[Marxism] doing labor work

["andypollack@xxxxxxxx" <andypollack@xxxxxxxx>]

Reading Josh's post was very encouraging, both for his urging cadre to get jobs 
in key industries and for the purpose enunciated behind doing so -- to be able 
to have real ties in the ranks to be able to make a difference in strikes like 
the soCal grocery strike. But let me take it a step further. Josh says:
"[n]ot one group of revolutionaries (including my own) had a group of militant 
workers inside the grocery stores who had won the trust and confidence of a 
substantial group of workers.  This would have been a requirement to challenge 
the union leadership..."

Right now there are strikes of national significance going on in casinos and in 
hotels. Even a left group with a serious colonization strategy would be 
unlikely to have placed cadre in these industries, given the size of all left 
groups  today. But past work in other unions could put a group's members in a 
position to lead a nationwide solidarity effort and thus meet members among 
strikers.

Labor Notes has long had more than enough contacts throughout the labor 
movement to have played such a role in the soCal strike. By the same token they 
could have done the same in the P-9 strike, but instead a tiny Maoist sect with 
virtually no labor contacts launched the National Rank and File Action 
Coalition which became, for better and mostly worse, the vehicle for solidarity.

Labor Notes (and the group which leads it) did try AFTER the grocery strike 
this year to launch rank-and-file caucuses among UFCW grocery workers. That's 
what they do best. What they refuse to do is to strive for leadership, either 
in strike solidarity efforts, or more broadly in building a class struggle 
leftwing throughout the labor movement.

I found an old article I'd written on this and will send it along after 
transcribing it.

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