United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 24, 2024 2:06 pm

Low Octane Labor Leaders Leave Workers in the Lurch
Posted by Chris Townsend | Dec 21, 2024 | Featured Stories | 0

By Chris Townsend
reprinted from the November-December Capitol Hill Citizen

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They Cheerlead for the Dems, While New Organizing Slows to a Trickle

The trade and labor union organizations in the United States are in crisis. Some lie in virtual ruins. Today, this key working-class movement is largely a disparate assemblage of pieces and parts that have somehow avoided or survived the destructive blows of corporations and governments. The top union officialdom and their apologists would protest such an assertion, claiming public opinion polls prove that the masses of working people support unions. But these polls are irrelevant, a mere distraction, as the masses cannot join the unions even if they support them on account of epidemic and unaddressed corporate lawbreaking. Both ruling parties refuse to confront this wholesale violation of the fundamental labor rights of American workers.

Efforts to reform our failed and weak labor laws have been jettisoned by even the labor leadership today. Ultimately, and contemptibly, the mass approval by working people of trade and labor unions is squandered, because the unions themselves in great majority refuse to do the difficult work of bringing those supporters into the unions as members and participants. New organizing levels have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, which themselves were at a 50-year low point in 2019. Today’s union bigs tend frequently to refer onlookers to their abundant internet sites and social media accounts for evidence of their leadership prowess – all showcasing in most cases the absolutely ordinary daily activities they undertake during their rule as union “leaders.” No expense is spared in many unions to employ trained public relations staff charged with inflating the egos and visibility of many of these top union officials. These manufactured publicity offerings are at best aimed at creating an optical illusion to mask the steady deterioration of the past six decades.

Few among the top echelons want to admit to the decades of defeats and destruction which has been dealt out to the labor unions and their memberships. By all measures the labor movement today is mired in a quicksand of failed practices and backward trade union ideologies. Aggregate union financial assets have, however, been accumulating to dizzying heights, confirming the fact that our labor movement ironically remains the most financially rich in the history of the world.

Union bank accounts bulge, all while the actual state of the unions at the membership level is in many ways a textbook case of decay and decline in most sectors. The net assets of the AFL-CIO nearly doubled in the past fifteen years to $138 million in 2024, while headquarters continues to spend an all-time low on organizing today. Facts are stubborn things; for the past 60 years, U.S. unions have lost millions of members and been wiped out along with entire industries where those workers had labored for decades. They have lost community presence to an alarming degree, lost political power, and frittered away the moral high ground and loyalty of the vast majority of working people – which they once possessed. Topping this sad litany of failures, today’s union leadership, almost without exception, have been unwilling to lead the campaigns of new organization needed to revive the labor movement.

This unwillingness has consigned the movement to a slow strangulation and evaporation at best, as employers and governments actively destroy union membership. The unions under their current leadership are incapable of refilling the membership losses. Few even try. Surrender and decline is apparently a certainty for these elements. The inability of today’s labor leaders to respond to the current alarm bells is striking. This calamity is rooted in numerous factors, among them the relentless attacks of Corporate America and politicians from both parties on organized labor and working people generally. The nation’s job-killing trade policies were all rammed through Congress in a massively bipartisan fashion both before and after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. Led by Democrats and Republicans alike, hundreds of corrupt trade deals were systematically unleashed to accelerate the corporate agenda of abandoning the U.S. The deepening pathologically anti-worker and anti-union bias of big business has also sped the race to the bottom. This combination of factors has delivered us to mass impoverishment, record levels of acute anxiety that engulfs the people, declining public health, epidemic crime and disorder, and all the other indicators of a failing nation. Both political parties gave untold inducements for corporations to destroy as many as 10 million of the very best jobs in the country. Basic industry was wiped out in many sectors and grievously wounded in many others. Most are just a shell of themselves today, and the unions that exist are scattered, greatly reduced in size, and sapped of the stamina and energy to rebuild.

As the manufacturing economy was destroyed, millions of jobs in transportation, natural resources, supply chains, and supporting service industries were also killed off as employers moved abroad. Pockets of resistance still exist, and here and there struggles are waged such as in the recent UPS battle, the auto strike, and in the recent union organizing outbursts in multinational companies such as Amazon and Starbucks. Good news in the labor movement is always available in small amounts when a close look is taken, as workers across most sectors still do their best to push back against the big business attack. But when the collective magnitude of these struggles is measured against the overall situation, and in the face of the relentless and continuing attacks of anti-labor forces, it is impossible to deny that a drastic crisis exists for working people and the unions.

Throughout the life-and-death battles of the past 50 years union leaders would sometimes emerge and push back against the tide of decline and defeat. Oil and Chemical Workers Union leader Tony Mazzocchi was one, who initiated and led a valiant campaign to establish a Labor Party in the U.S. in the 1990’s and 2000’s. The Labor Party vigorously campaigned for a general union revival, an independent political orientation free from subordination to the two-party system, and for national health care, among other badly needed reforms. Half a dozen union leaders later launched what became the Change to Win grouping within the labor movement in the early 2000’s, pushing for increased new organizing and coordination of efforts. Both efforts eventually lost momentum and withered to the point of dissolution. Few traces of either exist today, with even internet documentation of both once-major initiatives difficult to find. The bulk of the union leadership watched both efforts from a distance, some horrified, yet many sympathetic but unwilling to participate. In these brief periods the wider labor membership did at least see some of their top labor leadership at work, working to avoid the always guaranteed demise from inaction.

In recent years the assembled union officials have once more dipped into obscurity and invisibility, for many of them a deliberate goal. Few union members are capable of identifying their union president, let alone can express any informed opinion about them or their performance. Union after union is so estranged and disconnected from its own membership that pollsters are routinely hired so the leadership can ascertain the political sentiment of the dues-payers. This “follow the polls” is not leadership at all, but a device to conceal the fact that too many of these “leaders” are remote from the opinions of the workers they presumably speak for and represent. The obscure status of many union presidents and upper echelon leaders acts to mask an even bigger crisis. Logic would dictate that if a union leader as the head of a membership organization comprising huge numbers of members was invisible, and barely known, this would be confirmation that the “leader” had done little to win that sort of recognition. Few union leaders today are publicly known outside the small layer of staff functionaries and active members. Many conduct their affairs as de facto corporate managers, as organizational “administrators,” and certainly not in the style of labor leaders of the past.

Addiction to failing routines and methods is the norm in many unions. Corporate business practices for operating and managing the union’s affairs frequently substitute for actual trade union principles. A one-foot-ahead-of-the-other program of existence is practiced on a day-to-day basis, with little to no strategic thinking applied. Many unions tragically drift with this stream, piloted by leadership happy to sail along in anticipation of a luxury retirement at some point, all compliments of their members’ dues contributions. This leadership crisis reflects itself in many more ways than just a general organizational stupor. Vast treasuries are frequently built up, although little overall attention is paid to the success of the union’s obligation to better the position of the members. Collective bargaining with the employers has become something to avoid at nearly all costs, with the length of contracts now commonly reaching as long as 5 years in many industries. Once comprehensive healthcare benefits have been watered down as costs are shifted onto the backs of the members, with the union offering no answer to this costly debacle. Real defined benefit pensions are on an endangered list, consigning tens of millions to a pauperized “retirement.”

Again, where is the leadership to address this disaster for the members? Trade union functioning in the workplaces such as grievance handling, campaigns against employer attacks, detailed training for shop level trade union leaders, and trade union and political education are all receding, if they still exist at all. The “good news only” school of left and liberal thinking will howl in protest at these cold realities, although all are evident as facts. The situation facing labor leaders and their organizations in the early years of the last century was likewise hardly opportune. Tens of millions slaved in the mass production factories, in the mines, on the railroads, and across the farms. Subsistence wages and systematic overwork in dirty and dangerous workshops took their toll. Millions were spit out onto the human trash heap once the body and mind were no longer able to keep up with the incessant profit-driven demands of the boss.

But what constitutes the attributes of an authentic labor leader? What kinds of labor leaders built our trade unions in the first place? Which remain role models for those striving to renew the unions today? One such genuine and notable labor leader was William Z. Foster. Philadelphia-raised William Z. Foster joined the workforce in 1891 as a ten-year-old, like millions of other workers forced to seek employment to help support their families. His working life ranged over dozens of industries as he moved from job to job, finally settling in a permanent position in the railroad industry in Chicago in 1912. Having spent several years in the storied Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) on several jobs, Foster eventually joined the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). From this point forward in his career Foster dedicated himself to the project of changing the unions from within, restarting the unions as one of its leaders, and abandoning the urge to quit the old and inadequate unions in search of new and perfect organizations.

Animated by the life and work of the U.S. socialist and labor leader Eugene Debs, Foster’s eventual landing in the new and successor communist movement was practically foreordained. Those easily rattled by the left-wing tenets of the vast majority of our early labor leaders are to be expected. Union leaders today are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary alone, with many on a fast-track to millionaire status as a result. These comfortable placeholders have no interest in reminding their memberships of the sacrifice, privations, and frequently radical beliefs of most of the founders. From his position in the Chicago labor movement, Foster managed to push – and pull – the established union leadership in Chicago into a remarkable campaign to organize the meat packing industry during World War I. On the heels of his modest success he turned his attention to organizing the largest mass production citadel of all, the steel industry. In mid-1919 Foster managed with furious effort to corner the leadership of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in support of a mass campaign to unionize the steel industry. Foster was derided as a lunatic by labor “leaders” ambivalent about the atrocious conditions in the mills for 400,000 poverty-stricken workers.

Foster’s campaign to organize the steelworkers faced every imaginable obstacle thrown up by the established labor “leadership,” and when finally initiated was transformed into a desperate strike lasting into early 1920. Launched too late to take advantage of favorable conditions as a result of World War One production, facing fanatic opposition by every employer, savage repression by local police, and sabotaged at every step by the supposed AFL “leadership,” the workers and their heroic strike were defeated. With what became known as The Great Steel Strike lost, Foster eventually came to recognize that the existing leaders of many unions were not leading at all and were in fact retarding the growth of the organizations and consigning the working masses to the mercy of the bosses. He grew contemptuous of self-serving union leaders who enriched themselves off the membership, and who invariably opposed all initiatives to resist and counterattack against the non-stop big business onslaught.

His bitter experience with the steel strike solidified his determination to expose and eventually build structures strong enough to oust these treacherous and corrupted union leaders. After spending several years regrouping and rallying the scattered militants in the far-flung unions, Foster published “Misleaders of Labor” in 1927, a 348-page volume chronicling the sordid corruption and sellout practices of dozens of contemporary union leaders. He denounced undemocratic and autocratic practices in the unions, exposed endemic corruption in a number of unions, and he boldly singled out the kinds of employer thinking that had seeped into the unions with destructive consequences. Enormous salaries paid to many union leaders and their always-side-with-the-boss ideologies were condemned. At its root, Foster was able to easily prove that corrupt, do-nothing, and conservative business unions were ultimately weak unions.

Foster’s work through the 1920’s and his selfless and controversial work to confront the labor misleaders was validated when just 15 years later the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) emerged and swept through the nation’s basic industries. One after the other successful campaigns of union organization stormed through the nation’s basic industries. Two decades of principled and militant union activity – fed from the spring of many of Foster’s concepts and experiences – spurred the trade union movement to reach its historic zenith of size and influence. (Foster’s collected works, American Trade Unionism, which spans his 50-year labor career, is available from International Publishers. Also available from the same publisher is the splendid biography of Foster by Arthur Zipser – Working Class Giant.)

In the current situation the battered unions are confronted on all sides by hostile elements. Thankfully, there are some labor leaders still willing to rally their rank and file to fight back, organize, and set a higher bar for their own conduct. Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers (UAW) President, has pushed the once-moribund auto workers union back into gear. Flight Attendants union (AFA-CWA) head Sara Nelson is one who has worked diligently to mobilize her own union and has taken a more general leadership role across the labor movement. Postal Workers Union (APWU) President Mark Dimondstein has initiated the first significant resistance in the postal unions in decades. Nurses Union (NNU) Director Bonnie Castillo has expanded nurses’ union organizing from coast to coast. And United Electrical Workers Union (UE) commander-in-chief Carl Rosen has led the against-all-odds revival of this early CIO union, among others.

Although scattered elements are in forward motion within some individual unions, the overall AFL-CIO labor federation remains captained by the unremarkable Liz Shuler and a virtually unknown cast of lesser Executive Council members. Shuler was catapulted to the Federation top spot in 2021, after similarly landing the Secretary-Treasurer position in 2009. Her official bio offered on the AFL-CIO website offers nothing of substance as to her experiences in the labor movement, or her presumed qualifications to lead the 60 percent of the U.S. labor movement that comprises the AFL. Her role as an unchallenged custodian placeholder has allowed the Federation to aimlessly drift in today’s turbulent waters. AFL-CIO functioning in recent years has slowed to a trickle, mostly consisting of subsidizing and cheerleading for the Democratic Party, and adjudicating disputes that arise within the 60 affiliated unions. The federation leaves most union challenges to be faced by the individual unions on their own, with few efforts even mounted to coordinate their responses. New union organizing has by all measures been abandoned, which marks the first time in the history of the AFL-CIO, or the earlier AFL or CIO organizations, that new organizing has not been a top working priority.

The legacy of William Z. Foster would be just one historical example of how labor leadership might actually perform under battle conditions. In these perilous times, with war drums sounding world-wide, austerity attacks looming on account of the two-party addiction to war and corporate subsidy, and with labor’s new organizing stymied by big business lawbreaking, radical change in labor leadership thinking is overdue.

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This article originally appeared in the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper, and was written just before the November 2024 elections. It is reprinted here only with only small edits. For those wanting more information about the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper see: https://www.capitolhillcitizen.com/

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 30, 2024 2:42 pm

U.S. Sees Surging Worker Strikes in 2024

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U.S. workers on strike, Dec. 2024. X/ @HwardShaniya

December 30, 2024 Hour: 8:49 am

As of Friday, 334 labor actions were active in 515 locations across the United States.

The United States experienced surging labor strikes in 2024, with workers across various sectors staging protests over issues ranging from wages to working conditions.

The nation witnessed 334 labor actions across 515 locations as of Friday, continuing an upward trend in strike activity in recent years, according to the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations’s Labor Action Tracker, a database of strike and labor protest activity.

One of the year’s most notable strikes occurred at Starbucks, where at least 5,000 workers from over 300 stores across 45 states walked off their jobs on Christmas Eve, according to their union Starbucks Workers United.

The strike, the largest ever at the coffee chain, involved workers from 12 major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle. Workers demanded higher wages and fair scheduling, while criticizing the company’s executive compensation practices, particularly CEO Brian Niccol’s US$113 million compensation package.


Just days before the Starbucks walkout, Amazon faced what the striking workers called the largest-ever strike during the peak Christmas shopping season. While the labor union reported nearly 10,000 workers joining the movement for higher wages and improved workplace safety, Amazon disputed these figures, claiming that the striking workers aren’t even Amazon employees.

The manufacturing sector was also affected when approximately 33,000 Boeing machinists launched a seven-week strike in September. Their union accepted a contract offer in November and the striking workers returned to work. The strike, involving workers who assemble the bestselling 737 Max airliner in Washington, added to Boeing’s challenges in a turbulent year.

Maritime commerce faced major disruption in October when nearly 50,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) struck against East and Gulf Coast ports, affecting the flow of imports and exports from Maine to Texas.

The hospitality industry wasn’t spared from labor actions, as about 10,000 hotel workers struck across several major tourist destinations in September. The walkout impacted 24 hotels operated by Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt in cities including San Francisco, San Diego, Honolulu, Boston, and Seattle. The hotel workers’ union, Unite Here, highlighted understaffing issues, with three staff members often doing the work meant for four.


Several factors contributed to the surge in labor activism. The U.S. Department of Labor reported a doubling of union representation petitions from 1,638 in fiscal 2021 to 3,286 in fiscal 2024. “Unions continue to be more popular than at any time since the 1960s, with 70 percent public approval,” said the Labor Notes, an organization and network for rank-and-file union members and grassroots labor activists.

In addition, economic conditions played a crucial role in driving labor actions. The unemployment rate remained low, giving workers more leverage in negotiations. The rise of remote work and concerns about technological displacement have added new dimensions to labor negotiations, as workers seek protection against job losses due to automation and artificial intelligence advancement. These issues have become particularly pressing in industries undergoing rapid technological transformation.

This was especially evident in the recent port workers’ dispute, where automation became a central issue. The ILA said automation at ports would cost some members their jobs. Besides, reform movements in labor unions have also led to effective strike threats.

With a Jan. 15 deadline looming to resolve the automation dispute at East and Gulf Coast ports, tensions remain high, raising the possibility of another significant port disruption in the new year.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/u-s-sees ... s-in-2024/
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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 06, 2025 4:03 pm

US dockworkers could go on strike again before Trump’s inauguration

Dockworkers union and longshore industry at impasse at the bargaining table over use of automation

January 02, 2025 by Peoples Dispatch

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Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) after negotiations with USMX were halted in June 2024. Photo: ILA

Months after a strike numbering in the tens of thousands, US dockworkers throughout the East Coast could once again walk off the job just before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

The October strike of dockworkers organized by the The International Longshoremen’s Association, the ILA’s first strike since 1977, ended after three days with an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) to extend the master contract until January 15, and return to the bargaining table to continue negotiations. The strike in early October resulted in a tentative agreement between USMX and ILA dockworkers which secured a 62% wage hike over six years.

Before the strike in October J.P. Morgan Chase estimated that the strike could cost between USD 3.8 billion and USD 4.5 billion per day.

The ILA is “the largest union of maritime workers in North America, representing 85,000 longshore workers along the East Coast, Gulf Coast, Puerto Rico, Great Lakes, and major US rivers.” If another strike takes place, major ports will be affected throughout the East Coast, including the Port of New York and New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, Mobile, and Houston. These ports handle between 43% and 49% of all US imports.

The ILA and USMX are currently at an impasse over the use of automation at ports, which “jeopardizes jobs, threatens national security, and puts the future of the workforce at risk,” according to the ILA.

USMX, which represents employers in the longshore industry, claims that automation at ports “serve to bolster US industries by creating supply chains that are more resilient and efficient, which keeps cargo moving and helps manage costs and improves reliability for American companies that depend upon our operations every minute of every day.”

Workers’ concerns over the increased use of automation by employers mirrors issues at play in other recent labor struggles, including those of Hollywood writers and actors concerned with the use of artificial intelligence in the industry.

The ILA claims that the fight is not just about them, but instead “it’s about all workers.”

“Automation isn’t just coming for dockworkers; it’s coming for everyone,” the union writes. “Blue-collar or white-collar, no one is safe from the corporate drive to cut labor costs and fatten bottom lines through automation and artificial intelligence.”

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 14, 2025 2:47 pm

Eight Years On, What Have We Learned?
Posted by Ed Grystar | Jan 12, 2025
January 4, 2025

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Facing the immediate future dominated by a continued corporate controlled economic / political / media landscape, I offer this 2017 piece on the US elections for review. Could you simply insert 2024 rather than 2016?

“How can labor’s top leadership be so insulated from the reality of falling wages, rising health care costs, mounting debts, and endless wars that they were clueless about the frustration of workers exploding right before their eyes? Are these same top leaders capable of organizing and leading the type of popular campaign to protect workers in the upcoming period.”

_________

Which Way Forward? It’s Time for Organized Labor to Move Left

Posted on JANUARY 2, 2017

Now union leaders face a huge, embarrassing question: Why, after unions spent more than $100 million to defeat Donald J. Trump, did Mrs. Clinton win only narrowly among voters from union households, by 51 percent to 43 percent according to exit polls? Clinton even lost to Trump among union households in Ohio, 49 percent to 44 percent.

“We underestimated the amount of anger and frustration among working people and especially white workers, both male and female, about their economic status,” said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and chairman of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s political committee. (New York Times, Nov. 26, 2016)

How can labor’s top leadership be so insulated from the reality of falling wages, rising health care costs, mounting debts, and endless wars that they were clueless to see the frustration of workers exploding right before their eyes? Are these same top leaders capable of organizing and leading the type of popular campaign to protect workers in the upcoming period.

In his recent posting “Red Dawn in Pennsylvania,” Coleman Saint James writes a critical analysis of the recent Trump victory and asks “What went wrong?” Not that a vote for Clinton was the answer, but what drove many in the working class to support Trump? Why was voter turnout lower? Why did working-class towns like Erie, Pa., that had previously voted for Obama now vote for Trump?

Was the Clinton message to workers so dull and muted that people did not bother to listen? Was it all about anti-immigrant racism and sexism?

The recent slew of billionaire right-wing appointments to cabinet positions by Trump signals that a sharp move further to the right is in the works. Trump’s appointees and congressional Republican leaders seem to have nearly every social program on the cutting board next year, a signal that Trump is prepared to betray some of his key campaign promises not to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Given the immense dangers that lie ahead, Saint James questions the strategies and tactics union members and working people might utilize to defend themselves and the public interest. Is the reliance on an all-consuming and one-dimensional strategy of electoral politics advocated by the Democrats and liberal establishment really up to the challenge after decades of decline?

For a relevant history lesson, Saint James offers the 1988 Jesse Jackson for President campaign as an example that might offer a few clues as to how to revive and deepen today’s struggles. The 1988 Jackson campaign, like the 2016 Sanders campaign, had as its foundation the now forgotten working-class message of jobs, peace and justice that resonated with a substantial numbers of workers in western Pennsylvania.

For example, Jackson received 22.5% of the Democrat primary votes in Allegheny County, 16.4% in Beaver, 16.3% in Butler and 49% in Lawrence County. And as a comparison, Sanders received 44% in Allegheny, 42% Beaver, 39% in Lawrence County.

A crucial forerunner of his electoral campaign was the Rainbow Coalition, a Jackson-led independent, grassroots organization that sought to unite broad masses under the banner of left and progressive policies. The Coalition’s record helped to give credibility to the local campaign organizers and opened the door to a wider understanding of the need for the unity of workers regardless of color.

This simple but powerful class-based message, coupled with an independent organizational strategy, is the antidote to the demagoguery of Trump and the phony corporate identity politics of Democrats today. Although most of labor’s officialdom supported Michael Dukakis, the eventual Democratic nominee in 1988, Jackson generated a critical mass of support amongst labor’s lower levels of leadership and the rank-and- file. A thorn in the side of corporate America, Democratic Party officials, and top labor leaders, Jackson’s campaign message was able to grab the hearts and minds of a sizable portion of the population, even without the financial and organizational support that was withheld by corporate, Democratic and labor leaders.

And contrary to today’s liberal rhetoric of an irrevocable divide between the white working-class and black America, these two groups were equal partners in Jackson’s coalition. Comments by Ted Rechel, a United Paperworkers union member during the 1988 strike against International Paper in rural Clinton County, Pa., typifies the strength of Jackson’s class-based message:

He’s the only guy in the whole lot who did anything for the people who work for a living and have been shoved out of the door by scabs and Ronald Reagan politics… He’s the only guy in the whole world who did anything for people who work for a living and is going to get a lot of votes from this rural, redneck community.” (Morning Call, Apr. 21, 1988)

However, the strong public support for a bold program of jobs, peace and justice promulgated by Jackson in 1988 did not result in the formation of an organization that could be a building block to give political expression to this untapped sentiment. Jackson disbanded his Rainbow Coalition and folded his grassroots election campaign into the waiting arms of the Democrats, where it and the key issues that propelled his success ultimately died. It became another failed electoral campaign that spent millions of dollars and left supporters demobilized with no clear path to continue building a grassroots movement.

Jackson went away from the political stage but the same issues resurfaced again in a smaller version with the Dennis Kucinich 2004 presidential run — a strong grassroots network with a left/progressive message that ultimately channeled these resources and enthusiasm to the mainstream Democrats.

Again, in 2016, the Sanders campaign, like Jackson in 1988 and Kucinich in 2004 (but with significantly more traction), has proven that there is a solid, consistent mass base in the working class for a program that focuses on the evils of corporate rule in America. Similar in many ways to the Jackson campaign, Sanders’ grassroots supporters were ostracized, belittled and ignored by organized labor and the officialdom of the Democratic Party. Like Jackson, Sanders is keeping his movement in the Democratic party and attempting to carve out a concrete left wing within.

Standing in opposition to the energy of Sanders’ insurgency was the floundering Clinton campaign which, because of its ties to Big Money and allegations of wholesale corruption, was unable to offer a strong anti-corporate message. Just how out-of-touch Clinton’s politics were with the conditions of working people in America are made evident in two recent studies.

The surging income inequalities of American society and the crisis faced by everyday workers are highlighted by a recent report from three economists, Thomas Piketty, Emanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. They state:

Our data show that the bottom half of the income distribution in the United States has been completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s. From 1980 to 2014, average national income per adult grew by 61 percent in the United States, yet the average pre-tax income of the bottom 50 percent of individual income earners stagnated at about $16,000 per adult after adjusting for inflation. In contrast, income skyrocketed at the top of the income distribution, rising 121 percent for the top 10 percent, 205 percent for the top 1 percent, and 636 percent for the top 0.001 percent.

It’s a tale of two countries. For the 117 million U.S. adults in the bottom half of the income distribution, growth has been non-existent for a generation while at the top of the ladder it has been extraordinarily strong.

An economy that fails to deliver growth for half of its people for an entire generation is bound to generate discontent with the status quo and a rejection of establishment politics.
[http://equitablegrowth.org/research-ana ... countries/]


Similarly, the sinking fortunes of the vast majority of American retirees is highlighted by a recent study conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies, “A Tale of Two Retirements,” which highlights the enormous gap between the pensions of the top CEO’s and those of working class Americans.

Just 100 CEOs have company retirement funds worth $4.7 billion — a sum equal to the entire retirement savings of the 41 percent of U.S. families with the smallest nest eggs. This $4.7 billion total is also equal to the entire retirement savings of the bottom:

59 percent of African-American families
75 percent of Latino families
55 percent of female-headed households
44 percent of white working class households.

Of workers 56-61 years old, 39 percent have no employer-sponsored retirement plan whatsoever and will likely depend entirely on Social Security, which pays an average benefit of $1,239 per month.
[http://www.ips-dc.org/wp-content/upload ... dec-15.pdf]


Rather than offer popular solutions that would address these and other issues related to the economic crisis affecting the vast majority, Clinton and the Democrats pursued a losing strategy of attempting to win over the more “moderate Republicans.” They arrogantly assumed that workers had nowhere to go but vote Democratic. The remarks of Chuck Schumer, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Committee in July 2016, show it best:

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

The essence of the Clinton campaign was to try to cement the neoliberal dream of a future America — that her coalition of the urban elite and sheep-dogged identity groups in America, wooed by both an honest but only surface-level support of multiculturalism and a phony ideology of ‘pragmatism,’ can continue to elect Democrats while holding absolutely no one accountable. But set against the backdrop of world capitalism in crisis, this ideology (or lack thereof) — “America is already great” — excited few.

Enter the Donald, the other half of the two most disliked presidential candidates in US history. His right-wing “populist” campaign message of simultaneously blaming immigrants, Muslims, Washington insiders, and corporate-friendly “trade deals” for job losses whipped a nationalistic fervor that gradually gained traction and tapped into the economic angst of many.

Unfortunately, the groundwork of the anti-foreigner sentiment promoted by Trump had actually already been laid by the decades-long campaigns of unions that constantly railed against “foreign imports” while simultaneously preaching “labor management harmony” to protect their “partners,” soulless multinational corporations.

Confusion, disorientation, and apathy engulfed the rank-and-file as workers were told by union leaders and Democrats that the corporations are their “allies” and need “concessions” to remain “competitive,” even as jobs, benefits, pensions and whole communities were being gutted and poisoned over the decades by these same multinational capitalists.

In 2012, the AFL-CIO in Ohio even promoted the movie, Death by China, made by Peter Navarro, Trump’s appointee to a new White House position on trade and industrial policy. Recently, the AFL-CIO appeared optimistic about Navarro’s appointment and reported that he “has raised some important critiques of American trade policy and we look forward to working with him to translate that into real policies that benefit America’s workers.” These are signs that Trump’s opposition to the TPP forebodes an even more aggressive trade position against China, escalating the possibilities of a retaliatory trade war and military conflict.

The road ahead

However, like during the Jackson campaign, there was a small but significant section of organized labor that both endorsed the Sanders campaign and is open to solutions that challenge the unfettered rule of corporations and the “free” market. And as the primary vote totals show, this critical support from labor unions is accompanied by even greater support in the general public. As liberals are engulfed in a sea of finger-pointing to explain this loss, labor must recognize that there is already a critical mass of unionized workers and a large segment of the general population that can be a springboard for an alternative independent political movement.

How can we broaden and deepen this budding class consciousness inside of labor to regain the necessary power to defend workers on the job?

Is it possible to build an independent movement that educates and mobilizes those inside labor and the general public for policies that challenge the current right-wing corporate agenda?

A key to the revitalization of labor is to begin an honest dialogue about the class struggle against all workers being led by corporate America. It spans decades and continues under successive Democratic and Republican administrations. Organized labor’s response to these ongoing attacks has been totally ineffective, resulting in a sharp decline in the number of union members along with its ability to effect changes in the economic and political arenas.

What kind of trade union do workers need today?

And what are the changes in strategy and tactics necessary for labor to best defend worker interests on the job, in the community and in the political arena? The working class is searching for answers and is open to more militant and class-based responses but has no organizational forum to help move this debate forward.

Activists with a class struggle vision need to lead this bottom-up organizing with the understanding and confidence that real power comes through education and mobilization of the rank-and-file. This foundation that begins at the grassroots level will be a slow and arduous process of articulating a bolder and more militant approach to bargaining, organizing and politics. Victory is not always certain but never educating and mobilizing workers to challenge the rule of corporations is a guarantee for defeat.

The confusion, anger, and desire for change must be addressed at all levels within labor. It won’t be easy, nor are there any “hero leaders” that can change the internal lifelessness that typifies most labor organizations. Both labor-management cooperation, which pacifies and confuses the rank-and-file, and the poodle-like following of the Democratic Party must be critically examined and replaced with class- struggle unionism and independent political action — a strategy that consciously works to connect the dots and show that workers have more in common with each other than with their boss.

Building real power on the job also has its parallel in politics — independent political action. Issues like Medicare for All, Fight for Fifteen, taxing the wealthy to provide a public works jobs program to rebuild America, and support for public education, are just a few causes that resonate strongly and can be the catalyst for a powerful unifying message. This will be a message that counters the confusion, apathy, and hopelessness now afflicting many who are increasingly turned off by what is pushed as “practical politics” by the two mainstream parties.

The Rainbow Coalition can be an outline for the type of year-round independent political vehicle that restores the voice of the working class as the proper foil to Trump’s populist demagogy. Both the necessity of this sort of vehicle and the fading irrelevance of labor’s current strategies were again made evident by the 2016 election. The building of a working- class based, grassroots movement inside of labor and in the public can’t wait until the next election cycle.

Organized labor’s rich history through great upheavals like those of the CIO show that with principled leadership and a vision, labor, fueled by the energy of the workers within it, can lead this political movement.

https://mltoday.com/eight-years-on-what ... e-learned/

Jimmy Carter Was No Friend of Union Workers Like Me
Posted by Chris Townsend | Jan 12, 2025

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As a worker in the 1970s, I looked forward to a Jimmy Carter administration. By the end of his term in office, like millions of my union sisters and brothers, I felt betrayed.

I watched TV like everyone else on Inauguration Day, January 1977, when new president Jimmy Carter, his wife Rosalynn, and daughter Amy got out of their limo and walked the final stretch to the site of his speech.
Wow. Amazing. Unheard of for a president to act so normal. Just like us regular people — the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, had done the impossible and was now president. He brought a much-needed dose of honesty and authenticity after the long nightmare of Richard Nixon and Watergate. It was hard not to like Carter, or his whacky brother, dedicated mom, and wonderful wife, or the fact that, as a Southern Baptist, he had given an interview to Playboy. Playboy!

I left high school, went to work, and joined my first union in the Carter years. But by 1980 — the first election where I was old enough to vote — I didn’t vote to reelect Jimmy Carter. Union friends and Democrats alike pleaded with me. “It’s the most important election of your life! You have to vote for Carter!” Not me. I was already aware by then of the impacts that failed politicians and their politics can have on your life. My one little vote didn’t matter anyway, since after almost four years of the Carter presidency just about everyone I knew — and worked with — was voting for Ronald Reagan, an even worse alternative, anyway. If they were voting at all.

My labor friends like to comment today that “it all started with Reagan.” As if a switch had been thrown and a cascade of awful things was suddenly unleashed on us. No so fast. For me, a young blue-collar worker, the hellish years of Reagan started when Carter was elected. No doubt Jimmy Carter inherited a titanic mess; the 1970s were years when the many sins of the past were catching up with the United States. But Carter raised hopes and expectations that the unemployment and inflation crises would be confronted and working people would not be the victims. Instead, we all found out that Carter was the original “New Democrat,” long before we knew what that meant. It meant a Southern, conservative Democrat not beholden to “big labor” and “liberals.”

Over the four years of his presidency, Jimmy Carter stumbled and ricocheted from one failure to the other. His pro-business bent led him to deregulate the trucking industry, the airlines, the railroads, and natural gas prices. This restored profit for corporations but led not to job growth but mass layoffs for the unionized workers in these industries. The consequences of this handiwork are still with us today. In order to curtail the raging price inflation of the times, Carter was eager to cap wages, only offering murky and unenforceable controls on prices. Corporations easily skirted the price controls. Working people and retirees saw the purchasing power of their paychecks and pensions evaporate week to week. Carter’s political fortunes evaporated likewise.

Unions that confronted inflation aggressively in their collective bargaining were coerced by the White House into standing down. Carter invoked the shameful Taft-Hartley Act against the United Mine Workers in their 1977–78 national coal strike. Most strikes in vital industries were pressured and threatened into settlements far short of what was needed for the membership. None received any White House support.

These collisions with labor led Carter to abandon any pretense of support for much-needed labor law reform as well as legislation protecting jobsite picketing by the building-trades unions. Both pro-union bills were fanatically opposed by big business, so Carter abandoned the pro-worker legislation. As his political fortunes plummeted, Carter began to oppose just about any beneficial legislation for working people, always claiming that the new law would be “inflationary.” His timid support for the heavily watered-down Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act in 1977 was an early signal to labor that there was not going to be any significant legislative relief for working people under this president.

Carter’s foreign policy blunders and disgraces also helped torpedo his 1980 reelection. His support for the dictatorial regime of the Shah and his later handling of the Iranian embassy hostage crisis were twin debacles of historic proportions. His early support for the murderous Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan —justified as anti-Soviet maneuvers — reverberates in deadly form around the world even today. While foreign policy questions were remote to me as a young worker, Carter’s decision to enthusiastically revive the Selective Service military draft registration in 1979 was the last straw for me. Only six years after the unpopular draft had been cancelled, and with the entire Vietnam War’s mass killings repudiated by the bulk of the country, Carter yet again knuckled under to reactionary pressure in an absurd attempt to appease. (I never, ever registered, and had no problem slamming the door on the FBI agents who pestered me well into the 1980s.)

As Jimmy Carter aged gracefully and worked to redeem himself as a former president, I found myself once in a while thinking that Jimmy and Rosalynn would make nice next-door neighbors. But I cannot, I will not, forget his term in office and the effect it has had on me and tens of millions of other working people.

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 17, 2025 4:30 pm

Closing Ranks: Organised Labour and Immigration
Posted on January 17, 2025 by Yves Smith

Yves here. This post documents the role that rising levels of immigration played in labor organizing in the US. As you’ll see below, at a local level, it increased the formation of skilled (“craft”) unions but did not appear to result in a rise in unions for unskilled workers. One would have to think this result was not due to a want of effort, but to the workers’ relationship with their employer being too casual for them to have enough bargaining leverage.

A recent report by Pew Research included some useful historical data:

Image

My dim recollection, and labor history experts are encouraged to correct me, unskilled unions did not get traction until the shift to assembly lines, which resulted in large-scale employment of labor that had not mastered a trade. That was later than the time frame of this study but also did not strongly overlap with an immigrant surge. Then, due to the value that these factories had tied up in plant and inventories, plus the fact that the workers had learned how to operate particular machinery in it, even though that did not rise to the level of skilled labor expertise, did represent a training/time cost for employers, so that a factory-wide strike would make it burdensome and complex for the owners and factory floor managers to bring in enough scabs to get the facility running on a more-or-less normal basis, even assuming enough scabs would cross the picket lines.

One therefore has to wonder if the recent rise in successful unionization efforts is similarly the result, or at least partly the result, of our recent immigrant surge.

By Carlo Medici, Postdoctoral Researcher Brown University; PhD Candidate Northwestern University. Originally published at VoxEU

Despite fluctuations in membership, labour unions remain pivotal in today’s economy. However, evidence regarding the forces behind the unions’ emergence and growth remains limited. This column examines how mass immigration from Europe to the US in the early 20th century shaped the rise of American labour unions. Immigration fostered the emergence of organised labour, especially among skilled workers. Low-skilled workers, however, struggled to sustain unions. Unionisation grew more prominently in counties that received immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and in counties that displayed stronger anti-immigrant sentiment.

Labour unions have long shaped the economic and political landscape of advanced economies. Throughout the 20th century, they reduced inequality (Farber et al. 2021, Osorio-Buitron and Jaumotte 2015), improved working conditions (Rosenfeld 2019, Bryson et al. 2020), and influenced policies (Ahlquist 2017) and political systems (Acemoglu and Robinson 2013, Ogeda et al. 2024).

Despite fluctuations in membership, unions remain pivotal in today’s economy (OECD 2019). In the US, union approval rates recently reached 70% (Gallup n.d.) – one of the highest levels in 90 years – and the number of workers involved in work stoppages surged by 141% in 2023 (from 224,000 to 539,000) (Ritchie et al. 2023). In other parts of the world, such as Europe, where collective bargaining has a strong tradition, organised labour continues to expand into previously unorganised sectors and influence labour market conditions.

Yet, despite their enduring importance, the empirical evidence on the forces behind unions’ emergence and growth remains limited. In a recent paper (Medici 2024), I examine how mass immigration from Europe to the US during the early 20th century shaped the rise of American labour unions.

How immigration impacts unions is ambiguous. On one hand, increased job competition can motivate workers to unionise to defend wages and employment. On the other hand, a larger labour supply may make it easier for employers to replace uncooperative or striking workers, weakening unions’ bargaining power. Whether immigration fosters or hinders unionisation is ultimately an empirical question.

The early 20th-century US offers a compelling setting to examine this question. The US was already the world’s largest economy (Bolt and Van Zanden 2020), and the labour movement began expanding nationally (Foner 1947). Many unions founded during this period remain influential today. This growth occurred despite significant challenges to organising, as employers could legally dismiss or replace unionising and striking workers without facing penalties (Taft 1964). Immigration played a central role in shaping these dynamics. Between 1850 and 1920, around 30 million European immigrants entered the US, transforming local labour markets and creating both opportunities and challenges for organised labour (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Number of union members and inflow of immigrants to the US, 1880s to 1920
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Notes: Panel A shows the total number of union members in the US between 1880 and 1920 (Freeman 1998). Panel B shows the inflow of immigrants to the US between 1850 and 1920 (Immigration Policy Institute).

Studying the relationship between immigration and unions presents two key challenges: measuring local unionisation and establishing causal effects. To measure unionisation, I digitised archival documents on unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labour between 1900 and 1920 – a period when American Federation of Labour unions represented over 80% of union members nationwide. These records, drawn from the convention proceedings of state federations of labour, provide detailed information on the number and location of union branches across the country, and allow me to construct novel estimates of union membership. These data provide the first comprehensive, local-level measurements of historical union presence and density in the US (Figure 2).

To estimate the causal impact of immigration, I employed a shift-share instrumental variable approach (Card 2001). This method leverages chain migration patterns, whereby immigrants tend to settle in areas with established communities from their countries of origin.

Figure 2 County-level union density

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Notes: These maps display county-level union density (i.e. the number of union members as a fraction of the labour force) in 1900, 1910, and 1920. The legend represents the deciles of the distribution in 1920.
Source: Author’s calculations from convention proceedings of the state federations of labour (American Federation of Labour unions).

Main Results

The results show that immigration fostered the emergence of organised labour. Counties that received more immigrants as a share of the population experienced increases in union presence, the number of union branches, the share of unionised workers, and the number of union members per branch.

Immigration spurred unionisation both at the intensive and extensive margins – expanding unions in counties with an existing labour movement and establishing new unions elsewhere. For every 100 immigrants entering the average county, union membership increased by nearly 20 workers. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that without immigration, average union density (i.e. the share of unionised workers) would have been approximately 22% lower between 1900 and 1920.

Mechanisms

Why did immigration promote unionisation? The evidence is consistent with existing workers unionising in response to immigration for economic as well as social motivations.

Immigration affected unions in skilled and unskilled occupations differently: it spurred unionisation among skilled workers but had smaller and statistically insignificant effects for unskilled ones (Figure 3). Skilled workers, such as those in craft occupations, organised to protect their jobs and wages. Their specialised skills acted as barriers to entry, making them not immediately replaceable and enabling them to form or join unions. This allowed them to exclude new workers from their occupations and prevent outsiders from acquiring the skills required for these jobs. In contrast, low-skilled workers, such as labourers, struggled to sustain unions. Their jobs could be easily and immediately filled by newcomers, which reduced their bargaining power and made unionisation efforts in response to immigration largely unsuccessful.

Figure 3 Immigration and unionisation among skilled vs unskilled workers
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Notes: This figure shows the coefficients and confidence intervals from two-stage least squares regressions examining the effects of immigration on unionisation. The blue bar on the left displays the effect on all workers, while the grey bars on the right show the effects on skilled and unskilled workers separately.

Alongside economic motivations, the results also support the role of social factors in the expansion of labour unions. American Federation of Labour unions often adopted nativist rhetoric, portraying immigrants – particularly those from Southern and Eastern Europe – as culturally distant and less likely to assimilate or unionise effectively. These attitudes were reflected in unionisation patterns. Unionisation grew more prominently in counties that received immigrants from culturally distant regions (Figure 4). It also expanded more in areas that likely displayed stronger anti-immigrant sentiment, such as those with strong historical support for nativist movements like the Know Nothing party or higher levels of residential segregation between immigrants and US-born residents (Figure 5).

Figure 4 Source regions of European immigrants and unionisation
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Notes: This figure shows the coefficients and confidence intervals from two-stage least squares regressions examining the effects of immigration on unionisation. The blue bar on the left displays the effect of immigrants from any European country, while the grey bars on the right show the effects of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe or Northern and Western Europe separately.

Figure 5 Local anti-immigrant sentiment and unionisation
Image
Notes: This figure shows the coefficients and confidence intervals from two-stage least squares regressions examining the effects of immigration on unionisation. The blue bars on the left display the effects for counties with low and high historical vote shares of the Know Nothing party. The grey bars on the right show the effects for counties with low and high baseline levels of residential segregation between US-born individuals and European immigrants.

It is important to note that these results are also consistent with economic explanations. Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe likely had lower wage expectations than those from Northern and Western Europe, making them more likely to be perceived as a threat to existing workers’ conditions. Moreover, fears of economic competition from immigrants may have amplified negative stereotypes and reinforced pre-existing resentment. Overall, the results support the role of both economic and social factors in driving the observed growth of organised labour.

Alternative explanations, such as immigrants disproportionately joining unions or bringing radical ideologies from their home countries, are not supported by the data. The results are also not driven by other major events during this period, such as the political and economic transformations caused by World War I and the First Red Scare, or by differential economic growth experienced by counties receiving larger shares of immigrants.

Long-Term Implications

The effects of early 20th-century immigration on unionisation extend well beyond the historical period studied. Places that received more immigrants between 1890 and 1920 continue to exhibit higher union density today, suggesting that early unionisation created durable institutional advantages for organised labour.

Immigration also reshaped occupational choices. US-born workers increasingly took unionised jobs, likely using organised labour as protection against immigrant competition.

Conclusion

This research identifies immigration as a key driver of unionisation during the formative years of the American labour movement. By examining how immigration shaped organised labour, the study highlights the economic and social forces that influence labour market institutions.

These findings also broaden our understanding of the consequences of immigration, showing that responses to large immigrant inflows are not limited to increased support for conservative parties or anti-immigration policies. Instead, immigration can foster the growth of organisations, such as unions, with broad economic and political impacts.

While the historical context is unique, the results point to broader mechanisms that remain relevant today. Renewed interest in unions may reflect workers’ responses to modern labour market pressures – such as immigration, globalisation, and technological change. These dynamics are not confined to the US. They also resonate with advanced economies facing similar challenges and with industrialising nations undergoing economic transformations comparable to early 20th-century America.

Further research is needed to examine how organised labour responds to economic shocks in different contexts. The dataset assembled for this study provides new opportunities to investigate many additional questions, such as the long-term impact of early unionisation on immigrant integration and its broader impact on the US economy and political landscape.

See original post for references https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/closing- ... mmigration

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Sun Feb 09, 2025 3:05 pm

ImageTrump’s Government of Billionaires No Good for the Working Class
January 31, 2025
Pittsburgh

Statement of the UE General Executive Board

Since Donald Trump assumed the Presidency on January 20, he has issued a flurry of executive orders which will both directly cut living standards for working people and make it harder for us to organize and fight to improve our working and living conditions.

Trump was inaugurated surrounded by the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world. They had reason to celebrate — the world’s billionaires saw their wealth grow by $2 trillion last year, three times faster than in 2023. And with a cabinet full of billionaires, the new administration is poised to carry out a program of continuing to enrich themselves while dividing, repressing and bankrupting the working class. Our country is fast moving towards a more blatant and transparent form of oligarchy — rule by the super-rich.

On his first day in office, Trump appointed Republican Marvin Kaplan as chair of the National Labor Relations Board. The following week, he fired NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who had moved NLRB case law in a more pro-worker direction since she was confirmed in July 2021, and then, in a move of questionable constitutionality, fired Democratic NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox.

A Trump-appointed board and general counsel will continue the track record of the first Trump presidency, consistently supporting profits for bosses over rights for workers. We can also expect attacks on our union security clauses, whether through legislation or the courts — such as happened during Trump’s first term, when his first appointment to the Supreme Court proved the deciding vote in the Janus decision, stripping public-sector unions of their right to negotiate union security clauses.

Trump has given a prominent role in his administration to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, a multi-billionaire with a history of vicious anti-unionism and support for far-right and neo-Nazi parties. Musk has been given co-leadership of a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), which has tried to sell Congress on $2 trillion in spending cuts. Cuts of this depth are impossible without reductions to the spending required to maintain Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security at current benefit levels.

Regardless of whether Musk is successful in cutting a full $2 trillion, his new department will almost certainly pursue massive cuts to many social safety net programs, including health care, food security, housing, retirement, job-creating climate transition initiatives, and public education. President Trump has already begun ordering freezes on crucial federal aid to state and local governments, and funding for science research and nonprofit agencies that provide services to the American people, leaving thousands of UE members unsure if they will receive their next paycheck — or any paychecks — as of this week.

All of these steps will result in workers being laid off and cuts to the living standards of large numbers of working-class families in the U.S.

Trump’s imperialist foreign policy, with his threats of tariffs and annexations, are also making the world a more dangerous place for all working people, as he raises tensions with not only China but also the European Union, Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, and many others.

Most threatening to the ability of workers to stand together and fight for what we need, though, are the efforts of Trump and his billionaire backers to divide the working class through attacks on immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Black/African Americans, other people of color, and all who disagree with them.

Attacking immigrant workers hurts the entire working class, as employers take advantage of the fear caused by threats of deportation to undermine wages and working conditions, and weaken unions. And removing immigrants’ rights to due process — as the recently-passed “Laken Riley” bill does — threatens the very premise of “innocent until proven guilty.”

Despite the fact that Trump is entering his second term with an even smaller Congressional majority than he had in 2017, there are worrying signs that Democrats — nominally the “opposition party” in our two-party system — will not stand up to his corporate agenda. In January, 46 Democrats in the House joined the Republican majority in passing the Laken Riley bill, and 10 Democrats supported it in the Senate. Some Democrats also seem to be cozying up to the budget-slashing “DOGE” effort.

The fact is that the Republican agenda will not improve the economic situation for working people, and is, in fact, likely to make it worse. It is up to the labor movement, along with other working-class and popular organizations, and any elected political leaders that still stand with working people, to instead unite the working class to oppose the oligarchic agenda of the billionaires and corporations.

The labor movement will need to stick firmly to the basic labor movement principle that an injury to one is an injury to all. We will need to aggressively defend all of our members against attacks on their collective bargaining rights, their wages and working conditions, and their right to participate as full-fledged members of society regardless of their race, religion, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. We will need to clearly lay the blame for the ongoing cost-of-living crisis on corporations and the oligarchs, and both political parties which enable their greed. Labor needs to demand a positive economic program on behalf of the whole working class. And in addition to fighting for justice in our own country, we will need to continue to challenge our government when it pursues unjust foreign policies.

The actions of Trump and his billionaire supporters have already begun to generate popular resistance, and we can expect to see more. The labor movement needs to play a key role in channeling that anger into an effective fightback. And in order to best fight for a better future for working people, we will need to develop a political organization, such as a labor party, that is independent of the Democratic Party.

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 13, 2025 3:02 pm

A Return to Basics: Rasmus, the “Neoliberal” Turn, and Exploitation


Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: 'Abolition of the wage system!' Karl Marx, Value, Price, and Profit

Today, the point that Marx made in his 1865 address to the First International Working Men’s Association is largely lost on the trade unions and even with many self-styled Marxists. The distinction between the goal of “a fair day's wage” and the goal of eliminating exploitation-- the wage system embedded in capitalism-- is lost before a common, but unfocused revulsion to the exploding growth of inequality. It is one thing to deplore the growth of inequality, it is quite another to establish what would replace the logic of unfettered accumulation.



Marx offered no guidelines for a “fair wage”. Indeed, his analysis of capitalism made no significant use of the concept of fairness. Instead, he made the concept of exploitation central to his political economy. He used the concept in two ways: First, he employed “exploitation” in the popular sense of “taking advantage of” -- the sense that the capitalist takes advantage of the worker. “Exploitation of man by man” was a nascent concept, arriving in discourse with the expansion of mass industrial employment and borrowed from an earlier, morally-neutral usage regarding the exploitation of non-humans. Its etymology, in that sense, arises in the late eighteenth century.



Marx also uses the word in a more rigorous sense: as a description of the interaction of the worker and the capitalist in the process of commodity production. Even more rigorously, it appears in political economic tracts like Capital as a ratio between the axiomatic concepts of surplus value and variable capital.



As a worker-friendly concept, exploitation is most readily grasped by workers in the basic industries, especially in extractive and raw-material industries. Historically, an early twentieth century coal miner-- bringing the tools of extraction with him, responsible for his own safety while risking a more likely death than a war-time soldier, and accepting the “privilege” of going into a cold, damp hole to dig coal for someone else’s profit-- intuitively understood exploitation. A reflective miner would recoil from the fact that ownership of a property could somehow-- apart from any other consideration-- confer to someone the right to profit from a commodity that someone else had faced mortal danger to extract from the earth. What is a “fair day’s wage” in such a circumstance?



Organically, from its intuitive understanding by workers, and theoretically, from class-partisan intellectuals like Marx and Engels, as well as their rivals like Bakunin, exploitation became the central idea behind anti-capitalism and socialism.



Today, most workers’ connection to the exploitation relation appears far removed from the direct relation of a coal miner to the coal face and to the owner of the coal mine. The immediacy of labor and labor’s product in extraction is often of many removes in service-sector or white-collar jobs. Moreover, the division of labor blurs the contribution of the individual’s efforts to the final product.



Well into the twentieth century, “labor exploitation” fell out of the lexicon of the left, especially in the more advanced capitalist countries, where Marx thought that it would be of most use. Left thinkers, as well as Marxists, rightly attended to the colonial question, focusing on the struggle for independence and sovereignty; they were discouraged by the tendency for class-collaboration in many leading working-class organizations; Communist Parties correctly felt a primary duty to defend the gains of the socialist and socialist-oriented countries; and the fight for peace was always a paramount concern.



Exploitation was attacked from the academy. The Humanist “Marxist” school trivialized the exploitation nexus to a species of the broad, amorphous concept of alienation. The Analytical “Marxist” school congratulated itself by proving that given an inequality of assets, a community of exchange-oriented actors would produce and reproduce inequality of assets, a proof altogether irrelevant to the concept of exploitation, which the school promised to clarify. Both schools influenced a retreat from Marxism in the university, followed by a stampede after the collapse of the Soviet Union.



Liberal and social-democratic theory revisits the “fair day's wage” with the explosion of income inequality and wealth inequality of the last decades of the twentieth century that was too impossible to ignore. But what is a “fair wage”? What level of income or wealth distribution is just, fair, socially responsible, or socially beneficial? The questions are largely unanswerable, if not incoherent.



Thanks to the empirical, long-term study of inequality shared in Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century, we learn that capitalism’s historical tendency has been to always produce and reproduce income and wealth inequality, a conclusion sobering to those who hope to refashion capitalism into an egalitarian system and making a “fair wage” even more elusive. Piketty’s work offers no clue to what could constitute a “fair wage.”



Others point to the productivity-pay gap that emerged in the 1970s, where wage growth and productivity took entirely different courses at the expense of wage gains. Researchers who perceptively point to this gap as contributing to the growth of inequality often harken back to the immediate postwar era, when productivity growth and wage growth were somewhat in step, when the gains of productivity were “shared” between capital and labor. But what is magical about sharing? Why shouldn't labor get 75% or 85% of the gain? Or all of the gain? Is maintaining existing inequalities the optimal social goal for the working class?



Where the concept of a “fair wage” offers more questions than answers, Marx’s concept of exploitation suggests a uniquely coherent and direct answer to the persistent and intensifying growth of income and wealth: eliminate labor exploitation! Abolish the wage system!



Thus, the return to the discussion of exploitation is urgent. And that is why a serious and clarifying account of exploitation today is so welcome.

http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-r ... beral.html
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