BY GREG McCARTAN
LOS ANGELES - Socialist workers active in six industrial
unions in the United States met here and in Des Moines, Iowa,
October 24-25. They charted a course of action for socialist
trade unionists to participate in the defensive struggles
working people are waging against the offensive by the
employers throughout the United States.
Doing so means becoming an active component of what is a broader vanguard of working-class fighters, and functioning as effective revolutionary politicians in the unions. The framework of the party's efforts to reach out to militant workers and bring them in contact with each other is seeking to lay the foundations for a class-struggle left-wing in the labor movement. This is a reality socialist unionists must act on today, in addition to opportunities to recruit individual fighters to the party.
A class-struggle left wing develops in the unions, the main defensive organizations of the working class, in a period of growing resistance to the attacks on the working conditions and rights of workers. As working people look for ways to counter the street actions of rightist and fascist currents, the need to transform the unions into revolutionary instruments of struggle against the employers and their government, and for the interests of the entire working class is posed.
"Our third campaign for the turn to the industrial unions has two aspects," said Nan Bailey in a report to the meeting of members of the International Association of Machinists. "First is to rebuild all eight national union fractions" where members of the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialists are concentrating their forces.
These are the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW); the International Association of Machinists (IAM); and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), which had meetings in Los Angeles. Meeting in Des Moines were members of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA); the United Auto Workers (UAW); and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). Rail workers who are members of the United Transportation Union (UTU) met in late September. Socialists are currently seeking jobs in coal mines organized by the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA).
Responding to the onset of the world capitalist economic crisis and renewed openings to carry out effective communist work in the unions, the party launched its initial turn to industry as a politically centralized nationwide campaign in 1978, to get an overwhelming majority of the membership and leadership of the party into industrial unions. In 1985 the party launched the second campaign for the turn to industry, focusing on expanding the number of fractions built in each branch, and thereby extending the geographic spread of the national fractions.
To launch this third campaign, meetings of socialist workers in the UTU, followed by the party's National Committee a week later, took stock of the fact that over the past years of retreat in the labor movement the size of the party fractions in the UTU, IAM, and USWA had grown substantially. The number of Socialist Workers and Young Socialists in the UNITE, UFCW, and UMWA had been reduced to a few in several cities.
Norton Sandler, an airline worker and member of the party's Trade Union Committee, noted in a report to a joint session of the meetings in Los Angeles that this campaign to rebuild and revitalize the party fractions in the industrial unions got off to a false start in one important aspect. Instead of politically leading this effort and building hard-working, quick-response committees to find jobs where the party decides to concentrate its work, branch leadership bodies simply declared that all branch members would be immediately active in a renewed search for industrial union jobs.
Voluntary jobs committees
Sandler explained that previous campaigns to carry out and
reinforce the turn to the industrial unions were voluntary, as
is the current effort. Party members join the branch jobs
committee as they become convinced of the changed objective
situation and get some experience in the openings for communist
work in the working class.
To do this means that a substantial number of those currently in the three unions with the heaviest concentration of party members will get jobs and build fractions in another union workplaces such as in UNITE, UFCW, and the UMWA, building multi-fraction branches across the country.
"The second aspect of this campaign," said Bailey, "is to adopt a course of action to deepen the proletarianization of our fractions in each of these industrial unions." This includes timely responsiveness to political developments and functioning with the habits, professionalism, and standards required for the organized leadership of the working class that will contest for power against the imperialists. And it means getting back to a party in which all of its units - the local branches and industrial union fractions - carry out in a collective and centralized way the prioritized campaigns of the movement.
"We can't do one part of the third campaign for the turn without the other," Bailey said in her report. She stressed that "today there is a layer of militant workers who are drawing broader lessons about politics. This has raised the standard of leadership responsibilities for us in the labor movement and other social struggles.
"This campaign," she said, "is a precondition to opening opportunities to recruit workers and youth to the party and the Young Socialists. It's a pre-condition for the recruitment of workers in the unions who are part of these struggles today."
A joint session of the meetings were held in each city to discuss reports on branch jobs committees, along with a campaign to raise $550,000 for a capital fund needed to purchase machinery and pay for plant improvements needed to facilitate efforts of Pathfinder's printshop, where Pathfinder books, the Militant, and Perspectiva Mundial are produced.
Participants in the meetings voted to return to the tradition of party members and supporters giving any company bonuses -usually given as a sweetener for ending up with a bad contract - to the capital fund. The four workers from Great Lakes Steel in Detroit who were present decided to donate their recent bonuses, totaling well over $1,500.
On October 24 in Los Angeles the socialist trade unionists attended a Militant Labor Forum held to celebrate publication of New International no. 11 and to raise funds for the $115,000 drive now underway for the magazine. The program, entitled "U.S. Imperialism has Lost the Cold War," featured Pathfinder editor Mámud Shirvani. Young Socialists leader Carlos Hernández, one of the drafters of the "Young Socialist Manifesto," published in the new issue of New International, and Sam Manuel, a leader of Socialist Workers in the UTU and of the party's farm work, also spoke.
In Des Moines the Militant Labor Forum, "Workers and Farmers Fight the Bosses' Offensive," opened with the ideas and experiences of a panel of working-class fighters. The speakers were Cecelia Moriarity, a member of the USWA and the Socialist Workers candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, and Ramona Chávez, a member of the UFCW.
Chávez spoke of helping to lead her co-workers to fight for safer job conditions in the meatpacking plant where she works, and the confidence to continue the fight that meeting socialist workers on the job gave her. Earl Simes, a farmer activist, spoke from the floor about the depression conditions in agriculture farmers are confronting today and the need for leadership.
Leftward shift in bourgeois politics
At the Des Moines meeting of members of the UFCW, Tom Alter
pointed to how the resistance of the working-class gets
reflected in a variety of ways, including through capitalist
elections. He said the recent electoral victory of the Social
Democratic Party in Germany and of the selection of the leader
of the former Communist Party in Italy to head up the
government there are examples of a "leftward shift in bourgeois
politics."
After living through seven years of a steady retreat in working-class struggles, this recent shift helps fighters to see that far from having dealt a major defeat to any layer of the working class around the world, the rulers must still maneuver to head off resistance to the conditions they try to impose on working people. "This is an opportunity for all fighters to have some space," Alter said. "They don't get vamped on if they learn to handle themselves well and meet others who can show them how to function as revolutionary politicians."
Joel Britton, a leader of the SWP's Trade Union Committee and a member of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union, described how a leader of the locked out oil workers at the Crown petroleum refinery in Texas joined coal miners at a recent rally held in the southern Illinois town of Virden in support of the United Mine Workers strike against Freeman- United Coal. Unionists at Caterpillar who are fighting that company's continued union-busting drive turned out, as well as strikers against Titan Tires.
These workers came to meet with and learn from one another, and add the weight of their struggles to the miners' fight. Socialist Workers, who campaigned in their unions for support to the miners and participation in the Virden rally, played a role in bringing these fighters together at the rally.
Britton explained that experiences leading up to and during the October 11 rally in solidarity with the striking miners show what every local union fraction and branch of the party can be doing today in the class struggle and labor movement.
Alyson Kennedy, a member of OCAW at a Chicago-area corn processing plant, explained that the socialist oil and chemical workers have important political openings, particularly in responding to the Crown lockout and the resistance by OCAW members to the continued offensive of the oil bosses against refinery workers. These and other fights against the oil bosses present an opportunity to reach more workers with the Militant newspaper, socialist books, and election material.
Workers at Crown refuse to give up their over two-year long fight against the company's union-busting lockout at the Houston-area refinery. In hopes of forcing the unionists to end their fight, the company has filed a civil lawsuit against 14 refinery workers and OCAW Local 4-227 secretary-treasurer Joe Campbell falsely accusing the workers of sabotage.
The union has been waging a "corporate campaign" against Crown, which includes a boycott of Crown products and protests at the company's main office in Baltimore, Maryland. Participants in the meeting noted that Crown workers who have been traveling across the South promoting the boycott had begun to connect up with farmers and fighters from the civil rights movement.
Polarization and workers' resistance
Participants in the meetings also discussed the sharpening
polarization in politics, and the rightist "culture war,"
highlighted by the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay youth in
Wyoming. While the socialists were meeting, a rightist
assassinated Dr. Barnett Slepian in Amherst, New York. Slepian
was an outspoken supporter of a woman's right to choose
abortion and worked at a clinic for working women that provided
abortions among its health-care services.
Alter from Des Moines described joining protests of working farmers and running into supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, a fascist politician whose organization seeks to gain influence among farmers and others who are being dealt blows under the crisis of the world capitalist system.
The march of the imperialist system toward fascism and war was also underlined by increasing moves to deepen U.S. and NATO military intervention in Yugoslavia. In the days following the meetings of socialist workers, Washington ratcheted up its saber rattling against Iraq.
Across the South, Black farmers have intensified a years- long battle with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reverse the government's racist practices that have driven thousands of Black farmers off the land in recent years. Just prior to the socialist workers' meeting, some 600 Black farmers scored an important victory, when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled that their fight against the agriculture department could be waged in court as a class action lawsuit. The broad support and interest in the Black farmers' fight points to the increased possibility to forge a fighting alliance between workers and farmers.
"In their actions you can see a new generation of Black leaders," said Sam Manuel, a railroad worker who is part of a SWP leadership committee charged with leading its work among farmers. Manuel noted that socialist workers have an enormous opportunity and responsibility to work alongside of these farmers as they continue their fight.
The machinists union members discussed some of the specific fights being waged, especially by airline workers. For example, some 19,000 passenger service workers at United Airlines voted to join the IAM in July and USAir workers are threatening a strike.
At Northwest Airlines, following a successful strike by pilots, ramp workers, mechanics, and cleaners - working without a new contract since 1996 - IAM members still have a fight in front of them.
Along with this increase in resistance has also come an offensive against the union in the guise of a drive to convince mechanics to leave the IAM and join the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA). AMFA is a company-minded outfit that has launched efforts to decertify the IAM for a layer of workers at both United and at Northwest Airlines.
In response to the decertification attempts, IAM officials restructured the union at Northwest and created a separate division for mechanics, a move that can only weaken the workers in the IAM by dividing them up along craft lines. The answer to AMFA's union busting logic has to be greater organization for a fight by the ranks in the IAM to take on the airline bosses.
USWA strike at Titan Tire
One battleground of the resistance discussed at the meeting
of steelworkers is the six-month strike by Steelworkers at
Titan Tire in Des Moines, Iowa; and Natchez, Mississippi. Ray
Parsons from Des Moines reviewed the work of socialist
steelworkers participating in strike activity, building support
among co-workers, and getting their union locals involved in
the fight.
John Hawkins reported on the work of a local fraction in the Twin Cities to help bring a Titan striker to speak at a union meeting and do a plant gate collection. As a result "our co- workers look at us differently," he said. Parsons reported that a growing number of Titan strikers have subscriptions to the Militant newspaper, including some of the "road warriors," the name given to the strikers who are hitting the road to reach out for solidarity.
Gaetan Whiston, in a political report to the meeting, said that during the retreat of the labor movement possibilities for carrying out "our propaganda work and our mass work diverge." But with the increased resistance there is an intertwined relationship between the two, because fighters who are looking for other fighters need the Militant. Whiston pointed to an example of timely response to a political development by socialist steelworkers in Pittsburgh. They campaigned at U.S. Steel and LTV steel plantgates the same week as a jointly organized company and union [officials] "Stand Up for Steel" rally, and used the institutions of the SWP - the election campaign, the plant gate sales teams, and the forum series - to present an alternative to the jingoist, anti-imports crusade.
Socialist steelworkers within those plants were able to follow up and deepen the discussions. Peggy Kreiner reported that her co-workers' deep distrust of a union and company partnership opened up political space to have the discussion.
Heather Wood related how she turned to her co-workers to push back problems with sexual harassment and a company effort to intimidate her. She is the only woman in the melt shop of her plant. The meeting discussed other examples of women steelworkers stepping forward, which strengthens the union and the fight for women's rights, and discussed ways to build and participate in the Women of Steel conference scheduled for Columbus, Ohio, November 17-18.
Socialist workers from Des Moines, Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, and Pittsburgh participated in the UFCW meeting. Several participants noted the need to give increased attention to getting off probation and functioning on the job. Like other workers socialists need to learn skills of the job, while being alert and prepared to discuss politics with their co-workers.
Learning Spanish is another task of socialist workers, participants noted, given the large number of Latinos in the packing plants. Several workers pointed out how socialists cannot do serious politics at work and in their union without learning Spanish. They also discussed the need to relate to the increasing number of raids at meatpacking plants nationally by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and protests that have been happening against these antiunion moves around the country.
The meeting of socialists in UNITE registers some initial gains in the third campaign for the turn as well, with socialist workers present from six cities.
Gale Shangold, a UNITE member and the Socialist Workers Party candidate for Governor of California explained how after a couple of co-workers came to an event at her campaign headquarters they organized a house meeting for her. In New York, members of UNITE passed out a flyer that invited co- workers to meet the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate, an airline worker, at their plant gate.
Socialist unionists noted that while most fights and strikes are occurring outside UNITE-organized plants at this time, they can't just wait for the struggle to come to them. Several unionists described how they were joining in support for labor struggles in several areas, from the Standard Motors strike in New York, to the Jeddo coal miners strike in eastern Pennsylvania, to rallies by airline workers at Northwest Airlines and a strike by workers at nursing homes in Massachusetts.
Another participant at the meeting described relating to a struggle and union victory at a large garment distribution center in Massachusetts. In April the 900 workers there won an organizing drive and in September ratified a three year contract that includes a $1.60 raise over the next three years, increased holidays, sick days and improved health and pension benefits.
Bill Scheer in the USWA; Jim Altenberg in the OCAW; Ted Leonard in UNITE; and Laura Garza in the IAM contributed to this article.