May-June 2011 Number 66
Publication of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA
SOME ALARMING AND PROMISING NEWS ON MAY DAY 2011
I. The Arab Masses Brighten May Day For Us All!
II. The Tax Man Cometh for you and me, but Not for GE! Let’s Make the Rich Pay!
III. Wisconsin Battleground Update: The Struggle Continues...
IV. The National Union of Healthcare Workers Union- Still Waging the Struggle for Democratic & Militant Trade Unionism in the USA
V. Oppose U.S. Imperialist Attacks – in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and the USA!
VI. Destroy Capitalism Before It Destroys the Earth! Shut Down All Nuclear Power
I. The Arab Masses Brighten May Day For Us All!
“May Day, the holiday of the international working class, brings into sharp focus two cornerstones for the successful struggle for workers’ power, for socialism leading to communism:
(1) Our struggle is not primarily national but international in character. (2) The working class makes history.”
(“May Day 2008: The International Workers Holiday Finally Coming Back to the Land of Its Birth,” Ray O’ Light Newsletter #49, August-September 2008)
May Day 2011 arrives with promising times for the world revolution. The Arab masses, inspired by the popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, continue their street protests in ever greater numbers from Yemen to Jordan, from Syria to Bahrain, demanding an end to corrupt and repressive regimes and demanding economic relief through decent and stable employment. This May Day, proletarian revolutionaries and freedom loving people the world over salute the militant working class of Tunisia and Egypt who were the decisive force in the popular uprisings that were successful in toppling the dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak.
Furthermore, the fact that many popular and proletarian forces in these two countries are now demanding a more thorough-going revolution than merely the successful removal of the corrupt heads of state and their closest cronies is a direct repudiation of the political maneuvering of the Obama Administration and U.S. imperialism by means of which they are trying to maintain U.S. domination of the Middle East. Tunisian and Egyptian proletarian-led struggle is influencing the masses throughout the Middle East to do the same; it is a very encouraging sign of the great potential for the more full development of national democratic revolutionary struggles in all these countries and for the forward march to socialism. “The working class makes history.”
Precisely for this reason, the Tunisian and Egyptian masses have met with violent resistance on the part of the so-called “reform” regimes still solidly in the hands of the military and comprador bourgeoisie under the aegis of U.S. imperialism. This is all the more true for the street protesters – the workers, the peasants, the students and the unemployed youth – in the other Arab countries where the monarchical and secular military dictatorships have not yet yielded any political power at all.
As the Arab revolution continues to unfold, U.S. imperialism is leading the charge, economically, politically and militarily to contain and push back revolutionary progress in order to maintain its hegemonic control of the oil rich Middle East. The U.S. imperialist-led brutal military assault on Libya behind a “humanitarian” disguise and with the connivance of the U.N. and NATO and the invaluable blessings of the Arab League is aimed at establishing an additional and more reliable imperialist military foothold, along with Iraq, with which to protect “its” oil and strategic economic interests as the Arab people rise up in revolt.*
*NOTE: [See flyer distributed at the April 9th and 10th anti-war demonstrations and published in this Newsletter on page 16: “Oppose U.S. Imperialist Attacks – in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and the USA.”]
The fact that this imperialist intervention has nothing to do with a principled defense of Arab democratic protesters in general or special concern for the Libyan “protesters” is clear from the following: The U.S. backed Saudi-United Arab Emirates (UAE)-Qatari military intervention against the Bahraini protesters in Bahrain, the home of the U.S. 5th fleet and banking center of the oil rich region, is designed with the same aim as the joint U.S.-French-British imperialist intervention “in defense of” “the Libyan protesters,” i.e. on the side of the heavily armed rebel army waging a civil war against the Gadhafi regime in Libya. In Libya, U.S. imperialism is “with” the imperialist-armed protesters; in Bahrain, U.S. imperialism is with the monarchy against the unarmed protesters.*
*NOTE: [The role of the Arab monarchy of Qatar in Libya is very instructive in this regard. Qatar is the home base for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forward headquarters directing the U.S. imperialist wars against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. Qatar is also the home of Al Jazeera, which from the very first street protests in Libya had broadcast (with stirring background music) CIA-packaged interviews with “protesters” in Libya (and Egypt!) speaking in excellent English and begging for U.S. and western imperialist intervention in Libya. This is in marked contrast to the street protesters of all the other Arab countries who are struggling against the reactionary regimes in their countries. For example, the current Egyptian leadership has now admitted that 846 unarmed protesters were killed during the 18 days of protests that led to Mubarak’s ouster. With justifiable pride in dealing with “their own” despots, the Egyptian protesters and others have not been seeking imperialist support for their protests at all. Nevertheless, on the basis of the propaganda war waged by Al Jazeera and the western news media against Libya, British, French and U.S. imperialist aerial bombardment was launched against Libya. Qatar became the first Arab government to participate in the unprovoked attack on Libya. In record time, Qatar, along with French imperialism, was the first government to give official recognition to the Libyan “rebel government” based in Benghazi. Lo and behold, in almost the same record time, the French and Qatari governments, while bankrolling the new “rebel” government have signed major oil contracts with the new rebel government as well.]
Imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism, is the main enemy of the Arab people and the international working class. What is extremely disturbing and could become a fatal flaw in these most encouraging and inspiring popular rebellions throughout the Middle East is the apparent lack of focus on targeting U.S. imperialism, the main sponsor of the brutal reactionary Arab regimes. Without tackling U.S. imperialism in particular, the current ruling class, perhaps with some new faces, a few transitory concessions and modified forms of government rule, will continue to enslave the Arab people. And the people will remain under the heel of imperialist exploitation and its insatiable drive for maximum profit at their expense. The apparent silence of most street protests on U.S. imperialist responsibility for their own reactionary Arab regimes (from Egypt, to Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, etc.) as well as the U.S. intervention in Libya under the Obama baton, is remarkable, especially in light of the continued U.S. military occupation of Iraq. In addition the increased use of Arab soldiers against the rising Arab masses, from Qataris in Libya to Saudis, UAE and Qatari troops in Bahrain, all with the blessings of the Arab League, is also of great concern.*
*NOTE: [Likewise, the open French imperialist intervention in Ivory Coast which has met with little or no international protest seems to be another sign that direct colonial wars against oppressed peoples, involving colonial troops as well, are once again being accepted by virtually all the world’s states.]
Clearly, the bankruptcy of the Chinese revisionist “theory of the three worlds” promulgated in the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution forty years ago has been utterly exposed in the Middle East uprisings of 2011. In the imperialist-led intervention in Libya in particular, not one member of the United Nations Security Council, from Workers Party-led Brazil to the “independent” Russian state to the so-called “Communist party-led Chinese government,” the latter two with veto power, voted against the naked imperialist aggression against Libya. Likewise, the Arab League was exposed as the U.S. imperialist/Saudi Arabian stooge organization that it is, giving its “blessing” to the unprovoked attack on Libya.
While the Soviet revisionists of that time openly repudiated the revolutionary essence of Leninism, pursued a pacifist path and encouraged neutral “nonalignment” of the oppressed nations in its bourgeois nationalist pursuit of rapprochement and collaboration with U.S. imperialism, the Chinese revisionists forty years back had to use a militant façade to cover up the bourgeois nationalist analysis at the heart of the pseudo Marxist, pseudo revolutionary “three worlds theory.”* According to this theory, countries or nation states were alleged to be the main actors in the achievement of world progress. Raw bourgeois nationalism replaced the revolutionary working class analysis of the contradictions facing international imperialism. Formerly, Leninism had taught that these imperialist contradictions would lead the world from the capitalist to the socialist stage of development, with the struggle between labor vs. capital as its linchpin, and the liberation movements of the oppressed nations and peoples against the imperialist oppressor countries, and the inter-imperialist rivalries as the other fundamental contradictions in this proletarian revolutionary context.
*NOTE: [In 1925 Comrade Stalin explained the basis for this bourgeois nationalist phenomenon as follows, “... the danger of nationalism must be regarded as springing from the growth of bourgeois influence on the Party in the sphere of foreign policy, in the sphere of the struggle that the capitalist states are waging against the state of the proletarian dictatorship. There can scarcely be any doubt that the pressure of the capitalist states on our state is enormous, that the people who are handling our foreign policy do not always succeed in resisting this pressure, that the danger of complications often gives rise to the temptation to take the path of least resistance, the path of nationalism. ... the path of least resistance and of nationalism in foreign policy is the path of the isolation and decay of the first country to be victorious.” (Stalin, Selected Works, Vol. 7, pages 170-171)]
With the international communist movement dominated by the Russian revisionists in state power on the one side and the Chinese revisionists in state power on the other, the Arab communist proletarians and other revolutionary patriots were sold out, ostracized and marginalized, set up, and imprisoned and killed. Today, after forty years in the global revisionist desert, so clearly evident in the Sahara region, the great mass initiatives of the Arab people and especially the Arab working class in the first four months of 2011, have led us to this great new revolutionary opportunity as we celebrate May Day 2011.
It is up to the Arab working class, organized on a Marxist-Leninist Party basis and linked with its international working class brothers and sisters around the world, to educate and unite the politically aroused people of Arabia to overthrow the secular military dictatorships and brutal monarchies that remain in power in virtually every Arab country and to drive out U.S.-led imperialism in the process. This is the essence of the national democratic revolutionary stage of the struggle that will pave the way for the Arab working class to then lead the struggle for a socialist Arabia
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Of course there are many other arenas of working class struggle in the world today. In the USA, the workers uprising in Wisconsin, centered around the basic union rights of public sector workers, was undoubtedly inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian masses coupled with the bold and blatant right-wing corporate assault on U.S. workers and their unions. This new found militant strength which hitherto arrogant U.S. workers, previously dismissive of the rest of the international working class, has drawn from our Arab brothers and sisters is indicative of the stake of the entire international proletariat in the outcome of the current struggle in the Middle East between the rising Arab working class and toiling masses, on the one hand, and imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism on the other. “Our struggle is not primarily national but international in character.”
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The Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA extends militant May Day greetings to revolutionary comrades and fraternal organizations, working class fighters against monopoly capitalism, anti-imperialist protesters rising up throughout the Middle East, resistance fighters against U.S.-led imperialist wars of invasion and occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Libya, Honduras, Colombia and the Philippines, stalwarts in the struggle for freedom, national liberation and socialism – all those in every corner of the globe rising up to “build a new world from the ashes of the old.” We greet all those helping to bring about the Communist future when “the international working class shall be the human race.”
Comradely,
Ray Light
General Secretary,
Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA
II. The Tax Man Cometh for you and me, but Not for GE!
Let’s Make the Rich Pay!
They caused the economic crisis through speculation and greed. Almost 10 million jobs lost. Millions of homes foreclosed. Retirement plans plundered. Austerity measures implemented at the Federal, State and Local levels gutting social programs from education to environmental protection. Now Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are squarely in the sites of the privatizers and “deficit-cutters” of the Republicrats, i.e. both the major political parties of U.S. monopoly capitalism and imperialism. Behind the smoke screen of the economic crisis and the need for “shared sacrifice,” workers and their unions are under accelerated attacks (particularly in the public sector) as politicians, and their rich benefactors like the billionaire Koch brothers, are pitting “taxpayers” against “workers,” whether teachers, firefighters, healthcare, transit or sanitation workers.
When film director and producer Charles Ferguson won the Academy Award for the best documentary, “The Inside Job,” he had enough gumption to state to the TV audience of millions, “... I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that’s wrong.” In fact, just the opposite is the case. Wall Street investment firms and banks have received massive government bailouts at taxpayer expense along with enrichment at the public trough through trillions of federal government no interest loans. Corporate America has gained and maintained extensive tax loopholes and tax breaks for the rich. During the “jobless recovery” while workers’ wages remain stagnant, productivity has increased, corporate profits set all-time records and CEO salaries and Wall Street bonuses have skyrocketed. The 25 largest Wall Street firms paid a record $135 billion in executive compensation in 2010. And just one hedge fund speculator, John Paulson, gained $5 billion in profit last year alone! The gap between the rich and poor in the USA is expanding. Astoundingly, the top 1% of households has about 43% of the financial wealth (net worth not including one’s home) while the bottom 80% has a mere 7%! (2007 figures)
Why aren’t the rich paying for their crisis?!? Recent exposure of the largest U.S. corporation – General Electric – helps provide the answer.
While the working class and working poor struggle day in and day out in this “jobless recovery,” GE had a very good year in 2010 with world-wide profits of $14.2 billion dollars. $5.1 billion of that total profit came directly from U.S. operations. After all the complaining from big business and their politicians that the U.S. corporate tax rate is just too darn high (35%), one would expect GE to have paid about $5 billion dollars into the U.S. treasury, money that could have been used for education, medical care, workplace safety and a cleaner environment.
GE’s tax bill for 2010? – ZERO! In fact, GE received a tax credit of $3.2 billion which makes it highly unlikely that they will pay any taxes in the foreseeable future. So, how do they do it when the workers and other regular folk pay taxes with every paycheck?
According to a New York Times article, GE’s tax department of 975 employees is headed up by a former U.S. Treasury official. “The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax writing committees in Congress. ... Over the last decade, GE has spent tens of millions of dollars to push for changes in tax law, from more generous depreciation schedules on jet engines to ‘green energy’ credits for its wind turbines. But the most lucrative of these measures allows GE to operate a vast leasing and lending business abroad with profits that face little foreign taxes and no American taxes as long as the money remains overseas.” (GE Turns the Tax Man Away Empty-Handed, New York Times, March 25, 2011)
This is not a phenomenon unique to GE nor is it a new development. The same Times article points out, “Such strategies ... have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts – from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950’s to 6.6 percent in 2009.” After conspiring with the Congressional Republicans to extend huge tax breaks for the wealthy last December, Democratic President Obama has now declared his “plan” to lower the corporate tax rate and close some “loopholes.” Obama has established the “President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness” which is expected to address the question of “reforming” corporate taxes.
Obama has recently appointed Jeffrey Immelt as Chairman of this Council and as the President’s liaison to the business community. Just who is Jeffrey Immelt? None other than the $15 million dollar a year CEO of the gigantic tax evader General Electric! Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.
“Make the Rich Pay” is on the order of the day!
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III. Wisconsin Battleground Update: The Struggle Continues ...
In the face of massive, month long, just and angry worker protests, newly elected Wisconsin Governor Walker succeeded in passing a “budget plan,” with the main goal of destroying unions, a basic and vital self-defense organization of the working class.
The draconian Wisconsin legislation includes: a) an end to collective bargaining rights for public employees except over wages. Any agreed to wage increase is limited to the rate of inflation (firefighters and police are exempted); b) large increases in the employees’ contribution to health insurance and pensions. Workers will now have to contribute almost 6% of wages for pension benefits, equating to huge pay-cuts; c) the outlawing of union shops (where all workers in a specific bargaining unit must belong to the union); d) the all but total elimination of the right to strike; e) mandated annual union re-certification elections; f) outlawing voluntary union dues from payroll deduction; g) annulment of thousands of existing collective bargaining agreements containing negotiated provisions on job security, safety, seniority, wages, benefits and grievance procedures. University of Wisconsin labor historian William Powell observed, “This bill is designed to make it almost impossible to operate a union.”
Tucked away in the legislation is a provision that will privatize the 32 state power plants. This major shift is a boon to Walker’s corporate backers. These corporations received tax cuts of $117 million when Walker recently took office. Two-thirds of them paid no state taxes last year! At the same time, the governor demanded of public workers that they give huge concessions because the state is broke! Now the people of Wisconsin will end up paying higher costs for profitized energy.
At this moment the enforcement of this legislation in Wisconsin has temporarily been put on hold with a Judge’s ruling that the “public notice” rules were violated.
In the meantime, Ohio has enacted a similar bill stripping 360,000 public sector workers of their right to collective bargaining, aimed at completely decimating the public sector unions in what was once a union bastion. Other states governments, from Michigan to South Carolina, are aggressively working on enacting legislation aimed at eviscerating union and worker rights.
While the Wisconsin battle burned hot, we provided the following context to these accelerating attacks on the working class:
“The deep economic crisis has given new fuel to the bosses and their government to go for the jugular. The ‘Republicrats’ are united in their trillion dollar bail-outs of the Wall Street criminals and billions in tax breaks for the wealthiest. The stock market and corporate profits are soaring. Wall Street compensation is near record levels. The bipartisan imperialist wars of occupation for control of oil and energy resources escalate. The smoke-screen of ‘balancing budgets,’ ‘shared sacrifice’ and ‘deficit reduction’ are efforts to solve the crisis on the backs of the workers after a massive transfer of wealth to the banks, investment firms, etc.
“The U.S. Labor Movement has been in alarming decline due to labor bureaucrats’ reliance on the anti-union (but ‘lesser of two evils’) Democratic Party and refusal to ‘organize the unorganized.’ (In the 1950’s the U.S. unionization rate was about 35%. The current rate stands at 11.9%. The private sector rate is 6.9%; the public sector rate is 36%. Thus public sector workers are Corporate America’s prime target.) …
“The ‘Union Busters’ new divide and conquer ‘big lie’ is to blame state budget shortfalls on unionized government workers: the idea is that public sector workers (our teachers, sanitation and public health workers, etc.) are ‘fat-cats’ at public taxpayer’s expense. A study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that at every comparable level of education/experience, public sector workers in Wisconsin are compensated less than private sector workers. ...
“The political struggle in Wisconsin is not about balancing the budget. The governor has already gained Republican, Democratic (note well) and unfortunately even some union leadership support for his dictated deep cuts to workers’ benefits. No – this is a monopoly capitalist power struggle to break the unions and spread the assault state by state, including in former union bastions of Ohio and Michigan.”
(“It’s Time for Solidarity Day III – Wisconsin Workers Standing Up Strong To Save the Unions!,” Statement of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA, February 26, 2011)
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There are a number of valuable lessons that the working class can draw from the rich experience of the battle in Wisconsin thus far:
1) The workers of Wisconsin were ready to fight back. Their response has breathed new life into a moribund labor movement. The state house was taken over for more than three weeks, daily demonstrations reached over 100,000 participants at their peak, made up mostly of Wisconsin workers. Large numbers of workers were calling in sick and joining the protests and the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council based in the Madison, Wisconsin area seriously raised the question of a general strike. The spirit of the just and popular uprisings of the people of Tunisia and Egypt had spread to Wisconsin!
2) Most leadership of the state and national unions as well as the AFL-CIO and Change to Win (CTW) coalition once again have miserably failed the working class. “Fine” speeches were made by the heads of these unions in Wisconsin. Yet no mobilization to put a million workers into the streets of Wisconsin, for a “Solidarity Day III,” took place. The reports from the ground indicated that the protesting workers likely had the unity, energy and determination to go on strike if there had been bold leadership charting the way forward. Instead the union bureaucrats encouraged teachers and others, who were taking over the capital instead of going to work, to return to work. The National unions then diverted and diluted the struggle into April 4th demonstrations all over the country, when a timely and powerful demonstration could have stopped this regressive Wisconsin legislation in its tracks, and thus have kept the contagion from spreading to Ohio, Michigan, etc.
3) These April 4th demonstrations around the U.S. were called on the anniversary of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King and on the basis of invoking the most backward social pacifist slogans possible — “Defend the Dream” and “We are One.” These slogans represent treacherous social democratic leadership of the first magnitude! Wisconsin actually shows us that we better stop dreaming and start fighting. And we are clearly not “one” as the war against the working class is barreling full steam ahead. It is “Them” vs. “Us,” the capitalists and their government representatives from both political parties vs. the workers. April 4th was largely projected around electing Democrats (for example, in Boston the target of the rally was the Republican Party headquarters in a state that has been under firm Democratic party control for decades.)
4) Even so, there were some very positive developments. The International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) in Oakland and San Francisco, California held a one day strike that shut down the huge port for 24 hours in solidarity with the Wisconsin workers. In Oakland, California teacher protests also shut down a Wells Fargo bank for a few hours, demanding the bail out of schools, not banks, and bringing to life the demand to “Make the Rich Pay.” The employers’ Pacific Maritime Association has now filed suit against the ILWU for the one day strike action in an effort to stifle such union solidarity and weaken one of the few unions left in the U.S. with both militancy and internationalism. It is now incumbent on the genuine left forces and honest working class fighters in the trade union movement, and especially among the Wisconsin workers, to rally support for the ILWU.
5) The tremendous unity and activity of the Wisconsin working class has now been largely diverted into the framework of the legal system and electoral politics. A recent Associated Press headline correctly observed, “Fervor of Wisconsin debate shifts to recall elections.” Focus on recall election tactics has taken the initiative away from the workers, dissipated the workers’ unity in action in the street, and directed it into a “safe” electoral process with its facade of democracy. Along with recall election efforts, court challenges have been filed. The dead end of reliance on court challenges in a legal system dominated by corporate judges should be obvious. The first court ruling “in favor” of the workers does not strike down the law itself, but simply states that the governor and legislature violated the “public notice” rule and therefore they would have to do it all over again, this time properly. Furthermore, a possible referendum ballot initiative is being considered to overturn the legislation. While creative use of the electoral process, such as referenda, can be a positive arena for struggle, it will never be a winning tactic when it is used to substitute for and divert the direct action of the workers.
6) The misdirected focus on recall efforts is related to the grand illusion that through the election of representatives of the Democratic Party, the workers and their unions will succeed in defending their unions and solving their problems. Certainly the first two years of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party controlled House and Senate (2008-2010) yielded virtually no advances for the labor movement, such as the promised passing of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). It was “dead on arrival.” In fact this two year period has resulted in setbacks for workers such as the government ultimatums for massive concessions in the auto industry. The measures passed in the Wisconsin anti-union and anti-people bill will not be overturned in the corporate courts or by changing the landscape of the legislature through replacing a few Republicans with a few Democrats or vice-versa.
7) Scratch the surface and the Democratic Party is no friend of labor, despite “conventional wisdom” and the protestations of the compromised chieftains of organized labor. In the case of Wisconsin, the “proof” they offer is that the 14 Democratic State Senators (hailed as heroes by many labor bureaucrats) left Wisconsin to prevent a quorum and thus avoid the temporary passage of this regressive and reactionary law. Yet these same senators had readily agreed to the recent dramatic concessions in health care and pension benefits for Wisconsin public sector workers. Furthermore, as Democratic State Senator Bob Jauch stated, “Our purpose was not to permanently block the vote but to give a voice to the citizens of Wisconsin.” (Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2011) As Mike Tate, leader of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, proclaimed, “From a policy perspective, this is terrible, but from a political perspective, he [Walker] could not have handed us a bigger gift.” (“In Wisconsin Battle on Unions, State Democrats See a Big Gift,” New York Times, March 11, 2011) Let’s be clear: These same Democratic Party senators rely on the labor movement for their frontline troops at election time, so destroying the unions entirely is not in their political self-interest.
As part and parcel of the massive bailout of the Wall Street criminals, tax breaks for the rich, corporate tax loopholes and the funding of unjust and endless wars and the enriching of the military industrial complex, the Democratic Party leaves the working class caught in the “lesser of two evils” vise. Disillusioned and discouraged, significant portions of union members and their families abandoned the Democratic Party and sat out the recent mid-term elections. And it was President Obama and the Democratic Party that in the 2010 election abandoned Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, probably the most progressive and principled U.S. Senator, whose defeat helped open the floodgates for a powerful shift to the right in the state of Wisconsin. Thus the Democratic Party laid the basis for the ascent of extreme right-wing and reactionary politicians like Governor Walker and their aggressively anti-union agenda.
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The U.S. working class can take advantage of the legal delay in the implementing of the anti-union, anti-worker, anti-people Wisconsin legislation as a political opportunity to regroup. Tens of thousands of union members in Wisconsin and their supporters are still ready to champion the good fight. Union members and workers around the country can struggle within their unions and other pro-worker organizations, locally and nationally, to support the Wisconsin workers by demanding a massive labor-led Solidarity Day III in the streets of Wisconsin – and soon! If the labor leaders refuse, such a groundswell can be built from the rank and file membership at the local and state levels.
Over the intermediate haul, we can take inspiration from the example and experience of the Wisconsin workers and rebuild our unions on democratic and militant bases (see companion article on NUHW), politically break with the Democrats and build a worker based political party accountable to the workers and other oppressed sectors of society, not to the corporations, bankers, Wall Street speculators and their Democratic Party henchmen. We can demand that our union officials “lead or get out of the way.”
In 2005 in Indiana, the state government abolished collective bargaining for public sector workers. The unions did not survive. Over 90% of state employees abandoned their organizations. Even if the Wisconsin anti-union legislation is eventually enacted, unions can survive and thrive if they are rebuilt on the militant foundation of worker involvement activism. It is precisely the great response of the Wisconsin working class to the assault on their democratic rights that lays a firm basis for such a rebirth of the unions in Wisconsin. For example, direct action around key demands can take place in workplaces where marches on the bosses can become a living grievance procedure. Strong alliances with the community, especially in the fields of education and healthcare, can be built and become a fighting force for workers’ rights. Union dues can be collected without dues check off and can actually strengthen the workers’ commitment to their unions. “Work to rule” campaigns and creative strikes and slow downs can be instituted to replace the “formal” negotiation and arbitration of issues.
In 1981, the air traffic controllers’ union (PATCO) went on strike to defend decent working conditions and the safety of the flying public. In response, President Reagan fired 12,000 air traffic controllers in the open attempt to break the union entirely. PATCO became a watershed event for the U.S. Labor Movement. AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and the corrupt leadership of the labor movement shamefully failed to back PATCO; it was then crushed. Ever since then, the working class, especially in the private sector, has taken a beating. Private sector union membership has been in sharp decline, concessionary bargaining has become the norm and the powerful strike weapon has been all but wiped out of the hearts and minds of the U.S. working class.
Wisconsin is another such watershed. The outcome of the struggle to save the unions, will either lead to further impoverishment of the working class, both in the private and public sector, or lead to a resurgence of a militant, fighting labor movement in the U.S. capable of beating back the assaults and shifting the economic crisis back onto the capitalist class, onto those who caused it. Thus far, “the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class” have been taking us down the path of defeat despite the exemplary efforts of the Wisconsin workers, their families and supporters.
Mother Jones, the legendary mine worker organizer, shared these prophetic words many decades ago,
"Many of our modern leaders of labor have wandered far from the thorny path of these early crusaders. Never in the early days of the labor struggle would you find leaders dining and wining with the aristocracy. ... In those days labor's representatives did not sit on velvet chairs in conference with labor's oppressors, they did not dine in fashionable hotels with the representatives of top capitalists, such as the Civic Federation. .... The rank and file have let their servants become their masters and dictators. The workers have now to fight not alone their exploiters but likewise their own leaders, who often betray them, sell them out, who put their own advancement ahead of that of the working masses." (As quoted in American Trade Unionism by William Z. Foster.)
We concluded our previous statement on the Wisconsin struggle with the following:
“The Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA supports the just struggle of the Wisconsin workers. No more cutbacks or concessions – make the rich pay. Let’s tax the corporations, speculators and Wall Street finance capital. As part of the struggle to “Save Our Unions” an immediate Labor Movement-led nation-wide “Solidarity Day III” should be held in the streets of Wisconsin. Workers, fighting for democratic rights, can defend and improve the standard of living for the working class today. Through this process we’ll see the need for real workers’ power, socialism, and develop our ability to win!”
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For a massive Solidarity Day in Wisconsin —
To the Streets, Not Just the Courts!
Militant Actions to Save Our Unions!
Defend the ILWU workers in California!
Stop the Republicrat “two-party” Hoax —
Build a Labor Party!
Let the Fighting Spirit of the Working Class and People of
Tunisia, Egypt and Wisconsin Spread through the land!
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