Trade Union

By Richard Mellor in California

Sara Nelson, the International president of the Association of Flight Attendants of the US trade union federation AFL-CIO, has been in the news lately. She was making the point that organised labour, and working people in general, are facing some of the most vicious attacks on our living standards in the modern era.

This comes after Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the US Congress took away the rail workers’ right to strike with emergency legislation in December 2023. Despite the seriousness of such an assault, that was met at the time with no serious opposition from the folks atop the AFL-CIO.

On more than one occasion, sister Nelson has raised the need for a general strike as a response to the Trump’s efforts to eradicate bargaining rights for workers, firing workers at will, and driving organised labour back to the conditions that existed prior to the rise of the CIO in the 1930s. 

In 1934 there were three major general strikes, although they were not national: Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco. These were followed by the sit-downs and factory occupations in auto, culminating in the great 44-day Flint occupation in 1936-37; this should be labour’s fourth of July. Much of the social legislation we have today was a response to that movement, as legislators codified what workers had already won in the streets and workplaces of America.

Most labour history is not taught in schools

Sadly, labour history is not taught in the schools the way it should be, or at all in most cases as the US, despite the negative elements, racism, exclusion of women and so on, has a rich, militant, history that workers should be proud of. 

In this video clip, where she raises the need for a general strike again, sister Nelson also turns to labour history, a more recent but no less important section of it. In the 1980s there were some huge strikes after Ronald Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). This was the early period of the neo-liberal era. Carter had begun with the deregulation of the airlines and Reagan took the baton and ran with it. Thatcher continued the assault in the UK 

The strikes in the 1980s were an effort to counter this offensive of Reagan, and while mistakes were undoubtedly made by the leaders of the unions that struck, UFCW Local P9 at Hormel, for instance, hooking up with Ray Rogers and his corporate campaign, these strikes were not defeated because organised labour was weak or the bosses strong. They were defeated primarily due to the failed strategy, or lack of it, from the heads of the AFL-CIO.

Sister Nelson is right to raise them, and there are a few documentaries about the Hormel strike in particular. Young workers, members of unions in particular, should review that history.

Reagan fired 11,000 workers

When Reagan fired those 11,000 workers and banned them from working in their industry for life, the AFL-CIO leadership should have named a date for a 24-hour national general strike and in the interim, through the state federations, central labour councils and district councils and other resources that unions have, held meetings to organise and build for it, reaching out to working class communities as well. 

With next to no response from the AFL-CIO leadership, the employers had the green light and continued their offensive as workers and unions were cowed by the Reagan war. It wasn’t until the teachers and educators strikes of 2018-19 that strike days lost rose significantly. 

Given the capitulation of the leadership of the AFL-CIO in the face of the capitalist offensive over the past decades, it’s not likely sister Nelson’s call will be met with much action, but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have made it, or that rank and file union members and individual locals should sit on our hands. We are in the dawn of a new era, a historical shift in relations between the powers and the nations of the world. 

Sara Nelson’s comments are a world apart from UAW leader Shawn Fain’s anti-union embrace of Trump and his tariffs that pit worker against worker, each joining with our class enemies in their competition for control over the world’s resources and profits. Equally so for my former union (Afscme) leadership’s strategy in the face of the Trump/Musk onslaught: “Now is the time to act! Call your representative and tell them to stop the billionaire tax breaks and save public services.”  

Really? This approach has been tried and failed with disastrous consequences, one of them being an exit from the electoral process altogether, and a shift to the right by many workers, including union members. 

There are millions of workers and individual union locals that would support Sara Nelson’s call, but it has to be organised and that is highly unlikely, though not impossible, given the anger that exists and the nature of the present period. 

What Can We Do?

If you are in a local like I was, that had a very democratic internal life, you can introduce a letter or resolution supporting sister Nelson’s call, urging the AFL-CIO Executive Board to take it up and act on it, by selecting a date ahead for a 24-hour one day national stoppage, as a first step.  

Copy it to Sara Nelson and the AFA, your Central Labour Council, State Federation and District Council, if you have one, and urge them to send it out to their affiliated locals. Make it public in your newsletter or publication. The discussion alone will be positive, as will the response, whether it’s passed or not. It will not be wasted time. 

I haven’t been active for 20 years or more, but there must be thousands of locals and millions of members that would support this. Don’t be put off by organisational details used by staffers, whose job it often is to stifle or supress any movement from the rank and file that threatens the relationship the labour hierarchy has built with the employers, based on class cooperation (the Team Concept) and labour peace. 

Naturally we can’t just call for a strike of any kind without demands. What do we want? 

We should speak to the immediate needs of workers

Any movement should oppose the assault on immigrants and our civil liberties, the right to protest and speak against government policy at home and abroad. But demands in such a situation should speak to the immediate needs of the millions of Americans in particular whose living standards are being savaged.

Sixty-three percent of US adults currently agree with the statement that the Republican and Democratic parties do “such a poor job” of representing the American people that “a third major party is needed.”, according to a Gallup poll. Workers have no political voice and we need a political party of our own based on the unions, our community organisations and working-class communities in general 

Most Americans want better public services and more sustainable transportation choices, not more highways. And 62% of Americans agree that the US government should ensure everyone has health coverage. And 64% of Americans believe the government should have a role in the housing market. Housing is a basic necessity and the private market is unable to address many Americans’ affordability concerns. 

Workers in the US are crying out for a leadership that is willing to stand up and act on our behalf and Sara Nelson is a lone voice, at a time when the heads of organised labour should be speaking in a loud, angry, collective voice.

The Wall Street Journal tells it like it is

There was an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal in January titled, What The People Want and What They Don’t and it is worth reading as it gives a fairly honest account of the general mood for change in US society and that not everyone is on board with the degenerate Trump’s agenda.

It points out that Americans:

“… oppose seizing illegal immigrants from churches, hospitals or schools, or deporting parents if it means separating them from their children who were born here as citizens.”

Also:

“Here’s what the majority of Americans don’t want Mr. Trump to do: use the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals, punish reporters for writing stories he dislikes, pardon people convicted of committing crimes on Jan. 6, 2021, replace civil-service workers with political appointees, impound funds appropriated by Congress, or use force to stop protests against him. Nor do they want their new president to eliminate the Education Department, make childhood vaccinations voluntary, withdraw from the Paris climate accords, expand into Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal, or rename the Gulf of Mexico the “’Gulf of America.’”

A member of one of the multitude of self-styled socialist organisations that vegetate on the fringes of the labour movement once accused me of having a policy of attacking the trade union leadership. This was just to cover his own group’s refusal (they had some members in unions) to challenge their class collaborationist policies; the ‘Team Concept’ being the main expression of it.

Let Sara Nelson know she is supported

I couldn’t have survived and gained some respect from other delegates in my Central Labour Council* with such an approach.  When I disagreed with the leadership’s policies I spoke out, and when I agreed I supported them. Isn’t this supposed to be as American as apple pie?

Rather than ignore Sara Nelson’s call for a general strike, or refuse to give it any credibility (after all, it has been raised before without any follow up by various labour officials) let her know through your organisation that she has your backing.

We Can’t Wait For Mayday!

*NOTE: For readers of Facts For Working People abroad, the Central Labour Council, or Labour Council is the county arm of the national AF-CIO. Local unions have to have strikes “sanctioned” by this body in order to receive support. The state organ is the State Federation. In California, the California Labour Federation represents 2.3 million workers. The Los Angeles County Labour Federation has 800,000 members. That most workers are unaware that they belong to these organisations is the fault of the leadership, not the members. 

Republished from the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original, with all original hyperlinks, can be found here.

[Feature picture from Work-Bites website, here.]