U.S. workers battle nationwide assault on public unions

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400,000 rally in London against government cutbacks In the largest British union-organized event in 20 years, 400,000 swelled into central London on March 26 to protest cutbacks of social services. Local government budgets will be slashed by up to 9 percent, with libraries and youth clubs closing; £7 bn. is being cut from welfare and social security spending. Thousands of public workers will lose jobs. Coalitions backing the protest say that working people should not pay for the government’s wars and tax breaks to the wealthy.

Workers in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and elsewhere are continuing to battle massive neoliberal austerity measures and attacks on their organizing rights. But in the absence of any strikes, and with the almost universal capitulation of the labor leadership on wage and benefit concession demands, the bosses’ offensive seems to be spreading and gaining confidence.

In Ohio, after weeks of pro-labor protest throughout the state, Gov. John Kasich signed a law on April 1 de­ stroying collective bargaining rights for 360,000 public workers. The law removes seniority-based pay raises, mandates a 15 percent co-pay on health-care premiums, outlaws public-sector strikes, allows easier union de­ certification, and nullifies contracts in school districts in towns or school districts that declare a “financial emer­ gency.” Rather than striking to protect their rights and pay, unions are backing a Democrat-let attempt to put the law before a voter referendum.

The assault on public workers goes hand in hand with deep cuts to the unemployed and the poor. Michigan has passed a law to reduce unemployment compensation from 26 weeks to 20 despite an official unemployment rate of over 10 percent, while Florida and Arkansas are considering similar measures.

The Indiana legislature backed off of an open-shop law after weeks of protest and a walkout by Democrats, but advanced bills reducing unemployment payments, rolling back project-labor agreements in construction, massively expanding school vouchers, cutting school funding for poorer urban districts, and banning local minimum wage increases.

In Minnesota, the Senate passed a budget bill that would eliminate 15 percent of the state’s workforce and freeze wages for all other state workers. The bill would require state workers making an average of $38,000 per year to pay over $6000 more toward health insur­ ance premiums. The House approved a bill eliminating teacher tenure and instituting merit pay based on stu­ dent test scores.

Coupled with the attacks is a massive propaganda assault aimed at erasing the gains of organized labor from official recognition. In the most egregious case so far, Maine’s Republican governor, Paul LePage, had a mural depicting the history of the state’s labor move­ ment removed from the capitol. The Maine legislature is also considering a bill that would allow companies to pay $2.25 less per hour than the state’s minimum wage to workers under age 20 and eliminate the maximum number of work hours for teenagers over 15.

Wisconsin remains the state with the most dramatic showdown over anti-union measures. On March 11, Gov. Scott Walker signed the bill that strips collective bargaining rights and reduces public workers’ pay by 8 percent. The law is in limbo as of this writing, as a Dane County (where Madison is located) judge issued a restraining order preventing the bill from going into effect. Walker’s administration initially attempted to ignore the order, claiming the bill had been published on-line and was therefore in effect, but backed off implementing it later in the week. Multiple court challenges to the law are based on its passage having violated the state’s open meetings statutes, because a Senate committee gave less than the required two hours’ notice for a hearing to pass the bill.

The indefinite halt to the Wisconsin law has been thanks to the most massive and sustained fightback of any state. Some 185,000 protesters took to the streets around the state capitol on March 12, the largest protest in the state’s history. That event in­ cluded a worker-farmer solidarity tractorcade. The same day, 3000 protesters came out in tiny Wash­ burn, in far northern Wisconsin, to “greet” Walker at a Republican Party fundraiser.

Although street actions in Madison have since ebbed, there continue to be creative forms of protest regularly. These have included everything from la­ bor ballad singalongs and free speech actions inside the capitol building (now guarded by state troop­ ers with metal detectors at the entrances), to Union Cab taxi parades, to running protests and a “Zombie Walk” against Walker. Around the city, many shops have pro-worker slogans plastered to their win­ dows, and it’s hard to go anywhere without seeing solidarity buttons or shirts worn by pedestrians.

Solidarity protests continue to ripple across the state, albeit of a much more modest nature than previously. In several cities, activists have taken to picketing M&I Bank, whose board of directors all gave the legal limit in contributions to Walker’s election campaign, mak­ ing them his second largest source of funds. During the height of the protests at the state capitol, M&I allowed Walker to use an underground tunnel connecting the building to their bank to avoid contact with protesters.

Unfortunately, the focus of pro-labor action has been parried by union officials and the Democratic Party away from the streets and toward electoral efforts, in­ cluding petitioning to recall Republican state senators and campaigning for Democrat JoAnne Kloppenburg in the April 5 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

A broad call for mobilization on April 4 initiated by the AFL-CIO, dubbed, “We Are One,” will likely draw tens of thousands into actions nationwide, ranging in character from street protests to phone banking for Democrats. This day is appropriately symbolic as the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during Gred DeRuiter / The State Journal / AP (Above) College students rally at Michigan capitol against budget cuts to higher education.

the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike. A one-day gen­ eral strike does not appear to be on the agenda, although such an action—like the “Day Without Immigrants” on May Day, 2006—could have demonstrated the power of a united working class to repel the ruling-class attacks.

While Socialist Action supports the recall of any politi­ cians who have participated in the attack on worker’s rights, electing Democrats is the last thing that will serve workers’ interests. Ironically, the much-vilified Koch brothers, major funders of the Tea Party, also contributed over $12,000 to the Wisconsin Democratic Party and individual Democratic candidates in 2009 and 2010. M&I Bank executives gave almost $4000 to Demo­ crats over the same time period, according to data col­ lected by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democrats are beholden to the same ruling rich as the Republicans, but position themselves as an op­ position party by softening their neoliberal agenda and dressing it in pro-labor rhetoric. Unions should use the momentum generated on April 4 to call together a broad Congress of Labor to found a real Labor Party based in the unions and representing the interests of the work­ ing class rather than corporate campaign donors. n

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(continued from page 1: “Stop NATO strikes on Libya!”) racism against immigrant workers, and to support those in Bahrain, Yemen, and elsewhere who are “vic­ tims of a terrible repression carried out with the direct complicity of those who claim to be coming to your rescue. … International solidarity friends … let us not be afraid of debates between us, including with our Libyan comrades. No to unity on a minimal basis! Let us not be an accessory to the balkanization of Libya and the countries in the area.”

On April 1, Reuters reported a conversation with the Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, Giovanni Innocenzo Mar­ tinelli, who stated that recent NATO raids had killed at least 40 civilians in Tripoli. Yet some insist that the U.S. and NATO are “saving” Libyan lives. We ask: What concern did the U.S. show for the lives of the three chil­ dren and grandfather in Gaza murdered by the Zionist army on March 22 while playing football? Or for the 1400 massacred in Gaza in 2008-9, or the hundreds murdered by Israeli snipers since then?

The millions dead in Iraq and Afghanistan from de­ cades of sanctions, war, and occupation—added on to the tens of millions murdered by U.S. or U.S.-backed wars and repression around the globe over more than a century—should be more than enough proof that the United States and its Western allies care nothing for Libyan lives.

But we will add to this the recent record of “humani­ tarian intervention” in Haiti. Here too, many claimed that without U.S. or UN troops, huge numbers would be massacred by Duvalierist forces. The result of the invasion by U.S. and UN troops was cold-blooded mur­ der by those forces, death from cholera or starvation, blocking of humanitarian relief supplies after the 2010 earthquake—and the kidnapping and exile by the U.S. of the country’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aris­ tide.

The UN resolution authorizing the “no-fly zone” says force may only be used to protect Libyan civilians, but heads of state in the U.S., Britain, and France, and their top diplomats and military chiefs, have all repeatedly said that “Gadhafi must go.” The goal of regime change has been made clear by the character of the U.S./NATO war—the bombing of all possible Libyan targets re­ gardless of their position, direction, or activity.

Socialist Action categorically rejects all forms of im­ perialist intervention in Libya, “no-fly zones” includ­ ed. We lend no credence to the language employed by the UN/NATO and U.S. imperial wordsmiths, who are skilled at justifying the use of deadly force in all its manifestations behind the cover of resolutions that broadcast fake “humanitarian” intentions.

Recent days have seen a repeating pattern as impe­ rialist air strikes force a retreat by Gadhafi’s forces— which then counterattack against under-armed and poorly coordinated rebels and retake the lost ground. This pattern almost guarantees escalation of the war, i.e., the introduction of new types of weaponry, per­ haps ground troops, and increased civilian casualties.

It has also provoked a debate within U.S. govern­ ment circles about whether to arm the rebels—a de­ bate centering on whether Washington can continue to control a well-armed Libyan force. Obama, Clinton, 4 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2011 Patrick Baz / AFP / Getty Images and military chiefs have all said they are open to sup­ plying weapons and training. The media has speculat­ ed, however, that for diplomatic purposes it might be left to France, or even the Egyptian military, to funnel arms into Libya.

Reasons for imperialist intervention Gadhafi was never a genuine anti-imperialist, much less a socialist, but rather one of a long list of bour­ geois populists who kept tight control over the masses while doling out rivulets of revenue from the country’s sale of its resources, served up with meaningless bom­ bast against imperialism.

But despite Gadhafi’s open turn to the West in recent years, he is still a wild card for imperialism, unpredict­ able and difficult to control, along the lines of Manu­ el Noriega and Saddam Hussein. So why not kill two birds with one stone, and launch a war to put in place a more reliable flunky while showing the world once again who calls the shots? And by trying to derail the Arab revolution, Washington’s war in Libya also aids its junior partner, Israel, thrown into a panic by the rolling Arab uprising.

For the U.S. government, “humanitarian” interven­ tion in Libya has the added benefit of deflecting anti­ war sentiment at home. The U.S. triumph in the first Gulf War helped to end the “Vietnam syndrome”—i.e., the abhorrence of people in the United States for the government’s near-genocidal wars. But now that the U.S. is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, Wash­ ington hopes that its fake “humanitarian” escapade in Libya will end the “Iraq syndrome.”

In Time magazine, Massimo Calabresi wrote: “Presi­ dent Barack Obama says he’s intervening to prevent atrocities in Libya. But details of behind-the-scenes debates at the White House show he’s going to war in part to rehabilitate an idea. Administration and human rights organizations admit that reports of potential war crimes [by Gadhafi] remain unconfirmed. Instead, interviews with senior administration officials show that the rehabilitators convinced Obama to go to war … to bolster America’s ability to intervene elsewhere in the future.

“The president and some of his advisers are so eager to rehabilitate the idea of preventive intervention that they’re exaggerating the violence they say they are in­ tervening to prevent in Libya. ‘The effort to shoe-horn this into an imminent genocide model is strained,’ says one senior administration official.”

Of course, the Libya war is likewise a boon for the arms industry—costing $550 million as of March 29, the majority of which has gone to the manufacturers of Tomahawk missiles. A cartoon in the Hartford Cou­ rant depicted teachers watching a cruise missile flying toward Libya and one saying, “There goes 20 years of paychecks.”

Instead of ending the “Iraq syndrome,” what Wash­ ington has likely created is yet another quagmire, in which soldiers on all sides and Libyan civilians will face years of death and suffering. A post-Gadhafi, pro-U.S. regime is guaranteed to repress any movements seeking to take control of the country’s revenues for use of its people.

On March 29 the rebels’ Interim National Council is­ sued its eight-point plan for the country. It included promises to use the nation’s economy “for the benefit of the Libyan people”—a claim put in doubt by the same document’s tribute to a “free private sector.” The British Guardian observed that the statement wording (Left) Libyan rebel soldier passes burning tank that was bombed by NATO near Ajdabiya, March 23.

indicated crafting by imperialist advisors. And it was issued as Western officials such as Hilary Clinton and UK Prime Minister David Cameron were meeting with Council leaders, as well as conferring amongst them­ selves to plot the next stages of the war. Solidarity among the Arab people One way or another, it is the masses of Libya who alone can decide their own fate. Those who claim that they can’t do so without imperialist aid ignore the ability of the masses in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere to face down vicious militaries of their own. They ignore too such examples of decades-long resistance to murderous repression by internal and external foes as the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people.

The flip side of this is that they ignore the unfortu­ nate truth that even bloodier confrontations are com­ ing in Egypt and the other Arab countries, as none of those revolutions are yet complete—and in those con­ frontations the West will seek to use its role in Libya to disarm both ideologically and materially those who say the working masses can run their own countries. So regional solidarity is crucial for the fate of each country’s revolutionary process, and of all of them taken as a whole.

There are, however, some heartening examples of the kind of solidarity that can begin to turn back the tide in favor of the region’s masses. Grassroots groups in Tunisia and Egypt, on their own initiative, set up col­ lection points for food and medical supplies for the Libyan people, and arranged their own transport of these supplies into Libya.

Many Egyptians who were working in Libya when the conflict broke out stayed to fight with the rebels. Al Ah­ ram quoted an Egyptian grandmother who, along with her family, is aiding the rebels in various capacities: “I feel so proud to be Egyptian and Arab. Now that the Arab people are defending their lives and freedoms, no one will be able to stand in their way.”

The paper cited an Egyptian supermarket owner in Benghazi who donates goods every day to the rebels; he regrets that he didn’t join the Egyptian revolution and is proud to be part of the Libyan uprising. Said one Libyan: “I didn’t use to like Egyptians; I used to think they only cared about their own interests, but after the revolution, I saw many of them volunteering with us and supporting us in an unprecedented way. I fell in love with Egyptians.”

A medical volunteer spoke of “very poor Egyptian la­ borers, wearing light clothes in the cold, and coming to donate blood, or even notes of 10 and 15 dinars. I was so touched by their generosity and solidarity,” said the volunteer, “who thinks the revolutions will bring Arab and African peoples together in their struggles against totalitarian regimes.”

The walls of Benghazi also speak to growing inter­ national solidarity, with graffiti such as “Thank you Tunisia, thank you Egypt,” “Greetings from the Libyan February 17 to the Egyptian January 25 revolution,” and “Benghazi is freed by Libyan and Arab revolution­ aries.”

Rank-and-file Libyans have shown great bravery in confronting the snipers, tanks, and artillery that Gadhafi has thrown against them. But the proceeds of their struggle are being usurped by pro-capitalist figures, such as those in the Interim National Council, who have placed themselves at the forefront of the rebel leadership and are now playing into the hands of imperialist officials.

For their part, the imperialist butchers of the world, now led by the United States, seek to re-establish and expand their domination of their former colonies in African and the Middle East. If the U.S. and NATO are able to gain a foothold in Libya, the type of chaos, mis­ ery, terrorist incidents, and repression typical of postinvasion Iraq and Afghanistan is virtually guaranteed.

Only the reassertion of the Libyan masses them­ selves as leaders of the uprising, aided by workers from around the region, and the removal from the up­ rising’s leadership of the traitorous collaborators with imperialism, can avoid such outcomes.

Democratic popular councils should be established in the areas held by the rebels, and empowered to take measures that deepen the Libyan revolution and fully address the democratic and economic demands of the masses. Such measures, and the knowledge that the councils will fight for them against both Gadhafi and the quislings, are needed to give the masses inspira­ tion and confidence in completing the uprising they began.

And such measures can also effectively appeal to the interests of those among the oppressed masses—in­ cluding immigrant workers—who are mistakenly sid­ ing with the Gadhafi regime.

Ultimately, to ensure victory for working people and the oppressed in Libya, it will be necessary to con­ struct a revolutionary party, which can lead the strug­ gle forward to socialism. n

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Hatem Moussa / AP

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SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2011 3 ... LIBYA