The slate headed by R.V. Durham and supported by a majority of the union's old executive board received 33%. Two Durham candidates for vice-president from
Canada were elected at the union's June convention when they ran unopposed.
A third slate, headed by Walter Shea
14 and supported by a minority of in suma bents, got 18% and won one seat on the board
Each of the 1.5 million Teamster members were eligible to vote for president, secretary treasurer, five at-large vice presidents, and vice presidents in their area conferences. There were three vice presidents elected in the Eastern and Central Conferences, and two in the Southern and Western Conferences.
### Organized crime
The reformers won in every region except Canada. They did their best in the South and West - winning over 53% in both Conferences - where TDU has strong local chapters. In the East, though Carey lost the locals with closest ties to organized crime, reformers won the Conference by winning throughout New England, and in big locals in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. The race in the Central Conference was closer, but even here, Carey took 48%.
"The members were pissed off with everyone in the leadership of the union", said Mike Ruscigno, recording secretary of Local 138 in New York. "When their local officials told them to vote for Durham or Shea, they said 'yeah, stick it. They certainly weren't going to listen to them." Carey won Local 138 by a 10-1
The only defeat for the reformers was in the Canadian Conference, where Durham beat Carey 2-1. This loss reflected the reformers' relative lack of organization there. However, Carey won in British Columbia, the home base of Diana Kilmury of the Carey slate and Edward Lawson of the Durham slate.
The composition of the new Teamster executive board is qualitatively different from any other leading body in the US labor movement. Carey's slate contained executive board - Kilmury and John Riojas — and one African American, Leroy Ellis.
Activists were especially pleased by the election of Kilmury, a feminist, long-time union reformer and co-chair of TDU. During the election, Carey supporters hit hard at the absence of women on Durham's slate and at Durham's suggestion that none of the 400,000 women Teamsters were qualified for national office.
"This has always been a male-dominated union," said Farrell. "Now we have people on the executive board who Will pay attention to working women's issues."
Pat McIntosh, a University of Chicago clerical worker, agreed. "This union will now raise issues that affect working women — childcare, pay equity, health insurance - and it will address the concerns of those low paid $6 an hour Teamsters who are primarily women."
The Teamsters union was once known for its militancy. Over the last 30 years, however, it has been better known for its corruption. Recent Teamster leaders conspired to blackmail employers, bribe politicians and sell out and beat up workers. They created an "election" process that allowed them or their hand-picked successors to lead the union time after time. While the living and working conditions of the workers declined dramatically, the leaders paid themselves two or three salaries, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
### Jailed leaders
Four of the last five Teamster presidents have been jailed; the fifth died before he could be.
How then were rank-and-file Teamsters able to regain control over the union in a race where they were outspent 2-1, and where the incumbents had access to locals? The key elements in their victory
• Years of organizing by Teamsters for a Democratic Union. During this time, TDU developed an impressive group of leaders in locals across the country. Some won local office, some became discouraged and dropped out. But many more were recruited. All across the union, there were hundreds of seasoned activists -ready to take advantage of the big break When it came.
• Ron Carey and his slate. Carey had a sterling record of fighting for his membership in Local 804. Carey never hid his disgust with the top Teamster leadership. He
February 3, 1992 • #221 International Viewpoint and his running mates campaigned tirelessly, often until midnight, and then again in the early morning at the next stop.
• An incumbent leadership that could not remember — if it ever knew - how to take its message to the membership. Because many local officials relied on intimidation in the past, they couldn't campaign when their jobs depended on it. "Durham's people didn't know how to campaign, because they never had to," said McIntosh. "They told the members 'vote' but never had a strategy to turn out the vote."
• Government intervention. In 1989, the US government ordered the Teamsters to hold a one-member, one-vote election for top officers in order to settle a lawsuit filed by the government to clean out organized crime in the union. This remedy was supported by the TDU.
Though many activists in the US labor movement opposed the government's intervention in the union, the reformers needed it to win at this time. Without the federal surveillance, there would not even have been an election in 1991, let alone a
It is impossible to say how the process of reform in the Teamsters would have been played out if one of these four elements had been missing.
The new administration's supporters say it will need to move quickly to show that the union has a different kind of leadership. Urman suggest, for instance, that the International Teamster magazine "talk about workers for a change."
On December 12, Carey said he would cut the president's salary by $75,000 and end the practice of paying executive board members multiple salaries for holding more than one
But more than symbolism is needed. Carey ran on bread and butter issues, as well as union democracy, saying that a clean union is an effective one. The most difficult problems in the union's future are the same as in the past: those created by the employers. The new leaders will have to rebuild the union's strength at the workplace.
One way to do this, according to reformers, is to move resources away from things like officers' salaries and toward organizing. "We need to set up a massive organizing drive across the country," said Local 138's Ruscigno, "where we put unemployed Teamsters into unorganized shops and have them organize from the inside. Then if they get fired, the Joe behind them says 'you can't fire him for that', and we'll start a movement."
Carey will also have to strengthen the union's bargaining. Before the election, employers worried that they'd face pressure from the ranks for better contracts.
The Wall Street Journal reported, "Trucking companies and others among the Teamsters 45,000 employers will probably find it more difficult to count on union leaders... to sign cozy or at least modest contract agreements the Teamster members will have to accept."
The new administration's first task will be to negotiate the contract for carhaulers - those who transport cars from factories to dealers — which expired last May 31. Carhaulers have been working under
Old-guard remain
Reformers will also have to finish the job of cleaning up the union. They've elected the top officials and have demonstrated their support among the members, but a vast middle layer of multiplesalaried, old-guard officials remain in control of much of the union apparatus.
Carey has said that he's willing to work with anyone who wants to rebuild the union. But it's not clear whether these officials will be willing or able to adapt to a different way of doing union business. One Teamster activist predicted that a "civil war" would break out between the administration and activists on one side and the old-guard, mid-level officials on
OH SH*T AFL-CIO ISLAND
On the other hand, says Pat Reardon, a freight driver from Kalamazoo, Michi-
"There are a lot of good people in the Teamsters - even some establishment people - who are caught in a bad position." Some will welcome changes.
Reformers know that consolidating their strength will require taking over more locals. The local-by-local vote tallies from the International election will tell reformers which locals are most receptive to change in elections next fall.
And activists will have to reach new areas and involve more than the 28% who voted, if their plan to turn around the union has any chance of succeeding. "We need to get the members concerned and involved in this union," said McIntosh.
USA
"We need to show them that this is a union worth belonging to, because Carey can't
Though the turnout was low, some say that, considering that this is the first time an election has ever happened in the numbers aren't surprising. "Don't forget that hundreds of thousands of Teamsters made a decision about who the union," Urman said. "That's better than in the past, when these decisions were made behind closed doors
Teamsters reformers are beginning to think about how their union can become an aggressive and progressive voice in the
One way is for the new leadership to break with past practice in the area of electoral politics. For most of the past 35 years, Teamsters' presidential endorsements and campaign contributions have been more like those of a corporate political action committee than a labor union's. Conservative Republicans got the nod, no matter how bad their labor record was Carey has pledged to change this selfdefeating strategy.
Beyond elections, says Urman, "We need to take positions on issues that go beyond the Teamsters and into the broader labor movement." These issues include national health care and unemployment.
If the Teamsters are successful in doing this, adds Reardon, could be one hell of a force in the labor movement." The other big question is what the Teamsters election will mean for others fighting for change in Those in the labor bureaucracy hope it won't mean much. Within hours of Carey's victory, former United Auto Workers Federation President Douglas Fraser denied that the Teamster example bore any relevance to other unions. The Teamsters union, Fraser claimed, disagree — they know their victory will have an impact on rank. J.C.Thomas, a freight driver from Memphis: "People will see that we did it. They'll see how we did it. People will start feeling like they belong to a union movement again."
In other unions, different conditions will suggest different strategies for overthrowing the entrenched old guard leadership, but the key element will be organizing at the grassroots to build a reform caucus and a battle-tested leadership. That's the one factor that rank-and-file activists have
As Thomas put it, "We can't discuss this win without discussing the foundation that has been built by TDU. They had the 15 money, but we had the people." *
Groundswell of support for creation of Labor
International Viewpoint #221 • February 3, 1992 would be based on, and there is heavy would be, and what type of program it concentration on the electoral aspects of independent political activity. Nevertheless, they are clearly animated by a disillusionment with the Democratic Party as a vehicle for defending women's rights at a time when abortion rights are seriously challenged.
They also realize that women's rights
THE United States is practically the only advanced industrialized capitalist country that does not have a mass labor or left wing political party based on the trade union movement. This has had deleterious effects on the capacity of workers and oppressed nationalities in the US to defend themselves and to elaborate an alternative course for US society. It has meant that the potential political energies of US labor have been either unrealized or channelled into one of the two bourgeois parties — the Democratic and Republican parties, with the former successfully posing as the party of workers and Blacks since the 1930s.
While left-wing militants have long argued for a labor party, and some trade union bureaucrats have even threatened to launch one when the government and Democratic party have seemed to them particularly unresponsive to labor's interests, no significant progress in this direction has ever been made.
Today however, important forces in the trade union, women's and African-American movements appear prepared to break with the parties of the bosses and form a third party.
KEITH MANN
HESE developments take place
T in a context of increasing social polarization in the United
States. Throughout the 1980s the amount of wealth controlled by the richest layers of US society dramatically increased. Today, 36% of the country's wealth is owned and controlled by 1% of the population, while over 23 million
Americans — nearly ten percent of the population - rely on food stamps to survive.
Unemployment is rapidly increasing, especially in some of the industrial sectors where the organized labor movement has been the strongest and where the greatest gains have historically been registered, such as the auto industry where General Motors has recently announced that 74,000 workers will be laid off.
These social polarizations have not been reflected in a corresponding political polarization. The general rightward movement of the Republican Party has been matched by a rightward drift by the
Democratic Party. The failure of the
Democratic Party to even talk about the mild program of social protection they had advocated in the past has meant that
16 the growing social contradictions of US society have not found an echo in mass public political discourse.
This is the context in which the National Organization for Women (NOW), the largest women's rights group in the United States with over 500,000 members and chapters in all fifty states, has been debating the question of independent political action and a third party for the last two years. During the last year NOW has conducted public hearings where over 500 people, mostly militants in the feminist, environmental, civil rights, and antiwar movements debated the perspective of a third party. Their findings were striking; an overwhelming majority were in favor of building a new party.
A committee called the "Commission for Responsive Democracy" formally recommended by a vote of 26-4 the formation of a new party. This proposal will be discussed and voted on at NOW's national conference in June 1991, also recommended that "NOW join forces with other interested groups to initiate a call for a new party."
NOW leaders and activists seem less than clear about what type of party this are tied to Black, labor and environmental issues. It must also be remembered that whatever illusions NOW has had in defending women's rights through parliamentary institutions, this organization has mobilized enormous street demonstrations of up to 600,000 people.
The second significant development in the direction of independent working class political action is the formation of an organization called Labor Party Advocates (LPA) by Tony Mazzocchi, a longtime leader of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union. Mazzocchi launched LPA after becoming disgusted with the failure of the Democratic Party to oppose the anti-union offensive of American capital throughout the 1980s. He has also been encouraged by the results of polls he conducted amongst working people concerning the idea of a labor party.
Strong dissatisfaction with
Democratic Party
These polls indicated that there was both strong dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party and interest in a labor party. For example, less than half of the workers questioned saw the Democratic Party as representing the interests of working people (only 4% saw the Republicans as their party, while 52.8% supported the idea of a labor party.
The LPA does not consider itself a Labor Party but rather a vehicle for educating and agitating workers on the need to politically break with the Democrats and Republicans and eventually create a Labor Party. It hopes to recruit 100,000 trade unionists, following which a founding convention will be held.
Although the type of party Mazzocchi has in mind is patterned after West European reformist parties, it is, nevertheless, conceivable that if this initiative gathers momentum, far more radical dynamics could develop which would go far beyond the mild Social Democratic vote gathering party that Mazzocchi envisions. In any event, LPA represents the first attempt since the immediate postworld war period by a section of the labor movement (apart from small groups of radicals) to actually fight for a Labor Party.
The third and least well known of cur-
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USA Party
The growing isolation
February 3, 1992 • #221 International Viewpoint rent developments in favor of independent political action for US workers and the oppressed is the presidential campaign of veteran African-American activist Ron Daniels. Daniels explains that his campaign is intended to be "part of
USA / MOROCCO of Hassan II the process of organizing and institutionalizing an independent and progressive third force or new political party to...
Interview with Abraham Serfaty advance the struggle for a new society." More specifically, Daniels hopes to contribute to the building of a political force that will represent African-Americans and all workers. He and his collaborators are preparing a program that calls for full employment and a national health service. He has also expressed support for the LPA and NOW initiatives.
The question of independent working class political action is a crucial one for African Americans. Since the 1930s African-Americans have been among the most loyal constituents of the Democratic Party though they have benefited least from Democratic Party presidencies and congressional majorities.
Gains of civil rights movement
The gains in affirmative action that the civil rights movement registered in the 1960s and 1970s are today under attack. Due to the racist nature of US society and the concentration of African Americans in the dying manufacturing sector of US industry, the African American working class has borne the brunt of the current
ABRAHAM SERFATY, one of the the longest serving political prisoners in the world, was freed from Kenitra prison in Morocco in September 1991 and expelled to France. Today 65 years old, he was arrested 17 years previously, in 1974, for his role in founding and leading the Marxist-Leninist organization lla Al-Aman ("Forward"), which originated among far left students.
Serfaty, who along with many other prisoners of Morocco's
Abraham Serfaty on his arrival in France after his economic crisis.
Like the LPA and NOW initiatives
Daniels has an inconsistent conception publications in jail, agreed to grant /Va long interview dealing of what actually constitutes independent with the main themes of his thinking during his years of political action. Like Mazzocchi and incarceration. By mutual agreement we preferred to wait until the many of the NOW activists involved in shock of his new found liberty had worn off before conducting their respective campaigns, Daniels' past is in the shadow of the Democratic Party
(he is a former executive director of the
The interview takes place in many dimensions, corresponding
Rainbow coalition — an organization to Serfaty's multifaceted outlook as a revolutionary leader: the that largely functioned as an organizing
Moroccan, the North African (Arabo-Berber), the Arab, the Arab committee for Jesse Jackson's presidenanti-Zionist Jew and the internationalist.
tial campaign).
We publish overleaf the first part of this interview, dealing with
Nevertheless, like the other two initiatives, the discussion that will certainly
Morocco; a second part dealing with other themes will appear in accompany the Daniels campaign can go our next issue. The interview was conducted by Salah Jaber in a long way towards popularizing the idea of independent Black and working class political action, especially within the
African-American community. Likewise, it could, in spite of the fact that it has been until now a far more modest effort than the LPA or NOW initiatives, erode the influence of the petty- bourgeois pro-Democratic forces that have long been hegemonic amongst African Americans.
Each of these developments in the direction of independent working class political action in the post-cold war United States are significant. The coming royal dictator Hassan II, received our the interview. December 1991. period will see each one of them encounter the pressures that have traditionally mitigated against the formation of a labor party in the US This raises a number of questions. Will the inevitable pressure to defeat the Republican presidential candidate by supporting an eventual Democratic Party candidate be too much to resist?
What effect will the current absence of release in September 1991 sharp working class upsurges have on the political coloration of such a party if it is actually formed? And finally will a dynamic develop that could push such a party in a revolutionary direction, or will the situation evolve in such a manner that the reformist illusions already present in the NOW, LPA and Daniels initiatives
17 prevail?*
International Viewpoint #221 • February 3, 1992
MOROCCO
INCE your release in Sep-
S tember 1991, you have several times used the term
"end of reign" to describe the situation in Morocco. Why do you feel able to pass such a judgement on a regime which, seen from the outside, seems very secure?
This appreciation is based first of all on the fact, that, over the past three or four years, there has been a coming together of the struggle of democratic forces from the legal opposition and that of the revolutionary forces.
structured
These latter are not really organizations, but rather fringes or currents of more or less legal parties. The most organized revolutionary group is Ila
Al-Aman, which functions in clandestini-
Our influence grew cantly owing to a rethinking that took place after the 1984 riots!;
towards the end of 1979 we had already made a political adjustment allowing us to direct our work towards the popular districts and the working class, but even so we made many mis-
After the arrests in 1985, we continued along this road, and, above all, we thought more deeply about basic problems of the Moroccan revolution which had been neglected as much by ourselves as by other forces — in particular the Berber question.
These ideas have gained ground in certain quarters, such as the qa'idine students?, but also in the neighbourhoods, popular especially Casablanca. At the same time they have helped in drawing together the radical forces within the legal organiza-
There is, of course, also an radicalization which is not due to the work of our organization, but comes from the pressure of the popular masses and working class, and which expresses itself in the renewed dynamism of the
Democratic Confederation
(CDT).3 This organization has increased its weight both as a union organization and within the Socialist Union of Popular
Forces (USFP).4 The result has been a tendency towards radicalization for the whole of the USFP and its dependent organizations, such as its youth organization, the Shabiya Ittihadiya ("unionist
This global radicalization is certainly linked to objective conditions: the middle classes are no longer benefiting from the relatively important material advantages they enjoyed in the 1970s. Furthermore, the chauvinist mobilization around the Saharan question has lost its force, even if it continues to be pushed forward by the parties. More and more it is the problems of democracy and human rights, and more fundamentally of the political transformation of the country, which are uppermost in people's minds, both in the popular and the middle classissues of the legal and democratic forces and the revolutionary groups, as well as the radicalization of the former (and particularly the CDT) explains the continuous rise in struggles in the past three or four years, increasingly raising the issues of democracy and human rights. This is clear from the legal parties' attitude to the constitution: in a few months they have gone from demanding constitutional amendments to, since November 19, 1991, calling for a new constitution,
SILENCE! YOUR MAJESTY, THERE'S... which is obviously incompatible with Hassan Il's regime. • The main new feature of the recent situation is thus the change in the attitude of the middle classes on the question of democracy. Is this why you have talked of the "end of reign"?
Yes. Certainly, this is a complex phenomenon and one not limited to the middle classes. The demand for liberty runs deep. At the same time the old sectarianisms are being overcome, both by the legal democratic forces and the more radical, even revolutionary forces. For example, lla Al-Amam previously rejected these legal forces, while they considered us as extremists, and traitors to the cause of the "Moroccanness" of the Sahara.
Now, in practice, the question of the
Sahara has been relegated to the second level and is no longer a divisive issue.
On the other hand the coming together is in opposition to the king — which is why we have set the concrete objective of overthrowing Hassan II rather than that of abolishing the monarchy. Among the people, there can be no doubt that there is a rejection not only of Hassan but of the monarchy - this is especially evident in
On the other hand, the middle classes do not yet reject the monarchy; they are still in the grip of the old ideologies of the
Moroccan national movement, dominated by the bourgeoisie for the past 60 years.
They are perhaps worried about being outflanked and their concern for stability prevents them from challenging the monarchy as an institution.
This coming together against the king is also due to something that took shape during the 1980s, and particularly after 1984: Hassan II's while it continues defend the interests of the dominant classes, is relatively isolated even within those classes, having formed what we have called the
"makhzen mafia", rooted in the old
"feudal" power structures. This system basically rests on the heads of the police forces, and, more marginally, on certain generals — it would be untrue to say that the army as a body is really a part of this power system. What we have is a police state, under the aegis of