Hormel strike signals growing union militancy

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4 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1986 The strike by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local P-9 against the Geo. A. Hormel & Co. has received exceptional attention from all sides concerned with the sharpening struggle between employers and workers in this country.

The nine-month long strike in Austin, Minn., has been in the limelight for a number of reasons.

First, Hormel's meatpacking plant in Austin is one of the most efficient and profitable in the country. Up until this strike, the employers' campaign to reduce the living standards of U.S. workers has focussed on those ailing sections of the economy where the threat of bankruptcy, plant-closings, and mass firings had some credibility.

Second, the Austin local is one of the industrial unions built through militant struggle during the mass labor upsurge of the 1930s. Local P-9's founders were the first in the United States to employ the sitdown strike to gain union recognition.

Their successful 1933 strike led to an outstanding contract, which included a guarantee that no layoffs could take place unless Hormel gave notice a year in advance. This was especially noteworthy in a period of widespread unemployment.

While other unions with comparable origins have also been victims of the current 15-year-long takeback campaign, this is the first time determined resistance on the picket line by such an industrial union has been challenged. When the United Auto Workers, for instance, gave historic concessions to the Chrysler Corp. in 1979, it was without a fight and thus without any need by the bosses to attempt to operate a struck plant with strike -breakers.

Third, the union-busting attack on Local P-9 has developed into a test by the employers to gauge the present fighting ability of workers and their unions. The capitalists, while systematically pressing their takeback campaign, are careful not to move too fast. They are concerned that their union-busting drive not spark a strong reaction by the workers and blow up in their face.

Such a misjudgment was made when then-President Jimmy Carter invoked the Taft-Hartley Act in an attempt to break a strike of the United Mine Workers in 197879. Determined coal-miner resistance and an accompanying wave of support by signi -ficant layers of union militants across the country forced Carter and the bosses to retreat. Drawing back in time, the bosses limited their losses.

Victory for the bosses in the current battle with labor in Austin will encourage the big corporations in future assaults against larger more unions.

De-facto break

Fourth, the Hormel strike has led Local P-9 leaders and members to take a step toward a de-facto break with the prevailing strategy of the labor bureaucracy. This strategy is based on the delusion that employers (those who have signed union contracts, at least) are in a "partnership" with their workers. This means, in practice, that workers must subordinate wages and working conditions to maintaining the profit rates of their capitalist "partners."

This conception seems to be confirmed every time a company goes out of business in the normal course of dog-eat-dog competition. The belief that the workers' fate is thus tied to the continued profitability of "their" company is in a sense true-given capitalist norms. But it is dead wrong when it is used to justify concessions by workers.

Sacrifices by workers cannot save companies that fall behind in the tech -nological race for higher productivity. The successful capitalists are those with the financial means and the wisdom, or luck, to have retooled at the right time.

The U.S. capitalist class has, over a long historical period, outproduced its com -petitors. After World War II, American employers reaped the largest profits from the capitalist world market, despite paying U.S. workers the highest wages in the world. Before that, British capitalism had dominated competition for the greatest share of the world's markets and profits.

But British capitalism lost out to a more dynamic U.S. capitalism after World War I. No sacrifices on the part of British workers could have changed that. And no sacrifice by American workers can save jobs in the current global economic war. Only a perspective of union struggle that points to solutions independent of company profita -bility can save jobs.

Fifth, the Local P-9 strike explodes the myth that token picket lines can win strikes. During the years of "prosperity" after World War II, strikes often appeared to be little more than a peaceful waiting game to see which side had the will to hold out longest.

The enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 permitted struck employers to get injunctions against mass picketing. But until recently, while injunctions limiting picketing were routinely granted, token picket lines of a few workers were not directly challenged by the bosses in the major industrial unions.

The apparent ability of a handful of pickets to close down a plant had two adverse effects. It discouraged active parti -cipation in the unions-strikes became opportunities for many workers to take extended vacations. Second, it eroded the memory of how the unions were built-through mass mobilizations on the picket lines to keep scabs from taking jobs and breaking strikes.

Strikebreaking treason

Sixth, the P-9 strike spotlights the depths of treason to which the top labor officialdom is capable of descending. Both UFCW President William Wynn, Local P9's parent union, and AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland have placed the American labor bureaucracy squarely on the side of the strikebreakers.

Wynn has offered, after withdrawing the strike sanction and meager strike benefits, "post-strike benefits" to members of Local P-9 as an inducement for them to scab. To qualify for these "benefits," striking members must put their names on Hormel's list of those willing to scab. Moreover, there is no guarantee that those who capitulate will ever be rehired if the union is crushed.

Furthermore, Wynn has initiated a "trusteeship" action to take over the striking local—remove its democratically elected leadership, entirely abolish P-9 members' democratic rights, confiscate its funds, property and records-and thus deal its Austin affiliate a coup de grace.

The top echelons of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, moreover, have brought enor -mous pressure to bear upon union officials close to the ranks to keep them in line and counter the widespread sympathy for their beleaguered sisters and brothers in Local P9. Despite these pressures, material support keeps coming in to the striking Austin packinghouse workers.

President Wynn rationalizes the betrayal of his membership with the argument that his intent is to "standardize" wages in the meatpacking industry. His record of having signed more concessions contracts than any other comparable union official—not to mention his current blows against Local P9—makes clear that by standardizing wages he means making them lower than the level his membership is willing to accept.

William Wynn and Lane Kirkland have shown by their open strikebreaking that they are committed to helping their employer "partners" come out on top in the sharpening economic conflict among the world's major industrial capitalist powers.

These "labor statesmen" have put all unemployment has occurred in a period of capitalist prosperity. When the economic bubble bursts—which is inevitable-the army of permanently unemployed will grow to new heights.

Real solutions for working people can only be at the expense of employer profits. The class interests of workers and bosses are mutually exclusive. What's good for the workers-higher wages, for instance —means reduced profits for the bosses. A shorter workweek, with no reduction in pay, along with publicly financed works programs to provide jobs at union scale for the unemployed is the only real answer to capitalist unemployment.

A progressively shorter workweek to permit the entire workforce to participate in production is eminently rational. The in -creased production of goods coming from scientific and technological progress would mean more goods and more leisure time to enjoy them. Only under capitalism does increased productivity result in increased misery.

In conclusion, new leaders are emerging from struggles such as the Hormel strike. As working people increasingly confront employers' takeback demands in the coming years, this process will continue. The old leaders with their strategy of collaborating with the employers will inevitably be replaced.

In the meantime, Local P-9's fight continues. The union can gain time and continue to bring pressure on Hormel with its boycott campaign. Every new strike confrontation will tend to raise the banner of Local P-9's struggle alongside its own. And reinforcements may yet come to turn the tide of the strike against Hormel.

But whatever the ultimate outcome of this strike, it will go down in labor history as a sign of a new willingness to fight, and of a growing consciousness of the bankruptcy of official labor strategy.

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"Sacrifices by workers cannot save companies"

ABOR David Walsh