By Richard Mellor in California
Some years back in the early 2000s, my friend and fellow union activist, Roger Martinez, and I walked into our monthly membership meeting. As soon as we got through the door we noticed two guys sitting there who we didn’t recognize. They certainly didn’t look like any of our blue-collar brothers or sisters. Our conversation went something like this:
“Who do you think those two are Rog?”
“They look like a couple of lawyers to me, Rich”
“Yeah, that’s what I think”, I reply
“They’re either a couple of lawyers or staffers from the International Union.” Says Rog.
Well, we were half right. They were staffers from the AFL-CIO, [the US trade union federation] and they were there to get our local, Afscme 444, on board with the AFL-CIO’s latest campaign entitled; “The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride: “On The Road to Citizenship”. The term “Freedom Ride” was in deference to the Freedom Train movement of the 1960s in the US South, but in 2002 buses would be carrying immigrant workers. Other than that, there was no significant similarity with the past.
The idea was to cross the country travelling through working class communities, culminating in rallies in Washington DC and New York City. The initiative was started by the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), now called HERE/UNITE, in order to, “….counter anti-immigrant bigotry and xenophobia in the wake of 9/11.”, according to the website.
It should occur to any serious political activist or trade unionist that being able to explain to a worker in Cleveland why their job went to Mexico and what a worker/union response to it should be, including why it’s in our interest to defend immigrant workers, would be first on the agenda. Unfortunately not.
This is the AFL-CIO’s resolution on the campaign. HERE represented hotel, restaurant and other workers in the hospitality industry, and many of them are immigrants, as anyone who has stayed in the big hotels in Las Vegas or other US cities would know. So the union had a vested interest in pushing immigration reform and getting the wider labour movement to support it. This industry has contributed greatly to the percentage of US workers in organised labour. It’s all about revenue, which is what members’ dues is.
After the two staffers’ presentation, there was some discussion. Both Roger and I opposed supporting this campaign as it was presented to us. We distanced ourselves from one member whose opposition was from the right, and a touch xenophobic.
Supporting immigrants’ rights
We explained that while supporting immigrant rights and countering the bigotry and fear of immigrants taking our jobs is essential, the campaign needed to have a program and a set of demands that can appeal to all workers on a class basis rather than moral appeals for fairness and respect for immigrants’ rights.
We pointed out the failings of a bus tour or freedom ride through middle America for immigrant rights, where thousands of jobs had been exported to Mexico and other countries where human labour power was cheaper and democratic rights weaker.
In many industries, the immigrant population was beginning to replace native-born workers as a cheaper option. This was occurring, not because immigrants are more “willing” to work for less as the mass media always frames it, in order to denigrate the native worker as lazy and spoiled; the immigrant worker, often limited by language as other issues, is more desperate.
An example was the meatpacking industry. Twenty years earlier, with the defeat of the Hormel Strike, wages and the conditions in the meat-packing industry continued to worsen. Injuries to workers increased, as belt speeds were increased and workers looked for better options.
In order to maintain the supply of bodies, meat-packing companies in the mid-west, “…recruited illegal workers in Mexican villages and brought them north. Nebraska state officials estimated that illegal migrant workers represented 25% of the meat packing workforce.” (Sharing The Pie, by Steve Brouwer).
Serious mistake to organise such a tour
It was a serious mistake to organise a bus tour through many US working class communities with immigrant rights as the only theme, when these workers had their jobs exported to Mexico, or they were replaced, at half the wages, by Mexican or other workers from our southern border (Canadians are in no rush to work here).
Surely, this would do more to strengthen anti-immigrant feelings than build solidarity and class unity between immigrant and native born workers? Any person with an ounce of sense would understand that.
But the purpose of that bus tour in 2002 was not to strengthen or build the organised or unorganised workers’ movement. There is nothing further from the minds of the strategists atop the AFL-CIO. That’s why there were no demands that would appeal to the average worker to get involved in anything. Even those who sympathised with and supported favourable legislation to protect and guarantee immigrant rights would hardly take to the streets for that.
The resolution from the AFL-CIO supporting the campaign in 2002 makes it clear that the goal of the mobilisation, “…was meaningful legislative reform in Washington, D.C……” In other words, pressure the Democrats to pass a law here and there. That’s it.
I am reminded of these experiences as I came across the AFL-CIO’s latest bus tour campaign launched a month ago at union headquarters, just down from the White House, (closer to their friends and safer ground, far from the folks who pay the dues).
The new bus tour is titled, “It’s Better in a Union: Fighting for Freedom, Fairness and Security”. Wow! The strategists atop organised labour have got a gem there! Not sure many workers will take to the streets, miss the PTA meeting, extra overtime work needed to pay the child care, for that one, even though we know we’re better off in a union than working non-union in most cases.
“It’s ‘Better in a Union’ bus tour is officially bringing union power to a city near you!” says the AFL-CIO in its announcement as the, “…bus tour will crisscross the nation to amplify workers’ voices on our fights to organize….”
Political activity
Let’s be clear here. The heads of organised labour have no intention of mobilising the potential power of their members in order to counter the offensive of capital that will continue with Trump. The Freedom Bus Tour 22 years ago and the bus tour today are simply an attempts by the labour hierarchy to get their Democratic Party friends into office and return to the status quo of a somewhat less aggressive administration than the present one.
The split that took place in the AFL-CIO back in 2005, which led to the Change to Win Coalition, caused much excitement among the liberals, but that split was over the same issue, organising and drawing more members in to organised labour, giving it increased clout at the ballot box. In other words, it was all about electing Democrats to office and organised labour has given the Democratic Party billions over the decades and is unequivocally pro-market and pro-management.
But this support for the other Wall Street party has undermined labour’s leadership even further, and is one of the main factors in the rise of Trump. The disgust with the two parties of capitalism is so deep that the union leadership’s support has to be carefully couched in obscure phrases. This has been ongoing.
I was at an International Convention of AFSCME [my union] back in the 1990s when I first started noticing that open support for the Democrats was not so prevalent and was replaced by the need to elect candidates who support “working families”, no matter the party, though that’s pretty much always Democrats. Here in the US, the term working class is avoided like the plague.
At the announcement for the super-militant bus tour last month, leading up to Labour day, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, “rallied the crowd around how a union contract gives workers the freedom, fairness and security…And the answer is not a political party—the answer is not more of the broken status quo—the answer is a good union job!”, she added.
Why won’t The AFL-CIO leadership form a party?
The answer to that question is fairly simple. As things stand, the folks that sit atop the AFL-CIO, an organisation with 14 million members in it, and whose members could, with little effort, bring the US economy to a halt, can always blame politics in general or the Democrats in particular when they turn on us.
For the labour hierarchy to venture into the political arena with an independent party of our own, based on our organisations and our communities, it’s a tricky situation. Such a development would inspire millions of workers, as the two parties of capitalism are so despised, but it would also mean they would have to produce the goods and the labour leadership is wedded to the market, to capitalism, to profits and the right of the boss to make them at our expense. So they dodge the bullet any way they can, including forcing concessions on their own members.
This does not mean we should give up on our unions. We should not, as some socialists and leftists argue, abandon these organisations that our ancestors built through great sacrifice and struggle, without a fight. Part of the campaign against the class collaborationist policies of our own leaders is like the wider struggle for reforms in society as a whole. The conclusions workers draw from such a struggle for reforms is that they cannot resolve the crises that we face in capitalist society or the unions. What workers learn in the struggle for reforms is that we have to change society. We have to usher in a new era.
I have been out of the labour movement battles for 20 years or more, but I cannot accept that the bureaucracy is so entrenched that there is no possibility of movement at all. They are like rotten apples on a tree, that seem to be firmly fixed, but the slightest breeze dislodges them without effort. We need to provide that wind.
If you are in a local union in particular and are an elected, rank and file leader (not a paid staffer) and you are not engaged in this internal struggle to take control of our organisations then you are not doing your job.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People, and the original can be found here.
[Feature picture is the AFL-CIO logo from their website]
