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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 6, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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"A momentous development"

Workfare organizing & prospects for labor struggle

By Larry Holmes

[The writer, a leading member of Workers World Party, was instrumental in forming the group Workfairness which, with 2,000 members, is one of several organizations now organizing workfare workers in New York. The following is excerpted from a Feb. 21 talk at a WWP meeting.]

The AFL-CIO's Feb. 17 announcement that it is instructing its affiliates to proceed with organizing workfare workers is a momentous development.

We knew that the unions would have to do something like this at some point. But one might have expected it to happen a little further down the road when there were, instead of 40,000 workfare workers in New York, for example, maybe 140,000. By then it would be impossible not to see that this was breaking the unions' backs, destroying any power, any viability they had even to conduct contract negotiations.

But they're acting faster than anyone might have predicted.

The push to get the AFL-CIO to adopt this position came from the unions that represent public workers, primarily AFSCME. The government is trying to bust AFSCME with workfare. The union's president, Gerald McEntee-who is not known as a particularly militant unionist to say the least- made a very deft analogy in a speech he gave some time back.

He characterized workfare as the domestic equivalent of NAFTA. And we all know that NAFTA was, among other things, an attempt to break the union movement.

It is a tremendous thing that the AFL-CIO is going to act on organizing workfare workers. The old Lane Kirkland leadership that was pushed out-you can't imagine them doing this.

It's a victory. It's a big step forward, and opens a new phase in this struggle.

Huge challenge for unions

Keep in mind the contradictory character of the labor movement. At the same Los Angeles meeting where the labor leaders said they were going to organize workfare workers, they also let Vice President Al Gore in. This was right after Clinton smashed a strike of airline workers.

They want a relationship with the government. That's their policy-to collaborate with a wing of the bourgeoisie. They think that's in the workers' interest. This is their basic limitation.

Yet they understand the nature of the threat workfare poses against these unions. There are somewhere between 2 million and 3 million adults on public assistance, not counting two or three times as many children. Most of them are single women with children.

And all of the adults are either going to be pushed into workfare or pushed into some cheap job or pushed off the rolls into the labor market. A half-million of them are in New York alone.

If the government is able to do that, it's possible that there will be no more AFSCME. This is what radicalizes a labor leader. This is the magnitude of the problem.

I don't know how many of you saw the New York Times editorial today. It gives you an idea of how seriously the bourgeoisie takes this, how much they're ready to fight to keep workfare workers without rights. And this is the liberal bourgeoisie.

The Times headline was "Don't Unionize Workfare." The editorial says, well there may be some problems and they should be treated humanely and there should be humane conditions-but the reason why you can't unionize them is because they don't really have jobs.

If you read the editorial it doesn't really make sense. Either they ran out of space or they didn't put the part in about why it's not a job. But see, this is the whole trick of the bourgeoisie. It's the same thing with slaves. You can't negotiate, because you're a slave. You don't understand-slaves don't negotiate, you don't have a job, we own you. Really, it's similar to that when you boil it down.

This editorial shows you how much the AFL-CIO's announcement shook up the bourgeoisie. They're not happy about it at all. Oh, they're happy about Sweeney meeting with Gore. But they're not happy about this.

The labor movement is organizing workfare workers, recognizing them as workers and not as "participants" or "trainees" or whatever they've been calling them. They are workers.

Tactics to win rights

Will the unions rely on lobbying for new laws recognizing workfare workers' rights? Will they wait for legislation?

We're all for legislation. The law should be changed.

Absolutely. But how will that happen?

How did the unions fight this attack that the head of

AFSCME equated workfare with-NAFTA? The AFL-CIO knew NAFTA was a big threat. So what did they do? They lobbied to get Congress to vote it down. But they didn't even call a one-hour strike in one city. NAFTA was passed.

It's the same thing with the so-called anti-scab legislation. They waited around after Clinton got elected the first time for the Democrats to push a bill that would ban scabs. It was in the middle of the big Caterpillar strike-and they're waiting for some legislation to be passed.

Nowhere did the unions say, `Well, while they're considering this legislation we're going to pull out not only our members but all of the union members and we're going to stop the scabs. We're just going to stop them. And maybe after that the legislation will be passed, because somebody will figure out that if they don't pass it this is what's going to keep happening.'

They didn't do that. And the anti-scab bill died.

We should go back over the history of labor's strategy and tactics when it was revitalized by more revolutionary forces-communists-in the 1930s. They didn't rely on legislation.

I remember WWP Chairperson Comrade Sam Marcy telling us a story about how District 65 used to organize workers. They organized anybody. You worked in a drugstore or you worked in a sweatshop or whatever-no matter what you did or what you made, they organized you. It was a great conception.

Did they do it all nicely and politely? Hell no.

Say there's a shop. There are 30 workers in it, or 100, or 12, against some criminal boss who hasn't paid them for three weeks or three months.

So you get maybe 500 workers who you could round up right in the neighborhood, and you go there, and you just close the place down and maybe even barricade the boss in until he signs the agreement where he recognizes the union.

This is how they did it. They didn't wait for some neat legal process.

These sorts of new concepts and new, militant tactics and strategies are going to have to emerge again. Someone is going to have to imbue this kind of approach into the labor movement.

Because believe me, the government is not going to roll over and recognize workfare workers. That would end workfare. The whole point of having workfare is to create a third-class slave-labor work force to bust unions so you can pay somebody one-seventh of what you're paying another person.

If they're getting unionized and they're getting equality, then there's no point to having workfare.

You can just imagine the resolve of the government at all levels to resist the organizing of workfare workers. There is the potential here for a big, militant struggle, in many cities, around organizing workfare workers.

Sign them up!

What is our conception of how to organize workfare workers? Tear down any obstacles, including how much dues they have to pay or other qualifications, or whether the government has to acknowledge that they're legally covered by somebody's law. Forget about all that.

Don't wait. Just sign them up for the union! Let them in!

You want an analogy? You know the construction workers who sometimes make good money but sometimes they only work for about three months in a year and they're on unemployment the other nine months? Well, you've got a lot of unemployed unionized workers in some of the trades. They hang around the halls waiting for jobs, but they've got their union card.

And in some ways, that's how more and more of the whole work force is. Capital is trying to atomize workers, make them temporary, part-time. Workfare is a perfect example of it. You work for a few years and then they kick you off and then they get a volunteer to do it for free. That's what Clinton wants.

So make a preemptive strike. Organize everybody on public assistance into the union. That means you'll have several million members right away.

At the same time, bring in all of the women's organizations. Solidarize yourself with the women's movement, and particularly the poorer women and Latinas and Black women, Jamaicans.

And bring in the radicals. It's got to be a political movement. Get the students in it.

The workfare workers need supporters. They need militants, they need rank-and-file trade unionists, they need community leaders, they need women leaders.

Force the issue. Try to make it more militant. We're not for an adventure, something premature or something gimmicky. But don't wait. The time to act is now.

Organize! Organize!

- END -

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