By Richard Mellor in California
The young workers at Amazon, and throughout the US, including places like Starbucks and the fast food super exploitative industry, are the voice of the future and are shaking up the organized labour movement. This is a very powerful, positive development and working class people union or otherwise must give support wherever we can.
But for those of us who have spent many decades as rank and file activists in the labour movement and most importantly rooted in the workplace and community struggles building working class power, history has taught us that with such victories there are many dangers.
The first of course is the bosses, the capitalist class. And when we talk of capital we mean the state, the two political parties of capitalism, the police the judiciary and the all-so-important mass media that they control.
But there are other, more pernicious dangers, and those are some, not all, of the forces that will claim to be friends, that will offer their assistance. The right wing pro-market leadership of organized labour that view the established unions as employment agencies with themselves as the CEOs, will be eager to draw the new leaders in to their camp and along with them the millions of young workers that are a potential source of revenue in the form of dues money.
Leadership at the top of the AFL-CIO
The present leadership atop the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Coalition are committed to the market and capitalism and the right of the bosses to own the forces of production and to profit from it. They do not oppose Jeff Bezos’ right to own Amazon, they merely want him to be less aggressive, to treat his workers fairly. This is a utopian dream. Decades upon decades teach us this as workers.
There are also many left forces, again not all, that see themselves as the sole owners of the correct strategy and tactics necessary to take the movement forward, that see themselves as the educators of the working class, that rarely enter a dialogue with the working class or listen to what the working class has to say. They see their role only as leaders of the working class. Many of them have proved incapable of accomplishing what you have and certainly have failed to challenge the present leadership of organized labour whose concessionary policies have brought us this fa
Along with this, threats will come from conservative pro-market elements in the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party that is funded by Wall Street just like their Republican relatives. Different sections of the ruling class tend to one party or the other, energy and oil, for example, with the Republicans, and tech and others to the Democrats. But as we saw with the defeat of Trump, the US elite uses both these parties to get their man or woman into the driver’s seat. The Democratic Party is the only political party to use nuclear weapons on urban communities.
Nancy Pelosi – “we are a capitalist party”
As so called progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders, who is a recruiter for the Democratic Party, are sent to woo the new young leadership, we are seeing arise today like the folks in the video, remember what that party is and its history. Remember that Nancy Pelosi, a representative of the real power in that party, reminded a naive young DSA member that “we are capitalist” and that the Democratic Party is capitalist. Brothers and sisters, we have suffered serious defeats over decades under Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
We won the right to unionize by relying on our own strength as workers, our ability to shut down production and hurt them where it hurts most, profits.
These comments are not to lessen the importance of your victory, but only to warn you of the dangers from an old veteran of union, workplace and community struggles. Dangers will come from left and right. My feeling is that the youth of today are astute, are certainly street-smart, as they say. But the forces against you are very powerful and extremely devious. Always keep your feet rooted firmly in the working class and the communities that are ours.
I see that in France there are strikes throughout the country of Amazon workers; there is hope in the insane capitalist world where everything is for sale. In the meantime, thank you for your inspirational efforts that are shifting the balance of class forces in the US and probably the world.
Watch this video on Facebook of victorious Amazon worker speaking: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=862736647845997&t=29
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
