New directions for labor nine workshops, covering topics from the "AFL-CIO's global foreign policy," "How to take on the multinationals, to workshops on the labor movement in a specific country. In some cases, the network of trade unionists active in solidarity work was able to discuss specific solidarity activities.
More than a dozen activists of the
"NEW DIRECTIONS for Labor," a conference held in Detroit, Michigan in mid-November, attracted more than eight hundred participants, the vast majority of whom were trade unionists. This was the fourth conference sponsored by Labor Notes, a progressive monthly newsletter. DIANNE FEELEY
The conference had three interrelated themes: highlighting international solidarity in the face of rising "protectionism" on the part of business, government and trade union bureaucrats a focus on successful tactics for mobilizing the rank-and-file and carrying out successful union struggles; and a discussion of the strike against the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota by Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW).
The underlying premises of the conference were based on counterposing new directions for the old -and failing - program of US labor. Today only 18 per cent of the entire US work force is even unionized. The conference counterposed to "business unionism" a concept of "social unionism." That is, a unionism that understands that concession bargain. ing is bargaining away worker rights.
A second premise of social unionism is solidarity: an injury to one is an injury to all. For this to be operative, labor's social responsibility spans generations, racial and sexual lines, and even the boundaries of the nation-state. Another crucial premise is the concept of union democracy, for that the rank-and-file the vision, the training and the skills to grasp what the workplace and the society as a whole must become.
At the opening
Msane, chief Allied Workers Union of South Africa in a 3M plant in Elandsfontein (near Johannesburg), the trade-union movement is playing in the fight against apartheid. COSATU, the non-racial trade-union federation which more than half a million members, 10 is almost a year old. Yet it has played integrating the struggle of the working class at the workplace with the community-based struggle. Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU - May 1 Movement) in Manila, the largest labor federation in the Philippines, spoke about the role of unions in the fight for democracy.
Octavia Lara of the September 19th Garment of how the women workers in the textile industry began to organize themselves in the period following the 1985 earthquake. Their organizing takes place in the context levels of unemployment and the fact that all but the unions associated with the government in power are considered "illegal." International trade union speakers
* Alberto Eulalio, director of the Brazilian Metal Workers Union, spoke about how to build a strong and militant union under conditions where the employer and the state use strong-arm tactics, including ing the factory and dispersing assemblies of the workers.
Geremias Rivas, of the Social Security Workers Union of El Salvador, now living in exile in the US, described the rise of the new federation, and their call for peace and justice in the face of the growing militarization of Salvadorean society.
Also present was Numonde Ngubo, founder of the South African National Union of Mineworkers, who came to the US in 1983. She is the director of the Shell Boycott - an increasingly battle against Hormel came to the conference. At this stage, the union has been placed in trusteeship by the international union, a weak contract has been negotiated and ratified by the scabs working in the plant, members of the union not working in the plant have been barred from meetings, and the United Support Group - the backbone of the strike support activity - was expelled from the union hall. The UFCW trustees in charge have dismantled the facilities the strikers had set up: the Santa's the clothing exchange, and the food-shelf. The massive mural on the side of the union hall - the work of more than 100 rank-and-file members and their families sandblasted, although strikers obtained a temporary restraining order preventing further destruction of the mural.
But if people believed demonstrated that the strikers are fighting against the imposition of the the United Support Group in panel on P-9 and over a dozen workshops that followed up the presentation, it became clear that the struggle of P-9 has resulted some important victories trade unionism. the preparation the P.9 local put into their strike and support work had led to establishing some excellent working class self-organization has not existed in the US since the unemployed movement of the 1930s. They have organized their spouses, children and retirees into a support class people not just in their own town or their own state, but fanned out in the months before they called the strike into all of the states bordering their own.
Second, the level of strike support activity - even in the face of attacks by the International UFCW, the trade union officialdom and the Communist Party - surpasses the level of national support that has existed before. For instance, the number of food caravans to Austin, the number of unions who have adopted a P-9 family,
The sources for the other statements following this material are marked at the beginning of each piece.
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986 and the sizeable rallies in defence of P-9 that have been held around the country indicate a sustained level of commitment.
Unfortunately the international union, although initially agreeing to sanction the strike, double-crossed the local, moving in to make a deal with the owners, and freezing out the strikers. The international union has been extremely vindictive towards P-9. It has attempted to paint its leadership as irresponsible in its demands and tactics; use its power to isolate attitudes of male co-workers.
One of the highlights of the conference was the Saturday evening banquet speech by Victor Reuther, one of the founders of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the 1930s. As an advocate of union democracy and in opposition to the UAW's concessions strategy, Reuther stands as a bridge between the rich and militant history of the US trade-
POLAND union movement of the 1930s and the developing anti-concessions movement of the 1980s.
The conference is not a decision-making one, but functions as an information-exchange. This year, however, one resolution adopted unanimously was a message of solidarity that one member will take to El Salvador to give to the UNTSsponsored peace conference.
P-9 from all trade unionists; and side with Hormel in ensuring that those who do go back to work in the plant disassociate themselves from Open work for the old P.9 and from any boycott of Hormel products.
The tragedy is that the P-9 strike could have been won. Although the meatpacking industry is in turmoil, the Hormel plant in Austin is an efficient and productive plant. It is the fact that the potential victory turned was into a defeat by the trade-union bureaucracy that has been the big blow to the labor movement here.
THE DECISION by the Polish regime to extend a political amnesty on
The event has moved the soft under-
September 11 to imprisoned leaders and activists of Solidarnosc belly of the trade-union movement led to an attempt by the union leadership to establish an area of into the concessions more camp, open work for the first time since the crackdown of December 13, but at the same time there has been the emergence of a countervailing trend:
the development of
On September 29, an open Provisional Council of Solidarnosc those was formed. (See International Viewpoint, No. 108, November 10, who demand an end to concessions.
And this is the development of a
1986.) On the same day, statements were issued by Lech Walesa,
"hard left."
chair of the union, and the Provisional Council. They were published in issue No. 182, October 1, of Tygodnik Mazowsze, an underground publication close to the leadership of Solidarnosc.
Need to develop a political
The following leaders of Solidarnosc were members of the new arm
Zbigniew Bujak from Warsaw, Wladyslaw Frasyniuk and
Jozef Pinior from Lower Silesia, Bogdan Lis and Bogdan Borusewicz
Clearly one aspect that needs to from Gdansk, Janusz Palubicki from Poznan and Tadeusz Jedynak be developed by this newly-emerging social unionism is a greater
1981.
Council.
from Upper Silesia.
understanding of the need to develop a arm. In this sense, as political in darnosc), and they issued a joint statement.
others, the
US trade-union many
On October 6, the Regional Strike Committee (RKS) of Lower movement can learn from the emerging unionism in the third world, that union activity in that region would remain and especially from the Brazilian strictly underground. Two days later, the Regional Executive Comexperience, where mittee (RKW) of Warsaw emerged from clandestinity and began unions have started the process of a workers' initiating was followed by the leaders of Solidarnose in reflects the needs of the several major industrial centers - Lublin, Upper Silesia, Lodz, working class, both organized
Szczecin, Poznan and Nowa Huta, the steel center outside Cracow.
unorganized, both employed where open committees were established. The same thing happened unemployed.
in several smaller regions - Pila, Konin, Kielce, Opole, Radom,
Although eight countries were
Gorzow Wielkopolski and Jelenia Gora.
represented at the conference, the
This attempt to establish legal work is obviously a turn for Solivast majority of participants were
US trade unionists, followed by a darnosc and has prompted considerable discussion within the antisignificant of Canadians.
bureaucratic union movement. On the fifth anniversary of Jaruzelski's number