Click on the headline to link to CNN coverage of the British public workers unions strikes.
Markin comment:
Victory To The British Public Workers Unions-No More Wisconsins-No More Pension Cuts!
Showing posts with label defend public workers unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label defend public workers unions. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
From The Pages Of "Spartacist Canada"-Defeat Capitalist War on Public Sector Workers!
Spartacist Canada No. 170
Fall 2011
For a Class-Struggle Leadership of the Unions!
Defeat Capitalist War on Public Sector Workers!
Working people everywhere have paid with their jobs, benefits and pensions to bail out the bankers and corporate magnates whose financial swindles kicked off the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Amid this devastation, profits are soaring once again along with CEO salaries and bonuses. Having bilked the public purse of billions for this “recovery,” the capitalist rulers are whipping up an outcry against public sector workers and their unions as supposedly living high off the hog at the taxpayers’ expense.
The industrial unions in this country have been ravaged by deindustrialization and a one-sided class war by the ruling class. Two years ago, leaders of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) surrendered some $20 an hour in wages and benefits to help bail out Chrysler and General Motors, a demoralizing defeat that helped set the stage for broader attacks. Nickel miners in Sudbury went through a year-long lockout in 2009-10 that ended with major concessions by the union. Steelworkers in Hamilton remain locked out in a bitter battle over pensions that began late last year. The workforces in both these industries, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, have been decimated by many years of job cuts.
With fewer than one in six workers in the private sector now in unions, public sector workers—71 percent of whom are organized—now make up by far the largest proportion of union members in Canada. Yet many public sector unions remain constrained by the bosses’ laws from going on strike. Without the ability collectively to withdraw their labour, the workers are left at the mercy of the employer. A union that can’t (or won’t) strike is like a lion without claws or teeth.
Governments at all levels, led by the Harper Conservatives, are now moving to further curtail the right to strike. Emboldened by their majority status, the Tories brought down legislation in early summer that forced nearly 50,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) to take down picket lines and return to work or face huge fines and the seizure of union assets. In addition to banning strikes for four years and kicking Canada Post’s rollback demands to a government-appointed “arbitrator,” the law imposed a wage settlement even lower than the corporation’s last offer.
CUPW leaders had launched city-by-city rotating strikes in early June. When workers in Toronto and Montreal were brought out simultaneously in a one-day strike on June 14, the company responded with a countrywide lockout. The Tory back-to-work edict came less than a day later, an unconcealed act of collusion with union-busting management. Making clear that it was declaring war on all union struggles, the government also moved to break a strike by 3,800 Air Canada customer service agents. In this case, the CAW union leaders quickly abandoned the strike, signing a deal that accepted multiple concessions, notably on pensions, the central issue in the strike.
Such attacks are not only coming from the federal Tories. Earlier this year, the Ontario Liberal government banned strikes by Toronto transit workers at the behest of the city’s right-wing mayor Rob Ford, who is preparing a frontal assault on city workers through outsourcing and job and service cuts. From coast to coast, the rulers are bringing down the austerity axe on tens of thousands more jobs, claiming this is necessary to “balance the budget” and “keep Canada competitive.”
Labour Tops and NDP: Obstacles to Struggle
The unions are elementary defense organizations of the working class against unbridled exploitation. But struggle against the onslaught of the ruling class has been undermined by a labour leadership that accepts the inevitability of capitalist austerity while seeking to soften the blows. The union tops couple this with fealty to the NDP social democrats, or in some cases the Liberals, around a program of Canadian nationalism and protectionism which falsely asserts that the workers share a common interest with Canadian big business and governments.
The New Democrats, now Her Majesty’s Official Opposition in parliament, postured against the Tories’ recent back-to-work laws. But the NDP’s claim to stand on the side of striking workers is sheer hypocrisy, as shown by its record of breaking strikes and jailing union leaders while running governments in various provinces. In 1975 the first-ever NDP government in B.C. broke the strikes of pulp workers, railworkers, supermarket employees and propane truck drivers. A generation later, in 2000, they broke a strike by school support staff. In Ontario, an NDP regime jailed the president of CUPW’s Toronto local for defending picket lines in a 1991 strike, and in 2008 the Ontario New Democrats endorsed Liberal legislation breaking a strike by Toronto transit workers.
Down-the-line supporters of Canadian capitalism, in the midst of the postal showdown the NDP endorsed Harper’s call for a three-month extension of support to the brutal NATO military assault on neocolonial Libya. The very day CUPW members were forced back to work, foreign affairs minister John Baird visited Canadian NATO troops in Italy, where he signed a bomb destined for use against Libya that included the message, “This postal service don’t strike.” This powerfully underscores the link between imperialist war abroad and attacks on workers at home.
The eulogies from ruling-class spokesmen for NDP leader Jack Layton following his recent death from cancer are a measure of the services rendered to Canadian capitalism by the New Democrats, and by Layton in particular. The Tory government gave Layton an official state funeral, while Stephen Harper saluted his “dedication to public life.” It is instructive to contrast the bourgeoisie’s laudatory treatment of the late NDP leader to its unconcealed contempt for the poor and unemployed; its racist repression of immigrants and refugees; its imperialist pillage of the semicolonial world. The social role of the NDP has been, and remains, to tie the working people to supporting the rulers’ violent and barbaric social system, perhaps cushioned by a few cosmetic and highly reversible reforms.
Unchain the Unions!
The social power of public sector workers is not that of industrial workers, who can directly stop the wheels of production and thus of profit from turning. But public sector unions include transportation, utility and other workers who provide the means and services by which the economy runs—the infrastructure vital for a modern society. While the capitalist media whips up a propaganda barrage about “public outrage” against these unions, the truth is that some hard class struggle would win plenty of allies among the unemployed, immigrants and all those who have been thrown under the bus by the ruling class.
“Public opinion” is, in the end, determined by the ebbs and flows of the class struggle. As V.I. Lenin, leader of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, stressed: “Whereas the liberals (and the liquidators) tell the workers: ‘You are strong when you have the sympathy of “society”,’ the Marxist tells the workers something different, namely: ‘You have the sympathy of “society” when you are strong’” (“Economic and Political Strikes,” 1912).
In the face of the rulers’ savage offensive, the number of strikes has plummeted. Last year saw the fewest in more than half a century; by some measures, labour struggle in Canada is at its lowest ebb since the 1930s. What stands in the way of the necessary militant class struggle is the union bureaucracy, which has for the most part surrendered abjectly in the face of the austerity onslaught, the continuation of decades of bowing before the bosses.
Leaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union in Toronto rolled over with barely a peep of protest when the Ontario government banned their right to strike. Two months after the short-lived CAW strike at Air Canada, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) leaders called on the airline’s flight attendants to accept a tentative deal that threatens their pension plan. A letter by the president of CUPE’s Air Canada Component, Jeff Taylor, sought to justify the betrayal: “One of the main deciding factors is the Conservative government, a government that would rather enforce back-to-work legislation than allow your union to strike. This was a key reality that drove the bargaining committee’s decision” (Toronto Star, 21 August). The union tops preach that struggle is not possible, that workers will just have to eat it. Nonetheless, 87 percent of the union voted down the sellout deal.
In the case of CUPW, while the union’s leaders refused to swallow Canada Post’s outrageous demands, they at no time sought to unleash the full power of the union on the picket lines. Their strategy of rotating strikes meant that the mail kept flowing until the company moved to shut down operations in preparation for the government intervention. The CUPW tops even offered to call off the strikes if management reinstated the old, expired contract. And once the lockout began, their only response was a series of punchless rallies featuring stale “solidarity” rhetoric from union bureaucrats and NDPers.
The miserable defeatism that characterizes today’s union misleaders threatens disaster for the workers. Labour has never won anything by meekly accepting the bosses’ rules. Once, unions themselves were illegal under the capitalists’ laws. It took “illegal” strikes, notably by postal workers, to win the right to organize for hundreds of thousands of government workers in the 1960s. The best working-class leaders recognized the need to face down state repression and go to jail if necessary for the workers’ cause. As we wrote last issue, in an article titled “All Labour Must Stand With CUPW!” which was distributed heavily at postal worker pickets, rallies and meetings:
“It is in the interests of the entire working class that CUPW beat back the bosses’ onslaught. If the union movement is to wage the battles necessary for defense of the workers and all the oppressed, a political struggle is necessary to get rid of the sellouts atop the labour movement who strangle the workers’ fighting spirit. It is in the crucible of the class struggle that a new leadership of the unions can be forged.”
—SC No. 169, Summer 2011
For a Revolutionary Workers Party!
The question of turning the unions into fighting organizations for the working class is fundamentally a political one. In an article written more than 70 years ago, the Marxist leader Leon Trotsky wrote: “The trade unions of our time can either serve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordination and disciplining of workers and for obstructing the revolution, or, on the contrary, the trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat” (“Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay,” 1940).
The economic devastation that now stalks the capitalist world is the product of the workings of a deeply unjust and irrational social system based on production for profit derived from the exploitation of the working class. The obscenely wealthy capitalists appropriate the results of the workers’ labour as their own, while working people are left to wonder if they will have a job tomorrow. Many feel that the best they can do is to try to hold onto their jobs. But the same conditions that grind down the workers and set them one against the other in a fight to survive can and will also propel them forward to unity in battle against the class enemy.
What are the obstacles to such united class struggle? First and foremost is the lie that there is a “common interest” or possible “partnership” between the exploited and the exploiters. The working class must champion its own interests, which are also the interests of all the oppressed. Thus in this country the labour movement must defend the national rights of Quebec against the chauvinist Canadian rulers and their NDP handmaidens. Anti-Quebec bigotry divides the working class, with workers in English Canada rallied behind their “own” exploiters and those in Quebec pulled into the framework of bourgeois nationalism. The New Democrats have a long history of supporting “united Canada” chauvinism against Quebec. This includes endorsing the Clarity Act, which seeks to ban Quebec’s democratic right to national self-determination. They have renounced none of this.
Various reformist leftists (echoing bourgeois commentators) assert that the NDP’s surge in Quebec in the federal election means that national antagonisms are a thing of the past. But nothing could be further from the truth. The continued significance of the national question was underlined in its own way by the furor whipped up in English Canada when it emerged that the NDP’s new interim leader, former federal public sector union leader Nycole Turmel, was until recently a member of the Bloc Québécois. While Turmel asserted that she has always backed “Canadian unity” and only joined the Bloc because it was a purportedly “progressive” force in her native Quebec, this was of no consequence to the witchhunters of the Canadian ruling class, for whom even a hint of possible support to “separatism” is tantamount to sedition. As revolutionary internationalist opponents of chauvinism and oppression in all their manifestations, we Marxists advocate independence for Quebec.
To unite the working class in anti-capitalist struggle, it is necessary to champion the rights of immigrants and oppose the rulers’ stepped-up campaigns for deportations and the detention of refugees. It is necessary to fight for women’s rights including free 24-hour child care and free abortion on demand. It is necessary to oppose Ottawa’s repressive “anti-crime” hysteria and the “war on terror” hysteria against Muslims and other minorities. The working class must take up the cause of all the oppressed!
The labour bureaucrats and New Democrats claim that the workers must “sacrifice” to preserve the profits and rule of Canadian capitalism. This road has led to disaster. It is necessary to fight for the perspective of mobilizing labour’s immense potential power against the exploiters, taking up such demands as jobs for all through sharing the available work at no loss in pay; a massive program of public works to rebuild crumbling roads, hospitals, schools and transit systems; for decent pensions, health care and other social services for everyone, fully guaranteed by the state. Such measures will not be granted by the capitalist ruling class, whose only interest lies in maintaining its profits and privileges.
The achievement of such basic measures, and more, requires a fight for the workers to wrest power from the hands of the exploiters through socialist revolution. Only then can we begin the rational reorganization of society in the interests of the vast majority. The fight for a class-struggle leadership to rebuild the unions is linked inextricably to the fight to forge a binational, multiracial revolutionary workers party including through political struggle against NDP-style social democracy. The need for revolutionary Marxist leadership is today posed acutely, not only to defend the working class against the menace of its own devastation, but to do away with the source of that devastation, the capitalist system itself.
Fall 2011
For a Class-Struggle Leadership of the Unions!
Defeat Capitalist War on Public Sector Workers!
Working people everywhere have paid with their jobs, benefits and pensions to bail out the bankers and corporate magnates whose financial swindles kicked off the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Amid this devastation, profits are soaring once again along with CEO salaries and bonuses. Having bilked the public purse of billions for this “recovery,” the capitalist rulers are whipping up an outcry against public sector workers and their unions as supposedly living high off the hog at the taxpayers’ expense.
The industrial unions in this country have been ravaged by deindustrialization and a one-sided class war by the ruling class. Two years ago, leaders of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) surrendered some $20 an hour in wages and benefits to help bail out Chrysler and General Motors, a demoralizing defeat that helped set the stage for broader attacks. Nickel miners in Sudbury went through a year-long lockout in 2009-10 that ended with major concessions by the union. Steelworkers in Hamilton remain locked out in a bitter battle over pensions that began late last year. The workforces in both these industries, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, have been decimated by many years of job cuts.
With fewer than one in six workers in the private sector now in unions, public sector workers—71 percent of whom are organized—now make up by far the largest proportion of union members in Canada. Yet many public sector unions remain constrained by the bosses’ laws from going on strike. Without the ability collectively to withdraw their labour, the workers are left at the mercy of the employer. A union that can’t (or won’t) strike is like a lion without claws or teeth.
Governments at all levels, led by the Harper Conservatives, are now moving to further curtail the right to strike. Emboldened by their majority status, the Tories brought down legislation in early summer that forced nearly 50,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) to take down picket lines and return to work or face huge fines and the seizure of union assets. In addition to banning strikes for four years and kicking Canada Post’s rollback demands to a government-appointed “arbitrator,” the law imposed a wage settlement even lower than the corporation’s last offer.
CUPW leaders had launched city-by-city rotating strikes in early June. When workers in Toronto and Montreal were brought out simultaneously in a one-day strike on June 14, the company responded with a countrywide lockout. The Tory back-to-work edict came less than a day later, an unconcealed act of collusion with union-busting management. Making clear that it was declaring war on all union struggles, the government also moved to break a strike by 3,800 Air Canada customer service agents. In this case, the CAW union leaders quickly abandoned the strike, signing a deal that accepted multiple concessions, notably on pensions, the central issue in the strike.
Such attacks are not only coming from the federal Tories. Earlier this year, the Ontario Liberal government banned strikes by Toronto transit workers at the behest of the city’s right-wing mayor Rob Ford, who is preparing a frontal assault on city workers through outsourcing and job and service cuts. From coast to coast, the rulers are bringing down the austerity axe on tens of thousands more jobs, claiming this is necessary to “balance the budget” and “keep Canada competitive.”
Labour Tops and NDP: Obstacles to Struggle
The unions are elementary defense organizations of the working class against unbridled exploitation. But struggle against the onslaught of the ruling class has been undermined by a labour leadership that accepts the inevitability of capitalist austerity while seeking to soften the blows. The union tops couple this with fealty to the NDP social democrats, or in some cases the Liberals, around a program of Canadian nationalism and protectionism which falsely asserts that the workers share a common interest with Canadian big business and governments.
The New Democrats, now Her Majesty’s Official Opposition in parliament, postured against the Tories’ recent back-to-work laws. But the NDP’s claim to stand on the side of striking workers is sheer hypocrisy, as shown by its record of breaking strikes and jailing union leaders while running governments in various provinces. In 1975 the first-ever NDP government in B.C. broke the strikes of pulp workers, railworkers, supermarket employees and propane truck drivers. A generation later, in 2000, they broke a strike by school support staff. In Ontario, an NDP regime jailed the president of CUPW’s Toronto local for defending picket lines in a 1991 strike, and in 2008 the Ontario New Democrats endorsed Liberal legislation breaking a strike by Toronto transit workers.
Down-the-line supporters of Canadian capitalism, in the midst of the postal showdown the NDP endorsed Harper’s call for a three-month extension of support to the brutal NATO military assault on neocolonial Libya. The very day CUPW members were forced back to work, foreign affairs minister John Baird visited Canadian NATO troops in Italy, where he signed a bomb destined for use against Libya that included the message, “This postal service don’t strike.” This powerfully underscores the link between imperialist war abroad and attacks on workers at home.
The eulogies from ruling-class spokesmen for NDP leader Jack Layton following his recent death from cancer are a measure of the services rendered to Canadian capitalism by the New Democrats, and by Layton in particular. The Tory government gave Layton an official state funeral, while Stephen Harper saluted his “dedication to public life.” It is instructive to contrast the bourgeoisie’s laudatory treatment of the late NDP leader to its unconcealed contempt for the poor and unemployed; its racist repression of immigrants and refugees; its imperialist pillage of the semicolonial world. The social role of the NDP has been, and remains, to tie the working people to supporting the rulers’ violent and barbaric social system, perhaps cushioned by a few cosmetic and highly reversible reforms.
Unchain the Unions!
The social power of public sector workers is not that of industrial workers, who can directly stop the wheels of production and thus of profit from turning. But public sector unions include transportation, utility and other workers who provide the means and services by which the economy runs—the infrastructure vital for a modern society. While the capitalist media whips up a propaganda barrage about “public outrage” against these unions, the truth is that some hard class struggle would win plenty of allies among the unemployed, immigrants and all those who have been thrown under the bus by the ruling class.
“Public opinion” is, in the end, determined by the ebbs and flows of the class struggle. As V.I. Lenin, leader of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, stressed: “Whereas the liberals (and the liquidators) tell the workers: ‘You are strong when you have the sympathy of “society”,’ the Marxist tells the workers something different, namely: ‘You have the sympathy of “society” when you are strong’” (“Economic and Political Strikes,” 1912).
In the face of the rulers’ savage offensive, the number of strikes has plummeted. Last year saw the fewest in more than half a century; by some measures, labour struggle in Canada is at its lowest ebb since the 1930s. What stands in the way of the necessary militant class struggle is the union bureaucracy, which has for the most part surrendered abjectly in the face of the austerity onslaught, the continuation of decades of bowing before the bosses.
Leaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union in Toronto rolled over with barely a peep of protest when the Ontario government banned their right to strike. Two months after the short-lived CAW strike at Air Canada, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) leaders called on the airline’s flight attendants to accept a tentative deal that threatens their pension plan. A letter by the president of CUPE’s Air Canada Component, Jeff Taylor, sought to justify the betrayal: “One of the main deciding factors is the Conservative government, a government that would rather enforce back-to-work legislation than allow your union to strike. This was a key reality that drove the bargaining committee’s decision” (Toronto Star, 21 August). The union tops preach that struggle is not possible, that workers will just have to eat it. Nonetheless, 87 percent of the union voted down the sellout deal.
In the case of CUPW, while the union’s leaders refused to swallow Canada Post’s outrageous demands, they at no time sought to unleash the full power of the union on the picket lines. Their strategy of rotating strikes meant that the mail kept flowing until the company moved to shut down operations in preparation for the government intervention. The CUPW tops even offered to call off the strikes if management reinstated the old, expired contract. And once the lockout began, their only response was a series of punchless rallies featuring stale “solidarity” rhetoric from union bureaucrats and NDPers.
The miserable defeatism that characterizes today’s union misleaders threatens disaster for the workers. Labour has never won anything by meekly accepting the bosses’ rules. Once, unions themselves were illegal under the capitalists’ laws. It took “illegal” strikes, notably by postal workers, to win the right to organize for hundreds of thousands of government workers in the 1960s. The best working-class leaders recognized the need to face down state repression and go to jail if necessary for the workers’ cause. As we wrote last issue, in an article titled “All Labour Must Stand With CUPW!” which was distributed heavily at postal worker pickets, rallies and meetings:
“It is in the interests of the entire working class that CUPW beat back the bosses’ onslaught. If the union movement is to wage the battles necessary for defense of the workers and all the oppressed, a political struggle is necessary to get rid of the sellouts atop the labour movement who strangle the workers’ fighting spirit. It is in the crucible of the class struggle that a new leadership of the unions can be forged.”
—SC No. 169, Summer 2011
For a Revolutionary Workers Party!
The question of turning the unions into fighting organizations for the working class is fundamentally a political one. In an article written more than 70 years ago, the Marxist leader Leon Trotsky wrote: “The trade unions of our time can either serve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordination and disciplining of workers and for obstructing the revolution, or, on the contrary, the trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat” (“Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay,” 1940).
The economic devastation that now stalks the capitalist world is the product of the workings of a deeply unjust and irrational social system based on production for profit derived from the exploitation of the working class. The obscenely wealthy capitalists appropriate the results of the workers’ labour as their own, while working people are left to wonder if they will have a job tomorrow. Many feel that the best they can do is to try to hold onto their jobs. But the same conditions that grind down the workers and set them one against the other in a fight to survive can and will also propel them forward to unity in battle against the class enemy.
What are the obstacles to such united class struggle? First and foremost is the lie that there is a “common interest” or possible “partnership” between the exploited and the exploiters. The working class must champion its own interests, which are also the interests of all the oppressed. Thus in this country the labour movement must defend the national rights of Quebec against the chauvinist Canadian rulers and their NDP handmaidens. Anti-Quebec bigotry divides the working class, with workers in English Canada rallied behind their “own” exploiters and those in Quebec pulled into the framework of bourgeois nationalism. The New Democrats have a long history of supporting “united Canada” chauvinism against Quebec. This includes endorsing the Clarity Act, which seeks to ban Quebec’s democratic right to national self-determination. They have renounced none of this.
Various reformist leftists (echoing bourgeois commentators) assert that the NDP’s surge in Quebec in the federal election means that national antagonisms are a thing of the past. But nothing could be further from the truth. The continued significance of the national question was underlined in its own way by the furor whipped up in English Canada when it emerged that the NDP’s new interim leader, former federal public sector union leader Nycole Turmel, was until recently a member of the Bloc Québécois. While Turmel asserted that she has always backed “Canadian unity” and only joined the Bloc because it was a purportedly “progressive” force in her native Quebec, this was of no consequence to the witchhunters of the Canadian ruling class, for whom even a hint of possible support to “separatism” is tantamount to sedition. As revolutionary internationalist opponents of chauvinism and oppression in all their manifestations, we Marxists advocate independence for Quebec.
To unite the working class in anti-capitalist struggle, it is necessary to champion the rights of immigrants and oppose the rulers’ stepped-up campaigns for deportations and the detention of refugees. It is necessary to fight for women’s rights including free 24-hour child care and free abortion on demand. It is necessary to oppose Ottawa’s repressive “anti-crime” hysteria and the “war on terror” hysteria against Muslims and other minorities. The working class must take up the cause of all the oppressed!
The labour bureaucrats and New Democrats claim that the workers must “sacrifice” to preserve the profits and rule of Canadian capitalism. This road has led to disaster. It is necessary to fight for the perspective of mobilizing labour’s immense potential power against the exploiters, taking up such demands as jobs for all through sharing the available work at no loss in pay; a massive program of public works to rebuild crumbling roads, hospitals, schools and transit systems; for decent pensions, health care and other social services for everyone, fully guaranteed by the state. Such measures will not be granted by the capitalist ruling class, whose only interest lies in maintaining its profits and privileges.
The achievement of such basic measures, and more, requires a fight for the workers to wrest power from the hands of the exploiters through socialist revolution. Only then can we begin the rational reorganization of society in the interests of the vast majority. The fight for a class-struggle leadership to rebuild the unions is linked inextricably to the fight to forge a binational, multiracial revolutionary workers party including through political struggle against NDP-style social democracy. The need for revolutionary Marxist leadership is today posed acutely, not only to defend the working class against the menace of its own devastation, but to do away with the source of that devastation, the capitalist system itself.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
From The "Renegade Eye" Blog- "Death By A Thousand (Budget) Cuts"
Click on the headline to link to the above article via the Renegade Eye blog.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Some Times You Have To Think Outside The Box-The Current State Of The Struggle Of The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions And Strategy- A Short Note
Markin comment:
This short note is animated by the news, reported via the Steve Lendman Blog (June 15, 2011, see below) that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has, in essence, upheld Governor Walker’s anti-union collective bargaining guttering bill that was the cause of much union struggle in that state earlier this year. It is, as well, animated by a plethora of e-mail requests from Daily Kos to support (in cyberspace of course)the efforts of Wisconsinites to recall various Republican state senators in order, presumably, to reverse that Republican majority's previous passage of the anti-union bill. And, for good measure, the note is animated by some archival work that I am doing concerning the slogan calling for labor anti-war general strikes during the Vietnam War, although that slogan is not directly related just now to the struggle in Wisconsin.
The question posed in the headline, the idea of thinking politically outside the box, was not devised merely for rhetorical propagandistic effect but rather to raise the point that, as mentioned in the paragraph above, communists, labor militants, and their supporters are not confined to the niceties of bourgeois institutional solutions in order gain redress of grievances. The use of the bourgeois courts and electioneering systems, while, perhaps useful, and occasionally successful (think of the gay marriage issues in recent times) is not always the way to win in the class struggle. And unless something happens in the tedious recall process to dramatically change things in Wisconsin (and elsewhere) the public workers in Wisconsin, and don’t kid yourself, unionized workers in general have suffered a serious defeat despite their, at times, heroic militancy last winter.
And that is where the third prong of this note comes into play. I am by no means, like some wild-eyed youthful anarchist, a devotee of labor-centered general strikes every day in every way as some automatic path to socialist revolution. Nor am I, like some trade union bureaucrat in France, for example, for using such a tactic to “blow off steam” when the class struggle heats up. In short, I am not for raising this slogan haphazardly but in February in Wisconsin this call made perfect sense. Perfect sense in order to solidify the entire labor movement in Wisconsin (and elsewhere) behind their fellow unionists when they were “under the gun,” at a time when there was moreover sentiment on the ground for such action. And, also, thinking offensively, to “bloody” the Walker-ite and tea bag opposition in the shell, as well.
Of course on June 20, 2011 the ebb and flow of the class struggle in Wisconsin would make raising that slogan now, to say the least, untimely. The real deal, the lesson to be learned, is that we cannot afford to limit our tactics to the norms of bourgeois politics-they know those politics better than we do and have state power to boot. What we have going for us are our numbers, our solidarity, our capacity to struggle and some labor history from the 1930s and 1940s concerning successful union actions that we had best dust off.
Note: I have used the information provided in the Steve Lendman Blog, and gladly, on many occasions especially for current news. His prolific output reflects his sense of urgency in the task of citizen journalist that he apparently has for set himself. I, on the other hand, am unabashedly a communist propagandist and on this occasion need to draw some conclusions from the struggle in Wisconsin and fear not to say words like class struggle, socialism , socialist revolution and labor general strikes absent from his blog, his thinking and from the general American political landscape.
*******
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law - by Stephen Lendman
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law
by Stephen Lendman
Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 15 Jun 2011
union busting
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law - by Stephen Lendman
At the state and federal levels, pro-business/anti-worker rulings are nothing new. US Supreme Court history is rife with them since the 19th century, and no wonder.
From inception, America was always ruled by men, not laws, who lie, connive, misinterpret, and pretty much do what they please for their own self-interest.
In 1787 in Philadelphia, "the people" who mattered most were elitists. America's revolution substituted new management for old. Everything changed but stayed the same under a system establishing illusory democracy at the federal, state and local levels.
Today, all three branches of government prove it's more corrupt, ruthless, and indifferent to fundamental freedoms and human needs than ever, including worker rights to bargain collectively with management on equal terms. Forget it. They're going, going, gone.
Last March, a protracted Senate battle ended when hard-line Republicans violated Wisconsin's open meetings law, requiring 24 hours prior notice for special sessions unless giving it is impossible or impractical.
The epic battle ended along party lines after State Assembly members past Walker's bill 53 - 42, following the Senate voting 18 - 1 with no debate.
At issue was passing an old-fashioned union-busting law with no Democrats present, brazen politicians and corrupted union bosses selling out rank and file members for self-enrichement and privilege, complicit with corporate CEOs.
Besides other draconian provisions, the measure permits collective bargaining only on wage issues before ending them altogether, what's ahead unless stopped.
On May 27, however, Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi rescinded Walker's bill, ruling Republican lawmakers violated the state's open meetings law. They promptly appealed to Wisconsin's Supreme Court, needing a decision before June 30, the 2011 - 2013 budget deadline.
Republicans, in fact, warned that without prompt resolution they'd include anti-worker provisions in their budget bill, practically daring the High Court not to accommodate them.
Unsurprisingly, they obliged, reinstating Republican Governor Scott Walker's union-busting measure, clearing the way ahead to strip public employees of all rights, heading them like all US workers for neo-serfdom without collective national action to stop it.
On June 14, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writers Patrick Marley and Don Walker headlined, "Supreme Court reinstates collective bargaining law," saying:
"Acting with unusual speed, the (Court) Tuesday ordered the reinstatement of (Walker's) controversial plan to end most collective bargaining (rights) for tens of thousands of public workers," in clear violation of state law.
Nonetheless, ruling 4 - 3, the Supreme Court said lawmakers were "not subject to the state's open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when it hastily" acted in March.
Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson disagreed, rebuking her colleagues for judicial errors and faulty judgment in a stinging dissent, saying:
The Court unjustifiably "reached a predetermined conclusion not based on the fact(s) and the law, which undermines the majority's ultimate decision."
Majority justices, in fact, "make their own findings of fact, mischaracterize the parties' arguments, misinterpret statutes, minimize (if not eliminate) Wisconsin constitutional guarantees, and misstate case law, appearing to silently overrule case law dating back to at least 1891."
Republicans praised the decision. Democrats said they'd move to amend the state constitution to assure meetings law enforcement, what could take years and only be possible if they have majority powers.
The measure will take effect once Secretary of State Doug La Follette publishes it, what he's certain to do quickly.
The ruling was similar to an Illinois January 27 one when its Supreme Court ruled Rahm Emanuel could run for mayor despite his residence ineligibility according to binding state law since 1818, the year Illinois gained statehood.
The law says only qualified voters who "resided in the municipality at least one year preceding the election or appointment" are eligible to run for office. Although Emanuel didn't qualify, the High Court ruled for him anyway, proving it's not the law that counts (in Illinois, Wisconsin or anywhere in America), it's enough clout to subvert it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This short note is animated by the news, reported via the Steve Lendman Blog (June 15, 2011, see below) that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has, in essence, upheld Governor Walker’s anti-union collective bargaining guttering bill that was the cause of much union struggle in that state earlier this year. It is, as well, animated by a plethora of e-mail requests from Daily Kos to support (in cyberspace of course)the efforts of Wisconsinites to recall various Republican state senators in order, presumably, to reverse that Republican majority's previous passage of the anti-union bill. And, for good measure, the note is animated by some archival work that I am doing concerning the slogan calling for labor anti-war general strikes during the Vietnam War, although that slogan is not directly related just now to the struggle in Wisconsin.
The question posed in the headline, the idea of thinking politically outside the box, was not devised merely for rhetorical propagandistic effect but rather to raise the point that, as mentioned in the paragraph above, communists, labor militants, and their supporters are not confined to the niceties of bourgeois institutional solutions in order gain redress of grievances. The use of the bourgeois courts and electioneering systems, while, perhaps useful, and occasionally successful (think of the gay marriage issues in recent times) is not always the way to win in the class struggle. And unless something happens in the tedious recall process to dramatically change things in Wisconsin (and elsewhere) the public workers in Wisconsin, and don’t kid yourself, unionized workers in general have suffered a serious defeat despite their, at times, heroic militancy last winter.
And that is where the third prong of this note comes into play. I am by no means, like some wild-eyed youthful anarchist, a devotee of labor-centered general strikes every day in every way as some automatic path to socialist revolution. Nor am I, like some trade union bureaucrat in France, for example, for using such a tactic to “blow off steam” when the class struggle heats up. In short, I am not for raising this slogan haphazardly but in February in Wisconsin this call made perfect sense. Perfect sense in order to solidify the entire labor movement in Wisconsin (and elsewhere) behind their fellow unionists when they were “under the gun,” at a time when there was moreover sentiment on the ground for such action. And, also, thinking offensively, to “bloody” the Walker-ite and tea bag opposition in the shell, as well.
Of course on June 20, 2011 the ebb and flow of the class struggle in Wisconsin would make raising that slogan now, to say the least, untimely. The real deal, the lesson to be learned, is that we cannot afford to limit our tactics to the norms of bourgeois politics-they know those politics better than we do and have state power to boot. What we have going for us are our numbers, our solidarity, our capacity to struggle and some labor history from the 1930s and 1940s concerning successful union actions that we had best dust off.
Note: I have used the information provided in the Steve Lendman Blog, and gladly, on many occasions especially for current news. His prolific output reflects his sense of urgency in the task of citizen journalist that he apparently has for set himself. I, on the other hand, am unabashedly a communist propagandist and on this occasion need to draw some conclusions from the struggle in Wisconsin and fear not to say words like class struggle, socialism , socialist revolution and labor general strikes absent from his blog, his thinking and from the general American political landscape.
*******
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law - by Stephen Lendman
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law
by Stephen Lendman
Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 15 Jun 2011
union busting
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law - by Stephen Lendman
At the state and federal levels, pro-business/anti-worker rulings are nothing new. US Supreme Court history is rife with them since the 19th century, and no wonder.
From inception, America was always ruled by men, not laws, who lie, connive, misinterpret, and pretty much do what they please for their own self-interest.
In 1787 in Philadelphia, "the people" who mattered most were elitists. America's revolution substituted new management for old. Everything changed but stayed the same under a system establishing illusory democracy at the federal, state and local levels.
Today, all three branches of government prove it's more corrupt, ruthless, and indifferent to fundamental freedoms and human needs than ever, including worker rights to bargain collectively with management on equal terms. Forget it. They're going, going, gone.
Last March, a protracted Senate battle ended when hard-line Republicans violated Wisconsin's open meetings law, requiring 24 hours prior notice for special sessions unless giving it is impossible or impractical.
The epic battle ended along party lines after State Assembly members past Walker's bill 53 - 42, following the Senate voting 18 - 1 with no debate.
At issue was passing an old-fashioned union-busting law with no Democrats present, brazen politicians and corrupted union bosses selling out rank and file members for self-enrichement and privilege, complicit with corporate CEOs.
Besides other draconian provisions, the measure permits collective bargaining only on wage issues before ending them altogether, what's ahead unless stopped.
On May 27, however, Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi rescinded Walker's bill, ruling Republican lawmakers violated the state's open meetings law. They promptly appealed to Wisconsin's Supreme Court, needing a decision before June 30, the 2011 - 2013 budget deadline.
Republicans, in fact, warned that without prompt resolution they'd include anti-worker provisions in their budget bill, practically daring the High Court not to accommodate them.
Unsurprisingly, they obliged, reinstating Republican Governor Scott Walker's union-busting measure, clearing the way ahead to strip public employees of all rights, heading them like all US workers for neo-serfdom without collective national action to stop it.
On June 14, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writers Patrick Marley and Don Walker headlined, "Supreme Court reinstates collective bargaining law," saying:
"Acting with unusual speed, the (Court) Tuesday ordered the reinstatement of (Walker's) controversial plan to end most collective bargaining (rights) for tens of thousands of public workers," in clear violation of state law.
Nonetheless, ruling 4 - 3, the Supreme Court said lawmakers were "not subject to the state's open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when it hastily" acted in March.
Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson disagreed, rebuking her colleagues for judicial errors and faulty judgment in a stinging dissent, saying:
The Court unjustifiably "reached a predetermined conclusion not based on the fact(s) and the law, which undermines the majority's ultimate decision."
Majority justices, in fact, "make their own findings of fact, mischaracterize the parties' arguments, misinterpret statutes, minimize (if not eliminate) Wisconsin constitutional guarantees, and misstate case law, appearing to silently overrule case law dating back to at least 1891."
Republicans praised the decision. Democrats said they'd move to amend the state constitution to assure meetings law enforcement, what could take years and only be possible if they have majority powers.
The measure will take effect once Secretary of State Doug La Follette publishes it, what he's certain to do quickly.
The ruling was similar to an Illinois January 27 one when its Supreme Court ruled Rahm Emanuel could run for mayor despite his residence ineligibility according to binding state law since 1818, the year Illinois gained statehood.
The law says only qualified voters who "resided in the municipality at least one year preceding the election or appointment" are eligible to run for office. Although Emanuel didn't qualify, the High Court ruled for him anyway, proving it's not the law that counts (in Illinois, Wisconsin or anywhere in America), it's enough clout to subvert it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law - by Stephen Lendman
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law
by Stephen Lendman
Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 15 Jun 2011
union busting
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law - by Stephen Lendman
At the state and federal levels, pro-business/anti-worker rulings are nothing new. US Supreme Court history is rife with them since the 19th century, and no wonder.
From inception, America was always ruled by men, not laws, who lie, connive, misinterpret, and pretty much do what they please for their own self-interest.
In 1787 in Philadelphia, "the people" who mattered most were elitists. America's revolution substituted new management for old. Everything changed but stayed the same under a system establishing illusory democracy at the federal, state and local levels.
Today, all three branches of government prove it's more corrupt, ruthless, and indifferent to fundamental freedoms and human needs than ever, including worker rights to bargain collectively with management on equal terms. Forget it. They're going, going, gone.
Last March, a protracted Senate battle ended when hard-line Republicans violated Wisconsin's open meetings law, requiring 24 hours prior notice for special sessions unless giving it is impossible or impractical.
The epic battle ended along party lines after State Assembly members past Walker's bill 53 - 42, following the Senate voting 18 - 1 with no debate.
At issue was passing an old-fashioned union-busting law with no Democrats present, brazen politicians and corrupted union bosses selling out rank and file members for self-enrichement and privilege, complicit with corporate CEOs.
Besides other draconian provisions, the measure permits collective bargaining only on wage issues before ending them altogether, what's ahead unless stopped.
On May 27, however, Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi rescinded Walker's bill, ruling Republican lawmakers violated the state's open meetings law. They promptly appealed to Wisconsin's Supreme Court, needing a decision before June 30, the 2011 - 2013 budget deadline.
Republicans, in fact, warned that without prompt resolution they'd include anti-worker provisions in their budget bill, practically daring the High Court not to accommodate them.
Unsurprisingly, they obliged, reinstating Republican Governor Scott Walker's union-busting measure, clearing the way ahead to strip public employees of all rights, heading them like all US workers for neo-serfdom without collective national action to stop it.
On June 14, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writers Patrick Marley and Don Walker headlined, "Supreme Court reinstates collective bargaining law," saying:
"Acting with unusual speed, the (Court) Tuesday ordered the reinstatement of (Walker's) controversial plan to end most collective bargaining (rights) for tens of thousands of public workers," in clear violation of state law.
Nonetheless, ruling 4 - 3, the Supreme Court said lawmakers were "not subject to the state's open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when it hastily" acted in March.
Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson disagreed, rebuking her colleagues for judicial errors and faulty judgment in a stinging dissent, saying:
The Court unjustifiably "reached a predetermined conclusion not based on the fact(s) and the law, which undermines the majority's ultimate decision."
Majority justices, in fact, "make their own findings of fact, mischaracterize the parties' arguments, misinterpret statutes, minimize (if not eliminate) Wisconsin constitutional guarantees, and misstate case law, appearing to silently overrule case law dating back to at least 1891."
Republicans praised the decision. Democrats said they'd move to amend the state constitution to assure meetings law enforcement, what could take years and only be possible if they have majority powers.
The measure will take effect once Secretary of State Doug La Follette publishes it, what he's certain to do quickly.
The ruling was similar to an Illinois January 27 one when its Supreme Court ruled Rahm Emanuel could run for mayor despite his residence ineligibility according to binding state law since 1818, the year Illinois gained statehood.
The law says only qualified voters who "resided in the municipality at least one year preceding the election or appointment" are eligible to run for office. Although Emanuel didn't qualify, the High Court ruled for him anyway, proving it's not the law that counts (in Illinois, Wisconsin or anywhere in America), it's enough clout to subvert it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
by Stephen Lendman
Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 15 Jun 2011
union busting
Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Union Law - by Stephen Lendman
At the state and federal levels, pro-business/anti-worker rulings are nothing new. US Supreme Court history is rife with them since the 19th century, and no wonder.
From inception, America was always ruled by men, not laws, who lie, connive, misinterpret, and pretty much do what they please for their own self-interest.
In 1787 in Philadelphia, "the people" who mattered most were elitists. America's revolution substituted new management for old. Everything changed but stayed the same under a system establishing illusory democracy at the federal, state and local levels.
Today, all three branches of government prove it's more corrupt, ruthless, and indifferent to fundamental freedoms and human needs than ever, including worker rights to bargain collectively with management on equal terms. Forget it. They're going, going, gone.
Last March, a protracted Senate battle ended when hard-line Republicans violated Wisconsin's open meetings law, requiring 24 hours prior notice for special sessions unless giving it is impossible or impractical.
The epic battle ended along party lines after State Assembly members past Walker's bill 53 - 42, following the Senate voting 18 - 1 with no debate.
At issue was passing an old-fashioned union-busting law with no Democrats present, brazen politicians and corrupted union bosses selling out rank and file members for self-enrichement and privilege, complicit with corporate CEOs.
Besides other draconian provisions, the measure permits collective bargaining only on wage issues before ending them altogether, what's ahead unless stopped.
On May 27, however, Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi rescinded Walker's bill, ruling Republican lawmakers violated the state's open meetings law. They promptly appealed to Wisconsin's Supreme Court, needing a decision before June 30, the 2011 - 2013 budget deadline.
Republicans, in fact, warned that without prompt resolution they'd include anti-worker provisions in their budget bill, practically daring the High Court not to accommodate them.
Unsurprisingly, they obliged, reinstating Republican Governor Scott Walker's union-busting measure, clearing the way ahead to strip public employees of all rights, heading them like all US workers for neo-serfdom without collective national action to stop it.
On June 14, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writers Patrick Marley and Don Walker headlined, "Supreme Court reinstates collective bargaining law," saying:
"Acting with unusual speed, the (Court) Tuesday ordered the reinstatement of (Walker's) controversial plan to end most collective bargaining (rights) for tens of thousands of public workers," in clear violation of state law.
Nonetheless, ruling 4 - 3, the Supreme Court said lawmakers were "not subject to the state's open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when it hastily" acted in March.
Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson disagreed, rebuking her colleagues for judicial errors and faulty judgment in a stinging dissent, saying:
The Court unjustifiably "reached a predetermined conclusion not based on the fact(s) and the law, which undermines the majority's ultimate decision."
Majority justices, in fact, "make their own findings of fact, mischaracterize the parties' arguments, misinterpret statutes, minimize (if not eliminate) Wisconsin constitutional guarantees, and misstate case law, appearing to silently overrule case law dating back to at least 1891."
Republicans praised the decision. Democrats said they'd move to amend the state constitution to assure meetings law enforcement, what could take years and only be possible if they have majority powers.
The measure will take effect once Secretary of State Doug La Follette publishes it, what he's certain to do quickly.
The ruling was similar to an Illinois January 27 one when its Supreme Court ruled Rahm Emanuel could run for mayor despite his residence ineligibility according to binding state law since 1818, the year Illinois gained statehood.
The law says only qualified voters who "resided in the municipality at least one year preceding the election or appointment" are eligible to run for office. Although Emanuel didn't qualify, the High Court ruled for him anyway, proving it's not the law that counts (in Illinois, Wisconsin or anywhere in America), it's enough clout to subvert it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
From The Pages Of "Workers Hammer (GB)"-Craven trade union leaders offer Labour cuts as "alternative" to Tory cuts
Workers Hammer No. 214
Spring 2011
Craven trade union leaders offer Labour cuts as "alternative" to Tory cuts
For class struggle to defend public sector jobs!
On 26 March, a massive turnout of up to half a million trade unionists demonstrated in London against the savage budget cuts announced by David Cameron’s government. The demonstration consisted of a sea of trade union banners, representing local council workers, teachers and lecturers, health workers and firefighters — in a show of anger against the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government’s assault on healthcare, social services, pensions and much more. The public sector jobs massacre saw 132,000 jobs lost in 2010, while the overall unemployment figure stands officially at 2.5 million, the highest for 20 years.
Low-paid public sector workers, a high proportion of whom are women and minorities, are the core of the trade union movement today. But rather than a strategy to mobilise that social power for a class-struggle fight to defend jobs, the TUC’s “March for the Alternative” was intended to channel this anger into supporting another Labour government. For the first time in over a dozen years, a trade union demonstration in Britain was addressed by the Labour Party leader. Ed Miliband, who was elected leader last September with the support of the trade unions, intoned on the platform that “there is an alternative”, adding that “there is a need for difficult choices, and some cuts” to reduce the budget deficit, but this government “is going too far and too fast”. For a clue as to what Miliband’s “alternative” might be, one only has to recall that before the last election Labour promised cuts deeper and tougher than under Thatcher.
Deep cuts, fast or slow cuts: these are the “choices” being offered to the working class by the servile trade union bureaucracy. Throughout Europe — from Greece to Ireland and Spain — every capitalist government is trying to force the working class to pay for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — a crisis that was caused by the capitalist system itself. An effective defence of jobs today requires hard class struggle — strike action across the public sector. But the trade union leadership is an obstacle to the kind of fight that is necessary because they too share the political framework expressed by Miliband, that the alternative to “Tory cuts” are Labour government cuts.
The ground for the present devastating public sector cuts was prepared by 13 years of Labour governments that relentlessly attacked jobs, pensions, health and education services; froze pay below inflation and slashed tens of thousands of civil service jobs. And all the while, the union leaderships stood by and refused to lead battles against the Labour government. Recall then FBU leader Andy Gilchrist calling off the firefighters strike in 2002 when it threatened to “hinder” the armed forces preparing to invade Iraq.
Visit any of the public sector unions’ websites and find “alternatives”, not for a fight to beat back the rapacious bourgeoisie but for solving British capitalism’s budget deficit. Unison’s recipe calls for “a 50 per cent tax on bankers’ bonuses” and a “Robin Hood Tax” on bank transactions. The Public and Commercial Services union, which organises civil servants, offers similar counsel to the bourgeois rulers including “We could free up billions of pounds by not renewing Trident.”
The “socialist” outfits who ride Labour’s coattails look to none other than the bold class warriors of the TUC to call a general strike, while cravenly rebuilding illusions in the election of a Labour government. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) runs the National Right to Work coalition, whose slogan is “Break the Con-Dem Coalition!” (read: and replace it with a Labour government). When Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership contest last year, they enthused that his win was “another avenue to bring pressure to bear on Labour to fight” (Socialist Worker, 25 September 2010). In the meantime a poster on their website lists their own recommendations to the capitalist rulers, “Why There’s No Need to Slash Spending”. Cuts can be avoided by taxing the rich, clamping down on tax evaders, and cutting defence spending — the tired, hopeless call of reformists everywhere to reorder the priorities of the capitalists in favour of the working class.
The Socialist Party, after calling for a one-day public sector strike and a 24-hour general strike, go on to showcase their abiding faith in the capitalist state, and Labour, approvingly quoting an article from Labourlist.org: “A cascade of ‘no cuts’ budget decisions by local authorities could be the most effective resistance to the cuts so far”. The Socialist Party continues, “By using their reserves and borrowing powers to avoid making cuts, councils can gain time to build a mass movement in their support”, and “Ed Miliband could promise that an incoming Labour government would write off all local authority debts incurred from avoiding cuts” (Socialism Today, March 2011).
What is necessary to fight against the massacre of public sector jobs and social services is to mobilise the multiethnic working class in a fight for jobs for all, through a shorter work week with no loss in pay, and to undertake union organising to draw into their ranks all of the working class, including its minority and immigrant components. In the course of class struggle, workers must replace the Labourite cringers atop the unions with workers’ leaders who aim to win battles on the picket lines. Striving to forge such a class-struggle leadership of the unions is an integral part of the fight for a multiethnic revolutionary workers party whose aim is no less than doing away with the entire system of capitalist wage slavery through socialist revolution.
Spring 2011
Craven trade union leaders offer Labour cuts as "alternative" to Tory cuts
For class struggle to defend public sector jobs!
On 26 March, a massive turnout of up to half a million trade unionists demonstrated in London against the savage budget cuts announced by David Cameron’s government. The demonstration consisted of a sea of trade union banners, representing local council workers, teachers and lecturers, health workers and firefighters — in a show of anger against the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government’s assault on healthcare, social services, pensions and much more. The public sector jobs massacre saw 132,000 jobs lost in 2010, while the overall unemployment figure stands officially at 2.5 million, the highest for 20 years.
Low-paid public sector workers, a high proportion of whom are women and minorities, are the core of the trade union movement today. But rather than a strategy to mobilise that social power for a class-struggle fight to defend jobs, the TUC’s “March for the Alternative” was intended to channel this anger into supporting another Labour government. For the first time in over a dozen years, a trade union demonstration in Britain was addressed by the Labour Party leader. Ed Miliband, who was elected leader last September with the support of the trade unions, intoned on the platform that “there is an alternative”, adding that “there is a need for difficult choices, and some cuts” to reduce the budget deficit, but this government “is going too far and too fast”. For a clue as to what Miliband’s “alternative” might be, one only has to recall that before the last election Labour promised cuts deeper and tougher than under Thatcher.
Deep cuts, fast or slow cuts: these are the “choices” being offered to the working class by the servile trade union bureaucracy. Throughout Europe — from Greece to Ireland and Spain — every capitalist government is trying to force the working class to pay for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — a crisis that was caused by the capitalist system itself. An effective defence of jobs today requires hard class struggle — strike action across the public sector. But the trade union leadership is an obstacle to the kind of fight that is necessary because they too share the political framework expressed by Miliband, that the alternative to “Tory cuts” are Labour government cuts.
The ground for the present devastating public sector cuts was prepared by 13 years of Labour governments that relentlessly attacked jobs, pensions, health and education services; froze pay below inflation and slashed tens of thousands of civil service jobs. And all the while, the union leaderships stood by and refused to lead battles against the Labour government. Recall then FBU leader Andy Gilchrist calling off the firefighters strike in 2002 when it threatened to “hinder” the armed forces preparing to invade Iraq.
Visit any of the public sector unions’ websites and find “alternatives”, not for a fight to beat back the rapacious bourgeoisie but for solving British capitalism’s budget deficit. Unison’s recipe calls for “a 50 per cent tax on bankers’ bonuses” and a “Robin Hood Tax” on bank transactions. The Public and Commercial Services union, which organises civil servants, offers similar counsel to the bourgeois rulers including “We could free up billions of pounds by not renewing Trident.”
The “socialist” outfits who ride Labour’s coattails look to none other than the bold class warriors of the TUC to call a general strike, while cravenly rebuilding illusions in the election of a Labour government. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) runs the National Right to Work coalition, whose slogan is “Break the Con-Dem Coalition!” (read: and replace it with a Labour government). When Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership contest last year, they enthused that his win was “another avenue to bring pressure to bear on Labour to fight” (Socialist Worker, 25 September 2010). In the meantime a poster on their website lists their own recommendations to the capitalist rulers, “Why There’s No Need to Slash Spending”. Cuts can be avoided by taxing the rich, clamping down on tax evaders, and cutting defence spending — the tired, hopeless call of reformists everywhere to reorder the priorities of the capitalists in favour of the working class.
The Socialist Party, after calling for a one-day public sector strike and a 24-hour general strike, go on to showcase their abiding faith in the capitalist state, and Labour, approvingly quoting an article from Labourlist.org: “A cascade of ‘no cuts’ budget decisions by local authorities could be the most effective resistance to the cuts so far”. The Socialist Party continues, “By using their reserves and borrowing powers to avoid making cuts, councils can gain time to build a mass movement in their support”, and “Ed Miliband could promise that an incoming Labour government would write off all local authority debts incurred from avoiding cuts” (Socialism Today, March 2011).
What is necessary to fight against the massacre of public sector jobs and social services is to mobilise the multiethnic working class in a fight for jobs for all, through a shorter work week with no loss in pay, and to undertake union organising to draw into their ranks all of the working class, including its minority and immigrant components. In the course of class struggle, workers must replace the Labourite cringers atop the unions with workers’ leaders who aim to win battles on the picket lines. Striving to forge such a class-struggle leadership of the unions is an integral part of the fight for a multiethnic revolutionary workers party whose aim is no less than doing away with the entire system of capitalist wage slavery through socialist revolution.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
From The ISO Website- "International Socialist Review"- Class struggle in Wisconsin
Class struggle in Wisconsin
Weeks of mass demonstrations and solidarity show the U.S. working class is ready to fight, says Phil Gasper
A lot has happened since I wrote my last column for the ISR, about whether mass struggle would return to the United States in the foreseeable future. In response to the question “When will something happen here?” I wrote:
The simple answer is I don’t know when, but the long-term nature of the current economic crisis and the struggles we have seen in other parts of the world in recent months make me quite certain that significant struggles will reemerge in the U.S. sooner that than later.
What most readers probably don’t know is that I live in Madison, Wisconsin, and I wrote those words on the evening of February 11. That was the day that Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was finally forced to resign after 18 days of mass demonstrations. It was also the day that Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker declared war on public sector unions in the state.
What followed was a spectacular demonstration of class struggle in Madison and across Wisconsin, with mass demonstrations reaching over 100,000 people, an occupation of the State Capitol for more than two weeks, sick outs by teachers around the state, and enormous solidarity from all sections of the labor movement, tens of thousands of non-unionized workers, and university, high-school and middle-school students. (Even my seven-year-old son spent days at the Capitol supporting his teachers, marching, and eventually leading chants.)
The protests went hand-in-hand with a remarkable shift in popular consciousness. Madison felt—and still feels—different. The solidarity and energy of the protests created a sense of community that had not existed before. Political conversations took place everywhere—in workplaces, in coffee shops, on buses, in the street. Strangers would stop and join in. At the height of the struggle, the feeling of confidence was palpable.
Why did this take place in Wisconsin? Certainly none of us expected it—me least of all. Although I argued, “objective circumstances will once again produce the potential for mass struggle in the U.S.,” I did not have in mind next Tuesday in my hometown when I wrote those words. All I knew was that after over thirty years of one-sided class war from above in the United States, we were getting closer to the point when there would be a response from below.
The economic boom that followed World War Two, and which sustained the idea of the “American Dream,” came to an end in the early 1970s. The ruling classes around the world went on the offensive, dismantling social programs, privatizing public assets, driving down working class living standards, busting unions, and deregulating the economy—the policies that came to be known as neo-liberalism.
The result was growing inequality and rising profits, but also a return to the boom-bust cycle of the pre-war years, with major global recessions in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, the early 2000s, and finally the financial crash of 2008. Three decades of neo-liberalism has left workers in the US worse off than they were in the 1970s, and has created huge pools of bitterness and misery in other parts of the world. The world economic crisis, accentuated these problems.
Last year, the IMF issued a report warning that high levels of youth unemployment around the world were creating the conditions for political turmoil, uprisings and rebellions. It was predicting events that played out first in Tunisia—which started with a former student, Mohamed Bouazizi, burning himself to death on December 17 after police confiscated his unlicensed vegetable cart—and then on a much larger scale in Egypt, resulting in the overthrow of hated dictators in both countries.
The protests in Madison erupted in the wake of the Egyptian revolution, and from the beginning the demonstrators drew parallels between the two, with numerous signs comparing Walker to Mubarak. Even Walker’s Republican ally, U.S. Representative and House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (now busy trying to undermine Medicare and Social Security) told an interviewer, “It’s like Cairo’s moved to Madison these days,” probably unaware that he was implicitly comparing the Governor to a hated dictator.
Of course Wisconsin was not on the verge of revolution, but the comparisons were nevertheless apt. The spirit of mass protest was in the air, and Wisconsin workers took inspiration from the success of their Egyptian counterparts. But beyond that, workers around the world are linked together in a single global economy, which affects us all when it goes into crisis. Soon after the demonstrations in Madison had begun, one activist in Cairo’s Tahrir Square held up a sign that read, “Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers—One World, One Pain.”
Wisconsin voted for Obama in the 2008 election, but last November with unemployment still high and disillusionment with the White House’s pro-corporate policies widespread, many Democrats stayed home, allowing Walker to become governor with only about 28 percent of eligible voters supporting him. Republicans also took control of both houses of Wisconsin’s legislature.
Walker ran a low-key campaign, which was thin on specifics, but he nevertheless took his election victory to be a mandate for a radical right-wing agenda, no doubt fueled by his conviction that he is receiving daily instructions from God about what to do. In January he pushed through corporate tax cuts that would cost the state $140 million over the next two years. Then, in February, he used the excuse of a $137 million shortfall in the current budget, to unveil a ‘Budget Repair Bill” that was little more than thinly veiled union busting.
Walker’s bill would strip most public-sector workers of most of their collective bargaining rights, end automatic paycheck deduction to pay dues, force unions to be recertified every year with support not just of the majority who vote, but of the entire bargaining unit. (As many commentators pointed out, if Walker were held to the same standard, he would never have been elected.) In addition, workers would be required to pay significantly more for health care and pensions.
Walker’s attack came straight from a playbook put together by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing think tanks, and is part of a national strategy. Only 7.6 percent of U.S. workers in private industry are unionized, but in the public sector the proportion is almost 37 percent. So in the latest phase of their decades long war on the working-class, Republicans have taken aim at public-sector unions—an especially enticing target because these unions provide Democrats with much of their funding at the state and local level. Wisconsin just happened to be the first place where this strategy was unrolled.
“What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy,” wrote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. “And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.”
Walker expected to steamroller his proposals through in less than a week, but instead, the frontal attack on unions touched a raw nerve of class anger. On the Tuesday following his announcement, thousands of workers descended on the State Capitol in the center of Madison, joined by thousands of students from the University of Wisconsin, led by unionized graduate teaching assistants.
Part of Walker’s plan was a strategy of divide and conquer, which deliberately exempted firefighters and police from the new rules. But firefighters joined the demonstrations immediately, marching in full uniform and playing bagpipes. Even more surprisingly, off duty police officers also joined the protests, displaying signs saying, “Cops for Labor.” Private sector unions were also involved from the beginning.
Sick outs by Madison teachers were initiated by the rank and file. By Tuesday evening, so many had called in to say that they would not be at work the next day, that the school district cancelled classes. The teachers stayed out for the rest of the week and the following Monday, with union leaders scrambling to catch up, and teachers from other districts around the state joining the action as the week progressed.
The occupation of the Capitol building began on Tuesday night, with hundreds of protesters staying inside demanding to testify before the Joint Finance Committee, which was required to hold hearings on the bill. The occupation was initiated by students, but soon had enthusiastic labor participation, with particular unions designating certain nights for their members to sleep over.
This huge and militant response led all 14 Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate to leave the state on the third day of the protests, depriving Republicans of a quorum necessary to pass Walker’s bill. For nearly three weeks the legislature was gridlocked. In response to threats of layoffs, the South Central Federation of Labor passed a resolution saying that it would support a general strike. Others pointed out that the budget deficit would disappear if corporations and the wealthy paid their fair share of taxes.
The mood to escalate action was there, but union leaders were terrified of things going too far. From the beginning most said they would accept the economic concessions contained in Walker’s bill in exchange for the preservation of collective bargaining and other union rights, sacrificing their members’ paychecks to defend their own positions.
After the teachers returned to work, union officials were unwilling to call more job actions, and instead starting channeling resources into recall campaigns against eight GOP senators. This allowed Walker to wind down the occupation by slowly making access to the Capitol more difficult. Rallies continued outside, but on March 9, in a legislative maneuver, the Senate detached the anti-union sections from the rest of Walker’s bill and voted to pass them without the Democrats present.
The result was a huge and spontaneous outburst of anger around the city. Several thousand of us retook the State Capitol in the early evening, climbing through windows and pushing past cops, who eventually gave up trying to stop people from entering. The mood was electric, and the many teachers who had joined the occupation were waiting for word from their union to walk off the job again the next day. If that had happened, other workers might have joined them.
But instead of calling its members out, leaders of the teachers’ union urged them to go to work. As a result the battalions of organized labor were absent from the Capitol the next morning. The occupation succeeded in delaying the state Assembly from voting for several hours, but the cops eventually cleared people out, and the bill passed there too. Walker signed it the following day.
The passage of the bill represented a significant and unnecessary defeat. Even though, as I write this, it has not been enacted because of legal challenges, unions have rushed to sign new contracts or renegotiate existing ones, giving Walker what he wanted on health care and pensions. Once the focus had shifted from the state to the local level, the choice became one between concessions and layoffs. But the unions wanted to sign contracts covering the next few years, in the hope that Walker cannot void existing agreements.
Labor leaders hope that by the time existing contracts expire Democrats will once again be in control of state government. It is certainly possible that enough of the recalls will be successful to give Democrats a majority in the senate, and Walker himself may well be removed from office next year (Recall Walker bumper stickers are everywhere, and his poll ratings have dropped dramatically). But replacing Republicans with Democrats won’t be enough.
While the Democrats don’t want to destroy the unions, they want to co-opt them to push through their own austerity plans. Their defense of collective bargaining is that it is no barrier to forcing workers to accept concessions. What is needed is a mobilization from below to fight cutbacks proposed by either party.
Meanwhile, Walker and the Republicans are already planning further attacks. The two-year budget currently being debated will include massive cuts to education and health care, and Walker also hopes to copy legislation already passed in Michigan that would give him the power to dismiss local governments that are deemed to be insolvent, replace them with an appointed auditor, void union contracts, and impose more harsh cuts.
But the struggle that began in February has shifted consciousness dramatically. Wisconsin’s workers are still groping towards the kind of organizations that will be needed to respond to the continued attacks, but it is unlikely that they will take any of this sitting down. The same is true across the country. The next five or ten years in the United States is not going to look like the last twenty or thirty years, when class war from the top met little response from below. Instead, it’s going to look a lot more like the last few months in Wisconsin.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Gasper is the editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Document (Haymarket Books, 2005) and a member of the ISR editorial board.
Weeks of mass demonstrations and solidarity show the U.S. working class is ready to fight, says Phil Gasper
A lot has happened since I wrote my last column for the ISR, about whether mass struggle would return to the United States in the foreseeable future. In response to the question “When will something happen here?” I wrote:
The simple answer is I don’t know when, but the long-term nature of the current economic crisis and the struggles we have seen in other parts of the world in recent months make me quite certain that significant struggles will reemerge in the U.S. sooner that than later.
What most readers probably don’t know is that I live in Madison, Wisconsin, and I wrote those words on the evening of February 11. That was the day that Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was finally forced to resign after 18 days of mass demonstrations. It was also the day that Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker declared war on public sector unions in the state.
What followed was a spectacular demonstration of class struggle in Madison and across Wisconsin, with mass demonstrations reaching over 100,000 people, an occupation of the State Capitol for more than two weeks, sick outs by teachers around the state, and enormous solidarity from all sections of the labor movement, tens of thousands of non-unionized workers, and university, high-school and middle-school students. (Even my seven-year-old son spent days at the Capitol supporting his teachers, marching, and eventually leading chants.)
The protests went hand-in-hand with a remarkable shift in popular consciousness. Madison felt—and still feels—different. The solidarity and energy of the protests created a sense of community that had not existed before. Political conversations took place everywhere—in workplaces, in coffee shops, on buses, in the street. Strangers would stop and join in. At the height of the struggle, the feeling of confidence was palpable.
Why did this take place in Wisconsin? Certainly none of us expected it—me least of all. Although I argued, “objective circumstances will once again produce the potential for mass struggle in the U.S.,” I did not have in mind next Tuesday in my hometown when I wrote those words. All I knew was that after over thirty years of one-sided class war from above in the United States, we were getting closer to the point when there would be a response from below.
The economic boom that followed World War Two, and which sustained the idea of the “American Dream,” came to an end in the early 1970s. The ruling classes around the world went on the offensive, dismantling social programs, privatizing public assets, driving down working class living standards, busting unions, and deregulating the economy—the policies that came to be known as neo-liberalism.
The result was growing inequality and rising profits, but also a return to the boom-bust cycle of the pre-war years, with major global recessions in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, the early 2000s, and finally the financial crash of 2008. Three decades of neo-liberalism has left workers in the US worse off than they were in the 1970s, and has created huge pools of bitterness and misery in other parts of the world. The world economic crisis, accentuated these problems.
Last year, the IMF issued a report warning that high levels of youth unemployment around the world were creating the conditions for political turmoil, uprisings and rebellions. It was predicting events that played out first in Tunisia—which started with a former student, Mohamed Bouazizi, burning himself to death on December 17 after police confiscated his unlicensed vegetable cart—and then on a much larger scale in Egypt, resulting in the overthrow of hated dictators in both countries.
The protests in Madison erupted in the wake of the Egyptian revolution, and from the beginning the demonstrators drew parallels between the two, with numerous signs comparing Walker to Mubarak. Even Walker’s Republican ally, U.S. Representative and House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (now busy trying to undermine Medicare and Social Security) told an interviewer, “It’s like Cairo’s moved to Madison these days,” probably unaware that he was implicitly comparing the Governor to a hated dictator.
Of course Wisconsin was not on the verge of revolution, but the comparisons were nevertheless apt. The spirit of mass protest was in the air, and Wisconsin workers took inspiration from the success of their Egyptian counterparts. But beyond that, workers around the world are linked together in a single global economy, which affects us all when it goes into crisis. Soon after the demonstrations in Madison had begun, one activist in Cairo’s Tahrir Square held up a sign that read, “Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers—One World, One Pain.”
Wisconsin voted for Obama in the 2008 election, but last November with unemployment still high and disillusionment with the White House’s pro-corporate policies widespread, many Democrats stayed home, allowing Walker to become governor with only about 28 percent of eligible voters supporting him. Republicans also took control of both houses of Wisconsin’s legislature.
Walker ran a low-key campaign, which was thin on specifics, but he nevertheless took his election victory to be a mandate for a radical right-wing agenda, no doubt fueled by his conviction that he is receiving daily instructions from God about what to do. In January he pushed through corporate tax cuts that would cost the state $140 million over the next two years. Then, in February, he used the excuse of a $137 million shortfall in the current budget, to unveil a ‘Budget Repair Bill” that was little more than thinly veiled union busting.
Walker’s bill would strip most public-sector workers of most of their collective bargaining rights, end automatic paycheck deduction to pay dues, force unions to be recertified every year with support not just of the majority who vote, but of the entire bargaining unit. (As many commentators pointed out, if Walker were held to the same standard, he would never have been elected.) In addition, workers would be required to pay significantly more for health care and pensions.
Walker’s attack came straight from a playbook put together by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing think tanks, and is part of a national strategy. Only 7.6 percent of U.S. workers in private industry are unionized, but in the public sector the proportion is almost 37 percent. So in the latest phase of their decades long war on the working-class, Republicans have taken aim at public-sector unions—an especially enticing target because these unions provide Democrats with much of their funding at the state and local level. Wisconsin just happened to be the first place where this strategy was unrolled.
“What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy,” wrote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. “And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.”
Walker expected to steamroller his proposals through in less than a week, but instead, the frontal attack on unions touched a raw nerve of class anger. On the Tuesday following his announcement, thousands of workers descended on the State Capitol in the center of Madison, joined by thousands of students from the University of Wisconsin, led by unionized graduate teaching assistants.
Part of Walker’s plan was a strategy of divide and conquer, which deliberately exempted firefighters and police from the new rules. But firefighters joined the demonstrations immediately, marching in full uniform and playing bagpipes. Even more surprisingly, off duty police officers also joined the protests, displaying signs saying, “Cops for Labor.” Private sector unions were also involved from the beginning.
Sick outs by Madison teachers were initiated by the rank and file. By Tuesday evening, so many had called in to say that they would not be at work the next day, that the school district cancelled classes. The teachers stayed out for the rest of the week and the following Monday, with union leaders scrambling to catch up, and teachers from other districts around the state joining the action as the week progressed.
The occupation of the Capitol building began on Tuesday night, with hundreds of protesters staying inside demanding to testify before the Joint Finance Committee, which was required to hold hearings on the bill. The occupation was initiated by students, but soon had enthusiastic labor participation, with particular unions designating certain nights for their members to sleep over.
This huge and militant response led all 14 Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate to leave the state on the third day of the protests, depriving Republicans of a quorum necessary to pass Walker’s bill. For nearly three weeks the legislature was gridlocked. In response to threats of layoffs, the South Central Federation of Labor passed a resolution saying that it would support a general strike. Others pointed out that the budget deficit would disappear if corporations and the wealthy paid their fair share of taxes.
The mood to escalate action was there, but union leaders were terrified of things going too far. From the beginning most said they would accept the economic concessions contained in Walker’s bill in exchange for the preservation of collective bargaining and other union rights, sacrificing their members’ paychecks to defend their own positions.
After the teachers returned to work, union officials were unwilling to call more job actions, and instead starting channeling resources into recall campaigns against eight GOP senators. This allowed Walker to wind down the occupation by slowly making access to the Capitol more difficult. Rallies continued outside, but on March 9, in a legislative maneuver, the Senate detached the anti-union sections from the rest of Walker’s bill and voted to pass them without the Democrats present.
The result was a huge and spontaneous outburst of anger around the city. Several thousand of us retook the State Capitol in the early evening, climbing through windows and pushing past cops, who eventually gave up trying to stop people from entering. The mood was electric, and the many teachers who had joined the occupation were waiting for word from their union to walk off the job again the next day. If that had happened, other workers might have joined them.
But instead of calling its members out, leaders of the teachers’ union urged them to go to work. As a result the battalions of organized labor were absent from the Capitol the next morning. The occupation succeeded in delaying the state Assembly from voting for several hours, but the cops eventually cleared people out, and the bill passed there too. Walker signed it the following day.
The passage of the bill represented a significant and unnecessary defeat. Even though, as I write this, it has not been enacted because of legal challenges, unions have rushed to sign new contracts or renegotiate existing ones, giving Walker what he wanted on health care and pensions. Once the focus had shifted from the state to the local level, the choice became one between concessions and layoffs. But the unions wanted to sign contracts covering the next few years, in the hope that Walker cannot void existing agreements.
Labor leaders hope that by the time existing contracts expire Democrats will once again be in control of state government. It is certainly possible that enough of the recalls will be successful to give Democrats a majority in the senate, and Walker himself may well be removed from office next year (Recall Walker bumper stickers are everywhere, and his poll ratings have dropped dramatically). But replacing Republicans with Democrats won’t be enough.
While the Democrats don’t want to destroy the unions, they want to co-opt them to push through their own austerity plans. Their defense of collective bargaining is that it is no barrier to forcing workers to accept concessions. What is needed is a mobilization from below to fight cutbacks proposed by either party.
Meanwhile, Walker and the Republicans are already planning further attacks. The two-year budget currently being debated will include massive cuts to education and health care, and Walker also hopes to copy legislation already passed in Michigan that would give him the power to dismiss local governments that are deemed to be insolvent, replace them with an appointed auditor, void union contracts, and impose more harsh cuts.
But the struggle that began in February has shifted consciousness dramatically. Wisconsin’s workers are still groping towards the kind of organizations that will be needed to respond to the continued attacks, but it is unlikely that they will take any of this sitting down. The same is true across the country. The next five or ten years in the United States is not going to look like the last twenty or thirty years, when class war from the top met little response from below. Instead, it’s going to look a lot more like the last few months in Wisconsin.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Gasper is the editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Document (Haymarket Books, 2005) and a member of the ISR editorial board.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Photos/Video-April 4 Labor Rally,Boston, On Anniv. Of Martin Luther King's Assassination
Click on the headline to link to Photos/Video-April 4 Labor Rally,Boston, On Anniv. Of Martin Luther King's Assassination by Michael Borkson
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
From The Jobs For Justice Website- The April 4th Actions- A Report With Video From Boston
Click on the headline to link to a Jobs For Justice website post of the national actions on April 4, 2011 in defend of union rights.
Monday, April 04, 2011
From The Jobs For Justice Website-Florida House Votes to End Pay Deductions for Public Workers’ Union Dues
Markin comment:
Although, as a matter of trade union independence from the state, the bourgeois state, trade union militants favor union dues being collected by our own agents, shop stewards, or other union personnel we oppose actions, as the one in Florida mentioned in this post (and elsewhere in Ohio and Wisconsin), by state legislatures and state executives to eliminate that “right” in order to further gut public workers union collective bargaining gains.
********
Florida House Votes to End Pay Deductions for Public Workers’ Union Dues
By jwjnational, on March 31st, 2011
On Friday, March 25th, the Florida Governor signed legislation into law that ties teacher’s salaries to test scores and removes tenure. On the same day, the Florida House passed legislation to make union dues deduction of public workers illegal.
Workers and students united in Orlando to say “Enough is Enough” to these attacks on working people. Protesters demanded the Speaker of the House Dean Cannon stop the scapegoating of workers and students. Rep. Cannon is following the Governor’s agenda of prioritizing corporate interests at the expense of middle class families dealing with the effects of economic crisis. Its time to find real solutions and sensible policies and not keep it as politics as usual.
The delegation loudly marched into Rep. Cannon’s office. A person dressed as the Notorious Governor Rick Scott left a huge box of money behind congratulating the Representative on blaming working people on behalf of their corporate cronies. People carried framed testimonials from a student, an unemployed worker, a professor, a parent and an immigrant advocate: we will not be framed for the state’s revenue shortfall!
Protests will continue to escalate throughout the legislative session. Coordinating groups include Central Florida Jobs with Justice, Central Florida AFL-CIO, and the Student Labor Action Project @UCF.
Although, as a matter of trade union independence from the state, the bourgeois state, trade union militants favor union dues being collected by our own agents, shop stewards, or other union personnel we oppose actions, as the one in Florida mentioned in this post (and elsewhere in Ohio and Wisconsin), by state legislatures and state executives to eliminate that “right” in order to further gut public workers union collective bargaining gains.
********
Florida House Votes to End Pay Deductions for Public Workers’ Union Dues
By jwjnational, on March 31st, 2011
On Friday, March 25th, the Florida Governor signed legislation into law that ties teacher’s salaries to test scores and removes tenure. On the same day, the Florida House passed legislation to make union dues deduction of public workers illegal.
Workers and students united in Orlando to say “Enough is Enough” to these attacks on working people. Protesters demanded the Speaker of the House Dean Cannon stop the scapegoating of workers and students. Rep. Cannon is following the Governor’s agenda of prioritizing corporate interests at the expense of middle class families dealing with the effects of economic crisis. Its time to find real solutions and sensible policies and not keep it as politics as usual.
The delegation loudly marched into Rep. Cannon’s office. A person dressed as the Notorious Governor Rick Scott left a huge box of money behind congratulating the Representative on blaming working people on behalf of their corporate cronies. People carried framed testimonials from a student, an unemployed worker, a professor, a parent and an immigrant advocate: we will not be framed for the state’s revenue shortfall!
Protests will continue to escalate throughout the legislative session. Coordinating groups include Central Florida Jobs with Justice, Central Florida AFL-CIO, and the Student Labor Action Project @UCF.
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