation. Why the “good guys” lose is not merely a question of poor tactics by well-meaning labor leaders-even when they do rise directly out of the ranks. The long term political subservience of labor to the Democratic Party (one of the two major parties controlled by and representing the capitalist class) acts like a ball and chain on labor preventing strikes from accelerating to victory. Only by going beyond the parameters set for labor by the bosses’ parties in power can labor mobilize the power of the working class to win-what are indeed class battles! Those “legal” parameters, set in stone by anti-labor laws, supported and invoked by both Democrats and Republicans, with the acquiescence of labor’s misleaders, prevent strikers from asserting their power to initiate and win indefinite, general and political strikes.

On July 5th, after 4.5 days of strikers shutting down BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), under threat of a government mandated cooling off period, both sides agreed to extend contract expiration for 30 days. Some see this as a tactical retreat or tactical mistake, but in reality it is emblematic of a subservient labor leadership whose strategy is to grovel at the feet of the state.


HWRS & LBB lick the tail of the bureaucracy*

In Class War #5 we raised the rhetorical question: was the collapse of the strike a tactical retreat or a strategic collapse in the first place (pg10)? It seems the HWRS/LBB has answered that ending the strike after four and a half days was a “tactical mistake.”

In their August 1st Statement “Transport and Public Sector Unions: Strike in Support of the BART Workers and Their Unions!” they categorize the bureaucracies’ capitulations in the first round of negotiations, which sent the strikers back to work without any gains for a 30 day cooling off period, as a tactical mistake. Trying to make lemonade out of lemons the HWRS/LBB state:

“Even now, the ATU 192 workers at AC Transit, and the AFSCME 444 & 2019 workers at EBMUD, still have not settled their contracts. This gives the workers an opportunity to correct the tactical mistake (our emphasis) made by the BART unions in returning to work before they had achieved the goals of their strike.”

So it remains for us in our lonesome to say this was a strategic collapse in the first place. We would not only want to make the points that the ICL (Spartacist) makes that on both sides of the negotiating table you have champions of the Brown administration, but that this is a cynical class collaboration against the interest of the workers and takes place against the backdrop where labor leaders of this kind across California and the USA have acquiesced in the bosses austerity, as has their beloved president Obama who is yet to make one practical move against the ALEC-inspired sequester.

This trade union misleadership has “thrown the fight” and left the membership on the ropes and it will be all California workers who take the resultant beating. To win labor needs to repudiate the bureaucracy, the Democratic Party and all of the false consciousness of capitalist ideology. As we said in Class War #5, workers must reject the compounding of “reactionary backward consciousness perpetuated by the media, the culture and the state [which] limits labor’s power to mobilize the entire class to win strikes.” It will take a general strike to win this battle. And right now is not too soon to realize this.

HWRS/LBB not only says this was a tactical error but proceeds to reduce the workers real grievances to a secondary order of importance, changing the subject to the also objectively necessary labor self-defense of oppressed communities. This wouldn’t be bad if they had raised demands that made either winning the strike or defending the oppressed an immediate prospect.

Replace the misleaders via a class struggle program to defeat the bosses and their politicians

Today the labor leaders still tell the workers there is no alternative but to acquiesce to the state’s demands that labor work without a contract. Thirty days after the end of round one, on August 4th, on the eve of the strike’s resumption, Governor Brown put a seven day halt to the strike to “investigate why” the negotiations are stalled. In both cases the government stepped in, not on the side of labor but to prevent the workers’ momentum from accelerating.

Marty Morgenstern, State Labor Secretary, with S.F. Mayor Ed Lee (right) at a news conference: “I don’t think the Bay Area should be on pins and needles. It’s time for this to end.” Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

The governor, the Democrats and all the politicians in the Bay Area were gesticulating madly in front of the TV cameras, doing everything they could to berate labor and stop the BART strike from reigniting and gaining support. They know that AC Transit workers (who at this writing 8/5 have announced a 72 hour strike notice) and other city, municipal, county and state workers unions are also working while out of contract. The possibility of united strike action by multiple unions at this time could “legally” grow over into a General Strike. The Taft-Hartley restrictions written into law precisely to prevent another Oakland general strike as happened in 1947 are cited by labor leaders whose link to the Democratic party prevents labor from challenging these laws with militant class struggle! These laws were written to prevent class solidarity strike action. It is only by general strike action that we will defeat these laws and regain labors’ strongest weapon–SOLIDARITY STRIKE ACTION!

If labor’s historic strategy was to obey the dictates of the state it would never have won the 8- hour day or organized the industrial unions, forced the government to concede a minimum wage, social security, or end child labor. Labor’s strength can emerge victorious only when our organizations mobilize the membership and the entire working class with the understanding that the capitalists run the government and that it is not neutral, that the state is the tool of the bosses and that labor needs its own political independence and an action strategy to win a fair shake.

Only with this understanding can labor unite with all the unorganized, the precariat, the immigrant communities, the international workers movement and those victimized by racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic police and vigilante terror in order to initiate united general strike and political strike actions that can secure democratic and economic. The capitalists have their posse, the politicians, the corporate media, the cops, and even their agents in the labor movement who keep us tied to their politics. We need to have a strategy of political independence to win. This means organizing class struggle caucuses in our unions which develop class struggle strategy and tactics to turn our organizations into fighting tools for workers victory.

Labor must have a strategy of defeating Taft-Hartley in the street through united strike action defying government injunctions. This is a strategic, not a tactical decision, one which can only be made when the rank and file assert their dissatisfaction with the long-term losing strategy of class collaboration foisted upon the membership by the entrenched bureaucracies of the major labor federations. To get off this political treadmill workers need their own fighting workers labor party which adopts and carries out a transitional program bridging the immediate concerns of the class to the historical resolution of the major contradictions of class society and all oppression. A party which will stop at nothing to accomplish this and will secure all political power for the working class.

The bosses’ strategy has been sold to the rank and file by the labor aristocracy and the union’s bureaucracies because they, a small percentage of the laboring class, have had their bread buttered by their alliance with capitalism at the expense of the unorganized millions of workers here and the hundreds of millions of workers super-exploited by parasitic Wall Street imperialists “investing” abroad. This grand coalition of labor and capital is enforced through the Democratic Party of President Obama, Governor Brown, Mayors Ed Lee (SF) and Jean Quan (Oak) on the one side and the sellout labor leaders on the other. There was no tactical mistake when the BART workers went back to work without a contract! No, it is the long term strategic collapse of the labor leadership that ill-prepares the class for these battles and which must be removed and replaced for labor to assert its just claims of today and win its historical revolutionary class demands.



* Humanists Workers for Revolutionary Socialism and Labor Black and Brown