Kim Moody on NYC/WEF

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

[again, from ATTAC]

3- Why Not in the U.S.A.?
____________________________________________________________

Around the World, Mass Political Strikes Challenge the Effects of
Globalization. Why Not in the U.S.A.?

by Kim Moody

Around the world in the last few years, labor has responded to
globalization and its impact with general or mass political
strikes.
In Argentina, India, Spain, South Korea, Bolivia, South Africa, and
France, labor federations have called on their members and
sometimes
the entire working class to challenge privatization, austerity,
downsizing, and other symptoms of increased corporate power-by
stopping work.

Not too long ago, the Ontario Federation of Labour organized
one-day
general strikes in cities across that province called the Days of
Action. In 1998, Puerto Rico's labor movement, including most of
its
AFL-CIO unions, struck in opposition to the sale of the public
telephone company.

With the Free Trade Area of the Americas coming down the Fast
Track,
why not a general strike throughout the hemisphere, including
across
the whole U.S.?

It's a novel idea for a labor movement that, especially since the
1940s, has been focussed on industry-by-industry or
company-by-company
bargaining. Since the go-it-alone strategy is not working in an era
of
globalization, some changes may be in order.

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

It has to be admitted that in the United States, general strikes
are
as rare as a generous employer. One reason for this is simply that
the
business unionists who head up most of our unions are not for it.
Back
in the mid-1970s then-AFL-CIO President George Meany said, "We
believe
in the American system. We don't take to the streets and we don't
call
general strikes and we don't call political strikes."

In one respect Meany was wrong. "We" certainly do take to the
streets,
and it hasn't just been in the 1930s or the 1960s. Check out the
streets around Pittston's western Virginia coal mines in 1989, or
the
highways hit by "road warriors" from Hormel in the mid-1980s or
Staley
in the mid-1990s. What about the Latino drywallers in Los Angeles a
decade ago or the construction workers in New York City a couple of
years ago? And then there were the thousands who marched last June
in
Columbia, South Carolina in support of the Charleston 5, members of
the ILA threatened with felony charges for trying to stop scabs.

And does Seattle ring a bell?

Meany was wrong. American workers hit the streets with regularity.
But
they don't stop work and hit the streets all at once, together, for
a
common goal. In large part this is due to the weak class
consciousness
of most American workers that is both a cause and consequence of
business unionism. Over the years, it has been further undermined
by a
prosperous past, racial divisions, and an approach to politics and
social programs unique to unions in the United States.

Most accounts of the tightening grip of business unionism after
World
War II include the, by then, universal presence of no-strike
clauses
in union contracts; the purge of leftists from the CIO; the growing
dependence on the Democratic Party; McCarthyism; increased
bureaucracy; and, of course, the Taft-Hartley Act. All of these
played
a role in the triumph of the narrow ideology and practice of
business
unionism. But it is important to understand what they did and
didn't
accomplish.

All of these events and trends weakened organized labor in
important
ways. They wrecked the plan to organize the South, leaving that
region
a haven for runaway shops to this day. Bargaining in the electrical
industry was fragmented and seriously undermined by the attacks on
the
United Electrical Workers after it was forced out of the CIO.

Most unions, however, emerged from the 1940s larger and
institutionally stronger. Many grew from the 1950s through the
1970s,
although private sector unionism slipped for a time. There were
more
strikes in the 1950s than in the 1930s, and many of the big gains
in
collective bargaining came in that decade. Real wages, adjusted for
inflation, grew by 250 percent from 1945 to 1975. In most respects,
the unions of the 1950s were stronger than they had ever been and
much
more powerful than they would become.

A NARROWED VISION

What the very success of the path chosen in the 1940s did do,
however,
was to undermine the notion of the labor movement as the
representative of a class and to narrow the vision of most unions.

Frustrated in the late 1940s by a Republican Congress and a
rightward
moving Democratic Party, leaders of the individual unions turned
toward a trend begun by the Mine Workers in 1946 when John L. Lewis
negotiated an employer-paid health and welfare fund. "If we cannot
bring this protection to our members by national legislation," said
Textile Workers President William Pollock, "we should insist that
this
become part of our contracts."
This trend toward winning social gains union-by-union,
industry-by-industry instead of class-wide was given a boost by the
Taft-Hartley Act, which in an attempt to control union-run plans
actually encouraged them.

It meant, of course, that programs such as improved pensions and
national health care that had been seen by millions as benefiting
the
entire working class and others as well, now only came to those
whose
union was strong enough to win them from reluctant employers.
Whereas
in 1946 the major industrial unions had bargained at the same time
for
the same demand and many had struck together, henceforth each union
sought its own way, and fought only for its own members.

Whether they administered industry-wide union-run plans like the
Mine
Workers or Teamsters or the company-based health and pension plans
like those in auto, steel, and electrical, top union leaders now
stood
over highly complex "private welfare states" that encouraged more
bureaucracy and a greater focus on a particular company's
well-being.
It was the companies, after all, not the government or the public
as a
whole, which appeared to "pay the bills" for health care and
pensions.

Thus, the leaders' and staffers' concern for company profits,
already
there for many, was reinforced and deepened. This meant the
continual
surrender of workplace organization and power to management in
return
for expensive benefits-presumably paid for by the productivity
squeezed out of the members. It meant the abandonment of
cross-industry pattern bargaining and eventually the unraveling of
even single-industry patterns, as union leaders focused on the
 "health" of the big companies that provided the benefits.

Above all, it meant a growing identification with the company, not
only among the leaders, but in the ranks as well. This didn't mean
that workers didn't hate management and resent the indignity and
physical pressure of the demands of production. But the realization
that your pension and health benefits derived from the company-even
if
won through struggle by the union-could not help but affect your
outlook.

FRAGMENTED RESISTANCE

The aggressive speed-up and productivity drives of the late 1950s
through the 1960s provoked an upsurge in rank and file militancy,
expressed through wildcat strikes and the formation of reform
movements among coal miners, airline mechanics, auto, steel,
postal,
public sector, and trucking workers. Yet the movements and
organizations they created never came together or had much contact
with one another. For all their daring and militancy, these
grassroots
workers' movements of the 1960s and 1970s reflected the
fragmentation
underwritten by the "private welfare state" that brought both a
measure of prosperity to many and speed-up to millions.

By the early 1980s, the corporate assault on the workplace was
joined
by company efforts to cut costs across the board. Now, the wages
and
benefits employers had ceded in more profitable times came under
attack along with working conditions. The room for trade-offs
shrank
year by year.

For most top union leaders this produced accelerated concern with
company well-being. Labor-management cooperation, jointness, and
partnerships became the alleged salvation of company and union
alike.
It might cost jobs as downsizing proceeded, but the goose that laid
the golden egg would be saved-even if the eggs going to the workers
became more scarce.

Even in its own terms this "strategy" has failed. It has not
stopped
the erosion of benefits or the loss of jobs. The go-along,
go-it-alone
route can't work for workers in a world of global corporations.

Perhaps ironically, the corporate post-September 11 rush to war
profiteering and government hand-outs has made the question of
class
all too real for millions, who are being forced to sacrifice jobs
or
income in the face of war and recession.

In this context, the fight against the Free Trade Area of the
Americas
offers an opportunity to pull organized labor and its allies back
together again. It holds out a chance to retrain our movement in
the
idea that an injury to one is an injury to all.

A mass political strike in America? Think about it.

A Striking History

Though rare, mass political strikes have not been completely absent
in
American labor history. During the Civil War, as the Confederate
army
retreated or disintegrated across much of the South, hundreds of
thousands of slaves walked off the plantations in what W.E. B.
DuBois
called the general strike that crippled the Southern economy. There
were no unions and no central coordination, but there was a common
goal-emancipation.

On May 1, 1886 a general strike for the eight-hour day brought much
of
industry and commerce to a halt in many cities. It was called not
by
the more visionary Knights of Labor but by the predecessor of the
AFL.
Some of the very founders of business unionism had called America's
workers into the streets for a common objective.

In 1919, Seattle was shaken by a general strike. The unions-the AFL
and IWW together-ran the city and the local economy for a while.
There
were general strikes in San Francisco and Terre Haute, Indiana in
1934. In the same year, the threat of general strikes helped bring
union victories in Minneapolis, Toledo, Milwaukee, and Pekin,
Illinois.

When World War II ended, employers moved to test the new balance of
power. This brought not only the giant industrial strike waves of
1945
and 1946, but a series of local general strikes in 1946. Near total
work stoppages occurred in Oakland, California; Stamford,
Connecticut;
Lancaster and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Rochester, New York; and
Houston, Texas. These began as sympathy strikes in support of a
particular group of workers, but turned into political, class
confrontations.

By the end of the 1940s, general strikes had disappeared as
anything
more than a dream in the minds of union militants. The CIO
leadership
rejected proposals for a general strike in opposition to the
Taft-Hartley Act of 1947-although half a million UAW members did
stop
work for five hours.

The Act itself outlawed the sort of sympathy strikes that had
sparked
the local general strikes of 1946. The idea of the general strike
was
among the casualties as modern business unionism solidified in the
late 1940s.

The Failure of Labor's Democratic Dependency

American labor's dependence on the Democratic Party headed off the
development of the labor-based parties that were typical of most
other
industrial nations of the time. While the union preference for
Democrats goes way back, dependence was solidified in 1943 with the
formation of the CIO's Political Action Committee and the explicit
rejection of independent political action. This meant that the
CIO's
ambitious political program-including national health care, housing
for all, full employment, civil rights, and more-became dependent
on
the goodwill of the Democrats. This will rapidly proved ill indeed.

The CIO's political strategy was a compete failure. The labor vote
collapsed between 1948, when union members voted 81 percent for
Truman, and 1952, when only 57 percent of union members voted
Democratic. From then on, this percentage would rise to the levels
of
the 1940s in only one year, 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran the
first
truly right-wing Republican campaign.

Dependence on the Democratic Party left the unions with no
independent
means of pursuing their political agenda.

Kim Moody
Published in collaboration with Labor Notes. 'Labor Notes' is a
monthly magazine based in Detroit, USA. We are committed to
reforming
and revitalizing the labor movement. We report news about the labor
movement that you won't find anywhere else. News about grassroots
labor activity, innovative organizing tactics, international labor
struggles, immigrant workers, and problems that some union leaders
would rather keep quiet. Subscribe and receive a copy of 'Labor
Notes'
in your mailbox! Subscription information can be found at our
website
at www.labornotes.org