Showing posts with label defend our unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label defend our unions. Show all posts

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Rally For HEI Rights


Harvard students will be meeting at 3:45 and at 4:05 in front of Lamont Library to head over to the picket line, or just meet us there!


Rally for HEI workers' rights!
Thursday 10/11, 4-6PM

20 Sidney Street, Cambridge
(near Central Square)
Protest and rally to support workers at the Le Meridien Hotel in Cambridge
The Le Meridien Cambridge is trying to decrease hotel standards for workers. Starwood owns the Le Meridien brand, but the hotel is owned and operated by an hotel equity company called HEI Hospitality.
Over 70% of workers at the Le Meridien in Cambridge have asked for a fair process to decide whether to have a union on the job. HEI has refused. HEI workers have low wages, rising health care contributions, and work overloads. HEI hotel workers are part of a growing effort to stand up for basic working standards. On October 11th, hotel workers across the country are launching a national boycott of HEI Hotels.
This summer Harvard, Yale, and Brown decided not to invest any new funds into HEI.
All workers deserve respect, dignity and a voice on the job. Show Le Meridien workers your support by joining us at a rally and march on Thursday, October 11 at 4 pm. We will meet in front of the Le Meridien Hotel at 20 Sidney Street in Cambridge (Central Square Red Line stop). Download the flyer here and download the directions here.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

All Out For The Verizon Workers In Boston- Thursday March 22 -5 PM: Meet at Dewey Sq.

Click on the headline to link to the IBEW Local 2222 website

March & Rally to Stop Corporate Greed

By Website Editor

Created 03/11/2012 - 1:47pm


Verizon has made tens of billions in profits and its top executives walked away with $283 million in the last four years. But when it comes to the 45,000 workers who make Verizon's success possible, suddenly the company cries broke.

Verizon has sent thousands of American jobs overseas, and wants to outsource even more jobs, gut pensions, charge current and retired employees thousands of dollars more for health benefits, and cut disability benefits for workers inured doing their jobs.

Join us for a national day of action in support of good jobs and the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act.

Thursday, March 22

5PM: Meet at Dewey Sq.

5:30PM: March to Verizon Wireless

6:00PM: Rally at 185 Franklin St. in Boston

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source URL:
http://ibew2222.org/march_%2526amp%3B_rally_to_stop_corporate_greed

Monday, January 09, 2012

From The "Occupy 4 Jobs" Website- In Boston On January 16th-Make MLK Day OCCUPY 4 JOBS DAY! Demand jobs, housing, education and people's rights!

In his final days, Dr. King planned a mass OCCUPATION FOR JOBS

Make MLK Day OCCUPY 4 JOBS DAY! Demand jobs, housing, education and people's rights!

10:00 A.M.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14th

DEMONSTRATE at GROVE HALL POST OFFICE

647 Warren St, Dorchester (in Grove Hall)

SAVE JOBS AND SERVICES IN OUR COMMUNITIES!

Stop the Post Office shutdowns!

Stop the fraudulent, disastrous & totally unnecessary attack on our postal services!

• Rightwingers want to kill Postal Service:
slash 200,000+jobs or close 3,700 stations -

•—Most shutdowns are in poor communities,
where service is needed most.

• The postal service is NOT in financial crisis, it is subject to ridiculous
and unfair requirements imposed by a rightwing Congress in 2006.

Let your voice be heard:

No reduction in postal service - keep 6-day delivery!

No Post Office Closings - expand the postal service, don t destroy it!

Stop the PRIVATIZATION - the postal services belong to the people!

Demand a WPA style 30 million Jobs program at union wages for all, regardless of immigration status

Jobs for Youth - NOT JAILS!

Support the postal workers' unions:

*******
If Post Offices close & Saturday mail delivery ends...
Who will suffer?

V People who need medicine delivered

V People without computers or internet

V People who need money orders

V People who ship packages to relatives In need


V People who need a P.O. box due to lack of safe or permanent housing

V People who will have difficulty traveling to the remaining offices
and standing in long lines

V Businesses where postal workers spend their pay

V Whole communities, when formerly well-paid unionized workers can no longer afford their mortgages (Have you seen Detroit since the auto plants closed?)

V Children and grandchildren who will lose a source of funding for college

V More than 200,000 postal workers faced with losing their jobs!

From the inner cities to country roads, the overall prosperity
and health of populations already struggling are at risk
if congress cuts the U.S. Postal Service.

Save Our Jobs & Services!

To endorse and join this campaign, email: Occupy4JobsBoston@gmail.com

TOUCH
106.1FM

Boston Metro Local 100 APWU 137 South St 4th fl Boston MA 02111 617-423-2798 Occupy 4 Jobs Network c/o USW L. 8751 25 Colgate Rd. Roslindale, MA 02131 617-524-3507 Minister Don Muhammad, Temple 11, Nation of Islam Boston City Councilors Charles Yancey & Tito Jackson; Boston City Councilors at Large Felix G. Arroyo & Ayanna Pressley. Charles demons, Gen Mgr, Touch106.1FM;Grove Hall NDC; Coalition for Equal Quality Education; Mass. AFL-CIO; Cntrl Mass AFL-CIO: USW Dist 4; Myles Calvey, Bus. Mgr./Fin Secy, IBEW 2222; Painters & Allied Trades DC35; Women's Fightback Network; SistaCipher Fanmi Lavalas Boston; Bishop Filipe Teixeira.OFSJC, Diocese of St Francis of Assisi, CCA; Dorotea Manuela, Exec Dir. New Mission School; Intl Action Center; Bail Out People Mvmt; Chelsea Uniting Against War (partial list) For info and to volunteer call International Action Center 617-522-6626 or email occupy4jobsboston@gmail.com

Sunday, December 18, 2011

From The “West Coast Port Shutdown” Website-This Is Class War, We Say No More!-An Open Letter from America's Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports

Click on the headline to link to the West Coast Port Shutdown website.

An Open Letter from America's Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports

Submitted by admin on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 10:05
Originally Posted At cleanandsafeports.org

We are the front-line workers who haul container rigs full of imported and exported goods to and from the docks and warehouses every day.

We have been elected by committees of our co-workers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and New Jersey to tell our collective story. We have accepted the honor to speak up for our brothers and sisters about our working conditions despite the risk of retaliation we face. One of us is a mother, the rest of us fathers. Between the five of us we have 11children and one more baby on the way. We have a combined 46 years of experience driving cargo from our shores for America’s stores.

We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. Thank you “99 Percenters” for hearing our call for justice. We are humbled and overwhelmed by recent attention. Normally we are invisible.

Today’s demonstrations will impact us. While we cannot officially speak for every worker who shares our occupation, we can use this opportunity to reveal what it’s like to walk a day in our shoes for the 110,000 of us in America whose job it is to be a port truck driver. It may be tempting for media to ask questions about whether we support a shutdown, but there are no easy answers. Instead, we ask you, are you willing to listen and learn why a one-word response is impossible?

We love being behind the wheel. We are proud of the work we do to keep America’s economy moving. But we feel humiliated when we receive paychecks that suggest we work part time at a fast-food counter. Especially when we work an average of 60 or more hours a week, away from our families.

There is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.

We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.

Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.

You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.

Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.

There are no restrooms for drivers. We keep empty bottles in our cabs. Plastic bags too. We feel like dogs. An Oakland driver was recently banned from the terminal because he was spied relieving himself behind a container. Neither the port, nor the terminal operators or anyone in the industry thinks it is their responsibility to provide humane and hygienic facilities for us. It is absolutely horrible for drivers who are women, who risk infection when they try to hold it until they can find a place to go.

The companies demand we cut corners to compete. It makes our roads less safe. When we try to blow the whistle about skipped inspections, faulty equipment, or falsified logs, then we are “starved out.” That means we are either fired outright, or more likely, we never get dispatched to haul a load again.

It may be difficult to comprehend the complex issues and nature of our employment. For us too. When businesses disguise workers like us as contractors, the Department of Labor calls it misclassification. We call it illegal. Those who profit from global trade and goods movement are getting away with it because everyone is doing it. One journalist took the time to talk to us this week and she explains it very well to outsiders. We hope you will read the enclosed article “How Goldman Sachs and Other Companies Exploit Port Truck Drivers.”

But the short answer to the question: Why are companies like SSA Marine, the Seattle-based global terminal operator that runs one of the West Coast’s major trucking carriers, Shippers’ Transport Express, doing this? Why would mega-rich Maersk, a huge Danish shipping and trucking conglomerate that wants to drill for more oil with Exxon Mobil in the Gulf Coast conduct business this way too?

To cheat on taxes, drive down business costs, and deny us the right to belong to a union, that’s why.

The typical arrangement works like this: Everything comes out of our pockets or is deducted from our paychecks. The truck or lease, fuel, insurance, registration, you name it. Our employers do not have to pay the costs of meeting emissions-compliant regulations; that is our financial burden to bear. Clean trucks cost about four to five times more than what we take home in a year. A few of us haul our company’s trucks for a tiny fraction of what the shippers pay per load instead of an hourly wage. They still call us independent owner-operators and give us a 1099 rather than a W-2.

We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America. Every year it literally goes from bad to worse to the unimaginable. We were ground zero for the government’s first major experiment into letting big business call the shots. Since it worked so well for the CEOs in transportation, why not the mortgage and banking industry too?

Even the few of us who are hired as legitimate employees are routinely denied our legal rights under this system. Just ask our co-workers who haul clothing brands like Guess?, Under Armour, and Ralph Lauren’s Polo. The carrier they work for in Los Angeles is called Toll Group and is headquartered in Australia. At the busiest time of the holiday shopping season, 26 drivers were axed after wearing Teamster T-shirts to work. They were protesting the lack of access to clean, indoor restrooms with running water. The company hired an anti-union consultant to intimidate the drivers. Down Under, the same company bargains with 12,000 of our counterparts in good faith.

Despite our great hardships, many of us cannot — or refuse to, as some of the most well-intentioned suggest — “just quit.” First, we want to work and do not have a safety net. Many of us are tied to one-sided leases. But more importantly, why should we have to leave? Truck driving is what we do, and we do it well.

We are the skilled, specially-licensed professionals who guarantee that Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart are all stocked with just-in-time delivery for consumers. Take a look at all the stuff in your house. The things you see advertised on TV. Chances are a port truck driver brought that special holiday gift to the store you bought it.

We would rather stick together and transform our industry from within. We deserve to be fairly rewarded and valued. That is why we have united to stage convoys, park our trucks, marched on the boss, and even shut down these ports.

It’s like our hero Dutch Prior, a Shipper’s/SSA Marine driver, told CBS Early Morning this month: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

The more underwater we are, the more our restlessness grows. We are being thoughtful about how best to organize ourselves and do what is needed to win dignity, respect, and justice.

Nowadays greedy corporations are treated as “people” while the politicians they bankroll cast union members who try to improve their workplaces as “thugs.”

But we believe in the power and potential behind a truly united 99%. We admire the strength and perseverance of the longshoremen. We are fighting like mad to overcome our exploitation, so please, stick by us long after December 12. Our friends in the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports created a pledge you can sign to support us here.

We drivers have a saying, “We may not have a union yet, but no one can stop us from acting like one.”

The brothers and sisters of the Teamsters have our backs. They help us make our voices heard. But we need your help too so we can achieve the day where we raise our fists and together declare: “No one could stop us from forming a union.”

Thank you.

In solidarity,

Leonardo Mejia
SSA Marine/Shippers Transport Express
Port of Long Beach
10-year driver

Yemane Berhane
Ports of Seattle & Tacoma
6-year port driver

Xiomara Perez
Toll Group
Port of Los Angeles
8-year driver

Abdul Khan
Port of Oakland
7-year port driver

Ramiro Gotay
Ports of New York & New Jersey
15-year port driver
..

From The “West Coast Port Shutdown” Website-This Is Class War, We Say No More!-Press Release: OCCUPY MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESS

Click on the headline to link to the West Coast Port Shutdown website.

Press Release: OCCUPY MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESS
Submitted by admin on Thu, 12/15/2011 - 18:17
For immediate release – December 15, 2011

OCCUPY MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESS IN COORDINATED “WALL STREET ON THE WATERFRONT” PORT SHUTDOWNS

RESPONDS TO OAKLAND CITY COUNCIL EMERGENCY RESOLUTION CALLING FOR GREATER REPRESSION

On Monday, December 12, in response to police attacks on Occupy camps across the nation, the Occupy Movement effectively shut down sea ports up and down the West Coast, including in Oakland, Portland, Seattle, and Longview, with partial shutdowns or support actions at Long Beach, San Diego, Hueneme (Ventura County), and Vancouver, B.C.. The “Wall Street on the Waterfront” campaign targeted the ports as sites of the corporate and financial power of the 1 %, and were particularly directed at the investment banking giant Goldman Sachs and grain exporter EGT, which has been in conflict with the ILWU/Longshore workers for refusing to hire union dockworker. The search from profits of these and other multinational corporations affect people's daily lives around the world, from determining the global flows of commodities and capital, to expropriating agricultural lands from indigenous peoples.

The coordinated shutdown, with support by Longshore workers, Teamsters, and independent truckers, demonstrates the continuing vitality and widespread appeal of the Occupy Movement.Support actions were held in numerous other cities. In Bellingham, WA protesters locked themselves to rail lines carrying Goldman Sachs goods. In Denver, CO, Salt Lake City, UT, and Albuquerque, NM, demonstrators blockaded Walmart distribution centers to protest its low wages and lack of adequate health care for workers. In New York, Occupy Wall Street protesters stormed financial institutions. Other support actions occurred in Houston, Tacoma, Coos Bay, Anchorage, Hawaii, Canada, Japan and elsewhere.

Despite concerted efforts to thwart the Oakland Port blockade by Mayor Jean Quan, the ILWU International leadership (which mounted an international media campaign) and the Port itself, which spent tens of thousands of dollars taking out full page newspaper ads, the Oakland Port blockade was a success. Teamsters did not go to work, and with few exceptions, Longshore workers and independent truckers did not cross the picket lines. A group of truck drivers parked their trucks and helped block a gate.

In dramatic contrast with the ILWU International leadership, rank and file workers have expressed extensive solidarity and support. For example, ILWU Local 21 President Dan Coffman from Longview, WA told a crowd of 10,000 in Oakland: “On behalf of Local 21, we want to thank the occupy movement for shedding light on the practices of the EGT and for the inspiration of our members."

In an “Open Letter from America's Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports” (http://westcoastportshutdown.org/content/open-letter-americas-truck-drivers-occupy-ports), port drivers wrote: “We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. ... Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. ... Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. ...We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. ... We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America.”

Port Of Oakland Was Shut Down For 24 Hours

After the arbitrator sent workers home, ending the morning shift, 5-10,000 protesters re- assembled in the afternoon and marched from two locations to the Port to picket the evening shift. Marine veteran Scott Olsen, recovering after Oakland Police shot him in the head with a tear gas canister during an Occupy protest in October, led the march, joined by members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Teamsters, the Feminist Block, and the Tactical Action Committee, among others. In response, Port workers cancelled the evening shift, and rescheduled it for 3:00 am.

As pledged in the event of police repression at any of the port actions (see
www.occupyoakland.org/2011/11/occupy-oakland-calls-for-total-west-coast-port-shutdown-on- 1212 ), several hundred protesters continued to picket at the Port gates until workers canceled the substitute shift and departed around 3:45 am.

The Port protests were peaceful, even as police in various cities rioted, caused injuries, and made arrests. For example, Seattle police used teargas. Houston police, hiding their names and badge numbers with tape, snatched protesters whom the fire department concealed under a giant inflatable tent while the police made arrests. Houston Police on horseback later re-attacked the crowd. In San Diego, police broke the picket line and violently arrested protestors. In Oakland, police beat a handful of protestors.

Proposed Resolution by Oakland City Council

On December 15, Oakland City Council members De La Fuente & Schaaf introduced an emergency resolution calling on Mayor Quan and the City Administrator to “use whatever lawful tools we have, including enforcement of all state laws and local municipal code regulations and requirements, to prevent future shut downs or disruptions of any port operations.”

“Threats of even greater repression by Oakland officials illustrates that they are more concerned with protecting business as usual for the one percent than addressing the concerns of the rest of us” said organizer Barucha Peller.

The divisive and repressive tactics of elected officials, global corporations and police goons will only strengthen our resolve to fight back with direct action, because we know that another world is possible.

From The “West Coast Port Shutdown” Website-This Is Class War, We Say No More!-Neighboring occupiers help Longview on December 12

Click on the headline to link to the West Coast Port Shutdown website.

Neighboring occupiers help Longview on December 12


Submitted by admin on Sat, 12/17/2011 - 09:35
Originally posted at D12 Action in Longview Washington


By Loretta Marie Long

On the morning of the West Coast Port Shutdown in Longview, Washington, not one longshoreman tried to cross a picket line filled with nearly 125 Occupy protesters. After ILWU International President Robert McEllrath wrote letters proclaiming the ILWU did not support the West Coast Port Shutdown, main-stream media described ill feelings between rank and file ILWU workers and Occupy members. Some news reports suggested that protesters might get roughed up or longshoremen might force their way through picket lines to get to work. But in Longview, Washington such fearful scenarios were only imaginary.

At around 7:30 am, a line of ILWU Local 21 workers drove past Weyerhaeusers’ log yard stacked high with Washington timber and headed toward the port terminal for their 8 am shift, more than likely curious if they would be able to make it to work or not. After driving under the Lewis and Clark Bridge and around the corner, the scene longshoremen discovered at the port gate undoubtedly warmed their hearts: close to 125 community and out-of-town protesters, bundled in scarves, hats and hoodies against the bitter cold, danced and marched clockwise around the port terminal entry. The protesters' voices bounced off the bridge foundation as they echoed chants magnified through a bullhorn.“Occupy. . . Shut it Down. . . Longview is a Union Town” followed by “Union rights are under attack. . . What do we do? . . . Stand up. . . Fight back.”

In the circle, protesters ranging in age from teenagers to senior citizens could be seen next to men wearing plaid or denim jackets with union letters on the back. Members of both labor and Occupy movements were marching shoulder to shoulder.

For the last six months, longshore workers had manned twenty-four hour picket tents outside Export Grain Terminal’s chain link fence, so they looked happy to see so many enthusiastic supporters. In response to the activists who were trying to shut down their port for the day, longshoremen honked and waved or quietly headed back to the union hall to wait for arbitrators to facilitate an agreement between the Port of Longview, ILWU, and The Pacific Maritime Association, ILWU’s employer for all of the shipping companies. At around 9 am, when a decision was made to shut down the Port of Longview because the protest had become “a health and safety hazard,” instead of going home, more than twenty port workers and their family members came back to watch the protest.

Even though longshore workers couldn’t represent their union in the protest, it was very clear occupiers were there partly to support ILWU workers in their fight against union-busting by EGT, a multi-national grain transport company that recently built a 200-million-dollar grain terminal on property leased to them by the Port of Longview. According to nwLaborPress and The Stand, in exchange for substandard wharfage and docking fees and substandard tax rates, EGT promised 200 jobs to local construction workers and 50 permanent jobs for longshore workers after the terminal was built. Instead of keeping their promises, however, project managers brought in out-of state and foreign workers to construct the terminal and paid laborers substandard wages. After the terminal was built, EGT representatives left negotiations with longshore workers and hired Operating Engineers Local 701 to do ILWU Local 21’s work.

Bill Proctor, a Longshore Union (ILWU) retiree, told Labor Notes in September “If that facility is allowed to go non-ILWU, other facilities will be tempted to follow suit. And the grain terminals on the coast are all going into contract bargaining next month.”

Vigorous, persistent protests fighting EGT’s labor violations brought heavy fines to ILWU. And now longshoremen aren't allowed to protest the third-party scab workers EGT hired because all 50,000 longshore workers on the West Coast have an injunction against them. They are not to interfere in any way with grain transport by blocking trains or workers. They are only allowed up to sixteen pickets outside EGT’s gates at any one time.

Kim Swart said that she showed up at the protest because her father, ILWU retiree Don Talbot, had worked on the docks driving crane since Swart was a young child. “I’m here trying to keep unions going, here to make sure we still have a middle class,” she said. “Being a longshoreman isn’t just a job—everyone’s family. We’re close-knit. We all jump in and fight for each other when we need to.” She said that unions are important to the entire community. “The mills and other businesses wouldn’t get the benefits they get if they didn’t have to keep up with the longshoremen’s wages and benefits.” She sat just to the side of the circling protesters holding a sign reading “Evil Global Takeover.”

Earlier that morning at 6:30 am, before the march started, a local activist and retired high-school history teacher stood on the frost-bitten sidewalk at the corner of Longview’s Industrial Way and Fifteenth Avenue. Larry Wagle whooped and yelled as he banged a three-foot wide metal sign reading “Help The Longshoremen” in large black letters. Wagle’s curly, thick white hair blew in the wind each time a semi truck drove by only a few feet away. He said he’s been participating in protests for working people since 1967 when he began standing up and organizing farm workers. These days, in Longview, Wagle can often be seen fighting corporate greed outside Walmart parking lots with huge signs and a bullhorn.

Next to Wagle, fifteen or twenty other protesters also carried signs with messages ranging from “It’s BeGGining to look a lot like Oligarchy” lit up by four Christmas lights to “Corporations are not people,” and “People are too big to fail!”

Bernadette O'Brien, a Longview resident who works with developmentally disabled adults in Columbia County, said she wasn’t at all fearful of attending the protest. “In a small town, cops are not the enemy. They’re part of the community. The only thing to be afraid of is frostbite!” She said she wasn’t a member of a union but she was attending the protest because funding for the most vulnerable citizens—the disabled, the elderly, those with mental health problems—is being severely cut. “I’m here because the rich guys won’t pay their fair share of taxes,” she said.

Zach, a young man wearing a bandana across his face, who didn't want to reveal his last name, had been living in Portland’s Occupy encampment for several months before they were evicted. In the pre-dawn light, he was serving free steaming coffee to the protesters. “Did you read in the paper that during the Portland eviction they were serving free champagne? That was us: Rumorz coffee.” He said that living with Occupy Portland was the most exciting community-building experience he’d ever lived through. “But it’s been a lot more difficult since the eviction because cops trashed all of our camping gear. I’ve been having to couch surf.” He came home to Longview for the December 12 event, he said, because “Something was actually happening in Longview! I couldn’t miss it.”

“I’m here to show support for longshoremen who are fighting EGT’s union busting and port truckers who are trying to unionize” said Scott Gibson, President of Laborers 483, a union that represents Portland Oregon’s municipal employees. He’d been up since 4:30 am and taken the bus from a Vancouver Park and Ride.

Wyatt McMinn, Vice President of Portland’s Painters and Tapers Local 10, said he was really excited to be on the bus with the protesters who had come up from Portland “Our local is in total solidarity with what is going on in Longview,” he said. “When the rich guys come after us, we have to show them we have the power to shut them down.”

While a dozen or so protestors stood on the street corner, more than a hundred protesters stood in the darkened gravel parking lot behind Ozzie’s Car and RV Wash. In the shadows, more protesters climbed off a yellow school bus to huddle around organizers and receive instructions while waiting for the march to begin.

Paul Nipper, one of the organizers for Longview’s D-12 action, had intentionally given local news media vague information hoping to prevent the Cowlitz County Sheriff from needlessly calling in extra riot police officers from Seattle. Occupy organizers feared an over-reaction by police because earlier this year, on September 7th , when nearly 400 ILWU members and supporters stood on railroad tracks trying to stop a train loaded with grain from reaching EGT’s terminal, 50 riot police were called in. According to David Groves, writing for The Stand, ILWU International President Robert McEllrath had been arrested, “escalating tensions between protesters and officers. In the confrontation that ensued, police beat protesters away with clubs and pepper spray. “

According to court documents titled “Recall of Mark Nelson Response from ILWU International and Local 21," in the months following the September 7th incident, police officers followed and harassed local longshore workers. In one incident, a police officer yanked a longshoreman from his car, by the hair, “without asking him to get out of his car even though his charge was 2nd degree trespassing and the officer was not in danger.” Another longshoreman was thrown to the ground in front of his child’s daycare center.

In another incident listed in the response, a secretary for ILWU Local 21 reported having police spotlights shined into her bedroom window for several hours one night and her door busted down the next morning. A minister and longshore worker for ILWU 92 was arrested in front of all of his children while sitting down to breakfast. During another protest, where nine women from the ILWU Women’s Auxiliary sat down on railroad tracks to prevent a train carrying grain from reaching EGT, a police officer twisted the arm of a longshore workers’ mother so hard that he damaged her rotator cuff. A video circulated via Facebook shows longshoremen, who had been peacefully standing on the sidelines, try to stop the police officers from brutalizing their wives and mothers. In the video, police officers throw both longshoremen to the ground, smashing their faces into gravel. While kneeling into the back of one longshoreman’s knee, a police officer aggressively bends it. Even after the men are detained, one police officer can be seen shaking a canister of pepper spray before forcibly spraying the oil-based chemical into the eyes of one of the longshore workers.

Even though police stopped harassing local longshore workers after the recall effort was started, the videos of police brutality and the verbal reports of police officers’ behavior had many Occupy Longview protesters worried about the safety of the hundreds of protesters expected to arrive in Longview from Astoria, Portland, Vancouver and Bellingham. Occupy Longview organizers feared state police officers brought in from larger cities might be more likely to escalate a peaceful protest into a day filled with fear and violence.

After watching news reports showing confrontations between Occupy protesters and police across the country, many protesters marching around the Port of Longview terminal entry voiced surprise at seeing only one police car nearby. A uniformed police officer waited patiently in the gravel lot across the street from the terminal entrance. Most occupiers from Portland had seen rows of riot police at their recent evictions so the trust shown to activists with minimal policing was heartening.

“I’m happy today not to see where my kids’ education money gets needlessly spent,” Nipper said. “I’m happy not to see the riot gear, the weapons.”

Both Paul Nipper and his wife Amanda seemed thrilled by the successful and very peaceful protest. Amanda Nipper had been working tirelessly for the last three weeks while trying to help organize the protest. “It was like a second job,” she said. In addition to writing press releases, meeting minutes, and handouts for the protest, over the last week she’d been participating in two-hour conference calls every other day with Occupy organizers up and down the West Coast. At first, both organizers were worried they might not have enough people to pull off an effective protest. Since the Occupy Longview movement is just getting started, the twenty enthusiastic members showing up at meetings didn't seem like enough people. “We put out a battle call for help from neighboring Occupies and everyone joined forces,” she said, adding, “I’m amazed. I’m proud of every single person that’s standing out here.”

“I’ve been waiting for this for twenty years,” said Dan Smith, a retired fifth-grade teacher who has devoted his life to social activism.

Monday, November 28, 2011

From The "Socialist Alternative" Website-"75th Anniversary of 1936 Auto Sit Down Strikes — When Workers Shut Down GM"

75th Anniversary of 1936 Auto Sit Down Strikes — When Workers Shut Down GM

Jul 25, 2011
By John Gallup, Seattle, WA

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the 44-day GM sit-down strike. This organized the largest automaker in the world and established the United Auto Workers (UAW) as one of the most powerful unions in the U.S. The impressive gains they won in the 1930s led auto jobs to be seen as the symbol of good union jobs with high wages and solid benefits.

With mass unemployment returning, remembering how the UAW was originally built can help workers understand how they can organize against the bosses’ attacks and win today.


The Depression
Workers in the early 1930s faced brutal conditions. Union membership had been cut in half since 1920 as employers laid-off tens of thousands of workers and slashed the wages of those lucky enough to keep their jobs by 65%. Mass production workers (auto, steel, textiles, etc.) worked long hours for poverty wages with no benefits, had no control over their working conditions, and had no union to fight for their interests.


If a worker stuck his neck out to challenge an employer, he could be fired at will and easily replaced from the army of 16 million unemployed workers.


Workers not only had to fight against the bosses’ dictatorship in the factory, but they also had to organize around the existing union leaders. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was the only labor federation at the time. Their failed policy of craft unionism divided workers into multiple unions based on job classification, each with a separate contract with the employer even if they worked side by side on the same assembly line.


The AFL was proving unable to defend the gains of the past let alone organize new workers. Craft unionism was a strategy of “organizing for permanent disorganization” as workers were conditioned to look after their own sectional interests, and locals selfishly competed over dues-paying members.


Despite the obstacles, rank and file workers in the auto plants were fighting back. At their head were Communists, Socialists, and other class-conscious militants who understood that the power of the workers in the auto plants lay in their ability to organize as a class. They fought for industrial unions where all workers in a factory were organized side by side into the same union regardless of job classification.


In many auto plants the rank and file organized new federated locals as a way to maneuver around the craft unions. These were industrially organized locals that presented their existence to the AFL as an accomplished fact, and affiliated directly to the federation’s executive to prevent being split up among rival craft unions. The AFL leadership was willing to recognize the federated locals for a time, though they saw them primarily as holding tanks of workers to be divided later.


Fighting Back
As the initial shock of the Depression wore off, auto workers began to reverse the tide. The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the passage of the National Recovery Act in 1933, with its article 7a supposedly giving workers the right to organize, boosted their struggle. While article 7a didn’t actually give workers anything they hadn’t had before, it had a substantial psychological effect that increased workers’ confidence, and a wave of strikes spread across the nation’s auto plants.


Despite the courageous efforts of the auto workers, most of these strikes ended in defeat. The courts issued employer-friendly injunctions against pickets set up by strikers, while the police and National Guard escorted scabs into the factories to keep the bosses’ profits flowing. Without stopping the scabs, the auto workers had no leverage.


But in 1934, auto workers in Toledo scored a victory in the class struggle that inspired workers nationwide.


The Toledo workers were led by socialists who defied the courts and stood up to the police and National Guard. They were determined to stop scabbing even if they had to break the law and fight the state to do it. Organizations of the unemployed were brought onto the side of the union and strengthened picket lines in defiance of court injunctions. By relying on their own organized strength, and though bitter struggle, they organized 19 auto plants in a series of strike victories.


The Struggle for the UAW
At the same time, worker activists across the country were agitating for an international auto union. This movement took shape around a series of rank and file conferences where delegates from auto plants nationwide gathered. The resolutions coming out of these conferences called for an international union along industrial lines, democratically controlled by the rank and file, as well as a detailed plan for a general strike of workers in the auto industry.


Finally under pressure from below, the AFL called the founding convention of the UAW in August 1935.


The position of rank and file activists in the UAW was strengthened when splits opened up in the AFL leadership over the question of industrial vs. craft unionism, and the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) was formed.


By this time the character of auto locals across the country had drastically changed from just a few years before. These locals had been tempered in the heat of brutal industrial battles, and more militant figures had been pushed into leadership positions. The locals that had survived the last period were those that had overcome every obstacle in their path including ruthless bosses, company spies, employer-friendly courts and police, and back-stabbing politicians and union bureaucrats.


By the end of 1935 auto locals were notching up victories one after another. Workers at a plant would democratically work out a series of demands and elect a strike committee representing the entire factory. They would present their demands to the bosses with a deadline, and if the demands weren’t met, they struck with determination and militancy. Many victories were won in this manner.


In May 1936 the UAW held its second convention. Democratically elected leaders replaced the old guard bureaucrats, and the convention adopted a progressive platform including a call for a national labor party and no discrimination against women, blacks, or communists.


A month later the UAW joined the new industrial union federation, the CIO, and was the most democratic, rank and file-controlled union in the country. Auto workers were ready to take on the industry giants, and GM was their first target. They wasted no time.


Sit-Down!
In 1936 workers developed a powerful new tactic in their battles against the bosses: the sit-down strike. Instead of massing pickets outside factories and fighting to keep scabs out, sit-downers occupied the plant itself, defended it like a fortress, and made certain the bosses wouldn’t make a dime until their demands were met. The tactic proved decisive.


In November 1936 workers at Fisher #1 in Flint, Michigan spontaneously sat down over speedups. Next Fisher Body workers in Atlanta and Kansas City sat down to defend co-workers who were fired for wearing union buttons. In December, fed up with stalling, 7,000 workers at Cleveland’s Fisher Body struck with 1,000 sitting down in the plant. They demanded a national contract with GM.


In the following days the sit-down spread to Fisher #1 and #2 in Flint after workers saw crucial dies being transferred out of the plants as the bosses tried to lessen the impact a strike would have. Within three weeks 15 other GM plants were shut down. These strikes were completely rank and file led with no pre-approval from the UAW leadership.


In January, the UAW officially recognized the strike and presented 8 demands to GM including union recognition with a closed shop (meaning all workers at the factory would be in the union), a 30-hour work week and 6-hour day, union control of production line rates, and the reinstatement of all fired unionists.


GM’s counter attack began with court injunctions ordering strikers out of the plants, which the strikers defied. Next came attempts to freeze and starve out the strikers by turning off the heat to the plants (this was Flint in January) and forming barricades through which food could not be passed.


But women organized into the Women’s Emergency Brigade and other workers on the outside successfully broke through police lines bringing food to the sit-downers. The police tried to retake the plants with teargas and guns but were repelled as workers hurled heavy bolts at them and blasted them with fire hoses.


As the strike dragged on, pressure was mounting on the strikers. New injunctions were issued against the sit-downers, and FDR openly talked about calling in the National Guard to break the strike.


Decisive action needed to be taken, so the strike organizers decided to spread the battle and attempt to occupy Chevy #4 which was a key engine producer for GM. The plan was carried out with military precision which involved a decoy occupation of Chevy #9 and even the deception of most of the strike committee to foil company spies!


The plan was an absolute success and GM folded, signing a contract with the UAW on February 11 giving them full recognition and reinstating all fired unionists. The victory ignited an explosion of sit-downs across many trades, with all workers looking to the UAW and the Flint sit-downers for assistance and inspiration. This led to a massive surge in unionization in industry after industry, as workers won real improvements in wages and working conditions.


The UAW conquered the seemingly invincible GM by showing the bosses who really has the power in society, the working class. By bringing the capitalists’ profits to a halt and relying on their own organized strength to stand up to all the forces allied against them, auto workers laid down a tradition of fighting unionism and workers’ power that we need to draw on today.

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Saturday, May 07, 2011

From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- All Labor Must Defend ILWU Local 10 (California)!-Union Attacked for Solidarity with Public Workers

Workers Vanguard No. 979
29 April 2011

Union Attacked for Solidarity with Public Workers

All Labor Must Defend ILWU Local 10!

Reliance on the Democrats: Recipe for Defeat

In their call for nationwide protests on April 4, the AFL-CIO tops said the day would be one of “rising up to support workers in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states.” But the only genuine labor action was taken by members of Bay Area Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), who overwhelmingly stayed away from work that day. The port of Oakland was shut down for 24 hours.

Now the shipping companies represented by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) are gunning for the union with a lawsuit against Local 10 and its president, Richard Mead, demanding that the ILWU foot the bill for “damages sustained” by the PMA as a result of the port shutdown. Although no price is named, in a similar suit East Coast shipping companies are demanding that the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) pay $5 million for a two-day shutdown of the ports in New York and New Jersey last September in response to a union-busting attack on ILA jobs. According to the head of the PMA, the employers also want the courts to enforce an injunction against further work stoppages.

Local 10 longshore workers stood up against the assault on public workers unions. Now all of labor must stand up for Local 10! Stop the PMA’s union-busting attack!

That Local 10 members gave up a day’s pay in solidarity with embattled public workers unions is a real statement of the deeply felt anger and desire to fight at the base of the unions. This was also witnessed in the tens of thousands of workers who mobilized in protest outside the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, this winter. But the labor misleaders have done their level best to contain any militancy and redirect it back into support for the Democratic Party. This was the intended purpose of the April 4 “We Are One” rallies, as was baldly stated a week later by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka in a speech to the National Women’s Democratic Club in Washington, D.C. Declaring that “the energy of working people is infectious and their solidarity and commitment are inspiring,” Trumka advised that “if Democrats are to take back the House in 2012, and to hold on to the White House and the Senate, it will be because they succeed in riding this wave.”

The price of the bureaucrats’ subordination of the unions to the political fortunes of the Democratic Party, which no less than the Republicans represents the interests of the capitalist class enemy, can be counted in busted unions, millions of unemployed and the living hell that is life for the ghetto and barrio poor and countless others who have been written off by a system based on the exploitation of labor. So beholden are the labor bureaucrats to the capitalist order that even the notion that there is a working class in this country has been deep-sixed, reflected in the pitch at the April 4 protests to “reclaim the middle class.” By the same token, the union misleaders were desperate to avoid the remotest hint of working-class struggle against the one-sided class war by the capitalist exploiters and their state.

At the “We Are One” rallies in Oakland and San Francisco, called by the Alameda and SF Labor Councils, the organizers would not even allow a speaker from ILWU Local 10, the only union whose members took any kind of actual labor action! There was no such censorship of a representative of the strikebreaking cops. One of the few speakers at the opening rally for the thousands-strong SF protest was the president of the Police Officers Association of San Francisco, who used the occasion to declare: “I am a member of labor just like you are.” Far from being “union brothers,” the cops are the armed thugs of the capitalist state whose job is to smash labor struggle. This would readily be seen if there were any real fight against the union-busting assault on public workers, just as it was seen when the SF police killed two workers in the 1934 longshore strike. The “bloody Thursday” assault by the cops was the spark for the citywide general strike that laid the basis for founding the ILWU.

The only speaker who even mentioned that Local 10 members had not worked on April 4 was the secretary-treasurer of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, Stephanie Bloomingdale. But this was not to promote any such action by others, much less to address the crying need to mobilize the power of labor in strike action to fight the assault on public workers unions. On the contrary. Bloomingdale hailed the Wisconsin judge who put a temporary stay on the implementation of the state’s union-busting bill for not letting Republican governor Scott Walker “get away” with it. But Walker did get away with it, as did the Ohio legislature, which passed an even more draconian anti-union law in the immediate aftermath.

In response to the PMA’s lawsuit against Local 10, the San Francisco Labor Council passed a resolution calling for a “mass mobilization of all Bay Area Labor Councils and the California AFL-CIO” on April 25 at PMA headquarters. But the Labor Council officials did little to nothing to mobilize their membership for this protest, which drew about 150 people. Fine words will not stop the union-busters!

The capitalist rulers have been winning the war against labor because the power of the working class has been shackled by the class-collaborationist policies of the trade-union leadership. Labor’s weapons are inherent in its collective organization—strike action, mass pickets, plant occupations, hot-cargoing of scab goods, etc. The capitalists’ arsenal is the state—the courts, cops and military. The 1934 SF general strike, and mass strikes in Toledo and Minneapolis the same year, were pitched battles between workers and cops and other strikebreakers. All of them were led by reds. The 1934 Minneapolis strikes, which forged the Teamsters as a powerful industrial union, were led by supporters of the Trotskyist Communist League of America. James P. Cannon, the founding leader of American Trotskyism, underlined the political program that lay behind this victory:

“The modern labor movement must be politically directed because it is confronted by the government at every turn. Our people were prepared for that since they were political people, inspired by political conceptions. The policy of the class struggle guided our comrades; they couldn’t be deceived and outmaneuvered, as so many strike leaders of that period were, by this mechanism of sabotage and destruction known as the National Labor Board and all its auxiliary setups. They put no reliance whatever in Roosevelt’s Labor Board; they weren’t fooled by any idea that Roosevelt, the liberal ‘friend of labor’ president, was going to help the truck drivers in Minneapolis.…

“Our people didn’t believe in anybody or anything but the policy of the class struggle and the ability of the workers to prevail by their mass strength and solidarity.”

—James P. Cannon, The History of American Trotskyism (1944)

If the unions are to wage the battles necessary for their own defense and in the interests of all the oppressed, they must be mobilized in opposition to the capitalist state and independently of all of the political parties of the class enemy—Democrats, Republicans and Greens. That means a political struggle to get rid of the sellouts sitting on top of the unions 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. This is not simply a matter of militancy but, as Cannon pointed out, a question of political program. What is needed is a leadership that will arm the workers with an understanding both of their social power and their historic interests to free all of humanity from the exploitation, all-sided misery and war inherent to a system based on production for profit. Forging such a leadership is in turn an integral part of the fight for a multiracial revolutionary workers party whose aim is no less than doing away with the entire system of capitalist wage slavery through socialist revolution.

“Progressive” Labor Tops: Different Talk, Same Walk

In an interview on KPFA radio the day after the April 4 protests, ILWU Local 10 executive board member Clarence Thomas said that “one of the reasons” no Local 10 member was allowed to speak “is because the Democratic Party is not in favor of workers taking independent action.” True enough. But when asked if he was opposed to the unions continuing to pour millions into backing the Democrats and funding Obama’s re-election campaign, Thomas responded that the unions should support only those Democrats who would be “accountable” to the working class. In short, behind all the seemingly radical rhetoric that has historically been a trademark of the “progressive” labor tops in Local 10 is the same old shell game of peddling the Democrats as a party that can be made to serve the interests of the working class and the oppressed if, in Thomas’ words, their feet are “held to the fire.”

Last year, the Local 10 leadership pulled out all the stops to mobilize the ranks for the election of Democrat Jean Quan as mayor of Oakland. Boosted as a “friend of labor,” Quan was the headline speaker at the Oakland April 4 rally. Denouncing Wisconsin governor Walker for stripping public workers unions of the right to bargain for their members, Quan contrasted the good offices of her administration, declaring: “We will have layoffs but they will come as part of collective bargaining.” It would be hard to find a more chemically pure expression of the role played by the Democratic Party. The Republicans revel in taking out the knife to slaughter the unions. The Democrats hand the knife to the union bureaucrats to slash the wages and benefits of their members in the name of “preserving collective bargaining.”

That’s exactly what the union leaders following the Democrats, who had already agreed to such givebacks, were willing to do in Wisconsin. In California, the bureaucrats promote Democratic governor Jerry Brown, who has axed millions from social programs for the poor, as a man they can do business with.

But Quan’s appeal for the unions to sacrifice more jobs did not go down well with much of the crowd at the Oakland rally. She was drowned out in a chorus of booing, a response aptly described by one reporter as reflecting “a schism between the labor leaders who invited Quan to headline their rally and rank-and-file workers impatient with years of government cut-backs” (Bay Citizen, 4 April). It is precisely such burgeoning anger that the labor tops are working overtime to head off.

At the same time, calls for a “general strike” have been coming from left-talking bureaucrats like Ken Riley, president of ILA Local 1422 in Charleston, South Carolina. Heading into an “Emergency Labor Meeting” held in Cleveland on March 4-5, which was called to “explore together what we can do to mount a more militant and robust fight-back campaign to defend the interests of working people,” Riley said, “I don’t see any other way than a general workers strike.” But there was no call for any such action coming out of this meeting, which drew some 100 of the more radical-sounding and even “socialist” labor fakers and their hangers-on. Rather, the best they could choke out was that labor “must go to the streets,” meekly adding that “where possible” the participants would promote “industrial actions” on April 4.

Evidently, they did not find it “possible.” Instead, the April 4 protests are being portrayed as helping build “momentum” toward a general strike. This is simply to provide some militant-sounding cover for a program these labor fakers share in common with the top AFL-CIO officialdom: reliance on the capitalist state. The “perspectives” approved by those attending the Cleveland meeting advise: “There is plenty of money available without demanding givebacks from public employees, but this requires changing our nation’s priorities to raise taxes on the rich, redirect war dollars to meet human needs, and more—all demands that we must place on the federal government.” Far from building momentum for any kind of real labor action, much less a general strike, such appeals serve merely to dissipate and divert the workers’ anger into the illusion that the government can be pressured into serving their needs.

A central chant at both the SF and Oakland rallies was “tax the rich!” The banks, corporations and other capitalist enterprises are sitting on mountains of cash, the ill-gotten gains of a system based on the exploitation of labor for the profits of the few. But the working class is not going to get its hands on this money by appeals to the federal government, whose purpose is not to “meet human needs” but to defend and increase the profitability of American imperialism.

Capitalist governments might temporarily increase tax rates for the rich to meet the needs of the ruling class as a whole, such as gearing up for war or bailing out their economies at times of crisis. And in the face of class or other social struggle, the rulers may shell out some money to buy social peace. But once such peace is purchased, the benefits gained through struggle come under attack, and all the more so in times of economic crisis like today. What they take out of the hides of the working class and oppressed at home they invest in waging war against the workers and oppressed abroad to expand their spheres of exploitation and their domination around the globe. These “priorities” cannot and will not change short of getting rid of the profit system in which they are rooted.

For the workers to reclaim the wealth that is the product of their labor, they have to break the power of the bourgeoisie and its state. That means fighting for a workers government that will expropriate the expropriators and put the wealth of this society to serving the needs of society under a planned socialist economy.

Bureaucrats Feeling the Heat

It’s not just left-talking labor bureaucrats who are mouthing the words “general strike.” In his column in the March issue of the ILWU’s Dispatcher, the union’s International president, Robert McEllrath, wrote: “Holding a rally is usually the first thing we think of. It’s good to feel pumped-up for a few hours or even a few days, but they’re soon over and then people ask: ‘now what do we do?’ If the answer is, ‘hold more rallies,’ then maybe we need to think harder, because our goal has to be about winning public support, and if rallies don’t help us accomplish that goal, maybe we need to be doing other things such as a general strike across the United States with support from all unions and labor.” This is an extraordinary, indeed unheard-of, statement coming from an official in the upper echelons of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, for whom the very mention of working-class struggle is to be avoided like the plague. While it lacks credibility, it is a measure of the desperation of at least some of the union misleaders as they feel heat from the ranks.

The industrial unions have been ravaged, with the rate of unionization in the private sector now below 7 percent. Public workers are now the majority of union members in the country, and the laws being brought down against them challenge their survival. Asking “Will we be able to win over workers—many who once belonged to unions—but have since seen their pay, benefits, and job security go down?” McEllrath argues: “The stakes in this fight couldn’t be higher, as it may determine whether the labor movement continues to shrink or survives long enough to organize and grow in the future.”

While the ILWU holds real social power in its hands, the union itself is an increasingly isolated bastion of labor organization in a sea of unorganized workers on the docks and the inland warehouses. The union leadership has done little to nothing to organize these workers.

Standing amid the wreckage that their sellout policies have produced over the past 30 years and more, McEllrath is expressing the bureaucrats’ concern for their own survival, which is, after all, dependent on having dues-paying members. To preserve their status, it is possible that they could be moved to take some kind of strike action. But that would not change their fundamental loyalty to the capitalist system, particularly as represented by the Democratic Party, which includes the labor officials among its key components. Following his musing over a general strike, McEllrath makes clear its purpose, arguing that “if we want more politicians to stand with us, then we’ll need to rally a lot more troops to our side.”

For a Multiracial Revolutionary Workers Party!

The April 4 protests were called in conjunction with the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, who was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was supporting a strike by black sanitation workers. The photos of these black workers with picket signs reading “I Am a Man” are a searing statement of the integral link between the struggles for labor rights and black rights. But while much was made at the protests of King’s dedication to labor’s cause, the truth is that King was a spokesman for reliance on the capitalist government, seeing the courts and the Democratic Party as the vehicles for legal reform of the racist status quo.

The myth that black people could achieve equality within the confines of racist American capitalism was ripped apart when the civil rights movement “came North.” Here the forcible segregation of blacks in the ghettos was not a matter of a legal code but was and is rooted in the very foundation of capitalist rule in America. When the black masses in the Northern ghettos entered the struggle—fighting for real equality, for jobs, for decent housing and schools—the role of King and others in the liberal leadership of the civil rights movement was one of fearful containment. Thus, King supported the troops sent in to brutally suppress ghetto upheavals in the 1960s.

With the deindustrialization of large swaths of the U.S., the ghetto poor who once supplied a “reserve army of labor” to be employed when the bosses needed them have been written off as a “surplus population” by the capitalist rulers, their labor and very lives no longer seen as necessary for the production of profit. But black workers remain a militant backbone of organized labor—from the ILWU to the public workers unions—and are critical to linking the power of the working class to the simmering anger of the ghettos. If the unions are to fight for their very existence, they must take up the defense of the ghetto and barrio poor by fighting for jobs, quality housing, education, health care and more, and must as well defend the rights of immigrants, an increasingly important component of the working class. Organizing the unorganized is a life-and-death question for labor everywhere. Crucially it means a fight to break the open shop South, directly posing the need for labor to combat anti-black racism and anti-immigrant bigotry.

Many workers no longer buy the lie peddled by the trade-union bureaucracy and its “socialist” water boys that the election of Barack Obama would bring “change” they could “believe in.” The massive protests in Wisconsin inspired many to believe that finally there might be some fightback against the war on their unions, their families and their livelihoods. The leaden hands of the labor bureaucracy are trying to drown any such impulse. It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a real explosive potential here. But to transform that potential into some successful class struggle poses the question of leadership. The labor misleaders must be ousted and replaced with workers’ leaders who will link the fight to defend the unions to building a multiracial revolutionary workers party. This is the necessary instrument to lead the struggle to free the working class and the oppressed from the chains of exploitation, poverty and imperialist war.