Where did the labor movement go wrong?

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Women's Auxiliary in Flint, Mich., after the victory Sitdown strike remembered SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1987 7

DOLLINGER

On Feb. 11, 1937, the 44-day sitdown strike at three GM plants in Flint, Mich., ended with a stunning victory for the workers. The largest industrial corporation in the world was forced to recognize the United Auto Workers Union.

A key factor in this victory was the role played by the Women's Auxiliary and par -ticulary its Women's Emergency Brigade.

The Auxiliary was organized on Jan. 1, 1937, at the initiative of Genora Johnson Dollinger to help with strike picketing, first aid, soup kitchens, fund-raisers, and neighborhood organizing.

After the Jan. 1l Battle of Bulls Run, when police stormed Fisher Plant 2 in an effort to eject the strikers, the women involved in the battle decided to organize a "paramilitary" organization: the Women's Emergency Brigade. Among its many activities, the Brigade freed suffocating strikers from Plant 9, which had been gassed by the National Guard, and set up locked-armed pickets to prevent the police from opening up Plant 4.

The following is a slightly abridged version of an article by Genora Johnson Dollinger, who was the captain of the Women's Emergency Brigade. She talks about the state of the union movement today-50 years after the sitdown strikes.

The article appeared in a special edition ofUAW Chevrolet Local 659's newspaper, The Searchlight, on Feb. 10, 1987. It was sent to Socialist Action by Dollinger and is reprinted with the author's permission.

In August I returned to Flint to celebrate with the UAW pioneers the 50th anni -versary of the Sitdown Strike.

It was a visit filled with symbolism. The world-famous Chevron sign on the overpass between Fisher 2 and Chevrolet the site of the beginning of the victorious Sitdown Strike by Fisher 2 workers—was being dismantled and dumped near Chevrolet plants 6 and 10. Many of the plants in the Chevrolet complex stood idle and rusting. Shockingly profound changes were taking place in the city of Flint that were palpable to the naked eye.

During my brief visit I toured around Buick and Fisher Body 1. Buick, now bearing a name too complex to remember, had doubled in area size since I knew it, yet it employed no more than it did decades ago. A vast automated complex had gobbled up space.

And what had happened to Fisher 1-fabled in song and memory, scene of enormous picket lines where strong voices rang out in heartfelt sounds of "Solidarity Forever" and "We Shall Not Be Moved?"

We fought for this union with our hearts, minds, bodies, and our blood. And now this huge structure stands like a ghost ship anchored in time.

A union diminished in vitality Returning after 50 years-and seeing the removal of the Chevron sign, the empty factories, the forlorn and worried looks on the faces of men and women in anticipation of further industrial decline—indelibly impressed on my mind the fortunes of a union diminished in strength and vitality.

Was this the city, which brought industrial unionism to America in the most dramatic display of worker solidarity and sitdown action ever seen in the world, now tragically digging its own grave? Was the 50th anniversary of the UAW-CIO victory marking the demise of industrial unionism in America?

These were my thoughts as I drove through the silent, forbidding streets of a city marked by slums and out-of-work, outof-hope hands and bodies.

Lessons of 50 years ago In 1937, our gallant strike electrified and mobilized an entire nation. All of working$700L PIGEON Flint strikers occupy their plants.

class America thrilled to our victory. They knew our fight was their fight.

We proved again, as the railroad and coal workers had proved before us, that in union there is strength. We fought against our own intolerable conditions, but our fight was the fight of the entire nation of exploited men and women.

When Chevrolet Local 659 initiated and fought for the escalator clause in our contract, we again paved the way for these benefits for all workers. Our pioneering efforts brought us praise and support. We were considered a progressive and decent union, and we gloried in our reputation. In those early years, our objectives were broad and general. We wanted justice for the workers of America and nothing else.

And today?

But, sad to admit, no longer are we in the UAW considered to be crusaders. Our objectives became narrow and selfish. We became an affluent two-car family with a two-car garage; with a summer cottage and a winter home; and we forgot, while watching TV, that we were leaving half of America behind!

Oh, how we celebrated our pension plan! It was wonderful to be able to exercise early retirement at full pension-while most of America had to get by on skimpy social security checks.

How much better it would have been if our union had used its enormous political and economic strength to have won federal pensions for all workers and a federal health-insurance plan with guarantees for all-such as the unions won in England, Germany, Canada, and every major Western European country.

Bitter harvest

But we didn't do it. And now we are reaping the bitter harvest. Solidarity is dead and union-busting is rampant. Union pension funds are raided by derelict, bankrupt, dishonest capitalist entrepreneurs. Even the vaunted GM, Ford, and Chrysler pension funds are not secure. It was not so long ago that Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy.

And the pension funds built from worker contributions-in lieu of wage increases —were, and are, under the sole domination of the corporation. Our union leaders, sadly derelict in their duties, failed to see the possible failure of one or more of these funds. They were not farsighted enough to negotiate even joint control of the funds paid by the union members.

Pension funds in Europe are controlled in part or in whole by the unions and are used for socially beneficial purposes of building workers' housing, etc. In any case we would have been much better off having fought to make pensions universal for the workers of the entire country, rather than industry by industry.

In this way we could have maintained worker solidarity and recognition of our respective needs.

Need for political voice There are more auto workers than lawyers in the United States, yet we have never had a genuine auto worker elected to Congress! The same for the steelworkers, service employees, etc. There is not a genuine worker from our ranks to speak for us-but Congress is loaded with lawyers and businessmen to legislate for the interest of the Big Business capitalists.

Failing to exert our influence in the Democratic Party, (as I am convinced we would have failed), we might conceivably By More than 2000 angry members of the United Auto Workers Union, carrying signs that called for an end to plant closings, rallied in front of Fisher Body Plant No. 1 on Feb. 12. They were honoring the original sitdown strikers who occupied the plant and won union recognition 50 years ago.

Management has announced that this historic plant will be closed in December 1987. It is among 11 GM plants slated to be closed in the next two years, eliminating 27,000 jobs.

Cheers and applause greeted Flint UAW Regional Director Stan Marshall when he said the union might consider using have organized a third party of labor, civil rights organizations, small farmers, environmentalists, the peace movement, the women's movement, and concerned professionals. These movements have remained fragmented, and the strength and power of the American labor movement is weakened, emasculated, and supine.

The preferential pension plans of the big unions bought us off. Our political influence is at its nadir. Our working class is mesmerized and helplessly paralyzed as it watches the hemorrhaging flow of jobs out of the country.

When will it end?

Only when we recognize that the old spirit and determination of union solidarity was the right way to go. Solidarity is absolutely vital for our survival against the philosophy of dog-eat-dog and the-deviltake-the-hindmost.

When will it end? When we realize that what we gained on the economic field through our strike and negotiations was all minimized or taken away from us in the political arena. This is not yet understood. We have not-and cannot—maintain our economic gains while we remain political slaves.

As dark as today's picture is, some of us who have been around the labor movement these many years feel there is still a measure of time left. I was 23 years old at the Battle of Bulls Run. There are many thousands of thinking potential leaders in their 20's in the ranks of the UAW today who are capable of rousing their coworkers.

History teaches us that they must start acting now in conjunction with other militants in other unions, and ally themselves with other Americans concerned about the future of our country and our families....Time is still on our side.

Remember, the UAW-CIO was born because the old AFL labor leaders had failed us. Every leader of the UAW-CIO was only a rank-and-file worker in the auto plants at the time we built this union.

The new upsurge of labor will not come from the stagnant and incompetent leaders we have today. There will be a new regrouping of those who care about America-and ALL its people. This will be because there is no other rational course for US. sitdown strikes again if U.S. companies keep sending jobs overseas.

Many proposals are being made to meet the problem of plant closings. Some union members are demanding corporation-wide seniority. This would enable long-term workers in a shutdown plant to carry their seniority into another plant.

Leaders of two UAW locals asked the Detroit City Council for help in saving the families, homes, and cars of nearly 8400 auto workers who will lose their jobs at five GM plants this year. The UAW locals asked the council to enact measures that would protect laid-off workers from creditors and extend their unemployment benefits.

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... U.S. resists full sanctions (continued from page 1: “U.S. resists full sanctions against S. African apartheid”)

Congress. U.S. weapons also find their way into South Africa's arsenal; some supplies are "recycled" through Israel.

Sanctions loopholes

The sanctions legislation passed by Congress leaves the door open for U.S. companies to invest in and lend money to South African enterprises. Taking its cue from Washington, a consortium of 34 international banks recently agreed to renegotiate some of South Africa's $13 billion foreign debt.

Leaders of South Africa's ruling National Party had been quite worried, since $1.42 billion of the debt was scheduled to fall due next month-immediately after the country's all-white elections. The payments have now been postponed for three years, allowing the "Nats" to breathe much easier.

In February, the U.S. government exempted 10 minerals of "vital strategic importance" from its list of proscribed South African imports.

Most of these products-including antimony, chromium, cobalt, industrial diamonds, manganese, vanadium, titanium, asbestos, and the platinum group of metals-are crucial in the manufacture of airplanes and weapons. In recent years, these minerals have comprised the largest single sector of U.S. imports via South Africa.

The extent of the U.S. government's hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed by Pretoria. "That which the U.S. needs for its strategic interests—suddenly that's not subject to sanctions!" Foreign Minister R.F. (Pik) Botha taunted.

Americans should realize, Botha recently told The Washington Post, that punitive sanctions "encourage violence" and delay his government's process of "reform." In the meantime, he emphasized, the state of emergency (under which as many as 30,000 people have been jailed without charges) will continue.

Have sanctions "backfired?"

Incredibly-despite the current wave of repression-the South African foreign minister's argumênts are finding an echo in newspapers and on television within the United States. In the words of The AVIH AFRICA Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, "sanctions have backfired."

As proof, readers and TV viewers have been treated to the wisdom of KwaZulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, who argues that international sanctions are responsible for increased unemployment and misery among Blacks. During his tour of the United States this winter, Buthelezi assured President Reagan of the need for increased capitalist investment in South Africa to promote "a strong business climate."

Buthelezi, who claims to speak on behalf of the Black masses, has strong ties with the sugar-refining industry in Natal. He dominates Inkatha, the ruling party in the KwaZulu "homeland," which has extensive trading, insurance, and financial interests in partnership with private firms.

Buthelezi and his supporters in the liberal U.S. media are hardly unaware that "a strong business climate" did nothing to end the misery of Blacks in the past.

U.S. corporations invested heavily in South Africa during the 1970s, when their profit rate approached a lofty 20 percent. But high profits were only achieved by paying low wages to the workers. Black workers in manufacturing continued to earn only 20 percent of the wages of whites.

Unemployment in South Africa SANCTIONS WOULD ONLY HURT YOU. another product of the drive by the capitalist class to maintain their superprofits. "Surplus" Black workers are "deported" to the "homelands" —where they provide a resource of cheap labor for the employers.

With or without sanctions, millions of people have no hope of a job. Over 3 million Blacks could not find work in South Africa even before limited international sanctions took effect late last year. Unemployment ranges from 30 percent in the urban townships to 60 percent in the semi-rural bantustans.

Unions demand jobs

Chief Buthelezi's opinions notwith -standing, few improvements in the living standards of Blacks in South Africa can be traced to the benevolence of international capitalism. Poverty and unemployment have been countered only by the struggle of the people themselves through their unions and community groups.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions has given top priority to the fight for a living wage and against unemploy -ment. COSATU demands that the government institute a national program of public works-schools, housing, and hospitals—in order to provide more jobs.

The unions are demanding a reduced workweek (a universal 40-hour week) at full pay in order to spread the work.

COSATU also resolved at its founding congress in 1985 to undertake the fight for "workers' control" of industry. What is produced and who is employed should be determined by working people not by the capitalists, who are interested in their own profits instead of society's needs.

COSATU leaders oppose sales of foreign companies to South African businessmen as part of a divestment plan. "Companies should leave their assets to the workers," says COSATU Vice-President Chris Dlamini.

But those companies that remain in South Africa, the union leaders state, should pay the price of sanctions. And those sanctions must be "quick and comprehensive."

"We as workers did not create apartheid," COSATU General Secretary Jay Naidoo said at the congress of the National Union of Mineworkers in February. The trade unions "will continue to fight against retrenchments, and make sure that our enemies carry the burden of sanctions—not US.

Solidarity in the fight The Black working class of South Africa will lead the struggle to end apartheid and reconstruct their country on a new basis. But anti-apartheid activists in this country can provide needed solidarity in the fight for freedom.

We should insist that the U.S. government immediately end all military aid, diplomatic support, and trade with South Africa.

We should demand that the United States freeze the assets of South African enterprises in this country. South Africa's giant Anglo America corporation, for example, is the largest foreign corporate investor in the United States.

Punitive actions should be taken against third countries-such as Israel-that continue to trade and supply arms to South Africa. South African exports to Israel rose 70 percent last year. Israel's new "sanctions," announced this year with great fanfare, would restrict trade in the "future," but leave existing links with South Africa intact.

We must take up the demand of the April 25 protests in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco: "No U.S. Support for South African Apartheid!"