Labor Day Scorecard- 2008

COMMENTARY

CONTINUING TOUGH TIMES FOR THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT- AND THAT IS NO LIE

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

This writer entered the blogosphere in February 2006 so this is the third Labor Day scorecard giving his take on the condition of American labor as we approach Labor Day. And it is not pretty. That, my brothers and sisters, says it all. There was little strike action this year. The only notable action was that of the autoworkers last fall that I made comment on then and have reposted here. The situation since then for the beleaguered auto workers has only gotten worst, as the dramatic decline in auto sales and the energy crunch have kicked in.

Once again there is little to report in the way of unionization to organize labor’s potential strength. American workers continue to have a real decline in their paychecks. The difference between survival and not for most working families is the two job (or more) household. In short, the average family is working more hours to make ends meet. Real inflation in energy and food costs has put many up against the wall. Moreover the bust in the housing market has wrecked havoc on working people as the most important asset in many a household has taken a beating. Once again forget the Federal Reserve Bank’s definition of inflation- one fill up at the pump confounds that noise. One does not have to be a Marxist economist to know that something is desperately wrong when at the beginning of the 21st century with all the technological advances and productivity increases of the past period working people need to work more just to try to stay even. Even the more far-sighted bourgeois thinkers have trouble with that one. In any case, here are some comments on the labor year.

*The key, as it was last year, to a turn-around for American labor is the unionization of Wal-Mart and the South. The necessary class struggle politics that would make such drives successful would act as a huge impetus for other areas of the labor movement. This writer further argues that such struggles against such vicious enemies as Wal-Mart can be the catalyst for the organization of a workers party. Okay, okay let the writer dream a little, won’t you? What has happened this year on this issue is that more organizations have taken up the call for a boycott of Wal-Mart. That is all to the good and must be supported by militant leftists but it is only a very small beginning shot in the campaign (See archives, dated June 10, 2006). National and local unions have taken monies from their coffers not for such a worthy effort as union organizing at Wal-Mart but to support one or another bourgeois electoral candidate. Some things never change.

*The issue of immigration has surfaced strongly again this year, especially in presidential politics. Every militant leftist was supportive of the past May Day actions of the vast immigrant communities to not be pushed around, although one should also note that they were not nearly as extensive as in 2006 or 2007, a sure sign that the norms of electioneering by the affected ethnic leaderships have put a damper on such extra-parliamentary actions. Immigration is a labor issue and key to the struggle against the race to the bottom. While May Day and other events were big moments unless there are links to the greater labor movement this very promising movement could fizzle. A central problem is the role of the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church in the organizing effort. I will deal with this question at a latter time but for now know this- these organizations are an obstruction to real progress on the immigration issue. (See archives, dated May 1, 2006 for a recap on this factor)

The Auto Workers Struggles of the Fall of 2007

COMMENTARY

NO TWO- TIER WAGE RATES- EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

The big labor news this fall has been the fight by the United Auto Workers (UAW) for new contracts with General Motors, Chrysler and now Ford. I have already discussed the GM and Chrysler settlement and now as of Friday, November 3, 2007 Ford and the UAW have reached a tentative agreement. That agreement is along the same lines as those ratified by GM and Chrysler (barely) - a new two- tier wage system for new hires who will get one half the average pay of senior autoworkers and union takeover of the health and pension funds. As I have lamented previously these contracts are a defeat for the autoworkers. Why? The historic position of labor has been to fight for equal pay for equal work. That apparently has gone by the boards here. Moreover the pension and health takeovers are an albatross around the neck of the union. No way is this an example of worker control not at least how any militant should view it. After all the givebacks its time to fight back even if this is a rearguard action in light of the previous votes AND the futility of the 'apache' strategy. Any illusions that the give backs will buy labor peace and or/avoid further layoffs, close downs or outsourcing got a cruel comeuppance in the previous contract negotiations. No sooner had those contracts been ratified, and well before the new contracts were even printed, Chrysler announced layoffs of 8000 to 10, 000 and GM had previously announced about 1500 layoffs. FORD AUTOWORKERS VOTE NO ON THIS CONTRACT.

I HAVE REPOSTED THE NOTES ON THE GM AND CHRYSLER SETTLEMENTS TO GIVE A PERSPECTIVE OF HOW THE HOPES THAT ORGANIZED LABOR COULD START TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE TIDE OF GLOBALIZATION HAVE FADED AS THE PROCESS HAS UNFOLDED THIS FALL.



A SHORT NOTE ON THE CHRYSLER AUTOWORKERS SETTLEMENT

Commentary

The Wal-martization of the Once Proud UAW

Yes, I know that we are in the age of ‘globalization’. That is, however, merely the transformation of the same old characters like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in the auto industry that we have come to know and love moving away from mainly nationally defined markets to international markets. In short, these companies allegedly are being forced to fight their way to the bottom of the international labor wage market along with everyone else. As least that was the position of these august companies in the on-going labor contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers (UAW). And the labor tops bought the argument. In the General Motors settlement GM was nicely absolved from having to administer its albatross health and pension funds. Now autoworkers are held responsible for deciding what autoworkers get what benefits. This is not my idea of workers control, not by a long shot. Based on those provisions alone that GM contract should have been soundly defeated. That it was not will come back to haunt the GM autoworkers in the future.

Now comes news that, as of October 27, 2007, the Chrysler workers have narrowly (56%) ratified their contract, although some major plants voted against it and the labor skates pulled out all stops to get an affirmative vote. If anything that contract is worst than the GM contract because it also contains a provision for permitting a two-wage system where ‘new hires’ will be paid approximately one half normal rates. So much for the old labor slogan of 'equal pay for equal work'. If the GM contract will come back to haunt this one already does today. Remember also that Chrysler was bought out by a private equity company that has a history of selling off unprofitable operations, driving productivity up and then selling the profitable parts for huge profits. That, my friends, is what the global race to the bottom looks like in the American auto industry. This contract should have been voted down with both hands. Ford is up next and based on the foregoing that contract should also be voted down.

Look, every militant knows that negotiations over union contracts represent a sort of ‘truce’ in the class struggle. Until there is worker control of production under a workers government the value of any negotiations with the capitalists is determined by the terms. Sometimes, especially in hard times, just holding your own is a ‘victory’. Other times, like here, there is only one word for these contracts-defeat. Moreover, this did not need to happen. Although both strike efforts at GM and Chrysler were short-lived (intentionally so on the part of the leadership) the rank and file was ready to do battle. The vote at Chrysler further bolsters that argument. So what is up?

What is up is that the leadership of the autoworkers is not worthy of the membership. These people are so mired in class collaborationist non-aggression pacts and cozy arrangements (for themselves) that they were easy pickings for the vultures leading management. The epitome of this is the ‘apache’ strategy of negotiating with one company at a time. If in the era of Walter Reuther, at a time when there were upwards of a million union autoworkers, that might have made some sense today with reduced numbers it makes no sense at all. Labor’s power is in solidarity and solidarity means, in this case, ‘one out, all out’. Beyond that it is clear a new class struggle leadership is needed, just to keep even, and it is needed pronto. Those rank and filers and, in some cases, local union leaders who called for a no vote at Chrysler are the starting point for such efforts.



VICTORY TO THE GENERAL MOTORS AUTOWORKERS!


COMMENTARY

THE FIGHT AGAINST THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM BEGINS HERE! CALL
OUT THE WHOLE UAW!

As of September 24, 2007, after a break down in negotiations the General Motors autoworkers went out on a nation-wide strike. In the old days, in the 1930 and 1940’s, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union was created and solidified by fierce class battles. This action evokes memories of those times although then the fight was centrally around wages and working conditions. Today, in the age of ‘globalization’ (meaning, in reality, most of the same capitalists like GM fighting it out in the world market rather than in nationally isolated markets) the fight is against the corporation- driven race to the bottom. The issues of health care, pensions, outsourcing and job guarantees are what drive today’s struggles. And the prospects are not pretty.

Take the case of heath care provision. General Motors (and ultimately the other auto makers) want to foist that responsibility onto the union with some kind of trust fund arrangement. I think an unidentified UAW local president in Detroit made the most eloquent response to that idea. His response: Why should the union be responsible for cutting off the health benefits to its own membership as health costs continue to spiral or a member reaches the plan maximum. Make no mistake this scheme is not some step in the fight for workers’ control of working conditions. The company is merely trying to bail out from its own mistakes. Ditto on the under- funded pension plans. However, GM is more than happy to try to lock the union into an agreement on outsourcing to their other plants internationally in order to cut costs. This they know how to do as the decline in membership of the UAW dramatically shows. In the end that means poorer working conditions not only here but also internationally. To mitigate the problem of outsourcing it is not enough to call for job protection. Also necessary is an international organizing drive to unionize all autoworkers.

One of the most compelling pieces of data that I have run across lately on the labor movement is from an article on globalization in which it was stated that today there are as many auto workers as in the past but only about a third of them are organized. Today GM has 73,000 UAW autoworkers. In the past there were several times that number. As we support the current UAW action let us remember this for the future. The same can be said for the other members of the Big 3. And while we are at it since all autoworkers will ultimately be affected by the GM action- extend the picket lines to the other Big 3. Call out the whole UAW to defend this strike. VICTORY TO THE GM AUTO WORKERS!

*From The Archives- Why I Will Not Be A United States Presidential Candidate In 2012...Or 2016

Click on title to link to Spartacist No. 61 Spring 2009,a publication of the International Communist League, for a very full discussion about the question of running for executive offices in the capitalist state, "Marxist Principles and Electoral Tactics", that forms the backdrop to my commentary.

Media Flash: A. F. Markin, long time anti-capitalist, pro-socialist militant and creator of the blog “American Left History”, has announced today that under no conditions will he be a candidate for President of the United States in 2012. Paraphrasing the great 19th century Northern Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, Markin stated that 'if drafted he will not run and if elected he would not serve' in that post. He, however, did not rule out the possibility of running for some legislative office like the United States Senate or House of Representatives.

Commentary

I know that the long suffering readers of this blog have been waiting breathlessly for me to announce my intentions for the presidential campaign of 2012. Wait a minute! What kind of madness is this on my part to impose on readers who I am sure are still recovering from the shell-shock of that seemingly endless and mendacious 2008 presidential campaign. Well… Okay, as usual I want to, for good or ill, make a little point about running for the executive offices of the bourgeois state now that I have gotten ‘religion’ about the necessary of radicals and revolutionaries NOT to do so. I think this point can really be driven home today now that we have a ‘progressive’ Democratic president, one Barack Obama, as a foil.

I have detailed the controversy and checkered history in the international workers movement, and especially in the Communist International in its heroic days in the early 1920's, surrounding the question of whether radicals and revolutionaries, on principle, should run for these executive offices of the bourgeois state. I need not repeat that argument here. (See June 2008 Archives, "If Drafted I Will Not Run, If Elected I Will Not Serve-Revolutionaries and Running For Executive Offices", dated June 15, 2008). I have also noted there the trajectory of my own conversion to the position of opposition to such runs. Previously I had seen such electoral efforts as good propaganda tools and/or basically harmless attempts to intersect political reality at times when the electorate is tuned in. Always under the assumption made clear during the campaign that, of course, if elected one would not assume the office.

In any case, I admit to a previously rather cavalier attitude toward the whole question, even as I began to see the wisdom of opposition. But having gone through the recent presidential campaign and, more importantly, the inauguration and installation of a ‘progressive’ black man to the highest office attainable under the imperium I have begun to wipe that smirk off my face.

Why? I have hardly been unaware throughout my leftist political career that Social Democratic and Communist (Stalinist/Maoist varieties especially) Party politicians have, individually or in popular front alliances with capitalist parties, wreaked havoc on working people while administrating the bourgeois state. I have, in particular, spent a good part of my political career fighting against the notion of popular front strategies as they have been forged in the past, disastrously in places like Spain during the Civil War in the 1930’s or less disastrously in France in the 1980’s. However, this question of the realities of running the imperial state in America really hit home with the coming into office of Barack Obama.

Certainly, Obama did not have, and in the course of such things could not have any qualms about administering the bourgeois state, even if such toilsome work contradicted his most basic principles. Assuming, for the sake of argument here, that Obama is not the worst bourgeois politician, progressive or not, that has come down the pike. Already, in a few short weeks in office, he has escalated the troop levels in Afghanistan. He is most earnestly committed to bailing out the financial heart of the imperial system, at the long term expense of working people. Where is the room for that vaunted ‘progressive’ designation in all of this? Oh yes he has is against torture and illegal torture centers. That, dear readers might have passed for progressive action- in the 17th century. Jesus, is there no end to this madness in taking grandstanding kudos for stuff that Voltaire would have dismissed out of hand. So the next time someone asks you to run for President of the United States (or governor of a state or mayor of a city)take the Markin pledge - Just say NO!

The Class Struggle Heats Up, A Victory For Our Side For Once-Public unions win in Ohio referendum on Gov. John Kasich restrictions on bargaining

Markin comment:

After last week’s Oakland General Strike and the closing down of the Port of Oakland I thought we were on the offensive, finally. And I was not wrong. The molecular process that has been going on down at the base of society after years of being beaten down in the one-sided class struggle has finally gotten some push back, if ever so slightly just now.

The Ohio referendum vote was a sweet victory to put the breaks on this “in your face” right-wing slide that we having been dealing with for a long time. While, in the final analysis, hard struggles, hard street struggles, still lie ahead we will take our victories, small or large, wherever we can. I don’t think that the bourgeoisie is ready to make reservations to some island and let us take over yet but I would think that some of the more far-sighted elements might be checking their frequent-flyer mileage status. Nor am I so intoxicated by Ohio that I would raise the propaganda slogan to build workers councils now. But I will raise right here, well in advance of the 2012 bourgeois electoral fist-fight, the need to fight for a workers party that fights for a workers government. And I am not wrong on that.

P.S. Anytime anybody anywhere says labor and its supporters need to spent union dues to elect bourgeois "friends" like Obama just point to Ohio. That is the way to spend our dough-and not have it wasted. That, and putting a ton of money into organizing the unorganized.
******
Post by Peter Callaghan / The News Tribune on Nov. 8, 2011 at 6:47 pm | November 8, 2011 6:47 pm

This from the Associated Press:
COLUMBUS, Ohio The state’s new collective bargaining law was defeated Tuesday after an expensive union-backed campaign that pitted firefighters, police officers and teachers against the Republican establishment.

In a political blow to GOP Gov. John Kasich, voters handily rejected the law, which would have limited the bargaining abilities of 350,000 unionized public workers.

Labor and business interests poured more than $30 million into the nationally watched campaign, and turnout was high for an off-year election.
The law hadn’t taken effect yet. Tuesday’s result means the state’s current union rules will stand, at least until the GOP-controlled Legislature determines its next move. Republican House Speaker William Batchelder predicted last week that the more palatable elements of the collective bargaining bill Ñ such as higher minimum contributions on worker health insurance and pensions Ñ are likely to be revisited after the dust settles.

Kasich and fellow supporters promoted the law as a means for local governments to save money and keep workers. Their effort was supported by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business-Ohio, farmers and others.

We Are Ohio, the largely union-funded opponent coalition, painted the issue as a threat to public safety and middle-class workers, spending millions of dollars on TV ads filled with images of firefighters, police officers, teachers and nurses.

Celebrities came out on both sides of the campaign, with former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and singer Pat Boone urging voters to retain the law and former astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn and the Rev. Jesse Jackson urging them to scrap it.

Labor and business interests poured more than $30 million into the nationally watched campaign, with the law’s opponents far outspending and outnumbering its defenders.

Opponents reported raising $24 million as of mid-October, compared to about $8 million raised by the committee supporting the law, Building a Better Ohio.

Tuesday’s result in the closely divided swing state was expected to resonate from statehouses to the White House ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

Ohio’s bill went further than a similar one in Wisconsin by including police officers and firefighters, and it was considered by many observers to be a barometer of the national mood on the political conundrum of the day: What’s the appropriate size and role of government, and who should pay for it?

Kasich has vowed not to give up his fight for streamlining government despite the loss.

For opponents of the law, its defeat is anticipated to energize the labor movement, which largely supports Democrats, ahead of President Barack Obama’s re-election effort.

ADIEU, KARL ROVE

COMMENTARY

A SAVAGE CLASS WARRIOR LEAVES BUSH TO HIS OWN DEVICES

Well by now everyone among the ‘chattering classes’ knows that Republican President George Bush’s ‘evil counselor’, one Karl Rove, has like so many in the recent past abandoned the sinking ship U.S.S. Bush and gone off to seek greener pastures in the hills of Texas. However, unlike most of the Bush ilk, the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to a name a couple, I will miss Karl Rove as a target. Why? I will make a confession based on a very long experience in politics- I get along better with and better understand right wing ideologues than the usual mushy ‘consultant’ types who populate today’s political scene. The ‘band aid guys’ and the ‘scotch tape gals’ whose political program is a small grab bag of ‘nice’ things to tweak the capitalist system while leaving it intact and that solve nothing leave me cold. One only needs to mention the name of the apparently recently retired Democratic Party consultant and perennially ‘loser’ Robert Schrum to bring this point home.

Give me the hardball players, the real bourgeois class warriors, any day. They know there is a class struggle going on as well as I do and know and that, in the final analysis, it is a fight to the finish. And who will dare say that Karl Rove was not the hell-bent king of that crowd. Anyone who could get a genuine dolt like George Bush elected twice Governor of Texas and twice President of the United States without flinching knows his business. Imagine if Rove had had a real political street fighter like Richard Nixon for a client. Yes, I know in the end Mr. Rove and I will be shooting from different sides of the barricades but Karl was a real evil genius and I will miss that big target.

Karl Rove honed two basic propositions that Marxists can appreciate, even if only from an adversarial position. One was the above-mentioned sense of the vagaries of the class struggle for the bourgeois class that he has so faithfully represented. How he was able to grab the dirt poor and against the wall farmers of places like Kansas and the desperately poor of the small towns of the ‘Rust Belt’ as cannon fodder voters for a party that has not represented plebian interests since at least the 1870’s is worthy of study. The second was his notion, parliamentary-centered to be sure, of a ‘vanguard’ party. What? Karl Rove as some kind of closet Leninist? No. However, his proposition that the Republican party should cater to its social conservative base and drag whoever it could in their wake is a piece of political wisdom that leftists should think through more. That is a much better political approach than to rely on the current dominant ‘popular front’ strategy of organizing on the basis of the lowest common denominator issues whittled down to a meaningless point just to avoid antagonizing the Democrats instead of fighting for what is necessary. Yes, one can sometimes learn something from one’s political adversaries- Adieu, Karl.

ON REVOLUTIONARIES RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT

COMMENTARY

The main bourgeois electoral political action of 2007 in the Western world has thus far been the French presidential elections. After the just completed first round the Gaullist and Socialist Party candidates are headed into the final round on May 6th. Recently, in a commentary on the workers movement and public campaign funding (see April 2007 archive), I used the example of the French presidential campaign in discussing the erroneous policy of ‘far left’ groups in France, like the Revolutionary Communist League (English translation) and Worker’s Struggle (also English translation), of accepting campaign funds from the state. My position was that as a matter of integrity, the nature of our tasks and security this policy was unprincipled for revolutionaries. That stirred up some controversy; or rather I should say a 'tempest in a teapot', not so much around the question of accepting funds as the question of whether those organizations in France should have even fielded presidential candidates. Thus, the question is starkly posed. Can leftists in principle run for executive office in the bourgeois state and therefore take political responsibility for the administration of its policy? The following comments represent my take on this issue; however, they are by no means my final thinking on the matter.

Those of us who consider themselves Marxists owe two debts of gratitude to Vladimir Lenin. First, for leading the modern fight against parliamentary abstensionism, mainly a fight against anarchist and syndicalism tendencies in the worker’s movement to deny any importance to bourgeois elections as a means of getting out the socialist message. His classic polemic against those tendencies in ‘Left-Wing' Communism-An Infantile Disorder’ gives short shrift to such notions.

Secondly, we owe Lenin for his sorely needed updating of the Marxist conception of the state and the need to replace the current bourgeois state with a workers state with its own institutions. His classic statement of the case in State and Revolution gives short shrift to the notion that a victorious worker’s revolution can take over the current state apparatus with just a little ‘fine tuning’.

Why do we need to invoke the tremendous authority of Lenin on what is a seemingly simple question of whether a revolutionary organization should or should not run for an executive office of the bourgeois state? On the basis of State and Revolution to pose the question would appear to give the answer. However, unlike other questions this one is not one where to pose the question gives the answer. Let us set the parameters of the debate. Nobody, or at least I hope nobody, believes in 2007 that running in elections will lead to socialism. I would also hope that nobody believes that we can simply take over the current state apparatus as is and go from there. I would further hope that no one, in some kind of anarchist funk, would fail to draw a distinction between administering the executive power of the capitalist state and using the legislative branch as a forum in order to be ‘ tribunes of the people’. Finally, for now and the foreseeable future no one should assume that this question is much more than a theoretical one. Otherwise something is desperately wrong with one's organizational priorities and one's grasp of political reality.

So now that I have safety guarded all those parameters, What is the big deal? And that is pretty much where I stand on the issue. Historically, revolutionaries have used bourgeois election periods to run on their programs and get a hearing in quarters they might not reach outside of the electoral process. In terms of executive offices, a revolutionary organization, like the Socialist Workers Party in the old days, ran for executive office with the proviso that if elected they would not serve. And that seems to me to continue to be the right policy. Those who want to carry out a policy of total refusal to participate in executive office campaigns, like the presidency, today have got to make a better argument for that decision than they have thus far.