“This meeting is to implement a radical change in the work of socialists in the UMWA,” explained Anna Guerrero in the opening report to the meeting. Guerrero is a coal miner in a nonunion mine in Arizona. “The work we do has to be centered on building the union and its transformation into a revolutionary instrument of the working class,” she said. “We have been focused on getting socialist newspapers and books into the hands of our co-workers and getting the necessary job skills, and we have retreated from our strategic trade-union orientation.”
“Work to transform the unions can be done today—strengthening the union where it exists and fighting to organize it where it does not,” Guerrero continued. “There are serious discussions about organizing the union at two of the mines where socialist miners are working today.”
“We must be known as trade unionists of word and deed who use the structures of our union to advance struggles alongside our co-workers and who bring to the union the social questions that the working class is facing today, like racism and sexism,” said Jason Alessio, a coal miner at the Deserado mine in Colorado. “To say that you are building a movement without this perspective is empty talk,” he continued. “When you live by this perspective, then it has real meaning to explain to your co-workers why you are a communist.”
“There are miners where I work, younger and older, who are collaborating on how to use the union to push the company back on questions like mandatory overtime,” said Alessio.
“A recent newspaper article brought home to me the importance of not missing our union’s activities,” said Francisco Picado, also a miner at Deserado. “This last commemoration of the 1914 massacre of miners in Ludlow, Colorado, included a march by Hispanic steelworkers from Denver, who joined in with miners in the restoration of the recently vandalized Ludlow monument. The article highlighted the participation of Mexicans in those early battles for our union. Most of the children who were murdered by the bosses that day were from Mexico,” he said.
“The coverage socialist miners did for the Militant newspaper of the flood that trapped miners at the Quecreek mine in Somerset, Pennsylvania, and the subsequent cover-up by the bosses and the government last year was useful,” said Tony Lane, a miner in Pennsylvania. “But we need to do such efforts starting with our union and how to advance it.”
“We have begun discussions with co-workers about organizing to bring in the union where we work,” said William West, a miner in Arizona. “The bosses take advantage of the fact that many of my co-workers have been forced to migrate here from other countries to find work,” he continued. “By bringing the union into the workplace we cut across all of that, because all workers, regardless of legal status, can fight for our union as equals. Many immigrants are joining unions in the U.S.”
“We want to take full part and responsibility in the organizing drive where I work,” said Joe Armstrong, a coal miner at a nonunion mine in Colorado, where supporters of the UMWA are trying to build support for the union. “This is not the first attempt to organize this mine and I’m looking forward to working with the veteran unionists who are leading this struggle.”
The socialist miners also decided to assign miners from the Pittsburgh area to discuss out how to strengthen communist trade- union work in West Virginia. “This area of Appalachia is where important battles around safety and black lung were fought in the late 1960s,” said Lane, referring to a deadly disease miners develop from breathing coal dust into their lungs. “Through these battles the ranks of miners wrested more power into their hands. It remains a strong area of the union as shown by the nearly 1,000-strong protest in May in Charleston, West Virginia, over new rules increasing the amount of coal dust in the mines as well as the Widows’ Walk protest over black-lung benefits in 2002.”
Coal production in West Virginia is second only to Wyoming in a period where overall mine productivity continues to increase. Average mine productivity has gone up from 3.45 tons per labor-hour in 1989, to 6.44 tons in 1999—an 87 percent increase. According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), there have been 21 fatalities in coal mining as of July this year—13 of them in Kentucky and West Virginia alone.
Francisco Picado is a member of UMWA Local 1984 in Rangely, Colorado. William West works at a mine in Arizona not yet organized by the union.
This perspective builds on previous advances. “Today we are more connected with layers of our class who are on the receiving end of some of the more vicious attacks by the bosses and where there is a degree of resistance and the potential for workers to dig in their heels and fight,” Britton said.
“This gets us back to how the strategic fight for the unions to become fighting instruments of labor is critical to the struggle of the working class to take power,” said Wanda Lewis from Los Angeles who is working along with other workers to revitalize the union at the Farmer John plant. A number of workers have begun to look for ways to rebuild the union in response to indiscriminate firings, increased line speed, and bathroom break restrictions imposed by the bosses.
“Orienting to the whole local union, not just our plant, will connect us to the broader labor movement,” said Britton. Many UFCW locals organize workers at a variety of plants and other facilities, including those in food and retail. Tim Frank from St. Paul, Minnesota, remarked that slaughterhouse workers who led the fight to organize and build UFCW Local 789 at Dakota Premium Foods “have a real opportunity to reach out to other fighters. That local is involved in a public fight for a contract at Borders bookstore, where workers recently voted in the UFCW, and has launched an organizing drive at the local Target department stores in the Twin Cities as part of its campaign to raise the wages, benefits, and dignity of retail workers.”
James Stone from Toronto pointed to opportunities in Canada to join with UFCW campaigns, from a unionization drive in southwest Ontario to the successful organization of the Wal-Mart store in Thompson, Manitoba—the first entire Wal-Mart store organized by the UFCW in North America.
Union taking on social questions
Britton noted that “the stance the labor movement is taking in support of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride will get quite a hearing” (see advertisement in Calendar section). Growing numbers of unions are supporting the rights of immigrants, he said. This stance helps in answering America First, rightist demagogy, such as that espoused by Patrick Buchanan, who recently blamed the social crisis in California on free trade policies and “an unrepelled invasion from Mexico” of immigrant workers.
“The five-month-long strike by members of UFCW Local 538 against Tyson Foods is a fight with big stakes, not just for the 470 strikers,” said Britton. “The company is demanding deep cuts in wages and benefits.” The Solidarity Sunday Rally set for August 17 is the next opportunity to show support for the embattled union, he said (see ad below).
The union-organizing effort by workers at the giant Smithfield Foods hog-processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was also discussed. Participants decided to organize a team to visit Tar Heel to learn more about it and cover it in the Militant.
Ved Dookhun from Newark, New Jersey, drew on his recent experience as a participant in the Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange delegation to Cuba. “Explaining the course of the Cuban Revolution to vanguard workers is at the center of building a revolutionary workers movement in this country,” he said.
Arlene Rubinstein and Maurice Wilson are meat packers in Atlanta and Chicago, respectively.
James Harris from Atlanta pointed out in the main report that workers today are less weighed down by defeats of the past and many are looking to make links with other workers in struggle. This course of action was presented in “A Sea Change in Working-Class Politics,” the opening chapter of Capitalism’s World Disorder by SWP national secretary Jack Barnes.
Harris said that as the employers’ assault on the rights and living standards of the working class deepens, more and more workers are looking to the unions to defend and unify working people. Those who find themselves without a union in many workplaces are seeking ways to collectively organize one. These struggles will increasingly include defense of the unemployed, he said.
On July 30, for example, on the eve of the meeting, the textile giant Pillowtex announced that it is shutting down its North American operations, throwing its 7,500 employees, the majority of them textile workers, onto the streets. The plant shutdowns by the nation’s third-largest maker of towels and linens is causing devastation in some towns throughout the Carolinas (see lead article in this issue).
“How do we fight for solutions for workers who have stopped getting paychecks?” asked Will Collins, who had worked for Pillowtex until a few months ago. “We are steered to apply to charities for help or sign up for short-term aid from the state. Yet many of us can be ruled ineligible if we have cars or other assets. One of my co-workers was told she would have to wait months for financial aid from the state because she had already received some aid once this year.” Collins said that the UNITE officials’ stance on Pillowtex is that “foreign competition” shut down the company and U.S. jobs are now overseas. “I don’t agree with that,” Collins said. “It’s the whole economic system of capitalism that’s in crisis worldwide and workers internationally are bearing the effects of it.”
Another former Pillowtex worker, Naomi Craine, said, “We need to use union power to organize the unemployed workers and to call for measures such as immediate relief in the form of cash aid and for a national unemployment insurance not tied to the company.”
Socialist garment and textile workers decided to visit the Kannapolis, North Carolina, area to find out the facts and discuss with laid-off Pillowtex workers ways to confront the devastation of joblessness.
Abby Tilsner from Newark spoke about the organizing effort that UNITE and the Teamsters are carrying out at Cintas, the largest uniform producer and industrial laundry in North America. Socialists are joining with Cintas workers and others to build support for this campaign.
Participants discussed the challenge before garment workers in relatively small shops not organized by the union.
Maggie Trowe from Boston said, “Workers operating machinery in the textile mills and sewing plants in garment are at the heart of the industry and it is from these workers that the bosses extract the surplus value. They need the union.”
A garment worker from Miami described the recent victory by workers who are fighting for union recognition and a contract at Point Blank, one of the largest clothing manufacturers in southern Florida. A recent National Labor Relations Board ruling cited the company for firing three unionists, and locking out hundreds of workers last year as part of its efforts to prevent workers there from organizing themselves into UNITE. Point Blank was ordered to cease and desist from offering bribes or threatening workers not to join the union and forced to pay back wages.
Laura Garza from Boston spoke about the upcoming Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. “Many immigrant workers see this mobilization,” Garza said, “as a show of their potential power to win more legal status and rights.”
Another participant pointed out that the victory of Róger Calero against attempts by the U.S. government to deport him received support from many rank-and-file UNITE members and officials. This support is another indication of the necessity and possibility that exists today to mobilize the union to defend the working class.
Mary Martin and Nancy Rosenstock are sewing machine operators in Des Moines, Iowa, and Newark, respectively.
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JOIN TYSON STRIKERS August 17 Solidarity Rally 2:00 p.m. Tyson/Doskocil plant gate 1 River Rd., Jefferson, WI immediately followed by… Back to School Rally with strikers’ families Rotary Waterfront Park, Jefferson, WI Bring financial contributions and/or school supplies For information call: (608) 244-5653 www.tysonfamiliesstandup.org |