[lbo-talk] An Appeal to the U.S. Antiwar Movement

[jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net]

> It is not necessary for workers to engage in an illegal political 
> strike to raise the costs of business as usual for the US power 
> elite, exerting indirect and occasionally even direct pressures on 
> the war machine.  If US workers asserted their own economic interests 
> more militantly, even if they didn't link their struggle with the 
> Iraq War in any way, that in itself would be good for those who 
> oppose the Iraq War.
> 
> Observe the radical decline of industrial conflicts since the 1970s: 
> "Table 1. Work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers, 1947-2004" 
> (at <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkstp.t01.htm>).  The peaks 
> within the tables were 1952 (470 stoppages) and 1974 (424 stoppages). 
> The lowest number of stoppages recorded in the table, 14, was 
> registered in 2003.  Last year, the number of stoppages was still 
> only 17.  Existing unions alone will never be able to raise the level 
> of class struggle from below.  Currently unorganized workers have to 
> discover such tools of industrial struggles as sit-downs and 
> work-to-rule on their own and use them.
> -- 
> Yoshie

Waht specifically do you have in mind? It seems to me union workers 
should, in a manner of speaking, lead the way. Non-union workers are 
too easily dismissed from their jobs when attempting to do these things. 
The workers who have greater institutional protections from such abuse 
could do more in this area in spite of their smaller numbers in my 
opinion.

John Thornton