[Marxism] Sit-Down Strikes! By Nat Weinstein

[Bonnie Weinstein <giobon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sit-Down Strikes!
By Nat Weinstein
January/February 2009
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/

“This never happens—to take a company from the inside. But I’m  
fighting for my family, and we’re not going anywhere.” —Lalo Muñoz— 
Chicago sit-down striker, Republic Windows and Doors, December 2008

History repeats itself, as the saying goes, but never the same way  
twice. After the 1929 crash, it took nearly three years of double- 
digit rates of unemployment and mass misery before a veritable  
explosion of strikes and other forms of mass resistance began. This  
time, as we shall see, the first small but highly significant  
indication of the act of mass resistance has begun sooner than the  
powers-that-be had expected in their worst nightmares. Not with just  
a strike victory, but via one of the most powerful weapons of  
resistance in the arsenal of a potentially revolutionary working- 
class uprising—when workers take possession of their factory.

Leaving aside the exceptionally provocative action by Chicago’s  
Republic Windows and Doors bosses who suddenly fired their workforce  
without giving them the 60-day notice as required by Illinois state  
law; the bosses refused to pay them the $1.5 million in severance and  
vacation pay owed them.

Thus, what the country had not seen in the first few years after 1929  
did happen at the end of 2008. The 250 fired workers, members of  
Local 1110, of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE),  
held an ad hoc meeting, discussed, debated and voted to occupy the  
plant until their demands were met.

But even more important than their highly significant sit-down strike  
victory, was the example it sets for the entire working class. It  
proves that united and direct action under the right conditions, with  
a fighting and capable leadership, can get you a victory!

Making the power of direct action by any means necessary most  
convincing was the inspiring support their sit-down began to generate  
among the entire working class.

A report by Lee Sustar, shows why it was only a matter of days before  
the potential for winning mass enthusiastic support became evident.  
He writes:

Amid the forest of mobile TV satellite feed dishes, some 20 burly  
members of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150  
installed giant inflatable rats on either side of the plant entrance  
and took up positions near the door. [A tactic that had proved useful  
in building-trades unions toward the end of the 20th century to  
mobilize popular support for scattered on-site strikes against non- 
union contractors .]

Local 150 Business Manager/President Jim Sweeney explained the  
motivation for this delegation in one word: “Solidarity.” Why the  
large delegation? “We heard they [management] were going to try to  
move them out,” he explained, adding that his locals’ members would  
be on hand for the duration of the occupation.

For Sweeney, the struggle “summarizes where we are as a movement,” he  
said. “We’ve come full circle. Seven percent of the workforce is  
unionized [in the private sector], and we’re back to sit-down strikes  
like in Flint, Michigan,” he said, referring to the famous factory  
occupation of 1936-37 that forced General Motors to recognize the  
United Auto Workers.

“We need a catalyst,” Sweeney said. “And this may be what starts it  
for the American worker again.” [Socialist Worker, December 9, 2008.]

Thus, for all practical purposes UE Local 1110’s sit-down strike has  
already inspired workers far beyond Chicago to rally to their  
support. And as noted by Local 150 President Sweeney, this could  
indeed be the “catalyst” that can put 1930s-style fighting tactics  
back into workers and their unions in the United States.

To be sure, the next time may not be as easy as it was for Chicago’s  
sit-down strikers when it involves thousands of workers as it did  
during the 1930s. Concessions won by workers then would cost the  
employers of today millions and even billions in 21st century  
dollars, depending on the numbers of workers involved. But it can  
also be easier when tens- and hundreds-of-thousands of workers  
decide: “We’ve taken all we can take and we won’t take it anymore!”

But labor history proves that it certainly can be done—providing the  
working class can construct a fighting leadership that knows how to  
fight
as effectively as those who came
before them.

To fully appreciate the significance of this seemingly modest event  
at Republic Windows and Doors involving a few hundred workers, we  
need to take a closer look at the state of the global economy. Today  
it is far worse than it was in 1929 or any other time before and since.

So let’s take a close look at why workers everywhere are being forced  
to fight as though they have nothing to lose and/or face losing  
whatever is left.

A ‘depression greater than the Great Depression’

George W. Bush reportedly said, in his closing remarks addressed to  
the mid-November 2008 meeting of G20 nations: “…[I]t’s conceivable  
that our country could go into a depression greater than the Great  
Depression.” This possibility, he later said, had come from a top- 
level policy meeting he had with Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben  
Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who had convinced him  
that it was indeed a possibility if not a likelihood.

Then on December 1, 2008 U.S. government agencies responsible for  
making such decisions, belatedly reported that, starting in late 2007  
and early 2008, the country was in recession—officially.

But most of the evidence upon which such judgments are made suggests  
that the economy had already changed from a recession to something  
far more serious as early as mid-October 2008—if not earlier. That  
was when the economy took a sudden lurch downward, effectively  
transforming an expected narrow victory for Barack Obama on Election  
Day into a landslide.

In any case, whether it’s called a recession or depression may mean  
little to the great majority of Americans who work for a living. What  
counts, however, is the big difference a deep and prolonged  
“recession” will have on their lives.

Meanwhile, the bipartisan capitalist government has been doing its  
best to soften the impact of the crisis on the rich and powerful, in  
the vain hope that by absorbing billions and trillions of dollar- 
losses by banking and industrial capitalists, and pumping a hoped- 
for, life-saving transfusion of trillions of taxpayer’s hard-earned  
dollars into their veins, their system can be saved.

Meanwhile, the failure of government to lift a finger to help the  
estimated 10-million homeowners losing or having lost their homes to  
foreclosure, and the millions of others losing or having lost their  
jobs has proved to be much more than enough to begin making the tens- 
of-millions of working people mad enough to be fighting mad.

How many unemployed
are too many?

We can get a handle on what workers can expect down the road by  
comparing the real rate of unemployment today with what it was at the  
end of 1929. Such a comparison will serve as a reasonably accurate  
gauge of the true state of the U.S. economy today compared to what it  
was before and after the stock-market crash of October 1929.

For instance, although the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported  
in November an increase in joblessness from September 2007 to  
September 2008 from 6.1 percent to 6.5 percent, it’s no secret that  
the BLS does not count all those without jobs as officially jobless.  
For instance, in an article titled, “Grim Report on Jobs Not Showing  
Full Picture,” that appeared on the front page of the December 6, New  
York Times, reporters, David Leonhardt and Catherine Rampell reported  
the following:

The number of people out of the labor force—meaning that they were  
neither working nor looking for work and that the government did not  
consider them unemployed—jumped by 637,000 last month, the Labor  
Department said. The number of part-time workers who said they wanted  
full-time work—all counted as fully employed—rose by an additional  
621,000.

In other words, there were at least three times as many newly  
unemployed or partly employed than were counted by the BLS at that  
time. Therefore, even if we were to take its statistics for good  
coin, it will show that today’s numbers are closely comparable with  
those at the end of 1929 when the Great Depression began. Moreover,  
if anything, they are worse, and already rising significantly each  
month.

Based on a report by the on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia, the rate of  
unemployment during the Great Depression, stood at “3.2 percent at  
the end of 1929.” It rose to “8.7 percent in 1930, 15.9 percent in  
1931, 23.6 percent in 1938 reaching its highest point of 24.9 percent  
in 1933.” And from there it seesawed up and down for the next few  
years until it rose again to 19 percent in 1938.

In fact, America and the rest of the capitalist world never really  
recovered from that first great global Depression. It took World War  
II, and the mass production of weapons of mass destruction to bring  
that Depression to an end.

The problem is compounded today by the rate of public and private  
indebtedness. The most conservative estimates cited are upwards from  
$60 trillions in total debt, public and private. Remember, however,  
private capital is the fuel that makes the capitalist engine go.

But let’s focus our attention on how the crisis has been affecting  
those who produce all of society’s wealth, and how it is likely to  
affect them tomorrow and the months and years immediately ahead.  
Let’s start with its impact on workers in just one of capitalism’s  
main industrial powerhouses, the auto industry, whose crisis of  
overproduction—that’s the real cause of recessions and depressions— 
typifies capitalism’s potentially fatal sickness today. And more,  
when it is known that it vitally affects virtually all of basic  
industry—and from there, everything else—from finance to commerce to  
health and service industries depends.

Auto bosses ask Congress for a taxpayer bailout

Detroit’s Big Three started losing their dominant position in  
production and sales of cars and trucks in the U.S. domestic market  
starting in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Consequently they are now  
faced with bankruptcy because of their steadily declining share of  
the American market.

Thus the Chief Executive Officers of Detroit’s Big Three, facing  
imminent bankruptcy, routinely applied for their share of the  
billions and trillions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailout money  
already handed out to the bankrupt financial institutions and held in  
reserve for ailing industrial behemoths. Then, after the lame-duck  
Congress began its final session on November 12, the Detroit Three’s  
CEOs were invited to make their case for a $25-billion bridge loan to  
tide them over the very crisis facilitated and deepened by the bailed- 
out lenders who now refuse to lend, even to credit-worthy borrowers.

But what are we to make of the sudden furor in Congress, loudly  
echoed in the mass media, over the relatively modest request by  
Detroit’s Big Three automakers for a $25-billion bailout? Modest,  
that is, in light of Congress’s bailout of the financial  
superstructure of the U.S. economy to the tune of billions and  
trillions of dollars in “loans” they know the banks mostly cannot,  
and will not, pay back.

But neither the bipartisan capitalist government nor Wall Street has  
any intention of letting the U.S. sector of the auto industry  
disappear without making every effort to keep it alive and well. They  
cannot afford to let their competitor’s take over this key sector of  
their own domestic market for cars and trucks, upon which U.S.  
control over its entire domestic market largely depends.

Without it, American capitalism cannot hope to come out on top in the  
never-ending struggle for an ever-larger share of the ever-shrinking  
global market place.

After all, the real problem didn’t begin in the nation’s financial  
superstructure. It began, as it has always done, in the industrial  
infrastructure of capitalist economy as indicated above; that is,  
it’s a classic crisis of overproduction.

In the final analysis every such crisis can be traced to the tendency  
built into the capitalist mode of production for the average rate of  
profit to fall. And at this point in time, the only way the profit  
rate can be raised is by forcing down the average cost of labor power  
by any means necessary.

To be sure, the individual capitalist’s rate of profit can be raised  
by the replacement of more workers with labor-saving machines, as  
well as by cutting labor costs the old-fashioned way, i.e., by  
cutting wages and increasing the workday and workweek. But either  
way, it also serves to reduce the average profit-rate enjoyed by all  
capitalists in a given country and eventually everywhere in the  
capitalist world as they play “catch-up and surpass” the other guy,  
in the never-ending race to cut labor costs.

That takes us to where we are today. The attack that was begun  
against the entire American working class was set into motion a lot  
faster when Congress turned down the Big Three’s request for a bridge  
loan. As we shall see, the “debate” that has since been covered in  
infinite detail in the mass media is really not a debate at all. It’s  
a charade designed to convince autoworkers that if they don’t  
“voluntarily” accept another drastic cut in their wage package and  
choose, instead, to fight for their jobs and living standards,  
bankruptcy judges will impose ever-worse conditions. But, neither the  
bosses, nor bureaucrats nor judges are as powerful as they want their  
victims to think.

Licking the toughest
kid on the block?

The question that needs an answer is, why are they still demanding  
that autoworkers and their union, who already suffered more than 50- 
percent reductions in hard-earned wages and benefits so recently, be  
asked to make even further drastic reductions and sacrifices? After  
all is said and done, next to the more than a million-member  
Teamsters Union, the UAW is still the second strongest union in the  
United States. Why not take on almost any other section of the  
workforce to spearhead the assault on overall labor costs?

We can think of at least three very good reasons for their plan of  
attack:

First, autoworkers and their union had played a major role in the  
great labor upsurge of the 1930s and serve as a powerful symbol of  
workers’ power.

Secondly, the UAW has played a pioneering role by winning wages and  
benefits better than any other sector of the American labor movement.  
The most significant benefit was originally called Supplementary  
Unemployment Benefits (SUB), which together with State-financed  
unemployment insurance amounted to full wages for a year of  
joblessness. The UAW was among the first to win the escalator clause,  
which pegs wages a little closer to rising prices periodically  
through the life of the union contract.

And third is a well-known tactic in all conflicts—military social,  
economic and political. When the war begins each side attacks the  
other where it is weakest, and continue targeting their enemy at the  
weakest point until one of them feels strong enough to pick on one of  
the enemy’s strongest battalions, which could take it more than  
halfway to victory.

In the neighborhoods where I grew up, we called it “licking the  
toughest kid on the block.” Thus, when autoworkers and their union  
licked General Motors in its Flint Michigan stronghold in 1937—the  
biggest and toughest kid on the block—the UAW took GM’s place to  
become the toughest kid on the block.

The analogy becomes more complete when we remember the latest phase  
of the assault by capital on labor began when Republican President  
Ronald Reagan, upon taking office in early 1981, launched his strike- 
breaking, union-busting attack on a small national union of airline  
controllers, PATCO, in a trap set by his predecessor, Democratic  
President Jimmy Carter, just before the 1980 election.

That historical episode, and many smaller local union-busting attacks  
by capital since then, helps explain why GM led the attack by the  
Detroit Three and the capitalist class-at-large—its government and  
all of its horses and all of its men—against autoworkers and their  
union from October 2005 through September 2007.

But while top UAW leaders are prepared as usual to go down for the  
count, there’s still a chance that the rank-and-file and its wisest  
and most class-conscious leaders are not ready for a knockout. Maybe  
they still believe they can make a comeback and gain some time or  
even set in motion an all-out fight to the finish by the American  
working class and its natural allies and all other victims of  
exploitation and oppression.

The first Black president and the key role he was chosen to play in  
the class war

This takes us to another big question. Unless you can believe that  
the most ruthlessly all-powerful American ruling class has found God  
and been born again as the champion of human rights, why did a  
decisive section of the capitalist class suddenly appear to have  
broken from their racist past by using their money and influence  
behind putting a Black President in the White House? Make no mistake;  
though he fooled people who could not be fooled before, he didn’t  
fool the rich and powerful. In fact, to hear the praise now being  
heaped on Barack Obama one might think Jesus Christ himself has come  
back to save American capitalism and all its rich and powerful as  
well as the tired and huddled masses.

And no less suddenly, but far less surprisingly, have they begun  
talking about Depression-era President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and  
his New-Deal policy which established the Democrats as the “workers’  
friend” and the Republicans as the workers’ enemy.

In other words, for those of us who don’t believe in fairies and  
goblins, it’s an even more sophisticated version of the good-cop, bad- 
cop confidence-game played by Roosevelt which got him elected and  
reelected four times as the friend of the working class (but also the  
friend of the Dixiecrats-Jim Crow South as well as capitalism and its  
ruling class.)

But there’s a big difference between Obama and FDR. Obama is  
identified with the most oppressed sections of American society,  
while FDR was a white plutocrat with a long line of capitalist  
plutocrats as his heritage and behind him. But in this case,  
experience once again is proving that the first Black president’s  
racial origin is one of those differences that doesn’t make a  
difference.

As one of our contributors has
written:

“Roosevelt was the worst strikebreaking president in U.S. history.  
Throughout the 1930s, hundreds of striking workers were killed,  
thousands wounded and tens of thousands thrown into jail. In 1934,  
Roosevelt’s first full year in office, 52 strikers were murdered, one  
every week.”

“Despite the hoopla about New Deal public works programs, the number  
of jobless Americans never fell below eight million. The Civil Works  
Administration lasted three months. The Federal Emergency Relief  
Administration lasted less than a year providing starvation wages to  
two million people. Even within these programs, workers were subject  
to draconian measures. In the spring of 1939, when conditions got so  
bad in the WPA [Works Progress Administration] that workers went on  
strike, Roosevelt immediately fired all 1.5 million of them! (See  
“New Deal, New New Deal, Old Deal, No Deal,” by Mike Alewitz,  
elsewhere in this edition.)

Obama is key to the success of the anti-labor offensive

The furor in Congress over whether or not to bailout the Detroit  
Three is indeed a charade. There can be little doubt, however, that  
there are those among the country’s power brokers in and out of  
Congress, who for one self-serving reason or another are truly  
opposed to a bailout of the still U.S.-dominated domestic market,  
which happens to be almost as big or bigger than the combined  
domestic markets of most of American capitalism’s main competitors.  
(Some simply because they are lobbyists and/or politicians elected,  
thanks to financial support received from Japanese, German and other  
foreign-owned automakers.)

But they aren’t necessarily as stupid as they sometimes appear. After  
all, good cops can’t do their part of the job without the bad cops,  
and vice versa. In any case, both good and bad cops don’t give a damn  
about what happens to autoworkers as long as it helps the auto bosses.

It’s pretty obvious, too, that their game plan does not exclude the  
likelihood that after Obama and his bipartisan capitalist gang do  
their hard-cop, soft-cop number on autoworkers they will demand still  
more! After all, there’s nothing stopping bosses from filing for  
Chapter 11 bankruptcy after they have sucked as much blood from  
autoworkers with the indispensable aid and assistance of the two- 
faced UAW bureaucrats. Chapter 11, by the way, should rightly be  
called “bankruptcy bargains only for capitalists” which gives a judge  
the power to break and remake all contracts, ensuring that “fallen  
companies have a reasonable shot at picking up the pieces”—at  
workers’ expense.

Nothing could be clearer about what the ruling class has in store for  
the American working class—which happens to be the only force capable  
of leading the great majority of capitalism’s exploited and oppressed  
from being driven down to the lower depths of pauperism and  
homelessness.

Class solidarity has more than one side

While there are more than a few occasions when one or another section  
of the working class can win some significant battles mostly through  
their own efforts, it is, nevertheless an exception to the rule. In  
any real conflict where the stakes are high, workers power depends,  
on the level of class solidarity achieved by the workers as a class.

But when we look at the entire spectrum of class relationships, it  
can be seen that even class solidarity is not enough to win when the  
stakes are at their highest. For instance, even during the 1930s when  
class-consciousness was at one of its historic highs, it wasn’t  
enough to realize its greatest potential gains.

One of the least appreciated contributions to the struggle for  
economic justice by working people during the Great Depression was  
the struggle for social and economic justice first initiated by rank- 
and-file working class leaders who instinctively came to understand  
the strategic importance of class and human solidarity.

One of the most important barriers to this solidarity was the policy  
of the leadership of the American Federation of Labor (AFL)—the only  
existing mass labor federation at the time—and their policy of  
supporting race-determined hiring and firing; and in the worst cases— 
insisting that their employers hire no Black workers. This had to be  
overcome decisively!

Capitalists as a rule try their best to defend their right to hire  
and fire whomever they damned please. They could readily see that the  
policy of last-hired and first-fired was entirely in their interests  
and diametrically opposed to the class-interests of the workers.

Capitalists also learned a long time ago that if you can’t stop  
workers from organizing a union, the best way to keep workers within  
manageable bounds is to tame its leaders. After all it’s far cheaper  
to buy off a few leaders than thousands of union members. And what  
could be better than dividing workers by the easiest and surest way.  
That is, according to race, nationality, religion or gender—and in  
any and every other conceivable way.

In a word, nothing is more destructive of class solidarity than the  
division of the working class based upon the myriad of identifiable  
differences between human beings while ignoring or playing down their  
common interests as working people. And we must be prepared to fight  
it by all necessary means.

Some of the mostly union and class-conscious readers of these pages  
may be wondering why I am making a federal case about something that  
they all know is the ABC of trade unionism and class consciousness.  
But I am confident that you will see why.

The role of race consciousness in the history of the 1930s

Let’s take another look at what we can learn from labor history that  
will help us better understand how we can most effectively defend and  
advance our class interests in the face of the most destructive  
attack on our living standards that the ruling class has mounted.

We look back to 1934, the year in which the first three great  
groundbreaking strike victories were won, that set the stage for the  
even bigger victories of the rest of that decade and the beginning of  
the next. While the miners union, the United Mine Workers, one of the  
largest industrial unions in the AFL, was well-known for organizing  
all workers in their union on an equal basis and with equal rights  
(because they already were fully integrated without regard for race,  
religion or national origin) there was no need for them to play a  
direct role other than by example—by supporting and establishing  
principles and policies, in the day-to-day struggle to organize all  
other industrial workers regardless of their race.

Thus, auto workers and their union in 1934 were among the first of  
the new industrial unions to put their force behind the struggle to  
end white-only unions and agitate and organize the working class  
irrespective of race, religion as well as any other social, or  
political differences that may arise. They went further still in that  
direction by also, at first implicitly and later explicitly,  
defending the rights of African Americans.

Consequently, by the mid-1930s, it had become unmistakably clear to  
Black Americans—as a people, not only as workers—that the struggles  
of all workers no matter their differences was also the struggle  
carried out by unions like the UAW, and, therefore, defense of these  
unions also became their struggle! In fact, it can be said that  
without this alliance forged by workers as a class and African  
Americans as a people—vigorously and enthusiastically reciprocated by  
the latter and their leaders, the great working-class rebellion of  
the 1930s would not have been nearly as massive and effective as it was.

Starting as early as 1935, it became increasingly harder for  
capitalists to draw on a vast pool of angry Black workers who could  
now easily distinguish between which part of white society, workers  
or bosses, was their main enemy. And as the saying goes: The enemy of  
my enemy is my friend. But when workers are showing what they can do  
and what they have done as a social and economic force—that’s what  
counts the most.

But there is yet another factor in the class vs. class equation that  
takes us to the role of the middle class in labor history. The middle  
class always sees its interests tied to one or the other of the two  
main contending classes in modern society—labor or capital.

In the class war now shaping up to be a fight to the finish, neither  
side—neither labor nor capital—can win without winning the support of  
those in the middle class.

Where we are and what needs to be done next

This takes us back to the single most significant sign that a new era  
of ever-sharpening class struggle may have begun with the victorious  
six-day sit-down strike victory by 250 fired members of UE Local 1110  
in Chicago—the workers at Republic Windows and Doors.

In order to better understand the radical change in mass working- 
class consciousness taking place before our eyes, listen to how  
Armando Robles, a maintenance worker at the factory and president of  
UE Local 1110, responded to a question put to him and his coworkers  
by Times reporters: Why, they asked, had they taken such a bold step  
as to occupy and refuse to leave their workplace, unless their  
demands were met. Robles answered: “In the environment of this  
economic crisis, we felt we were obligated to fight for our  
money.” [Emphasis added.]

By pointing to the impact the crisis is having on the consciousness  
of the super-exploited and oppressed, as well as those workers who  
had for most of their lives enjoyed what they called their “middle- 
class” living standards, Robles is simply saying what millions of  
workers are thinking. And it’s only a matter of time before others  
also feel “obligated to fight for their money,” too.

The reporters, Michael Luo and Karen Ann Cullotta, who had  
interviewed many of President Robles’s coworkers at Republic,  
summarized what workers had told them:

The tale of how this small band of workers came to embody the welter  
of emotions in the country’s economic downturn is flecked with plot- 
turns from the deepening recession, growing anger over the Wall  
Street bailout and difficult business calculations.

This tells us much more than meets the eye, particularly when we take  
into account that the majority of the workers involved in this first  
sit-down strike victory since the 1930s were predominately Latino and  
African American workers.

No less importantly, it tells us that American capitalism’s radically  
changed immigration policy, which began slowly after the First World  
War and then more rapidly after World War II, was designed to create  
a new category of highly vulnerable immigrants. It was also designed  
to make it far easier to subject them to super-exploitation and hyper- 
repression. These so-called “illegal” workers are given the right to  
live and work in the U.S., not permanently as were 99 percent of  
immigrants that came before them, but only for a period of months for  
minimum wages.

The Smithfield strike

Now what would you do if you were such an immigrant with a family at  
home that you were now able to support somewhat better than you could  
have in your homeland—where jobs are even harder to get and wage  
rates are far lower than the average minimum wage-rate set by the  
States?

While the minimum wage in agriculture is somewhere between five and  
six dollars an hour, it’s perhaps twice that in industries like  
meatpacking. Providing, that is, if ICE (Immigration and Customs  
Enforcement—also called La Migra by immigrant workers) doesn’t grab  
you and deport you back from where you came from—mostly from south of  
the Mexican border. (But only after spending time in a federal prison  
first.)

However, the bipartisan capitalist government’s real intention is to  
allow many, if not most, highly vulnerable undocumented immigrants to  
work here illegally. La Migra’s function is to establish conditions  
that discourage protests while allowing the employers to continue to  
rob part or all of their wages. That’s why for the most part, ICE is  
assigned to hunt down, arrest and deport undocumented workers who  
have spoken up, and to keep one eye closed to those undocumented  
workers who keep silent.

It’s real purpose is to only enforce this law enough to put fear into  
undocumented immigrants to keep them from raising a fuss over how  
much they are paid, and whether or not they are paid at all. It has  
the effect of keeping these workers from joining a union, which  
weakens the bargaining power of all workers. And that keeps the  
average pay of workers down and therefore the average rate of profit  
higher. That’s what happened at the Smithfield meatpacking plant in  
North Carolina.

But the widespread cheating of undocumented workers out of their pay  
has begun to spread to include American citizens and fully legal  
residents as we have seen in the Chicago sit-down strike.

These strikes tells us something else about what the future holds in  
store for all workers—Black, white and Latino—in the immediate period  
ahead. African American workers account for more than 13 percent, and  
Latino’s more than 15 percent of the U.S. population. And because a  
higher proportion of oppressed peoples are working class, they  
constitute much more than 30 percent of the U.S. workforce—legal and  
“illegal.”

On December 13 the New York Times reported in an article entitled  
“Workers at Pork Plant in North Carolina Vote to Unionize After a 15- 
Year Fight”—about the Smithfield meatpacking plant where a union  
struggle involving a large number of immigrant workers was taking  
place—that although it was a fight with mostly militant rank-and-file  
Black and Latino union activists leading the way; and even though  
just a few short years ago the La Migra raids decimated the Latino  
pro-union activists at Smithfield by arresting and deporting them;  
the Black workers who took their place carried on the struggle, which  
has finally led to union representation—a modest but significant  
victory.

Adding to the potential force this section of the working class  
contributes to the worker’s movement is the fact that throughout  
American history, each wave of new immigrants tends to play the  
leading role in the never-ending class struggle. That’s the role now  
being played by the latest wave of Latino immigrants along with Black  
workers.

Besides, experience proves that both communities, Latino as well as  
Black, support the struggle of workers and their unions. That’s a  
mighty powerful potential alliance between workers—Black, white and  
brown—their unions and their community organizations. If it’s  
reinforced and kept as closely knit as possible, their combined power  
would become much greater than the mighty power demonstrated by  
workers in the 1930s and early ’40s.

One last word on autoworkers and the one-sided class war

The latest developments in the calm before the brewing storm strikes  
the autoworkers, their union and their natural allies, will heavily  
influence the course of the one-sided class war by capital, its mass  
media, and its government against the working class and its allies.

The December 19 New York Times ran a front-page story, titled “Car  
Bankruptcy Cited as Option by White House.” Here are the first four  
paragraphs that summarize the essential facts covered by David E.  
Sanger, Bill Vlasic and Micheline Maynard in this report:

The White House announced early on Friday that President Bush would  
make a statement at 9:00 A.M. Eastern time about efforts to negotiate  
a bailout for the domestic auto industry. On Thursday, his  
spokeswoman, Dana Perino, confirmed growing speculation within legal  
circles that the president and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson  
Jr. were considering the step.

“There’s an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of  
a soft landing,” Ms. Perino said. “I think that’s what we would be  
talking about. That would be one of the options.”

A senior administration official, however, later described that  
option as a last resort, to be used only if an agreement for a  
voluntary overhaul of the industry could not be reached. These  
officials said the preferred solution would be to force a  
restructuring of the industry outside of bankruptcy court, extracting  
concessions that would make the companies more cost-competitive with  
foreign automakers.

In return, the Treasury would tap the financial rescue fund, called  
the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to make loans to the companies.  
(December 19, 2008.)

The main purpose of this latest report and subsequent reports will be  
to convince autoworkers that if they voluntarily cut their pay, they  
can prevent a Chaper 11 bankruptcy Judge, who has the legal power to  
cut their future wages and benefits, from doing so. As usual, in this  
case, Republican President Bush, playing his appointed role of “bad- 
cop” threatens to take everything from autoworkers so that “good-cop”  
President-elect Obama will take away less.

But one doesn’t need a crystal ball to predict that either way; they  
will take the Chapter II route, even if autoworkers make more  
concessions than they have already made.

In light of the last few decades of relations between the Detroit  
Three on one side and autoworkers and their union, on the other,  
common sense would suggest that autoworkers are highly likely to take  
whatever is thrown at them by bosses and bureaucrats without even  
trying to put up the kind of fight that can win. Besides, even if  
they did put up the best fight they can, they may, nevertheless lose— 
but no more than they will the other way.

First, if workers decide to fight, winning cannot be excluded.  
Second, there are things workers can do before negotiations have run  
their course to mobilize more support for their fight from their  
friends and allies—such as Chicago’s sit-down strikers gained and  
which resulted in their modest victory. And third, history proves its  
better to go down fighting than not to fight at all. Besides, most  
strike victories could not have happened against the world’s  
mightiest corporations without risking even greater losses had they  
not fought.

But common sense doesn’t necessarily lead one to the right course of  
action. Under ordinary circumstances it’s sometimes better to give up  
a little when the stakes are not as high as they are today, and wait  
until a more favorable opportunity arises to take back what was lost.  
And if you can do that, you can also take back more than what was  
lost in the next, new confrontation.

But these are not ordinary times, and the more ground workers give up  
without a fight the harder it gets to stop. And the way the world is  
going to hell in the proverbial hand basket, the consequences of not  
fighting will be nothing short of disastrous.

When the mood of workers keeps changing as fast as it is today, we  
may all be surprised at the fighting spirit that’s really out there  
and growing at an ever-faster pace.

I have been listening very carefully to what people are saying among  
my friends and acquaintances, and what I read in the papers and see  
and hear on television. I think a real fightback, bigger than the  
last one that began nearly 75 years ago will begin soon.

Perhaps some of those in the commanding heights of Wall Street and  
Washington know this too.


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