WAR ON YUGOSLAVIA
What's at stake for workers here?
By
Hillel Cohen
Delegate, 1199 National Health and Human Services
Employees Union, Service Employees, AFL-CIO
The writer has introduced resolutions that the union
passed putting 1199 on record against the Gulf War, against the
sanctions on Iraq, and in solidarity with political prisoner
Mumia Abu-Jamal. A resolution to oppose the bombing and war
against Yugoslavia he introduced is currently being discussed
in the union.
Any way you look at it, the war against Yugoslavia will hurt
workers here. Billions of dollars will be spent for bombs
instead of jobs, education and health care. War profits will
strengthen the bosses in general.
If NATO succeeds, companies like General Motors and Ford
will close production lines here and move capital to Yugoslavia
in order to take over the industries that NATO destroyed.
And if the war escalates to ground troops, it will be young
workers, or workers' children, who will be sent to fight and
die there.
So why haven't the leaders of the AFL-CIO and the individual
unions spoken out against the war?
To some extent the union leaders, like so many others in the
progressive movement, have been taken in by the phony war
propaganda played non-stop in the big-business media. Repeated
more often than a Big Mac commercial, slanders against the
Yugoslav government and chauvinist attacks against the Serbian
people have been used to justify the genocidal war.
But that doesn't explain why some of the more progressive
union officials, who should know better, have also remained
silent.
While the war is clearly being carried out by the Pentagon
and the military-industrial complex, the so-called
commander-in-chief is the Democrat Bill Clinton. Despite his
administration's anti-labor policies--NAFTA, fast-track,
welfare cuts, etc.-- some believe they have to defend a
Democratic Party administration from a Republican takeover at
all costs.
Already some union officials are lining up behind Al Gore
for president in 2000, or for Hillary Clinton for Senate from
New York. They may be concerned that protesting this anti-labor
war would cause a break with the administration.
It has even been rumored that some are angry with Jesse
Jackson for embarrassing the Clinton administration when
Jackson called for an end to the bombing after the prisoner
release.
Avoiding taking a stand against the war is wrong in
principle. History shows that it is also a grave threat to the
recent efforts to revive the union movement after 30 years of
decline.
One cause of that decline was that 30 years ago, the George
Meany-Lane Kirkland leaders of the AFL-CIO refused to break
with the Lyndon Johnson administration over the Vietnam
War.
While progressive youths and the civil-rights movement were
taking to the streets against the war, the AFL-CIO old guard
backed Johnson. When Johnson, under pressure from anti-war
demonstrators, withdrew from the 1968 election, they campaigned
for his vice president, Hubert Humphrey.
Humphrey had been a sterling liberal, with a voting record
on labor issues far better than Clinton's or Gore's. But
Humphrey was totally committed to the Johnson administration's
bankrupt war program. By refusing to break with that program,
the top layers of the AFL-CIO alienated the best, most active
young workers and the progressive movement.
The union movement sold its fighting spirit, its conscience
and its best potential allies for a mess of bloody
war-porridge. At the same time, war profits had infinitely
strengthened big business. The bosses then used the post-war
inflation and subsequent recession and unemployment to beat
down workers' wages.
Union membership went on a steady decline for 30 years.
When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took a stand against the
Vietnam War 30 years ago, he was criticized by former allies,
including top leaders of the AFL-CIO, for embarrassing the
Democratic Party. This was not unlike the whisper campaign
directed against Jesse Jackson today for his mild anti-bombing
statements.
Ironically, some union leaders of today became active in
union politics years ago in opposition to the Meany-Kirkland
pro-war program. Now they and the AFL-CIO are again at a
crossroads.
If the war against Yugoslavia continues, or if a new war
breaks out somewhere else, the union leaders will be faced with
a choice: support the war-making Democratic administration in
exchange for "access" to the White House, or stand up in
principled opposition to the war in support of the needs of the
workers here and in Yugoslavia.
Every active and conscious union member must ask: Can we
stop the AFL-CIO from making that same deadly mistake
again?
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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