[The following article was written for publications in Australia, England, and India.--SeeingRed]

(CHICAGO) 8 April 1998 - Just last fall--especially at the October U.S .national union federation [AFL-CIO] convention--all talk was of a "new" and "revitalized" labour movement. The word "militant" was even occasionally sprinkled in pundits' analyses, among the many uses of "fresh," "different" and the like.

Indeed, here was an AFL-CIO convention led by people who accomplished the unprecedented feat of removing the incumbent leaders--hide-bound by all accounts--a convention not meeting at the usual exclusive resort, but in the working-class city of Pittsburgh, where the venerable local "Red Bishop" greeted unionists with warmth and--to their cheers--an explicit attack on "capitalism."

Then, too, "organising the unorganised" was a centerpiece of the meeting--not a small question for unions now driven down to representing a mere 11% of private sector workers. Why, the Vice President of the United States himself joined in, promising delegates that removing governmental obstacles to union organising was now a "top priority." This, too, is no small question, because employers now openly violate U.S. labour laws--firing all workers who sign up to join a union, for instance--knowing full well that the Washington body charged with enforcing them has largely ceased to function; something about a "five-year backlog" on hearing cases....

Even for the most cynical--wary of the big-business newsweeklies' heralding of a "new day for labour" and their glossy photos of the new leaders (though some came from the ranks of Latinos, Blacks, women and even the historically-radical miners' union)--it was hard not to believe. Clearly something was going on.

"We Beat Big Brown"

After all, the convention came on the heels of a victorious August strike against United Parcel Service [UPS]. Here was an historic strike against the largest unionized U.S. employer, a strike where an outpouring of youthful rank-and-file workers won the hearts of the nation and crushed a cocky management's strike-breaking plans--after successful strike-breaking had for some years been established as a given in U.S. labour relations.

Taken together with historically-low unemployment (which obviously favors those selling their labour) both workers and pundits could be excused for believing that a "new day" had arrived.

Perhaps now--at long last, after nearly two decades of massive redistribution of income from society's bottom to its very top--the totemic "pendulum" had begun to swing the other way. (The notion that all politics can be reduced to a pendulum that swings too far one way--but inevitably comes back as far the other way--dominates the U.S. body politic.)

Payback

Yet within weeks of the AFL-CIO convention, the dawn of a new day for labour stood revealed as being much further away than many believed as Washington "dis-elected" the president of the UPS workers' union--and to boot, barred him from office for life. This was not just some minor figure, but Ron Carey, president of the Teamsters Union--the largest union in the country. Nor was he some ancient hack, but a newly-elected leader put forward by the ranks after years of battle with a notoriously corrupt, undemocratic, and gangster-ridden officialdom.

With the charges against Carey pitifully weak--several subordinates committed technical violations of restrictions on campaign contributions from non-Teamsters--Washington was clearly issuing a warning to union tops and workers that they'd face the government's wrath if they dared win nationwide strikes and institute union democracy.

One could only wonder: was the dream of a new day still alive--if momentarily darkened--or was it a hopeless illusion all along?

Workers

On the ground, like in any war, things look more complex than either/or. It's true that the apparent fresh stance of the new AFL-CIO leaders on organising and on opening up to minorities--especially Latinos--has provided some opportunities for workers to act more freely. For instance, new support from the AFL-CIO may have aided the growing social and union movement among Mexican and Mexican-American strawberry workers in California (which saw a march of over 10,000 in the small city of Watsonville this past summer).

But rebellions by underpaid and mistreated workers of Mexican origin--many of them ironically "illegal immigrants" in territory forcibly taken from Mexico--have been occurring for several years now. Take, for instance, strikes and union organising drives by hotel workers in Las Vegas and San Francisco, drywall construction workers in California, and the "Justice for Janitors" campaign in the same state.

Resistance to "Reaganite" attacks on wages and working conditions among already-unionized workers is not a new phenomenon either: there were important strikes by Midwestern meatpackers in the mid-eighties [broken], by Eastern Airlines workers in 1989-91 [fought to a draw], and by heavy equipment manufacturing workers at Caterpillar beginning in 1993 [perhaps a draw--but still fighting].

Eight Hours Work for Eight Hours Pay

But whatever its precursors, the size and strength of the UPS strike marked the emergence of a new phenomenon: rank-and-file workers taking the fight against austerity into their own hands. For far from being the brainchild of a beneficent Ron Carey, this strike driven from below--and carried out from below as well. For the first time in years truly mass picketing was utilized by U.S. workers in a nationwide strike--workers themselves actually shut down more than 90% of company operations. (Shocking as it may be to those outside the United States, mass picketing and strikes that close production are not features of American labour relations.)

The issues in the strike were also worth special notice: workers directly tackled the most important question facing the unions today, re-establishing full-time work and full pay. It is here that U.S. unions have been most weakened, so much so that even their sorry 11% of the workforce is in benefits arguably closer to five.

The institution of two-tier pay scales, or lengthy periods of "progression" to full wages, has become rampant throughout U.S. industry, along part-time jobs and the "jobbing out" of formerly-unionized work to non-union contractors. Taken together, it is now not unusual to find less than half the workers in a union working 40-hour weeks at full wages.

It was against just these practices that UPS workers struck, following years of rank-and-file unrest. And it was around these practices that UPS workers found a responsive chord among the rest of the U.S. working class.

Pickets lines became miniature festivals of the oppressed, with not only large numbers of UPS workers of all races, but with a constant presence of workers from other industries as well. Remarkable as well was the youth of most of them.

Not Alone

Notable too, was the utter miscalculation by UPS management of what they were facing. They were somewhat surprised that their employees were foolish enough to strike, but they were clearly astonished when their casual national advertising for strike-breaking jobs galvanized UPS workers' resistance--and put management beyond the Pale in the eyes of most Americans.

While the two-week strike did not succeed in eliminating all part-time work or all under-scale pay, it marked a turning point in U.S. labour relations. Here at last was something not seen in decades: young workers leading a militant national strike in defense of old union standard of "eight hours work for eight hours pay," winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the population, and stopping strike-breaking dead in its tracks. Here was a new development indeed.

That the UPS strike was not some anomaly was shown just a few months before when workers at San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit [BART] also struck successfully over the elimination of two-tier wages.

Then last month [March] Caterpillar workers--still intransigent after six years of battle (which included successful company strikebreaking)--voted down an offer strongly recommended by their union leaders. Here was an offer which would have left virtually all of them better off, yet it also left 160 of the most militant workers--fired by the company for strike activities--without jobs. Both union and company leaders were shocked by workers' lack of "realism"--yet within days they agreed to rehire all one hundred and sixty.

Employers and the government

Nonetheless, employers heedlessly continue on their aggressive course. "Downsizing" (corporate-speak for sackings and redundancies) continue apace as U.S. capitalists jockey for competitive advantage against their European and Japanese counterparts in a world glutted with unsold goods.

That the UPS and BART strikes--and the intransigence of Caterpillar workers--had failed to alter the rules of the game was underlined by the stance of both management and government in the confrontation now unfolding between the Philadelphia mass transit agency [SEPTA] and its workers (primarily organised into the Transport Workers Union [TWU]).

Here an aggressive new management--installed by a suburban and Republican-dominated Board of directors--has launched a frontal attack on wages and working conditions, calling for the "wholesale elimination" of existing contracts and work-rules.

Moreover, SEPTA determinedly announced plans to continue running trains should workers strike against the tearing up of existing agreements. This was audacious indeed: a public challenge to the most militant union in the nation's fifth largest city--a city ranked number two in dependence on mass transportation.

And behind it lay not the Republican Board but the government of the United States which--under a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and a Democratic president--eliminated all federal subsidies for mass transit operations. This was clearly nothing less than marching orders for wholesale union-busting, since there isn't a single mass transit agency in the world which operates without governmental assistance.

Whether SEPTA workers, who in the largely-Black TWU local 234 once created one of the more militant and democratic unions in the country--will knuckle under to demands for two-tier wages and part-time workers is unsure as of this writing. Clearly workers are taking a serious approach to the attacks on them, breaking their long-held tradition of "no contract, no work" by extending the existing contract past its expiration. Additionally, by waiting until contracts with suburban SEPTA workers expire as well, workers will be able to launch a strike that is region-wide.

Yet even that prospect has been met with intransigence by the SEPTA board: "The TWU is mistaken if it believes the threat of a regional strike will diminish the board's resolve to modernize labor agreements .... SEPTA's quest for a drug-free workplace, reduced absenteeism, a completely restructured, more efficient workers'-compensation program and modern work rules that would improve productivity and service are on the bargaining tables because they are fair and just," said the Board in a 2 April statement.

This confrontation could become the most important current labour battle in the United States. While its outcome will not be decisive in U.S. labour relations, it could have an important effect--especially should workers strike and face continued operations of rail lines. Indications are that strikebreaking in Philadelphia would represent a dangerous miscalculation by SEPTA.

Yet, whatever the outcome, the confrontation in Philadelphia has already demonstrated that, far from a gentle pendulum swing back toward employer recognition of legitimate labour demands, U.S. labour relations are instead polarising into two increasingly irreconcilable camps. On the one hand stand employers and their government demanding as much as 50% cuts in pay and in hours, and blocking free elections within the unions; on the other stand workers trying to simultaneously fight back and overcome the obstacle of a hide-bound leadership with rank-and-file activism and union democracy.

New leadership?

For despite the brouhaha about "insurgent" leadership taking the helm at the AFL-CIO, unionized workers have yet to see any indication that things are anything but business-as-usual. What small efforts the national AFL-CIO and its regional bodies have made to enlist rank-and-filers in union activities (like their "Union Cities" program) have been overwhelmingly limited to campaigning for Democratic party politicians--a move that, far from veering off from the old ways, actually digs labour deeper into the path followed by the ousted old guard.

And unionising efforts--limited primarily to the rapidly-growing city of Las Vegas, and to some government workers--have yet to add to the number of U.S. unionists, as losses continue at a similar pace.

Moreover, the bold new strategy unveiled by the new AFL-CIO leadership to overcome the National Labour Relations Board's "five-year backlog" is ... appealing to employers to simply capitulate to organising drives--with no NLRB-supervised vote by workers on whether to join a union, with no attempts by the company to speak or intimidate against a pro-union vote. Imagine the Iraqis saying "Wait--here's an idea: why don't we ask the U.S. to lift the sanctions?"

Nor--despite the U.S. vice-president's promises--has there been any moves in Washington to streamline NLRB functioning, let alone to alter its composition so that when it does act, it actually enforces the laws instead of ignoring them.

Rather than leading labour into the light of a new dawn, the new union leadership--in the harsh light of class polarization--looks irrelevant at best, as facilitating a deadly two-tier structure inside the unions at worse, all in the name of "new unionism."

America first

After all, the leadership of American unions have long since turned their backs on workers outside U.S. borders--and many inside--in favor of a "partnership" with the U.S. national-security state. Not only has labour officialdom turned away from global unionism, but it has enlisted in Washington's wars against the Third World, even providing union cover for covert actions against overseas unions. More than one wag has dubbed the AFL-CIO the "AFL-CIA."

Moreover, during the entire 20 years since "austerity" has become the rule in labour relations, AFL-CIO activity has been focused on campaigning for "American jobs" against various "free trade" pacts negotiated by Washington, against jobs for foreign workers, and against the importation of foreign goods..

Yet at the Pittsburgh convention, the new AFL-CIO leadership posed a stronger fight for American jobs as its value against the old guard.

So, too, did it pose a deeper orientation to the pro-capitalist Democratic party; championing (for instance) the notion of 2,000 union members running as Democrats in the year 2000--a notion arguably equivalent to 2,000 women joining Islam to advance the fight for women's rights.

Is this judgment overly harsh? Could the new AFL-CIO leadership still represent a break from the past?

Comedian

Take it from one of the foremost "radical" labour officials in the U.S., Walter Johnson, head of the San Francisco Central Labour Council, a man who over the years has regularly lent his name to civil rights, civil liberties, and even anti-war causes.

At a press event organized to showcase the achievements of the new "Union Cities" program, I asked Mr Johnson whether it represented a turn to the ranks and away from relying on Democratic Party politicians. Further, would the Convention take up and act favorably on the resolution before it--brought by his own San Francisco Labour Council--advocating the launch of a Labour Party?

Johnson, ever a suave PR-man, was suddenly without words, and his mouth hung open for some long seconds. He finally begin to repeat earlier prepared remarks about "Union Cities." Later, he pulled me aside--chuckling conspiratorially and shaking his head: "Only in San Francisco," he said with a roll of his eyes, "would they ever pass a resolution like that."

Stirrings

Yet it's on the very question that the future of U.S. labor ultimately hangs, for it's nigh impossible to independently stand up for workers when tied into a junior partnership with capitalists in both the economic and political spheres. Starting down a new road--which ultimately requires U.S. unions launch a Labour Party--would mean making alliances with the 85% of U.S. workers who are non-union, and alliances with "foreign" workers both inside and outside the borders of the United States.

But if labour officials show no signs of turning, workers are impelled by unremitting attacks on wages and working conditions (as in Philadelphia transit) to find a new way.

That's what's important about the UPS and the San Francisco transit strikes, and the actions by Caterpillar workers.

That workers could rudely disturb the long-running orgy of the wealthy may well be unthinkable to America's many Romanovs. After all, stock prices have rocketed to ten-times their value of less than a decade ago. Indeed, on 7 April one executive scored a gain of $160 million in a single day, after the announcement of a major merger plan. And Washington casually spends $600 million to threaten starving people in Iraq, while eliminating subsidies for mass transit operation.

All that--what some have called "one-sided class war"--is nothing new.

But one-sided class war is now turning into polarisation. And if a "new day" for labour emerges from deepening divisions within U.S. society, it won't look like the reconciliation dreamed of by union officials. It will look like UPS and Caterpillar: two-sided class war.

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