First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 10, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The year 1976 was marked by a sharp upturn in the activity and consciousness of the workers’ movement. The year saw many long and militant strikes, including more than 3,000 in the first half of the year alone. These spontaneous struggles were battle-grounds for developing greater political consciousness among the workers and for demonstrating who their friends and enemies really are.
Fierce rank-and-file opposition against the trade union bureaucrats was fueled in the course of one struggle after another, from the nationwide truckers’ and rubber workers’ strikes to the miners’ wildcat, the auto walkouts and the current meatcutters’ battle in Los Angeles. The reformist and revisionist misleaders wielded their huge bureaucratic resources time and again in the bosses’ interests: fighting to reconcile the workers’ anger and just demands with the continued rule of the giant capitalists.
The bureaucrats’ treachery, as well as court decisions and police attacks, gave a greater political character to many of the demands raised in the spontaneous struggles.
Miners wildcatted against government interference, defending the right to strike. Workers in the garment and rubber industries, among others, closed ranks against fascist deportation raids, fighting for the democratic rights of foreign-born workers. In union locals across the country, struggles against discrimination and racist court rulings were linked to the tight to free Gary Tyler and to support self-determination for the Afro-American people.
The scope of the spontaneous movement in 1976 and the growing militance and consciousness of the workers underlined the need to build revolutionary leadership for the trade unions and to train a core of advanced fighters to lead the struggles ahead. This year calls for ever greater efforts to educate, organize and win many more advanced fighters to the cause of communism and to the ranks of the new communist party which we are building.
The labor campaign initiated by the October League for the period ahead has been organized to accomplish some of these difficult and essential tasks. The campaign raises three main slogans around which to carry out revolutionary education, provide tactical leadership in the present period, and point the road ahead for revolutionizing the unions: Boycott the elections! Drive out the bureaucrats! Build class struggle unions!
These main slogans focus the campaign on the struggles unfolding in three of the largest industrial unions in the U.S. – the United Auto Workers (UAW), the United Steel Workers (USW), and the United Mine Workers (UMW) – where there are upcoming union elections. Not only has the rank-and- file struggle been sharp in these unions, but it has set off a heated power struggle among different factions of the bureaucracy. Each of these factions is trying to channel the rank-and-file movement off its developing revolutionary course.
In these elections, the capitalists make use of the phony communists of the revisionist CPUSA and militant-sounding reformists to appeal to the increasingly more radicalized workers in order to keep them on the path of reformism.
The boycott of the elections in these major unions is a tactic aimed at exposing the bureaucrats of all stripes and especially the liberal brand of “insurgents” and “dissidents.” Agitation and propaganda in the campaign must show that the rank and file has no alternative among the candidates for union office. All preach one or another form of reformism and class collaboration – Ed Sadlowski as well as Lloyd McBride in steel; Arnold Miller and Henry Patrick as well as Lee Roy Patterson in the UMW, and all of Woodcock’s inner-circle cronies like Douglas Fraser and Irving Bluestone in auto.
The boycott corresponds to the growing consciousness of many workers who have seen from their own experience that support for any of these reformist misleaders is a dead-end street. More and more workers, for the first time in decades, are actively seeking out revolutionary ideas and organization. The campaign is aimed at these workers especially, to rally them to fight for revolutionary leadership in the unions and to train them as agitators, propagandists and organizers for the new party.
At the same time, the campaign pro-vides a means of, organizing and raising the political level of the thousands of spontaneous protests which have shaken every major, city and industry over the past year. Capitalism’s deep economic crisis has created intolerable work conditions, poverty and unemployment for the masses of people. It was these conditions which unleashed a storm of economic struggle in 1976 – more than 38.1 million strike days from January to October alone.
The labor campaign will deepen and broaden these struggles, raising demands for jobs or income for all and an end to lay-offs, speedup, and forced overtime. It will rally workers to fight for a shorter work week with no cut in pay, for an end to discrimination against minority and women workers, to defend the right to strike; and to organize the unorganized.
Even these most immediate and basic demands cannot be guaranteed under capitalism and will never be won by relying on the capitalists’ good graces nor on their agents in the labor movement. This important lesson was at the very heart of the main labor struggles over the past year.
The 1976 strike wave itself and resulting economic gains raised the question of the role and importance of strikes. The reformist and revisionist labor lieutenants apologized for the strikes and fought to end them as swiftly as possible.
The sellouts in the 1199 New York hospital strike and the auto strike were two glaring examples. After imposing scab settlements, the bureaucrats in both strikes claimed that strikes are an unnecessary labor tool and that labor-management talks can yield as much or more by safeguarding production and profits.
Chief misleaders like I.W. Abel in the USW, Arnold Miller in the UMW, and Albert Shanker, head of the teachers’ federation, attacked in public statements the right of workers to strike. Some of the year’s most significant, battles were in opposition to these capitalist agents, such as the 120,000-strong miners wildcat last summer and the growing movement among steel workers to smash Abel’s no-strike agreement.
The four-month rubber workers’ strike and 38-day battle of 1,000 Chicago nurses demonstrated the importance of the strike weapon in winning concessions from the capitalists. In these struggles, rank-and-file workers built unity, took initiative and held the line until the bosses caved in. Rubber workers won substantial wage and cost-of-living increases, and the nurses won union rights and most of their economic demands.
Another important advance in the labor movement came in the battle to organize the unorganized, especially in the Black Belt South and the Southwest, where national oppression has been used to divide the work force, keep out unions and drive down living standards for all workers. Building multi-national unity was a decisive factor in determining the success or failure of these workers’ struggles.
Black and white workers – with women playing a leading role – in Monroe, La., cracked GM’s “southern strategy” and voted in the UAW at their headlamp parts plant. Mainly Chicano and Native American miners achieved a great victory in the Southwest, winning union representation at New Mexico’s Sundance Mine after a long and bitter struggle.
But in many other union drives such as the textile workers’ battle at Cannon Mills in North Carolina, the union bureaucrats continued their historic policy of refusing to organize the unorganized. At Cannon Mills, the ACTWU turned its back on the organizing drive, despite enthusiastic support for it from the rank and file. Minorities and women, the least unionized and most brutally exploited, have stepped forward in union drives and many other struggles as leading class fighters. The role of the Filipina nurses at Cook County Hospital in Chicago was just one example.
The work of communists over the past year has shown the importance of carrying out consistent revolutionary education to break the hold of reformism and the labor misleaders over the majority of workers.
The strike struggle at Capitol Packaging in Chicago, which ended last January, was an example of communist work and a model for struggles which developed throughout the year: The Call as well as leaflets and on-the-line agitation were used to popularize a Marxist-Leninist analysis and to expose the reformist bureaucrats and the array of opportunist forces which tried to sabotage the struggle. At the same time, propaganda work with the advanced workers at Capitol was decisive in strengthening their leadership in the strike and winning sympathizers and also recruits to the communist movement.
Last year saw communists dig deeper and firmer roots in the working class. They used the weekly Call to initiate factory networks, recruited workers to build communist cells in plants, and played a leading role in many struggles around the country, asThe Call has reported in every issue.
The growing influence of communism was also recognized by the misleaders and the imperialists, who visibly stepped up their red-baiting attacks and goon actions aimed at driving a wedge between the masses of workers and the leading activists and communist fighters.
The frenzy of anti-communism stirred up at the September UMW convention and the expulsion of a Call reporter from the hall, demonstrated the bureaucrats’ fear and ruthlessness towards all’ rank-and- file activists and revolutionaries.
A leading voice in the anti-communist tirade has been the revisionist CPUSA. These scabs supported Arnold Miller’s red-baiting at the UMW convention and have stepped up their attacks on the October League in many other unions.
The emergence of the revisionist party as a more prominent force in the labor movement was another significant development of 1976. True to their role as a fifth column for the interests of the Soviet Union, the CP has increased its propaganda for “detente” and trade with the USSR as its program for the U.S. workers’ movement.
The revisionists have tightened their alliance with the liberal and social-democratic union leaders like Ed Sadlowski as a way of gaining positions of influence for themselves. Riding Sadlowski’s coattails, several revisionists were elected to positions of leadership in the USW. In unions where the CP already has a strong influence, they left their mark of treachery on important strike battles. In both the 1199 Hospital strike and the San Francisco city workers’ strike, the revisionists paved the way for sellouts by preaching reliance on liberal politicians.
More than anything else, the struggles of 1976 showed that the fight against capitalism’s exploitation and misery cannot be conducted without waging a determined struggle against capitalism’s agents right inside the workers’ movement. The labor campaign which the October League has initiated for 1977 is designed to draw thousands more workers into this fight against both the bosses and the bureaucrats.