Labor under siege, secret talks, selective strikes demobilize workers

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Workers in the United States have been under siege since the monetary crisis that broke out at the end of the 1960s signaled an end to the post-World War Il worldwide capitalist economic expansion.

Hard-won economic gains continue to be wrenched away. The official "leadership" of the unions continues its headlong retreat, agreeing to major giveback concessions in the vain hope that these will dull the appetites of profit-hungry corporations. Bosses and bureaucrats agree on the necessity to restore the profitability of U.S. business. The bosses, however, are a long way from satisfied and demand more.

The union misleaders see themselves as "partners" of capital. Refusing to mobilize the membership for a fight, they seek to out-maneuver the bosses through "clever" negotiations designed to gain the maximum possible for union members within the framework of maintaining the profitability of capitalist enterprise.

This is a bluff designed to fool the ranks of the unions into believing that sacrifices must be made and that the unions are too weak to dare mount a decisive fightback.

This strategy, based in the last analysis on the illusory notion of a community of interests between labor and capital, is why rank-and-file union members are uninformed, uninvolved, and unprepared to respond to the relentless employer attacks.

Restructuration not new

The series of setbacks suffered during the nearly 15-year-long employer offensive has caused some in the workers' movement to ask some basic questions:

Does this 15-year retreat indicate that American workers have lost their will to fight? Does this reflect a decline in the potential power of industrial workers to bring the economy to a standstill? Do transfers of major U.S. production facilities to other countries qualitatively reduce the potential power of industrial workers?

Our answer to these questions is a flat—No!

Some in the workers' movement are dismayed by the proliferation of plant shutdowns and the export of U.S. capital investment into productive facilities abroad, both of which have led to increased levels of permanent unemployment. But they have mistakenly ascribed these structural changes to some sort of clever scheme by the capitalist class to undermine the power of the American working class.

These structural changes in the economy are not new. They are merely expressions of the logical tendency of capitalism to produce more goods with fewer workers and to systematically seek new fields of profitable investment anywhere across the globe.

The internationalization of capital and the export of U.S. industry abroad have not given the U.S. economy a new lease on life. On the contrary, as Karl Marx predicted over a century ago, these changes are evidence of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, which are creating the conditions for this economic system's downfall.

Socialist Action/Asher Harer Striking San Francisco restaurant workers. Walkouts began in August in over 15 city restaurants.

It is, in fact, the threat of collapse of the world capitalist economic house of cards that compels the current onslaught against the living standards of U.S. workers. Wages must be reduced to keep profit rates high enough to maintain a rate of reinvestment sufficient to keep the economy going.

This is the Achilles' heel of capitalism. There is no other way to raise profit rates except by extracting more profits out of the workers' hides. But the reduction in the workers' share of the fruit of their labor has a long way to go before the capitalist profit rate is stabilized. An explosive fightback is inevitable when the cuts become unbearable and it becomes clear that it is not an episodic but a permanent reduction.

Bureaucrats demobilize workers

American workers, like workers everywhere, continue to show their will and capacity to wage an effective struggle for their interests when given half a chance. The most dramatic instance of this was the victorious 1977-78 miners' strike in defiance of a threat by President Carter to use federal troops to force the miners back to work. More recently, the UAW workers at the AP Parts plant in Toledo, the striking Phelps Dodge copper miners in southern Arizona, and the ATU Greyhound bus drivers have demonstrated their readiness to mobilize to defend themselves and their unions.

There are, however, two basic reasons why a massive fightback has not yet erupted-although there have been skirmishes that are a sign of bigger battles certain to come:

First: The highly privileged union bureaucrats— softened by salaries double, triple, and even quadruple the incomes of the membership who pay the dues—refuse to mobilize workers for a fight.

UAW President Owen F. Bieber has just maneuvered his membership into accepting a three-year giveback contract. While the terms of this contract have been kept hidden from the auto union membership, the ruling class is kept intimately informed. An "independent analyst" quoted in the Sept. 22 New York Times judges the contract to be a victory for the bosses: "I feel very positive that this is a good settlement for the company."

The UAW officialdom's policy of secret negotiations were accompanied by grossly ineffective "selective strike" tactics, which reduce the economic pressure on the company and contribute to the feeling of powerlessness widely prevalent in the union ranks. Through such a combination of secret negotiations and demoralizing strike tactics, the auto workers and the working class as a whole have been delivered yet another setback; the worst kind of all—one without a real fight.

Fighting capacity intact

Second: A massive fightback has not yet exploded because the gains won in the class battles of the 1930s and 1940s remain essentially intact. The fighting capacity of the unions has not been broken, nor have the economic gains made during this period been reversed-despite the retreats imposed on the unions with the help of the bureaucratic misleadership.

The masterminds calling the shots for the ruling class are also aware of labor's dangerous-if dormant-potential. The capitalist assault on the unions proceeds with extreme caution. The bosses retreat when indications appear that new takebacks might trigger a dynamic that could lead to the kind of setback they received from the coal miners in 1978.

The problem of working-class leadership remains the key to a successful fightback and ultimate victory. A new leadership in the unions must recognize the reality of the ongoing struggle between classes. It must chart a class-struggle program based on the need for working-class solidarity, union democracy, and independent political action.

The labor bureaucracy is the principal obstacle within the unions to mounting a successful fightback. But the Owen Beibers and their ilk must and will be shoved aside. The coming struggle for an effective labor strategy will begin with the fight for democracy in the union movement and will end with the institution of a generalized system of workers' democracy in every work place and sphere of activity-from the local communities all the way up to a government based on working people and their natural allies.

rally the membership. Over the past few years, TDU has developed significant support at United Parcel, so that Presser and the UPS management could expect strong opposition to a poor contract if the membership was given a chance to discuss it.

As it was, hastily called local Teamster meetings in 18 cities called for a "no" vote. The largest local, in New York City, had threatened to pull out of national negotiations in protest. Despite this militancy, the absence of democratic discussion and the fact that only a one-third minority vote is needed to ratify Teamster contracts would have probably allowed the sell-out proposal to go through if the TDU had not won in court.

Teamsters from UPS, freight, carhaul, and other jurisdictions facing the current round of negotiations will be meeting in Chicago on Oct. 13-14 at TDU's Rank-and-File Convention. Participants will attempt to draw the lessons of the "sneak attack" by UPS and Jackie Presser to impose concessions and they will prepare to mobilize the membership to fight for union democracy, better contracts, and a stronger

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