BY MIKE ITALIE
In the January 25 Militant, Arlene Rubinstein and Ernie
Mailhot answered questions from readers Edwin Fruit and Larry
Johnston about whether or not to describe the Aircraft
Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) as a union. I want to
address some of Johnston's other questions.
He asks, "Why have you not taken up the issue of the true interests of the skilled workers? What is a reasonable difference between skilled and unskilled wages?" In a follow- up letter printed last week, he adds, "More explanation of why the interests of skilled and unskilled workers are the same and how the value of labor power is determined would be useful."
AMFA presents itself as the defender of "skilled" workers, as a separate "craft," whose members are mistreated by industrial unions that include all workers in a company or industry. In its biggest victory in 40 years, of which there have been few, AMFA defeated the International Association of Machinists (IAM) in a November 20 representation vote among Northwest Airlines mechanics and cleaners. At the Atlanta maintenance base hardly a week goes by without the posting of a newspaper clipping pointing to a high demand for aircraft mechanics. Some AMFA supporters argue that mechanics should split off from other workers to take advantage of a seeming increase in bargaining power, saying, "I look at things as a mechanic. We should negotiate separately for what we're worth."
But this narrow craft approach is a deadly trap that leads workers into making deals with the bosses for short-term gains at the expense of the labor movement as a whole.
The wages system
Johnston rightly asks, "How can you address the issue of
the unity of the skilled and unskilled without taking up the
issue of the wages system itself?" Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels, the founders of the modern communist movement,
analyzed the source of wages. In The Wages System, Engels
explained that workers are not paid the value of what they
produce. Instead, the capitalists pay a wage based solely on
what will physically maintain the workers and their class. As
Engels says, the wage is "the sum required to produce to the
laborer the means of existence necessary, according to the
standard of life of his station and country, to keep himself
in working order and to propagate his race."
In exchange, the employer purchases our labor power, with which we create products worth many times more than what we receive in wages. This is why the bosses speed up production and drive to increase the length of the working day (regardless of the miserly overtime premium we sometimes receive) - the capitalists' profits soar when they are able to grind more work out of us, and yet continue to pay only what we need to survive.
Marx and Engels also analyzed the reasons for the differences in wages workers receive, and concluded that these have very little to do with factors such as the amount of training required for a job. In volume 1 of Capital, Marx points out that as the production process becomes more mechanized and less specialized, "The distinction between higher and simple labor, between `skilled labor' and `unskilled labor,' rests in part on pure illusion or, to say the least, on distinctions that have long since ceased to be real, and survive only by virtue of a traditional convention; and in part on the helpless condition of some sections of the working class, a condition that prevents exacting equally with the rest the value of their labor-power."
Noneconomic factors play a predominant role in pitting workers against each other and determining sometimes sharp distinctions in wages - physical differences (age, race or sex), sheer prejudice (national origin), or social power (union vs. nonunion). For example, in spite of the high level of skill and experience involved in sewing garments, the fact that most workers in this industry are women and immigrants is used by the bosses to drive down the value of their labor power. They are among the lowest-paid workers in the United States, with some of the worst job conditions. In contrast, workers at the Northwest maintenance base in Atlanta who sew seat covers receive wages three or four times higher than those of most garment workers, though their skills are no greater.
Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin explained that a craft mentality was characteristic of an "aristocracy of labor," which had become the base for the bureaucracy in the unions and a source of opportunism in the socialist movement. Their conception of "we" vs. "them" was one that allied better-paid workers with the bosses in opposition to the vast majority of workers and farmers, at home and in the semicolonial world. The challenge for workers and farmers today is to understand that "we" includes all workers regardless of the work we perform or the country we live in, and excludes all bosses, bankers, and landlords who make up the ruling capitalist classes. In this way we can fight for the vast majority who produce the wealth against the tiny minority who steal it.
Mike Italie is a member of the IAM, soon to be in AMFA.