The coming working class fightback in the United States

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UNFAIR Socialist Action/Carl Finamore P-9 strike became a national symbol of emerging fightback B SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1987 (continued from previous page) have pushed capitalist politicians to the right. But the impact of the economic offensive against the working class and the threat of war will force working people to Once they have overcome their initial reaction of shock, disorientation, false starts, and false hopes, the American workers will fight ferociously to protect their standard of living and their democratic rights.

Impact of austerity on oppressed The austerity drive of the capitalists has had a profound impact on Blacks, Latinos, and women.

According to Urban League statistics, Blacks today are worse off than they were 20 years ago. Thirty-four percent of Blacks live below the poverty line. For Black teenagers, the rate of unemployment is 43 percent, and Blacks continue to suffer double the unemployment rate of whites.

The defeats suffered by the working class, in general, have had their heaviest reverberations in the Black community. Gains made in affirmative action have been gutted by plant closings, layoffs, and cutbacks. Between 1979 and 1984, over 2 million Blacks were pushed below the poverty line. For Blacks-especially Black youth-the prospects for the future are bleak.

For the Latino community, especially the Chicano and Puerto Rican communities, the economic situation is not much different than that of Blacks. Unemployment, poverty, and homelessness have hit these sectors of the working class the hardest. Combined with these economic attacks, the U.S. rulers are using their offensive against undocumented workers to attack all Latino people as an oppressed nationality and as workers.

For millions of working and unemployed women, the capitalist austerity drive has been devastating. Women are the fastestgrowing component among the ranks of the impoverished. Single-parent, female-led households—a fast growing category—are almost always the poorest households.

Women still make little more than half the money men make for the same work. Women still do not have the Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee their democratic rights. And the right of women to control their own bodies is under unremitting Socialist Action/Joe Ryan assault by reactionaries—with support from the government.

In these very important sectors of the working class—Blacks, Latinos, and women-the ruling-class drive for profits has not kindled any special loyalty or love for the capitalist system. For that reason, the oppressed nationalities can be expected to be in the vanguard of the fightback as it develops.

Outlines of employers' strategy Millions of low-income people are excluded from the unemployment figure of 7 percent. There are 5.6 million part-time workers who are looking for full-time work, many of them women. The unemployment statistics don't include the millions who are in labor-wasted military service, the millions who are still looking for their first job, and the millions of unemployed whose benefits have expired and who have given up the search for work.

In the United States, 11.5 million workers lost their jobs due to plant shutdowns between 1979 and 1984. Only 60 percent of these workers obtained other jobs-most of them at reduced wages and inferior working conditions.

Over 550,000 steelworkers and 250,000 auto workers have been permanently laid off since 1978. Facing the threat of plant shutdowns, layoffs, and lockouts, the industrial workers have been pushed for huge concessions by the employers.

The Saturn UAW contract is a perfect example of the concessions bargaining that has been imposed on the unions. The Saturn contract virtually eliminates job classifications, establishes wage-reduction clauses, and introduces grievance procedures that bypass the union. The employers remain steadfast in their goal to drive forward the reorganization of American industry. They will attempt to accomplish this by eliminating traditional union protections on the job.

Postponing the inevitable confrontation which would result from drastic wagereduction demands, the bosses have adopted a longer-term approach of introducing two-tier wage schedules and adjusting work rules. Approximately 700,000 workers were forced to accept two-tier contracts in 1984 and 1985.

Following the example of the auto, rail, and trucking bosses' negotiating tactics, USX has refused to negotiate a 1986 master contract with the of United America (USWA).

This is another key employer tactic. By rejecting master agreements, the major corporations seek to exhaust the unions by dragging them through numerous scattered and separate negotiations with a myriad of concessionary demands. This will place more pressure on the unions and decrease their collective strength by breaking them down into ever-smaller bargaining units.

The U.S. capitalist class, however, has not yet mounted an all-out assault against the working class. It is still testing and probing for weaknesses, but in such a way as to avoid prematurely arousing the sleeping giant. The employers' extreme caution is eloquent testimony to their respect for the labor movement's revolutionary potential.

Impact of austerity drive There are clear signs of working class unrest and frustration which are percolating and will eventually boil over as the capitalists press on with their attacks.

Since the defeat of the Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1981, there have been a number of important skir -mishes-with uneven results. The unevenness of the outcomes of these struggles is a reflection of the unsettled character of the period.

Rail workers on the Maine Central Railroad were forced to go on strike in March 1986 by Guilford Transportation Industries. The Guilford workers surprised everybody with their militancy—including the international union leadership. The striking rail workers organized demon -strations and roving pickets throughout the Northeast.

After the ConRail workers walked off the job-honoring the Guilford picket -lines—Reagan and the courts ordered the strikers back to work. The rail bosses and the government feared the extension of the strike throughout the entire rail industry.

In July 1986, 5000 Detroit city workers recognized the picketlines of 7000 striking AFSCME workers and effectively shut down transportation and important city services. The 19-day strike was the longest city workers' strike in Detroit's history.

Also in July, Philadelphia sanitation workers conducted an 18-day strike that was both aggressive and militant. It was ultimately the threat of injunctions and fines—and threats by labor-endorsed Mayor Wilson Goode to fire the workers-that forced the strikers back to work.

Not long after, steelworkers at LTV struck one plant for six days, forcing the company to back down from canceling might go bankrupt.

In August 1986,. 42,000 USX steelworkers were locked out when they resisted a $3.50-per-hour pay cut. Previously, steelworkers were forced to make concessions that totaled $1.8 billion and resulted in thousands of lost jobs. The USX workers have had their fill of concessions.

The strikes of the TWA Flight Attendants and the Communication Workers of America (CWA) were earlier examples of the growing anti-concessions mood of the workers.

The Local P-9 Hormel strike The most heroic example of workers who wanted to fight against the concessions demands of the bosses was the strike of the Hormel workers in Austin, Minn.

The Hormel workers, organized in Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), went on strike in August 1985. During the course of a year, Local P-9 faced the combined assault of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, the National Guard, the courts, and the UFCW international leadership.

The UFCW international negotiated a contract behind the backs of P-9 several years ago. The bureaucracy went on a rumor campaign to undermine the local's leadership when P-9 decided to fight Hormel's demand for a two-tier wage structure. This back-stabbing campaign ultimately escalated into physical threats and the physical removal of the P-9 officers from the union.

The UFCW international then capitulated to Hormel, putting P-9 into receivership and signing a concessionary contract while hundreds of members had lost their jobs and were still ready to fight.

Despite the attacks leveled against P-9 and its elected leadership by the top national AFL-CIO labor officials, over 3000 union locals donated money and supplies to the struggle. These workers were inspired by the determination of the P9 strikers to resist employer takebacks and government intervention.

The workers' desire to resist, however, must be coupled with a correct strategy for winning.

The Corporate Campaign, which was employed by P-9 throughout the strike under the direction of labor consultant Ray Rogers, mistakenly considered publicrelations outreach campaigns to be a substitute for the power of the picketline.

Accordingly, the P-9 leaders declined to mobilize a militant defense of their picketlines, choosing instead to rely on the sympathy for the strikers generated by the Corporate Campaign. This handicapped the ability to mobilize union support nationwide around the principles of solidarity and defense of the picketlines against cops and scabs.

When attempts were made to shut down the Austin plant, there was a large outpouring of labor solidarity. Consistently resisting the cops and the National Guard on the picketline would have raised the political ante for the bosses even further. It would have also presented a powerful

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