Michael, .......
Attached below are my thoughts on John August's letter. I don't know how to post it or put it out into the same communication path taken by his letter. If you can do that without too much trouble, please do so. ........
Fred
REPLY TO JOHN AUGUST LETTER
I take issue with the view of California's Proposition 226 as expressed by John August in his letter of June 6, 1998.
Prop 226 was much more than what he calls, " a threat to the flow and use of cash for political activity for unions." It was the most profound attack against labor in California since the so-called "Right to Work" law in 1958. It would have outlawed use of dues money for collective political action, not unlike the draconian decrees of Agustin Pinochet to keep unions out of politics in Chile in 1973. Prop. 226 was the spearhead of a national assault on the collective rights of workers and had a potential to set us back more powerfully than the Taft-Hartley Law in 1948.
Taft-Hartley rode the crest of the first wave of the Cold war. It came to us when CIO internationalism stood at odds with U.S. corporate power in its drive to dominate foreign policy with its vision of an "American Century." They sought containment of the world's socialist bloc and replacement of European colonialism by a vigorous U.S. economic neo-colonialism.
Taft-Hartley was a strategic part of the effort to de-fang a labor movement which threatened to organize the South and which contained elements that could never take roles as government agents of corporate foreign policy. That effort, begun by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce massively seeking a Red under every bed, succeeded in diverting CIO organizing energy to waging campaigns against the Reds and the Left unions. Once cleansed of such elements U.S. labor was honed by the intelligence and then State Department apparata as the sharpest and hardest tool yet developed to pacify and "westernize" labor movements from Europe to almost every nation of what came to be called the "Third World." The AFL-CIO foreign labor institutes and organizations based in Washington eventually absorbed millions of dollars annually, a quantity perhaps equal to the rest of the Federation's income. A power base and personnel infrastructure was created which influenced everything U.S. labor did abroad and, of course, here at home.
Now, what has all that to do with Proposition 226?
We are now in a world where power and wealth are being concentrated away from the working class through processes of globalization, "free trade," privatization and neoliberalism. The "American Century" falls by the wayside as corporate structures, with soaring speed, globalize, lose national identity, begin to exceed the strength of nations, and burst beyond constraints of democratic governance.
At the same time that this "New World Order" is taking shape, U.S. corporate power, once so cozy with Meany and Kirkland, now confronts (at least for the next few years) the "new" AFL-CIO. How will they ever hope to control or kill militant and insurgent workers' movements abroad, as in the past, without the active and collaborative support of the AFL-CIO? And the evidence shows that the AFL-CIO programs abroad no longer slavishly follow any government or corporate agenda.
And in these same years the "new" AFL-CIO is straining to switch to an organizing model of action. The top leaders are increasingly seen in the front ranks of struggles around the country, no longer as visiting dignitaries who keep raucous and militant workers at arm's length. Not enough of this! Of course not, but the direction is clear and it is set. We are moving into struggle around the basic social issues of a living wage, about human rights, free quality education, safe jobs, and maybe even accessible and adequate health care for all. Victory in any of these struggles would be farther from, if not beyond our grasp if rightwing corporate America could slam shut the gates to the political arena with a Prop 226 and keep unions on the outside.
So, when we speak of the "status quo," let's not speak of the status quo of the past. One thing is immutably consistent about the status quo - it is always changing, forever in flux. Let's speak of a status quo in which we almost beat NAFTA, in which we picked up speed and stopped corporate Clinton in his Fast Tracks. In this status quo the AFL-CIO confronted the globalizing heads of state in Santiago, Chile, setting Clinton back in his bid for a Free Trade Area of the Americas. In this status quo Stan Gacek, Western Hemisphere representative of the AFL-CIO International Affairs Department joined forces in San Francisco with workers from many nations to stand fast against any more NAFTAs and against privatization and deregulation.
Under today's status quo a man with the clarity of purpose and background of militancy like John August has been able to help the Teamsters grow, enhance standards and conditions for workers, and promote social consciousness among members and non-members alike as National Organizing Coordinator for the IBT. A few years ago, in a frustrated moment while putting together an organizing team at a Central Valley tomato cannery, brother August remarked about how much easier organizing would be if we all shared a common understanding of class struggle and a vision of the future.
Last fall Bill Fletcher, AFL-CIO Director of Education barnstormed the country giving teach-the-teacher Common Sense Economics seminars to local union leaders, both officers and rank-and-file. The program was a joint effort of many unions which opened up the book on the Cold War against labor in the late forties and fifties. Fletcher informed and motivated discussion about the underlying facts of globalization and the spiralling increase in economic injustice. He made class consciousness real and factual, opening concepts of capitalist accumulation and class struggle to people who never before heard such words because they had been stolen from the U.S. union vocabulary 50 years ago.. He never ducked a question and he pointed to the central importance of dealing openly with issues of racist oppression and male supremacy as basic parts of the labor movement struggle. Fletcher teaches people to reject any concept of worker apathy and to seek organizing and educational approaches based on the elements which really do excite and interest workers in the shops and to dispel despair with action.
I don't know how many leaders from the San Jose seminar went back to their unions to actually teach the new gospel. We were overcome by events. By February the Proposition 226 handwriting was on the wall and we were up against it. Teamsters, communication workers, laborers, plumbers, mass transit workers, and others who took part in the seminar launched themselves into the struggle against Prop. 226. They brought new perspectives, new vigor and new ability to talk to fellow workers at the worksites, in the communities and through phone banks and did a more effective political organizing job than ever before had been done in the area. Yes, it was helpful to have glitzy direct mail pieces and mostly well done TV commercials, but it was one-on-one, worker-to worker contact which won the day. And in California's Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties the No on 226 action was played out consciously against the background and from the perspective of a labor movement which, despite its faults, despite the deviant paths it has followed, despite opportunists and sellouts, has its power in its members and those who look to it for leadership, and its roots in the May Day struggles for the eight hour day in the 1880s..
It is undoubtedly true that the victory over Proposition 226 saved the bacon of many recalcitrant labor bureaucrats, but it is also true that it was a victory for a labor movement that has become more than just a collection of locals and that is moving to become a far better reflection of what we once were. And it is a matter of fact that this is the labor movement we have. It reflects the reality we have lived through as we enter a newly configured reality with a changing labor movement. It will never be improved by despairing over its faults, but rather by doing our absolute damnedest to make it grow and serve the needs of the working class with a vision of social, economic and political justice.
It would seem that Proposition 226 came upon usjust as the AFL-CIO was beginning to demonstrate new electoral clout. More importantly, it came on the scene as we start to flex our muscles against permitting global capital to institutionalize worldwide "free trade" control in total disregard for the rights and needs of the world's working class. With the stakes so high, and genuine international labor solidarity rising to new levels, is it not safer for big capital to try to kill the movement that blocks its path to new power rather than to try to polish up the old deals that have run their course and been rejected.
In 1948 Cold War anti-communist hysteria was used to divide and pacify the labor movement. We were controlled in areas of foreign policy and tamed on the domestic front. We are now turning away from that era. Instead of dividing us, the Proposition 226 approach would simply marginalize our political importance. If they can't easily control our movement, they would just as soon see it dead.
Fred Hirsch 6/11/98