Markin comment:
While it is the duty of every pro-labor militant to support striking workers ( picket lines mean don't cross) it is extremely hard to intervene and agitate from the outside as we find out every time a strike happens (far too few of late). Thus the immediate necessity is to create rank and file caucuses of the militants inside the unions to fight the union bureaucracy's do-nothing strategies and to fight to to extend the union's reach by organizing the whole industry in one industry-wide union. Easy enough to say but hard work ahead if the communications unions are to survive in this tough global tech market.
RADICAL POTENTIALS IN THE VERIZON STRIKE
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Common-Struggle-Libertarian-Communist-Federation/292180050829038
Starting August 7, 45,000 Verizon employees were on strike for nearly three weeks over the company's demands that employees contribute to healthcare premiums, the company be allowed to more easily fire workers, wages be tied to job performance, and pension accruals be halted for the year. Two unions, the Gommunication Workers of America (GWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), took to the picket line to defend wages and benefits. In Rhode Island there were 800 workers represented by IBEW. Wearing their red IBEW shirts and picket signs around their necks, they began the strike with twenty-four hour picket lines.
Picketing, however, was not all that was happening. Some workers attacked the company through clandestine direct action. Verizon reported dozens of cases of sabotage. Workers were damaging and destroying Verizon phone lines throughout the Northeast. This was officially shunned by the union bureaucracy. Community groups went to the aid of Verizon was well, organizing events such as "Wireless Wednesdays" when supporters of the unions would go to Verizon stores and picket to discourage people from financially supporting the company.
After around three weeks, however, the union called off the strike. The day after a large rally in Providence, Rhode Island, to which over 400 people in red shirts and union signs attended, the workers were back to work without a contract. What, then, were some of the limitations to the union strategy that caused the leadership to call off the largely-successful and popular strike without winning the contract first?
One of the biggest worries was the financial security of the union members themselves. Neither the CWA nor the IBEW had a strike fund prepared to ease the burden. Only part of the Verizon workforce is in the union - the landline part of the company. Wireless and retail are left without a union. With a larger part of the company organized, the unions would have been in better positions. Their strategy of picketing did not inflict enough financial damage onto the company and direct action measures were denounced by the union leadership and thus were not widespread enough.
The lack of a strike fund and narrowed strategy of picketing are typical of business unions, alongside their bureaucracy and undemocratic structure. It appeared as though the leadership mainly wanted to remain managers of labor, somewhere in between the workers and the companies management - the result being the rank and file were kept from creating a winning strategy. Unfortunately due to the shortness of the strike, it was difficult for radicals to really intervene and engage with the rank and file to the point there some action could be taken, but still there were ideas floating around on how to aid workers who felt powerless in a business union.
Members of Common Struggle all across the Northeast participated in the picket lines to support and build relationships with the striking Verizon workers. We listened and agitated for a winning strategy with some of the most militant workers, and saw radical possibilities in potential reform caucuses, sabotage, occupations, and sit downs. With the strike over, the best way to go forward for any radical is to get more workers organized - to do what the business unions will not or cannot do.
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