High tech and labor
Class struggle heats up, oppressed workers on front
lines
By Milt
Neidenberg
Last week Workers World analyzed the impact of the Cold
War and the reactionary policies of former AFL-CIO President
Lane Kirkland on the labor movement in the U.S. and worldwide.
This week Neidenberg takes up the developments under the new
AFL-CIO leadership.
Following the resignation of now-deceased AFL-CIO President
Lane Kirkland, John J. Sweeney was elected in 1995 to lead the
labor federation. Sweeney changed the right-wing conservative
direc tion of previous presidents, who had pursued a Cold War,
anti-communist policy.
Sweeney eliminated the American Institute for Free Labor
Development from the Department of International Affairs--along
with other departments that had been entangled with U.S.
imperialist foreign policies under Kirkland.
Anti-communist loyalty oaths that had poisoned relationships
and isolated the progressive wing of the federation were
dropped.
The hallmark of Sweeney's administration is organizing the
unorganized. He restructured the Executive Council to prepare
for this all-important campaign. He increased the AFL-CIO
organizing budget by millions of dollars.
He added more African Americans, Latinos and women to the
leadership, including the appointment of Linda Chavez-Thompson
as his executive vice president.
Sweeney took note of the groundswell of low-paid,
service-oriented oppressed workers joining unions. He
encouraged the International affiliates to provide resources
and foot soldiers to assist unorganized workers to challenge
their bosses.
Unfortunately, Sweeney had another agenda as well: an
election strategy plan ned with the Democratic Party. In the
1996 presidential election year the AFL-CIO spent a whopping
$35 million to unseat unfriendly legislators.
Betting the farm on Democrats
Clearly this unprecedented effort diverted much-needed funds
and rank-and-file participation from union organi zing
campaigns.
It was a mistake. At best, they defeated a few anti-labor
candidates. Meanwhile, Wall Street and Corporate America
intensified their attacks on the labor movement. Clinton and
congressional Democrats stood idly by. And on many occasions
they broke their promises to labor by siding with the most
conservative Republicans and Democrats.
At the AFL-CIO Executive Council winter meeting this past
February, Sweeney repeated the mistakes of 1996. He announced
plans to the affiliates to spend $40 to $46 million to mobilize
voters for the 2000 presidential elections, primarily to elect
Democrats.
This will once again divert funds and resources from the
labor movement at a time when the bosses' attacks have
increased to a dangerous level. Sweeney is shortchanging the 13
million members of the AFL-CIO who are fighting for job
security and waging strikes to win better wages, working
conditions and other benefits.
The dangers are compounded on the organizing front,
particularly among the millions of low-paid, service-oriented
workers who are putting their lives on the line in heroic
struggles to join unions.
This multinational workforce--primarily women and immigrants
from Mexico, the Caribbean, South America and Asia--are willing
to fight against the vicious attacks from the bosses who use
both legal and illegal means to defeat the workers.
Many are veterans of the class struggle in their homelands.
They have courageously waged strikes here to beat back the
bosses, despite the threats that some face as undocumented
workers.
An article in the July 19 Business Week confirmed the
determination of these workers to organize. "Some 40 million
say they want a union today compared with 19 million in 1984,"
the article noted.
This is an astounding and optimistic statistic.
But the article questions why unions only win half the
elections held at private companies. Business Week quoted the
findings of a National Labor Relations Board study researched
by Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University.
According to this study, "a third of the companies fired
union supporters (in house), up from 8 percent in the 1960s.
Half threatened to close facilities if the union won, and 91
percent required workers to meet one-on-one with supervisors on
the issue."
This doesn't include the wave of mega-mergers that
undermines unions, weakens organizing campaigns, and exports
and outsources union jobs, here and abroad.
Nevertheless, there have also been important victories on
many fronts.
At Fieldcrest-Cannon in North Carolina, 5,200 workers voted
in UNITE--the needle trades, industrial and textile
union--after five previous votes had failed.
Workers at IBP--the world's largest producer of beef and
pork products in Wallula, Wash.--are on strike. Ninety percent
of these strikers are immigrants. Rallies and leaflets are
translated into Laotian, Vietnamese and Serbo-Croatian.
What a testament to the workers that they are able to
overcome difficult language and cultural barriers in order to
organize and unify their strike. One worker on the picket line
commented, "`Enough is enough' is something you can understand
in any language."
Mushroom pickers and packers in Florida have won a contract
signed by Quincy Farms and the United Farm Workers after three
years of fighting.
Workers at the Newport News Shipyards beat back
union-busting tactics by the company and the Navy--which
organized a scab workforce. Local 8888 threatened to picket the
Navy in Washington. The Navy and NNS backed off and settled the
strike--a strike organized in a "right-to-work" state.
Class struggle is heating up
These are some of the successful strikes and struggles that
the media have made public. But many others, smaller and less
prominent, go on daily.
There are losses as well. But one fact is indisputable: The
class struggle is heating up.
Wall Street and Corporate America are gearing up to stop the
union movement from growing. Nevertheless, fear and uncertainty
are growing among the financial and corporate tycoons.
Each time the Labor Department reports a rise in the
employment-cost index and a decline in unemployment figures,
the stock and bond market drops. This occurred again recently
when the government reported a 1.1 percent increase in wages
between the first and second quarters of this year--the biggest
in eight years.
This confirmed the fact that workers are joining unions and
strikes are improving wages and benefits. That's bad news for
Wall Street, which is sensing that events both here and abroad
are getting out of control.
An Aug. 22 New York Times article headlined "Who You Gonna
Call After the Next Bust" quoted well-known Wall Street
consultant Henry Kaufman. Kaufman stated, "I know of no time in
the post-World War II period in which the welfare of the
American economy, and for that matter the rest of the world,
has hinged so much on the well-being of the American stock
market."
The article referred to the bubbles that can burst in stock
prices and real estate.
These doom-and-gloom projections appeared to be mitigated in
an Aug. 20 article by Thomas L. Friedman--a New York Times
columnist and an imperialist apologist for Wall Street, the
Pentagon and Washington.
In a column awash in deception, Friedman applauded the
Reagan days of the 1980s when the military buildup enabled the
U.S. to run so far ahead of its allies and enemies.
Breaking of PATCO strike
Most significant is Friedman's assertion that "The most
important thing Mr. Reagan did was break the 1981 air traffic
controllers strike which helped break the hold of labor over
the U.S. economy. This was critically important for spurring
the information revolution in America."
These technologies, he wrote, gave the "U.S. military its
great technological leap forward--from laser-guided weapons to
stealth technology to electronic warfare. These systems are now
essential for fighting wars."
Friedman added that "U.S. companies are quick to absorb new,
more productive technologies because they can easily absorb the
cost of the new investment by laying off the workers who used
to perform that task.''
He chided the doomsayers by reminding them that the
Europeans will have a hard time catching up because the
stricter labor laws that the working classes there have won
through struggle "make it very hard or very costly to lay off
workers."
Clearly Friedman is exhorting Wall Street, Washington and
the Pentagon to target the workers and break up the unions, as
Reagan did with PATCO--the air traffic controllers' union. He
assures them that busting the unions will free the technology
that is growing by leaps and bounds--technology that guarantees
the supremacy of U.S. imperialism.
As if these architects of anti-labor offensives need
Friedman's advice.
Friedman--a ruling class mouthpiece--is articulating the
dream of the capitalists to dominate and control the
untrammeled growth of high technology at the expense of and on
the backs of the working class.
The PATCO strike, like all strikes, was a threat to the
bosses. The strength of workers on strike forces the bosses
into all kinds of negotiations that restrict that ruling-class
dream.
Freidman distorts the truth when he says that smashing the
PATCO strike was a turning point in Corporate America's
determination to roll over the labor movement in order to
develop high technology. The entire development of the labor
movement has forced the bosses to negotiate contracts that from
time to time restrict the unchecked growth of technology at the
expense of workers.
Friedman neglects to mention that the
scientific-technological revolution itself is the result of a
social process built over centuries by the labor power of the
workers. This mushrooming development in technology occurred in
different stages of capitalist production and was itself the
basis for the growth of the modern union movement.
Friedman also fails to note the profound social changes in
class relations that are the result of the technological
revolutions. In the last several decades Corporate America and
Wall Street have grown immeasurably richer. Workers have become
laid-off and de-skilled, often returning to work at a half or a
quarter of their former wages.
Friedman doesn't deal with the question of who controls high
technology--the product of social labor--either. He ignores the
obvious fact that the powerful high-tech means of production
are in private hands.
No wonder he leaves out that important information. Because
it begs the question: Shouldn't the means of production be
collectively owned by the class that built them?
Breaking the PATCO strike was a setback for the union
movement--an unfortunate development such as has occurred at
other times in history.
But history has also shown that the labor movement has
survived these setbacks.
This discussion of the PATCO events may seem to be ancient
history today. But it provides a valuable lesson for the labor
movement that has gone through such profound changes since
then.
AFL-CIO President Sweeney faces tremendous challenges.
Events, both in the U.S. and abroad, are speeding up and are
unpredictable. The labor movement has survived a century of
cataclysmic and trying times.
But there are millions in the multinational workforce today
in the U.S. Many are low-paid, nationally-oppressed workers.
Many are immigrants from Mexico, Central America, South
America, Africa and elsewhere who have a more developed world
view of the struggles faced by the working class. These workers
are proving ready to wage class war against their enemies--who
are few in number.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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