Debate erupts in Black community over affirmative action programs

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Conservative Black leaders question necessity of quotas to end discriminatiol nservative Black leaders question necessity of auotas to end discriminati Debates for or against affirmative action have often taken place between racists of the Jesse Helms stripe versus NAACP leader Benjamin Hooks.

The North Carolina senator makes clear that all remedies for past and current discrimination are anti-white. Hooks counters that only strong positive action by the government and courts will end Blacks' second-class economic status.

Hooks also adds, "I don't think it [America] has ever been ready to extend full equality. I can't think of anything we've gained as Black people that has not come without a struggle."

But since the victory of the civil rights movement in the 1960s that ended "Jim Crow"-legal segregation, there have been many changes in U.S. society. The most far-reaching changes have affected the oppressed Black nationality.

For the first time since Blacks were brought here on slave ships 300 years ago, a sizable Black middle class has been forged. The political and social weight of the middle class in the Black nationality has led to shifts in debates on how to end discrimination and who is responsible for its continuance.

The debate over affirmative action and quotas to achieve equality is now not just between the Helmses and the Hookses; it also includes Robert Woodson, a Black conservative who heads the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. Woodson says, "The civil rights agenda [of the NAACP and other Black rights groups] has nothing to do with the deterioration of life for low-income Black people."

He and other Black conservatives raise an old idea that equality is the responsibility of Blacks themselves. The laws have been changed, they argue, so let's get down to hard work and do what the Irish, Italians, and Jews did. The fact that the other immigrants never were slaves or suffered legal race segregation is brushed aside.

Civil Rights Act of 1991 The current debate centers around the new Civil Rights Act of 1991. Last year, the Civil Rights Act of 1990 was vetoed by President George Bush on the false claim that it would force employers to use quotas in hiring and promoting Blacks and women.

That bill and the new one explicitly reject the use of quotas (the only effective way to enforce affirmative action). Both bills, if adopted, however, would reverse six recent Supreme Court decisions that make it more difficult for Blacks and women to win employment discrimination suits.

Of course, the real dispute is not over quotas but over whether new steps should be taken by the government to stop the erosion of civil and democratic rights. The bottom line of maintaining race and sex discrimination concerns profits.

In the current fragile world economy, competition between the U.S. corporations and their competitors—particularly in Europe and Japan-drives the employers to lower their labor costs by any means available. Racism and sexism is a powerful weapon in their hands.

Helms and his ilk say past history is not their problem. White male workers can't be held responsible for what their parents did, they argue. They are for a "colorblind" society based on "merit." Any moves to give extra help to Blacks and women is "reverse discrimination." Period.

The Black conservatives, and many liberal Democrats and Republicans, argue in a similar fashion, except that they reject the charge of "reverse discrimination." They are simply for a better way to correct discrimination without the use of quotas.

In addition, they fear being stigmatized" by their white associates, who might charge that they received their positions through affirmative action and not merit. And they don't want their children to suffer the same condition.

It is useful to discuss the concerns of the Black academic and professional layers: does affirmative action and the civil rights agenda hurt the ability of the mass of Blacks to achieve full equality? Is there a "stigma" attached to taking part in an affirmative action program? Is full equality possible in our society?

Let's begin with some basic facts on the current state of Black America.

The median family income just 56 percent of that of whites. The unemployment rate for Blacks last year was 10.5 percent, twice that of whites. The leading cause of death among young Black men is murder.

By the official definition of poverty, 43 percent of Black children are born poor. Two-thirds of Black babies are born to unmarried mothers. The average Black male youth is more likely to go to prison than to college.

At the same time, there is a growing Black middle class that is not much different in social outlook than its white counterpart. Government and other sources use the term "middle class" to include workers who have relatively high-paying jobs that allow them to own a home and live in better-off neighborhoods.

In the last 30 years, this economic Black middle class has grown from a tenth to more than a third of the Black population.

The significance of these figures is not just quantitative. Historically, there has always been a layer of Black professionals and better-paid Black workers who lived in the Harlems and Watts.

The lawyers, doctors, and rail and postal workers had homes in these communities. The leaders of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s for the most part lived in the inner cities. They had no choice because of legal segregation. Not surprisingly, many of these figures became role models for the young.

Today, Black sports professionals, corporate executives, doctors, and better-paid workers live in the suburbs or other neighborhoods that Black ghetto youth rarely step foot in. The youth in the ghettos are a world apart, growing up physically and socially separated from these communities.

Not surprisingly, most Black professionals are generally out of touch with the mass of Blacks. They can't identify with the problems of inferior schools, unemployment, and rotten healthcare.

The average Black working person wants an education, a job, and housing. The concerns of poor Black workers-employed and unemployed—are not identical to those of the Black middle class. The latter identify more with the white professional than the Black worker.

Racist backlash

The racist backlash against affirmative action is based on white males who falsely believe they are losing jobs and opportunities to "unqualified" Blacks.

But as Black educator Roger Wilkins correctly notes: "We have had preference programs in this country, and we still have them, and the preferred are white men. But somehow in the debate all the victims are white men worried that Black people are going to take their jobs. The only place in America where Blacks have taken lobs in a major way from whites is the National Basketball Association."

Unfortunately, many of the new Black middle class more and more accept the discriminatory framework of their white counterparts. They say the road out of the ghetto is individual action. Political activism to fight discrimination is fine. But getting ahead, they say, requires self-discipline, hard work, and determination, which other immigrants have shown.

Of course, these "other immigrants" were not brought here as slaves and did not suffer legal segregation for 100 years. But to the new generation of Black well-to-do, this is all past history.

Black working people, however, do not have that luxury. It is institutional discrimination that keeps Blacks in Milwaukee, Chicago, Oakland, New York, Detroit, and other major cities in the ghettos. It is why Black unemployment is always at least twice that of whites; why housing is worse; why education is less than adequate. It is why the "economic upturn" in the 1980s barely affected poor Blacks, who became even more impoverished:

The fact that the Black middle class is larger than it has ever been (meaning that a layer of Blacks is living quite well-off), only camouflages the fact that over the last 30 years life for the average Black person has become worse.

By definition, the only solution to racial discrimination is a radical solution.

While the end of legal segregation allowed the creation of a new Black middle class and significant gains for Blacks overall, such as affirmative action programs in all fields (important conquests, which began to remedy historic discrimination), it could not end racism or bring full equality.

Racism is an integral part of capitalist America. People within the Black middle class can't escape the color of their skin. (For that reason, the Los Angeles police department is apt to stop them as well as unemployed workers like Rodney King!)

It is the capitalist system that continuously creates and reproduces racism and discrimination.

Discrimination helps create the basis for profits for the employers. Blacks and women are super-exploited because of that discrimination. Blacks and women are on the average paid less for their labor power than white males. That's why racism is very profitable.

The large pool of cheap Black and female labor helps to depress all wages. The employers use racism and sexism to divide the workforce: to encourage white males to blame Blacks, immigrants, foreigners, and women for job loss; lack of promotions, etc.

That is why in the 1960s, at the height of the civil rights movement, militant leaders like Malcolm X said that real equality would not be possible until Blacks rejected the capitalist system.

Malcolm explained that full equality would only be possible when Blacks had both legal and economic equality. He said that Blacks must rely on themselves and not look to leaders who refuse to challenge the underpinnings of racism.

(The only country in the world that has actively done so is Cuba, where racism is illegal and une government poncy is i promult ral addha ran-nauseas nost onliners Blacks in all spheres of Cuban society.)

While many Blacks may be rich and famous and leave the inner-cities, real equality still evades Blacks as a group. A Jesse Jackson can run for president and be taken seriously. Blacks can be mayors of big cities as Democrats or even Republicans.

But for the mass of Blacks life is getting worse: While life expectancy for whites has grown to a record 75.2 years, life expectancy for Blacks fell to 69.2 years!

A new perspective is needed in the Black community. Supporting legislation for affirmative action is fine, but it can't solve the deep social and economic problems. That requires a radical shift in policy.

The civil rights agenda must be broadened and updated, not junked. It means a new leadership that orients to and concerns itself with the problems of the poorest sectors of the Black community.

Moreover, it means a leadership tied to the labor movement, which is the strongest natural ally of working-class Blacks. It means taking up Malcolm X's call to break with the Democratic and Republican parties and forming a new working people's party that fights for the interests of all of labor, especially its most discriminated sections. SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1991

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….. Rail workers face gov't strikebreaking Striking rail workers and families demonstrate in Twin Cities.

(continued from page 1: “Rail workers confront strikebreaking by gov't”)

outdated and marginal, no longer at the center of economic life. Even if some disruption of rail service did occur, the claim went, its economic impact would be minimal.

But the reality is quite different. More than one-third of all goods shipped each month in the United States, 37 percent of all freight transportation, is carried by rail. Trucks, the railroad's next largest competitor, carry only 25 percent of the nation's traffic.

Furthermore, much of the rail freight (coal, chemicals, bulk grain, etc.) cannot be realistically shifted to any other form of transportation.

Rail's decisive economic weight was confirmed by a steady stream of corporation heads appearing on the nightly news, pleading that their operations would be shut down within the week or even within days if the strike were not brought to an end.

In short, the strike demonstrated that railroad workers, organized in rail unions, represent potentially the most single powerful body of organized workers in the nation today.

Pro-company intervention

Unfortunately, this was not the only lesson demonstrated by the strike. Once again, rail workers and their unions were subjected to swift government intervention directly to the benefit of the railroad owners.

The immediate cause of the strike was the entirely pro-company contract recommendations handed down by Presidential Emergency Board 219, which was appointed by Bush in January 1990 under the Railway Labor Act (RLA). The contract recommendations in PEB 219 gave the rail owners virtually everything they wanted:

1) It shifted the financial burden of health, medical, and hospitalization benefits onto the workers in the industry.

2) It drastically changed work rules, which would eliminate 20,000 jobs within months and further erode already dangerous safety conditions in the industry.

3) It would reduce the real wages of rail workers by 20 percent to 30 percent over the course of the contract.

Traditionally in the rail industry, wage increases are retroactive back to when the previous contract expired. This is crucial because the procedures under the RLA result in an extended period without a contract—in the present case, almost three years. Without retroactivity, this entire period constitutes a wage freeze.

But PEB 219 includes no retroactive wage provision and instead substitutes a paltry $2000 "lump sum" payment, which the Board called a "signing bonus." This works out to about three cents per hour for the three years railroad workers were without a contract.

The Board's recommendation amounts to a 10.3 percent total wage increase over nearly 7 years. This amounts to an annual wage increase of 1.4 percent in an economy with an annual inflation rate of at least 5 percent.

The Railway Labor Act Unions in the rail industry negotiate under the strictures of the Railway Labor Act. This special act of Congress was passed in 1926 in response to the growing power of rail labor, as demonstrated in a series of historic strikes through the turn of the century—the victorious 1894 strike on the Great Northern (led by Eugene V. Debs against the powerful rail magnate James J. Hill), the Pullman strike of 1894 (also led by Debs), and the shop crafts strike of 1922.

Rail owners and the ruling class as a whole recognized that they had to adjust to 6 SOCIALIST ACTION 0713 the new relationship of forces and to make concessions to the growing power of rail labor. But they were determined to do it in a way that would be least damaging to themselves and that would strengthen the unions as little as possible.

The capitalist class hoped to begin a process of undercutting and eroding the power of rail labor-encompassed in the unions' ability to strike and shut the railroads down. For that reason, they made the concessions in the form of federal legislation—a series of congressional acts culminating in the Railway Labor Act of 1926.

The RLA codified a series of significant concessions to the unions. It gave the rail unions official government recognition, including government recognition of the union shop and the dues checkoff. It required carriers to negotiate with the unions and to set concrete procedures for doing that. It restricted the carriers' ability to set up company unions, which was a widespread practice throughout the industry. It curbed the ability of the carriers to discriminate against union members.

But at the same time that it codified these concessions, the Act seriously restricted the right of rail unions to strike. At the end of a contract period, unions no longer had the legal right to strike. The old contract remained in force and a long period (often lasting more than a year) of formal notifications, "cooling off" periods, and board hearings ensued.

If the parties could still not come to a negotiated settlement, the final stage of the procedure was the appointment by the president of a Presidential Emergency Board, which had 30 days to come up with contract recommendations. The railroads and unions then had 30 additional days to consider it.

Only after these lengthy procedures had been exhausted, were the unions theoretically free to strike.

New level of government control Nothing in the RLA, however, authorizes the government to impose a contract on railroad workers.

The action by Congress on April 18, ordering railroad workers back to work and setting up a new "Congressional Board" with the explicit power to impose a contract completely over the heads of rail workers and their unions, represents a new level of government control of unions that goes beyond anything in the RLA.

Not only did an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress ram through this dangerously anti-union legislation (there were only five dissenting votes in the House and a unanimous consent resolution in the Senate to preclude any debate or roll call vote), but the specific wording of House Joint Resolution 22 makes it crystal clear that the main intention of the new "Congressional Emergency Board" is to reaffirm the horrendous recommendations of PEB 219.

To begin with, the resolution empowers Bush to name all three members of the new "Congressional Board." It goes on to specify that "one member of the special board shall be an individual who was a member of Presidential Emergency Board No. 219."

In another crucial section, the Joint Resolution states, "Issues on which Presidential Emergency Board No. 219 made no specific recommendation shall not be subject to consideration by the special board."

Virtually all the demands raised by the unions—such as additional vacation, holiday, and personal leave days; longevity pay; shortline protection; entry rates; and modification of the two-tier wage system introduced in the 1985 contract—were arrogantly swept aside and not even addressed by PEB 219.

BMWI REE FEATS The Congressional resolution is consciously crafted to disallow out of hand the consideration of these union demands by the new Board.

But the most revealing section in exposing the real intentions of the new "Congressional Emergency Board" is Section D, Procedure and Determination, which lays out the basis on which the board will carry out its deliberations and make a decision.

This section states, "In making a determination under this subsection, the special board shall accord a presumption of validity to the recommendations of Presidential Emergency Board No. 219. The party requesting a modification of a particular Presidential Emergency Board recommendation shall bear the burden of persuasion with respect to the modification of such request. In order to overcome such presumption of validity, the party requesting a modification must show that the Presidential Emergency Board recommendation is demonstrably inequitable or was based on a material error Nationwide protests Local demonstrations and rallies have been organized all across the country in opposition to the government's intervention against the rail unions.

On March 9, in Guernsey, Wyo., 200 union members and their supporters gathered to show their solidarity in the face of government attacks. Representing 23 unions from a four-state area, they marched and listened to speakers denounce the anti-union recommendations of the Presidential Emergency Board (PEB 219).

In Alliance, Neb., 23 officials representing the various shopcrafts sponsored an "All Unions Rally" to demonstrate the workers' commitment to one another and their unions.

In Minneapolis, 250 unionists gathered to discuss the PEB. Picketing was organized at the Federal Bldg. in St. Paul in April. Similar events took place in La Crosse, Wisc., and in other cities.

Plans are being made to hold a citywide meeting in Boston against the government's attack. Union members and officials from Conrail (as well as from Amtrak-which, although not part of the national dispute, has been without a contract for three years) are participating.

So in spite of the negative impact of the government's interference in the collective bargaining process, people have begun to organize themselves on the local level for the next fight. Socialist Action will be following their efforts in the days ahead.

-ART LE CLAIR or material misunderstanding." [Emphasis added-editor.] "Friends of labor?"

Ever since World War II, the strategy followed by top rail union officials has been based totally on relying on "labor friends" in Congress to barter a good deal under the Railway Labor Act, rather than relying on the union's own strength and its ultimate ability to strike.

How badly they miscalculated is reflected in the statement made by the president of the United Transportation Union, Fred T. Hardin, when (within hours of this treacherous Congressional action) he boasted, 'The railroads are going to be disappointed if they think Congress will panic and force a quick settlement."

Representative Jim Slattery, a Kansas Democrat and "friend of labor," who is a member of the House committee that wrote the joint resolution, justified his actions by explaining, "I consider myself to be a representative of the blue-collar workers of America." But he further explained that he could not ignore the interest of the struck Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, which runs through his state.

After all, Slattery pleaded, "Forty percent of the Santa Fe's business is sensitive to truck competition."

Congressman Al Swift, another Democratic "friend of labor" from Washington state (who headed up the key House transportation subcommittee and along with Ted Kennedy played a decisive role in lining up votes for House Joint Resolution 222), praised the Republican-Democrat solidarity on the issue. "I have not seen an issue as potentially as contentious as this one," he boasted, "resolved with so little partisan politics."

But the fight is not over. Congress could have done what they did two years ago in the Chicago & North Western railroad strike, when they directly imposed the PEB. This year, however, Congress was afraid to do this. Noting the thousands of letters, the numerous demonstrations by rail workers across the country, and the solidarity of the strike, they feared that striking workers might defy them by refusing to return to work.

Instead they decided to retreat a little, set up a new Board, and get the workers calmed down and back to work. They hoped to demobilize and demoralize the workers in preparation for imposing the PEB 219 recommendations with a few cosmetic changes.

Congress and the new Board will now be watching rail workers and their unions to see how angry, organized, and determined they remain. In the next 60 days, rail workers and their unions must launch a campaign to let Congress and the new Board know that they will not accept a clone of PEB 219.

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*Oh, I'm positive all right. I'm positive we got the shaft.' Rail workers realize they need a fighting strategy to defeat carriers' profit drive, gov't intervention When strikers at the Chicago Northwestern Railroad's (CNW) stack yard walked out at 7 a.m. on April 16, one switchman took out of his car the picket sign his wife had made him. The sign got a chuckle from most of the picketers. "Railroad executives are white-collar criminals," it read, and the workers all knew what he was talking about.

The CNW officials, including President Schmeige (annual salary a cool $500,000), had awarded themselves a 100 percent bonus, while we were being denounced for making "too much" money.

In the days leading up to the strike, I travelled around to various worksites. Workers in every craft were pretty clear about their reasons to support the strike and to reject the SAM: Get OuR BACKS PEB that way.

Faced with this proposal, some workers saw it as undermining solidarity. As one union member put it: It won't matter if the commuters run or not—as long as Congress is going to pass the PEB and order us all back to work anyway.

Many railroad workers felt a crying need for a serious strategy to take on the carriers and Congress. In the UTU strike headquarters, on the afternoon of April 16, the strikers (with one ear on the radio) talked about their options:

Wouldn't the railroads fire strikers and replace them if they refused to return to work? That possibility was dismissed. But who would lead such a move? Certainly not the union's national president, Fred Hardin, who has encouraged Congress to set up yet another Presidential Emergency Board.

Railroad workers on the CNW went back to work the next day, holding their breath to see what the consequences of Congress's intervention would be. The details are slow in coming. One engineer, encouraged to think positive, said, "Oh, I'm positive, all right. I'm positive we got the shaft."

What did become clear to a larger number of railroad workers than before was that, as long as our unions do not have a clear strategy to oppose the carriers' drive for profits and the government's intervention against our right to strike, we will continue to lose out.

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PEOPIE PROFISI-

MAY 1991 Rancor Gary