Which road forward for labor?

The AFL-CIO leadership is gathering at a crucial moment for the labor movement and the entire working class in this country. The attacks of the bosses and the government are escalating on all fronts, from the destruction of pensions, to mass layoffs, to take backs in health care, as well as all-around union busting.

The debate in the labor movement over how to turn the situation around and move on to the offensive is a welcome development. There has been too little of it in the labor movement over the decades.

But the terms of the debate initiated by the Change to Win Coali tion avoid the fundamental questions facing organized labor. Worse, Andrew Stern of SEIU has repeatedly threatened to split from the AFL-CIO if his demands are not met.

Change-to-Win made the debate revolve around issues of federation structure and the allocation of funds. It is better to spend money on organizing workers than to throw it down the drain paying for the campaigns of capitalist politicians, the way the John Sweeney leadership shamelessly did in the last election campaign. And no one can deny that centralizing the labor movement for struggle has its advantages.

Begin with the rank-and-file

But the keys to reviving the labor movement and expanding its numbers do not lie in restructuring or reallocation of funds.

First and foremost, labor’s future depends upon mobilizing its real core resource—the strength, energy and enthusiasm of the millions of rank-and-file workers who are its heart and soul. No advance can take place without this. And this is what the bosses fear the most.

Former Teamsters president Ron Carey shook up the corporate rulers in 1998 when he mobilized the ranks as he built unity between the full-time, part-time and temporary workers. The UPS workers battled the scabs and refused to be cowed by calls for a Taft-Hartley injunction.

With organization, the solidarity of the higher-paid and the lower-paid workers and militant struggle, the Teamsters won a stunning victory against the mighty UPS. This triumph awakened hope and enthusiasm in the workers. But instead of building upon the UPS victory to make it a turning point in the fightback, the entire AFL-CIO leadership shamelessly put their tails between their legs and watched as Carey was framed up and crucified by the capitalist government.

It is not surprising that neither the Stern group nor the Sweeney leadership has made mobilizing the membership for class struggle a part of their platform. In fact, the debate itself between these two camps has been largely confined to the upper echelons of the labor movement. This top-down style has left the ranks in the dark.

Fight for the whole working class

The labor movement can grow by becoming a beacon of progress and fighting for the needs of the entire working class and the oppressed communities throughout the country. The words “labor” and “union” must become identified not only with the fight for wages and benefits, but with the fight for causes like national health care, affordable housing, immigrant rights, the right of women to choose, turning the Pentagon budget into funding for schools and clinics and day care centers, ending racism and police brutality, defending the right to same-sex marriage and putting an end to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In order to grow, labor must reach out to the millions of workers, women and men of all races, nationalities and sexual identities, documented and undocumented. It must mobilize to meet their needs and defend their rights against the bosses and the government. The union movement must strive to change the reactionary political atmosphere which breeds fear and timidity among the workers. Fighting for the class as a whole will breed enthusiasm, hope and confidence and help pave the way to organize the unorganized.

Oppose war and the big business parties

This class-wide approach was raised on Oct. 17, 2004, with the Million Worker March Movement. The MWM, organized by a bicoastal Black union leadership, marched on Washington, D.C., to raise social and economic issues. But they also took the historic step, in the midst of a presidential election campaign, of demanding that labor be independent of the two capitalist parties and that it oppose the occupation in Iraq.

The war budget is swallowing the wealth and resources needed by the working class to survive on a daily basis. The people of Iraq are suffering death and destruction while U.S. soldiers are being killed and wounded, all for the colonial occupation sought by anti-labor U.S. trans national corporations. The Demo cratic Party leadership, despite all their complaints about Bush and Rumsfeld, are solidly for continuing the occupation and the war—the only difference is they want more troops.

Neither Change to Win nor the Sweeney leadership has opposed the war. And both cling to the capitalist parties.

NED versus international solidarity

In the era of globalization, international class solidarity is more and more important as a practical matter. Yet, the AFL-CIO leadership refuses to break with the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a corporate and CIA front. The Stern leadership has been silent on the issue. Right now NED is waging a subversive war against the Hugo Chávez government in Venezuela. Chávez is fighting to raise the standard of living and defend the rights of workers and peasants. He is opposed by U.S. big business, led by U.S. oil companies.

Despite all these common positions on fundamental issues, the Change to Win group is threatening a split. To split the labor movement at a time of weakness, when the class enemy is united and when the split will further weaken labor, is reckless.

Stern makes a false analogy with the break of the CIO from the AFL in 1936. But that split vastly strengthened the labor movement. The CIO was formed as a committee inside the AFL in 1935. It grew under the pressure of hundreds of thousands of industrial workers demanding organization who were being rejected by the AFL’s narrow, aristocratic, craft leadership. It was a period of upsurge and there were 1,000 sit-down strikes reported between 1935 and 1937. Much of the crucial organizing was carried out by socialists and communists.

The split was driven by the rank-and-file workers and it enabled the labor movement to more than double in two years. When John L. Lewis led the CIO split from the AFL, he was operating from a pre-existing position of strength based on the most intense period of mass organizing in the history of U.S. labor.

The present situation is a far cry from that.

Strengthen labor from the ground up

If Stern and the Change to Win Coalition want to revive the labor movement, they do not need to split to start things going. These are unions with major resources. They can start by setting the example. First bring in the rank-and-file. Start preparing a coordinated effort in the class struggle against a corporate target.

Open up an appeal to the entire working class. Organize a campaign for the millions of immigrant workers, who need labor’s help and who could greatly strengthen the labor movement. Find a way to show solidarity with the Millions More March this coming October, which promises to be a massive outpouring of the Black community.

Use the resources already available to open up a political struggle against the anti-working class Bush administration with a major march on Washington—without handing the movement over to the Democratic Party.

The needs of the multinational working class are vast. It is under pressure as U.S. capitalism spreads across the globe, seeking sweatshops, lower wages and non-union work forces. The corporations are shipping their factories and offices to every continent. They coordinate production and sales with the means of communication and transpor tation brought about by the scientific-technological revolution.

The working class is being organized into a disciplined world-wide work force which cooperates in the process of socially coordinated production under the direction of giant capitalist monopolies.

The working class, in order to be truly independent of the ruling class, must ultimately organize not just against the corporations, but to get rid of the system of capitalist exploitation entirely under which these corporations rule. The ultimate goal of those who want to organize labor for its true emancipation must be to establish a system of social ownership operating for human need, not for profit—that is, socialism.