[Marxism] Right Back Where We Started

[Bonnie Weinstein <giobon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Right Back Where We Started

By Gregg Shotwell
Sometimes one can’t see the precipice for the pitfalls. When you’ve  
lost a job or taken a steep pay cut; when your pension is threatened  
and your backup plan nose dives; when you’re faced with foreclosure  
or stuck in an abandoned neighborhood; when your biggest investment  
in life just lost half its value despite all the time, love, money,  
and labor you put into it; when you’re forced to relocate but can’t  
afford to uproot; when you’re too young for Medicare and too old not  
to have preexisting conditions that exclude you from health  
insurance; when you’ve followed all the rules only to find that the  
rules have changed; when one or all of the above apply, it’s  
understandable that you may cling to your private barrel of anxieties  
as the current hurls you down the Niagara.
Understandable, but useless. The barrels that we cling to—contracts,  
unions, pensions, promises, IRAs, VEBAs—will not protect us. Workers’  
rights are not defined by law or contract. Workers’ rights are  
defined by struggle. Empty barrels won’t protect us from the  
precipice, and there’s no turning back.
The United States is not in a recession. We’re getting “restructured”  
and “rationalized.”
The good news is, the barrels that once provided an illusion of  
safety are smashed to smithereens. From the wreckage we can clearly  
see that either we all rise up together, or no one walks away with  
dignity, let alone a living wage. The bad news is, no one—not the  
salary workers, the knowledge workers, or the retirees—will be  
spared. The carbon monoxide of “Too-bad-for-them-but-I’m-okay”  
complacency has blown away. Catastrophe demands unity. The good news  
is, our history can lead us.
Money isn’t lost, it changes hands. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s  
capitalism. The transfer of wealth from labor to capital didn’t begin  
with the current crisis. We can trace it back to Caterpillar, Staley,  
Bridgestone, and every lockout since then. We can trace it back to  
the offshoring of steel, rubber, textile, and electronics; to  
restructured airlines that pilfered pensions; and PATCO. We can trace  
it back to narrow interest bargaining and lunch bucket politics that  
allowed the corps to pick us off, one isolated union at a time. We  
can trace it back to southern tenant farms and garment sweatshops in  
Manhattan. What’s new isn’t the method but the magnitude. All workers  
in all sectors are under the whip this time.
The Delphi bankruptcy characterizes the contemporary strategy and  
serves as a template for what the Detroit Three and subsequent  
industries can expect. Recently Delphi abolished health care and life  
insurance for salary retirees. The switch enabled the company to  
report to the SEC that it “swung to a $566 million net-profit from a  
$577 million loss a year earlier” (Autobeat, May 13, 2009).  Easy  
money. Unearned money. Lots of it.
Next, they will liquidate the salary pension. What’s to stop them?  
Capitalism is the law.
GM and Chrysler may not achieve all their goals in the quick rinse  
bankruptcy controlled by the feds, but they’ll be back in court to  
finish the job, just like Delphi. Observe how history repeats itself.
Base wages at Delphi were negotiated by the UAW in 2004, eighteen  
months prior to bankruptcy: $14 per hour and no pension. Base wages  
at the Detroit Three were negotiated by the UAW in 2007, eighteen  
months prior to bankruptcy: $14 per hour and no pension. One  
coincidence leads to another.
Each new UAW contract promises security in exchange for concessions  
from workers. The latest UAW Concession Con promised to deliver  
members from bankruptcy and plant closings. As soon as it was  
ratified Chrysler went into bankruptcy and announced more plant  
closings.
But the nail in the coffin is the agreement to settle the contract in  
2011 by arbitration based on non-union standards. That isn’t a  
contract, it’s a death warrant for the UAW. What could be more clear?  
The Concession Caucus has effectively decertified the UAW.
The union agrees not to strike and commits to a goal that nullifies  
any benefit to union membership. This is the price we pay for company  
stock in a VEBA? The UAW signs confidentiality agreements with the  
companies and leaves members in the dark. Read the actual contract  
language at www.soldiersofsolidarity.com.
Read it and weep. Weep for the unsung heroes who risked everything  
they loved in the depths of the Great Depression so the next  
generation might labor in dignity. Weep for the youngsters who tread  
in the footprints of the generation who chose to collaborate with  
management and sold their birthright for a bowl of maggots that the  
clipboards call joint programs.
Read it and revolt like the heroes of America’s Civil Rights Movement  
who faced guns and clubs, police dogs and fire hoses, pimped out  
politicians, and judges controlled by cowards in hoods, so their  
children might live in dignity.
Read it and recognize that UAW members lost their voting rights.
We’re right back where we started. Sometimes, where we started is the  
right place to be.
Recently my wife, Sheila, and I ventured down to the crossroads in  
Clarksdale, Mississippi for the annual Juke Joint Festival. Every  
year it seems there is one old standard that predominates, that bands  
play at every juke joint we frequent. Each year it’s different. This  
year it was “Big Boss Man” by Jimmy Reed. Over and over again, we heard:
  You got me working, boss man / Working ‘round the clock.
  I want me a drink of water / You won’t let me stop.
  You big boss man / Can you hear me when I call?
  Oh, you ain’t so big / You just tall, that’s all.
The blues is essentially subversive. Every blues like every river has  
an undercurrent, a subtext, a baseline shackled to oppression and  
resistance. A song like “Baby Please Don’t Go”, for example, isn’t  
just another song about love. It’s a song about slavery and  
addiction; it’s a song about poverty and injustice; it’s a song about  
fear and violence and solitary confinement. And like every old blues,  
it’s a song about the struggle, the struggle to be human in an  
inhuman world—like Detroit or Buffalo or Cleveland, North Carolina.  
Or a meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa that treats workers like  
animals, and where the feds arrest those workers under regulations as  
cruel and uncivilized as Fugitive Slave Laws.
We’re right back where we started. The authorities turned fire hoses  
and police dogs on the children in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and  
arrested them just like the police beat and arrested children trying  
to escape the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. The  
struggle isn’t between North and South, black and white, native born  
and immigrant, it’s between labor and capital.
When we try to take back what belongs to us, they will beat us and  
arrest us, and we will know exactly where we stand on the precipice.
The People’s Summit

  On June 15-17, 2009, the National Business Summit, sponsored by the  
Detroit Economic Club, will conduct business over wine and cheese at  
the Renaissance Center. Millionaire capitalists Conoco-Phillips, Dow  
Chemical, General Motors, Chrysler, Humana Inc., Ascension Health,  
Deloitte Touche, Tohmatsu, BNSF Railway Co., PVS Chemicals, as well  
as the presidents of the National Council on Competitiveness and U.S.  
Chamber of Commerce, will gather at this summit.
  These wealthy businesspeople will strategize means and methods to  
increase their profits at the expense of the working class, and the  
growing millions living in poverty.
  The (Rich) People’s Summit

The National Business Summit will be held in a city with record high  
unemployment and poverty rates, layoffs, budget cuts, school  
closings, utility cost hikes and shutoffs and massive home  
foreclosures. With a registration fee of $1,495, it is unlikely that  
any victims of foreclosures and evictions, let alone laid-off  
workers, will be able to attend the National Business Summit. No one  
at this event will be speaking in the interests of those most  
affected by the economic collapse.
The (Poor) People’s Summit

  The People’s Summit will be a dynamic event. During the People’s  
Summit, organizers will implement a moratorium on foreclosure  
evictions by going into the neighborhoods and supporting homeowners  
who are willing to confront the bailiffs. If there is a strike,  
demonstration or sit in, the People’s Summit will join it. The  
People’s Summit will confront the big-business CEOs and politicians  
gathering next door.
Join us! June 14-17, 2009 at Grand Circus Park in Detroit. Four Days  
of Active Resistance, Political Discussion and Strategizing for a  
“People’s Stimulus Plan” and an “Economic Bill of Rights” for Working  
People and the Poor.
  I’ll be there with you, one more soldier of solidarity who knows  
whose side he’s on.
For more information:
Mobilization office: 5920 Second Avenue
Detroit, MI 48202 <www.peoplessummit.org>
Phone: 313-887-4344
Email: moratorium@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Endorse, volunteer, reserve your tent space and/or make a donation  
today!
—Live Bait and Ammo: #129, May 19, 2009
www.soldiersofsolidarity.com
www.factoryrat.com
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