Click on the headline to link to a "Boston Sunday Globe" article, dated April 11, 2010, concerning the decline of strike action by organized labor and the use of consumer boycotts as an alternative to such actions.
As the above linked “Boston Globe’ article indicates the current condition of the organized labor movement is in perilous straits. And, by extension, the unorganized working class is in even more desperate straits. Not only was the year 2009 the nadir of strike action nationally, the lowest since 1984 and by some other indicators ever, but there was a continuing long term decline in the number of organized union members, especially in the core industrial sector. Now no one expects that in hard economic times there would be a rush of strike activity. This is a defensive time when holding onto work and not losing benefits is the short term goal. However, as history has shown, the fate of the organized sector of the labor movement reflects on the rest of the class. That fate is particularly important to note today as the atomization of the class economically portends problems with organizing the unorganized later. We militants are duty-bound to fight against the atomization of the American working class, as well as internationally.
The central focus of the above article is on the current strike by some 300 warehouse workers, organized in the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), at the Shaw’s Supermarket warehouse. The upshot of this action was a lockout by Shaw’s and the hiring of replacement workers (aka, scabs). The union workers are currently conducting a consumer boycott campaign to get shoppers to shop elsewhere and put “pressure” on Shaw’s to come to terms. Labor militants, of course, support such actions. However one should also note that such ephemeral actions aimed at the general public are seldom successful. And that strategy pursued by the UFCW (and many other unions) is exactly one of the reasons that the atomization of the working class proceeds apace.
Part of the problem with the current labor movement is that there has been a serious breaking of continuity with the labor struggles of the past, especially those labor actions in the 1930s that helped to organize the basic industries like steel, auto, and the truck drivers. By every known indicator the working class, and its sons and daughters, are worst off today than they were a generation ago. That situation cannot be blamed solely on the trials and tribulations of “globalization”, privatization or other factors. Some of it is directly attributable to the actions, or rather inactions, of the national labor organizations and federations. Thus, the call for new labor leadership and a new labor strategy of organizing the unorganized starting with Wal-Mart and the South is merely the beginning of wisdom.
That, obviously, is no mean task with the enormous resources that the international corporations and their agents can bring to bear. However, it is a “no-brainer” that not to fight will only further erode the slight consciousness of the working class as a class and will not even solve the most minimal solutions such as health care, working conditions, and runaway shops. Seemingly the day of the great social-democratic labor unions, like the United Auto Workers, or even the traditional merely trade union-oriented business-like unions, like the Teamsters, are past but that is merely an illusion. At least it is an illusion if one does believes that the working class can be organized to fight for its immediate concerns, and eventually for its own workers government. I do, don't you?
No comments:
Post a Comment