REBIRTH OF MOVEMENT FOR WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES
of Jase Short
Jase Short vive nel Tennessee è membro di “Solidarity”, un’organizzazione socialista rivoluzionaria statunitense attivamente impegnata nello sforzo di raggruppamento della sinistra particolarmente attenta ai processi in atto e alle importanti implicazioni -negli Usa e nel mondo- della ripresa dell'attività di ampi settori di movimento operaio e sindacale e di quello sociale più in generale.
La testimonianza che riportiamo è ripresa dal sito della LCR belga:
www.lcr-lagauche.be e dal sito http://antoniomoscato.altervista.org/
There is no doubt that what is emerging in the United States is the most significant recovery of the labor movement for a long time this part. What began in Wisconsin is about to spread rapidly in other states - including some of the South, traditionally emptied of any union activity.
To understand what is happening, it is good to clarify a number of factors relating to the unique character of the United States among other major industrialized countries in terms of balance of power between labor movement and capitalist interests.
Peculiarities of the U.S. labor movement
First, in general, the rate of unionization in the U.S. is incredibly low. It is currently estimated at 14.2%, with rare exceptions, has dropped every year for several decades, especially after the peak of the '40s and '50s. At the time, union workers were nearly 30% in the private sector, and about 10% in the public sector. Currently, the trend was reversed: it is estimated a 12.4% of subscribers, a significant percentage of them in the public sector (36.8%), but only 7.6% in the private sector.
Given these figures, is explained the strategy of Governors of Wisconsin (Walker), Ohio (Kasica) and their counterparts: it is to destroy the right to collective bargaining, public employees, dealt a fatal blow to what remains of the labor movement as a whole . Once neutralized the obstacle union, you will be clearing the main obstacle on the path of privatization of services and what remains of trade unionism in the private sector will be considered finally passed.
The offensive against the public sector is carried out only by Republicans, but the harshness of the attacks in states such as Ohio, Wisconsin and Tennessee (where the only significant union public sector is that of teachers, which is faced with legislation which tends to destroy it) also has an aspect of a party. The Republican Party is in fact well aware of not having too many occasions to be able to return to its influence on government power (and by this time), so it should definitely move. Its objective is to ensure future electoral success by destroying an important source of financial support to the campaigns of its competitors, the Democrats. You, on the other hand, the trade unions for the Democrats who count in the homes and reach people by phone - without the unions, the Democrats are more isolated, elitist, e non hanno una buona percezione dell’opinione pubblica. Tuttavia, per essere chiari, quanto accade in California, nell’Illinois e a New York lo dimostra con chiarezza: entrambi i partiti si impegnano in una guerra contro quel che resta del movimento operaio negli USA.
Vanno tenuti presenti vari elementi significativi quando si cerca di capire la natura della lotta di classe negli Stati Uniti. Il primo è lo storico divorzio tra i sindacati e la sinistra politica radicale. Per accettare i sindacati, le cerchie dirigenti politiche e padronali hanno imposto come condizione che le file degli iscritti fossero depurate da quanti nutrissero convinzioni politiche radicali – come pure, con l’andar del tempo, da quegli iscritti senza idee politiche radical but still have a fighting point of view about the struggles. Thus, the American left is incredibly weak compared to the left of the Western European countries more comparable to the U.S..
Divorce with the left led to the subordination of trade unions agenda and the interests of the Democratic Party. This party has never been a workers' party, but has become the ultimate party of black people, the organized labor movement, the interests of women, LGBT, etc.. The reason is the sharp right turn most of the Republicans not to defend the interests of these groups by Democrats. What remained of the support of the Party democratic movement organized labor has worn out significantly after the 70's, especially under the Obama and Clinton administrations. The recovery, particularly emphasized by the media, thanks to the administration of General Motors Obama gave to it a great opportunity to support the traditional backbone of U.S. unions (the auto union, the UAW). Instead, it used the lever in his hand very hard to rip UAW concessions - now, new employees receive half of the previous salary. The main activity of most unions is to remain virtually silent until it arrives some electoral timetable, so she turned to fact in the headquarters of the Democratic Party across the country. In some cases, for example, that of teachers in Tennessee, the unions have virtually nothing to do but raise money and votes for the Democrats.
Moreover, despite heroic efforts at reform carried out by currents such as Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU, trucks for a democratic union) or the transport Workers Local 100 in New York, the unions are almost exclusively dominated by their bureaucratic leadership (an endemic disease that - let's face it - is not registered in the U.S. alone mas also Western Europe). Many of these executives' salaries are huge in comparison to those of their members. Their leadership circles often touch those of organized crime (including the Teamster Hoffa, Stern SEIU - Service Employees International Union). However, even leaving aside the extreme kind, the tendency of the bureaucracy over the past thirty years has been to assist the trade union and political elites in the task to wrest concessions to the world of work.
The air seems to be changing, thanks to current struggles. The fact is that the attack against the right to collective bargaining, as such, presents a challenge not only to unions, but to their own bureaucratic leadership, threatening powers and privileges. Despite, then, this huge rise that could defeat any attack on social protection, wages, etc.., direction trade union in exchange for the preservation of the collective agreement continues to advance the proposal to allow savage cuts (not to mention the attacks have not been announced).
The last thing to note is the uneven geographical development in the United States. The southern states have experienced a rapid transformation over the last twenty years: progressive shift from rural production to urban and suburban (the South has become the privileged place of investment in industrial production), demographic change, with the massive influx of people from other regions of the country (in search of work and states without local income taxation), and significant immigration of English-speaking workers (particularly in the last decade). Among other things, racial bipolarity of the South has turned so radically in the last ten years: there is now a brown-black-white spectrum, which is further complicated by the large number of other immigrant populations in places like Atlanta and Nashville (the latter receives a merger among the most numerous of Kurds out of the Middle East).
For these reasons, the traditional role of the South as a bastion of reaction to the labor movement has become very volatile. The southern states are mostly states in the "right to work" or countries that prohibit by law the practice of closed-shop (the assumption for members to trade unions), and then attempts to oppose unionization in the private sector. One of the most radical attack against the labor movement in recent weeks has been introduced in Indiana and a law which would make this a state of "right to work", which would represent a significant development for the Midwest. In the absence of traditional union bureaucracies can act as a safety valve for the discontent of workers earn credibility of the explosion at the prospect of a 'initiative at the base. A test of this potential can be found in the drive to establish trade unions in the public sector, especially in the South In the '70s, the heroic battles in this area have been fired by militants in the public sector and culminated in winning the right to collective bargaining for many workers. Now, even these gains are threatened.
From Tahrir Square in Madison
In this framework should be given the importance of what is found in Wisconsin and is spreading across the United States with a speed that surprised even many of us that we are on field. Tens of thousands of people continue to go down the streets of Madison. Tens of thousands took to the streets in Columbus, Ohio, a state devastated by offshoring activities in other countries and in the southern United States. How
militant base in Tennessee, I have to say that he has never seen anything so strange as 300 supporters of the union movement, which occupy a narrow corridor of the Legislative Plaza to hold a press conference (now transformed into miniraduno), or hundreds of teachers gather in a place so unlikely as Franklin and Johnson City (Francklin is a bastion of reaction, a sort of giant "gated community" - a very affluent residential neighborhoods, surrounded and guarded by fighters - and one of the richest in the country committees), or that 600 supporters of trade unionism will gather in front of the Capitol, simply on the basis of an appeal essentially launched by Facebook and MoveOn.org, virtually no other form of organization (most of us, activists, we expected about thirty people).
The nature of this movement is not simply economic in the sense that is not limited to the workplace and struggles over wages, benefits, working conditions, etc.. Rather, it is potentially a political movement, aimed to defend the right to the very existence of unions, from the legal point of view. The shape of the working refer to the rise of the early '70s, but the stakes are rather evokes the 30s: the legal right to existence of auditors.
The initiative is taken mainly from militanti di base e da simpatizzanti del sindacato, soprattutto fra gli studenti. Nei primi giorni di manifestazioni si sono visti pochissimo i cartelli stampati in massa dal sindacato, ma piuttosto c’è stata la fioritura di una varietà sorprendente di messaggi creativi, una parte significativa dei quali fa riferimento alla recente sollevazione rivoluzionaria in Egitto. L’attenzione delle masse per la lotta ingaggiata qui è stata attirata dal fatto che gli insegnanti hanno osservato di fatto uno sciopero di due giorni (si sono dichiarati malati in massa fornendo certificati, per solidarietà) e questo ha messo in evidenza la capacità dei lavoratori di avere negli USA un’udienza di massa quale non si era più vista da tantissimo tempo. Migliaia di liceali hanno abbandonato le loro classi per marciare verso Madison al fianco degli studenti universitari, offrendo lo spettacolo di un movimento intergenerazionale, smentendo le concezioni diffuse sui sindacati, da un lato, e sul fossato tra militanti più giovani e più anziani, dall’altro.
Il tentativo di dividere i lavoratori escludendo dalla legge polizia e pompieri è fallito. Al contrario, ha dimostrato alla gente la forza della solidarietà, perché i pompieri hanno sostenuto in massa i colleghi di lavoro, e questo ha diffuso il senso di solidarietà in vasti settori dell’opinione pubblica. Ora la polizia si è unita a quelli che protestano a Madison, infrangendo gli ordini impartiti di disperdere the crowd. This participation of the police is relatively unprecedented.
Recently, a liberal blogger has made a phone call to the office of governor bin Walker, proved highly revealing. Posing as one of the Koch brothers (billionaires who are the third and fourth place in the list of the richest men in the United States and whose funds have sprayed the creation of libertarian organizations in the U.S., as well as various forces associated with the Tea Party), called Walker, who has fallen into the trap. Among the revelations that have been widely disseminated by radio (including the public network, with the largest audience of several cable stations on the right) has learned that, for Walker the matter had nothing to do with balancing the budget and everything to do with trying to "change the course of history" dealt a mortal blow to organized labor movement. Walker also confessed to having thought of infiltrating agents provocateurs in the crowd assembled in Madison, to stir troubles and discredit the movement. The repercussions of these events are still unclear, but it comes to legal proceedings against Walker, especially after the representatives of the police came to know of the matter of agents provocateurs.
a movement that spreads like wildfire
is the sort of common action, creative, side by side by mass movements and activities of the strike (which, however, are still weak and poor) that characterizes the revitalization of the labor movement in the United States. For the first time in a long, long time, millions of ordinary workers gather chanting slogans such as "el pueblo unido Jamas evening be defeated!", An alliance with the radical left by reading publications and information on meeting times. Although very few things have been officially made, have become common understandings made between militants of different political tendencies of the radical left (the Maoists, Trotskyists, etc..), Especially among the younger members of these organizations.
The effect was felt within the forces more traditional left, culminating in the mass action on Saturday in the United States, on appeal by a former member of the Obama, Van Jones (expelled from his job following a campaign "anti-red" orchestrated by the Republicans) and MoveOn.org, a kind of opportunistic organization, focused on social movements, and that is mobilized whenever the masses of people promoting an initiative with the aim to channel it on the ground of the vote. Wisconsin gathered over 100,000 people (a figure very important for a country of that size), over 50,000 have gathered in other places, especially with some surprises like the 600 in Nashville. These efforts have
helped galvanize public opinion dormant, despite its widespread depoliticization, continues to give much importance to the creation of jobs that the reduction of budget expenditure as a key national priority. A recent poll NY Times / CBS Poll shows that only 14% of Americans consider it their priority to balance the deficit, compared with 43% indicating instead the creation of jobs as the national priority. After the social movement, the Tea Party - which is already suffering a drop in popularity for its excesses Islamophobic and racist - has lost much of its momentum. In Madison, more than 70,000 people gathered in a days in support of workers' rights, while the counter-demonstration organized by the Tea Party has collected just 2,000 people. In Nashville, at the meeting convened by Van Jones and MoveOn, the counter-announcement of the Tea Party has never materialized.
Indeed, a significant number of participants according to the Tea Party are still shouting "Hands off my Medicare (health care), or" Hands off my social security and assistance "to the detriment of their political leaders, whose objectives are mainly to do away with these very popular government programs. A significant number of beneficiaries of those programs, in fact, do not even know how to participate to government programs - which demonstrates the lack of political education in this country. Lack of awareness is exploited by the media right, but it begins to change today, because from now on these achievements are threatened at the federal level!
In short, the massive task now working to spread, from Wisconsin to Ohio, Tennessee and Georgia, the threat beyond the status quo of these countries in the world of business, trade union bureaucracy, the Party Democratic Party of the Tea ... and the vast majority of that population. Losses in Ohio and Wisconsin in the near future, they could crush the movement in the egg rising, but many militants are preprogrammed for all eventualities, how to capitalize on this uprising if he wins in Wisconsin, or if it was defeated: it seems that the problems that emerge from discussions between the workers and activists of the radical left, the whole country . The fact that workers are able to make their presence felt in some southern states has huge implications from a dual perspective: the prospects for rebuilding the labor movement nationally, and the ability to turn a makeshift defense of unions public sector in a battle to unify the private sector (although this is not immediately on the agenda). In the background of these attempts is the resumption of the "bottom", resulting from increased participation of union members recently (and often younger) in discussions of their daily labor unions, something promising trends that fight for reform Democratic unions within large organizations.
The recovery efforts of the movement so far have failed, not because there have been. Teams of the Democratic Party, AFL-CIO and the SEIU arrive in Wisconsin, looking to have some influence in the democratic uprisings because their privileges are not the next victim of this giant that has weakened the American labor movement. We hope that their attempts to break against the united front of democratic trade unionists.
If the U.S. were to grow a new labor movement seriously, the political repercussions would be enormous, not only in the U.S. but worldwide. For all of us, is a very exciting time. Let us hope we do not waste this opportunity to build an unprecedented new face of democracy in our country.
March 1, 2011
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