A statement on the crisis of the unemployed
By Workers World Party (1975)
THE DEPTH OF THE CRISIS
The “business recession” of 6 months ago has now become a full-scale depression for the working class. In the face of escalating layoffs, the plight of the unemployed is growing desperate, while the threat of still further layoffs hangs like a storm cloud over the heads of those still working. The U.S. Department of Labor now admits that there are more people out of work than there have been at any time for the past 34 years. The most conservative figures say about 8 million. But with part-timers and people so discouraged that they have “stopped looking,” most of whom are not registered, everybody knows that the real figure is at least 12 million – with Black people, other minorities, and women represented out of all proportion to their numbers in the population.
But 12 million is only the figure for working adults. If their families are included, the number of people affected comes to 35 or 40 million. And with additional millions of needy working class families, mostly mothers and children, forced to go on welfare, the total amount of people in desperate condition now approaches 50 million – or close to one-quarter of the population of the United States.
THE DUBIOUS SCHEMES OF WASHINGTON
The Ford-Rockefeller-Kissinger team are doing nothing or next to nothing about this appalling situation and are in fact trying to belittle its magnitude and conceal its horrors. The tax rebate scheme of this billionaire-controlled political gang is only a trick to make poor people feel rich for the one day they receive their $50 or $100 check – which is barely enough to pay the gas and electric bill at present skyrocketing rates. This tax rebate – pennies for the poor and billions for the rich – has meaning only as a “pump-priming” measure. Aside from it being a transparent attempt to buy votes from the workers, it is mainly intended to create a new ripple of business, to provide new sales for the very corporations that threw these workers on the scrap heap in the first place.
And even if this dubious gimmick should actually give the required shot-in-the-arm to these anti-labor corporations, there is utterly no sign, much less guarantee, that the 50 million outrageously neglected people would really benefit from the corporations’ additional profits.
UNION LEADERSHIP HAS NO REAL PROGRAM
The top leaders of the official labor movement – that is, the trade union bureaucracy – have so far shown no independent policy of their own, as against labor’s enemies in the White House, to really rescue labor’s brothers and sisters who are walking the streets.
This leadership’s only program is the program of the Democratic Party – the Democratic “loyal opposition” to the hidebound, openly big-business Republicans. This leadership proposes for their only solution to elect more Democrats to the already Democratically controlled Congress and to trail behind whatever opportunist Presidential candidate the Democrats may put into the field in 1976. Their policy is really a policy of stalling, of waiting for something to “turn up,” or of crossing their fingers in hopes that the corporate economists are right and good times will come back before things get even worse.
THE GREAT POTENTIAL
And yet the unions led by these bureaucrats comprise well over 20 million members. They have combined treasuries of hundreds of millions of dollars; and above all, they have the potential combined strength, the economic and political power of several times all their individual members if they only mobilize in a unified way. And this is infinitely more than the Democratic and Republican parties put together can really command in living human resources.
These big business parties can only get votes; they can only bedazzle the people in front of their television sets at home; they can make promises and get the people to pull down levers in the election machines; but they cannot and will not even try to organize the people for action against their oppressors. The unions, on the other hand, are organizations of the people who do the real work of the country and can stop the work of the country, too.
SLOGANS AND DEMANDS
The question is how to get these immense working class organs into action – with, against, or in spite of their present leadership. This can hardly be done by merely repeating a slogan, even a good one. The idea of 30 hours a week or 32 hours or 35 hours for 40 hours pay is a good one; the idea of declaring various hard-hit cities to be “disaster areas” eligible for immediate additional federal funds is also good and even more concrete at the moment; the idea of a drive for 8 million federally financed jobs, or the idea of calling upon the government to enforce the Full Employment Act of 1946 – these are all good. And one or two of the top union leaders may even adopt one or more of them – in words – after prodding from the ranks.
But the question remains: how to make these demands stick; how to put these ideas into action, struggle for them and win them. In other words: how to do it.
PROTEST AND STRUGGLE
What has to be done is to force the union bureaucracy to launch a struggle for the unemployed, as a matter of life and death for those still employed, as well as for their already suffering brothers and sisters outside the plants and for the union movement itself. What has to be done, besides appealing to the employed workers directly on behalf of their unemployed co-workers, is to seize upon the already active stirrings and loud statements by the bureaucrats themselves (in response to the tremendous pressure from below) and push toward a massive struggle of employed and unemployed together.
Large and militant labor demonstrations have already been staged in some cities. The UAW has already taken thousands to Washington and the workers made a splendid show of militancy there. And the AFL-CIO has now called for a huge one-day rally in the capital for April 26. This clearly shows that the workers are pushing for action and ready to fight. The top leaders, on the other hand, so far have shown a tendency to stop and be satisfied with a protest alone. And they unquestionably dominate the unions at this time. Nevertheless, it is possible for the workers to use the instrument of these unions, even to some degree under their present leadership, to get the results that are so urgently needed.
THE UNIONS BELONG TO THE WORKERS
This is possible because the unions are class organizations – that is, they are objectively instruments of the working class in spite of the misleadership of the bureaucrats. Their whole reason for being is to protest and advance the interest of this class. They were founded in struggle, often bitter and deadly struggle of the workers against the capitalists and all the capitalist class forces of deception as well as violence. And the bureaucracy itself, no matter how much it may hurt the workers from time to time or divert the struggle away from its logical goal, cannot in the very nature of things turn the unions into non-unions or turn themselves into capitalists while they are still union leaders. For if they did so their function would be gone; their own reason for being would disappear. Much as they fear the results of a militant policy, much as they shrink form a militant struggle, the bureaucrats cannot absolutely or directly oppose it, especially in such a crisis for the labor movement itself.
FORGING THE LINK
The interests of the employed and the unemployed are basically the same. The basic link that unites them is at first sight a fragile one and to some outsiders only a theoretical one. But the workers still employed already feel the winds of unemployment beating upon them, especially when they see whole plant shutdowns as well as five-figure layoffs in their own companies. Once they realize their own interests are completely interwoven with those of the unemployed, they will pressure their leaders for action – at first by taking such action themselves in sporadic and short-lived displays of anger, and later of organizing for massive and united efforts of all labor.
But, contrariwise, the unemployed must try in a hundred ways in word and deed to forge that same link with the employed. It is here that the most conscious and most self-sacrificing rank-and-file leaders have the greatest role to play. And it is in the proposals that best unite and best dramatize and best galvanize to action, that the conscious vanguard can lead the way to real and concrete victories for all.
THE CAPITAL BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE!
What is now needed is more than a one-day demonstration, however impressive it may be, but a great action of a struggle-type, with a determination to focus on a certain concrete goal and try with all reasonable means to win it. For example, the April 26 demonstration is expected to draw 40,000 workers. There are at least 50,000 people working as lobbyists for the big corporations in that city. And they get laws passed that virtually give hundreds of billions of the people’s money to these corporations. Why couldn’t the 40,000 of the employed and unemployed American working people stay in Washington until their demands are met?
Washington belongs to the people. And if the people cannot enforce their right to stay there on April 26, there will be other opportunities, especially if the leading militants fight for the idea. It is a question of organizing for an actual concrete objective, and not just for a statement of protest with oratory alone. (But of course a giant one-day demonstration can become a testing ground or preparatory step for real action at a later date.)
THE SITDOWN STRIKE IN A NEW ERA
The American works, even though not politically educated at this time, are least inclined to mince words or to shrink from a fight when their living conditions are at stake. And they will be perfectly willing to take strong action in Washington when they are united to do it.
It is true that people have gone to Washington a hundred times without getting any visible results. But hungry workers united in mighty unions are a different matter. Washington is full of lying politicians and broken promises. But it is also the place where the executive committee of the whole capitalist class does its business.
Washington is a logical and excellent place to replay the sitdown strikes that brought such a great victory to the organized workers nearly 40 years ago. It can be a focal point for a greater and more political sitdown strike of the employed and unemployed together. And difficult as that may be to organize at first, the real difficulty will not be the problem of the workers, but the problem of Ford, Rockefeller, and all their crew when the workers do it.
Last updated: 11 May 2026