Boston Black community targets anti-union construction contractor

Scan page 4

Rank and file members of the ANC have good reason to be wary of conciliation with apartheid regime.

...South Africa BOSTON-The construction site of a new Postal Service facility in Boston's Black community of Roxbury has been the scene of protests by Black community leaders and workers.

The protests, organized by the newly formed Greater Roxbury Workers Association (GRWA), have targeted Suffolk Construction, a notorious anti-union general contractor.

GRWA was formed in late October 1990 to make sure that workers in Roxbury receive a fair share of construction work in the community. GRWA has also protested hiring practices at a number of city-sponsored housing development projects.

City and state regulations require that publicly funded building projects employ significant numbers of local residents. According to the Boston ordinance, for example, at least 50 percent of the employee hours on city-funded projects have to be worked by "Boston residents." In addition, 25 percent of the employee-hours are supposed to be worked by "minorities" and at least 10 percent by women.

Chuck Turner, chairman of the Roxbury (continued from page 16) icy toward sanctions. An internal ANC discussion bulletin also raised this as a possibility.

The ANC conference, however, did not change its position of maintaining full sanctions until apartheid is ended. But it did reaffirm its commitment to negotiations with the government.

De Klerk has invited the ANC and other groups to join in negotiating a new constitution for the country in February when the white parliament opens. The white rulers are seeking to maneuver the liberation forces into a government-organized gathering to guarantee that white economic and political power would be maintained while giving Blacks a share of the government.

The two other major liberation groupsthe Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the Azanian Peoples Organization (AZAPO) are also debating whether to join negotiations with the government.

In another development, the ANC conference rejected de Klerk's call to end the use of mass nonviolent action to pressure the government to remove all obstacles before formal negotiations can begin. "We will not 4 SOCIALIST ACTION neighborhood council and one of the founders of GRWA, thinks that the city and state hiring requirements don't go far enough. He would like to see at least 50 percent of the workers on local construction sites come from the neighborhoods where the work is taking place.

Regular picketing at the post office site has shut down all work there after an initial spate of daily arrests.

In a bulletin released on Dec. 12, GRWA addressed the arrest issue and vowed their willingness to continue to be arrested if necessary.

"We understand that people will try to make it look as if we are in the wrong, as if we are the criminals," the bulletin declared. "But if we don't stand up for our rights to a fair share of the work in our community, who will? If we don't stop this theft that goes on daily, how will we persuade our children that crime does not pay? If we don't take action to see that those in our community who have the skills can work on construction jobs in our community, how can we persuade our children to develop skills?"

The Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler, a leader in the Black community, told Socialist trade off our mass struggle said Mandela.

The ANC is demanding the unconditional release of all political prisoners and the return of all exiles, the end to all political trials, and the repeal of repressive security laws. A deadline of April 30 has been set by the ANC for their demands to be met. If not, the NEC says it will suspend talks.

Both the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP), which has a strategic alliance with the ANC, have declared 1991 as the year of mass action— campaign of demonstrations, strikes, stayaways, and boycotts— "to achieve our objectives as quickly as possible,"

Retreat toward "new realism"

At the same time, the consultative conference refused to reverse the ANC's retreat from its own Freedom Charter program. While many criticisms have been made of the Charter for not being far-reaching enough to bring about genuine Black majority rule, it does include many radical democratic demands. Now many of these demands are being dropped by the top leadership.

The most important shift concerns nationIANUARY 1991 Action that "access to these jobs is intimately linked with the problems of crime and drugs in our community." Hagler has been arrested twice at the post office site and has been threatened by a judge with two month's incarceration without bail if he is arrested again.

The GRWA bulletin highlighted the enormous economic stakes: "The average salary for a worker on the post office site is $25 an hour or $200 a day. Each week, the average salary for a worker on the post office site is $1000. Ten construction workers earn in one week ... an amount of money equal to a year's work for one worker in our community earning $5 an hour. [We] are determined to do whatever is necessary to get our fair share of the dollars spent on construction in our community."

While GR WA was able to negotiate an initial agreement with the contractors to hire some workers from the Black community, it did not last long. As soon as the bosses thought that the community's attention had shifted, they laid off the Black workers and brought in crews from Worcester, Mass., and Providence, R.I.— each nearly 50 miles from Boston.

GRWA has received a lot of support from Dave Hartman alization of state enterprises and land. Mandela in his world tour last year said the ANC was now for a "mixed economy" in a post-apartheid South Africa. An official ANC document now proposes a "state minerals marketing authority" and other concessions, such as full compensation, to the white capitalist owners.

Considering that whites—who are 13 percent of the population-own 86 percent of the land and earn at least 10 times what a Black does, such a post-apartheid South Africa would remain under white domination. Blacks would be denied economic the community and from unionists. It won support at a Dec. 14 rally of 1000 building trades workers at the JFK Federal Building who had gathered to protest the use of Suffolk Construction's scab labor on a rehabilitation job at that site.

The building trades union leaders, unfortunately, refused to let the Rev. EllisHagler address the crowd on the issue of the post office site. But the union members were glad nonetheless to hear of Suffolk being picketed in Roxbury. Leaders and rank-and-file members of Local 26 of the Hotel Workers have walked the picketline at the post office site, as have other unionists.

WHERE WE STAND The struggle of Black construction workers in Boston should be supported by all working people. The building trades unions should have welcomed the Rev. EllisHagler to the platform at their rally. They should likewise welcome the Black workers led by the Greater Roxbury Workers Association into their unions. This would strengthen the unions and weaken the anti-union forces that are now in the majority in the construction industry.

At the same time, the building trades unions should demand that all affirmativeaction laws be fully enforced and strengthened. This would help cement an alliance between the Black community and the trade unions that could be a powerful force in the inner cities. It would form a base to begin to reorganize the construction industry.

-the editors clout.

Tony Karon writes in New Era, a publication edited by supporters of the ANC and the SACP, that "the immediate phase of our struggle is not for a national democratic state. It is for the creation of democratic conditions in which the political contest can continue."

Albie Sachs, also writing in New Era, explains, "We have to negotiate because we're just not strong enough to overthrow racist power-they've still got too many guns. ... The painful lesson learned by the Angolans is that a sharp, decisive, and total victory (of which many of us have been dreaming for a long time) might solve some immediate problems, but gives rise to other problems that can be really terrible."

This "new realism" is supported both by the ANC and SACP top leaderships. According to the resident chairman of the SACP, Raymond Mihlaba, some 23 of the 33 members of the ANC's NEC belong to the Communist Party. The SACP, a pro-Moscow party, not only endorses the policy of the ANC, but uses its influence inside the trade unions to advance the ANC's policy of compromise. Popular revolution is no longer seen as viable.

The discussions at the ANC conference reflect the deeper debates within the Black liberation movement. De Klerk's refusal to meet their just demands, the government-encouraged ethnic violence, and the weakening of the government's international isolation are behind the impatience of more militant Blacks in the ANC-as well as in other groups.

Urgently needed in South Africa today is the convening of a Constituent Assembly based on one-person, one-vote to draft a new constitution. Broad-based united-front mass actions including the use of civil disobedience) should be used to win this demand Negotiations with the government, if held, should involve all anti-apartheid forces.

Any other policy will keep the initiative in the hands of the white minority government, and weaken the Black majority's struggle for genuine self-determination. By Kwame M.A. Somburu, et al.

Send (includes postage)

to: 3435 Army St., Suite 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

Make checks payable to Walnut Publishing Co.

Scan page 5

busting. "Keep New York a Labor Town!"

----- pull-quotes -----

key pamphlet on the Black struggle