To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
October 23, 2021
- On the current strike wave in the US
- The rank-and-file revolt against the current labor leaders is an essential part of the strike wave
- Notes
The D/SWV list aims to bring to the attention of our readers, not only our own writing, but knowledge of the best writing elsewhere in the left about the state of the workers’ movement and the radical left. Below there are two items from writers with different overall views then ours, but which give a vivid picture of what is going on in the workers’ movement today. The first, based on a collaboration between the Intercept and Labor Notes, consists of excerpts from an article giving a feeling for the extent of the current strike movement. The second is a comment from John Reimann of Oakland Socialist, posted originally on the Marxmail email list, pointing out that the first article ignores a crucial feature of this movement, namely the efforts of rank-and-file union members to strike despite the opposition of the leaders of their own unions.
Below are excerpts from the article “The John Deere Strike Shows the
Tight Labor Market Is Ready to Pop” by Jonah Furman and Gabriel Winant,
October 18, 2021. (1)
Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, production workers at a John Deere facility in Waterloo, Iowa, started shutting down the plant, quenching the furnaces in the foundry. The plant was already mostly empty, with Deere telling overnight workers to stay home. Three days earlier, union members at United Auto Workers meetings in Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas had voted overwhelmingly to reject a proposed contract that gave subinflation raises and eliminated pensions for all new hires. The rejection came as a surprise to both the union leadership and the company; even some of the workers who had voted no and authorized a strike were surprised that it was actually happening. The 10,000 workers who walked off the job are striking Deere for the first time in 35 years. “Just confirmed Waterloo has their picket signs,” one worker said before the strike began. “Shit’s about to get real.”
They join 2,000 hospital workers striking in Buffalo, New York; 1,400 production workers for Kellogg’s in four states; 450 steelworkers in Huntington, West Virginia; and a one-day walk-off of 2,000 telecommunications workers in California, all since October 1. One thousand Alabama coal miners, 700 nurses in Massachusetts, 400 whiskeymakers in Kentucky, and 200 bus drivers in Reno, Nevada, were already on strike, in addition to recently settled strikes by 2,000 carpenters in Washington, 600 Frito-Lay workers in Kansas, and 1,000 Nabisco factory workers at five plants across the country.
And there are tens of thousands of workers waiting in the wings, with 37,000 health care workers at Kaiser in Oregon, California, and Hawaii who have either authorized a strike or are about to as well as several large unions of academic workers also readying to strike. More than 60,000 film and television workers were prepared to walk out, with 90 percent of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees members voting 98 percent to strike, before a tentative contract was reached on Saturday. A vote on whether to ratify that contract will be held in the next several weeks.
This strike wave isn’t the 1940s, when 1 in 10 U.S. workers went on
strike in the space of a year. But it isn’t the labor lull of the
2010s, either, when large strike activity in the private sector fell
toward zero. Today, workers are increasingly militant — that is,
unwilling to accept bad terms of employment — but they are not
particularly organized. With union density at a historical nadir, the
unions are playing an inspirational role, but they aren’t the only
source of the action. What we’re seeing now is strike activity
beginning to rise from a decades-long trough as the “essential” worker
— a new category of worker born of the coronavirus pandemic —
challenges the boss to make good on that designation.
…………………………………….
In terms of strike activity, the current private sector wave picks up where the teachers left off, after an interlude of relative inaction during the height of the pandemic. In 2020, moreover, teachers formed the first major group of workers to refuse to accept whatever terms the employer dictated for reopening the workplace. It is difficult to imagine teachers speaking out against returning to work in unsafe conditions as much as they did without the national wave of militant teachers’ strikes in the two preceding years. This resistance has now spread across the economy, in both organized and individual forms.
…………………………………….
President Joe Biden styles himself as labor’s champion, aspiring to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” Days before he launched his presidential campaign (using a Pittsburgh union hall for his stage), Biden appeared on the picket line of one of the major strikes of 2019, at the Stop & Shop grocery chain in New England. Recently, confronted with businesses having a hard time hiring staff, the president said, “Pay them more.”
But when asked to take sides, he’s stuck to official neutrality, his
press secretary citing unspecified “legal reasons.” On Friday, when
asked about the John Deere strike, he stated, obviously, “They have a
right to strike. They have a right to demand higher wages. … I’m not
getting into the negotiation.”
And the administration has allowed key pro-worker provisions in the
American Rescue Plan Act to expire, such as subsidies for COBRA, which
are particularly crucial for striking workers whose employers cut off
health insurance. The Allegheny Technologies Inc. workers, part of the
United Steelworkers union, who struck for five months this year had the
benefit of federally subsidized COBRA; the UAW members currently
striking John Deere, whose employer plans to cut them off their plans
by October 27, will not. They would, however, be eligible for other
subsidies, including heavily subsidized Obamacare plans, though that
would entail changing plans and potentially medical networks. … <>
by John Reimann, October 20, 2021 (2)
Like almost the entire rest of the left - Marxist and otherwise - this article [the srike wave article article excerpted above] ignores the most important aspect of what is happening in the US labor movement - the tendency of the rank and file to revolt against its own leadership. We have the examples of the Western Washington carpenters, who voted down the bureaucrats' tentative agreements four times before being forced into submission, Then the John Deere workers forced the UAW to call a strike by rejecting the TA by over 90%. We don't know yet what will happen with the IATSE tentative agreement, but there is widespread rank and file opposition to it.
"Betrayal" is a strong word, but in this hour of crisis it fits in describing the union leadership. As the UAW member I interviewed put it ***(3)***, that leadership is like a PR firm for the employers, a buffer between them and the rank and file. For far too long, the socialist left in general has confused supporting the unions with ignoring the disastrous role of the leadership. Now, it has led them to missing out on the most important aspect of what is happening. What basis do they have to lead anything, then? <>
(1) Jonah Furman and Gabriel Winant, “The John Deere Strike Shows the Tight Labor Market Is Ready to Pop/The end of the national mobilization around Covid-19 is releasing built-up pressures in workplaces nationwide.” Portside, October 18, 2021, originally in the The Intercept in partnership with Labor Notes, October 17, 2021.
(2) John Reimann, “Striketober: sleeping giant of US labour movement begins to stir”, Marxmail, October 20, 2021. Reimann edits the Oakland Socialist website.
(3) “The union leadership ‘like a PR firm for the company’:
Interview with UAW member Justin Mayhugh”.
<>
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