"Management sees a historic concessions, but to smash the rail

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SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1986 with hard-won union wages and working conditions. But the rail unions in particular have become weak. There have not been large nationwide rail strikes in which the existence of the unions were challenged since the 1920s.

The unions are organized on a craft basis, facilitating the companies' attempts to pit one craft against another. In addition, there is a growing gap and hostility between the membership and the top leadership of the rail unions. All these elements make the rail industry a good entry point for the capitalists to step up their attacks against the working class as a whole.

The post-war boom Coming out of World War II, the U.S. capitalists saw what they called the "American Century" opening up before them. They were a little overly optimistic on how long this would last, but for the next 20 or 25 years U.S. imperialism did completely dominate the world capitalist market.

In recognizing that possibility, one Memoirs of a Radical Rank & Filer The story of one who turned radical Juring the Great Depression and wa a militant, rank-and-tiler, through the '40s, '50s, and '60s. Today, in his seventies, he marches to the same drummer.

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Prometheus Press, Box 318 Gracir Station, New York, N.Y. 10028 made no attempt to get workers to cross the token picket lines put up by the unions. Eventually, the disputes were settled through mediation and government intervention. None of the settlements were designed to really attack the unions or attack the fundamental standard of living of the employees.

And so, the functioning of the unions became one of hustling votes for the Democratic Party in return for "fair treatment" under the Railway Labor Act.

None of the union officials ever had to organize a real strike. The idea of being faced with a situation where the rail carriers would attempt to run scabs across a picket line was as foreign to them as the possibility of the moon crashing into the earth.

But the rules of the game began to change with the end of the economic boom in the early 1970s. The employers saw that it had become necessary to neutralize the unions and drive down the standard of living of the working class. They made plans to pull out of national bargaining, develop a system for recruiting scabs, and work to pit the crafts against each other.

The government backed up the railroads' anti-union drive. In 1980 Congress passed the Staggers Act. Under the guise of "deregulation," the act swept aside all legal restrictions on the railroads' ability to adopted point for point major railroad in the country.

Several other preliminary struggles took place. In December 1977, a phony bankruptcy was set up on the Milwaukee Road. Huge concessions were imposed on the workers. Crew sizes were reduced, a wage rate was imposed lower than the national scale, seniority rules and work rules were broken, and different crafts were combined.

A key figure in the Milwaukee Road bankruptcy was a young lawyer named John Riley. In reward for his services, Riley was made head of the Federal Railway Agency-the government agency that supervises safety rules on the railroads. He then immediately brought about a massive change in safety rules to allow speedups with a huge deterioration of safety.

The 1984 contract What has been the response of the top union officials to these attacks? A look at the voting on the 1984 United Trans -portation Union (UTU) contract will shed light on what their plans are. (The contract was actually signed in late 1985, 18 months after the contract came due-normal procedure in the rail industry.)

The contract was rejected on the first vote, despite the fact that rank-and-file members don't get to vote on the contract.

"There have to be fundamental changes," Burlington Northern tells its workers. "If we can't come to an agreement with the unions after what we consider a reasonable length of time, we're going to present our final offer directly to you employees. Those of you who want to accept our offer are welcome to work here. Those who don't—maybe you can do better in another industry somewhere else."

Despite the inability of top union officials to challenge the companies' attacks, there are signs of a fightback (continued on next page)

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May 27, 1982: Over 20,000 railworkers demonstrate in Washington, SOCIALIST ACI ON NOVEMBER 1986 (continued from previous page) among rail workers. At the recent national convention of the BLE, the union president and almost the entire leadership were voted out, an unprecedented event. The top salaries were also significantly reduced across the board.

The Guilford strike An important struggle has been taking place on the Maine Central Railroad, where Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way workers were forced to go on strike in March 1986.

The Maine Central is owned by Guilford Transportation Industries, which also owns the Boston & Maine and the Delaware & Hudson railroads. Guilford's owner, Timothy Mellon, is one of the richest men in the country.

Mellon apparently had some kind of deal in the works to purchase a 1000-mile piece of ConRail and catapult himself overnight into one of the major rail owners in this country. But as part of the deal he had to show the government that he could smash the unions on his three railroads.

Two years before the strike began, Guilford hired professional strikebreakers to come in and write a white paper outlining their tactics in the upcoming struggle. The white paper suggested that the company break the smallest local on the most isolated carrier and then extend the process throughout the system.

The white paper also advised selling off branch lines to non-union operations. This tactic is being carried out on major railroads throughout the country.

These branch lines are usually completely phony setups. The big railroads provide all the financing. Sometimes they don't even sell it, but lease it for a dollar. The branch line then becomes a pocket of non-union labor designed to be used against the core railroad when management wishes to move to smash the unions there.

Solidarity among the crafts The Guiltora 1 workers surprised everybody-including the international union leadership. There was almost solid support for the Maintenance of Way strikers. None of the other crafts crossed the picket line.

The membership on its own, with no direction from the international, went out and organized a whole series of dem -onstrations. A little town like Waterville, Maine, had a demonstration of 2500 people. Support activities culminated in a big labor demonstration in Boston.

The response of the international union leaders, on the other hand, was horrible. Their whole strategy consisted of a By ART LECLAIR PORTLAND, Maine-President Reagan signed into law a joint House-Senate resolution imposing a settlement of the six-month-old contract dispute between the Maine Central Railroad (MCRR) and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees.

The bitter strike was the result of the flagrant union-busting schemes of the MCRR's parent company, Guilford Transportation Industries of Billerica, Maine, and its owner Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon bank fortune.

The terms of the settlement include a 6.5-percent wage increase and payment of up to $26,000 in severance pay to all track workers laid off since the strike began on March 3. But the settlement also includes "greater flexibility of crew assignments" and the loss of up to 800 jobs of workers who were laid off last July.

As this chapter of Guilford's anti-labor assault comes to a close, those close to the scene will not soon forget the true spirit of solidarity which was forged during the fight.

Without question it was the show of strength and support by all the unions which helped the BMWE hold off the vicious attacks leveled against them. against cutbacks in ConRail and Amtrak.

campaign to beg Reagan to intervene to impose a settlement. But Reagan wasn't interested. It seemed that, given time, the company had a chance to smash the union.

Guilford began to fly in scabs from other places around the country. Money, personnel, and equipment were funneled to Guilford from six other railroads. The major railroads saw it as a test run for 1988.

The strikers pointed to the Railway Labor Act, which says that if other railroads give direct aid to a railroad that is on strike, they can legally be included in the strike action. A judge ruled in their favor, and picket lines were set up at ConRail.

As soon as the picket lines went up, the ConRail workers walked off. Two hours after the ConRail strike started, Reagan came in and ordered the workers back to work for a protracted "cooling-off period."

The union officials are still trying to project this as a victory. But the railroad companies are more far-sighted. They have begun a campaign to plug up the loopholes in the Railway Labor Act so strikes cannot be spread "legally." Their strategy for 1988 will focus on a plan to isolate the unions from railroad to railroad, to provoke strikes, and to break the unions one by one.

The carriers have already achieved a great deal of success in scuttling any union protection under the Railway Labor Act, both in Congress and in the courts. The Supreme Court, in fact, has just agreed to hear a suit by eight major railroads to declare provisions of the Railway Labor Act allowing unions to strike other railroads unconstitutional.

Fightback at Burlington Northern In 1981, after the Staggers Act was passed, the Burlington Northern (BN) railroad set up a holding company to separate the railroad out from the coal, oil, lumber, and other property it had received through government land grants. It was a device to siphon funds away from the railroad and served as part of its preparations to smash the unions.

Some of the rail locals on the BN decided to initiate a court suit against the holding company. In the Twin Cities, Minn., an organization called the Intercraft Association of Minnesota (ICAM) was set up to help support the suit.

A number of rank-and-file unionists and Socialist Action/Joe Ryan local union officers became involved in ICAM and organized other activities-such as a rally of 500 people that included workers from all the crafts and other trade unionists.

The suit was defeated, but ICAM was revived about two-and-a-half years ago, when Burlington Northern launched a huge propaganda campaign calling for "corporateculture committees" to organize direct talks between management and the workers. This was really a move to set up a shadow company union.

ICAM responded with the first issue of its newspaper, Straight Track. The newspaper explained what "corporate culture" was. It went into the history of the so-called quality circles in Japan, and how they were used to break the unions in that country with the help of the U.S. Army occupation forces.

Rail workers took issues of Straight Track on the road with them. Hundreds of workers on the BN and other railroads wrote back to the editors, stating, "You're saying the things that have to be said and done."

While this was happening, massive job cuts were taking place. In a year, Burlington Northern cut its workforce from 55,000 to about 35,000. This was done in a direct sacrifice of safety.

As a result of the cuts, three head-on collisions took place around the time ICAM was being reactivated. One collision took place just north of the Twin Cities in a little town called Motley. It involved two coal trains running on a single-line dark territory. Dark territory is track that is not signalled—a 19th-century track in the 20th century.

The movement of the trains on dark track is completely controlled by the dispatcher through train orders. The company had cut all the operators who used to back up the dispatchers and catch any errors. At the same time, it had cut the number of dispatchers and located them all in the Twin Cities, where they were dispatching in territory 100 or 200 miles away that they had never even seen.

In the past, a new dispatcher worked with experienced dispatchers for up to six months. The company slashed that time to a few weeks. In the Motley incident, a new dispatcher was on his second day on the job by himself. He made a mistake and there was no operator to catch it, and two trains went into each other.

The Burlington Northern immediately accused members of the two train crews of being under the influence of alcohol. They dug the bodies out of the burning coal and announced that they had alcohol in them. The charges were backed up by John Riley, head of the Federal Railway Agency (FRA).

Straight Track launched a big campaign defending the train crew. The newspaper pointed out that one of the three dead men was even a teetotaler. ICAM organized a picket line outside the federal government's offices that demanded the FRA retract its charge that the workers were drunk. Meanwhile, with few exceptions, the international leadership of the unions did nothing.

Pressure brought by the dead men's UTU locals and ICAM forced medical and federal authorities to admit that whatever alcohol was in the bodies was the result of decomposition under the burning coal. The Motley accident won a great loyalty among rail workers for ICAM.

ICAM later organized another successful protest against charges of alcohol and drug abuse among Burlington Northern workers. ICAM played a role in encouraging a suit against the railroad's use of "drug-sniffer dogs" against its employees. ICAM also put out a brochure warning of the dangers of trains carrying nuclear wastes across the country.

When it looked like a national strike might take place after the contract vote last year, ICAM called a meeting and pointed out that the union had to prepare itself in advance. The meeting proposed a full mobilization and laid out a plan of getting all the crafts down to the picket line, regardless of which craft was actually on "Solidarity in action"

ICAM describes itself as a coalition of unionists on Burlington Northern that has come together to address new policies implemented by management:

"ICAM promotes the broadest par -ticipation of all rail workers in their respective unions and solidarity in action between all rail unions in pursuit of our common goals.

"ICAM recognizes the importance of full cooperation between rail unions on different roads. Finally ICAM points to the need for rail labor to reach out in solidarity to other sectors of the labor movement as well as to those in the general public whose lives are deeply affected by our industry."

ICAM members explain that their coalition is not and should not be a substitute for the existing unions. ICAM cannot negotiate contracts. ICAM is a device for mobilizing people to go to their own union meetings and begin transforming their unions and to coordinate activity between all the unions.

It is clear that ICAM and Straight Track provide a big opportunity for rail workers. ICAM is the type of organization that can begin to lay out a correct strategy for how to fight back against the attacks of the employers and the government.

ICAM picketline at Federal Bldg. in Twin Cities in defense of killed railworkers.

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Local P-9, in addition to fighting Hormel, also had to contend with betrayal by UFCW International leadership.

...Hormel lessons (continued from page 1: “More on Nicaragua,”) resulted from the manner in which the strikers and their union, Local P-9, sought their objectives-their firm stand against the company and its allies.

Workers everywhere were inspired by what this local of only 1500 members was able to do. And it was no small matter that they persisted in their struggle despite the opposition of the national leaders of their union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, who withdrew financial and other support they had given in the early stages of the strike.

The international leaders went so far as to sue in court to oust the elected leaders of Local P-9. But backed by a majority of the union membership, the local leaders fought on and are still fighting. They deserve to win.

Government intervention

The second important lesson of the strike has received far less attention-despite its Impact Visual great importance. This lesson may be drawn from an analysis of the interference of government institutions in the strike.

First, Austin police, using tear gas, intervened to help the company and oppose the union. Second, courts and judges who presided over them were unalterably on the side of the company and against the union. Their decisions, injunctions and so on, reflected their bias on every occasion.

Third, the power of the courts was shown by the jailing of strike leaders and others. Fourth, the National Guard, which is supposed to defend citizens from danger, was used to intimidate strikers, to restrict picketing, and to act in a manner that left no doubt about where its sympathies lay.

Fifth, Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich, a member of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, presumably elected with support of unions and their members, actively took the side of the company and not those who had voted for him.

When Perpich called out the National Guard, he succeeded in proving once again that Democrats are no use whatever to workers in their struggles with employers. (In Minnesota the Democratic Party uses the name "Democratic Farmer-Labor Party," reflecting the takeover of the old Farmer-Labor Party years ago.)

A sordid history This record of government support to the Hormel Company did not attract very much attention, perhaps, because people are accustomed to this sort of thing whenever workers go on strike and show a certain amount of fight.

Throughout labor history, government officials and agencies have always sided with the capitalists-never with the workers. No one can find examples in which police came to a picket line formed by strikers in order to defend them against scabs.

No one knows of judges who issued injunctions against a company whose workers were out on strike. Or judges who put capitalists in jail.

The example of the head of the Montgomery-Ward Company during World War II, photographed as he was physically carried out of his office when he defied government "seizure" of the company, was so exceptional that it made front-page news everywhere. It did little or no good to the workers, in any event.

National Guard killings

The National Guard has often been called out to intervene in strikes, but without exception, these instances have found the Guard on the side of the bosses. Many times killings were the result of this kind of intervention.

Even students on a campus were not safe from shooting by the National Guard at the time when opposition to the war in Vietnam was expressed on campuses all over the country. In 1970, three were killed at Kent State University in Ohio.

So many instances of government support to capitalists and against workers can be found that a fat book would be required just to list them. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who has been made maders. a saint byrunion leaders (and by Stalinists), turned his back to striking workers time and again.

In one example, when 10 workers were murdered by Chicago police in the 1937 Republic Steel strike, Roosevelt responded to mineworkers' leader John L. Lewis's appeal for help by answering, "A plague on both your houses."

This infuriated Lewis, then CIO president, and he broke with Roosevelt. Unfortunately, Lewis then went over to the Republican Party instead of calling for a labor party.

Build a labor party The time to raise a demand for a labor party based upon the unions is now, when the lessons of the Hormel strike are fresh in the minds of many workers and union members. Educational work along this line is essential. It should not be delayed for a moment.

Those who convinced workers by the millions to vote for Democrats or Republicans-and this includes almost every top union leader in the United States-stand guilty of betraying their trust. The action of the Minnesota governor shows that only a political party that really represents the working class can be trusted with support from workers.

If a labor party is not organized, if workers continue to support and vote for Democrats or Republicans, repetitions of the Hormel experience are inevitable.

If it had not been for intervention of government institutions in the strike, the meatcutters' union would have won a victory long ago. As the labor song put it, "We are many-they are few."

The lessons of the Hormel strike are clear: Workers need a labor party to defend themselves from the violence of the bosses and capitalist state power.

Since the workers are the majority and also the sole producers of society's needs, they must organize themselves politically, win state power, and set things right. In the final analysis, they will do no more than recover stolen property as well as their rights.

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Guilford strike is settled

Dar De ARD Tho's Socialist Action/Mike Zukowski Ne t? INS HUMA ALTH