ACTiON : Labor activists discuss strategy

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This month's Forum presents a discussion on some of the important issues con- siders this discussion a necessary step toward transforming the labor movement fronting the labor movement today. The employers' offensive against working peo- into the kind of fighting instrument that built the CIO and that must today go furple has witnessed wage cuts, plant closings, and outright union-busting. Millions of ther by extending the fight against the corporations into the arena of independent unemployed workers have been excluded from the current "recovery." The crushing of the air traffic controllers' (PATCO) strike in 1981, the Continental Airlines We offer the views of labor-leader activists who are involved in this discussion union-busting bankruptcy ploy last fall, and the recent defeat of the Greyhound and fightback. Ignacio De La Fuente is the directing business representative of the workers, all underscore not only the extent of the employers' campaign for conces- International Molders and Allied Workers Union, Local 164, Oakland, Calif., sions, but the sorry record of the labor officialdom's response to the anti-union which is currently on strike against a Bay Area foundry. David E. Mix, president of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), Local 1225, San Francisco, was a leader of the Many activists in the labor movement are discussing and debating what needs to strike against the Greyhound Corp. Ed Mann is a former president of Local 1462 be done to turn around this steady erosion of workers' rights and benefits. The cur- of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) in Youngstown, Ohio, and a memrent strike of hotel workers in Las Vegas and the strike at the AP Auto Parts Co. in ber of the Workers Solidarity Club in Youngstown, a group organized to provide Toledo are clear indications that this discussion takes place amidst signs that a new support for striking workers. In 1980 Mann ran as an independent candidate for Congress, although for health reasons he was forced to call off his campaign. Jeff As the working class confronts the anti-union designs of Mackler is a member of Socialist Action and a former organizer for the American task of mobilizing the workers in the most effective way-on Federation of Teachers (AFT), Local 1423, Hayward, Calif. He is currently a memthe political arena-will be posed with increasing sharpness. Unions need new direction drive.

militancy is developing in the ranks of labor.

Picket line at the Basic Tool and 31. Police protect scabs running through the gates.

the corporations, the the shop floor and in Socialist Action conSupply Co. in Oakland, political action. ber of the Hayward Unified Teachers Association.

Ignacio De La Fuente:

Socialist Action: Your molders local, like most of the locals in the Bay Area, has been hard hit in recent periods by attacks from the employers, plant closings, and layoffs. What plans does the local have to fight back?

Ignacio De La Fuente: There is no question that there is a concentrated attack on organized labor and the workers in this country. I think we are one of the few unions in the last few years that has held our ground in regard to concessions and givebacks. That doesn't mean that we are not under attack just like any other union. In the last year, for example, we engaged in strikes against about 20 companies. The companies demanded concessions and pay cuts and that is something that we definitely refused to do.

S.A.: What about the argument that today labor unions have to make concessions in order to keep the companies profitable because only profitable companies can afford to keep the plant open and pay wages? That seems to be the philosophy—"what's good for the company is good for the union?' De La Fuente: I disagree 120 percent with that philosophy. Coca-Cola, a multinational corporation, eliminates jobs here in the United States and goes to Latin America to exploit people in those areas. But when they get unionized, they throw people out and close down the plants.

I think the unions have to understand that it is a political question why companies are doing that, and why it is not the workers who are to blame if the