The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.35           October 7, 1996 
 
 
Socialist garment, textile workers meet  

BY NAOMI CRAINE

ATLANTA - How can communist workers in the garment and textile industries advance the understanding among their co- workers of the anti-working-class character of the capitalist two-party system, win union fighters to the perspective of independent working-class political action, and build the socialist movement? These were among the questions addressed during a meeting of socialists who are members of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) held here September 21-22.

Over the two days, unionists discussed developments in the presidential election campaigns, assessed their work over the previous half-year, and set goals selling Pathfinder books to their co-workers and other socialist activities. The discussion among the UNITE members, who hailed from Atlanta, Cleveland, Greensboro, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Philadelphia, was made concrete by the list of some 130 books and pamphlets they had sold to co-workers since February.

An important part of the weekend's events was a public Militant Labor Forum on the meaning of the 1996 elections for working people. It was presented by Paul Mailhot, a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee. "U.S. president William Jefferson Clinton has begun to put together a broad assault on the rights and living conditions of working people that will exemplify the next presidential administration, whoever wins the election," Mailhot said in his talk.

`Marriage Act' is a dividing line
"The Defense of Marriage Act will be a dividing line in many discussions, defining you as one who stands with the oppressed," Mailhot said, noting that many workers are outraged by this legislation. In the wee hours of that morning, Clinton had signed the anti-working-class measure, which sailed through Congress with an overwhelming bipartisan majority after the president promised his approval. The act bans federal recognition of gay marriages.

White House press secretary Michael McCurry said that Clinton was forgoing the usual pomp and ceremony in signing the bill because "the president believes the sooner he gets this over with the better."

What Clinton wanted to quietly "get over with," Mailhot said, was enacting a law that "in effect says `gay people aren't equal human beings.' " He cited three aspects of the legislation: it denies federal benefits such as health care and Social Security to surviving spouses of a layer of the population who is gay; the government reaches in and tells people who they can and can't marry; and the law undercuts an aspect of the "full faith and credit" clause in the U.S. Constitution, which requires state governments to recognize acts, such as marriage, performed in other states.

"Clinton is the president who set about developing a bipartisan package of laws that would cut into the rights of working people," Mailhot explained. The Defense of Marriage Act is one piece of this package, together with recent legislation on welfare, health care, immigration, and other questions. "There's an aspect to all of these laws undercutting the social wage, chipping away at gains working people have fought for and won through past decades of struggle." This process will continue under the next administration, Democratic or Republican, Mailhot added, because it's what the U.S. ruling class - the capitalist owners of banking and industry - need and want them to carry out.

One example the SWP leader pointed to is the attacks on the working class through so-called welfare reform. In New York City, for instance, William James, president of Transit Workers Union Local 100, announced September 18 that union officials had reached a tentative deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) under which 500 union members would be replaced by welfare recipients. These workers will be paid minimum wage to clean subways and buses for 26 hours a week, leaving them with the equivalent of a welfare check. Supposedly, the remaining union MTA jobs would be guaranteed.

This proposal stirred some controversy, including criticism from the Republican mayor of New York, Rudolph Guiliani, because for the first time it openly acknowledged the direct replacement of public workers receiving union-scale wages and benefits with so-called "workfare participants." There are currently 35,000 workers in similar programs throughout New York City, under agreements quietly worked out between Guiliani and officials of the main city workers union, District Council 37. Meanwhile the city's unionized workforce has fallen by 20,000 since 1994.

Fraud of `workfare'
The publicity around the MTA deal put pressure on other city union officials, who had been going along with the workfare schemes, to call for slowing down the government plans. "What happened here was the removal of the fig leaf," said Arthur Cheliotes, president of Communications Workers of America Local 1180, which represents 7,000 city workers. "Until now, there was a ruse that workfare was a training program. But now we see workfare for what it really is. It's indentured servitude."

Stanley Hill, the executive director of District Council 37, called for a moratorium on expanding the workfare program September 22. Guiliani replied, "We're going to continue with our workfare program as we've been operating it, which means it grows virtually every month by 4,000 to 5,000." The mayor said the unions "understand...we negotiate with them and work with them."

"Workfare" plans will be expanded nationally under the welfare law Clinton signed last month. Mailhot noted that the New York City measures are aimed at weakening the unions, and the union officials who go along with the scheme "are undercutting the unity that workers must fight to build with those who are out of work."

An Atlanta worker at the forum agreed. "There's discussion among city workers in Atlanta because they're setting up a capitalist businessman here to collect the garbage using welfare recipients," he said.

As they press ahead with these attacks, the capitalist rulers don't feel the pressure of any labor resistance at this time, Mailhot noted. The tentative contract between Ford and the United Auto Workers officialdom is a good example of the capitulation of the union tops in face of the bosses' offensive today, Mailhot stated. The agreement allows the second-largest U.S. auto company to pay workers in new parts plants substantially less than the contract rate for other Ford workers, in exchange for a promise to maintain 95 percent of current employment levels. This job guarantee "is one of the biggest lies in the world today," Mailhot said. "In the 1980s auto companies signed similar contracts, with similar escape clauses that allowed them to carry out massive layoffs when the market went down."

"Very few workers buy the idea that 95 percent of our jobs will be safe," commented one Ford worker at the forum. "All the older workers know that's not what happened before, and they're telling the others."

The trade union officialdom, which for decades has pointed workers toward the Democratic Party as their supposed friends in government, has less clout than ever. "This year there was a convention to organize a supposed Labor Party," Mailhot said. The founding convention of the Labor Party, held last June in Cleveland, decided not to run candidates at this time and voted down a proposed ban on endorsing candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties.

The so-called Labor Party launched in Cleveland "is a product of the frustration of a layer of trade union officials over their lack of leverage in the Democratic Party," Mailhot stated. "Most of the trade union bureaucracy is so buried in the Democratic Party they aren't even posturing for an independent identity. But others try to strike out and threaten to form a third party in an attempt to win some influence within the capitalist two-party system.

"This `Labor Party' offers no alternative to capitalist politics, however. It's only on the basis of a rising struggle of labor that there will be the possibility to form a genuine labor party," Mailhot said, "one that can chart an independent course for the working class."

At their two-day meeting, the UNITE members discussed how to use the Socialist Workers election campaign to bring these broad political questions to their co-workers and others, and to involve fellow unionists in struggles.

Like workers in many other industries, garment and textile workers face widespread layoffs and attacks on working conditions today, Arlene Rubinstein, a UNITE member in Atlanta, reported at the meeting of socialist workers. Employment in the apparel industry fell by nearly 100,000 -more than 10 percent - in 1995, and another 42,000 were laid off in fabric manufacturing. A February New York Times article stated, "For all the financial turmoil in textile workers' lives these days, the industry itself remains a huge and profitable sector of the American economy.... The increase over the last two decades has been more than 33 percent."

Campaigning for socialism
The meeting assessed the effects of the formation of UNITE through a merger of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union last year. At the time, socialists in the union called for a vote against the merger, arguing that it did nothing to strengthen the ranks of the union, a position the Atlanta meeting reaffirmed had been correct.

The socialist workers noted there is some modest but important resistance to worsening job conditions. Workers at the Kmart warehouse in Greensboro, North Carolina, for instance, just won their first union contract after a three- and-a-half-year struggle. And in several cities many garment workers turned out for activities to support their fellow unionists from the Peerless garment plant in Montreal, where 19 workers were fired for their participation in a union organizing drive.

The socialist garment workers grappled with how to strengthen their political activity on the job by consolidating their forces in the larger plants, where there are more opportunities to work with young rebels and other workers who are attracted to communist politics. They noted that where communists are working together in the same plant, such as in Atlanta and Greensboro, they had made the greatest advances in selling Pathfinder books. The meeting reaffirmed the SWP's commitment to expanding the number of socialist garment workers in the centers of the industry, particularly New York and Los Angeles.

Among the books sold on the job over the last eight months, titles on the Cuban revolution were some of the most popular. The UNITE members took a special report and discussion on how to deepen work in defense of the Cuban revolution among their co-workers.

One priority the UNITE members set was building the October 12 immigrant rights march in Washington, D.C., among garment and textile workers. Defending immigrant rights is a key question in these industries, which employ workers from all over the world. "In my plant the boss told 50 workers one day not to come back without better papers," said Gale Shangold, a garment worker from Los Angeles.

Wendy Lyons, a presser in New York, said UNITE is organizing three busses from that city to take unionists to the demonstration in Washington.

Over the last three weeks, Washington's bombing of Iraq and military build-up in the Middle East were a big topic at work. The unionists reported selling five copies of "Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq" in New International no. 7 since Clinton's September 2-3 missile attack on that country.

Anna Schell from Brooklyn said she also sold a copy of U.S. Hands Off the Mideast!, which contains speeches by Cuban leaders Fidel Castro and Ricardo Alarcón during the 1990 build-up to the Gulf War. "I had worked before with the woman who bought the book, in a different garment shop during the Gulf War," Schell said. "At that time many workers were wearing yellow ribbons to show `support for the troops.' "

Socialist workers at a carpet mill in Eden, North Carolina, described how one of their co-workers joined them on a picket line against the bombing of Iraq that was held in Greensboro. He was quoted in the local newspaper, and took the clipping into work to talk to others about protesting the U.S. war moves.

L. Paltrineri from Greensboro described the range of other books that socialist workers had sold over the last few months. "One worker read Teamster Rebellion, and told me, `This is great, this is our roots. What do you have for me to read next?' Now he's a member of the Pathfinder Readers Club. Another woman who's been part of a fight against a racist school board bought a book by Malcolm X, which she quoted from at a school board meeting."

The UNITE members took a goal of selling 32 Pathfinder books a month on the job. While this will be an increase from previous sales, they were confident the goal can be met and is the best way of finding the young rebels and other struggle- minded workers who can be recruited to Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party.

They also discussed how to finance the organization of their political work and increase pledges to the $125,000 Pathfinder Fund, and elected a steering committee to guide their work until their next meeting.  
 
 
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