Labor Notes Conference stresses labor solidarity

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These and many more loopholes have been provided the wealthy by both Democratic and Republican administrations over the years. It is estimated that taxpayers in the 70 percent and over tax bracket seldom pay more than 25 percent of their real income in taxes.

Then there is the notorious case of the dozen or more multimillionaires with incomes of over $1 million a year who paid absolutely no income tax. This revelation created such a scandal that a nominal tax is now being imposed on the free-loaders.

The multimillionaires might still be AND THE STAGGERING GAP BETWEEN SPENDING AND REVENUES WILL WIDEN...

$1,591,600,000,000 AND QUADRUPLING INTEREST PAYMENTS NEȚ INTEREST 1980 198T 1982 1983 AULLIONS OF DOLLARS enjoying their free ride except that the government needs the money. They need the money for invasions, police actions, for occupation of sovereign nations, for interventions, for overthrow of peaceful governments, for spying in every nook and cranny on the globe, for undeclared war and preparation for the final nuclear holocaust.

From the day 39 years ago when Japan surrendered, the United States has been rearming for another war, and every year save one for 22 years, the federal budget has run a deficit. The shortfall has been made up by borrowing, pushing the national debt up a few billions every time.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans deplore the rising debt even as they add to the deficits. Ronald Reagan made the evils of Democratic deficit financing a keynote of his campaign. He took office vowing to balance the budget. But he had two other priorities: to cut taxes further for his wealthy friends, and to build the most deadly war machine the world has ever seen.

Some voodoo economists told Reagan cutting taxes while vastly increasing expenditures for arms would result in a balanced budget-if he slashed benefits to the young, the old, the poor, and the sick. With the help of the Democrats, Reagan got most of what he wanted: tax cuts, record military budgets, and wholesale slashing of programs benefiting the poor. But he did not get a balanced budget. Instead he got a deficit of $200 billion.

With Reaganomics at the financial point had been reached. The Treasury had $4.75 billion worth of 30-year bonds to sell. The good faith and strength of the richest country stood behind them. They pay an interest rate of 13 percent. But there were no buyers. "The market is in a shambles," said one broker. "Investor psychology is such that no one even wants to hear about a bond."

The problem is that the supply of bonds is increasing while the demand is shrinking. Consumers have long since cashed in their war bonds and are borrowing themselves. The oil sheiks are no ...TRIPLING THE MATIONAL DEBT...

GROSS FEDERAL DEBT $2,830,000,000 1985 1986 - EST longer buying. Corporations are competing with the Treasury for loans. The Treasury has to beat the bushes at home and overseas to find lenders. It also has to raise its interest rates to make the bonds attractive.

This spells big trouble. With high interest rates people can't buy homes; small businesses go bankrupt. Debts of the Third World increase every time the prime rate rises. Reagan was the bad guy at the recent economic summit conference because high American interest rates drain money from Europe and halt its recovery.

If the bond issue does not sell there is a worse alternative. The Federal Reserve Bank has to buy them. This is a book-keeping operation that creates new assets, which the banking system can use to make more loans. This operation is known as monetizing the debt; turning the debt into money-an up-to-date way of printing money to pay the government's bills. How long can this process go on? It makes businessmen very nervous. They have visions of the printing press inflation of Germany in 1923 when it took a suitcase full of marks to buy a newspaper.

If the situation is so desperate you would expect to hear a lot about it from the Democratic candidates who are seeking our votes. Up to now they have had little to say because they have no solution. They can only nibble at the problem.

In Congress, the Democrats are working with the Republicans on what they call a "down payment" on the Six hundred and fifty activists from 52 unions, 28 states, and eight countries spent the June 15-17 weekend in Ypsilanti, Mich., discussing ways to build union solidarity against employer attacks on working people. Organizers of the Third National Labor Notes Conference had been concerned that recent setbacks for the labor movement would reduce attendance to under 500. The size and breadth of the conference is a sign of the increased frustration of a growing number of workers with the do-nothing policies of the labor tops.

In a workshop, Tony Mazzocchi, former candidate for president of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union (OCAW), referred to these defeatist policies as "going to the negotiating table waving the white flag."

Two opposition leaders in their unions, Pete Kelly, president of United Automobile Workers (UAW) Local 160, and Ron Weisen, president of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 1397, spoke against the myth that concessions save jobs.

Indeed, figures show that employment was actually reduced when there was a deterioration in working conditions. The bosses use speedup and crosscrafting to lay workers off. Concessions have done nothing but line the pockets of the rich bankers and industrialists in this country. Mounting profits have been used in mega-merger deals which have not resulted in one job.

Many conference speakers noted that after several years of experience, more workers are beginning to shed their illusions in the concessions scheme. Top leaders of the USWA and UAW have felt this pressure by the rank and file and are now on record against any more giveaways.

Of course, it will take an organized and militant rank-and-file movement to make sure this lip service by the labor misleaders is turned into effective action against the employers. While several signs of renewed labor militancy have appeared, as in the Toledo AP Parts strike, conference participants realized working people remain on the defensive with the bosses holding the upper hand.

Solidarity support actions were emphasized as the best prevention against the drive to pick off unions one at a time. This was the dominant theme in the plenary and workshop sessions. And it was a theme not restricted to just the United States.

In his welcoming remarks, Kim Moody, staff writer for Labor Notes, referred to the German Metalworkers' strike for the 35-hour workweek as a "demand to save jobs." He also pointed to the recent victory by the Guatemalan Coca-Cola workers who benefited from an international labor boycott of CocaCola. Swedish workers, he noted, actually stopped all production and distribution of the soft drink in that country.

Moody's account of this victory was greeted with thunderous applause as if to underscore the need for more interi tional labor solidarity as an alternati to the "Buy America" campaign whi pits U.S. workers against workers in other countries.

Next Round of Bargaining Several unions will be negotiating this year. Contracts between the U.S. Postal Service and four unions will expire in July. These workers don't even have the right to strike. The unchallenged destruction of PATCO will undoubtedly strengthen the bargaining position of the Postal Service. Autoworkers at General Motors and Ford, and United Mine Workers members will also be entering into negotiations this fall.

While it is clear that these powerful unions have the strength to defeat the bosses' concession game plan, that strength which lies in the mobilized power of their membership may remain dormant. The sanitized version of labor negotiating we have been fed for the last 35 years simply won't work. In fact it never worked. The only thing ever accomplished was, the demobilization of the American working class. .

"Skillful" negotiating by labor bureaucrats has substituted for the action of the rank and file. A number of speakers in the plenaries and workshops addressed this problem. Many called for a return to the militant mass-action tactics of the 1930s and 1940s, which placed the welfare of the workers above the profit needs of the boss.

No main speaker mentioned the need to abandon the crippling alliance of labor with the capitalist Democratic Party, while in fact several did declare their intentions to vote for anybody but Reagan. Unfortunately the need for a Labor party did not receive enough time for discussion. But Labor Notes staffer Jane Slaughter did get a solid round of applause when she observed that concessions "took place before Ronald Reagan and they'll be here after he's gone"-until a militant labor movement is built to stop them.

Solidarity Network Over 30 workshops were scheduled on topics including Central America, union organizing, affirmative action, unemployed, and plant closures. Separate meetings were also held for individual unions and geographic regions.

At the last session of the conference the Labor Notes staff presented its plans for establishing a national solidarity network. Much of this remains tentative since many activists had already begun to return home.

This conference presented convincing evidence that the terrible defeats suffered by labor have not eliminated important pockets of resistance which slow the capitalist austerity drive. These skirmishes are a necessary part of building a new leadership in the labor movement committed to preserving the rights of working people without regard to the profit claims of the small minority of super-rich.

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peace plan proposal Paris, January 1973. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho (back to camera)

"We must recover the legacy of Che Guevara who called for two, three, or more Vietnams."

MALL CAMERA AL MICHAELL TASTEM AT MEAt HALMIL ..the important thing is solidarity WOMEN'S COALITION TO STOP US INTERVENTION:

_IN CENTRAL AMERICA SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1984 11 Comments Dear editor, Socialist Action is to be congratulated on publishing the exchange between the Political Committee and a representative of its minority. Nothing so invigorates a revolutionary organization and its publications as an atmosphere of free-wheeling and open debate.

It engenders an environment in which members are freed from the subtle constraints which flow from a rigid obligation to present a pseudo-unanimity to the public on issues not only of moment, but around which there is necessary disagreement.

Nothing so prevents unconscious and not-so-unconscious tail-ending by cadre and members. Nothing so ensures that the public at large will perceive the party as vital, open in its attitudes toward ideas, and devoid of that party pride which treats non-members as untermensch.

The issue under debate is a crucial one, not only for the future of the Salvadoran revolution, but for the North American antiwar movement as well.

The FDR/FMLN proposal calls for a coalition government with bourgeois forces. It is a plan which occurs in a specific political environment under long-developing pressure. It proceeds from a rationale that imperialist, specifically U.S. intervention is imminent, and that this plan of compromise will stay the enemy hand.

A number of the political currents within the FDR/FMLN have, in fact, gone so far as to justify this turn in political program with the claim that a "socialist stage" is impossible for the Salvadoran revolution at this conjuncture. The argument in favor of the "Peace Plan," for them, has centered on a political demand that the Salvadoran revolution acknowledge the bourgeois-democratic stage of the revolution, and act accordingly.

The "Peace Plan" is being trumpeted as well within the leadership of CISPES as the correlative of the demand to "Dump Reagan." It is logical that it should, for it flows from the same premise.

The "Peace Plan," as formulated, will not put an end to the war being waged against the Salvadoran people. To say this is not to be presumptuous. The lessons of history-particularly the tragic events of China in 1927, France in 1936 and 1945, Indochina in 1954, and Indonesia in 1965—underline the fact that a clear political program is necessary if the masses are to avoid defeat.

It would be wrong for North American revolutionists to refrain from criticizing concessions made in El Salvador on the ground that these are revolutionary forces in the field who have the right to set their own priorities and strategy. It would be wrong to refrain from evaluating the meaning and merit of the program of any revolutionary leadership.

It is important to remember the example of the Bolsheviks at Brest-Litovsk who, when feeling compelled to make major concessions, never felt compelled to dress up defeat as revolutionary virtue. When the German Social Democrats deplored Bolshevik weakness as a pretext for supporting the Brest-Litovsk treaty, Lenin labeled them "swine." He reminded them that if the Bolsheviks were under siege, they, in on FMLN-FDR Germany, were in a position to fight tooth and nail the German imperial attempts to strangle Bolshevism, and not to become lawyers for its stratagems.

It is also useful to review the lessons of the Vietnamese revolution and of the Paris Peace Accords.

These negotiations were imposed on the Vietnamese by Chinese and Soviet pressure to reach an accomodation with Nixon. As Nixon was clinking glasses with Mao, the bombs were falling on Haiphong.

Nor can one forget the role of the "North Vietnamese leadership" in 1945, when they sought to keep Indochina in the French Union; nor the role they played in 1954, when they abandoned the struggle in the South after it had been won, after Dien Bien Phu.

The Paris Accords of 1973 were not expected by the Vietnamese negotiators to lead to power in Saigon. On the contrary. I was in Hanoi throughout the time when the terms of these accords were first being pressed, having already been set in prior meetings in Moscow between U.S. and Vietnamese representatives.

These terms provided for a coalition regime in Saigon without Nguyen Cao Ky, but with Nguyen Van Thieu. They Dear editor:

I found the two articles debating the FMLN/FDR peace plan in your June issue very interesting. They reflect the very real discussion in CISPES and the antiwar movement as a whole over these issues.

Much of the discussion in CISPES has been over the contents of the peace plan itself. I would share many of the criticisms raised by the Socialist Action Political Committee. I think the lessons of the Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Vietnamese revolutions show that you need a revolutionary victory that would totally replace the old state structure and the old army of the dictatorship and replace it with a new revolutionary government. As a member of CISPES, I've always supported the victory of the FMLN/FDR, for a FMLN/FDR government-not a coalition government with elements of the present junta and army.

In the discussion in CISPES a number of questions have been raised. Is the FMLN/FDR peace plan just a maneuver to win international solidarity? Is there a wing of the FMLN/FDR that really thinks that a negotiated, coalition government can work? What effect does the peace plan, which calls for a government with some of the big business sectors and an army with layers of the junta's army, have on the workers in San Salvador? Does it raise false and dangerous illusions in these sectors?

These are provocative and important questions. I'm not sure we yet have the information to know all the answers to them.

However-and this initial cease-fire agreement.

assumed U.S. military enclaves at Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang. They were predicated upon a bourgeois coalition regime in Saigon, modeled on that which had already been agreed upon back in 1962 for Laos and Cambodia.

That is why Giap expressed such surprise at the unexpected disintegration of the puppet army. That is also why the "North Vietnamese leadership" tried to restrain the guerrilla units in the field who wanted to fight despite the "accords." The Saigon army collapsed. It was not defeated by the handshake with Kissinger.

The imminence of major U.S. intervention in Central America is a danger not only to the revolution, but to U.S.

of tens, if not thousands of U.S. troops will unleash an opposition in the United States that will engage the working class in a far more decisive way than it did in the 1960s: disagree with the two articles—it must be emphasized that the critical question for supporters of the FMLN/FDR in the United States is what strategy to get the United States out. This is the key debate today in CISPES and the antiwar movement.

The debate is not whether you are for the whole peace plan, or have some criticisms, or oppose it. For example, 1 think the 1980 program of the FMLN/ FDR was more correct, more revolutionary than the current one. But I was against a strategy in 1980, just as 1 am today, of demanding that our government negotiate with the rebels—which is the strategy the CISPES national leadership is arguing the movement should take. Whatever the FMLN/FDR's program, our task is to get the United States out-and the only way to do that i-da fassa all aara ananian an the rimela energies on ine simpie This is the moment to deepen the revolutionary movement, not to curtail it. This is the time to extend the struggle, not to compromise it. This is the opportunity to spread imperialism thin in Central America-from Guatemala and Honduras, to Panama and Colombia.

The "Peace Plan" in El Salvador is the flip side of the pressure to back a bourgeois political program in the United States in November. It is the correlative of discerning "progressive content" in the campaign of Jesse Jackson as he delivers Black voters into the registry of the Democratic Party.

Today we must recover the legacy of Che Guevara, who did not call for "Negotiations Now," but for "Two, three, or more Vietnams; " who did not shrink from the prospect of U.S. intervention, but responded to it with the perspective of continentalizing the struggle.

Ralph Schoenman Santa Barbara, Calif. demand that they totally withdraw. If we focus our demands that the United States negotiate, they'll negotiate and negotiate until hell freezes over.

Our goal must be to unite activists with diverse views on the contents of the peace plan, around the strategy that the best way to help the FMLN/FDR is to build a massive movement in the streets of Blacks, Latinos, women, and labor, independent of the Democratic Party, around the demand that the United States get out of Central America. Steven Ashby Chicago Socialist Action

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Women miners discuss challenges - ACTiON:

Recalling the militant history of women in the United Mine Workers of America, UMWA Vice President Cr cil Roberts received an enthusias tic response from the 250 participants at the Sixth National Conference of Women Miners held June 22-24 in Charleston, W. Va.

"If we allow management to play us off against each other, we'll never win...If one group of workers can be discriminated against, all workers can be enslaved...Coal is not male or female, it's just coal," he told the cheering miners. Roberts himself is related to Mother Sara Blizzard, who fought alongside Mother Jones and other women to bring unionism to the coal fields.

By FRANK JARAMILLO On June 5, 1984, the Second National Day of Protest (Segundo Paro Civico Nacional) took place in Mexico, involving more than one-and-a-half million workers and peasants in 27 of Mexico's 32 states.

The Day of Protest was organized by over 150 organizations, including unions and peasant, slumdweller, student, and left-wing political organizations. These groups belong to an This pledge of support was welcomed by the women miners who have been hardest hit by the wave of layoffs which has affected 40 percent of UMWA members.

Indeed, larger and more efficient machines are being developed to mine coal with a reduced workforce. The UMWA has also been weakened by the expansion of mining into the poorly organized Western states, where low sulfur coal is available. The end result is that the UMWA organizes less than 50 percent of the coal mined in the United States.

With the contract expiring on Sept. 30, the union faces a stiff challenge from the steel, oil, and electric power monopolists, who now control mining. Only a policy which unites all the minest austerity In the provinces, it was primarily peasants, slumdwellers, and teachers who participated in the protest through various actions such as the blockading of roads and organizing meetings and marches.

The organizers of the Second National Day of Protest consider it a success, since the level of participation was much higher than the First National Day of Protest of Oct. 19, 1983. ers—men and women, employed and unemployed—can hope to turn back the employers' demands for concessions.

Most women owe their jobs to the landmark work the Women's Coal Employment Project did to open up job opportunities for women. Federal records show the first woman miner began working in 1973. Today 3773 women work underground.

These women continue to face company intimidation and discrimination, including sexual harassment while underground. Several important victories have been won by women against the coal operators, who benefit from the divisions among miners.

Union supports women miners At the conference, several top officers of the UMWA put the full weight of the union behind women in the mines. Unlike the previous regime of Sam Church, the Rich Trumka administration seems serious about women's rights.

Other issues discussed at the conference included the controversial union position on acid rain, which has placed the UMWA in opposition to environmental activists seeking to lower the pollutants in high sulfur coal and to use scrubbers in the smokestacks. Some participants disputed the union leadership's claim that environmental reform to UMWA will mean a loss of UMWA jobs.

The UMWA leadership also argued at the conference for their "selective strike" tactic as a response to the crippling impact of the widespread layoffs. By keeping some miners working while other members are on strike against selected targets, the leadership hopes to put pressure on the more aggressive coal operators, like Consol.

This strategy is a break with the militant tradition of "No Contract, No Work." Many miners are willing to try this new approach of selective strikes, while others believe that a nationwide coal strike is still more effective.

Actually, the British coal miners have set an example by expanding their strike to other industries. They have not limited their struggle to the coal industry, nor even to one segment of that industry. The conference heard reports on the British strike, and passed a resolution of support. The militancy of the British strikers will undoubtedly lead American miners to consider the same type of winning strategy.

The conference was a step forward for the UMWA, as women miners showed they were willing to continue their militant role of earlier years. Only this time, it will be as members of the

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imperialism, whose leaders, bluster aside, are well aware of it. For any use

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