Workers can ‹ bosses and bi
1986Nat Weinstein 1986-11Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 14 →
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The strategy of the current "leaders" of the unions—the labor bureaucracy-is based on systematic class collaboration. This is the scientific term for the view that a partnership exists between workers and employers.
The bureaucracy peddles this false notion to justify a policy of subordinating wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions to profitability.
Official AFL-CIO policy, firmly based on this concept of "partnership," has led working people into its current morass. Disarmed by this concept, labor is unable to effectively resist accelerating employer takebacks.
To the extent a partnership does exist, it is between the bosses and the bureaucrats and is necessarily directed against the class interests of working people. Collaboration between bosses and bureaucrats can only be established on the basis of joint efforts to guarantee the capitalist "right" to make a profit.
Such a "partnership," in principle, is similar to that between slaveowner and slave. The slave owner, like the capitalist, must have the "right" to expropriate the surplus produced by the slave-otherwise the slave system would die.
Class collaborators in the unions are under pressure, however, to show results to their membership. They worry that if they are not able to appear to make gains for the membership they can be ousted. Thus to get wage increases they tend to bargain away previously won gains or accede to conditions which are detrimental to the working class as a whole.
The "no-strike" clause in most union contracts is a particularly onerous result of this method of bargaining. It ties the workers' hands when the boss violates the contract and compels workers subject to this clause to cross the picket lines of other unions.
Before we can begin an effective defense of living standards we must refute this myth of class partnership.
Workers vs. capitalists
Ask workers which class they are members of and most will confidently answer, "middle class." In a sense, this is not wrong. They generally mean to say they are neither rich nor poor. But this sense of the term "class" is not adequate for perceiving and understanding the underlying material conditions dividing society into warring camps. ar li di ar Of CC
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