What strategy for the labor unions today?
1985 1985-04Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 5 →
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The following are edited excerpts of a trade-union resolution, "Revolutionary Strategy in the Unions Today," adopted by the first national convention of Socialist Action in November 1984. The full text will appear in the forthcoming issue of the "Socialist Action Information Bulletin.
Nixon's August 1971 announcement of a wage freeze signaled the beginning of an intensified ruling-class assault on the wages, benefits, and working conditions of the American working class. The era of slightly improved living conditions without any real fight had definitively ended.
Initially, the attacks were directed against the weakest, least-organized components of the working class. Attacks on unemployment benefits and other social services set the stage for the current assault on the organized working class.
The necessity of capitalism to extract ever greater concessions from the working class has laid the basis for a changing mood among workers. It's one of increased combativity and willingness to fight back.
At first, many workers believed the argument that concessions were a necessary temporary evil to save jobs. Now they see that the unions which granted the largest concessions have seen the biggest job losses. They see that the only result of concessions was higher profits for the bosses.
Although there hasn't been any nationally coordinated fightback, there have been increasing isolated skirmishes.
In December 1983 the Greyhound strikers demonstrated a tremendous willingness to fight. We've seen a similar combativity displayed since then by United Auto Workers members at McDonnell Douglas, Oil Workers union members in the California refineries, culinary workers in Las Vegas, copper miners in Arizona, and UAW members at AP Parts in Toledo. In all these cases, striking workers reached out for and received support from other area workers.
Crisis of leadership
One unfortunate common feature is Greyhound, McDonnell Douglas, and strikes. In each case the union bureauci the workers to accept concession co! shared by the California oil acy pressured itracts at the plant. In addition, safety problems and grievances are removed from the shop floor and handled by "experts" with little, if any, worker involvement.
Labor's giant upsurge
Job actions, ranging from formal protests to stop-work meetings and strikes to enforce the contract and to stop speeded-up assembly lines, were the normal method of asserting worker control over the workplace in the years of the big labor upsurge of