By Richard Mellor in California
I have not studied the recent Teamster contract with the United Parcels Service (UPS) in detail and, as of this writing, it has not been ratified and I understand that there are some forces pushing for a no vote.
The Teamsters union has had a change in leadership with Sean O’ Brien, a long time Teamster official in a coalition with forces around Labor Notes and the Teamsters For a Democratic Union (hardly a militant group), ousting James P Hoffa and the Hoffa slate. Myself and others connected to this blog have argued that given the present situation and the economic health of the UPS that some gains could be made.
Added to this is the 2024 election and President Biden and the Democratic Party are hoping the octogenarian (senile by some accounts) Democratic president will get another four years in the White House and will need the help or the leaders of organized labour to accomplish that. That is another incentive to throw a few crumbs to organized labour.
Bumbling Biden
The political situation in the US is a mess. The Democratic Party which considers itself the opposition, is so far unable to put forward a candidate other than the bumbling Biden and the Republicans cannot get the Trump monkey off their back. The only hope is jail time.
As one commentator put it today, both are mired in corruption, crookery, senility and that, “….both of these braying, boorish old men are fraudsters and fabulists” but, “These vices do not matter to their furious followers, who love their man precisely because he is not the hated other”. I intend to comment further on the article from which this quote is taken.
This is nothing new, and the US electoral process has for a long time been a choice between two bad apples, or the lesser of two evils as we like to say. We must emphasize that millions of workers have already opted out of the electoral process in disgust. These millions are never appealed to and if alluded to at all it is to scold them for their “apathy” “stupidity” or both.
Yet they have drawn the correct conclusion through experience that neither parties serve their interests. Voting is not an exercise in civics for most people. We do it in the hope that their material wellbeing will improve. If it doesn’t: why bother?
So while Biden, as a war hawk and representative of Wall Street, needs to offer some crumbs to organised labour as myself and others have suggested, he showed only a few months ago that when it comes to profits or workers’ health and welfare, it is the former not the latter that wins out. Both parties of Congress united to pass legislation overnight that denied unionised railway workers the right to strike, forcing on them a contract they had already rejected.
If push comes to shove, Biden will do the same to the Teamsters and to the auto workers whose contract is up next month and the entertainment industry unions that are striking as I write. UAW members have just elected a reform slate in an historic election that ousted the old guard and that leadership is issuing threats as well but talk is cheap, as they say.
West Coast dockworkers, part of the ILWU
It is also worth noting that the West Coast dockworkers, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, have been in contract negotiations for almost a year yet, we would hardly know it due to a blackout. President Biden has been involved, which means the union is at the table facing two opponents, the port bosses and their top political representative.
We’re in a situation this summer when some 650,000 US workers are on strike or threatening to strike, most of them in the same national federation. What a potentially powerful force that is. Uniting and taking to the streets, with rallies, demos appeals for unity and solidarity from working class communities in the face of a general assault on all workers and our living standards would send shock waves throughout US society and the world.
The average worker or rank and file union member knows this and understands it. But making it happen is another matter. But this is what scares the labour hierarchy, having no alternative to capitalism and the market, mobilising this power can only lead to chaos.
There are a number of factors preventing it beyond the class collaboration of our own leaders. A major factor is the lack of a political party of our own, relying instead on favours from our so-called ‘friends’ in the Democratic Party that are no friends at all.
A lawyer entrenched in the Democratic Party
Biden’s top labour advisor, Celeste Drake has just stepped down. She is an important member of the Biden administration, a lawyer entrenched in Democratic Party (capitalist) politics, who advised him on the recent negotiations at the ports and with the railway workers; she was assisted in these efforts by former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, who was a top labour official, former president of Laborers Union local 223 and then the Boston Metropolitan District Building Trades Council. This deathly marriage between the labour hierarchy and the Democratic Party is a death sentence for workers.
Drake was a “trade specialist” at the AFL-CIO and first joined the Biden Administration as director of the Made in America Office at the White House (so much for international working class unity). As Biden’s assistant, her role has been to head off strikes or limit the gains to those that are the least harmful to business.
If that approach fails, as we witnessed with the railway workers, then the courts and/or acts of Congress will follow. The police and national guard will back them up if the rank and file overcome the obstacle of their own leadership, a necessity if we are to change course.
Julie Su, President Biden’s selection for Labor Secretary replacing Marty Walsh, calls Drake a “leading authority on labor policy” and one of its “greatest champions for working families.” Su’s appointment was an historic event, her being the first Asian-American in this position, but what matters most is her politics, how she sees the world and in that she is like all of them. And if Drake was such a “champion” for workers, she would have opposed the imposition of strikebreaking legislation on the railways workers.
Labour lieutenants of capitalism
Daniel De Leon once referred to the bureaucratic clique atop organised labour as the “labour lieutenants of the capitalist class” and a cursory look at the role played by the likes of Walsh, O’Brien, the present head of the AFL-CIO Liz Shuler, and all of them, confirms that they have yet to receive their dishonorable discharges.
Organised labour has some 14 mn members, and despite the low unionisation rate, the US economy cannot function without the acquiescence of the ranks of organised labour. But it is this potential power that terrifies the labour hierarchy.
They have no alternative and mobilising this power can only lead to chaos, so they do all they can to suppress any movement from below that threatens their relationship with the bosses and the Democratic Party based on labour peace and the worship of the market. In the present situation, they will continue to play this role; they always have, because they support capitalism and the view that the market is the answer to all things.
This cannot go on forever, even though it seems like it at times. But history proves otherwise. The assault on US workers will not go unchallenged and we are witnessing it today, as even the unorganised workers, the low waged, those in tech, in Amazon and Starbucks are forming unions. This, too, terrifies the present leadership of the AFL-CIO who, at their national convention last year, had a session on organising, but refused to invite workers leading the battles at Amazon and Starbucks to it.
The dam will be breached at some point, and important lessons learned, as new approaches will arise out of the struggles ahead. History teaches us that when workers move into struggle there is a strong tendency to seek class allies, to overcome the divisive tactics the ruling class uses to weaken class unity: racism, sexism, religious sectarianism, xenophobia, homophobia, and so on. There are many diversions out there.
Workers can only rely on our own strength, independent of capital and its parties. And this marriage with the Democratic Party is an obstacle to this crucial step that has to be taken. Workers will build a political alternative, a party of our own that can change the balance of class forces in society. This and mass direct action in the streets, workplaces and our communities is what will bring results, as it has in the past. We cannot rely on the courts and these so-called friends of labour to save us.
Workers will make efforts to build a future
Nothing is guaranteed, including the continued existence of humans as a species on this orb. But there is a future, and I am convinced workers internationally will make every effort to build it.
I am not in the camp of those that argue the trade unions aren’t workers organisations and that the leadership is incapable of change or being removed. I see this view as an argument that 14 mn workers are incapable of struggle, and of changing the leadership that we know intellectually are failing us. But facing a war on two fronts, the bosses and our own leaders is a daunting task and will not be taken lightly. There will be some battles in organized labor ahead and these will also have a major influence on the working class as a whole.
There are reasons to be cheerful, as Ian Drury and the Blockheads pointed out.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
