Labor in the global economy

Chris Silvera WW photo: Liz Green

Workers today need to build a real rank-and-file global fight-back movement. The labor movement must embrace grassroots rank-and-file formations like the Million Worker March Movement to unite Black, Brown, Yellow, Red and White workers into a militant force for progress on behalf of the working class. The labor movement must share its resources with these worker formations while resisting the temptation to always need to “run things” in exchange for cooperation.

The current crop of labor leaders did not rise up from the shop floor. They are the products of Ivy League and other nationally recognized universities. Others are the result of the “legacy system” that allows extreme nepotism to envelop the movement’s leadership. They all joined the union at the upper levels or at the top of the organization. These Ivy League labor leaders have implemented a business model and address the issues of working families using this business approach. They are more comfortable with the bosses and politicians than they are with the rank and file.

The labor movement still suffers from the sudden and dramatic loss of leaders that began during the McCarthy era. Those tough, up from the craft, militant and analytic, movement-oriented leaders were replaced by the businessman union leader. Today we organize as if we are selling a product, instead of building a movement. Labor leadership is inviting workers to “join the union; we are the best of a bad situation,” never trying to change the bad situation…

There can be no real labor movement without a class consciousness as its foundation.

The business-model union does not have sustainable attributes. In fact, it only reacts to the behavior of the capitalist and does not attempt to lead the workers in a struggle between opposing forces for dominance. It seeks to work within whatever constraints are placed around it, while ignoring the need to confront capital and defeat the greed of the corporate bosses. We must fight to implement a plan that sets forth a lasting solution for the issues affecting the working class. We must successfully work toward a shift to a workers’ paradigm. Capital is in an unending quest for increased profits. There can be no partnership with capital. Partner ships mean that labor is in collusion with capital, and these relationships cannot be in the long term interest of the class.

It is, in fact, a sure sign of the end of the era of the AFL-CIO and a new epoch in labor.

Workers must reject any idea of “partnerships” with the bosses. We must get up and fight and become mobilized politically to elect people with a workers’ agenda.

The immigration debate is centered on a failed premise of appeasing racists and xenophobes, but does not solve the problems facing workers here at home and globally as workers confront this advanced capitalist paradigm. We must beware that the walls we build do not become a prison that separates domestic workers from their global counterparts. Capital seeks unfettered global movement in search of profits; why not the worker in search of work?

Organized labor is not advancing its own agenda; its leadership instead follows the pathetic approach of the Democratic Party. The leadership that allowed U.S. workers to direct the global struggle for the eight-hour day must be resurrected in order to revitalize the labor struggle and protect the standard of living we have come to know.

The destruction of defined-benefit pension plans and health and welfare benefits, and the downward pressure on wages, must be reversed. Only the workers, mobilized to fight, will reverse the decline in labor’s presence in the private sector. People join winners—and labor must begin to win. We can only reverse these trends with full labor solidarity and a willingness to “take it to the street.” To be of relevance, the union must reverse the flow of capital from the workers’ paychecks into the pockets of the ruling class.

Labor today must demand the same freedom of movement as capital has achieved. Workers today must be able to follow their trade as it traverses the globe. Workers must be able to take their collective-bargaining agreements and their unions and move to any country to which their work has been relocated. Just as capital seeks to remove all barriers that impede its movement, so too should labor seek unfettered movement in search of work.

In addition, the U.S. labor movement must become more attentive and involved in issues that affect workers in other countries, and the developing world in particular. The policies of the United States and the G-8 group of nations are having a profoundly negative economic impact on workers in Mexico, the Caribbean nations, Central and South America. This in turn leads to the mass migration of affected workers in search of work.

Historically, when workers lose traction—that is, the ability to support one’s family—then they migrate in search of opportunities for sustaining work. Some of these mass movements of workers were the Irish workers fleeing in the wake of the “Potato Famine,” the Sicilian exodus to the United States particularly after World War I and exacerbated after the rise of Mussolini and fascism, and the mass migration of African Americans from the agricultural Jim Crow South into the growing factories in the industrial North. All mass worker migrations have one common denominator, and that is the degradation of work and oppression in the geographic areas of the origins of the worker movement.

Black people have suffered high unemployment since the end of slavery, which was the only period of full employment for Black people, and as a result must seek their own methods to minimize the effects of racism on their ability to obtain and retain work.

Black workers must be the catalyst for worker solidarity on a global scale. We must never forget that Mexico lost its northern territory because of its opposition to slavery and providing sanctuary to runaway Africans during their enslavement. It was their opposition to the expansion of slavery that led to the Mexican-American War and the subsequent loss of land for Mexico; and a most valuable gain for the United States of America. Mexicans have a point when they say that they have not crossed the border, the border crossed them.

Black workers must become relevant in their communities to gain the support of unorganized workers. Organized labor must begin to invest in their communities and related organizations. We can only organize on relevance and on a comprehensive demand for the benefit of the working class. We must begin to harness the vast resources of the labor movement and invest in programs that lead the way for the government to propagate, such as the breakfast program initiated by the Black Panther Party which evolved into the Head Start Program as we know it today.

Black trade unionists must establish a progressive program that is tied to workers’ agenda. As trade unionists, we reject all forms of discrimination within the labor movement.

Like the immigrant struggle, workers in the United States must hit the streets and demand full protection for defined-benefit pension plans, full health coverage from the cradle to the grave, protection and improvement of Social Security, and full employment for all eligible workers.

Capitalists in the United States have established a system based on checks and balances. It is not a system of cooperation and collaboration. When we work in partnership with the “corporate bosses,” do we receive a partner share of the profits? If these are the terms of the “partnership,” then it can be a basis for negotiations.

When the “working partners’ retire, no one writes them a check for $140 million.

Certainly, there can be no partnership when pension plans are laid to waste, workers’ wages are out of step with the cost of living, and with the continued assault against the foundation of organized labor, (i.e., the erosion of Davis-Bacon), the destruc tion of defined-benefit pension plans, the continued increase in health-care cost sharing, and increased privatization and outsourcing. These cannot be the basis for “equal partnership.” Workers will achieve equal partnership when labor checks capital and there is a real increase in working families’ bank balance. Organi zed labor must take the helm and lead workers on a path of relevance. Organized labor must take stock of the needs of the class and forge a dynamic future.

Chris Silvera is the chair of the Teamsters National Black Caucus and secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 808.