First Published: The Call, Vol. 8, No. 4, January 29, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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While a general upsurge of workers’ struggle did not develop last year, there were definite signs that the growing rebellion within the ranks of organized labor is gathering steam.
The miners’ strike, the big wave of public employee and teacher walkouts, the iron-ore strike lasting four months, and the contract fight waged by postal workers – these were some of the highlights of the class struggle last year. But despite these examples, the treacherous role of the top union misleaders served to cripple strike activity overall.
Strike struggles were generally at an ebb last year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that, “Data for 1978 so far show fewer strikes [involving] fewer workers than in recent years.” Specifically, figures for the first 11 months of last year show there were 4,766 strikes in effect during that period. This is the lowest recorded strike activity in over a decade.
There were several factors accounting for the lower strike activity. For one thing, the capitalists have launched an unprecedentedly ferocious anti-labor offensive, aimed at driving workers’ living standards down and taking away even more of their rights. A new coalition of some of the most reactionary monopoly capitalists organized to defeat the labor law reform bill and common situs picketing act and to push a whole new wave of union busting in industry.
Workers were in most areas ill-prepared to resist the offensive. This is because organized labor’s top leadership continued to act as a ball and chain on the rank and file, restricting its efforts to fight back militantly. The constant sellout and betrayal of reformist and revisionist union misleaders sowed a sense of frustration and cynicism among many workers and promoted a fear among them of increased competition for jobs.
However, there were notable exceptions to this relative quiet, exceptions which stand out as positive examples for the rank and file as it moves into 1979.
The historic 110-day coal miners’ strike, for instance, struck fear into the hearts of not only the coal bosses, but all of big business as well. Going so far as to defy a federal back-to-work order, striking miners demonstrated the fighting capacity of the working class when its ranks are united and it adopts militant and flexible tactics. Despite the betrayal of union president Arnold Miller and other UMW officials, miners still emerged from the strike with a record 42% wage increase.
The miners’ strike was also an eye-opener about the role of the government in protecting the interests of the capitalist class. When President Carter dispatched troops to the coalfields and invoked Taft-Hartley, many workers across the country saw through the state’s phony mask of “neutrality.” Many also saw more clearly how the bosses, the union bureaucrats and the government collude to attack labor.
As a result of the deepening economic crisis of capitalism in 1978, wages – along with job securityand union rights – emerged as the central focus of labor’s fightback. The near double-digit inflation and predictions of a new recession are now propelling the fight against wage controls forward as the biggest challenge for the workers’ movement in the new year.
The worsening crisis was accompanied by a new campaign of racism and increased discrimination against women and minorities. The courts were brought into play by the bosses, making use of the Bakke decision and the case of Brian Weber at Bethlehem Steel to smash the gains of minorities in hiring and promotion under the fraud of “reverse discrimination.”
The experiences of 1978 showed workers time and time again that the fight against racial discrimination must be a central part of the labor movement. The powerful role played by minority workers, especially in strikes by government employees and miners, demonstrated that they are a vital force to be united with and an example for white workers to learn from.
In Tupelo, Miss., for example, Black people fought against discrimination and Klan terror and showed that militant unity could be built. A number of local unions even gave direct support to the Tupelo marchers because members understood that anti-Black means anti-labor.
Black and other minority workers helped spark last summer’s revolt of city workers, while Latino workers in the FLOC-organized tomato fields of Ohio last year also provided a strong example of labor militancy.
The capitalist crisis also forced more women out of the home and into social production last year. For the first time, over half the women in the U.S. held jobs. This had the effect of bringing men and women workers into common struggle against the system to a greater degree. The leading role of women in such strike battles as the militant Essex Wire walkout – which ended as 1978 began – and their role in building rank-and-file caucuses in steel and auto proved again that women can fight just as hard as men against the employers.
But another trend exists within the workers’ movement, a trend of thought and action which stands opposed to that movement’s vital interests.
This trend is represented by the top labor bureaucrats who are bribed by imperialism’s superprofits to act as the bosses’ agents inside the unions. Last year, though, these misleaders were confronted with the rank and file’s growing radicalization because of the crisis of U.S. imperialism. Their bankrupt line of “class peace” and “equality of sacrifice” between labor and management was increasingly exposed as the workers’ living conditions deteriorated.
The capitalist offensive in 1978 forced the bureaucrats into a difficult position. Their arrangement with the bosses – to keep the rank and file in check – was severely tested by the intensity of big business’s efforts to crush the workers’ movement. As a result, the top echelons of organized labor were in disarray.
In response, a whole section of this labor bureaucracy struck a more militant and radical pose in order to better hang onto their positions at the head of the workers. 1978 saw this group of liberal labor leaders, exemplified by the UAW’s Doug Fraser, the IAM’s Winpisinger and the leaders of the electrical and oil workers’ unions widen their split with the old-line reactionary bureaucrats like George Meany and the steel union’s Lloyd McBride.
Fraser, for example, captured national headlines last July with his blast against big business for waging “one-sided class war” against the workers. But was he suddenly ready to launch a large-scale labor fightback against the capitalists, alt some claimed?
In fact, Fraser’s “radicalism” was only designed to cool out the rank and file, to misdirect the revolt from below and prevent the development of militant labor activity. His preachings to support the Democratic Party liberals like Sen. Ted Kennedy and his own later endorsement of Carter’s wage freeze bear out this conclusion.
Judging from events last year, it’s clear that the misleaders’ “militancy” was chiefly a response to pressure from the rank-and-file workers below. Where this rank and file was united, organized and ready to fight for its demands, the bureaucrats were forced to retreat. The caucus movement, for instance, in Culinary Local 2 in San Francisco unseated the corrupt Belardi leadership and opened the way for that union’s first strike in 30 years.
In New Jersey, New York and San Francisco, union leaders stood idly by while 200 postal workers were fired and 2,500 others disciplined for wildcatting against the sellout postal contract last summer. But using demonstrations-and other militant tactics, and mobilizing broad support, postal workers have now forced the union leadership to take up their fight for amnesty
.The Fraternal Association of Steel Haulers (FASH) strike was another example of rank-and-file militancy. They demanded the right to negotiate their own contract and exposed the sellout leadership of Teamster president Fitzsimmons.
The UAW also saw rank-and-file struggle in 1978. A number of local presidents were voted out of office last year and replaced by reform-minded and, in some cases, rank-and-file workers. This was accompanied by strike votes in many of the UAW locals.
While 1978 did not produce any great turn towards revolution within the U.S. working class; a good number of union activists and strikers were won to the cause of socialism. The strike struggles of the miners, city workers, postal workers and many others were increasingly influenced by the presence of communist fighters and left-wing or revolutionary forces.
Our Party, the CPML, experienced its greatest growth among factory workers, and The Call was prominent in many places where workers took up the class struggle, The Party educated the workers in the course of taking an active role in the struggle itself, from the shop floor to the picket lines. The Party was there, pointing out the need for class unity, exposing the betrayal of the sellout union leaders and linking the immediate struggle with the long-range goals of socialism.
While their influence is still relatively small, these revolutionary activists and organizers are succeeding in rooting themselves in the plants and within the trade unions. This fact is recognized by the bosses themselves, who are increasing their repression and firings of activists throughout the country. But such reaction is only drawing more workers around the militants.
Despite many weaknesses in their work, in particular a certain inflexibility in tactics and a failure to always base their activity on the concrete conditions, the revolutionary forces showed steady growth and development in 1978 as they have done in the labor movement over the last decade.
And the crisis itself is turning more and more workers towards political activity as well as economic struggle. While the coming year may not bring about a massive upsurge in the movement, there are signs that 1979 will be a much bigger year for class struggle in the U.S.
Over 700 important contracts will expire this year, affecting 3.8 million workers. In April, 300,000 teamsters face their contract, fight, as do 55,000 rubber workers. Over 200,000 garment workers will renegotiate contracts in June, and 100,000 electrical workers will press their demands in July. Finally, the biggest contract fight of all will be waged by 760,000 auto workers in September.
In all these struggles, the rank-and-file movement is maturing and developing its leadership and organization and getting prepared for the big battles ahead.