The rail workers, members of the United Transportation Union (UTU), met in Washington, D.C., and the members of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) in Philadelphia.

Participants discussed how they could become more deeply involved in these developing struggles. They discussed how to restructure and transform their local work, so their day-to-day functioning converges with that of vanguard workers, especially those in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). These unions are in industries where attacks by the employers have been especially intense, where resistance is growing, and where members of the SWP and Young Socialists have made the most progress in becoming an integral part of the struggles.

The meetings of socialist steelworkers and rail workers took place a week after the national fraction meeting of socialists active in the International Association of Machinists (IAM), where the same issues were discussed (see last week's Militant).  
 
Resistance spreads
Reports and discussion at these meetings focused on a number of examples of workers' resistance. Packinghouse workers in the Upper Midwest are standing up to the bosses' offensive, both through struggles to establish union organization and to use existing union structures to wage an effective fight. There have been strikes, rallies, and meetings by coal miners and others in coalfield communities, including the recent strike victory of coal miners in Wyoming and New Mexico against Pittsburg and Midway Coal Co. (P&M).

Richard Pauling, a steelworker at the Bridgestone/Firestone plant in Des Moines, Iowa, described to the meeting of steelworkers a number of strikes and lockouts involving USWA members. These included the strike at Titan Tire and lockouts at Kaiser Aluminum and AK Steel. In each of these fights, the bosses are attempting to break the union and impose qualitatively worse conditions on the job.

The meeting also grappled with how communist workers should respond to the recent revelations about faulty Firestone tires that have caused the deaths of dozens of people in rollover accidents (see article, page 7). John Staggs from Philadelphia stressed that workers need to emphasize that Firestone is responsible not only for speedup in the plants but also for cost-cutting in making the tires. "Whenever the capitalists show a disregard for human life, the labor movement needs to go after it," he said.

The steelworkers in Philadelphia joined a Militant Labor Forum Saturday evening, featuring speakers who are part of the growing resistance.

Luis Tlaseca, of the Kaolin Workers Union, spoke about the fight of mushroom workers for a union contract at Kaolin Mushroom Farms in nearby Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. He was joined by Jack Ward, an underground coal miner from southern Illinois, who just returned from a celebration by miners and their supporters of the victory against P&M at its McKinley mine in New Mexico.

Both speakers pointed to brutal attacks that are fueling the fightbacks. Tlaseca emphasized the speedup at Kaolin, where workers must pick, cut, and package about double the number of mushrooms as they did 15 years ago for the same wage--and in the same amount of time! New hires who cannot make the minimum rate are fired. The work is seasonal, with short hours in the winter and massive overtime in the summer. The bosses' increasingly callous attitude to the workforce, Tlaseca said, galvanized workers to organize in the early 1990s.

"Today we are still fighting for a contract," he said. "The leadership of the union was fired seven years ago. We just won a ruling by the labor board, and I was recently able to start back to work. The fight to win recognition and a contract has intensified. We are getting out to other strikes to support others and to get the word out about our struggle," he said.  
 
Social movement in mining areas
Jack Ward described the social movement against attacks on safety, work conditions, medical benefits, and conditions of life in coal-mining communities. This was reflected in the strikes against Pittsburg and Midway where families, workers, members of other unions, owners of small businesses, and others in the community all got involved, helping to secure the victory. With this support, the miners pushed back company attempts to impose the 12-hour day and a cut in health care.

The UMWA local in Kemmerer, Wyoming, formed the "Miners' Backbone," an organization of women who organized marches, rallies, and picketing that played a significant role in gaining the victory. The striking miners leafleted plant gates to reach refinery workers in the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers International Union (PACE) at Chevron refineries near Los Angeles and Salt Lake City and held a rally of both locals at the P&M headquarters in Denver. P&M is a subsidiary of the Chevron energy giant.

"These victories will be an impetus to miners whose contracts are coming up at the Peabody mines and to nonunion miners who are turning to the union as they look for a way to fight," Ward said. "Miners at P&M are already discussing what they can do to strengthen others' struggles."

At recent hearings sponsored by the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the government agency proposed doubling the levels of coal dust allowed in underground mines. Miners have organized to speak at these hearings, exposing how such an increase in coal dust will lead to a rise in black lung and a heightened risk of mine explosions. Black lung remains the number-one killer of coal miners today.

Ward pointed to recent disasters in which miners have lost their lives, such as the explosion at the Willow Creek mine in Utah that killed two young workers. Soon after that disaster, a young contract miner at the Blacksville no. 2 mine in West Virginia was killed on the job. Earlier this year, miners who work for another contractor, Webnic Construction Services, at the same Blacks-ville mine voted to join the UMWA.

"This was a breakthrough for the union," Ward said, "one that points the way forward for miners--whether the growing numbers hired as contractors, or directly by the mine--to forge the kind of unity needed to confront the conditions that lead to death and injuries."  
 
Struggles in rail
In a report to the meeting of socialist rail workers, Chris Rayson, a conductor working for the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railroad in Seattle, gave some examples of resistance by workers in the rail industry. These include the victory against discrimination and for affirmative action resulting from several lawsuits by Black workers at Amtrak. One of these suits was filed by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE), which organizes workers, many of them Black or Spanish-speaking, who do the hardest work digging up and laying down track.

Rayson also noted the successful unionization drives by van drivers who transport rail crews. In the past, these jobs were organized by rail unions before being contracted out to nonunion companies paying the minimum wage and offering little or no benefits.

Andrea Morell, an assistant conductor on the Metro Boston Transportation Authority (MBTA), reported on a successful fight by workers there. In a transparent move to bust the union, MBTA officials attempted to end the contract with the UTU workers employed by Amtrak and bring in Herzog Transportation Services. This nonunion outfit in turn sent out letters to union employees to "apply for jobs they already had," Morell explained. To this day not one worker has agreed to do so.

Last February, the BMWE struck the Union Pacific railroad's central corridor in the Midwest to protest plans to contract out production of panel sections at a Wyoming plant. Three months later the union set up picket lines for three hours in Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland against the Norfolk Southern railroad to protest the layoff of 600 union members in violation of seniority and bidding rights protected by the contract. The strike was ended by union officials after a court granted the company a restraining order. Several railroads went to federal court in June seeking a court order requiring the BMWE to give 10 days notice before striking.  
 
Transforming union functioning
The SWP today is organizing to get its members into workplaces and unions where a more generalized resistance is developing to the conditions and indignities bearing down ever more harshly on workers.

"There is a social movement in the coalfields around health and safety issues, which affect whole regions," Ward said. "What is developing in packinghouses in the Midwest is part of the beginnings of a broader movement. Organizing drives in Nebraska and actions by workers in union plants in Iowa are part of this picture.

"Garment workers were among hundreds of other workers who marched on May Day in New York, helping to reclaim the day for the working class," Ward said. "Garment workers also made up part of the 20,000 workers who rallied for immigrant rights in Los Angeles recently.

"It will take a movement to organize the hundreds of garment shops in cities such as Los Angeles and New York, and workers are beginning to respond," he said. Ward noted that socialist workers in the garment industry "are going through real experiences on the job." In Miami, for example, nonunion workers signed a petition to support an organizing drive by meat packers at Dakota Premium Foods in South St. Paul, Minnesota--"because they need a union too," Ward said.

Speakers at the Philadelphia meeting pointed out that resistance by union steelworkers has not been centered in the giant steel mills where socialists have several local fractions. Many members of these fractions have found themselves in situations where they are not part of skirmishes or struggles, and are not able to function on the level of those of socialists in the garment, mine, or meatpacking unions. The meeting voted to recommend that these fraction members change jobs and join other fractions, guided by discussion and decisions of the branches of the Socialist Workers Party to which they belong.

Both the rail workers and steelworkers meetings set deadlines to establish fractions of two socialist workers who work together in the same plant, mine, or mill along with common co-workers. Only by doing so, they affirmed, is it possible to carry out party campaigns, respond to developments on the job, and figure out how to become integrated in working-class struggles, setting an example for co-workers and fellow fighters.

Prior to these meetings, most participants did not have another party member on the job, something that depoliticized their work, making it less consistent and revolutionary.  
 
Answering craft prejudice, arrogance
Following the example set by socialists in the IAM, both national fraction meetings set goals to sell the new pamphlet, The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism by Jack Barnes. Socialists in the UTU set a goal of selling 25 pamphlets and socialist steelworkers set a goal of 35. To help reach workers who are cleaners, carmen, van drivers, and janitors, the UTU fraction decided that a third of their goal would be copies of the Spanish-language edition of the pamphlet.

In a letter to the party's Trade Union Committee following the meeting, Andrea Morell reported on the discussion at the meeting on a sentence in the pamphlet asserting that the rail barons don't need for rail workers to be literate in order to keep the trains running. The Trade Union Committee had asked the meeting to take up the point, since several rail workers had questioned the accuracy of the statement.

"As workers on freight and passenger railroads throughout the country with years of experience among us," Morell wrote, "we felt we were competent to conclude that literacy is not a necessity for operating trains safely and efficiently. Instead, it is used by the bosses to serve their class purposes, which have nothing to do with the 'safe and smooth' operation of trains, as borne out every day on this country's railways.

"The literacy tests are used to exclude workers from the operating crafts, in particular Blacks and immigrant workers," she wrote. "Many such workers who apply are actually experienced railroad workers in other crafts or departments, whose skill levels vary and can be quite demanding--as in laying track switches, for example.

"Literacy, as a supposed requirement to do the job, is also used to inculcate a false sense of superiority among conductors and engineers over cleaners, maintenance of way workers, and others, thus fostering divisions among workers on the railroad," Morell noted. "Divisions act against the most basic thing railroad workers actually do need to get trains over the road with as little injury to themselves and the public as possible--and that is solidarity."

In her letter Morell explained that having the discussion on issues "raised around the pamphlet was a real strengthening of the political discussion that was at the heart of our meeting: that is, are we railroad workers with pride of craft and defense of relative privileges? Or are we communists--professional revolutionists--who have been assigned by the party to work on railroads for a time and are ready to move on if the party so decides?"  
 
August 26 March on Washington
The Militant Labor Forum held in Washington, D.C., the evening of the UTU fraction meeting focused on the national march against police brutality scheduled for August 26 in the nation's capital. Socialist workers and youth are publicizing the action and working to bring co-workers and others with them.

Jasmine Tyler, who has been actively building the march, emphasized the breadth of the efforts nationwide, with large contingents planning to come on buses from numerous cities. Tyler became active after a member of her family was brutalized by the cops and imprisoned.

"As young people," she said, "we need to be in the forefront of the fight."  
 
 
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