Why we need OCAW's secretary treasurer Ton the time is now for labor to form 1

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libelle ve-tihan-tlust-mizall, we-hene-to=ое-oun-luntemest saso tne prubli-czun nespona to the tosmess we firme themm. And tacy-hane-grot tode dümnety fucamad isaues of foll-emyl or meant, full-inneme, the-questom-of madoma Cezul immunsancetne-wdnde Witamy-offoms that adaranve-uronking zocchi, secretary treasurer of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union (OCAW) to an open meeting of the San Francisco Labor Council on July 22, 1991.

Thank you. That was a very kind introduction, and thank you again to the officers of the Central Labor [Council] for inviting me again to agitate for the concept of organizing a labor party in the United States.

I'd like to discuss with you the concept. Some of you in the audience—who I recognize, of course—have been involved in these discussions. But many of you are hearing for the first time this plea to help organize a group that we call Labor Party Advocates.

I, for many years, have felt that we need a labor party-along with many others in the country in the labor movement. However, I think many of us thought that, although philosophically we were for a labor party, conditions were not right, that most working people-trade unionistsfelt that they could advance their position by working within the Democratic Party. And I myself worked many years within the Democratic Party as legislative director of my union for 12 years.

I, of course, was working in concert with my fellow AFL-CIO legislative directors to advance working people's interests in the capital. I became frustrated at that task when I realized that lobbying, trying to convince an elected official that they should act appropriately on behalf of the people who we represent, was sort of a futile task.

Mostly you get lip-service from legislators-especially around election time. We've raised considerable amounts of money in the labor movement to help elect legislators, and on issues of crucial concern we're always left wanting.

I think the final straw for me personally was when we in the labor movement worked hard to elect Jimmy Carter. And at that time, we had a slogan, "Let's elect the veto-proof Congress. ...

And we, both building trades and the industrial unions, advanced two issues at the time: situs picketing and labor reform to make it easy to conduct NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] elections.

You all know the formidable obstacles in organizing workers. And it turned out we could not really get that legislation advanced even to the point where it could be vetoed if our president decided to violate his own election promises. We could not even get it out of the so-called "veto-proof Congress."

"Fighting defensive battles"

And the story, when you examine the post-war period (especially the last 20 years), is that labor has had great difficulty advancing an issue and even greater difficulty trying to defend what we have. You know, probably better than I do, what's happened to us. Our wages are lower than ever before. In real terms, we're back to the level of 1970.

It's more difficult to organize workers than at any time in the post-war period. We're losing membership by the hundreds of thousands per year. There's a hemorrhage of jobs to low-wage areas of the world. Our industrial base is diminishing. As a result, the ability to generate highpaying jobs in other areas such as the people who build things is greatly diminished also.

I think that [in] the recent scandal of the so-called "free-trade" bill with Mexico, all the friends that we supposedly had who were going to support us in that effort deserted us. Many of the key ones—we put a considerable amount of money behind their campaigns. I would mention Dick Gephardt, who received about $275,000 from the AFL-CIO alone, from the collective unions in the AFL-CIO. On an issue of such paramount concern to us, we've seen our so-called friends run.

Now, I need not describe the condition of our nation at the present moment, the condition of the labor movement. When I came into this labor movement, we practically represented 40 percent of the workforce, and the most significant parts of the workforce. And /today, depending on who's counting, we represent between 11 and 14 or 15 percent.

I submit, it's probably on the lower end of that scale. Either way, it is a rather low percentage of the workforce, and no trade union movement that [only] represents 10 to 15 percent of the workforce can really advance the interests of working people.

All we're doing today are fighting defensive battles. The issues are being framed by corporations. We're always arguing about an issue that is framed by the corporations. It's their agenda that's being advanced. They're the ones that are putting up enormous amounts of money in election campaigns for members of both parties.

If you look at the campaign contributions that float into both parties, you'll see that they really come from essentially the same sources, big industry, big construction firms, investment interests.

And it is very difficult for us to carry on a political dialogue in a situation where corporations control every avenue of expression. The media is totally controlled by big business. And working people realRobert Fox/Impact Visuals ly have very little power to change things through the existing political parties.

Now I don't believe we can change that over night. I believe that first of all, we have to advance our interests so the public can respond to the issues as we frame them. And they have got to be directly framed issues of full employment, full income, the question of national health insurance. The whole litany of issues that advance working people's interests have to be up there in advance of any other issues.

We have to be hammering away at that. We have to organize ourselves into a large movement. We can't do it within an anti-union climate where both parties are afraid to even move issues that will allow us a level playing field to allow us to organize workers.

"Move along in steps."

A labor party that I would propose would move along in steps. One, we'd have to organize ourselves in substantial numbers—not run anybody for election-but essentially organize a large group of people who then would develop a constitution and then a series of issues; also newspapers and other means public expression where we could begin to hammer out a cadence around the nation from our particular viewpoint that would effect the agenda of both political parties.

Right now, both political being tugged by the corporations and labor's voice is miniscule. A political party that would pose a threat to the existing Republican and Democratic parties, just the mere threat of it's existence would do more to capture the attention of the existing political parties.

We can't do it by constantly throwing money at them. You get their attention for about five minutes when you bring in the big check, and right after that they forget who you are and proceed to forget until they come up for election a few years hence.

That situation assumes that we're fools. I've been in the labor movement 45 years. And I've just decided that we are fools because any system [in which] you're constantly raising money for politicians and approaching them with a naiveté that we wouldn't approach our boss at the bargaining table with, and just assuming that if we give them money, that we can somehow influence them to vote our way.

Well, I've dealt with the Oil Workers for most of my life, knowing that the sum total of money that we could collect in this movement and give to a legislator, the oil industry could pack in a black bag and persuade legislators directly or indirectly to advance their interests.

And multi-national corporations have demonstrated that to us. They've diminished our wages. They've scabbed our jobs abroad. They've created the worst working conditions that I've seen in the entire postwar period.

They've put us up against the wall. We've been fighting defensive struggles. It's rare that we win a struggle. There are some victories-they're so few and far between that all of us are very proud of them. And we wave the flag of. those few victories because we have to rally around some flag.

"Organize in a serious way"

I would submit that the way to turn this around is to demonstrate that we're tired of it, that we understand the way the system works, and that we're going to organize in a very serious way.

Not just rhetorical, not just waving the flag and saying we're going to do this, that, and the other tomorrow. But organizing like we would organize a major corporation, long-view, organize in small committees to organize larger committees until at the appropriate time we're able to call for an election.

In the case of organizing [a union at] a large company, you call for an NLRB election. In case of a political party, I would submit that what we are establishing in Labor Party Advocates is a political party.

It is organizing members. We need 100,000 members before we're even able to make a major political pronouncement. Atter we consult with the people who've joined [together] in a convention, we'll formulate what our program should be.

One hundred thousand members—we would be at the beginning of a movement that I think can shake the major political parties to at least begin to understand that there are alteratives. Working people want alternatives.

The alternative they're choosing today is "none of the above." Sixty-five percent of the people don't vote, and it's not because they're stupid or apathetic. They don't vote because they don'i see what voting will get them. They really feel that there's very little choice.

I substantially agree. There's choice by nuance. Some elected officials express themselves a bit differently on the issues. There are a handful of people that are true friends of working people. They're in Congress. They're in the state houses.

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