[Marxism] on LN

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

This is the piece I mentioned in my previous post. It was written in 1999. The 
emphasis is heavily on the interaction of economic and political struggles 
because at that point intervention in the Labor Party was a hot issue. But the 
main point -- the need for a cross-union organization of militants -- is clear.

What next for union reformers?
Labor Notes at 20 Years

This April hundreds of rank-and-file labor activists will gather in Detroit, as 
they have every two years during the last two decades, at a conference 
sponsored by the progressive publication Labor Notes. Celebrating its 20th 
anniversary, Labor Notes has become a pole of attraction for dissidents in 
dozens of different unions, some of them organized in opposition caucuses such 
as Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU).

Those in attendance will be discussing the state of the labor movement four 
years after the Sweeney leadership took control of the AFL-CIO. Those years 
have seen a number of initiatives from the federation: new resources and 
personnel poured into organizing, a Working Women's Department, more money put 
into politics (almost all for Democrats but some for advertising around 
issues), the Union Cities program to revitalize moribund central labor 
councils, a revitalized education department, etc.

But these initiatives, while involving many union staffers, have hardly reached 
the rank-and-file, and have therefore had very little impact on the fortunes of 
labor. Even the centerpiece of Sweeney's platform, new organizing, has yet to 
lead to an increase in the percentage of the workforce organized. Last year the 
AFL-CIO finally achieved an absolute gain in membership, but the net result was 
a decline in the percentage represented due to the continued loss of jobs in 
previously organized manufacturing workplaces.

Limits of new AFL-CIO leadership

As Labor Notes points out, there are severe limits to how far the Sweeney 
leadership is able and willing to go. The sources of these limits include the 
lack of democracy in the federation and its affiliates, officials' support for 
bosses' drive to make profits and compete, reliance on public relations experts 
instead of rank-and-file mobilization and ties to mainstream politicians 
(mostly Democrats, but more recently, on occasion Republicans as well).

Yet, in this same period workers around the country have shown a desire for 
change, and a willingness to fight when given a chance - and leadership. The 
battles in the War Zone in Decatur, the Detroit Newspaper and UPS strike, 
struggles at GM and in telecommunications, the NABET struggle against 
Disney-ABC, last month's American Airlines walkout, the recent anti-sweatshop 
campaigns on campuses - all are symptomatic of workers' desire to end a 20-year 
period of concessions, defeats and unresponsiveness from official union bodies.

The election of the Sweeney team at the top of the union federation was a 
distorted recognition of this new mood - as is the recent turmoil in a number 
of unions. The recent vote of 74,000 lowpaid home health careworkers in LA.for 
union representation shows the possibility for larger scale organizing.

Perhaps most signfficantly, the development of the Labor Party shows both the 
anger of workers and their desire to find new vehicles to advance their needs 
-in cooperation with those officials willing for whatever reason and for 
however long to help, and despite the footdragging or outright opposition of 
those stuck in the old ruts.

Militants in unions have to take advantage of the few openings that are present 
in the unions at the present time in order to reach more workers and explain 
what needs to be done. For example, when union officials promise more 
solidarity, more aggressive bargaining, more action in defense of class-wide 
concerns such as Social Security or Medicare, we need to raise our voices in 
our union halls to demand that meetings, rallies and outreach be organized to 
draw on the power and ideas of our co-workers - and potential supporters in the 
community.

Those active in the Labor Party are ideally positioned to do just this. The 
last two AFL-CIO Executive Council meetings have taken up just those issues - 
Social Security, trade, health care, and the right to organize - around which 
the LP has launched campaigns, and Labor Party activists can become a force to 
pressure the union federation on all levels on these issues.

But what about participants in rank-and-file caucuses such as Teamsters for a 
Democratic Union or New Directions in the UAW- the caucuses which have been the 
core constituency for Labor Notes? What role can they play in this process?

Some in Labor Notes - including many of the newsletter's most prominent writers 
- would argue that the Labor Party is a nice development but the most important 
thing to do now and for the foreseeable future is to continue to build caucuses 
which will at some unforeseen point in the future be big enough, and present in 
enough unions, to lead to a mass upsurge. In the meantime, the Labor Party, 
they argue, can't become a significant force. What's more, they claim, attempts 
to pressure Sweeney and the AFL-CIO are misdirected, placing too much emphasis 
on the top rungs of labor, instead of on workers at the base.

Putting pressure on the union tops
But these arguments ignore the necessary interaction between building 
rank-and-file caucuses, independent political action and campaigns to put 
pressure around specific goals on union officials on the local and national 
level. Even when this does not succeed, it educates the rank and file members 
and shows what needs to be done and how by the current leadership. This is not 
to advocate a sterile shouting from the sidelines, but instead putting concrete 
proposals about what are the next necessary steps that the unions should take 
in concrete circumstances.

What's missing from the analysis of Labor Notes about the labor movement is the 
possibility of organizing the rank-and-file to put pressure on the top 
officials, first and foremost through united front campaigns and ad hoc 
organizations that can draw in broader forces, beyond those in our opposition 
caucuses. Far from representing "uncritical collaboration," such efforts take 
the openings provided by officials who claim to be new and better, to create 
new campaigns and organizational vehicles to involve large numbers of workers. 
And in so doing rank and file workers get to compare in action the different 
perspectives of officials and oppositionists.

Labor Notes' strategy has been from the start focused almost exclusively on 
rank-and-file caucuses. While reporting other forms of opposition and even 
changes at the top, those caucuses have been seen by the publication almost as 
a panacea for all labor's ills. What's more, the publication has always 
consciously limited itself to being just a newsletter with an informal network 
around it, as opposed to an organization uniting those who agree with it, and 
able to correct its perspectives and program. Every two years, its supporters 
come together to compare notes and hear new ideas. The events boost the morale 
of those in attendance, but give them no clear direction and don't provide a 
forum for proposing campaigns or other joint activities.

Organization needed
Labor Notes has provided valuable educational materials and events, especially 
on the "team concept." It has been a key medium for spreading news about 
important struggles. But it has never sought to provide leadership for its 
readers in the sense of organizing specific campaigns. Its conferences never 
have decision-making sessions, and the newsletter has never tried to build an 
organization around itself. Thus those opposing union officials, either in 
their own unions or in the labor movement as a whole, remain at best as a loose 
trend, rather than an organized force.

Mike Parker, one of the regular writers for Labor Notes, admits in a recent 
article that the recent Hoffa victory in the Teamsters' union "shifts the 
balance of power in the AFL-CIO official councils and is a further blow to the 
Sweeney reforms." He adds "we have to use what we have and rely more on 
ourselves and unofficial networks for ideas, coordination and inspiration."

But at some point we have to go beyond informal networking if that 
"corresponding motion from below" is to have any significant, direct impact on 
the labor movement. A new political culture in the union movement can only take 
hold when it has institutions to strengthen it and to spread its influence. And 
only organization can help those with an oppositional culture confront, and 
eventually defeat, the old, business unionist culture.

What's more, such organization would be crucial in the creation and building of 
rank-and-file caucuses. After 20 years of promoting this idea, there is still 
only one national caucus of any substantial size and impact - Teamsters for a 
Democratic Union - and a handful of smaller ones, either on a national or local 
scale. Labor Notes has certainly never sought to take on the task adopted by 
the radical Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) of the 1920's (a movement 
that advocated industrial organizing and radical policies against the 
craft-oriented AFL at the time), which organized affiliates in every union 
under its banner in opposition to the existing leadership. Such a step is even 
more necessary today and is all the more reason for Labor Notes' supporters, 
socialists and militant workers to begin building such a vehicle. Union 
militants could then begin to decide through careful, patient deliberation, on 
what issues and by what means we should confront the current leadership of the 
union federation. Ideas such as an ending of the no strike clause in union 
contracts and a campaign for the wages of union officials to be the average of 
the workers they represent in order to combat careerism, could be then 
collectively discussed and decided.

Politics and economics
In the meantime, many of those who would be part of such a process are already 
involved in building the Labor Party. The LP itself engages in some of the 
solidarity activities which a rank-and-file network would promote (examples 
include the solidarity session featuring ongoing struggles at the Pittsburgh 
convention and the activities of LP chapters around the Liverpool dockers' 
strike). But the core of the Labor Party's function is its political nature, 
providing a vehicle for working class independence. This function may at first 
glance seem remote from the tasks of those in caucuses fighting around contract 
issues and internal union reform. But the party's growth can in fact further 
shift the relationship of forces within the labor movement, making it easier 
for those seeking to wrest power from bureaucrats in their Individual unions 
and in the federation as a whole.

Unfortunately, among those sympathetic to the Labor Notes approach, this 
connection is not clear (or in the worst cases it is even denied). For example, 
in a recent article, Jane Slaughter and Rodney Ward see the success of the 
Labor Party as dependent not primarily on the unfolding world crisis of 
capitalism as well as our efforts today in building it, but on the spread of 
rank-and-file caucuses in individual unions, which in turn will lead to a mass 
upsurge at some undefined point in the future.

The problem with this perspective is that waiting for a mass strike or 
organizing wave before building the Labor Party, ignores the interaction 
between economics and politics, and prescribes a decisively 'economistic' 
course of action. It completely leaves out the fact that if we are successful 
in running working class candidates or have campaigns that can reach large 
sections of the working class and the unorganized that success will inspire 
rank-and-file unionists to build new opposition caucuses to transform their 
unions into militant and democratic organizations.

The source of workers' power is of course their strength at the workplace and, 
flowing from that, in the economy as a whole. But workers' awareness of and 
willingness to use that power, comes not only from economic, trade union, 
struggles, it also comes from the political awakening they experience in other 
parts of their lives under the impact of events. The Black movement of the 
1960s and the women's movement of the 1970s, for example, had a radicalizing 
effect on the working class and young people, as did the Vietnam War - all of 
which encouraged workers to consider taking more radical action at work and in 
their unions. Similarly today we can expect that as the Labor Party grows in 
size and strength, as workers begin to feel they can be active politically as 
workers, it will provide inspiration for them to confront their individual 
bosses and union officials.

Political action
Sixty years ago, the revolutionary socialist Leon Trotsky pointed out that the 
frustration of workers' economic struggles through the then new Congress of 
Industrial Organizations, when stalled, would force them to seek political 
solutions, in other words begin to generalize from their experience about the 
need to go beyond industrial action. The same process explains the birth of the 
Labour Party in England at the turn of the century, the Workers Party in 
Brazil, and the labor-backed Progressive Lists in South Korea. Each came about 
when the working class saw that their economic struggles had reached an 
impasse. A similar frustration over failed - or never-launched - economic 
struggles in the U.S. since PATCO, and the impact of events like NAFTA, 
deregulation, and the vicious attack on workers' living standards have fueled 
the launching of the Labor Party. And we can expect - as has happened in many 
countries in many periods - that independent labor political action can lead to 
radicalized workplace economic struggles.

What's more, the Labor Parry is addressing on a society-wide level, either in 
its campaigns or in its program, many of the issues which union dissidents 
organize around within their Individual union or industry. The more success the 
LP has in taking on fights around the shorter work week, deregulation, 
privatization, and free trade - all of which are life-and-death issues for the 
workers in these industries - the more likely we can find ways to fight around 
these same issues in our workplaces.

Hulie White, a leader of the struggle by AFSCME Local 420 to save jobs at the 
Brooklyn Central Laundry, which services all New York public hospitals, spoke 
at a recent meeting of the South Brooklyn Organizing Committee of the Labor 
Party. White said this was a fight against privatization, a strategy 
aggressively pursued by openly antilabor Mayor Rudy Giuliani. White also 
predicted that the new trustee of Local 420's parent body, District Council 37, 
would be under pressure to win this struggle; the internal turmoil means that 
the pressure is on to deliver something.

Struggles like this show the tightly-woven threads linking workplace and 
political struggle, and the need to connect independent political action with 
union reform. The recent setback in the Teamsters shows the need for reform 
movements to campaign for a clean break with the Democrats and to campaign for 
independent working class politics as well as union reform, something TDU has 
refused to do. Labor Notes should be at the forefront of the struggle to build 
the Labor Party and working class politics in the unions. Given the 
wide-ranging assault of capital and state in attacking all workers, whether 
employed in the public or private sector, this link shows the need for 
socialists and the best militants in the labor movement to be active both in 
reforming their unions and in building the Labor Party to effectively counter 
the offensive of capitalism.


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