It's not a matter of anyone picking battles, for solidarity can be only offered to those who pick themselves up and fight back. What you call a "labor left" are a very small group of activists who do not lead any major union or any other institution and are therefore not in a position to put any industry-wide strategy into practice. A strategy -- even if you have one and it's a good one, too -- is useless if you don't have troops.
On 12/19/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 19, 2006, at 2:30 PM, Jim Straub wrote:
>
> > However, the narrative around meatpacking and the Austin Hormel
> > strike has been just as inadequate in understanding what
> > happened. The labor-left in general, instead of articulating a
> > strategic understanding of the things that were happening in many
> > of these industries that could be applied to a successful
> > rebuilding strategy,
>
> Something similar's going on in auto now. You hear Labor Notes people
> complain about the lack of leadership & militancy coming from the
> UAW, but GM & Ford are pretty fucked, and they never really
> acknowledge that. So, comrade, what is to be done there?
The thing to do is clear -- organize non-union plants here, since auto production is still regional, not quite global, as Sam Gindin explains.
<blockquote>The main problem that the GM and Delphi workers face isn't competition from China or Mexico or even Japan but issues which can be directly addressed at home. As Steve Miller, the head of Delphi, said in a recent speech, "in the auto industry, Toyota, Nissan, and Honda are competing from assembly plants in our back yard . . . the old oligopoly has crumbled, not so much from globalization, but from upstart domestic competition" (October 28, 2005). In the parts sector, 80% of the US industry is non-union and many of these plants pay less than half the wages at Delphi (non-union parts also increase the incentive to outsource even more from the assembly plants).
The issue is not so different in Canada where the overall industry is in fact doing well, but non-union auto majors are winning a larger share of the market. Here too Toyota and Honda won't be organized through business as usual and neither will the parts industry, where the level of unionization was once close to 80% and is now approaching 40%. Unless the CAW shows the same verve which unions showed in the 1930s when they were able to organize workers in spite of times much tougher than today (and in spite of dramatically fewer resources than today's unions'), breakthroughs in unionization simply won't happen. In the 1930s, for example, mineworkers sent 100 organizers to organize steel workers so miners would not be isolated.
Although the auto companies are global, production is overwhelmingly regional: cars sold in North America are largely assembled in North America and made of parts produced here. This makes organizing all the more possible, especially if it is seen in cross-border terms. Why couldn't the CAW and UAW, for example, jointly declare: that the 10 major parts plants will be organized; that the longer it takes, the more disruption the entire industry will face; and that there is no point moving form the US to Canada or vice versa because we will be there to organize (and into Mexico as well)? And why would the UAW not put US$200 million of its ever increasing and unused $900 million strike fund to such use, if only to defend its own members? (Sam Gindin, "GM, the Delphi Concessions, and North American Workers: Round Two?" 15 November 2005, <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/gindin151105.html>)</blockquote>
Whether it's doable is another question. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>