Party Convention
* USA John Hinshaw reports from Pittsburg on the slow, steady consolidation of the Labor party. These delegates represented trade union bodies whose memberships total over one million (and several thousand individual members). They recommitted the LP to the comprehensive programme adopted at the founding convention in Cleveland in 1996.
Most of the 1996 convention had been spent hammering out the framework of the party, its constitution and programme. Little time was spent developing specific strategies to build the party. Thus two years later in Pittsburgh, delegates needed to deliberate on how they would build the party through issue-oriented and electoral campaigns.
Four major issue campaigns were launched: single-payer health care under the banner "Just Health Care," no privatisation of social security, a workers' bill of rights, and fair trade. These campaigns are designed to root the party in the struggles of organised workers and help attract a mass membership. These campaigns complement the 28th Amendment campaign, which seeks to guarantee everyone a right to a job at a living wage.
The convention also adopted a resolution initiated by the Black Caucus demanding a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal, "courageous defender of the rights of the working class," currently on death row.
The LP has approved a plan for running candidates in the future, but will only endorse candidates who are party members (i.e. no "fusion" tickets) and only in localities where labour support and finances are sufficient to mount a credible campaign. Why a labour party?
Most working class Americans are worried about their situation and that of the country: worried about the lack of jobs that pay decent wages and benefits, about healthcare costs, about the high cost of childcare and education. They are terrified that social security wont be there when they retire.
Many trade unionists know that policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) do not work in the best interests of the people and environments of the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Those who have tried to organise a union know that workers have to jump through successive rings of fire (while the boss and government soak them in gasoline) just to gain effective freedom of speech, association and sometimes even a union contract.
The belief that big business has too much control over the policies of both major parties and the government is
The Labor Party in the Big Picture
Over 1400 delegates from six national unions, over two hundred local unions and thirty-nine chapters of the Labor Party met in Pittsburgh in November, for the party's first Constitutional Convention.
This was an inspiring convention. At the Detroit chapter's report-back meeting, locked-out newspaper workers talked about how good it felt to be in a convention hall where everyone would "unlike the Democrats and Republi-
The differentiated strategy on electoral participation means that, in the places where those happen, we have the potential to attract a whole different layer of members.
Of course, what we have here is really an organising committee for a labour party. There is no shame in that; given the forces that back the Labor Party—a sometimes uneasy coalition of small unions and the left. In fact, it is remarkable that the group has held its own for so long
Whether we get from here to a party, however, depends first and foremost on a revitalisation of the labour movement. Any expectation that we can grow into a powerful force just by our own hard work could lead to demoralisation.
It is no accident that the Labor Party in Detroit has attracted activist 18 International Viewpoint #309 March 1999 newspaper strikers but made few inroads in the stagnant Union of Auto Workers (UAW).
What the Labor Party can do is prepare well to participate in and build on the upsurges that activists are working to bring about in the labour movement.
Labor Party leaders have met one important goal: to establish the party as a legitimate part of the labour movement. It's not a pariah. Their idea from the beginning has been to situate the Labor Party as an alternative. We will be there when union leaders finally give up on the
But look what the party is up against: Evidence indicates that there is no insult the Democrats can hand out to working people that is too great for our current labour
The people who are running American unions today believe in corporate competitiveness, not class independence. Unions that declare the boss the partner in the workplace will not mobilise to fight the boss in politics.
When labour leader John Sweeney brags about the movement's independence, he means that they sometimes endorse Republicans. No matter what great work the Labor Party does, it will not win such leaders over. Worse, the Hoffa victory in the Teamsters is a bigger setback to the Labor Party than a good health care campaign will be
Qualitative growth of the Labor Party-growth that could make us a force to be reckoned withdepends not only on what we do as part of the Labor Party but on how successful we are in building movements willing to take on the boss and take back the unions.
The LP's leading organiser Tony Mazzocchi has said that he knows he can't recruit top labour leaders, His plan is to win over local and regional leaders, who will then pressure the higher levels. Quite right. But it will take more than the Labor Party's own campaigns around health care and Social Security for sizable numbers of those leaders to make the break.
The Labor Party won't sit around and wait for big developments. Its campaigns will provide excellent education about the class nature of American society and be a vehicle for activists from different unions to meet and support each other.
With the Labor Party continuing to spread the notion of labour's political independence, the opportunities provided by any upsurge in the labour movement will not be lost. * Jane Slaughter and Rodney Ward
widespread. And yet in the last election, over 98% of the incumbents who ran for Congress were reelected. The AFL-CIO continues to endorse politicians who voted for NAFTA, because their opponents were even worse.
This is the daunting problem facing the Labor Party, as an organisation of, by and for working people. It is the workers' equivalent of David going up against the corporate Goliath, the first such attempt in decades.
Corporations have fantastic amounts of money which enables them to own most of the mass media and almost all the politicians. Even when unionists realise the Democratic party is selling them short, they know that the RepubliFurthermore, most have worked so long within the Democratic party that they can't even imagine how to break free.
It gets worse: Over 85% of workers aren't even unionised. Thus the problems of the LP go to the heart of the complex relationships among the U.S. political system, capitalism and the labour
Only those who enjoy a challenge, or the prospect of a gruelling political marathon whose benefits will likely accrue to the next generation, should read on. The faint of heart can stop reading here. An organising approach
The (limited) media coverage of the LP has focused on the question of its electoral strategy. The 1996 founding convention ruled out alliances, endorsements and running LP candidates. This confounded most political analysts.
Many left-wing journalists followed The Nation's Alexander Cockburn and JoAnn Wypijewski, who viewed the nonelectoral position as evidence of a reluctance to truly break with the Democratic
Even LP supporters, like veteran labour journalists Jane Slaughter and Kim Moody, were skeptical. In a recent issue of Labor Notes, Moody and Slaughter argued that the LP should run its own candidates since most people cannot understand the purpose of a nonelectoral political party.
Such views dovetailed with some party members who argued that the electoral process will attract members, organisers and the backing of local unions. In the coming years, this theory will be put to the test as localities determined to run candidates will put forward proposals through the local, state and national levels of the party.
The party has called for an "organising approach to politics." This would signal a departure from past practice for both labour and the left. The AFL-CIO has proven effective at getting candidates elected through endorsements, donations and mobilisation of staff and members, but "prolabour" politicians have rarely stayed loyal to workers.
Even in 1993, when Democrats controlled Congress and the Presidency, the union movement got NAFTA as its reward. Clinton-style Democrats are not so much the "lesser of two evils" but proof of the "evils of two lessers."
While the AFL-CIO undoubtedly aided the Democrats in the recent elecextremely doubtful that these politicians will enact any substantial reforms.
The typical electoral campaigns of the left might be "educational" in nature, but they have hardly transformed the country's socialist parties into major players in the country's political life. No one in the LP wants to be a two per cent footnote in the history textbooks.
The Greens have succeeded in becoming the third party in much of New Mexico and Maine, thanks to specific local conditions. But if the Labor Party stands where the main parties are evenly balanced, the result will be the election of more right-wing Republicans. The
"tsunami" in the labour movement would sink the LP. So the "spoiler" option is not open to the Labor Party
The goal of most LP members is patiently building the party and its platform. They resisted the idea that the LP could endorse Green candidate and consumer advocate Ralph Nader in the presidential elections. The LP also rejects the fusionist approach of the New Party, which has almost exclusively elected The base of support
Unionist support for the LP is fairly broad, but strongest amongst those unions unafraid of confrontation with corporations. These are generally modest-sized, notably the United Electrical workers (with 30,000 members), the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (80,000), the California Nurses Association (28,000) and the United Mine Workers (40,000).
Several large locals (branches of national unions) attended the Pittsburgh convention, including Teamsters 705 (15,000 members), International Brotherhood of Dupont Workers (23,000), District 1199P (12,000), SEIU 250
Since the last convention, support amongst the unions has grown. For instance, while the UMWA had almost no
USA * presence two years ago, at this convention 75 delegates from numerous locals were in attendance.
Party membership is uneven. One small UE local in Massachusetts has 45 LP members, while another in Pennsylvania with 3,500 members has seventeen.
Several SEIU locals have affiliated with the LP, a process aided by a letter inviting them to attend the LP convention by its President Andy Stern. That may not be repeated. After the success of the Democrats in the last round of elections, Stern began to criticise the LP as "pre-
The labour movement is proving to be relatively open to new ways of thinking. Even a staunch Democrat like Steelworker President George Becker spoke at the convention. He blasted the greed of corporations, but certainly didn't say that American workers face a class struggle. Instead he resorted to nationalist protectionism, especially against the import of steel cheapened by the Asian currency collapse.
Canadian Auto Workers President Buzz Hargrove was more impressive. He told delegates in Pittsburgh that "there is a class struggle and working people need a party that represents them. Campaigns and party building
A Labor Party with a million members, and much broader and deeper support amongst the unions would represent a real and hopefully genuine alternative to business-as-usual politics. The problem is that there is no easy path to get the party to that happy point. There is no sure-fire candidate, no clever advertisement and no single campaign that will work the magic spell.
It took over fifty years for US labour to get into its current mess. It shouldn't take that long to get out of it, but it is likely to be a long time, and a lot of hard, unglamorous work. As David Campbell said, given the nature of the class struggle, we will not simply elect ourselves to power.
The LP has chosen five campaigns designed to recruit members or unions to these issues and ultimately to the party. In the future, these campaigns will complement elections. Right now, they are designed to attract members and raise workers' expectations and to shift the national debate (or lack thereof) on
One campaign designed primarily for industrial workers focuses on fair trade. Five years after the introduction of NAFTA, LP members report that unionists are still furious. Not surprising, since its effects continue to ravage industrial workers.
Organising for a workers' bill of rights is a long-term campaign designed to change the workplace. Most workers are so used to giving up our free speech at the workplace, we hardly notice the irony that protecting corporations' rights
International Viewpoint #309 March 1999 19
DEBAT DES CHEFS 1998d
* USA/Canada to free speech are the justification for a broad range of anti-union tactics protected by the National Labor Rights Board.
Extending the Bill of Rights to the workplace would protect workers, and sharply curtail the privileges of corporations. At present, the First Amendment protects citizens from the government, not from corporations.
The social security campaign is primarily defensive. It rejects calls to privatize social security. There is no "social security funding crisis" that can't be fixed, once we accept realistic estimates of economic growth and family size. Any shortfall in social security funds and the LP calls for broad improvement of the social safety net) should be financed through taxes on the rich.
Both the Social Security campaign and the call for a single-payer "Just Health Care" system are designed to attract the support of non-LP members to fight for reforms that are easy to understand and would improve virtually everyone's lives.
All three main parties occupied the right-wing in the electoral campaign.
From the left, Bouchard (PQ), Charest (Liberals) and Dumont (ADQ)
Unity and the right to choose a Quebec's
Debate on the health-care campaign largely focused on the language used in the debate on abortion rights. The founding convention had adopted language that linked a universal health care system
As expected, the PQ retained its comfortable majority, winning 76 seats in
Quebec's 125-member National Assembly. The Britısh-style electoral system
Fi inertia to a "full range of family planning and reproductive services to men and women."
The Pittsburgh convention strengthened this language, by adding "including the right to continue or terminate a pregnancy. We oppose any forms of coerced sterilisation."
Some groups demanded that the term "abortion" be included in the platform. This move was firmly rejected by the convention as a whole and by the women's caucus. Attempts to delete the whole section were also decisively rejec-
Baldemar Velasquez, President of the Farm Labor Organising Committee (FLOC) told delegates that he and his members believed that life began at conception - but he eloquently argued that building unity in the class struggle was more important.
The question, Velasquez stressed, was "not whether FLOC would accept the LP, of course it would. The question was whether the LP would accept the FLOC." The response was a standing ovation. A generation's struggle
What party members make of these campaigns, issue or electoral, is largely up to them. The struggle to make principled labour politics a practical matter will be this generation's pivotal struggle. * This article first appeared in Against the Currents 20 International Viewpoint #309 March 1999
Billed in advance as a date with destiny, Quebec' s provincial election last November was a pretty dull affair. Robbie Mahood Parti Quebecois Premier Bouchard easily outmanoeuvred his Liberal opponent Jean Charest. Charest's strident pro-business and anti-referendum rhetoric allowed Bouchard to portray himself as a more effective defender not only of Quebec's constitutional interests but also of the role of government in alleviating social tensions