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 » Fri May 27, 2022 2:45 pm

The New Labor Reform: Its Impact on Youth and Challenges for Young Workers
05/27/2022

An Analysis of Spain's Labor Reform from Young Communists

From the editor. Our comrades from the youth organization (Colectivos de Jóvenes Comunistas) of the Spanish Communist Workers' Party (PCTE) sent an interesting analysis of the labor reform in Spain. The text brought to your attention helps to understand what regressive processes are now taking place in many parts of Europe.

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1 Introduction: nature and scope of the reform

A few days ago, the Spanish Congress of Deputies approved Royal Decree No. 32/2021 on urgent measures in the framework of labor reform. In fact, this reform is a clear example of the fact that in times of crisis, social democracy cannot offer solutions that go beyond the interests of capital. The reform is presented as a lifeline for young people who find themselves in an atmosphere of instability and uncertainty. In fact, it reinforces the current structure of labor relations, based on the wide possibilities of companies to respond flexibly to the need for employees.

This reform implements the "flexible security" strategy called for by the European Union. It is based on the established practice of temporary employment contracts, short-term employment, easy layoffs, precarious jobs - all of which are especially condemned by workers and trade unions. Such phenomena poison life and work, and the working class becomes the basis for the state, with the help of which it covers its losses in unstable times. Thus, the reform does not protect the rights of workers, but is an airbag for capital from a utilitarian and functional point of view. The state, as the backbone of the productive system and bourgeois society, ensures the strengthening of the mechanisms of exploitation by transferring labor income to capital so that the labor force can maintain itself at a minimum subsistence level.

The phenomena mentioned above are the consequences of applying the so-called “internal and external flexibility” formulas from the new reform, which left the “external flexibility” mechanisms intact and included some innovations in the already existing “internal flexibility” mechanisms .

The first mechanism can be defined as the ability of a company to vary the amount of workforce at a given time in accordance with its interests. In other words, the company can hire and fire employees as it sees fit.

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The second mechanism helps the company to subordinate working conditions to its interests in accordance with economic and production conditions (rewrite duties, change the work schedule and internal schedule, revise wage and productivity standards, suspend work without compensation in case of a drop in demand, etc.). Thus, the reform gives companies more freedom to change employment relationships as they see fit, but this is presented as something positive as it is "an alternative to termination of employment."

2 The content of the reform and its actual impact on the working conditions of young people

The preamble and text of the document contain references to the vulnerable position of women and youth. Taking into account the real situation in the labor market of these social groups, the decree states:

"There are no objective reasons in the Spanish economy that justify high, compared to the rest of Europe, unemployment and the widespread use of part-time jobs."

However, the reform does not eliminate or even limit part-time work, but only rephrases some of the provisions, taking into account “greater efficiency”. As for the fight against unemployment, classical capitalist mechanisms are used to increase the rate of profit in the conditions of the economic crisis: lowering the cost of labor by hiring young people (who are ready to work for less money) to further reduce the wages of other workers.

The main provisions of the reform can be summarized as follows:

Simplification of employment contracts, which may reduce the level of temporary employment in the future.
Renewal of the norm of automatic extension of collective agreements and the priority of sectoral agreements on wages.
Some changes in the regulation of subcontracting and outsourcing.
Implementation of new “internal flexibility” mechanisms for companies.
First, with regard to hiring , the reform states that it aims to "restore" the priority of a permanent employment contract. Although contracts for the performance of work and the provision of services (which contributed to the fraud of employers), temporary and other contracts are abolished, however, other types of temporary contracts remain: for production needs, for replacement and for training.
• The new production requirements contract rules that allow temporary employment are vague enough to cover most of the needs of companies. Its use is permitted both on a case-by-case and planned basis, which makes us young people fear that in fact our suffering from temporary employment will remain as it used to be.
• Employment contracts with on-the-job training are seen as one of the pillars of the fight against youth unemployment. Such contracts are of two types. First: a contract for the provision of professional practice . In fact, this is the usual analogue of an internship, and the reform did not significantly change its provisions. The duration of practice has been reduced from two years to one year, but this provision may be revised by agreement of the parties. Second: training contract, which is presented as an additional advantage in academic preparation. In fact, the training contract has captured the essence of the plight of young workers in our country, as it normalizes the need to work in order to pay for studies, and, as a result, provides companies with a large supply of cheap labor, since the norms provide for paying young employees up to 60 % of the regular rate during the year, in accordance with the category of employee and his functions. The basis of temporary employment contracts provided for in the new reform, along with other exploitation mechanisms, does not include the possibility of early termination of already signed contracts, since the previous norms will be valid until 2025. This also applies to “free contracts”, which were previously prohibited, but became legal after the reform, which allows companies to easily adapt to the needs of the market and production. In other words, it is presented as a victory for stability, but in reality, it only strengthens "labor on demand".
Secondly, the norm of automatic extension of collective agreements has been restored, which means the automatic extension of current agreements until the parties conclude a new one . On the other hand, the company cannot unilaterally change the size of wages (i.e., cannot cut it within the framework of an industry agreement), but reserves the ability to influence other aspects of labor relations. Prior to the 2012 reform, companies could only improve working conditions under an industry agreement. With the new reform, companies can worsen working conditions in such sensitive categories as overtime, the length of the work shift, and so on.

Thirdly, with regard to changes in the regulation of subcontracting and outsourcing. In fact, there are not as many changes as expected and publicly announced. Now the categories of subcontracting and outsourcing are becoming an industry of labor relations in their own right, their agreements are becoming industry-specific, that is, independent of the employing company, which was required in the past.

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Despite the exclusion of certain contractual terms, temporary employment agencies and contractors will continue to have a contract based on working conditions, as well as an intermittent fixed contract, since the new provision removes section 12 ET, which prohibits temporary employment agencies from using types of contracts aimed at satisfying “current needs of various user enterprises”.

While opportunities for wage increases and changes in legal wording remain in some cases, contracting and subcontracting is not restricted. In essence, this represents the perpetuation of a fragmented production model in various subcontracts and temporary employment agencies, so effective for employers, but worsening the situation of the working class.

Fourthly , for the most complete understanding of the situation, it is necessary to dwell separately on the Regulation of Temporary Employment Conditions (ERTE) and the introduction of the RED mechanism . Their main purpose, explicitly stated in the preamble, is to replace some external flexibility mechanisms with other internal flexibility mechanisms. In the case of ERTE, the inclusion of government incentives, exemption from contributions in situations related to crisis scenarios, the possibility of contracting for the training of interested workers, and the reduction of working hours or the suspension of contracts should be emphasized. In addition, the reform of the People's Party, which assumes the absence of the need for administrative permission, makes it easier for companies to apply the above measures unilaterally.

The RED mechanism , in turn, is a “flexibility and employment stabilization mechanism” and allows companies to request measures to reduce working hours or suspend employment contracts both during periods of general economic conditions and in case of need for “retraining or professional development” in the sector. In short, the RED mechanism gives companies the power to significantly change working conditions, or rather, modify the terms of the contract (working hours, salary, place of work, etc.).

ERTE and RED are explicitly cited in the text as advances that allow for a scenario in which firms enjoy sufficient guarantees of flexibility in their internal use of labor in the event of fluctuations in production. At the same time, this does not bode well for the working class - it will pay for “modernization” and strengthening the power of employers by exacerbating the current conditions of instability.

3 Tasks of working youth in the context of the new youth employment model
In essence: the fact that one of the paradigm contracts of the temporary employment model is removed does not mean the end of the temporary employment model. On the contrary: the new contractual mechanism only outwardly looks less destructive (intermittent fixed contract). This mechanism does not guarantee either continuity or stability of employment, while the cost of dismissal has not changed and remains within the parameters set by the 2012 labor reform.

For this reason, the reform not only does not overcome instability, but also does not solve the problems of the working class associated with temporary employment. What was presented as a temporary and transitory impact on youth after the 2008 crisis, due to the current reform, will penetrate deeper into the working conditions of the entire working class, allowing the use of labor on demand and completely subordinating our lives to the immediate needs of capital.

Just as before, when we were told the need to unite for the country's economy, so today the social democratic discourse is reduced to the common interests of society, as if there is no division into social classes in society and the same reform can be positive for both employers and for workers at the same time. As we have shown, any concession to flexibility increases the employer's freedom to control the labor force and undermines the position of the worker. Every victory of capital is a defeat of labour. We are being forced to abandon the demands that the labor and trade union movement put forward against the peculiarities of the reforms of 2010 and 2012.

Only a very short-sighted person can think that there are "small victories" for the working class in this reform. Not to mention those who present it as a "historic victory". The innovations not only keep the 2012 reform virtually untouched, but, as we have shown, what seems to reduce instability actually leads to the formalization and strengthening of mechanisms that are extremely functional for capital in this crisis period. The pursuit of flexibility will shape a work model in which volatility and uncertainty become the norm.

We think it appropriate to draw an analogy with the educational reforms promoted by the government (LOSU and the Vocational Training Act). They make training much more narrowly specialized and tailored to the needs of the labor market, in which companies will have more decision-making power, wiggle room and ways to use a semi-free workforce.

For this reason, it is important that we young people, who will be the direct victims of all these transformations, do not fall into apathy that will only please the capitalists and their managers. Crisis times are coming, which will greatly worsen the conditions of our life. We must start the struggle guided by completely different coordinates than during the years of the previous crisis. We need new, revolutionary coordinates that will allow us to win this time.

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May Day rally organized by the Colectivos de Jóvenes Comunistas

All of the above requires us to organize and politically realign, turn our anger into a response to oppressors, build a strong organizational network in our living and working space, have a fighting will, and work tirelessly to change the balance of power so that the red flag is again raised against those who want to make us prisoners of a life in constant crisis. This is far from the easiest, but the only true option.

Prisoners of life in crisis / Let's turn anger into response
#EligeLoNecesario
#EligeComunista

CJC Political Commission


https://www.rotfront.su/novaya-trudovay ... anie-na-m/

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Mon May 30, 2022 2:22 pm

Million Worker March leader talks with Teamsters: Roots of unity in the labor movement
May 30, 2022 Clarence Thomas

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Clarence Thomas — labor organizer, retired member of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10, leader of the Million Worker March Movement and author of the recently released “Mobilizing in our Own Name: Million Worker March” — spoke at Teamsters Joint Council 16 in New York City on May 14. Following are excerpts from his presentation.

Let me first say that I am glad to be here, on this part of a whirlwind book-signing tour. The Teamsters’ meeting is special and I’m going to get right into the reason why.

The Teamsters and Longshore Workers represent two of the strongest industrial unions in the nation, if not the world. We also share a radical rank-and-file militancy at the point of production.

Rise of industrial unionism

In May 1934, longshoremen on the West Coast and Teamsters in the Midwest took part in important struggles in the history of the U.S. labor movement: the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters Strike and the West Coast Maritime Strike led by longshoremen in San Francisco.

Local leaders associated with the Communist League of America led the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike. The strike paved the way for the organization of over-the-road drivers and the Teamsters union.

Bloody Friday is the name of the event which occurred in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on July 20, 1934, when police shot at truck drivers who were flying pickets, injuring 67 picketers and killing strikers John Belor and Henry Ness. An investigation determined, “Police took direct aim at the pickets and fired to kill.”

When solidarity strikes protested the shooting, the governor declared martial law and deployed 4,000 troops. On July 24, over 100,000 people lined the streets of the route of the funeral procession for Henry Ness.

The strike was pivotal to Minneapolis’ strong union tradition and is seen as a critical moment for the Teamsters and the labor movement.

This outcome led to the enactment of legislation acknowledging the right of workers to organize.

July 5, 1934, marked a turning point in the West Coast waterfront strike. One of the demands was to end the shape-up, where each morning longshore workers would gather in front of the ferry landing in San Francisco to beg for jobs and to pay bribes to get a day’s work.

The union demanded the right to a worker-controlled hiring hall to end the shape-up and a six-hour workday so that work could be shared on the West Coast with their union brothers during the Great Depression.

On July 5, employers tried to open the San Francisco port with scab trucks escorted by the police at Pier 38. The police tear-gassed unarmed strikers. At least 100 strikers and their supporters were injured.

Howard Sperry, a longshoreman and a World War I veteran, and Nick Bordoise, a union cook and strike supporter, were both shot in the back and killed by plainclothes police officers outside the union headquarters. This date is known as Bloody Thursday. Teamsters had Bloody Friday; longshore workers had Bloody Thursday.

The following day, thousands of strikers’ families and sympathizers, including Teamsters, took part in a funeral procession down Market Street in San Francisco, stretching more than a mile and a half.

The city was paralyzed by a general strike. Six workers were shot or beaten to death on the West Coast by police or company goons during the strike, which lasted for 99 days.

These terrible events galvanized public support. Following Bloody Thursday, similar incidents up and down the coasts created a wave of rank-and-file unrest that conservative American Federation of Labor leaders were unable to stop.

This gives you some idea as to why our two respective unions are so strong. Brothers and sisters: this is our history and it is a hidden history.

The 1934 West Coast waterfront strike led by the Communist Party USA and Toledo Auto Workers strike led by the American Workers Party were catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s, much of which was organized by the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

International Workers’ Day

One of the things I want to talk about is International Workers’ Day — known as May Day — which the Million Worker March Movement pledged to reclaim.

As an African American, I know quite well what the enslavement of African Americans has meant to me, my family and many generations of African Americans who lived on these shores. We have been denied our names, our history, our culture, our traditions and our freedom.

Many people think May Day is a communist holiday. Yes, it is. It is an official holiday in socialist countries. But it started here in the U.S.

We don’t grow up understanding the importance of labor solidarity, or that whether a person is Black, white, Latino, trans or straight, we are all working people. If you are unemployed, you still are a worker. That’s a common bond.

The history of the labor movement is hidden because we didn’t learn how we got the eight-hour workday.

In 1886, workers in Chicago who manufactured the McCormick reapers were in the forefront of the struggle for the eight-hour workday. Children and women worked under inhuman conditions, while they and the men worked 12, 14, 16 hours a day.

Workers all over the world stood to attention when four men were framed up for throwing dynamite at the police department in 1886 and martyred by a kangaroo court.

There is a common thread that runs through labor history. That it is the role of police who represent the bosses, the state and the privileged.

We must understand that history — and the role of the police department. Whenever we have a picket, when there is a labor beef, and the police come out, they aren’t in solidarity with us. They come out on the side of the bosses. That’s their job.

There is a reason why the government and big business did not want the working class to celebrate May Day. They gave us Labor Day. That has no connection to our struggle.

The reason why the Teamsters are who they are is because of the militant history that we share.

Class interests – theirs and ours

We are working-class people whose interests are separate from those of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Their interests are not the same as ours and I can prove it.

Most people in this country would like to have national health care. Do we have it? No. Most working people in this country would like to have a living wage. A living wage today would really be calculated somewhere between $25 and $30 an hour.

The bosses want to make it appear as if there is something criminal about a worker making six figures, but they applaud the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. They say the Teamsters and the Longshore Workers make too much money because they figure that we should be making the same wages as they pay people in Walmart.

The Democratic and Republican parties are funded in the interests of the rich. If they had their way, there wouldn’t be any unions.

We did not get the eight-hour work day, pensions and vacations because the bosses loved us. We got that because people fought and died for that. There’s nothing wrong with us standing up for our own class interests.

We don’t have a labor party in this country. They have them in other countries. Have you ever thought about why? Because they want us to believe that our interests are synonymous with the Republican and Democratic parties.

Let’s look at that. People in other countries don’t have to pay for their children to go to college, because they believe that a nation that does not invest in the youth doesn’t have a future. A country that really serves everybody would not be one with tremendous examples of income inequality.

Why do we have homelessness and poverty? We must be very clear as working people that we have our own class interest and that is what led to the Million Worker March.

To learn more about the formation of the MWM, read Clarence Thomas’ entire presentation online or listen to his speech, go to MillionWorkerMarch.com. Struggle-La Lucha will be publishing more from his book tour.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... -movement/

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Deep South Baristas Strike Starbucks
May 28, 2022 / Kerry Taylorenlarge or shrink textlogin or register to comment
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Striking Starbucks workers and supporters hold signs reading Stop Union Busting outside a store.

In South Carolina, the state with the lowest rate of union membership, Starbucks workers are helping breathe life into the labor movement. Photo: Kerry Taylor

Starbucks baristas in Columbia, South Carolina, returned to their jobs on Saturday, May 21, following a three-day walkout to protest anti-union retaliation.

Managers began denying employees promotions and transfers several weeks ago after 22 of 28 “partners” at the Millwood Avenue store petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for union representation. The workers reached a breaking point on May 18 when a popular store manager was fired for refusing to engage in union busting.

Two hours after learning of their manager’s dismissal the entire shift walked out, forcing the store to close early.

“She was a large reason a lot of us were still with the company,” said barista Sophie Ryan of her former manager.

“Starbucks loves to push this agenda of togetherness, equality, and of partnership,” said Ryan. “We’re looking to make sure they’re keeping up with that agenda and making sure that people can actually live off of what they do while loving it.”

The union election is presently underway via mail. Votes will be tallied on June 3.

LEARNING THROUGH EXPERIENCE

Most of the baristas are high school and college students and had little knowledge of unions a few weeks ago, but Ryan said that organizing and striking has brought them closer.

“We decided on our strike on Wednesday after we had been protesting for a couple hours,” Ryan said. “We ironed out all those details as a team, and although the next couple days were incredibly hot, the morale of our strike was pretty high.”

The strikers’ spirits were boosted on the picket line in front of the store by donations of popsicles and donuts and by honks from sympathetic passersby. Strike visitors included representatives of the South Carolina AFL-CIO and Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 347, as well as workers from other Starbucks stores. A GoFundMe strike fund appeal quickly met its goal as the news spread online through the state’s network of progressive organizations.


Late Friday afternoon, the baristas ended their strike after Starbucks reopened the drive-thru window using partners from other area stores as strikebreakers. Company managers also held one-on-one meetings with each employee. Still, Ryan remains confident of a union victory, noting the unanimous support for the strike among Millwood Avenue store workers.

If the union vote is successful, the Columbia store will follow the Pelham Road Starbucks in Greenville, which became the first South Carolina Starbucks location to win union representation on May 16. Baristas at stores in Sumter and Anderson—where Donald Trump got 70 percent of the vote in 2020—have also filed NLRB petitions.

'WILL NO LONGER BE SILENCED'

The organizing drive in Columbia moved very quickly after Ryan reached out to the Greenville workers in March and they connected Ryan to Starbucks Workers United organizers in Buffalo.

Since then, Ryan has maintained regular contact with a network of pro-union Starbucks baristas across the Carolinas, all of whom share concerns regarding low pay, understaffing, and punishing workloads as the company imposes new productivity demands that are the coffeehouse version of the textile industry stretch-out.

At the same time, many baristas take pride in being considered partners and note that Starbucks’ is one of a few reliable job options for queer and transgender Carolinians.

For several years, South Carolina has held the distinction of being the state with the lowest rate of union density in the country. Less than 2 percent of the state’s workers belong to unions. But South Carolina AFL-CIO Vice President April Lott said the baristas are a hopeful sign of growing restiveness on the part of the state’s workers.

“Starbucks and South Carolina workers are finally tired of being mistreated, harassed, and given less than what they deserve,” Lott said. “Their voices will no longer be silenced.”

https://labornotes.org/2022/05/deep-sou ... -starbucks
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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 14, 2022 2:50 pm

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London Underground train. Photo: Cookie M / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, license linked at bottom of article

‘The biggest rail strike in modern history’: RMT raises the flag – News from the Frontline

Originally published: Counterfire on June 10, 2022 by Counterfire; News from the Frontline (more by Counterfire) | (Posted Jun 13, 2022)

Fifty thousand workers on National Rail are striking on 21, 23 and 25 June. It’s already been dubbed the ‘the biggest rail strike in modern history.’ And that’s exactly what it’ll be as thousands of RMT rail workers, having returned a massive 9-1 vote for strike action, prepare to down tools in a three-day national strike over redundancies and pay.

The strike is growing. Aslef union have announced that drivers on Greater Anglia Trains will also strike on 23 June and Hull trains on 26 June. Croydon Tramlink drivers will stage two 48-hour strikes on 28-29 June and 13-14 July. Additionally, TSSA are balloting workers on Avanti West Coast Trains. Nine Aslef ballots close on 11 July across most rail companies in the country. All RMT London Underground workers will strike on 21 June as will some Unite members. Read the full report here, by Unjum Mirza, Aslef Equalities Rep at Brixton Depot.

The 18 June TUC Demonstration is gaining momentum, coaches will be coming from across the country. Many political parties, campaigns and union branches are building and organising for the demonstration as we face a cost of living crisis. Just days before a huge rail strike, this demonstration is crucial: keep pushing for a massive turnout! The link to coaches is here.

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Photo: The People’s Assembly

East Sussex police arrested and charged three GMB pickets for obstruction last week in what should be a thundercrack to all News from the Frontline readers.

The refuse workers are taking on privatisation kingpins Biffa over pay. They’ve been striking since April and, despite recent attempts at state intimidation, their determination to get pay justice has remained undimmed.

The current strike action will continue until 25 June with a GMB-led protest on the pickets’ day in court. GMB General Secretary Gary Smith is clear:

Across the country and industry working people are organising in the face of an economic calamity made in Downing Street.

They can arrest us, threaten us with more anti-union legislation but they can’t kill the hope that collective action represents.


The bosses and their cronies-in-blue are getting tougher; our side needs to shape up and focus. There will be more of this.

The strike fund is here. You know what to do, and that courtroom protest should be a three-line whip for all south-east trade unionists.

CWU strike, Crown Post Offices: our kind of counter offensive

Three thousand, five hundred counter staff, members of the Communication Workers Union, walked out on Saturday in their union’s campaign for a decent pay rise. The staff work at Crown Post Offices (the major post offices in big towns and cities) and the knock-on effect of their action meant there were no cash collections or deliveries to post offices on Monday. The action, backed by 97% of the members returning ballot forms, is in protest at the company’s refusal to offer more than a 2% pay rise, and the union says the disruption will continue until the company makes a decent offer.

Postal Delivery Managers vote to strike: the anger is spreading

The 3,000-plus Postal Delivery Managers employed by Royal Mail have voted 2:1 for strike action over company plans to cut a hundred jobs, whilst recruiting for a new post of Postal Manager, on lower pay. Their union, Unite, has described this as ‘fire and rehire wearing different clothes’. This is on top of the 1,600 jobs Royal Mail slashed in 2021, and is in spite of the £311 million profit the company reported last year. A walk-out would involve 3,000 members at 1,500 sites. The workplaces affected are Royal Mail’s Parcel Delivery offices (not post offices).

“We will fight till it’s over”: RMT resolve kicks in

RMT Cleaners employed by outsourcing giant Churchill, working on GTR, Network Rail, HS1 and South East Trains were on strike again for five days over the bank-holiday weekend. The workers are fighting for £15 an hour and an end to outsourcing. On the fifth day of action, RMT striker Rose, who had been on the picket at Victoria Station, said at the People’s Assembly Rally in London:

“Inflation is going high and we are not getting anything, we get no sick pay, whenever you are sick in Churchill you need to use your holidays … We Churchill staff across the country, we will fight till it’s over, it’s not over! We will also tell the government that it’s time for them to employ us in house.”

Heathrow: check-in and ground staff have had enough

Hundreds of ancillary workers at western Europe’s biggest workplace are being balloted for strike action between now and 23 June. These are workers who had their pay slashed during the pandemic period and are now expected to maintain the lower rate. Of course, the bosses have had their old pay restored.

Promisingly, the ballot involves both Unite and GMB. GMB’s Nadine Houghton says:

BA forced our members into pay cuts during the pandemic, when they had little workplace power to fight back. Now our members are back at work and staff shortages are hammering the company – it is their time to claim back what is theirs.

These loyal workers have stood by BA through thick and thin, they have kept passengers moving when staff shortages and IT failures nearly brought the operation to a standstill.


Unite’s Sharon Graham adds:

In a further disgraceful move, BA has now restored the pay of managers but has kept the cut for these workers. This is why our members have voted overwhelmingly to proceed to strike action. This is about paying the rate for the job.

Bosses’ cluelessness about airport staffing levels couldn’t be more apparent in recent weeks. Let’s hope some sustained joint action can bring them to their senses and that we ensure that the hottest place to be this summer is a UK picket line.

FE: in for the long haul

Teaching staff at four further-education (FE) colleges across north-west England are striking for improved pay and conditions. UCU pickets at the affected colleges on 7 and 10 June will be demanding pay deals to redress the almost £9,000 salary gap between FE staff and schoolteachers. Action at two other colleges has been called off after staff voted to accept pay deals amounting to between 6.5% and 7.5% respectively.

Moy Park workers ‘refuse to work for chicken feed’

Electrical engineers, lorry drivers and production staff, members of the Unite union, at Moy Park’s Randalstown animal-feed mill in Northern Ireland are on strike for equal pay with their colleagues at other Moy Park mills. The workforce at Randalstown is paid up to £100 a week less than their counterparts at the company’s other mills, and have had enough. The strike has hit the company hard, with a scab workforce only managing to maintain about 25% of pre-strike production.

The strikers have been encouraged by support from other Moy Park sites, and by messages of support from Unite members at AB Agri mills in England. As one of the driver reps from AB Agri’s East Anglian mills put it:

We have just won a 12.5% pay-rise for AB Agri drivers through standing together, and standing firm. We would like to see common standards across the industry, and supporting our Moy Park colleagues is the first essential step. Our branch has sent them £250 as a gesture, and if they want more, they only need to ask.

The end of the Jubilee marked by RMT London Underground strike

On Monday RMT station staff across the London Underground were on strike, crippling the service. Read the full report from the London Bridge picket line here.

Culture workers take further action to save jobs

Staff for the British Council, the cultural arm of the Foreign Office, took action back in March in response to the announcement of hundreds of job losses. The justification is a loss of revenue through the pandemic, which staff are not taking as an excuse with the end of lockdowns in most of the world. Continued intransigence from civil-service bosses is forcing the PCS union members to take further days of action in June. Staff are scattered in British Council offices at numerous sites in Britain and worldwide.

Strike over rubbish pay

Isle of Wight waste collection contractor Amey is facing potential strikes over pay after unionised workers voted overwhelmingly for industrial action. GMB members, who make up nearly half of the workforce, have given notice to strike for two weeks from 13 June if Amey continues to refuse to negotiate collectively for a meaningful pay rise.

Coventry bin drivers: 100% strike vote prompts new deal

Striking Unite members couldn’t have given Coventry Council a stronger message when they voted unanimously to maintain their strike action over pay.

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham says:

With another resounding vote, these workers are standing firm in their fight for the rate for the job. They have their union’s backing all the way.

The truth is that Coventry Council is squandering millions in a failed attempt to break the strike, money that would be far better spent addressing low pay in this workforce and supporting local people through the cost of living crisis.


Concerted action gets results and within twenty-four hours a new deal was on the table for the workers to consider. Proof, if proof were needed, that unity is strength.

https://mronline.org/2022/06/13/the-big ... n-history/

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To Fight Inflation, The Fed Declares War On Workers

By leaving the problem of rising prices to the central bank, Democrats are accepting an attack on labor power.

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

New inflation data released Friday offered dismal news: Historic price increases aren’t showing any signs of abating, and in fact may be accelerating.

What can be done? Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has an idea: throw cold water on the hot labor market — perhaps the one bright spot in the current economy.

In fact, Powell recently screamed the quiet part out loud, making clear the largest central bank in the world is in fact an adversary to workers, when he declared that his goal is to “get wages down.”

At a May 4 press conference in which he announced a .5 percent interest rate hike, the largest since the year 2000, Powell said he thought higher interest rates would limit business’ hiring demand and lead to suppressed wages. As he put it, by reducing hiring demand, “that would give us a chance to get inflation down, get wages down, and then get inflation down without having to slow the economy and have a recession and have unemployment rise materially.”

In other words, Powell is saying that the primary, blunt financial instrument at his disposal to address sky-high inflation — hiking interest rates — will limit job opportunities and suppress pay.

Increasing borrowing costs and discouraging investment would not do much to address the root causes of today’s inflation — brittle supply chains, a surge in energy prices further heightened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a housing crisis (which could actually be exacerbated by interest rate hikes), all of which are undergirded by corporate concentration enabling exorbitant corporate profits.

Hiking rates would likely suppress wages and worker power, as Powell indicated, a roundabout way to tackle inflation. That’s because there is overwhelming evidence that worker wages are not driving inflation, especially since wage increases are failing to keep up with rising prices. Friday’s data showed that while wages have continued to increase, the rate of increase is slowing.

Does the Fed chairman really mistakenly believe that wages are driving inflation? If not, Powell — a mega-wealthy private equity mogul and a Republican — might have just validated an argument long made by progressives: that a key driver of the central bank’s interest rate policies is actually to suppress labor power.

Meanwhile, if President Joe Biden and the Democrats who control Congress continue to sit on their hands and fail to take real action to address skyrocketing energy prices, the supply chain crisis, and corporate greed, they will be accepting a response that will force workers to bear the brunt of the crisis.

“If you endorse today’s rate hikes, and the further tightening it implies, you are endorsing the reasoning behind it: Labor markets are too tight, wages are rising too quickly, workers have too many options, and we need to shift bargaining power back toward the bosses,” Josh Mason, an economist at the Roosevelt Institute and a professor of economics at John Jay College, City University of New York, wrote in a recent blog post.

The Fed And Worker Power

The Fed, which is tasked with controlling the money supply and regulating banks, was given a dual mandate by Congress in 1978 to guide a monetary policy aimed at economic growth: Achieving “full employment” and “price stability.”

Powell and the six other officials who set this monetary policy do so primarily by adjusting interest rates, or the cost of borrowing money.

Powell, who was first appointed to helm this operation by President Donald Trump in 2017, was reappointed for a second term by Biden in 2021. “Chair Powell has provided steady leadership during an unprecedently challenging period, including the biggest economic downturn in modern history and attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve,” said Biden in a statement announcing his nomination.

The statement added, “Powell and [his colleague Lael Brainard] share the administration’s focus on ensuring that economic growth broadly benefits all workers. That’s why they oversaw a landmark re-evaluation of the Federal Reserve’s objectives to refocus its mission on the needs of workers of all backgrounds.”

Before Powell’s first term, the Fed had pursued a monetary policy that limited worker power. In the decades following the 1979 “Volcker shock” — in which chairman Paul Volcker induced a recession in order to cut inflation, creating a debt crisis in Latin America and crushing the labor movement — the bank consistently limited inflation below its 2 percent benchmark, suppressing economic growth.

“Tight To An Unhealthy Level”

When COVID hit, it seemed like the Fed was shifting away from its anti-worker stance. The bank slashed interest rates and went on a bond-buying spree, in addition to other measures.

While the Fed’s intervention in corporate bond markets may have amounted to a bailout of corporate America — especially heavily leveraged oil and gas companies — and lending programs prioritized large companies over municipalities, its actions early in the pandemic helped bring interest rates to zero.

“In 2015, I was working as an economist at the Federal Reserve. If someone told you then that in 2020 a deadly pandemic would shut down life as we knew it and that in the midst of a stop-and-go response from Congress, a Federal Reserve chair — who was a lifelong Republican and a Wall Street executive appointed by President Donald Trump — would emerge as a champion of Main Street, you may have thought she was from another planet,” wrote economist Claudia Sahm in a New York Times opinion piece last year.

Today’s labor market is, by some metrics, better for workers than at any point in recent history. Thanks to COVID-19 relief legislation — namely the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan providing enhanced unemployment benefits and stimulus checks — working people had the flexibility to quit terrible jobs and take higher-paying ones. Additionally, the labor force shrunk as parents stayed home to take care of their children who couldn’t go to school or daycare, workers died of COVID or were debilitated by lingering COVID symptoms, and people feared returning to the workforce due to inadequate pandemic protections.

This tight labor market has enabled historic gains for workers. Wage inequality is at its lowest point in 40 years. In the restaurant and hospitality industries, wages have increased by over 10 percent in the past two years. For every unemployed worker, there are two job openings. As a result, employers have to compete for workers by offering higher wages and better benefits. That’s good for workers: Over half of people who quit their jobs for a new one receive a pay increase greater than 10 percent, according to ZipRecruiter survey data, and the average pay increase is 7.5 percent. A resurgent labor movement has massively benefited from the fact that workers have less to fear from being fired, and can credibly argue that winning a union could mean winning wage increases.

But now, the tide might be turning for workers — since statements by Powell and other bank officials indicate that the Fed hasn’t actually turned away from its anti-labor stance.

In March, Powell noted that the labor market may be too good for workers. “Take a look at today’s labor market: What you have is 1.7 job openings for every unemployed person,” Powell told reporters after raising interest rates for the first time since 2018. “That’s a very, very tight labor market. Tight to an unhealthy level, I would say… If you were just moving down the number of job openings so that they were more like one to one, you would have less upward pressure on wages. You would have a lot less of a labor shortage.”

To weaken that labor market, Powell has turned to hiking interest rates. After cutting interest rates to zero in March 2020, the bank raised rates by .25 percent in March, by .5 percent in May, and is expected to raise rates by .5 percent again in June.

The way interest rates impact wages is based on a number of contingent factors, but the main theory is that raising the cost of borrowing money discourages businesses from making investments, which leads them to slow hiring or even lay off workers. If workers have fewer options for jobs, they are more likely to accept lower wage work and less likely to form unions.

Workers in the U.S. aren’t the only ones who will suffer from Powell’s policy. Rate hikes by the Fed and other central banks around the world are already contributing to debt crises in developing countries, leaving more people to die of hunger in places like Yemen and Sri Lanka.

Forging An Alternative Path

There’s no question that the federal government needs to deliver some type of relief.

Inflation is outpacing wage growth for most workers, meaning that “real wages” are actually declining. Not everyone experiences the same level of inflation, based on their expenses, but today’s price increases appear to be hitting low-income people the hardest.

But federal lawmakers could forge an alternate path to combating inflation. They could, for instance, make wealthy people pay the price of inflation — such as by raising the corporate tax rate, which Republicans slashed by 40 percent in 2017, or instituting a capital gains tax.

Of course, with corporatists like Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) running the show in a 50-50 Senate, those tax policies don’t appear to be on the table.

Instead, the White House has continued to endorse the Fed’s approach. “My plan is to address inflation. That starts with a simple proposition: respect the Fed, respect the Fed’s independence, which I have done and will continue to do,” Biden said in a recent meeting with Powell.

After Friday’s inflation numbers were published, Brian Deese, the director of Biden’s National Economic Council, said: “What the numbers today underscore is what the president has been saying and what we are focused on — which is fighting inflation has got to be our top economic priority. The Fed has the tools that it needs, and we are giving them the space that it needs to operate.”

Unfortunately, deferring to the Fed to address the crisis means throwing low-wage workers out of their jobs — and decreasing workers’ wages and power.

https://www.levernews.com/the-fed-decla ... n-workers/

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Labor Activists Launch New Organization to Challenge AFL-CIO Foreign Policy
JUNE 10, 2022

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Educational conference on April 9th which was part of an ongoing effort to expose AFL-CIO connection to U.S. imperialism in South America. Source: Photo courtesy of Thomas O’Rourke.

By Kim Scipes – Jun 3, 2022

Labor activists from across the country, members of a number of unions, publicly announced the creation of LEPAIO, the Labor Education Project on the AFL-CIO International Operations, over the weekend of April 8-9. They held a press conference outside AFL-CIO headquarters on 16th Street in Washington, D.C., on April 8th, and followed with a four-hour educational conference at the University of the District of Columbia the following day.

This is the first project to focus on AFL-CIO operations around the globe since efforts to pass the “Build Unity and Trust Among Workers World-wide” resolution at the AFL-CIO’s 2005 National Convention in Chicago.

This new project, LEPAIO, is hoping to build support leading to the AFL-CIO’s 2022 National Convention in Philadelphia on June 12-15.

Speakers at the educational conference spoke on a number of issues, noting that the education conference on April 9th came on the 20th anniversary of the attempted (but failed) coup against democratically elected President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.

Speakers Margaret Flowers, William Camacaro, and James Patrick Jordan spoke of the on-going U.S. attacks on Venezuela that continue today, particularly through economic sanctions supported by the AFL-CIO.

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Margaret Flowers [Source: baltimoresun.com]

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William Camacaro [Source: youtube.com]

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David Hemson [Source: sahistory.org.za]

This writer later noted the similarities between the 2002 attempted coup in Venezuela and the 1973 Chilean coup that overthrew democratically elected Salvador Allende, about which the AFL-CIO’s involvement in the latter through its American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) had been revealed by the late Fred Hirsch of Plumbers and Pipefitters #393 in San Jose, California, in 1974.
These talks were followed by a heart-felt talk by David Hemson about how the progressive non-racial unions of South Africa were created, beginning with the mass strikes in Durban in 1973. Hemson had been one of the original organizers there.

Hemson spoke about how the AFL-CIO had supported the apartheid regime, especially through the on-going support of Zulu Chief Gatscha Buthelezi. Buthelezi and his people had physically attacked COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) members and affiliated unions in an internal war in the early 1990s in the province of Kwa-Zula/Natal. The AFL-CIO, ironically, had given Buthelezi the George Meany-Lane Kirkland Award for Human Rights in 1982.

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Chief Gatscha Buthelezi [Source: digitalarchive.tpl.ca]

Lou Wolf of CovertAction Magazine talked about the CIA’s operations around the world, and AFL-CIO involvement in their operations. (For example, see Rob McKenzie’s new book, El Golpe: US Labor, the CIA and the Coup at Ford in Mexico, recently published by Pluto Press.)

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Lou Wolf speaking via Zoom. [Photo courtesy of Thomas O’Rourke]

This author followed, talking briefly about the AFL-CIO operations in Chile, the Philippines and Venezuela. However, most of my talk was about current events, with the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center serving as one of the four core “institutes” of the Reagan administration-created National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Prior to the development of the NED, the U.S. would intervene in response to social crises in countries it deemed important to its global empire; this was the case in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964) and Chile (1973)—all of which first the AFL and then the AFL-CIO participated in other than Iran—and in each case, overthrew the respective democratically elected government.

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[Source: wikipedia.org]

However, exposures of these operations during the 1970s resulted in the development of the NED and a shift toward intervention before-hand, where they developed and/or found organizations that would support U.S. operations before a crisis would develop. (This happened after their work in El Salvador in the early 1980s, where they definitely intervened in response to the revolutionary upsurge.) NED has supported these organizations with considerable amounts of money so as to give them considerable sway in the future direction of their country.
There are four “core institutes” of the NED: the international wing of the Democratic Party, the international wing of the Republican Party, the international wing of the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Solidarity Center of the AFL-CIO. These are the organizations at the heart of the NED and its operations. And whatever one thinks about either the Democrats or the Republicans, labor collaboration with the US Chamber of Commerce is despicable.

That does not mean that the Solidarity Center’s particular operations are necessarily evil, as was true of predecessor “institutes” in Africa, Asia and Latin America; there have been some projects where they have been helpful or at least “not evil.” However, the fact is that the AFL-CIO is complicit in the NED, which is designed to maintain the dominance of the U.S. Empire and its capitalist infrastructure.

Frank Hammer then discussed the assassination of his brother, Michael, along with two associates, in El Salvador while working on “land reform” for AIFLD in 1981. The U.S.-funded land reforms combined with right-wing military repression in the countryside were designed to defeat the revolutionary upsurge by the peasantry. Hammer noted that it was the oligarchs, that AIFLD was trying to protect, who were responsible for the assassination.

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Funeral proceedings for Michael Hammer who was assassinated after working on AIFLD land reform initiatives in El Salvador. [Source: arlingtoncemetary.net]

Following Hammer, Carol Lang spoke about the Histadrut, a long-time colonialist project in Israel, designed to maintain Palestinian and Arab worker subjugation, and which has long been supported by the AFL-CIO, particularly by getting member unions to purchase Israel Bonds that support the apartheid state.

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Steve Zeltzer [Source: mediaworkers.org]

And finally, Steve Zeltzer spoke on Solidarity Center ties to right-wing labor in Ukraine. Zeltzer again called for the AFL-CIO to “open its books” on their foreign operations.
In short, what was presented was a vehement condemnation of the AFL-CIO’s international operations from a global perspective, and an argument that we cannot have a labor movement promoting popular democracy at home while supporting fascism elsewhere. We must unite directly with workers around the world and must do so if growing crises, like climate change, war, suppression of labor rights, etc., are to be challenged.

In response, conference attendees (in person and via Zoom) passed a strong resolution that is now on the LEPAIO website: https://aflcio-int.education/.

The Educational Conference in Philly will take place on Saturday, June 11, from 1:00-5:00 pm at The Ethical Society, 1906 Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA 19103.


(ConvertAction Magazine)

https://orinocotribune.com/labor-activi ... gn-policy/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 21, 2022 4:43 pm

Whose side is Joe Biden on?

*****************

Larry Summers Says US Needs 5% Jobless Rate for Five Years to Ease Inflation
Philip Aldrick
Mon, June 20, 2022, 3:44 PM

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(Bloomberg) -- Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said the US jobless rate would need to rise above 5% for a sustained period in order to curb inflation that’s running at the hottest pace in four decades.

“We need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation -- in other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment or five years of 6% unemployment or one year of 10% unemployment,” said Summers said in a speech in London Monday. “There are numbers that are remarkably discouraging relative to the Fed Reserve view.”

Fed policy makers raised interested by 75 basis points on Wednesday, the biggest increase since 1994. In their accompanying outlook, they signaled they see inflation easing from above 6% today to below 3% next year and near 2% in 2024. The median forecast showed unemployment rising to 4.1% by 2024, from 3.6% in May.

“The gap between 7.5% unemployment for two years and 4.1% unemployment for one year is immense,” said Summers, a Harvard University professor and paid contributor to Bloomberg Television. “Is our central bank prepared to do what is necessary to stabilize inflation if something like what I’ve estimated is necessary?”

The Fed on Friday said it would do what is needed to get prices under control, reiterating that price stability is necessary to support a strong labor market and calling its commitment to reining in inflation “unconditional.”

Summers repeated his prior calls that the Fed’s task of tempering price gains is similar in scale to that of former Chair Paul Volcker, who had to engineer a deep recession and double-digit unemployment 40 years ago to get inflation under control.

“The US may need as severe monetary tightening as Paul Volcker pushed through in the late 1970s early 1980s,” Summers said.

He said the central bank should move away from providing communication to the public about the likely future course of monetary policy.

“The return to humility, the abandonment of forward guidance as a policy tool is entirely appropriate,” Summers said. “It is likely to be necessary to make much more difficult choices than yet contemplated between acceptance of slack and acceptance of sustained, above-target inflation.”

“In that way, I fear we are going to have both elements of secular stagnation and secular stagflation,” he said.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/larry-su ... 55450.html

And there it is: "The banality of evil"

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The Fed’s Austerity Program to Reduce Wages
By Michael Sunday, June 19, 2022 Articles

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To Wall Street and its backers, the solution to any price inflation is to reduce wages and public social spending. The orthodox way to do this is to push the economy into recession in order to reduce hiring. Rising unemployment will oblige labor to compete for jobs that pay less and less as the economy slows.

This class-war doctrine is the prime directive of neoliberal economics. It is the tunnel vision of corporate managers and the One Percent. The Federal Reserve and IMF are its most prestigious lobbyists. Along with Janet Yellen at the Treasury, public discussion of today’s inflation is framed in a way that avoids blaming the 8.2 percent rise in consumer prices on the Biden Administration’s New Cold War sanctions on Russian oil, gas and agriculture, or on oil companies and other sectors using these sanctions as an excuse to charge monopoly prices as if America has not continued to buy Russian diesel oil, as if fracking has picked up and corn is not being turned into biofuel. There has been no disruption in supply. We are simply dealing with monopoly rent by the oil companies using the anti-Russian sanctions as an excuse that an oil shortage will soon develop for the United States and indeed for the entire world economy.

Covid’s shutdown of the U.S. and foreign economies and foreign trade also is not acknowledged as disrupting supply lines and raising shipping costs and hence import prices. The entire blame for inflation is placed on wage earners, and the response is to make them the victims of the coming austerity, as if their wages are responsible for bidding up oil prices, food prices and other prices resulting from the crisis. The reality is that they are too debt-strapped to be spendthrifts.

The Fed’s junk economics of what bank credit is spent on

The pretense behind the Fed’s recent increase in its discount rate by 0.75 percent on June 15 (to a paltry range of 1.50% to 1.75%) is that raising interest rates will cure inflation by deterring borrowing to spend on the basic needs that make up the Consumer Price Index and its related GDP deflator. But banks do not finance much consumption, except for credit card debt, which is now less than student loans and automobile loans.
Banks lend almost entirely to buy real estate, stocks and bonds, not goods and services. Some 80 percent of bank loans are real estate mortgages, and most of the remainder loans are collateralized by stocks and bonds. So raising interest rates will not lead wage-earners to borrow less to buy consumer goods. The main price effect of less bank credit and higher interest rates is on asset prices – deterring borrowing to buy homes, as well as for arbitragers to buy stocks and bonds.

Rolling back middle-class home ownership
The most immediate effect of the Federal Reserve’s credit tightening will be to reduce America’s home-ownership rate. This rate has been falling since 2008, from nearly 68 percent to just 61 percent today. The decline got underway with President Obama’s eviction of nearly ten million victims of junk mortgages, mainly black and Hispanic debtors. That was the Democratic Party’s alternative to writing down fraudulent mortgage loans to realistic market prices, and reducing their carrying charges to bring them in line with market rental values. The indebted victims of this massive bank fraud were made to suffer, so that Obama’s Wall Street sponsors could keep their predatory gains and indeed, receive massive bailouts. The costs of their fraud fell on bank customers, not on the banks and their stockholders and bondholders.
The effect of discouraging new home buyers by raising interest rates lowers home ownership – the badge of being middle-class. Despite this, the United States is turning into a landlord economy. The Fed’s policy of raising interest rates will greatly increase the interest charges that prospective new home buyers will have to pay, pricing the carrying charge out of reach for many families.
As the United States has become more debt-ridden, more than 50 percent of the value of U.S. real estate already is held by mortgage bankers. Homeowners’ equity – what they own net of their mortgage debt – has fallen even faster than home ownership rates have declined.

Real estate is being transferred from “poor” hands to those of wealthy landlord corporations. Private capital companies – the funds of the One Percent – are going to pick up the pieces to turn homes into rental properties. Higher interest rates will not affect their cost of buying this housing, because they buy for all cash to make profits (actually, real estate rents) as landlords. In another decade the nation’s home ownership rate may fall toward 50 percent, turning the United States into a landlord economy instead of the promised middle-class home ownership economy.

The coming economic austerity (indeed, debt-burdened depression)
While home ownership rates plunged for the population at large, the Fed’s “Quantitative Easing” increased its subsidy of Wall Street’s financial securities from $1 trillion to $8.2 trillion – of which the largest gain has been in packaged home mortgages. This has kept housing prices from falling and becoming more affordable for home buyers. But the Fed’s support of asset prices saved many insolvent banks – the very largest ones – from going under. Sheila Bair of the FDIC singled out Citigroup, along with Countrywide, Bank of America and the other usual suspects. The working population is not considered to be too big to fail. Its political weight is small by comparison to that of Wall Street banks.
Lowering the discount rate to only about 0.1 percent enabled the banking system to make a bonanza of gains by making mortgage loans at around 3.50 percent. So despite the stock market’s plunge of over 20 percent from nearly 36000 to under 30,000 on June 17, America’s wealthiest One Percent, and indeed the top 10 Percent, have vastly increased their wealth. But most Americans have not benefitted from this run up in asset prices, because most stocks and bonds are owned by only the wealthiest layer of the population. For most American families, corporations and government at all levels, the financial boom since 2008 has entailed growing debt. Many families face insolvency as Federal Reserve policy aims to create unemployment. Now that the Covid moratorium on the evictions of renters behind in their payments is expiring, the ranks of the homeless are rising.
The Biden Administration is trying to blame today’s inflation and related distortions on Putin, even using the term “Putin inflation.” The mainstream media follow suit in not explaining to their audience that blocking Russian energy and food exports will cause a food and energy crisis for many countries this summer and autumn. And indeed, beyond: Biden’s military and State Department officers warn that the fight against Russia is just the first step in their war against China’s non-neoliberal economy, and may last twenty years.
That is a long depression. But as Madeline Albright would say, they think that the price is “worth it.” Biden’s cabinet depicts this New Cold War as a fight of the “democratic” United States privatizing economic planning in the hands of the largest banks “too big to fail” and other members of the neo-rentier class, in opposition to “autocratic” China and even Russia treating banking and money creation as a public utility to finance tangible economic growth, not financialization.
There is no evidence that America’s neoliberal New Cold War can restore the nation’s former industrial and related economic power. The economy cannot recover as long as it leaves today’s debt overhead in place. Debt service, housing costs, privatized medical care, student debt and a decaying infrastructure have made the U.S. economy uncompetitive. There is no way to restore its economic viability without reversing these neoliberal policies. But there is little “reality economics” at hand to provide an alternative to the class war inherent in neoliberalism’s belief that the economy and living standards can prosper by purely financial means, by debt leveraging and corporate monopoly rent extraction while the United States has made its manufacturing uncompetitive – seemingly irreversibly.

The rentier class has sought to make America’s neoliberal privatization and financialization irreversible.

It has succeeded to such a degree that there is no party or economic constituency promoting such recovery. Yet the Democratic Party leadership, subjecting the economy to an IMF-style austerity plan, will make this November’s midterm elections unique. For the past half century, the Fed’s role has been to provide easy money to give the ruling party at least the illusion of prosperity to deter voters from electing the opposition party. But this time the Biden Administration are running on a program of financial austerity.
The Party’s identity politics address almost every identity except that of wage-earners and debtors. That does not look like a platform that can succeed. But as the ghost of Margaret Thatcher no doubt is telling them: “There Is No Alternative.”

https://michael-hudson.com/2022/06/the- ... uce-wages/

Uh oh, the capitalists are mobilizing their Reserve Army......
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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 22, 2022 4:21 pm

Image
Amazon Labor Union (ALU) members celebrate after the voting results to unionize Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, N.Y. on Friday, April 1, 2022. Image: AP
Labor’s militant minority
Originally published: Boston Review on June 15, 2022 by Mie Inouye (more by Boston Review) | (Posted Jun 22, 2022)

On May 1 organizers from the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) joined the New York City Central Labor Council and community organizations to march from Washington Square Park to Foley Park. After a long afternoon of marching and chanting in the sun, about a third of the core organizing committee made their way to a May Day party at the Communist Party headquarters in Chelsea. In the Party’s spacious office, adorned with pictures of William Z. Foster and Lenin, a racially diverse group of twenty-somethings—ALU organizers, members of the Young Communist League (YLC), and fellow travelers—drank Modelos and Bud Lights, ate pizza, and danced to the Backstreet Boys. They were celebrating May Day and the first successful union election at Amazon—the ALU’s April 22 victory at the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island.

The organizers at the party included long-term Amazon workers as well as “salts.” Salts are workers who take jobs at a workplace with the goal of unionizing it—a strategy that left-wing organizations have used in the past, but that hasn’t garnered results in recent decades. Salts played an important but underreported role in the ALU’s widely celebrated union election at JFK8. Six of two dozen or so members of the core organizing committee were salts. ALU organizers wound up at the Communist Party headquarters on May 1 because Justine Medina, an organizing committee member who was recruited to JFK8 by the Young Communist League, helped plan the party.

Today’s salts are one component of a new militant minority, a layer of combative, politically conscious rank-and-file leaders within the labor movement. Their presence at Amazon and Starbucks suggests that we are witnessing an organic convergence of the college-educated middle class with the existing working class. This new militant minority, comprised of working-class labor leaders and left-wing college graduates, has the potential to unite the rejuvenated labor movement and other post-Occupy, post-Bernie arms of the U.S. left. If this occurs, then the victory at JFK8 portends many more to come.

The Militant Minority

ALU’s win at JFK8 and the ongoing unionization wave at Starbucks frequently invite comparisons to the 1930s. Widespread labor militancy in the ’30s shut down entire regions of the country and created the conditions for the passage of the New Deal, which regulated working conditions and protected union organizing. This history is alive in today’s salts, who see themselves in the lineage of ’30s labor radicals. The salts are “labor history nerds,” according to Medina. “We know about the IWW and how the Communists were connected to the CIO in the 1930s.” Indeed, one of the resources that members of the JFK8 organizing committee used during the campaign was William Z. Foster’s 1936 manual Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry, which served as “the blueprint” for left-wing CIO organizers in the ’30s.

Foster, a radical labor organizer and General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1945 to 1957, was one of the most influential theorists of the militant minority in the first half of the twentieth century. Foster organized for over five decades within a range of left-wing organizations, from the IWW to the Communist Party, and consistently advocated sending radicals into mainstream labor unions. They joined as both rank-and-file workers and union staff to radicalize workers, form new unions, and transform existing unions into vehicles for class struggle.

Foster, who was himself an industrial worker, was convinced that the working class was the only possible revolutionary agent. At the same time, he took a dim view of the intellectual and political capacities of most workers, and his conception of the militant minority was inflected with elitism. In 1920 he founded the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL), an organization that aimed to develop the leadership of radicals within the mainstream trade unions and advance industrial unionism. In “The Principles and Program of the TUEL,” he writes, “the fate of all labor organization in every country depends primarily upon the activities of a minute minority of clear-sighted, enthusiastic militants scattered throughout the great organized masses of sluggish workers. . . . Touched by the divine fire of proletarian revolt, they are the ones who furnish inspiration and guidance to the groping masses.”

One part of the militant minority’s role was to educate the masses, but they also aimed to take over leadership of the unions. The TUEL wanted to replace the “reactionaries, incompetents, and crooks who occup[ied] strategic positions” in labor unions with “men and women unionists who look upon the labor movement not as a means for making an easy living, but as an instrument for the achievement of working-class emancipation.” For Foster and other radicals of his time, building a militant minority was a means of growing the labor movement, radicalizing the conservative mainstream unions, and connecting the working class with revolutionary political organizations.

In a 2019 article on union revitalization, Micah Uetricht and Barry Eidlin argue that the militant minority was central to the labor movement’s growth in the ’30s and ’60s. These leaders comprised the labor movement’s “most seasoned and dedicated organizers,” contributing to the militancy and dynamism of their unions. According to Uetricht and Eidlin, the militant minority often played a key mediating role between workplace and community struggles, and between rank-and-file members and union leadership. It also helped consolidate gains the labor movement made during these upsurges.

Industrializing and Salting

By the late ’60s and early ’70s, a new term emerged to describe the relationship between the organized left and the labor movement: “industrializing.” To “industrialize” is to take a rank-and-file union job to democratize existing unions, push them to the left, and radicalize workers. Whereas “militant minority” refers to a radicalized segment of the working class, the agent of “industrialization” comes from outside. The word reflects the changing class composition of the organized left; by the ’60s it had lost its close connection with the working class.

During the mid-to-late ’60s and throughout the ’70s, upwardly mobile, middle-class college students in the New Left “industrialized” to regain the left’s connection to the working class. Groups identified with the New Communist Movement and a range of Trotskyist organizations, most notably the International Socialists, sent hundreds of college and graduate students into factories and working-class communities to build a working-class base for their revolutionary organizations.

This strategy has a mixed legacy. Many of the young radicals who industrialized were unable to stick it out for the long haul. According to Eidlin, this is in large part because of industrial restructuring that took place in the ’80s. As steel and auto plants shut down and the trucking industry was deregulated, many of the jobs into which people had industrialized simply disappeared. Moreover, many newly industrialized workers who had been sent into difficult jobs quickly burnt out, as they were ill-prepared for that kind of labor.

Despite these shortcomings, Eidlin notes that the turn to industry in the 1970s produced labor organizations that have fostered labor militancy and union democracy, such as Labor Notes, a news and analysis publication and network of rank-and-file unionists that is highly influential among today’s labor radicals, and Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a rank-and-file reform movement within the Teamsters that backed the reform slate that swept the union’s elections in November 2021. Without these organizations, today’s labor movement would look very different. Moreover, some shop floor leaders and activists did stick it out and pushed their unions in more militant directions. Eidlin acknowledges the complex legacy: “It’s a decidedly mixed balance sheet, but at the same time that we recognize the real limits we have to recognize the real accomplishments.”

Since the ‘70s “salting” has largely replaced “industrializing.” Whereas “industrializing” generally means taking a rank-and-file job in a workplace with an existing union to help democratize the union, “salting” occurs in workplaces without unions. “Salts” are typically hired by established unions to support union-led organizing drives. Like “industrializing,” however, “salting” implies coming from outside of the working class. For example, Jaz Brisack—a college graduate and a Rhodes Scholar who helped lead the first successful organizing campaign at a Starbucks in Buffalo, NY—came to her job at Starbucks as a salt for Workers United. Unions offer salts varying levels of financial compensation and mentorship.

But the lines between industrializing and salting seem to be blurring today. Young people are salting without any connection to an established union. For example, none of the ALU salts came to JFK8 with an established union, and Medina was the only one who was recruited by a political organization (the YCL). The other five salts came on their own, some moving across the country to take a job at JFK8 after reading about Chris Smalls, a longer-term warehouse worker who drew attention in 2020 for challenging Amazon around safety conditions at the warehouse and spearheading the unionization effort.

Howard Wurzeln, an Amazon worker and organizer with Amazonians United, a national network of Amazon workers that supports and develops worker-organizers at the company, observes that salts show up at Amazon independently across the country, not just at JFK8. “If you think that you want to do some organizing as a worker, where do you go nowadays? In the seventies, organizations within the New Communist Movement were able to send their members into industry because there were so many people who were committed to following the directives of the central committee. We don’t have that.” In the absence of left-wing organizations capable of directing workers into specific industries, “it’s just a question of who’s out there advertising and how.”

Why are so many young, college-educated people independently deciding to take jobs at Amazon? Gene Bruskin, former Campaign Director of the UFCW’s Justice@Smithfieldcampaign and informal advisor to the ALU, credits structural conditions for the labor movement’s renewed “coolness.” “It’s a particular moment. The younger generation went through the financial crisis, Trump, Bernie, the pandemic, and all of those objective conditions.” This process, combined with the growing imminence of climate change, has given young people both a sense of urgency and a willingness to take conventionally working-class jobs.

Today’s college graduates face a grueling, uncertain, and often decade-long process of trying to make it safely into the professional class. That effort might demand career choices that do not meaningfully align with their political beliefs. Moreover, conventionally “blue-collar” jobs often pay as much or more than “white-collar” jobs, such as working as a paralegal or at a nonprofit. Under these conditions, a job at Starbucks or Amazon that offers the prospect of being part of a rejuvenated labor movement is becoming an enticing alternative. While young radicals in the 1970s were committing class suicide by industrializing, today’s young radicals are making the best of their limited options.

Medina’s path to the ALU reflects these dynamics. A college graduate from an upper-middle class family, she had been unemployed for nearly a year and was struggling to find work when she heard about the opportunity to salt at Amazon. Given her political beliefs, her theory of social change, and her desire for meaningful work, the job at JFK8 was the best job available to her. For Medina, unionizing Amazon not only creates more workplace democracy and better conditions for workers, but also builds worker power in the most strategic industry in the global economy: “Amazon is where we needed to be. If you look on the industrial production line, if you’re going to focus in one place, it’s gotta be Amazon.”

The Role of Salts at Amazon
The successful ALU drive at JFK8 and the unsuccessful drive at LDJ5—a second, smaller Amazon warehouse on Staten Island—were both led by Black and brown long-term workers, including Chris Smalls, Derrick Palmer, Jordan Flowers, Angelika Maldonado, and Gerald Bryson. They had the deepest knowledge of the job and their fellow workers, and several were also familiar with unions, whether through family members or their own experiences. The relationships they built with other workers within the warehouse were the single most important factor in JFK8’s successful election.

Six of the seven ALU salts, by contrast, were white. One of the salts, who left Amazon before the election period but continued to support the union in a volunteer role, was Black. Some of the salts came from out of state to take a job at JFK8. Some came from out of state to take a job at JFK8. According to Flowers, one member of the organizing committee moved to Staten Island from Florida. “ She came from out of state because she wanted to make a change. That shows community. These people are coming out of state to support us and dedicating their time.” Medina emphasizes that the salts’ main role was to follow the longer-term workers’ lead. “We all went in to support the organic worker leadership that was there.”

Salts can also bring a sense of history to unionization campaigns, which can be a huge asset in an industry like Amazon that has long seemed un-organizable. Wurzeln notes that, “everything the boss does to retaliate is to make people shrink back and to kill this idea of a greater purpose and a greater movement so that people become discouraged and can only think of the personal risk and reward.” People who see the work of organizing a union as part of a broader vision for social transformation are less vulnerable to that pattern. Wurzeln explains that salts’ historical knowledge can also empower workers:

Famously, the role of leftist activists, labor activists, and union staff is to bring their knowledge of history, their study of theory, their reading of journals and articles and being connected to news from the wider labor movement to the workers. They can bring that knowledge and those networks to workers who might not have been connected to that or studied it or known there was a thing to study. . . . You can look at Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Bernie, and the Trump phenomenon and see that there is a lot of discontent out there. The system has not been working for a lot of people for a long time. There’s a widespread understanding that things suck and they’re not necessarily getting better. The question is whether or not people know what could work.

Left-wing organizers can help give workers a sense of the labor movement’s past achievements. As Wurzeln explains:

When I started organizing, a lot of the work that I did was talking people through their discouragement and disillusionment. If you know labor history, you can tell people that the boss needs us more than we need them. We’re the ones who sort these packages, and look what happened when those workers over there stood up, look what they got. People are ready. It doesn’t take a lot to get people ready to start organizing.

The Four-letter Word
While salts have played important roles in campaigns to unionize, there is a lack of discussion in the media about their efforts. This reflects some ambivalence on the left about whether to openly recognize the presence of salts in unionization drives. Jaz Brisack declined to discuss the role of salts in Starbucks Workers United in a recent live episode of The Dig podcast: “I don’t think that we as organizers should make those distinctions because I think it really boils down to, ultimately, I’m in the Starbucks making lattes and doing the same job . . . and it doesn’t matter if I have a second job with the union or in the same industry or a different industry. That ends up being kind of a false distinction.”

She is right to be wary. The distinction between non-salts and salts can be used to suggest that the latter aren’t real workers, and exposing salts can make them vulnerable to red-baiting by bosses, who may claim that they are “outside agitators” or “third parties” at odds with the workers’ interests. Bosses aim to exploit divisions between workers to undermine their attempts to unionize. This is also why it can be difficult to talk about internal democracy, racism, and sexism within unions. The impulse to distinguish salts from non-salts might also reflect a discomfort with transgressing boundaries of race and class that segregate our society and strengthen capitalism.

But, although acknowledging it carries risks, the distinction is not entirely false. Taking a job with the intention of forming a union is different from taking a job out of necessity, even if the downward mobility of today’s college graduates is beginning to blur these motives. And, as in ALU, salts often have access to safety nets that longer-term workers lack.

During the same episode of The Dig, Smalls openly acknowledged that the ALU has salts and distinguished them from non-salts. Of the salts, he said, “their task was and still is to support the workers.” For Smalls, who is not a salt, this distinction matters. But it’s not immutable. He explained that good salts embed themselves in the workplace over the course of years, which allows them to approximate “workers.” According to Smalls, deeply embedded salts are necessary to the union. “We need them. . . . You know, especially with the bargaining unit we had, we’re talking 8,300 workers . . . it wasn’t going to come from just workers. But it was led by workers, for sure.” Smalls’s answer simultaneously distinguishes salts from workers and emphasizes that salts can become more like workers through time and exposure. Whether they can ever fully become “workers” is unclear. Much like the dynamics between salts and non-salts, Smalls’s take on salts is complicated and riven with internal tensions.

These tensions notwithstanding, salting is perhaps the most important work today’s left-wing college graduates can undertake. The salts now taking jobs at Amazon, Starbucks, and elsewhere could play a key role in reversing union decline. Since 1954 union density has fallen from 35 percent to 10.3 percent, a decline that has greatly harmed the wellbeing of workers. Unionized workers have better wages, benefits, and job security, while unions compress race and gender wage gaps. Moreover, a strong labor movement concentrated in strategic industries would grow the political power of the working class, as it did in the 1930s.

Today we seem to be on the precipice of a labor resurgence. The NLRB reports that during the first six months of the 2022 fiscal year, union petitions increased 57 percent. A militant minority, composed in part of salts, can further this growth and help consolidate whatever gains labor makes in the coming years.

Salting is also important work because it combats the fracturing of the organized left that has deepened since the 1930s, when socialist organizations were much more firmly rooted in the working class. The salt vs. non-salt distinction is one pressure point of many that bosses can use to divide workers. But the difference can be a source of strength. The left’s capacity to fight for economic equality, climate justice, reproductive rights, and racial justice in the coming years will depend on our willingness and ability to transgress boundaries of race and class that divide and weaken us.

Salting is a powerful form of solidarity because it puts people from different class backgrounds on the same side of a shared struggle. Although they have real differences that are important to acknowledge and account for, salts and non-salts in the same workplace are also co-workers with a common material interest in forming a union. Moreover, the work itself, whether making lattes or organizing, can be unifying. When I asked Flowers whether the salts and non-salts played different roles in organizing JFK8, he emphasized the ways their shared work equalized them. “We were all learning as we were moving. We were all doing the same interviews, talking to the same people. We were organizing for one reason—to unionize JFK8—which we did.”

https://mronline.org/2022/06/22/labors- ... -minority/

To call Foster 'elitist' is libel. He simply realized that the average worker had a lot on their plate, had families and other basic consideration, and were burdened with 'the ruling ideas of the ruling class', which are not dismissed overnight. The' militant minority', some of whom took the appellation of "Fosterites' in later generations, devoted themselves wholly to the cause, often to the detriment of other aspects of their social lives.
Without people of this sort the labor movement has foundered, as evidenced by Taft-Hartley, which effectively banished 'people of this sort' from the movement and the resulting decline of membership and effectiveness in the past half century. These people constitute Lenin's 'professional revolutionaries'', small wonder the bosses hate them. And this explains why the Democratic Party, supposedly the 'friend of labor' will not strike down Taft-Hartley in a million years.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 29, 2022 2:20 pm

Seventy Five Years Later, Toll of Taft-Hartley Weighs Heavily on Labor
JUNE 23, 2022
BY JONATHAN KISSAM

Seventy-five years ago, the labor movement suffered its greatest setback of the 20th Century: the Taft-Hartley Act.

Despite a valiant effort by millions of rank-and-file workers to prevent its passage, Taft-Hartley became law on June 23, 1947 when the Senate overrode President Truman’s veto. Taft-Hartley halted what had been a remarkable decade of progress for working people, tamed union militancy, and set the stage for the long decline of the U.S. labor movement. We are still feeling its effects today.

Counterattack on a Growing Labor and People’s Movement
The Taft-Hartley Act was the centerpiece of big business’s counterattack against a labor and people’s movement that had, over the previous decade, won major improvements for working people on factory floors and in the halls of Congress.

From 1936 through World War II, the new industrial unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) — UE, the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, and dozens of smaller unions — had successfully organized the mass-production industries that dominated U.S. economy at the time. Like Amazon today, the huge corporations that dominated these industries — General Electric and Westinghouse in electrical manufacturing, the “Big Three” auto companies, and U.S. Steel — were engines of economic inequality. They exploited massive workforces to generate massive profits for a tiny corporate elite.

During the 1930s, workers throughout the country fought to establish “industrial” unions, which would organize all workers in a given industry, “regardless of craft, age, sex, nationality, race, creed, or political beliefs,” as the preamble to the UE constitution puts it. Against the intransigence and violence of the corporations, workers employed militant and innovative forms of struggle — which were frequently declared illegal. Famously, this was the era of the “sit-down” strike in Flint, Michigan which established the UAW in the auto industry.

Gains in the workplace were complemented by advances on the political front. In 1932, reeling from the Great Depression, voters had replaced the Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover with the Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised the American people a “New Deal.” But the content of the New Deal was determined less by pronouncements of politicians than by popular struggle from below, as working people and their allies demanded jobs, relief, economic security, and justice in the workplace.

Strikes, popular mobilizations, and political action through “Labor’s Non Partisan League” helped realign the Democratic Party towards the interests of working people. These struggles won enduring reforms including Social Security, the minimum wage, and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which provided for the first time a legal mechanism for workers to establish unions (at least in most of the private sector).

During World War II, the mobilization of fighting-age men to serve in the military created a labor shortage at home. While most working people supported the war effort, they were not afraid to use the leverage this labor shortage created to ensure that they were being treated fairly on the shop floor. As the war effort brought women into the workforce and created shortages, working people successfully demanded that Congress provide federally-subsidized child care and control prices, to prevent corporate price-gouging.

In his 1944 State of the Union Address, President Roosevelt outlined an ambitious agenda for expanding the New Deal with an “Economic Bill of Rights.” He proposed that all people have the right to a job, an adequate income, decent housing, medical care, security in old age, and education — and that the job of the government was to help secure these rights.

“An economic confrontation between industry and the organized rank-and-file workers”
The U.S. working class emerged from World War II well-organized and confident both on the shop floor and in the political arena — and eager to claim its share of the postwar economic recovery.

UE’s first Director of Organization, James Matles, wrote in his history of UE Them and Us:

Much pressure was building up in the shops and in the homes of working class families. At war’s end, August 1945, it was inevitable that there would be an economic confrontation between industry and the organized rank-and-file workers of the United States, squeezed almost unbearably by the constantly expanded cost of living. Industry’s attitude in that confrontation was made explicit in November 1945 at the White House Labor-Management Conference ... CIO proposals for immediate wage increases to make up the 30 percent loss in real wages and a demand for firm price controls across the board, were defeated by the combined votes of corporation executives and representatives of the AFL.

Shortly after the failure of that conference, the CIO’s “Big Three” (UE, UAW, and the Steelworkers) launched national strikes that shut down the nation’s largest mass production industries. Other unions struck as well, with close to five million workers taking part in strike action in 1945 and 1946. A number of cities, from Oakland, CA to Rochester, NY, saw short general strikes. These strikes found wide support among local working-class communities, and they established the pattern of collective bargaining that would bring a decent, “middle class” standard of living to tens of millions of working-class people in the middle decades of the 20th Century.

As Matles wrote, “The solidarity of workers and their allies among the people gave industry pause, to put it mildly.” Industry was not about to let this kind of working-class power continue.

The Corporations Strike Back

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Fred Wright cartoon likening Taft-Hartley to Hitler's efforts to smah unions, from the UE NEWS.

In 1946, the Republican Party retook control of Congress, amidst an unprecedented advertising blitz by the National Association of Manufacturers and other employer groups designed to convince people that “communists” lurked everywhere and that price controls (approved of by 75% of Americans earlier that year) were “un-American.” Unions were the next “un-American” institution in their sights.

GE CEO Charles E. Wilson spoke for all of corporate America when he declared in 1946 that “The problems of the United States can be ... summed up in two words: Russia abroad, labor at home.” Breaking labor’s power was central to their project of restoring corporate control of society, and legislation introduced by Congressman Fred Hartley and Senator Robert Taft was their weapon of choice.

Recognizing that the public would not accept a wholesale repeal of the NLRA, these wealthy and influential corporations instead sought to portray unions as too powerful and “communist-dominated.” They described their legislation as an even-handed effort to “correct abuses” and restore balance between workers and bosses.

The nation’s union members saw through this. They recognized that a bill which put restrictions on labor’s most effective tools, made unions financially liable for strikes initiated by the rank-and-file, allowed states to enact so-called “right to work” laws to weaken unions, and required that elected union leaders sign loyalty oaths, was not a restoration of balance, but instead was a “slave-labor bill” designed to break their unions’ power.

Millions of workers signed petitions and postcards opposing Taft-Hartley. CIO delegations — including many rank-and-file members who were Republican voters unhappy about the men they had voted for attacking their unions — visited the nation’s capital. And many in the labor movement agitated for action that would take the fight directly to corporations.

In April of 1947, CIO unions in Iowa declared a “labor holiday” on Monday, April 21, as the state legislature was considering a “right to work” bill. Tens of thousands of workers rallied at the state capitol while the packing houses and farm equipment factories stood idle. UE Director of Organization Matles recalled, “In 1947 while the Taft-Hartley bill was before Congress, the three officers ... went into the CIO Executive Board, and we had the unmitigated gall to propose, while the bill was still going through Congress, that the CIO recommend to all affiliated unions that they take the referendum to shut it down. Take a vote first. Do it in a democratic way but shut down every plant in the country.”


“A constant, day by day fight”

Despite opposition from the rank and file of the labor movement, the bill passed Congress with significant support from Democrats. Democratic President Harry Truman vetoed the bill, calling it a “dangerous intrusion on free speech,” but enough Democrats joined with Republicans to override his veto.

In an editorial following the bill’s passage called “How We Must Fight,” the UE NEWS outlined a struggle “on two broad fronts”:

1.We must carry on in the shops and in the local unions a constant, day by day fight to close and unite our ranks as a union for the protection and enforcement of our collective bargaining contacts.
2.We must ... [carry] forward the broadest possible battle on the political front, not only for the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, but to break the grip of reaction on the policies of government and to move forward along the path whose beginnings were outlined in the Economic Bill of Rights by President Roosevelt.

The editorial further noted that “the Democratic failure [to sustain Truman’s veto] makes the question of third party one that the labor movement will have to consider.”

While most of the labor movement mouthed agreement with these sentiments, behind the scenes too many labor leaders quietly made their peace with Taft-Hartley. As historian George Lipsitz describes in his study of labor and culture in the 1940s, Rainbow at Midnight, many CIO leaders who were more concerned with amassing union treasuries than aggressive struggle against the employer saw in Taft-Hartley’s prohibition of “wildcat” strikes an opportunity to discipline an unruly rank and file.

Even worse, some saw it as an opportunity to raid other unions. Although all of the CIO unions initially took a principled stand against signing the Taft-Hartley loyalty oath, UAW President Walter Reuther broke ranks in order to attack the smaller and more militant Farm Equipment Workers (FE). Since FE leaders had refused to sign the oath, their union was unable to appear on the NLRB ballot when the UAW raided their largest local in 1948 — and as a consequence they immediately lost a quarter of their membership. The UAW also began raiding UE, and soon other CIO unions joined in the raiding.

UE, FE, and other unions that were being subjected to raids appealed to the CIO to intervene, but to no avail, and in 1949 UE suspended dues payments to the CIO. At their 1949 convention the CIO expelled UE and FE under charges of “communist domination”; they would expel nine other unions, including the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) the following year. While UE and the other expelled unions carried out the day to day fight to enforce their contracts as best they could, this disunity in the labor movement was a death knell for the broader political fight to repeal Taft-Hartley and advance economic rights.


“Their muscles, wearied by the ever-increasing speed-up, told of the law.”

The loyalty act provisions of Taft-Hartley turned most of the U.S. labor movement into a compliant “junior partner” to corporate America, one that would fight for higher wages and benefits for its members but not question the broader direction of society. The bill’s other provisions established a restrictive legal framework that has hindered working-class advances for the past three-quarters of a century, and which too much of the labor movement has come to accept as simply the way things are.

Prior to Taft-Hartley, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) would frequently certify unions based on a procedure now widely known as “card check” — after verifying that a majority of workers have joined the union, the NLRB would require their employer to bargain with them. Taft-Hartley gave employers the option of demanding an election, leading to the long, drawn-out process workers have to go through today.

It also enshrined in law employer’s right to oppose the union — the original NLRA had required employer neutrality during a union organizing drive. Together with the provision allowing employers to request (and litigate the outcomes of) elections, this gave rise in the 1970s to the modern union-busting industry.

In addition to crippling the labor movement’s ability to organize new workers, Taft-Hartley put sharp restrictions on the ability of organized workers to engage in struggle against their employers. As Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais wrote in Labor’s Untold Story, after the passage of the law “an employer could break a strike through injunctions against picketing and other standard strike procedure. He could refuse to bargain collectively, even by shutting down his plant to prevent negotiations. He could destroy union treasuries by suit … [and] circumvent union democracy by charging any effective trade unionist with being a Communist.”

Of the effect on workers in the immediate aftermath of the bill’s passage, Boyer and Morais wrote, “As the cost of living rose to an all-time high some 16,000,000 trade unionists daily felt the law in their pockets and sometimes in their bellies. Their muscles, wearied by the ever-increasing speed-up, which always follows weakened unions, also told of the law.”

The Legacy of Taft-Hartley

As described in the UE booklet “Them and Us Unionism,” following the passage of Taft-Hartley:

The mainstream of the labor movement embraced the idea that workers and bosses share common interests, became even more tightly joined at the hip with the Democratic Party, and ceded the right to make all decisions about the economy and foreign policy to employers and the government.

When the employers ditched any pretense of a “labor-management accord” and launched all-out attacks on the labor movement in the 1970s and 80s, the mainstream of the labor movement had little idea how to respond. Without an accurate analysis of capitalism, or the ability to formulate an alternative vision, unions were unable to respond effectively or build public support for any kind of fightback. The only response many union leaders could muster was to offer deeper concessions.


The legacy of Taft-Hartley can be seen not only in the timidity of much of the U.S. labor movement, it can also be seen in the eagerness of the government to intervene in labor disputes on the side of employers, such as when President George W. Bush invoked the legislation during the 2002 lockout of ILWU members by their employers. Or the injunction issued against UE Local 506 during their 2019 strike against Wabtec — an injunction that is still in effect.

Taft-Hartley’s long shadow is also present in the unwillingness of the government to enforce labor law against employers. Before Taft-Hartley, the mission of the NLRB was unambiguously to protect workers rights, and for the most part the board acted relatively swiftly to enforce the law. Now, the board allows employers to drag out organizing campaigns into endless legal battles, even going so far as to overturn its own elections based on frivolous company charges.

In recent years a new militancy has emerged among the working class, especially among younger workers — a militancy that was on display as 4,000 trade unionists gathered at the Labor Notes conference in Chicago this past weekend. If it continues, this new militancy will almost certainly put our labor movement on a collision course with the legal framework established in large part by Taft-Hartley, and perhaps, after three-quarters of a century, labor will once again be prepared to lead a society-wide fight for economic rights for all.

https://www.ueunion.org/ue-news-feature ... y-on-labor

Bout time this was brought up, I've been harping on this for years. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the treachery of the Democratic Party regarding unions.

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SUNSET OF THE AFL-CIO?
Posted by Chris Townsend | Jun 27, 2022

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The 29th Constitutional Convention of the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) opened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 12, 2022 delayed by one year owing to pandemic conditions. There was little fanfare, and little advance publicity apparently. Even ordinarily sympathetic observers of AFL-CIO Conventions have been struck by the low profile and energy of the proceedings. Held only every 4 years the Federation Convention is the one minimally public event where union leaders, members, activists, and supporters of the labor movement might be able to look for leadership on the dizzying array of issues facing working people.

In recent decades as the labor movement has been assaulted from all sides less and less public and media attention is seemingly paid to this otherwise critical council of the leadership of such a primary section of the organized working class. By comparison, the twice-as-large Labor Notes conference convened in Chicago just a week after the AFL-CIO Convention, and it offered a dramatically different and far more energetic approach to solving labor’s crises and problems.

The AFL-CIO is comprised of 57 industrial and craft unions, claiming a combined total of 12.5 million U.S. members. When those only nominally associated with their unions are subtracted – primarily retirees and political campaign enrollees – actual Federation membership is significantly less. And in addition to this membership, more than 7 million workers belong to unions not affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The stark facts today would be that the unionized section of the U.S. working class remains numerically small, embattled, isolated, and encircled by hostile employers and governments. Activity levels among union members at the workplaces has declined as a result. The total unionized slice of the workforce has also been steadily shrinking as a proportion of the entire workforce for the past 70 years, now well less than 10%.

While positive anecdotes are always to be found in abundance where unions and workers fight back or try to advance, the overall condition of the labor movement given this imbalance of forces is precarious at best. For my entire working life as a union member – more than 40 years – the situation has been steadily deteriorating as both employers and governments systematically attack the remaining organized union garrisons in the industries. Our growth in new sections of the economy has been virtually stopped, as the employers have adopted an all-out union smashing strategy to prevent the unions from regenerating. The new industries have been nearly impossible to organize, so the unions continue to suffer major losses in established bases that they are unable to replace.

Convention Die Cast on Day One

Given the dire situation we now face as a labor movement one might have imagined a Federation Convention dedicated to intense study and debate regarding our situation. Or, we might have imagined a vigorous pre-Convention process where the disastrous situation we confront would have been dissected in a search for solutions by the leadership. Very little of this apparently happened, however. The Philadelphia Convention opened without the presence of the well-known and outsized figure of Richard Trumka, who died suddenly in August of 2021 after more than 25 years as first the Secretary-Treasurer, then the President of the Federation. Trumka had announced his intention to retire at the Philadelphia Convention, and his sudden death opened-up the possibility of an actual election contest for the leadership spot.

Trumka’s hand-picked successor was AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, the preferred shoo-in of the conservative elements in the various affiliate unions. Progressive forces scattered in the unions had promoted a possible candidacy by airline Flight Attendants (AFA) union President Sara Nelson, but resistance from the old regime’s supporters and a front-loaded leadership election on day one of the Convention ended any such thought of a challenge. Shuler was elected without debate or discussion. The small progressive forces in the various union leaderships – and the even smaller left elements – were unable to crystallize the needed support for Nelson that might have forced an election challenge and a wide-ranging debate of the many crises faced. The hurried Shuler election on day one ended any hopes for discussion, debate, or any meaningful appraisal of the state of things facing the unions at the Philadelphia meeting.

More Decay and Drift Ahead

With no leadership challenge or debate having materialized, the Convention proceeded to move through its customary standard agenda on a predictable course. The multiple disasters facing the labor federation were at times mentioned, but little urgent action was proposed. Scripted speeches, stage-managed presentations, visiting VIP guests from the Democratic Party – notably President Joe Biden – spoke to the assemblage, and an array of video clips were shown to try to inject enthusiasm into the audience. A trade show theme permeated the Convention as job training, “wellness”, and other HR functions were offered as substitutes for traditional trade union responses.

Some ongoing struggles and organizing successes were thankfully showcased, although the leaders of the three largest successful NLRB union election campaigns in the past 3 months – Amazon, Starbucks, and MIT – were all barely noted. Ironically, the three unions responsible for those wins – the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), Workers United (SEIU), and the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) – are not affiliates of the AFL-CIO. These unprecedented and successful uprisings of more than 15,000 unorganized workers in previously untouchable anti-union employer fortresses were little noted in the AFL-CIO proceedings.

During the week a variety of other public decisions were made; Fred Redmond from the Steelworkers Union was elected Secretary-Treasurer; the Executive Vice President slot was eliminated by being merged apparently with the Secretary-Treasurer position; a new Executive Council of affiliate union leaders was elected without any challenges or debate; and at the very end of the Convention it was announced that a new organizing initiative would be launched presumably to address the stagnant and sinking membership levels. No details or timelines were announced as to how or when this would be done. So ended the Convention of AFL-CIO, the all-too-rare meeting of the leaders and general staffs of the unions comprising the U.S. labor federation. My now departed and dear friend Harry Kelber – a tireless advocate for an improved democratic and deliberative process at AFL-CIO Conventions – would have been dumbstruck at the proceedings, what they covered, and what they did not cover.

Crises Will Deepen and Worsen

A “steady as she goes” approach has been the preferred course by the labor leadership for decades. It has proven to be a reliable path to a “rule or ruin” legacy where the singular goal of maintaining complete control crowds out all other considerations. Such is sadly the state in many of the affiliate unions as well. Ignoring problems and crises, delaying real discussion of new and urgently needed solutions, praying child-like for a miracle to save the “the middle class”, hiring outside advertising firms to explore new “messaging” schemes, continued habituation to decline and decay, an unwillingness to question the political strait-jacket of the Federation, substituting non-profits and NGO’s for the development of real trade union capacity, and even overt submissive gestures to enemy political forces and corporations in the vain search for allies have all been standard responses over the decades. Given this historically failed and sterile process no other outcome other than continued decline is to be expected. The Philadelphia Convention has ended, the delegates have drawn their breath and drawn their pay, and that’s that.

Progressives and Militants Demobilized and Scattered

Defenders and apologists of the status-quo alike have always pointed out one fact that is not in question here, which is to correctly observe that “The AFL-CIO is only a sum of its parts.” Meaning, that the Federation itself is merely a reflection of the character of the unions and the union leadership that comprise the leadership of the affiliate unions. Today’s situation within the labor center reflects accurately an overall business union malaise deeply infecting the labor movement. The current untenable and dangerous situation will not correct itself, either. The highly paid leaders of the bulk of the affiliate unions – and their networks of appointees and paid staff completely beholden to them – are customarily insulated and protected from virtually all political challenges in their own unions.

The progressive and left elements in the unions do exist, but they are precariously scattered and unable or unwilling to bring forward demands for such basic initiatives as the need for internal democratization of the unions, for aggressive bargaining campaigns before the current economic conditions deteriorate, for mass campaigns of new organization, or advocacy towards a new and improved political action program. Some of the more activist and progressive forces within the affiliate unions did emerge as part of the network which pushed for a candidacy by Sara Nelson from the Flight Attendants, but in the end the network was too small, too isolated, opposed by too many, undermined, and unable to pull together a campaign to confront the old guard as personified by Shuler.

Need for Real Work in the Unions

Over the past 30 years there have been 3 distinct union leadership groupings that have collected around demands that the labor Federation deal more realistically with its problems, deal more decisively with them, organize the unorganized on a wider scale, and exert some degree of independence from the Democratic Party. The union coalition that barely unseated the reactionary Lane Kirkland regime in 1995; the dozen unions that coalesced around the Labor Party movement in the 1990’s, and the unions that came together and ultimately split from the AFL-CIO to form the now moribund rival Change to Win federation in the 2,000’s. Progressives and militants played leading roles in all three efforts, although all three were unable to permanently establish themselves as sustained left alternatives to the ossified status quo.

In the wake of the failure of these three initiatives – so far as their goal of reinvigorating the overall labor federation – the left forces have dissipated and declined. The Bernie Sanders campaign rejuvenated some of these forces during his bid for the White House but have since scattered again in the wake of the Biden victory. With no pressure being brought to bear from the left, the entrenched conservatives in control of the Federation are unlikely to act on very much coming in the wake of the Convention, as history will attest. And on top of everything else, the apparent impending November election debacle facing the Democratic Party – and the likely return to power of an increasingly reactionary and anti-labor Republican Party – should be cause for alarm. With a Republican Party set to continue and expand its program of liquidating the trade unions one might have imagined the Federation willing to confront at least this singular issue as an emergency, but no such program seems in evidence.

The situation in many of the affiliates is even more dire, as internal union polls regularly indicate that large swaths of union membership support Trumpism and its variants at the ballot box and in general. With the Federation unwilling to take on and lead the needed – and necessarily controversial political work of exposing the Right’s agenda – the affiliate unions are unlikely to go it alone and risk angering large sections of their memberships. Union after union refuses to engage their memberships in any meaningful trade union political education, instead abandoning this most urgent of tasks.

Labor Notes Conference Eclipses AFL Confab

One very bright sign on the horizon besides the youth-led organizing upsets at Amazon, Starbucks, and MIT is the biennial Labor Notes conference which convened in Chicago just days after the AFL-CIO Convention. Run on a shoestring, more than 4,000 unionists gathered at the Labor Notes conference, twice as many as the all-expenses-paid attendance at the AFL confab. The evolving Labor Notes movement took root more than 40 years ago on the left fringes of the labor movement and today has grown to eclipse even the Federation itself in terms of the loyalty shown it by the activist elements across all unions and sectors.

The emerging younger, progressive, and more militant forces in some of the new organizing movements – as best illustrated by the Amazon, Starbucks, and MIT election wins – run counter to the AFL-CIO drift and decay. In some ways it offers parallels to the divide between new and old generations in the early years of the Committee for Industrial Organization, the predecessor of the eventual Congress of Industrial Organizations.

The recent Labor Notes conference featured addresses by Flight Attendants Union president Sara Nelson, Senator Bernie Sanders, and new Teamster President Sean O’Brien. In addition, union leaders and activists conducted workshops too numerous to count as virtually every aspect of labor’s crisis was debated and examined in the search for some way forward. The meeting stands out for its authentic energy and character, its decentralized structure, and its decidedly left political and militant union bent. Labor Notes has clearly carved-out and earned for itself the left pole of the labor movement and commands wide loyalty among the ranks. All signs point to a continued growth of this left flank.

William Z. Foster

As far back as 1925 William Z. Foster warned that, “To bring the millions into the unions is necessary not only for the protection of the unorganized workers, and to further class ends in general, but also to safeguard the life of the existing organizations.” Foster implored the progressives, the militants, and left forces within the unions to push, and push harder towards a goal of forcing the established bureaucracies in the labor movement to respond to the crisis as he saw them 100 years ago. That same counsel describes our collective dilemma today, with both the Federation and scores of union affiliates stumbling towards disaster and forfeiting the momentary improved conditions for aggressive trade union bargaining, strike action, and certainly for the initiation of mass campaigns to organize the many millions of unorganized workers.

Foster in his era was faced with many of the same business union pathologies as we face today regarding the need to revitalize the labor movement, and all serious participants in the current labor movement are well advised to acquaint themselves with his legacy. Foster correctly observed that, within the labor movement leadership, “The left wing militantly leads, the progressives mildly support, and the right wing opposes…The left wing alone has a realization of the tremendous social significance of the organization of the unorganized…” It should be noted that just 10 years after Foster’s admonition in the trade union low ebb of the Roaring Twenties to organize the unorganized the CIO was born; and just 16 years after the loss of the Great Steel Strike the mass strike waves that established the CIO were spreading like wildfire.

Things that look impossible today will be possible again, but not unless the left labor forces come together, build their numbers and reach, unify around a basic program of trade union revitalization, and work to compel the union leaderships to carry out the missions of the trade unions – and put an end to the disastrous AFL-CIO and affiliate union wandering in the wilderness. This work in the individual unions is urgent and critical if any progress is to be made at that level, and certainly no future progress will be possible at the Federation level absent these forces.

For those seeking Foster’s interpretation of the AFL shortcomings in his time frame see, “American Trade Unionism”, a collection of Foster’s writing spanning his career as a labor organizer. The book is published by International Publishers. https://www.intpubnyc.com/product/ameri ... -unionism/

https://mltoday.com/sunset-of-the-afl-cio/
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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 07, 2022 2:45 pm

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What is the trade union movement fighting for?
Written by Nicola Lawlor on 4th July 2022

An interesting but not entirely new debate has begun in Socialist Voice in recent issues on the question of “social partnership” and national wage agreements.

On the one hand, Jimmy Doran has condemned “social partnership” outright as class betrayal, with strong statements that it is anti-democratic, embodies insider dealing, reduces workers’ demands, produced wage moderation, deliberately demobilises workers, and has led to a decline in strikes, a decline in union density, and the Industrial Relations Act (1990), which is said to have stripped all power from workers and unions. As he says, “social partnership has devastated the trade union movement.”

In response, and contrast, to this, Niall Cullinane wrote in June another view on national wage agreements and the related “social partnership,” arguing that all the ills of the movement cannot and should not be laid at the feet of partnership and instead suggesting that unions change their tactics and demands to combine national bargaining on wages with local “job control” issues, and that than trade tax cuts instead to seek better job protections and collective rights.

I think if one strips aside Jimmy’s polemics the core point being made is that partnership removes the attention of unions away from the work-place and places its focus, more often than not, on secretive pay negotiations so distant from workers as to have a negative impact on organising, participation and union activity at the work-place level.

And the central response from Niall is that this doesn’t necessarily have to be the way and is more a result of weak (in this case) union power and tactics than national bargaining itself.

This leads us to the crucial questions of what are we fighting for and what do we see as the main purpose of the trade union movement. Are we, the trade union movement, about market interests or political class? If one sees its function in the narrow sense of just improving pay and conditions, a market actor, that will lead one to certain strategic and tactical decisions. However, if one sees it as an instrument of power for the working class for increasing class-consciousness and militancy in the struggle to overthrow capitalism, then one will take a different approach to these issues.

This is not a new debate and has been at the core of internal struggle in the movement for more than a century, with different positions more or less dominant at different junctures. And I am also not saying that Jimmy or Niall sit strictly in one or other camp only: both articles contain elements of both market and class positions, because the reality is that the trade union movement is both at the same time, without ever being settled.

The most important point to take away from Niall’s article is that “the problem with social partnership in the Irish context is that union engagement derives from a position of structural weakness…” This mistake must be avoided by the movement at all costs, otherwise we will see history repeat itself and the negatives outlined by Jimmy exacerbated.

As difficult as this is, the trade union movement, right now at this historical juncture in this balance of class power, must focus its energy and resources on rebuilding unions structurally at the work-place level and organising new sectors and workers into the movement. That is the immediate task that confronts us. Removing pay bargaining from this site of struggle and mobilisation will hinder, not assist, strengthening and building unions back up.

Therefore, national wage agreements or partnership should be avoided at all costs. Individual unions should concentrate on building and strengthening themselves and militantly pursuing big pay claims. The national movement should concentrate on winning legislation that makes it easier for affiliate unions to organise and win significantly in work-places and sectors. This should be our focus now.

https://socialistvoice.ie/2022/07/what- ... hting-for/
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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 26, 2022 3:56 pm

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Registering the ‘Labour Upsurge’ in North America
Originally published: Socialist Project – The Bullet on July 24, 2022 by Tori Fleming and Matt Davis (more by Socialist Project – The Bullet) | (Posted Jul 25, 2022)

After a long four-year hiatus, the Labor Notes Conference is back, and bigger than ever with a record-breaking 4,000 registering. With Amazon and Starbucks workers providing the lead at this year’s conference, it is clear that major events over the last few years have dramatically impacted the form and scope of the American labour movement. These include–but are not limited to–the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic resulting in the deaths of over six-million people globally and over one-million people in the United States; and the current of rampant inflation that is further pinching and financially punishing already income-strapped workers around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has put labour back on the agenda with an uptick of wildcat strikes occurring alongside other labour actions in response to employers such as Amazon, Starbucks, John Deere, and countless others failing to implement health and safety regulations needed to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

This uptick in labour actions has led several journalists, academics, and labour leaders to refer to the current milieu as a ‘labour upsurge’. Although the notion of a contemporary labour upsurge remains contested, with some arguing that reported strikes remain low when placed in historical context, the potential for a revitalized labour movement is mounting with slews of people turning to unions as a crucial site for workplace struggles and broader changes within North American society.

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This turn to unions has sparked a series of fundamental questions that were touched on throughout Labor Notes 2022: what is a union; what role does a union serve within the workplace and in the broader community; what forms should unions take today; what relationships should new and emerging unions have with established unions; how should legacy unions aid and assist novel workers struggles; and, importantly, what structural reforms do legacy unions need to undergo in order to orient themselves away from their current business union formations? These are foundational questions and seeing them raised and debated at Labor Notes suggests an array of workers are beginning to see the potential power of unions as sites of political possibility and radical change.

A Variety of Tactics at Amazon on Display

The ongoing labour struggles across all Amazon facilities in the United States reflect well these questions and debates. The diversity of union formations within Amazon’s labour struggle points to a growing interest (and need) in developing new unions which carry the capacity to respond to the changes in workplaces that have emerged under neoliberalism. Yet, they also illustrate the conflicting perspectives workers have toward unions (and perhaps the open-endedness and historical contingency of these issues to begin with). In the panels directed at Amazon organizing, these important debates bubbled to the surface and elicited interesting responses from Amazon workers attending.

Representatives from four distinct yet related Amazon union formations participated in Labor Notes 2022: Amazon Labor Union (ALU); Amazonians United (AU); the Bessemer, Alabama campaign partnered with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU); and Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE). Two primary schisms have influenced the shape of these unions: first, conflicting perspectives on the necessity and utility of fighting for a legally recognized union with the objective of winning a collective bargaining contract; and, second, whether or not these novel worker-led organizations should develop relationships with or rely on assistance from larger established unions.

The ALU has garnered the most attention recently, becoming the first legal union at Amazon in the United States due to their recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election victory. Although the ALU’s ballot victory marks an important historical milestone for the Amazon labour movement (and even the American labour movement as a whole), the ALU has a challenging road ahead in terms of both receiving union recognition as well as moving from union recognition to the actual bargaining of a contract. Amazon has consistently proven itself to be one of the most aggressive anti-union employers in North America as they immediately contested ALU’s win by initiating an NLRB oppositional hearing. This hearing is still in process and the ALU could still easily become bogged down in a legal dispute over recognition itself, having to divert resources, time, and attention away from organizing within and outside of Amazon’s JFK8 facility in Staten Island.

As many noted, this highlights one of many limitations of focusing too narrowly on receiving legal union recognition, as legal proceedings are often used by employers to entrap unions. Indeed, rather than strengthening workers’ struggles in the hyper-legalistic North American framework for unions there is also the possibility of losing momentum and strength without focusing on shop-floor organizing.

The Bessemer Amazon union drive illustrates similar limitations to achieving legal union recognition. Unlike ALU and AU, Bessemer organizers openly partnered with the RWDSU throughout their campaign. RWDSU has assisted Amazon workers at Bessemer with their union drives as well as with filing subsequent objections against Amazon for both recognition votes held. One of the benefits of working with a larger union like RWDSU is their ability to share a greater number of resources with emergent unions whose workers may not have experience with conducting and organizing union drives. Although the final outcome of their vote remains contested, their partnership with RWDSU has elicited critiques from other Amazon unions, such as the AU, and raised concerns over the extent of the RWDSU’s involvement in Bessemer’s union drive.

AU, on the other hand, as a more syndicalist oriented effort, has openly expressed disinterest in fighting to attain a legally recognized union. Instead, they are focused on building informal workers organizations concentrating on achieving gains within the workplace while providing political education for their members. While AU often acts and operates as a union regardless of their legal standing, a different set of challenges and limitations emerges that shapes their ongoing struggles. For example, without the relative stability of a legally recognized union, the AU will find it difficult to bargain for a contract, which could potentially limit their ability to achieve higher wages and longer-lasting benefits. Furthermore, without being able to win key demands over employment stability and status, the high turnover rate characterizing almost all Amazon facilities will remain a major obstacle to organizing.

Although CAUSE is affiliated with AU, throughout the Labor Notes panels they offered a fourth vision for unionization at Amazon. Based in North Carolina, CAUSE is rooted in the Black Baptist Church tradition and has explicitly tied their organization to the legacy of Black revolutionary political movements like the Black Panther Party. Borrowing from the Panthers, CAUSE has stated their intention to develop a food program in response to workers being unable to feed themselves and their families while working at Amazon. This approach has effectively initiated a fourth union formation that is located within an Amazon workplace but also extends to a broader community. By launching a community food program, additional challenges and struggles will no doubt develop that will shape and inform Amazon workers relations with labour struggles across the Carolinas.

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These variations in union formation at Amazon could be seen as a hindrance to getting the organizing done. The divergent views and practices, however, should be seen as the necessary unfolding of a vibrant and complex labour movement. The obstacles and successes that have and will continue to shape the ALU, AU, Bessemer, Cause, and other worker’s organizations found within Amazon facilities could strengthen and embolden the burgeoning American labour movement. These differences should be seen as opportunities for Amazon worker’s organizations to learn and grow from each others experiences in their collective struggle against Amazon. These debates amongst Amazon workers are about re-creating the labour movement and, in some instances, re-inserting a place for socialism within the North American working class.

Reform Caucuses: New Power in the Old Unions

The new and innovative organizing at major companies such as Amazon and Starbucks provided much of the energy at Labor Notes 2022. The conference also offered the opportunity for an intergenerational exchange between young workers riding the wave of organizing at these workplaces and seasoned workers organizing in the more established unions. One form this exchange took was in a variety of sessions that sought to shine a light on what is potentially the site of a further breakthrough for American labour–the rank-and-file caucus. Reform caucuses based in the rank and file that aim to directly challenge stagnant–and often corrupt–union leaderships are not a new development of the North American labour movement. Caucuses of all kinds have had a long history of being involved with Labor Notes, with this year’s conference being no exception. The ubiquitous presence of groups such as Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), and a wide variety of education worker caucuses (organizations of rank and file educators from Chicago, Rochester, and Baltimore, among others) demonstrates that this form of worker agency is here to stay.

A recurring theme at this year’s conference was the need for members to take control over the direction of their unions if they ever hope to make gains over wages and conditions at work. The president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Sean O’Brien (an endorsee of TDU), used the opening minutes of his Friday night plenary speech to highlight the importance of rank-and-file organizing–before returning to the common themes of standing up to corporate greed and saving ‘middle-class America’. The victory of the O’Brien slate in the 2021 Teamsters election, as well as UAWD’s success in campaigning for a ‘one member, one vote’ policy in the United Auto Workers, has given additional hope to many organizers in some of North America’s largest and historically most powerful unions.

While a strategy of electing reform-inclined candidates alone has obvious limitations, groups taking a rank-and-file-focused campaigning approach by putting workers’ issues ahead of the candidates themselves, have had far-reaching effects. Influenced by the victory of the O’Brien slate especially, members of the Teamsters-affiliated Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees have begun to form their own rank-and-file organization–BMWE Rank and File United. As BMWE members related to conference attendees, organizing in rail offers some unique obstacles. Frequent company mergers, the draconian Railway Labor Act, and not least, a workplace that is scattered across the vast rail network of North America are all day-to-day realities. These challenges necessitate a network of rank-and-file members to organize around major issues of poor working conditions and job security, especially when the elected union leadership has repeatedly opposed engaging in such struggles. BMWE rank-and-file activists are hopeful that their bottom-up approach will be what it takes to replicate the reform victories seen in the IBT at large.

Activists from public-sector employees at the conference also spoke of their eagerness to organize more aggressively against both their bosses and, if need be, their own union leadership. Members of the only recently formed Rochester Organization of Rank and File Educators (RORE) caucus, for example, described their union local–the Rochester Teachers Association–in sadly familiar terms: as having a disengaged and often apathetic membership, an inability to effectively mobilize, as well as an entrenched and corrupt leadership, most blatantly in the form of the local’s president holding an astounding 41-year tenure. Though willing to contest union elections when advantageous, RORE decided to first challenge the leadership where a union can have the most visible and powerful effect, on the shop floor (or classroom floor, as the case may be).

Within the course of only a few months, RORE went from a small group of teachers seeking modest change to a powerful caucus with their own dues and internal structure, capable of executing campaigns and levelling their own demands against the employer, such as a guarantee of internet access for all students and staff during times of remote learning. RORE was able to organize directly with their co-workers on such workplace issues, bypassing the union leadership completely and broadening the possibility of what workers are capable of achieving. Even without controlling the majority of leadership positions, RORE’s worker-led campaign suggests the true potential for democratic change and openings for class-struggle unionism within even the most entrenched of the legacy unions.

The impressive advances in organizing that these caucuses represent was a cause for celebration at Labor Notes. Yet, questions remain. Notably, tensions exist between strategies that seek to capture leadership positions and those that prioritize 1-to-1 relationship building among members. While there was much sober discussion about the need to organize fellow members, there was little talk of what happens if a reform caucus actually succeeds in gaining control of the existing union apparatus. Is it inevitable that recently elected leadership, whether in existing or newly founded unions, will eventually revert back to the old ways of a self-centred business-unionism? If rank-and-file members are able to make and win demands on their own, is it necessary to win formal control of a union to truly transform it? And though the desire of many for a return to a more militant labour movement is clear, what conditions made that kind of militant unionism historically possible?

These are difficult questions to address, and the experience of struggles like those of CORE in Chicago may provide important lessons. They do, however, require more time and space for debate and discussion than a one-weekend conference allows. What is clear, though, is that in terms of broadening the scope of what feels possible for working-class people to win, rank-and-file members organizing and winning in their own unions are making an absolutely vital contribution.

Understanding the Past, Grasping the Present

Many of the issues being raised by newly emerging unions at Amazon and elsewhere are articulated within the structures of the established unions more than the supposed new versus old dichotomy would suggest. Workers seeking to unionize and those in already established unions are increasingly facing the same questions around union bureaucracy, rank-and-file democracy (whatever the trappings of ‘formal’ democratic structures), the class divisions and working-class organization, and the balance between direct action and consolidation.

The main tension that emerges from Labor Notes 2022 is not to be found in the question of whether workers should form new unions or join existing ones. Or even asking where the hopes for a continued upsurge of labour organization resides. Rather it is how union militants, working-class activists, and socialist organizers address the fundamental challenges of building collective structures that workers need to organize. In attempting to face this challenge today, activists in established and emerging unions alike might initially turn to the rich history of the labour movement in the United States and Canada from which to draw important lessons that help contextualize our current context.

Although labour history, and especially the militancy of the 1930s, was referenced throughout the conference by panelists, the context was largely unexamined. The comparative reference was only to suggest the current labour upsurge as potentially more transformative than those of the past. But we need to also be raising more fundamental questions if we are to learn from the past to grasp the present. Why were the 1930s such a transformative moment for labour? What role did explicitly revolutionary political organizations such as the U.S. Communist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Socialist Party of America, among others, play in key moments of militancy during that time? What specific socio-political events were workers and revolutionary organizations responding to? And, importantly, how do they compare to today? Asking these questions is not to encourage organizers and union activists to look backwards, but rather to encourage the collective learning that puts our current moment in proper context and in perspective the work yet to be done.

It is not just the positive energy of a burgeoning labour revival that Labor Notes 2022 captured so well. It also told us something about the gaps in our collective understanding of labour’s relationship with our past, and our past to the neoliberal present, that remain to be closed. Unions are active and dynamic organizations that develop and respond in relation to the history and conditions of our workplaces and communities. The current challenge is to make our own history, with the past informing our analysis of the present, and encourage the inventiveness of organizing strategies for the struggles yet to come.

https://mronline.org/2022/07/25/registe ... h-america/
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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:49 pm

The political experience of the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Unions


Foreword SP
We bring to your attention an interview with Stephen Skypes, a professor of sociology at Purdue University (Indiana), a specialist in the US trade union movement.


How would you describe the degree of political influence of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Unions (AFL-CIO) within the American political system?

I don't think they have much influence over this system as a whole - in the sense that they are able to influence the political course of the United States. That is, they are able to carry out certain actions, to be influential - but not to form a policy. I would make that distinction.

Do they have any stable ties with the two main political parties?

The AFL-CIO has long been associated with the Democratic Party. They have virtually no contact with the Republicans. Although their ties with the Democrats are largely one-sided. The fact is that before the elections, the AFL-CIO mobilizes its members in support of the Democrats, as well as the resources of affiliated organizations - thereby having a significant impact on the outcome of the vote. Especially in big cities, where trade unions are mostly concentrated. But the Democrats are somehow not particularly in a hurry to pay for this support. For example, it was the Democrats during the Clinton administration who signed the NAFTA agreement - which turned out to be a real disaster for the unions. Obama, having come to power, promised to seek the adoption of the so-called. act "On the free choice of a hired worker" - and so did nothing in this direction. Even in the first two years of his presidency, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. That is, the Democrats, of course, say various pleasant things to the trade unions - something in the spirit of “the country is supported by you guys!” - but apart from rhetoric, they receive almost no real support. Especially at the national level. True, at the state level - in California, for example, or in New York with Illinois - unions are still an influential force. But outside of these three - and certainly at the federal level - they do not enjoy special influence. or in New York with Illinois, the unions are still a powerful force. But outside of these three - and certainly at the federal level - they do not enjoy special influence. or in New York with Illinois, the unions are still a powerful force. But outside of these three - and certainly at the federal level - they do not enjoy special influence.

To what extent is the AFL-CIO involved in the international trade union movement?

No, well, of course, he participates ... But keep in mind that a very limited circle of people is involved in this, where at the very top of the hierarchical pyramid there is a handful of managers in Washington. After all, they never even report to ordinary members about their activities outside the United States, they are never asked if they need to do anything there at all? - etc. etc. So we are talking about a very small isolated caste of the highest functionaries of the AFL-CIO and employees of the international department. And again, ordinary members know little about all this. So we are talking about activities that are largely “partisan” and have little connection with the politics of the trade unions.

Could you give examples?

There is such a nationwide organization - the so-called. National Endowment for Democracy. Sounds like a nice - in the sense of how great it is to promote democracy! In fact, we are talking about one of the most deceitful and insidious structures in Washington - at least from those that I know (and there are many, believe me). So, this fund is a supposedly independent and supposedly non-political organization - although in fact it was created by the American government, by a special law under Ronald Reagan in 1983, to promote the essentially imperialist interests of the United States around the world.

Within the foundation there are 4 key divisions - or institutions, as they themselves call them: one represents the Republican Party in the international arena, the other - the Democratic Party, the third - the American Chamber of Commerce and the fourth, called the "Solidarity Center" - in fact, AFL-CIO. So, within the framework of this organization, trade unions are very actively cooperating, including with the American Chamber of Commerce - that is, their traditional enemy - and everything that the trade union movement is associated with - in domestic politics! And they cooperate in cases that are quite peculiar. In Venezuela, for example, the Solidarity Center has traditionally opposed Hugo Chavez and now Nicolás Maduro. Calling a spade a spade, it was the "Center of Solidarity" that organized the coup attempt against Chavez, under its "roof" groups agreed among themselves, subsequently took an active part in these events. The center provided protection to the leader of the Venezuelan oil workers' union who led the rebels - although the AFL-CIO later denied this. Well, and so on in the same spirit. And all this was done without any authorization from the members of the AFL-CIO and even simply without their knowledge. True, there is some evidence that in some countries the "Solidarity Centers" are engaged in affairs that are quite progressive - well, or at least not "dirty". They really helped the Haitians, did some useful work in Central America and Bangladesh. But basically, we in America have no idea about their work. These centers are believed to operate in 60 countries - but what are they doing there and what are their connections with the local trade union movement? - We don't really know that. Moreover, up to 90% of funding for such activities they receive from the US government. So it turns out a whole range of operations without any reporting, and about which no one knows anything at all. Sounds a lot like a secret service, doesn't it?

Many European experts whom I interviewed asked what, in fact, does the AFL-CIO do in Europe? - answered that they do not know this for sure, but most likely it is about politics: like the Marshall Plan during the Cold War, etc., etc. Do you agree with this statement?

As far as the senior leadership of the AFL-CIO is concerned, it is certainly politically motivated. Here you need to keep in mind one thing, which, by the way, very few Americans - including myself - are willing to speak openly. So: it would be wrong to consider the United States solely as a state - well, there are 50 states and everything else. I believe that the US elite has been trying to establish world domination since at least 1945. Until 1991, of course, the Soviet Union interfered with it, but with its collapse, there was nothing to be afraid of. That is, we have an American empire. The leadership of the AFL-CIO, in my opinion, is completely in agreement with the world domination of the United States - and has worked hard to achieve it. So it was in the past, when it thought it knew how to run this American empire, almost better than the CIA, and now little has changed in this regard. So that,

So you agree that there is a connection between US foreign policy and Solidarity's priorities?

Many people believe that the international agenda of the AFL-CIO is shaped, so to speak, from outside: in some cases, the White House, in others - the CIA, thirdly - the American government as a whole, etc. In my opinion - and in my book (“AFL-CIO's secret war against workers in developing countries: solidarity or sabotage?”) I demonstrate it - it's quite the opposite: this agenda comes from the unions themselves. Sometimes they turn out to be more imperialists than the American government itself. On some issues - less, but in any case, they do not blindly follow the foreign policy of the government. They have their own agenda, their own worldview, and, of course, they cooperate with the government where it seems acceptable to them - and they take money from it - but in reality they are not controlled by it. It is a closed system with its own interests.

Can you give an example of the AFL-CIO pursuing a policy in the international arena that is different from the foreign policy of the White House?

It immediately comes to mind: during the Vietnam War, when Lyndon Johnson wanted to stop the bombing, the AFL-CIO was strongly opposed - they wanted to drive the Vietnamese back to the Stone Age by bombing. Or the second example: I can remember at least one case when the US sold wheat to the USSR and the AFL-CIO was also strongly opposed. So there were precedents - and they, by the way, were against Gorbachev's glasnost. In a word, I repeat, they have their own political line.

And what about modernity? What do you think their priorities have been over the past two decades - or several years?

I would list the first democratic elections in the history of the AFL-CIO as one of the most important events. Then they were defeated by such a comrade - John Sweeney. And so he came and closed many of the useful structures that were left from the Cold War. At one time, the AFL-CIO were established by the so-called. independent regional institutions - one for Latin America, called the AFL-CIO Free Labor Institute, another for Asia, the American-Asian Free Labor Institute, another for Africa, also something like "African-American ” and “free labor”, I don’t remember exactly what. So Sweeney dispersed them all - and replaced them with what is today called "Solidarity Centers". And he also began to change his rhetoric - he began to say things like “our foreign policy should be based on the fight against corporate globalization” and various other progressive things, began to reject the caveman anti-communism, on which the foreign policy of the past was mainly built. It all sounded very good, and some of us then, frankly, relaxed and let our guard down ...

... Then, in April 2002, there was a putsch in Venezuela - and then, 3 weeks after the events, I published an article in which I wrote that everything that was happening was very similar to the famous coup in Chile, in which the AFL-CIO was absolutely actively participated. In a word, I began to delve into the facts further and found that they participated in the coup this time too - not as openly as in Chile, but no less, if not more, on a large scale. This information - including with my participation - was made public, and in 2005, at the National Convention in Chicago, we managed to get a unanimous resolution from the California branch of the AFL-CIO condemning the international policy of the central organization AFL-CIO. For you to understand, it was about representatives of one sixth of all members of the organization who unanimously supported this resolution.

We tried to give it a go; it came to the profile committee of the national Congress of Trade Unions - which meets every 4 years - and this committee changed the content of the resolution - from condemnation to full approval. Explaining their actions by the fact that "they do not want to cast a shadow on the past activities of the AFL-CIO in the international arena." In this way, the very attempt of any discussion of the international policy of the AFL-CIO was prevented - not to mention its criticism or revision.

Since then, there have been several cases where the leadership of the organization has at least made an attempt to help workers in some incredibly poor countries - such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Bangladesh. But we also know that the AFL-CIO also operates in a number of oil exporting countries, and what it does there is completely unknown.

We know that its representatives are present in Ukraine - and it is also not clear what they are doing there. Although my source, whom I absolutely trust, told me in a telephone conversation that the AFL-CIO did not participate in any events this year. I have no information that would refute his words, but I can’t add anything on my own. But from the same source, I know that the AFL-CIO has activated some work in Russia in the last year and a half. And again, it is not clear what the AFL-CIO is doing there, what it is achieving, and why is it in Russia in general? In a word, no "glasnost" - perhaps, in some cases and in relation to some countries, but on the whole, the ends are hidden surprisingly well. I would venture to suggest that the "Solidarity Centers" operate on the basis of some kind of their own secret programs and ideas,

The last question concerned Russia and the post-Soviet space, but you have already answered it.

I consider their actions solely from the standpoint of the “presumption of guilt”: until proven otherwise, they are “bad” for me. It is absolutely certain that they do not act at all in the interests of the Russian people and the working class.

Recently, in general, there has been some strange activity - not only from the AFL-CIO, but also from other global federations - such as sectoral associations of trade unions in Europe, for example, in the food industry - the headquarters of this federation is located in Switzerland. So they also suspiciously intensified - especially after the imposition of sanctions.

The AFL-CIO has been cooperating with these international federations for many days - since the days of the International Labor Secretariat - and that together they were definitely involved in the coup in Chile. But since then, such activities of theirs have not been seriously studied, so we do not know what they are actually doing today. I think part of the problem is that workers are living so badly today that even the AFL-CIO tries to help them from time to time. But again, I strongly distrust this organization when it deploys its operations in regions in which American foreign policy has a keen interest - this includes China, and Russia, and oil-exporting countries.

https://prorivists.org/inf_afl-cio/

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

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 12, 2022 2:40 pm

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Image: Frederic J. Brown/AFP

‘We need a Labor Movement that’s a lot more militant and willing to challenge the status quo’
Originally published: Left Voice on October 4, 2022 by Left Voice (more by Left Voice) | (Posted Oct 11, 2022)

Left Voice: Your book Class Struggle Unionism is an increasingly popular text which puts forward important debates on strategy in the labor movement. Can you first tell us what you mean by “class struggle unionism” and why you think it’s important?

Joe Burns: Class struggle unionism is based on a very simple idea, which is that workers create all wealth. Through the employment process this wealth gets separated from the workers and flows to a handful of people in society. That is why and how we get billionaires.

This view of employment is very different from business unionism, which was the main competing form of unionism to class struggle unionism. Business unionism sees itself as having a very narrow role of negotiating the sale of labor. The view can be summed up with the slogan “a fair days wage for a fair days work.” Business unionists see themselves as narrowly representing a group of workers at a plant or industry and do not see themselves as part of a larger class struggle between workers and the billionaire class.

From this simple difference, comes very different forms of unionism. Class struggle unionism values sharp struggle against employers, rank-and-file democracy, and shop floor struggles, and are suspicious of the role of government and corporate media in backing employers. Because class struggle unions see our unionism as part of a larger struggle between workers and owners, we see the fight against racism and sexism as central to our unionism.

LV: In your book, you outline how, over the last decades, labor liberalism has replaced class struggle unionism as the primary challenger to business unionism. What is labor liberalism, and how does it relate to business unionism?

JB: In the 1980s, management launched an incredible offense against unionism unending decades of established bargaining relationships. Business unionism, bureaucratic and weak, proved incapable of resisting this trend. The class struggle unionists pushed for a fightback based on an anti-concessions stand, strike activity, picket line militancy, and reform movements.

But during this period, there arose a new form of unionism which attempted to straddle the fence between business unionism and class struggle unionism. The social base for labor liberalism were former class struggle unionists, veterans of the 1960s social movements who entered labor in the turn to industry. By the 1980s, many had risen to the mid-levels of the union bureaucracy or drifted into labor educator programs.

Their alternative relied on smart, savvy staffers to fight smarter within the existing system. Rather than the bitter open ended strikes and picket line militancy, they favored one-day publicity strikes, corporate campaigns, and the organizing approach.

But they also differed from traditional business unionism. On the plus side, they helped push the AFL-CIO from very conservative issues on race and immigration. But they also abandoned the workplace organization at the core of both traditional unionism and class struggle unionism. In fact, they used strikes and unionism to pass progressive legislation, placing them closer to middle class advocacy groups than true business unionism.

LV: Some sectors are fostering illusions at the NLRB under Biden’s administration but at the same time this entity is imposing a $13 million fine on the UMWA coal miners’ union over a protracted strike in central Alabama. How do you see the role of the state in the upcomingperiod?

JB: This is a very important question. Both business unionism and labor liberalism seek to get government institutions to protect unionism. Class struggle unionism, on the other hand, is skeptical of the government as a protector of labor rights.

The fundamental problem is a key role of the government is to protect the role and ability of the billionaire class to exploit workers by obtaining the value created by workers during their work shifts. Practically speaking, that means prioritizing protection of property rights over human and labor rights.

In the case of the mine workers, which you mention, the NLRB went after miners for minor picket line skirmishes and, incredibly, charged the union for list production during the strike. Similarly, the NLRB under Obama went after the Longshore workers for millions.

So the Biden NLRB makes some policy changes which assuredly will be overturned by the courts, and gets called the most pro labor NLRB. So this is exactly why we need class struggle analysis.

LV: One of the most interesting things in your book is the discussion you put forward for the need for class struggle tactics. What do you mean by that? Why is it necessary?

JB: I say in the book that you cannot have class struggle unionism without class struggle tactics. This is one of the key questions we face as a labor movement.

The employers and government have instituted a web of restrictions which outlaw effective union tactics. This makes stopping production difficult and forces unions to fight isolated battles rather than the industry-wide (or beyond) battles which created the modern labor movement.

Breaking free will require class struggle ideas as well as class struggle tactics and organization.

I cover this in more detail in my first book, Reviving the Strike, but classic trade union theory understood that striking required stopping the production of the employer. Just putting up a picket line failed to accomplish this because in a national labor market employers could find scabs willing to cross the picket line and bust the strike

To economically harm the employer, unions had basic tools. The first were those of picket line militancy, such as occupying the plant or mass picketing to essentially blockade the employer.

Beyond that, unions could expand the strike by extending the picket lines to related employers, strike entire industries, or refuse to handle struck goods. These tactics of solidarity put pressure on employers and impacted profits.

These tactics have been outlawed and our failure to reclaim them constitutes an important element in the weakness of the modern labor movement.

While not an easy question, such an effort will likely require new fighting unions, rank-and-file movements, and cross-union formations. But it will also require the popularization of a set of class struggle ideas which can validate these actions.

LV: There is this ongoing debate about how the worker’s movement should relate to the Democratic Party. Some call to work with Sanders and the progressive wing, others to completely break with the Democrats and for workers to develop their own political perspective. In your book, you provide a sharp critique of the Democratic party which has played a leading role in disciplining labor. But what’s your take on the political relationship between labor and the Democratic Party?

JB: The close alliance of the Democratic Party and the labor officialdom allows the ideas of the billionaire class to enter and control the labor movement.

The late Tony Mazzachi, leader of the oil workers union used to say, “the bosses have two parties, the workers need one.” We need a labor party.

The question is, how do we get there? Among class struggle unionists, opinions vary, which is OK. My overall perspective is that it’s hard to see a true workers party without the development of a strong, militant, class-struggle wing. I think the two go hand in hand.

Any socialist or labor party needs to have a rooting in at least a wing of the labor movement. Otherwise it risks becoming a middle-class movement isolated from the workers’ struggle.

Our problem, however, is that the class struggle wing is relatively weak within the labor movement. The last serious attempt to move past the Democratic Party was the Labor Party Advocates initiative in the 1990s which raised debate but was unable to make the leap to running independent electoral politics.

It’s important to raise the critique of the Democratic Party and the need for independent politics but it should be part of a larger project to put labor on a class struggle basis.

LV: Lastly, as we’ve been seeing, there’s a new generation of workers who are fighting to not only unionize their workplaces, but also for better working conditions. Do you have any final words for them?

JB: Trust your instincts. A lot of people come in and you are told this is the ways it’s done, but the way it’s done doesn’t work.

We need a labor movement that’s a lot more militant and willing to challenge the status quo. That’s one if the great thinks about the Amazon and Starbucks organizing. I hope they keep it up in how they approach bargaining.

https://mronline.org/2022/10/11/we-need ... tatus-quo/

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US rail workers’ union rejects deal, renewing corporate fear of a nationwide strike
Rail workers voted to reject a new agreement between union and employer which they allege does not change the poor working conditions, especially lack of sick days and exhausting schedules

October 12, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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Rail workers in the US have enormous influence over the economy as a 115,000-strong workforce in a USD$80 billion freight rail industry, in charge of transporting the nation’s goods. (Image from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority)

On October 10, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees , the third largest rail workers’ union voted to reject a deal with employers, which closely followed the recommendations by the Biden-appointed Presidential Emergency Board. This latest rejection renews the possibility of a nationwide strike which could have an enormous impact on the US economy.

On September 15, the Biden administration intervened in negotiations between railway corporations and rail workers’ unions to avert a nationwide and potentially economically-crippling strike. But this intervention may be soon rendered futile.

Biden’s intervention in the mid-September strike threat left the major questions around working conditions unresolved. The Presidential Emergency Board, created this past July specifically to avert a nationwide rail workers’ strike, recommended that corporations increase workers’ pay. But the board left workers on their own when it came to conditions, saying that unions should pursue additional negotiations with individual rail corporations, which could take years.

Rail workers in the US have enormous influence over the economy as a 115,000-strong workforce in a USD$80 billion freight rail industry, in charge of transporting the nation’s goods. The BMWED is only the first union to reject the Biden-inspired deals with railroad corporations. Other enormous rail workers’ unions, including BLET and SMART-TD, will finalize their votes on their contracts with rail corporations in mid-November.

11,845 BMWED workers submitted votes on the latest deal, inspired by Presidential Emergency Board recommendations, with railway employers. The deal was rejected by around 56% of workers with 6,646 votes against. The rejection means that the union and employers will reengage in negotiations. The earliest possible potential strike date is November 19.

This tentative national agreement was negotiated between the union and the seven Class I freight railroads, which are BNSF Railway Co., Canadian National Railway (Grand Trunk Corporation), Canadian Pacific (Soo Line Corporation), CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern Railway Co., Norfolk Southern Combined Railroad Subsidiaries, and Union Pacific Railroad Co.

While the latest deal included 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses for railway workers, it failed to address workers’ core concerns of lack of sick days and exhausting schedules. In September, workers were on the verge of striking because of a lack of guaranteed sick days and grueling schedules without time off for long stretches. Big railroad companies have been cutting staff in order to squeeze maximum profits out of fewer workers—calling this policy “Precision Scheduled Railroading.” From 2015 through 2021, large railroad corporations cut staff from 161,000 to 114,000, despite the fact that during this time the amount of freight transported increased.

For workers, the latest agreement negotiated between BMWED and rail corporations still fails to address issues related to working conditions and quality of life, rather than pay. “Railroaders are discouraged and upset with working conditions and compensation and hold their employer in low regard,” stated BMWED president Tony D. Cardwell. “Railroaders do not feel valued. They resent the fact that management holds no regard for their quality of life, illustrated by their stubborn reluctance to provide a higher quantity of paid time off, especially for sickness.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/10/12/ ... de-strike/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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