Following is based on a talk
given in a panel titled “Building a new workers’ movement: Organized labor and
the challenges ahead” at the Nov. 13-14, 2010, National Conference on
Socialism, sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Nov.
13 is the anniversary of Karen Silkwood’s death, at age 28. She worked in and
was a union activist at the Kerr McGee nuclear plant. On this day in 1974, she
was on her way to see a reporter to drop off key information exposing safety
problems at the plant. She was killed in a highly suspicious car accident.
Today,
there is another struggle against another highly profitable nuclear multinational—Honeywell.
Several hundred workers have been locked out since June at the plant in
southern Illinois. They have fought scabs and guards and injunctions over the
last five months as the company demands reductions in pensions, massive
contracting out and more.
The
day after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowed Honeywell to resume
production with scabs, there was a hydrogen explosion at this is
uranium-processing plant. This is a dangerous job, as Karen Silkwood knew.
The
CEO not only wants to cut their pensions, but he is also on the U.S. Commission
that just proposed raising the retirement age.
A
few hundred miles away from the Honeywell plant, the Olin Corporation in Alton,
Ill., just announced that they were closing their bullet manufacturing plant
and moving to Mississippi because the union would not accept concessions. One
thousand people will lose their jobs.
These
conditions characterize the environment a small group of women at a mental
health facility faced when they decided to join a union and then later to
strike. They work in a rural, totally reactionary mid-Illinois area.
When
management cut their wages and benefits, they came to AFSCME asking to form a
union. They won the election and they bargained for 18 months. Despite demonstrations
and other creative actions, they couldn’t get anywhere. So they went on strike
for a year. Moments before the one-year anniversary, we marched into the
company, scaring the scabs and shaking management.
This
was a tactic to block decertification since after a year of being on strike, an
election can be held on whether to keep the union. The courts have ruled that
union strikers can be excluded from the vote. This is only one of countless
legal obstacles faced by these strikers and labor in general.
After
being on strike for one year, the workers were locked out for over one more
year. Think about being on the picket line every day for over two years,
managing life at home with small strike benefits from the union, the stress in
relationships, the pain from knowing that children needs can’t be met, that
medical care has to be postponed.
These
women were raised to be submissive to their husbands (many of whom were against
the strike at various points) and submissive to authority. None had before been
on a protest or picket line. None had spoken at large rallies. But through this
they found their voice and spoke at rallies, faced off police and scabs,
maintained solidarity, learned about labor history, began to learn about
socialism and changed positions on issues like lesbian and gay rights. This
school of class warfare transformed them.
In
the end, their persistence led to the clearest victory in one of the longest
strikes and lockouts in a very long time. They won on every issue that drove
them to organize and later to strike.
Across
the board—everywhere—there are demands for concessions. There is also a desire
for struggle as represented in a small way by this small group of workers.
No
doubt you have heard about the massive furloughs and layoffs in California and
New York, and you’ve heard about the concessions in Massachusetts, New Jersey,
Ohio and Rhode Island.
Certainly
every union member affected by these cuts wants to struggle against them.
Unfortunately, many unions have not risen to challenge, but some unions have
resisted the onslaught.
In
Illinois, AFSCME organized several demonstrations of 5,000 each to win contract
advances for state workers.It then played the key organizational role in a
coalition demonstration of 15,000 in April.
On
the local level, there isn’t a week that goes by when cities and counties
aren’t demanding pay cuts and layoffs—which also involve cuts in vital
services.
The
dynamics of the current struggle are important to understand for the strategy
and tactics of union organizers and the PSL.
Only
about 7 percent of private-sector workers are in unions—the lowest number since
1900.
In
the public sector, union membership grew in 2009 to over 37 percent. There are
now more pubic-sector than private-sector workers in unions.
Big
business is targeting the public sector—attacking pensions, health insurance,
wages and even the right to have a contract. This is part of a worldwide trend.
The
attacks against the public sector are occurring everywhere but especially in
the states where the percentage of union membership is the greatest and the
level of wages and benefits the highest.
Privatization
is being pushed as a union-busting tactic. Use of prison labor is on the rise.
Appeals for volunteers to run parks and libraries and to serve as school
crossing guards are increasing.
The
right to even have a union is still denied to many public-sector workers, as in
Virginia and North Carolina. Twelve states allow no collective bargaining in
the public sector.
Today,
only 26 states have collective bargaining laws that allow all public workers to
organize a union—24 do not.
Big
business is targeting public-sector workers and their unions in its attempt to
crush the last vestige of any rights—part of its drive to lower wages and benefits
for all.
Just
this week, we had an action at a county board that forced them to back off of a
budget that would lay off several people. We did it by reaching out to the
community.
I
raise that only because these cuts are everywhere and they present opportunities
for the Party for Socialism and Liberation to intervene in the struggle—both as
workers who are affected, where that is possible, but more often as organizers
of community support.
Reaching
the workers with a political message can be done—if we find the ways to the
workers who are in struggle in a way that brings the community to support it.
The comrades and particularly the leaders of the PL have a wealth of experience
in doing this.
The
workers can learn many lessons in these struggles:
Increasing
monopoly, and the increasing power of finance capital, their intimate
connections with the state apparatus—all of which are features of every public
budget crisis.
Taxes—why
Exxon, GE and others pay none and why we pay more, as well as the federal war
budgets that taxes pay for—and how that affects budgets of states and cities.
The
rise of racism and its connection to the economic crisis.
Unions
and others cannot explain these issues as well as we can—and that is important
because workers and communities are looking for explanations and answers.
Most
importantly, workers can learn that the only way to make fundamental change is
to join the party.
But
there is a problem. This conference and this party is composed of mostly
revolutionary youth. But because unions are in decline in the private sector
and because there has been so little hiring and so many layoffs in the public
sector, few youth are in place to act.
The
AFL-CIO has set up a youth organization for union members, as has AFSCME and
other unions. Unions are also hiring many young organizers.
But
in general it is hard to get in.
There
have been periods like this in the past, and youth have played key roles both
as worker activists in unions, union leaders and leaders of communities supporting
labor.
In
summary, no other party is positioned as well as the PSL to intervene in this
struggle.
Let’s
look for the opportunities, let’s find the ways to reach the workers with a
political message—the most important of which is to join the party to make real
change.
