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What's the Labor Party? The Labor Party was founded in 1996 by thousands of local unions, central labor councils and international unions, and by community activists to defend and promote the interest and aspirations of working people.
On the occasion of its history-making First Constitutional Convention, November 13-15 in Pittsburgh, we're pleased to share with our readers the thinking and perspective of Labor Party members Kit Costello, Tony Mazzocchi and Dave Campbell.
For more information about the Labor Party, write to: Labor Party, P.O. Box 53177, Washington, DC 20009.
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INTERVIEW WITH TONY MAZZOCCHI: 'PRIORITY IS TO RESHAPE HOW PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THE ISSUES'
By R. Lee
[Editor's note: In mid-October, the People's Tribune interviewed Tony Mazzocchi, interim national organizer for the Labor Party.]
PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: How do you see the significance of this convention?
TONY MAZZOCCHI: I think its significance is best illustrated by the fact that this is the only national, labor-supported political party that's made it to a second convention. This convention also has as delegates more representatives from the organized labor sector than we even had in the first convention. There are growing signs of institutional support.
Among the key proposals this convention will be discussing will be under what conditions can people run for office. Thresholds have been proposed by a committee that was set up by the first convention. The issue of whether to be electoral or not will not be an issue, but there will be debate about the thresholds. There is substantial support for thresholds that recognize that, in order to be credible, if you're going to run an election, you have to have the financial ability to do it, and also membership support, etc. We don't expect that people running races necessarily have to win, but they cannot be token races. People have to demonstrate they can run a credible race, have some sort of impact, before there is agreement that a candidate should be run. So that will be one issue, and then there are five priority campaigns that the Labor Party will discuss at this convention. We'll involve the delegates in how to best implement these programs, so they're part of the implementation strategy.
The fact that a political party was born [at the 1996 founding convention] was just the first step. We had to structure ourselves so we're there for the long pull. And we've been doing that, and now we're prepared to have a more visible face in the coming period of time. I think it's the attitude of many that various crises are in our future, and I think we're in place with a coherent program that addresses the sort of perils that working people [face] -- and I use that term [working people] generically to cover everybody that works or wants to be working. I think we have a program that can mobilize working people around the issues we'll be discussing.
The delegates represent a cross-section of folks -- not only unions, but community people from poor-people's organizations. We have a science and technology, higher education committee; we're able to address anything from genetic engineering down to workfare problems. I think people are very sober about the formidable tasks ahead and are prepared to toil for whatever time it takes to accomplish the goal of establishing this party in a way that it begins to affect the national agenda in the country. That's really what our first priority is, to reshape how people think about issues, not from a corporate perspective, but from a perspective of ordinary people. So I think we're on our way to reframing the national debate, not overnight, but in a steady, concise way.
PT: What are the campaigns the convention will discuss?
TM: We intend to be the anchor of a health-care movement, we're calling that campaign "Just Health Care." We've got a real campaign that we're introducing at this convention. We don't intend to be deterred from that. We saw everyone get co-opted in the last effort to enact single-payer. We're going to have a worker-rights campaign; workers don't have rights in the workplace. We're going to make a campaign about how you become a member of a union; we know that 34 percent of people who work would choose a union if they were allowed to. We're going to propose a law that incorporates the notion that you don't have to go through a long, convoluted process to have a union, where the employer can use all sorts of dilatory tactics to frustrate it.
We will have a position on trade. We will also be pushing our 28th Amendment Campaign, discussing how we ought to project that for the future. And we're certainly conscious of all the attempts to divide working people, not only racially and ethnically, but also generationally, and we'll be trying to institute a broad-scale campaign on protecting Social Security, the notion that it should not be privatized.
PT: Where is the party at in the process of establishing a basic structure?
TM: We've been developing a structure to be permanent. We have training programs now on how to institutionalize the Labor Party within local unions, and we're working on one on how you build community-based Labor Party affiliates. Our whole notion is it has to be a mass membership-based party. We intend to be the largest membership-based political party, where people are members, they pay dues, they receive a newspaper, they are aware of what the party is doing. We don't expect everyone to be an activist, but we do insist on the members determining the destiny of the party.
We've got to get to the point where we're spending more time instituting and implementing what the conventions adopt as program. We want to be a self-sufficient party; it's not a party that gets grants from anybody. We strictly work on the basis of the affiliation fees from unions. The unions are the resource base of the party. Membership dues don't even pay for the cost of servicing the member.
PT: How many people do you expect to attend the convention?
TM: It looks now like a minimum of 1,100 delegates. There's more institutional support. The last time, we had a lot of people who came as individuals; this time, community chapters are sending more people, and a more diverse array of local and international unions are sending people. So the people who come will represent a constituency far greater than those who were there the last time, although the last time was pretty large. You might mention that we're always open to delegates to the last minute. If people want to come and see for themselves, they can come as observers or at- large delegates. Any member of our party can attend the convention; there are no bars.
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INTERVIEW WITH KIT COSTELLO
By Laura Garcia
[Editor's note: One of the Labor Party's co-chairs, Kit Costello speaks about the Labor Party's plans to launch a campaign to address the problems of our nation's health-care system.]
PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: How did you become involved in the Labor Party?
KIT COSTELLO: We [the California Nurses Association] had done some collaborative work in the past with the OCWA and, about a year and half before the founding convention, Tony Mazzocchi approached us about whether we would be one of the unions to form the Labor Party. I felt the idea made sense. We had a "Corporate Power Training" to see if the message resonated about the state of this country and what an independent political voice can be to make changes. People were opened to the idea. And we became an advocate union for the first convention of the Labor Party [in 1996].
... What our members care deeply about is how health care is delivered and funded in this country, so we were happy about the platform on health care adopted at the convention. We have a natural affinity to focus on that.
PT: What has been accomplished since the 1996 Labor Party founding convention?
KC: When we left the convention, we had done some very good work as far as coming up with a program for social and economic justice. It was simple. It reached the average person; that was something we could organize a political movement around. The question left is doing the work -- the organizing for chapters and unions to take responsibility for reaching out with that message -- signing up new party members.
The hard part of any campaign is doing the person-to-person discussions and organizing. Some of the things we've done around the 28th Amendment Campaign -- the right to a job -- has been a good experience for different chapters and unions. We would like to do the same for health care.
PT: What are the Labor Party's plans around health care?
KC: The Interim Council has contributed some work product that we want to put out at the convention and create a campaign. This campaign will be different than what we see now with both political parties rushing to be the defenders of the insured patients. We see a much larger issue than just managed-care legislation for the insured.
[Seeking] incremental solutions ... takes energy and resources away from a campaign that could do a lot more to capture people's imagination and raise expectations. When you're successful getting something incremental, you delude people into thinking that you're partly there when you're actually creating a new part of the problem.
For example, the Children's Health Care Initiative. Nobody is against giving health care to children. But it leaves 40 percent ineligible, i.e., 4.2 million. And it's only for five years. Then we have the same problem after that.
We are seeing a shift from community to private control as more public hospitals are taken over by private interests. We've got a crisis that affects care givers, patients and the community. We would like the health-care campaign to focus on what the solution has to be to the crisis. We would like to produce a lot of material that would be part of campaign material to educate people about single-payer insurance, and what a national health program would look like. Single-payer insurance is what Canadians have. Instead of the U.S. model of multiple insurance companies with separate contracts with selected doctors, hospitals and other health professionals, one "payer," the public insurance fund, pays all the bills.
This cuts out a tremendous amount of administrative waste and duplication -- dollars that can then go to provide care. Here in the U.S., we have less choices because we have to go to doctors and hospitals with HMO contracts. Canadians can go anywhere for care. In the U.S., we are pouring millions of dollars into private insurance company coffers to finance their competition with each other, to deny us care, and to pay their CEOs and administrators lavish salaries. A publicly controlled, single-payer insurance fund would put a stop to this.
It will be a uniquely Labor Party campaign. We want to put out a message that raises the level of expectation of what is possible. That's what our campaign will be.
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INTERVIEW WITH DAVE CAMPBELL
By Dave Swartz
[Editor's note: Dave Campbell has served in several capacities in the Labor Party and is also executive secretary-treasurer of Local 1-675 of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW). Dave is not a LRNA member, nor one of any political organization other than the Labor Party, although he knows much about LRNA's purpose and goals.]
PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: There are many "third parties" on the political scene in the United States. What makes the Labor Party different?
DAVE CAMPBELL: The Labor Party is different from all other parties in the U.S. in that it consciously is politically independent of the corporations and the rich. It incorporates a section of the only mass organizations of workers, the unions, as well as the most progressive, militant leaders of workers. It also incorporates other progressive movements.
PT: The Democratic Party has always claimed to be the party of labor, and the unions have always supported it. Why do we need a separate party now?
DC: Opinions vary on when this happened, but there is no doubt that the rich and the corporations control both parties. The Democrats and the Republicans deliver to their campaign contributors, not to the electorate. As long as we fight the corporations and the rich in the economic arena of our workplaces and let them have total control over the political process, we are holding our hands over one pocket while we allow them to steal from the other.
As the class struggle intensifies, as the drive to maintain falling rates of profit continues, as the contradictions of an economic system based on profit become more apparent, we have to pose an alternative to those powers who will seek to pit sections of workers against each other in order to save the rich and the corporations.
PT: What is the base of the Labor Party? Who makes up its constituency?
DC: Most of our base is among union members. We also have a smaller, but expanding base in community organizations where programs like our 28th Amendment Campaign are bringing us into contact with some of them. We also have a much smaller base among some "left" political activists. Altogether, these are the most class-conscious elements in our society.
PT: What does the Labor Party have to offer to all the working people who are not in unions? What about the people who are not working because they are unable to find jobs?
DC: We offer a new vision of what our society could be, a vision in which such elemental human needs as productive labor at a livable wage, education, and health care are seen as basic human rights and are, therefore, guaranteed.
PT: You are a very busy man with all your obligations to your union and to the Labor Party. But you have also spent a lot of time working with the maquiladora workers who are trying to establish independent unions in Mexico. Why do you see their efforts as so important?
DC: The age of global economics is upon us. You can read in the paper where Michel Camdessus, director of the IMF [International Monetary Fund], and the G7 [Group of Seven] finance ministers lament that no institution now has control over the rapid movement of capital across borders. So we have to respond to the crisis of capital globally, too. Yes, my union has been centrally involved in cross-border organizing in Mexico. We are organizing workers here and we are encountering the reality of not just "runaway" shops, but entire "runaway" industries. We are forced by necessity to think now on an international scale.
... Immigrants, regardless of their legal status, must have the same benefits and rights to organize as anyone else. It's not a matter of where you are born, but of a human right. Otherwise, a second class of workers exists which is underpaid with lower benefits and which is more exploitable, and this threatens the well-being of all the workers.
PT: What are the goals of the 28th Amendment Campaign?
DC: To popularize the idea that we, as human beings, have the right to a job at a living wage if we want one; that the government should "promote the general well-being of the public"; that the "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" won't be defined as the right to be unemployed, cutoff of benefits, homeless and freezing or starving to death; that the government will create the conditions where we can all work, raise our families, provide them with a home, food and other essentials. In other words, the campaign is to push the idea that the words of the American Revolutionaries -- our Founding Fathers -- contained in the Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence, apply to the citizenry as a whole and not just to the corporations who have usurped and corrupted our government. We want justice! And we are going to organize to take it!
****************************************************************** This article originated in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE/TRIBUNO DEL PUEBLO (Online Edition), Vol. 25 No. 11/ November, 1998; P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654; Email: pt at noc.org; http://www.mcs.com/~league Feel free to reproduce and use unless marked as copyrighted. The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE/TRIBUNO DEL PUEBLO depends on donations from its readers. ******************************************************************