Decades of rank-and-file fight-back

The following is from the book “Low-Wage Capitalism, a Marxist analysis of globalization and its effects on the U.S. working class” by Fred Goldstein, published in the fall of 2008. This excerpt from Part 3, “Lessons from the Past for Future Struggles,” covers a wide range of struggles from the 1930s to the present showing the capacity and willingness of the U.S. working class to engage in militant struggle at great sacrifice. For more information visit www.lowwagecapitalism.com.

The slide in union membership, the decline of wages, and the general deterioration of living conditions for the working class, as well as the increase in racism and national oppression, the wave of anti-immigrant attacks, and all the other setbacks during the last three decades and more, were not inevitable. They were avoidable.

The underlying relationship of class forces in U.S. capitalist society was not objectively so unfavorable to the working class that it had no way to overcome the anti-labor offensive. Nor is further decline inevitable, even in the face of capitalist crisis.

What has contributed to the feeling of inevitability about the retreat of the labor movement and the workers in general has been the steadfast refusal by the AFL-CIO leadership, including the Change to Win leadership that set up a parallel federation in 2005, to muster the latent power of the workers and the oppressed in a true test of strength with the ruling class.

To be sure, there are undoubtedly thousands of local union leaders, delegates, shop stewards, labor council members, as well as rank-and-file militants throughout the labor movement, in every part of the country, who have been straining at the bit to launch a fight-back. Such militancy has manifested itself over and over again in struggles during the 1980s up until the present day. What will revive the labor movement is when these forces are able to multiply, organize, and gain the upper hand.

The deadly conservatism of the present-day top labor leadership resembles in many ways the refusal of the old leadership of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), all the way up to and through the 1930s, to lead the struggle of millions of industrial workers who were crying out for organization. It was the workers themselves, with general strikes, sit-downs, shop actions, and other forms of struggle that broke through and worked around the old conservative leadership to achieve historic victories. As the present-day leadership becomes an unendurable obstacle to the workers’ need to defend themselves against the bosses, it is inevitable that these leaders will be either bypassed or swept aside by a mass upsurge.

Solidarity Day and beyond

During the entire period of the anti-labor offensive, there have been numerous opportunities for the labor leadership to open up a counteroffensive by seizing upon the militant resistance of the rank-and-file workers against concessions and union busting.

A month after Reagan fired the PATCO workers in August 1981 and replaced them with scabs, the AFL-CIO leadership called a demonstration in Washington labeled Solidarity Day. The architect of the demonstration was the conservative head of the labor federation, Lane Kirkland, the successor to George Meany. It was the largest single demonstration of the U.S. working class until that time and was estimated at half a million. Workers came from all parts of the country, many of them traveling long distances yet refusing to fly out of solidarity with the fired air traffic control workers.

The entire labor movement came out. Black and Latino/a groups and women’s groups were invited and came. So did farmers’ groups, environmental groups, consumer groups, and community organizers. In a rare departure for the encrusted, reactionary, white male labor leadership, the “approved” slogans included ones from moderate anti-war, civil rights, women’s, and voting rights groups, as well as demands for jobs. The progressive movement gravitated toward the power of the labor movement as an answer to the Reagan reaction.

The demonstration was timely. It came in the wake of the sharp anti-labor turn in the Democratic Party under the Carter administration followed by the endorsement of the drastic Reagan budget cuts by the Democratic Party leadership, which still controlled both houses of Congress. Democrats joined Republicans in passing cuts in school lunches, student loans, and across-the-board social welfare spending. Furthermore, the Reagan administration threatened to cut Social Security.

Solidarity Day had a challenging tone to it. Capitalist politicians were excluded from the platform. Even Kirkland declared: “We have come too far, struggled too long, sacrificed too much, and have too much left to do, to allow all that we have achieved for the good of all to be swept away without a fight. And we have not forgotten how to fight.”

Coming out of Solidarity Day, the workers were inspired and fired up. The sense of strength in unity was at a high point. But behind the scenes the labor leaders were really fashioning a non-struggle, self-defeating agenda. For them the goal of the demonstration was to strengthen their hand in the Democratic Party. This was the strategic road taken by the bureaucracy to arrest the budget cuts and reverse the anti-labor atmosphere in Washington. Kirkland’s demagogy about fighting back notwithstanding, the AFL-CIO donated $1 million to the Democratic National Committee and remained passive while the bosses escalated their anti-labor offensive.

This steady retreat and acceptance of concessions without a significant struggle of the working class was entirely unwarranted. The retreat ran directly in the face of numerous manifestations showing the desire and willingness of the workers to fight back throughout the entire period.