FRANK LOVELL* — New York, May 19, 1993 T HE 1993 Labor Notes Conference was advertised as a very special one." And that turned out to be no ad-writer's idle boast. The conference this year was in all respects different and better than previous ones, all of which were gratifying gatherings of progressive unionists seek-ing to exchange experiences and under-stand the disheartening decline of the union movements during the past two decades.
This year's conference was the largest ever, attended by more than 1,100 people. The focus: Solidarity and Democracy, but this time it became more specifically defined: "Labor needs it s own political agenda." And in the final session the speakers, Elaine Bernard, director of Harvard Universitiy's trade union program, and Bob Wages, international president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union, spelled it out: US workers need their own labor party based on a resurgent union movement.
Bernie Sanders, the independent congressman from Vermont, gave an opening address on the need for "A Bill of Rights for American Workers." He stands for tax reform, a a a single payer (Canadian style) health care!, military cuts, public works projects and a shorter working week. His talk was followed by panel of speakers on "Solidarity beyond Borders." Baldemar Valazquez, director of the Farm Labor Organising Committee (FLOC), described the collective efforts of farm workers on both sides of the Mexican border to win higher wages and better working conditions. He explained that his experiences as an organiser, in the US and Mexico taught him that the present crop of politicians and government agencies in both countries serve the interests of the big growers and that they are always out to thwart independent unionism. This was confirmed by several more speakers from the ranks of largely unorganised workers in Canada and Mexico. They addressed the complex problem of organising the unorganised in the present age of multinational corporations.
One of the central forums entitled "Solidarity Out of Diversity" featured representative labor activists from working mothers, Black Workers For Justice (BWFJ), and a lesbian and gay union caucus. It was a women's event, chaired by Mary Hollens of the Labor Notes staff The message was "Our diversity can be our strength if our movement recognises and respects differences of race, ethnicity,
Assault on working conditions
Nearly all of the 56 workshops were well attended; led by experienced and knowledgeable activists. A rail worker remarked that the meeting of workers in his industry reflected a new interests in unionism resulting from the viscous assault by the companies and government, including the US congress, on jobs and working conditions in this industry. He thought the political consciousness of rail workers, especially those who consider themselves solid union supporters, is changing. Workers generally harbor illusions and hopes in the Democratic Party and what the new Clinton administration can do for them, he said, but job cuts and more railroad accidents provoke resentment and arouse determination to strike back. This has already brought some changes in elected union officials (at least some old fixtures have been voted out and there are a few new faces in the leadership), and conditions maybe ripe for new union resurgence, he said.
Twenty-three union and industry meetings were held for workers in the car in New Zealand. In previous years such a meeting would not have attracted much attention among a crowd of pre-dominantly progressive unionists, preoccupied with sectoral problems. But the meeting this year was well attended and widely discussed during the remainder of the conference. Some said it reflected a growing political awareness and under-standing by secondary union officials, includ-ing many who were not present at this conference.
### US imperialism
Juan Gonzalez, a leader of the Newspaper Guild in New York City and of the strike at the Daily News in that city two years ago spoke at the events' banquet on reinventing organised labor. He stressed the changing composition of the US labor force, which is being reinforced by third world immigrants, many from Mexico and Central and South America. He observed that US imperialism for most of this century has drained the Latin American continent of its natural resources and now at the close of the century the impoverish-ed peoples from the southern hemisphere are invading the North America in the hope of reclaiming some of the stolen wealth.
After detailing the anti-labor policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations and their consequences in the US and elsewhere, Gonzalez hinted that it is dubious whether the present administration can make a difference as far as ending the exploitation and oppression of the working class. The clear implication was that workers in the US can assure a better life for themselves only by relying on their own organised economic and political power. This was not lost on the audience. The applause came immediately and was
*The author is member of Solidarity and a longstanding supporter of the Fourth International. We are publishing an edited version of his article, which first appeared in Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, June 1993.
1. The Canadian 'single-payer' system is based on the British National Health Service.
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USA
Teamsters for a Democratic Union
*TEAMSTERS for a Democratic Union (TDU), the rank and file reform caucus within the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), is at a turning point in its
International Viewpoint #247 July 1993
Carey for IBT president. In retrospect it is generally accepted that Carey could not have won without TDU support. But the other side of this proposition is a question:
where would TDU be today if it had failed history." This was the view of Nick Davidson, a TDU activist, writing in the March/April 1993 issue of Against the Current." The "turning point" is as a result of the victory of the Ron Carey slate in 1991, when several TDU members moved into high-ranking positions within the union as elected officials. In many respects the TDU incapsulates the positive developments within the American union movement that we outlined. But the TDU is not a new formation. The TDU was founded in 1976. In its constitution it states that: "We aim to bring the Teamsters union back to the membership. We do not advocate secession (...), or 'dual unionism'.." Many of its founding members bore scars of physical battles against the gangster driven IBT bureaucracy. The Teamsters was notorious for the corruption of its top officials, its use of intimidation to silence criticism in the ranks, close collaboration between employers and local union business agents... The charges could go on and on. Importantly, many of these founding members were also acquainted with earlier struggles that had transformed the Teamsters union in the 1930s, especially the Minneapolis Teamsters movement. In his history of the TDU, Rank and file rebellion, Dan La Botz (himself a former truck driver and early TDU leader) devotes a chapter to the 1934 Minneapolis strikes and the successful strategy of the Trotskyist leadership. These strikes initiated the transformation of the union from a craft bound collection of small city based branches into an industrial union of over-the-road truck drivers and warehouse workers. Despite many disappointments, TDU grew steadily. Over 17 years of struggle it has emerged as a viable leftwing with a membership of more than 10,000. It holds annual delegate conferences and elects a Steering Committee responsible for work between conferences. Its monthly paper, Convoy Dispatch, reaches an estimated 100,000. The most important discussion underway now is about the struggle between the democratically elected national leadership and the remnants of the corrupt Old Guard entrenched in the regional and district structures. Discussion articles are being published regularly in Convoy Dispatch. A recent contribution has argued for a special IBT Convention (the first ever) of democratically elected delegates to dislodge aging bureaucrats Wrapping up this unfinished business is just one of the many challenges that TDU to support Carey? As matters now stand the Carey/TDU alliance holds the national leadership and the Old Guard remains entrenched in many IBT locals (branches) and in the wealthy and powerful area councils. These Old Guard officials have declared war on Carey and the union. The task now is to mobilise the ranks to complete the clean-up of the union.
Later, one longtime union activist remarked that everything that was said and done at the conference was good, but what had not been said there was also important. He went on to elaborate. Despite the excellent successes of the reform movement in the Teamsters, he said, there was a danger that the reformers had waited too long in moving against the Old Guard middle layer of the union. When a year had gone by and the middle-level bureaucrats, in cahoots with the companies, were still running local unions the old way, tying up grievances etc., some activist members had begun to feel that, despite the Carey victory, nothing much had changed. There was a danger of demoralisation, demobilisation, and disorientation.
Obviously a lot of work went into winning the election, and the credit for that goes to TDU, but there was some stagnation after the election victory. The illusion that winning the votes was enough had to be combatted, and the TDU now needed to provide leadership in remobilis-ing all the forces that helped win the first stage in the battle to transform the union and go on to cleaning out the entrenched fossils in the middle levels of the union who engage in corrupt practices, line their own pockets, faces. *
* Against the Current is the bi-monthly journal sponsored by Solidarity sustained. It seemed as if this was what many were waiting to hear.
Speakers at a forum on "Inside the New Teamsters" (International Brotherhood of Teamsters - IBT) described some of what goes into a successful challenge and overthrow of an entrenched bureaucracy in a conglomerate union like the Teamsters - with 1.5 million members, thousands of them employed in industries and workplaces unrelated to trucking. They gave a picture of what is going on inside the Teamsters since the election a year ago of Ron Carey, and the 20 full slate of 15 reform candidates, to the leadership of the union.
The central idea these speakers sought to convey was that success depends on organising leading, educating, and mobilising the ranks. This requires patience. One panelist stressed the importance of democratic decision-making and the need of a small group (such as TDU was when it began, and still is compared to the IBT as a whole to constantly learn from its experiences and re-educate itself. He said one of the most important decisions TDU made was when it voted to endorse Ron work with the bosses, and fail to stand up for the needs and interests of the union membership.
### Need for vision
Even more broadly, he said, there was an absolute need for a leadership group with a vision of how society as a whole must be changed. The problem can't be solved just within the Teamsters, the Electrical workers or any one union. It's a problem of the social system. The struggle to transform the labor movement must be led by people who have a radical vision, a vision of the future, or a better way of organising society. If those are to be called communists, so be it. You can't be Redshy, he said, and hope to make any fundamental changes.
Other workshops took up the topical
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UAW - New Directions
WE support "social unionism and oppose business unionism. We believe that the failure of the major unions and the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-
Congress of Industrial Organisations) to challenge the policies of Big Business, particularly of the past 15 years, has caused enormous damage..."
International Viewpoint #247 July 1993 issue of health care reform. The questions asked: "Will congress pass a form of managed competition that allows insurance companies to amke enormous profits? Or can the prople's prevailing desire for a simple, single payer plan be turned into reality?" In order to win broad support and
This was Tom Laney, a leader of the New Directions current in the United Auto political influence the unions must cham-
Workers (UAW), writing in response to comments from a unelected UAW official.
pion issues like universal free health care
Like so many of the reform currents in the American union movement, New Direcand take the lead in the strategy to win tions, founded in 1989, faces an uphill struggle. The UAW is cited as the best these goals.
The final conference session began example of the worst of the new business unions. It lacks fundamental democratic with a talk by Elaine Bernard whose premechanisms. Members do not have the right to vote for national officers. The New sence was responsible for the unusually
Directions recent candidate for UAW President, Jerry Tucker, was denied even the large turnout at this event. She is popular right to address the national conference last June.
with that layer of the presently existing
The union has developed a system of patronage created by the negotiation of "job radical movement which comes from the security" contracts — contracts which trade jobs for the relative security of remainanti-Vietnam War protests and subseing workers. Furthermore, the system gives the UAW the right to appoint thouquently found jobs as union organisers or sands of local union reps to fultime positions over the heads of the rank and file.
became minor union officials. In 1960's jargon, "Elaine tells it like it is." She is
There have been opposition movements in the UAW before but they rarely went wise to union bureaucrats and explains in beyond a single issue or election. New Directions has begun to develop a rounded colourful contemporary language that the present gang of top union officials really
After a five month period of discussion the current platform was agreed in Novemare modern "labor lieutenants of the capiber 1991. It covers five themes central to the re-generation of the "social unionism"
talist class."
for which the UAW used to be well known for in the past.
She says they adamantly oppose the idea of a labor party in the US and cravenly support Democrats even while the
Democratic party endorses and helps enact the anti-union economic policy of big business, because this union bureaucracy alternative platform.
• Internal democratisation and reform.
• Collective bargaining.
• Organising.
• Political action - alliances with other unions and the community.
has adopted the political agenda of the employers.
She says the employer's political agen-
In his article Tom Laney summarises aspects of this platform: "We want a union da is "a conservative corporate agenda"
that is community — not corporate - based." We should be linking up with the designed to boost profits and drive down working class living standards to the
"We believe in unions that fight for full employment because the provision of a poverty level. Part of the plan, she says, is to pretend that US capitalism rests on a decent (...) job is the only way to social justice. The way to full employment is through the reduction of the working week. The only way to fair, real quality of (..)
classless society in which everyone is employment is through unions that organise solidarity." * middle class except the very rich, who remain unmentioned, and the very poor, who don't count. She argues for a candid recognition, at least on the part of those who pretend to represent workers as well as those who aspire to lead them, of this political reality.
No choice
Under the present two-party system working class voters have no choice in electoral politics and are repeatedly informed of this fact by their unions, their employers, and by all government agencies and public officials. So emphatically is this dogma delivered that most voters believe it. They have discovered that the
Republican Party serves only the rich, and they don't trust the Democrats because in
Congress, Democrats and Republicans always join forces to enact legislation that satisfies the employers.
But when election time comes the
• Internationalism.
"under-employed and the poor". voter who refuses to vote for the Republican candidate and doesn't like the Democrat is reminded again. "If you don't want to waste your vote, you have no choice. So take the lesser evil and vote for the Democrat." Bernard urged her audience to get behind the labor party movement and help give US workers the only meaningful choice they will ever have in the polling booth. The logic of her argument was so clear and her delivery so persuasive that her listeners seemed completely won over and responded with a standing ovation.
The next speaker was Robert Wages, AFL-CIO union, the OCAW. He led off with a candid announcement that he was is fact a union bureaucrat, which surprised no one. He then gave assurances that he is different from all other AFL-CIO bureaucrats because his union is the only one officially in favour of a labor party. He pointed to objective opinion polls taken for the OCAW that showed that their membership, by a large majority, favours a labor party and would support labor party candidates if they were given the choice. Where polls have been conducted elsewhere they have shown that members in other unions, in all parts of the country respond overwhelmingly in favour of a labor party.
Wages said he became firmly convinced that a labor party is essential to the future of unions when he looked at the 1992 Democratic Platform and saw that nowhere in it was there even a mention of trade unions. He continued to explain, by way of contrast, what a labor party will mean for the well-being and protection of unions, and for the needs of the working
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International Viewpoint #247 July 1993 class.
He believes that a resurgent labor movement today could be similar to what the CIO movement was in its formative years in the 1930's; a social movement which seeks to improve the conditions of life for the benefit of everyone. Before he finished he had won the enthusiastic support of the audience. One veteran unionist wrote a note that Wages had become her candidate for president in the 1996 elecamounts to a big difference at the end of
However we may assess the degrees of danger and difficulty, the challenges facing the left wing of the labor movement today are many. While this confer-ence helped lay the basis for meeting those challenges, success in the struggle for a better life for the US working class will finally be assured only by big changes in mass consciousness. When millions of workers realise that is they, and they alone, who can change the conditions of their lives, then we will see a real social transformation. This year's Labor Notes conference has brought the day of that transformation a little closer.*
Stopping the
At the fundraising event, over $20,000 was raised. This speaks well for Labor
Notes and for the growing progressive union movement upon which it depends. decline Only a movement that can sustain itself and its publications on the resources of the working class will grow and finally become strong enough to transform society.
Everyone there had learned something here, and no one left without a sense of having witnessed signs of a new beginning for the US labor movement. The pity is that there weren't eleven thousand present
Spot the difference
As Labor Notes staff and volunteers packed up and left the hotel another small segment of organised labor moved in for the UAW bargaining Convention. They came in chartered buses, some from the airport and others from union halls in Detroit and Solidarity House, home of the UAW bureaucracy. The contrast between those leaving and those coming was easy
There was clearly a generational difference. And there was also a visible difference in mood. Those about to leave were standing in groups, still talking seriously about the meaning of their conference and what had been accomplished. The others were coming in routinely, something most of them had done several times and become accustomed to.
Beneath the surface difference there was a material difference. Those who came to the Labor Notes conference paid the registration fee out of their own pockets; most of them paid their own transportation, many travelling long distances; they paid for their rooms at the hotel, and for their meals. They came to learn, and because they hoped to make a difference in the work of the conference. The UAW delegates, by contrast, knew that everything that would be done at the convention they would soon attend had been decided in advance. They were there as part of the show, and because they were paid to come. Every delegate was on per diem wages, plus all expenses paid. That 22
An international solidarity boycott of the Tate & Lyle sugar comglomerate is one factor that gives particular interest to a labor struggle in Decatur, Illinois. Equally significant is the emergence of innovative tactics. Workers have found a new way to use their power at the point of production: Rather than engage in strike action, under circumstances where defeat would be almost certain, workers at the Decatur Staley plant have embarked on 'in plant' action, combining work to rule tactics with a campaign in the local community. If successful, such a strategy suggests a potentially powerful alternative to set-piece isolated strikes, which are often fought against impossible odds. DAVID SIMCHA* A llied Industrial Workers
(AIW) Local 837 of Decatur, Illinois has declared war on the decline of the labor movement. The determination to fight came after their employer, the AE Staley Manufacturing Co., attacked the union. Staley, a subsidiary of British sugar * David Simcha is the pen name of an organiser and activist. The article has been published in Against the Current.
conglomerate Tate & Lyle, demands concessions, of course, but they also took on new employees.
They first retained Seyrath, Shaw Fairweather & Geraldson, a union busting law firm out of Chicago. They then brought in a new labor relations director best known for permanently replacing 1,200 striking paperworkers in Jay, Maine. Finally, Harmony Construction Company replaced previously used union contractors. Their claim to fame is supplying replacement workers in case of a strike
But AIW 837 isn't on strike. The 763 branch members know that militancy on it's own would not be enough. The local United Auto Workers (UAW), at Caterpillar, were taking traditional strike action but with defeat an increasing possibility. People across the country were describing the dispute as the "Patco of the "90s", in reference to the air traffic controllers strike Reagan used in the early 1980s to break their union.
### Mavericks
Instead the Staley workers brought in allies, two mavericks in the labor movement, and then labor and community forces spanning the globe. The mavericks were Ray Rogers of Corporate Campaign, Inc., and Jerry Tucker, a former director of UAW Region 5 and a leader of that union's New Directions reform caucus.
Rogers is best known for his role advising United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local P-9 strikers at Hormel in Austin, Minnesota, to co-ordinate a rank and file assault on the company's public image and isolate the company from the corporate community that supports it.
Tucker is a master of in-plant strategies and shop floor tactics such as work to rule, where workers stop helping management achieve production by using their
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International Viewpoint #247 July 1993 knowledge and skills, and instead follow the company's rule book and managers' orders to the letter.
Though friends, this is the first time that these two innovative strategists have worked together on a single campaign.
Production has plummeted 32.4%, according to Staley Vice President Patrick Mohan, since the company unilaterally implemented its last contract offer.
### Boycott
Mohan recently decided not to stand for reappointment to the Magna Bank of Central Illinois board. He claims that this has nothing to do with a union inspired boycott of Magna Banks, and he will not step down before his term ends on June 30. The boycott continues.
Robert Powers, chair of Staley, used to sit on the board of First of America-Decatur, until the union ran a successful boycott campaign of the regional bank in Michigan, Illinois and Indiana. Both banks and Staley management remain firm in their declarations that the banks are merely innocent bystanders in a labor dispute over which they have no control.
The union's job has been to argue differently. The members walk door to door throughout Decatur dropping off leaflets describing Staley's greed as well as its practices which threaten the environment, the local economy, and the physical safety of its employees (James Beals, 44, died at work in 1990 after inhaling toxic propyle-
Leaflets are also distributed outside local bank branches. They send the leaflets to union and community organisations regionally, calling for a boycott of the financial institutions which have close ties to Staley: "Don't bank on community bashing!" Organisations are asked to withdraw funds from these banks and urge their members and allies to do the same while sending letters of explanation to the Bank's Chief Executive Officer.
The union tries to convince the bank's board that it's just not worth the financial liability of maintaining such high profile relations with Staley. At a protest they staged outside the Magna shareholders' meeting in St Louis on May 5, they urged the board to sever ties because to refuse to do so would conflict with their responsibility to their shareholders.
Earlier, on January 27, protests were staged at parent company Tate & Lyle's Annual General meeting in London where workers cautioned stockholders that the spillover from Staley's labor dispute could have a negative impact on the value of their stock and the company's profits which totalled over $400 million last year.
International solidarity
Support for the Staley workers has come from more than 35 trade unions in Australia, Britain, Belgium and Canada. On March 28-29, the AIW hosted a meeting in St. Louis for representatives from every union at a Tate & Lyle plant in North America, and Dave Watts, the local's president, expected to see representatives from England, where Tate & Lyle is attempting to impose similar changes in working conditions against the wishes of the workers and the General & Municipal Boilermakers union (GMB), and Austra-
Tate & Lyle chief Stephen Brown resigned on March 1. A boycott of Tate & Lyle products — Domino, Redpath, and GW sugars — continues.
The Caterpillar workers were brought into the First of America boycott campaign early on, after Rogers identified James Wogsland, vice chairman of Caterpillar, as a director on the board of that bank. However, even though the boycott hasn't been officially called off, the UAW doesn't seem to be continuing promotion of the boycott beyond the local level since Powers of Staley resigned.
Similarly, the campaign at Caterpillar reportedly draws only 15 out of 2,400 workers to solidarity meetings, as opposed to 680 out of 760 at Staley. Some Caterpillar workers have been wondering why their campaign isn't working like Staley's, and why they had to find out from Rogers and the AIW, instead of their own UAW, about the connections between First of America and their employer.
There are no magic pills for the US labor movement, and the fight at Staley is still undecided. But the courage to be creative while thinking strategically, acknowledging and organising solidarity in the workers' communities, as well as national and international rank and file labor solidarity to compete to confront the power of multinational corporations, are necessary beginnings.
Staley demonstrates, in contrast to Caterpillar, that these cannot come from a labor bureaucracy afraid of its members' power, but only from the determination of rank and file workers, including those still to be organised, to mobilise in their own interests. *
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