UAW local leaders fight Chrysler plant closing

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The sale of Acustar would mean that the UAW could lose 15 percent of its Chrysler worker membership. 6 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1988 DETROIT—In response to Chrysler's announcement that it was talking to interested buyers for its $3 billion Acustar parts-making subsidiary, leaders of UAW Chrysler locals gathered here called for nationally coordinated local strikes to stop Chrysler from selling Acustar.

The call came from a meeting of presidents and chairmen of 49 Chrysler locals held at Local 212 in Detroit. "We're going to war," declared Don Lingar, president of UAW local 372, which represents workers at Chrysler's Trenton Chemical plant.

Marc Stepp, a UAW vice-president and head of the UAW's Chrysler Department, said the UAW international leadership would stand with the Chrysler locals. According to news reports, the UAW's Chrysler Council, which met the last week of February, voted to oppose the Acustar sale.

At a demonstration in front of Chrysler's Highland Park headquarters on Feb. 25, Stepp said, "I know what it's like to be bitten by a snake. You can't trust this corporation." The demonstration, which drew close to 2000 workers despite the bitter cold, was scheduled to coincide with the UAW's Chrysler Council meeting.

A nationwide strike of locals against the proposed sale of Acustar would technically be illegal, but unionists here said that all locals have sufficient number of grievances piled up to justify a strike. Stepp said that the grievance process required to call local strikes would begin immediately.

Reorganization = Union-busting In a major reorganization, Chrysler put much of its parts-making operations into a subsidiary called Acustar. It employs 28,000 workers-more than 11,000 of whom are workers covered by the UAW.

The sale of Acustar, to be followed by attempts to bust the UAW at these plants, means a potential loss of 15 percent of all UAW organized Chrysler workers in one sweep-only six months before the contract round opens.

The attempt by Chrysler to sell Acustar comes on the heels of massive plant closings announced by General Motors. Plant closings and layoffs have already begun, and their effects are already being felt in this auto-producing region of the Midwest. January's figure for unemployment in Michigan rose from 8.7 percent in December to 10.2 percent according to government statistics.

The national contract covering 68,000 Chrysler workers expires next September. The drive for concessions from autoworkers began at Chrysler with the closing of the Dodge Main assembly plant, which had a long history of union militancy in the UAW.

Many of those workers have seen concessions drive their wages to the lowest of all Big Three autoworkers. They surely recognize the attempt by Chrysler to pit locals against each other and workers at parts operations against other autoworkers.

The UAW international leadership's support for these local actions should be taken for all its worth by autoworkers, but in truth, the Acustar deal has been in the works for more than a year and only now— after local leaders took some initiative—has Stepp reacted.

Chrysler workers have nothing to lose by taking the initiative against Chrysler now. Building real solidarity with the workers at Acustar by turning back Chrysler's whipsawing tactics is the way to prepare for the expiration of the national Chrysler contract in September.

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SOCIALIST ACTION SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1988 7 By ALAN BENJAMIN In April 1978, shortly after the wholesale banning of all Black Consciousness organizations by the South African apartheid state, the Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO) was founded.

AZAPO was basically a continuation of the Black Consciousness movement, which had arisen in the late 1960s in the heat of the struggles of the Black students.

The Black Consciousness movement was spearheaded by Black students who had grown tired of the "paternalism" of the dominant liberal white student organizations and had decided to take matters into their own hands. As one Black student leader put it: "It does not help us to see several quiet Black faces in a multiracial gathering which ultimately concentrates on what the white students believe are the needs of Black students."

Black Consciousness held that only the Blacks could liberate the nation's Black majority through the harnessing of their collective energies in "solidarity in action." In 1976, this movement led the uprising in Soweto. In 1977, one of its most prominent leaders, Steve Biko, was killed by the government while in police custody.

At its founding conference, and subsequently, AZAPO was able to make some important political advances over the current from which it had emerged. One leader of AZAPO put it this way:

"From the previous Black Consciousness position-which at times could have been characterized as narrowly nationalistic, where race seemed to be all in the analysis of the political situation-AZAPO moved further to include the very real element of class in its analysis and strategic orientation."

The AZAPO leader continued, "One of the significant differences with the Black Consciousness current is that AZAPO's orientation is specifically socialist. Its program and strategy flow from a combined class-race analysis of the South African situation."

A brochure containing the basic positions of AZAPO explains this concept in greater detail: "AZAPO has identified the racist and capitalist system of the country as working against the interests and aspirations of the Black people. The liberation of the Black majority can only be realized in an egalitarian collectivized state which breaks with capitalism and colonialism."

Flowing from this understanding of the interrelationship between the apartheid state and the capitalist system of production, AZAPO has taken a clear stand in favor of Black majority rule and against a policy of alliances that would subordinate the interests of the Black majority to the so-called "liberal" wing of the white ruling class.

"The white liberals and their supporters are opposed to self-determination for the Black majority," said another leader of AZAPU in a speech on the meaning of AZAPO's Fourth Congress of January 1984. "Instead, what they propose is a 'multi-racial' unity and state."

The AZAPO leader explained that his organization advocates the "policy of the united front" and rejects "the policy of the popular front." He stated:

"In this period of sustained attacks by the state and imperialism, we must seek to bring together all organizations based on the working class and the oppressed, even the most moderate ones or those with the most opportunistic and revisionist leaderships. Our only condition is that we reject all alliances between the workers' movement and the liberal bourgeoisie...

"The fundamental characteristic of this united front is that, through its logic of pitting class against class, it sets off a dynamic that drives forward the struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeois order and capitalist property relations.

"The popular front, on the the other hand, because of its logic of class collaboration [with the 'liberal' bourgeoisie], sets off a dynamic that restrains and derails the struggles of the workers and the oppressed. Such a front is explicitly based on the respect of the established order and capitalist property relations."

AZAPO's attitude toward whites One of the main criticisms leveled against AZAPO by other currents in the South African liberation struggle concerns AZAPO's attitude toward the white minority. AZAPO is often denounced as "ultraleft" or "racist" because of its IC WACE exclusion of whites from its ranks and because of its assessment of the "limited role that whites can play in the struggle for Black liberation."

These charges are unfounded.

Under the system of apartheid, being white is automatically a passport for all privileges. Whites are the only recognized "citizens" with the right to vote. Their incomes derive from the institutionalization of racist discrimination and oppression.

White workers in South Africa, whose incomes are over 40 times greater than those of Black workers on the average, cannot even be compared to the "aristocracy of labor" that Lenin described in reference to the privileged layer of workers in the advanced capitalist countries.

In South Africa, the extreme social stratification is imposed by racial barriers established by a particular form of capitalist exploitation: apartheid. White trade unions, for example, have always oriented their activities around the defense of their privileges—in violent opposition to the rights and interests of Black workers.

The South African government only allowed the Black trade unions to legally organize and negotiate contracts in 1979 after the massive outburst of spontaneous strikes in the early and mid 1970s. This legal recognition—which is still limited by the state—was won through bitter struggle and organization independent of the white workers and their unions.

AZAPO's view of the role of whites is spelled out in the organization's brochure: "The role of whites in the liberation struggle cannot be considered a right. Their role should be rejected where it is an obstacle to the initiative, leadership, and organization of the Black majority in its struggle to remove the yoke of political and economic oppression by the white minority."

AZAPO and the Freedom Charter One of the documents that has caused the most controversy and division among the liberation forces in South Africa is the Freedom Charter, which was adopted by the African National Congress (ANC) in 1955.

The Freedom Charter puts foward a series of necessary and legitimate demands. But it does not call for socialism, outlining instead the perspective of an anti-apartheid settlement to establish a democraticcapitalist state.

A major underpinning of the Charter is the existence in South Africa of various different nationalities whose rights must be guaranteed within the framework of a multi-racial state. The Charter is in line with the South African Communist Party's strategy of a "popular front," which seeks to unite the working-class and sectors of the "liberal" white bourgeoisie around a common program.

A leading member of AZAPO characterized the Freedom Charter in the following terms:

"There are many aspects of the Charter which nobody could have any difficulty with: education, housing, healthcarewhich are basic human demands that need to be met. But, in its essence, the Freedom Charter is an attempt to seek accommodation with the status quo. It is an attempt to appease the ruling class and seek integration within that ruling class."

The AZAPO leader continued, "There is no talk of Black majority rule explicitly in the Charter. There is no indication of the type of economic, political, and social future that the majority of citizens are going to have. Merely talking of nationalizing certain industries is not synonymous with socialization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange."

In opposition to the ANC's Freedom Charter, AZAPO calls for support to the Manifesto of the Azanian People, which was adopted in 1983. This document summarizes the overall strategic goals of this extremely significant component of the South African liberation struggle. It states:

"The Black working class, inspired by revolutionary consciousness, is the driving force of our struggle for national self-determination in a unitary Azania. They alone can end the system as it stands because they alone have nothing to lose.

"They have a world to gain in a democratic, anti-racist and socialist Azania, where the interests of the workers shall be paramount through worker control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange...

"It is the historic task of the Black working class and its organizations to mobilize the oppressed people in order to put an end to the system of oppression and exploitation by the white ruling class."