By Richard Mellor in California
The Vice-President of the US United Auto Workers union, Gerald Kariem, has sent a letter to Ford workers in Avon Lake, Ohio, accusing Ford management of violating a contract agreement with the union in which the auto manufacturer made a commitment to invest $900 million on the plant. This is a bold and militant move indeed and will be sure to have Ford Executives shaking in their boots.
OK, enough humour. Apparently, Ford, made a “pledge” during the 2019 negotiations to spend the money and that, the company would ensure “employment well into the foreseeable future”.
Despite history teaching us otherwise, the UAW leadership took the pledge seriously. Ford confirms historical accuracy in its own letter to employees saying that “things have changed since the last UAW contract was negotiated” Wall Street Journal March 18, 2021. Anyone who hasn’t been asleep for a century or so is not surprised.
Punch and Judy shows
Resorting to the same old failed approach, a public theatre not unlike the old Punch and Judy shows, the Kariem plays the game for a while, adding in his letter, “Ford management expects us to just hang our heads and accept the decision…….But let me be clear, we are making a different choice.”
I’m not sure what that choice might be, perhaps a statement from President “Worker Joe “ Biden, saying on TV that unions are a good thing; it’s hard to say. Kariem seems to take it up a notch adding that, “We expect the company to honour its contractual commitments to this membership and when it fails to do so we will take action.”
The UAW leadership’s rhetoric sounds very familiar, but one thing we know is that the Ford bosses, like all of them, are not afraid of the likes of Kariem or any other top union official; they’ve heard it all before and like the boy who cried “wolf” are not listening.
It’s embarrassing to be honest, and reveals the complete ideological bankruptcy of the US trade union hierarchy today. The capitulation to capitalism and the market is complete.
‘Events that helped to shape the country’
This deathly partnership was cemented over a century ago and we can see that as when the last century drew to a close, the Wall Street Journal produced a centennial edition, including a segment titled – “Events that Helped Shape the Country”. It explained that in 1893 there was an economic slump that left half the membership of what was then the main union federation, the American Federation of Labour (AFL), unemployed. The AFL was composed overwhelmingly of craft unions (skilled trades) and Samuel Gompers was the leader of that federation. Under his leadership, and against the background of that economic slump, the AFL made a decision as to what its general policy should be towards U.S. capitalism.
Here is how the Wall Street Journal reported this decision. “The AFL led by Samuel Gompers voted against adopting socialist reform programs…Gompers believes that US labour should work with capitalism, not against it, and that the AFL’s proper concerns are wages and hours and better working conditions”. So a century after it was made, the main voice of US capitalism championed this decision by the then leaders of the national body of trade unions in the US, as one of the events that shaped the country over the previous 100 years.
Betrayal by union leaders at the highest levels
We have witnessed, especially since the crushing of the PATCO union by Reagan and the militant strikes that arose during the 1980s, betrayal after betrayal on the part of the trade union leadership at the highest levels. Major strikes at Greyhound, Eastern Airlines, Hormel and the famous UFCW P9 battle, not to mention the Detroit Teamsters, Pittston and the huge battles in Decatur among others.
In my opinion, while there is corruption and the type of graft we have witnessed in the UAW leadership of late and among the upper echelons of organized labour, this, nor the obscene salaries and perks these officials make, are the primary cause of the betrayals. It is the world view of the union hierarchy that is at the root of the problem. It is that they have the same world view as the boss; they have class solidarity with the boss not the worker, their own members. They worship the market and see no alternative to capitalism.
For the heads of organized labour, to organize and mobilize the potential power of the working class, organized and unorganized, can only lead to chaos and certainly an end to their lucrative positions at the helm.
We have to reject the ‘team concept’
Meanwhile, at the lower end of the chain, and among smaller or individual locals, there are workers and rank and file leaders who genuinely want to change course, want to drive back the bosses’ offensive and also recognize that in today’s global economy we have to build international solidarity to do this. We have to reject the Team Concept, the ‘partnership’ with our own bosses which amounts to collaboration with a class enemy and join brothers and sisters internationally in the struggle for a better world for all of us. We live in an integrated world economy, like it or not, and there is no national solution to the problem workers face.
It’s not a matter of personal courage or individual toughness or ‘machismo’. It is an ideological question. History is full of honest people who betrayed their ideals or simply opted out of the struggle in frustration. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes.
I am also not of the view that we must abandon our unions to a rotten leadership with a false strategy of class collaboration which amounts to class betrayal. Anyway, regardless of my own personal views, I do not believe the vast majority of workers or union members support this view either.
Instead, we are obligated to fight to change our organisations, there are 14 million of us organised and any internal battle within organised labour that moves us forward will inspire millions of the unorganized, and they will be drawn to them as perhaps new organisations emerge as well. Power attracts.
The capitalist assault on our well-being
I know that one thing I have learned is that in times like these we cannot predict what is going to happen with certainty; we live in volatile times and the only thing I can say with confidence is that the working class in general will be forced to wage a struggle to counter the capitalist assault on our material well-being.
It seems inevitable to me that the organised labour movement will be engulfed in internal struggle as the movement in wider society develops. At some point there can be a split as new forces are thrown up, new leadership arises and at some point, an independent working-class political party built.
As for the UAW leadership’s response in this individual instance, the Ford bosses see them for what they are, just empty threats. Unfortunately, most union members have come to that conclusion too, learning the hard way, through experience. At some point the obstacle of our own leadership will be breached.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
