The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.31           September 15, 1997 
 
 
SWP Leader: Join Actions Around AFL-CIO Convention  

BY DIANA NEWBERRY AND TONY DUTROW
PITTSBURGH - "Labor is Back" is the theme of a series of mass actions and meetings during the AFL-CIO convention that will take place here September 21-25.

A leaflet calling these activities states, "Thousands of delegates from all over the country and unionists from around the world will come to town. There will be rallies, commemorations of historical labor events, exhibits, programs, a huge street party, and a community-labor teach- in." The leaflet was issued by the Pittsburgh Community- Labor Planning Committee and the AFL-CIO Labor Councils of Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington/Greene and Westmoreland Counties. It was distributed at the Labor Day march here.

The teach-in will take place at the David Lawrence Auditorium at the University of Pittsburgh on September 21. During the AFL-CIO convention, a Mass Solidarity Rally/March is planned, the leaflet says, that will proceed from the convention center to the Allegheny County courthouse. "The battle against privatization, down-sizing and the fight for a living wage and decent contracts are part of the same struggle. Now is the time to do something about it! Join us!"

"The National Trade Union Committee (NTUC) of the Socialist Workers Party has issued a call to arms to socialist industrial workers to respond to the Pittsburgh- area unionists' invitation," said Joel Britton, a member of the party's NTUC and of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers in Chicago. "All SWP members active in the same industrial unions in each city should immediately meet, discuss, and decide taking the necessary steps to ensure they can take part in these activities as fully as possible, along with some of their fellow unionists and young people from their areas."

According to a press release by the local planning committee, the AFL-CIO convention proceedings will be held at the David Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh. "The city known as the `crucible of America's industrial age' is also the city where the modern labor movement began," the release says, "with the formation of the American Federation of Labor in 1881 and the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1938. In 1955 the AFL-CIO merged into today's federation, which will be returning to the city of its roots for its 21st Constitutional Convention...

"AFL-CIO delegates, editors and members are invited to participate in the week's events."

Activities include dedication of historical markers at the sites of the 1877 railroad strike massacre and the founding of the AFL and of the CIO, as well as music programs organized by the Musician's Union president Anne Feeney.

This convention will take place as the ruling class is still debating the adverse impact of the victory of 185,000 Teamsters against United Parcel Service in one of the most important labor battles of the last 15 years, said Britton. It will register the fact that the retreat of the labor movement has bottomed out some time ago. "We can expect that officials and rank-and-file members of trade unions who recently pushed back the attacks from Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp., who are organizing to sign up farm workers into the union, and who struck General Motors in several auto plants this year will be there."

Thousands of delegates are expected to stream into Pittsburgh, some of whom have first-hand experience in these struggles. The literature publicizing the convention and the activities surrounding it clearly encourages participation not just from union officials but from rank-and-file members as well.

Some of these unionists are becoming battle-tested as polarization grows and the employers counterattack after every union initiative, Britton said. Union organizers near Watsonville, California, for example, were recently chased off the fields for trying to sign up strawberry pickers. Growers there organized a pro-company rally involving a number of workers. But the United Farm Workers is continuing its drive to sign up apple and strawberry pickers and other agricultural workers.

The venue itself is far from the usual haunts for official union gatherings, Britton said, such as the luxurious hotels in Miami Beach, Florida, and Las Vegas, Nevada, where previous AFL-CIO conventions were held.

Peggy Kreiner is a member of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 121 at LTV Steel in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. She is also a member of the Pittsburgh branch of the SWP. "I am going to go to these events around the AFL- CIO convention and will encourage my co-workers to do likewise," she said in an interview. "The discussion that socialist workers can bring there, as participants in a number of labor battles with a class-struggle perspective and with literature with the lessons of the working-class movement for 150 years, will be the first topic of our agenda at the next meeting of socialists in the USWA here," she said. "We will also urge young workers, students, members of the Young Socialists, and other youth who may not be in unions now to come along."

Diana Newberry is a member of the Young Socialists National Committee. Tony Dutrow is a member of the USWA Local 1557 in Pittsburgh.  
 
 
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