The same story reports that the UFCW has filed a suit in Alameda, California, to block a buy-out of Safeway Stores there. Safeway owes its employees 750 million dollars lessons of this exemplary strike.
FRANK LOVELL
Last July, after losing control of their local union, P-9 of the United
Food and Commercial Workers
(UFCW), to the International officialdom, the strikers at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota, formed a new union - the North American
Meatpackers Union (NAMPU). They petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a certification election. The NLRB received their petitions, but they are still waiting for the election. No date is yet set.
On. August 28, the International officials of the UFCW announced that they had reached a settlement with Hormel, covering workers in eight of the company's plants. The contract is company dictated and conforms in wages to the industry pattern, reaching 10.70 dollars per hour in September 1988. (In 1980, workers at the Austin, Minnesota, plant were making 10.69 dollars.)
In the wake of the settlement, the debate about the merits of the P-9 strike built up steam. This debate is not limited to the various groups in the radical movement or the left wing in the unions that initially supported the strike. The employing class continues to take a keen interest in the strategy and tactics of the strikers. In a Labor Day editorial, September 1, the New York Times comments: "Organized labor is in deep trouble on Labor Day 1986. For most unions, however, it's still business as usual. The has been remade by deregulation, economy 8 automation and imports. Rather than facing such realities, unions lunge for protectionist laws to hold back the tide or circle the wagons and battle it out to the end, as happened with the suicidal strike of
Hormel meatpackers in Minnesota."
What the Times fears is the end which might come about if the union movement as a whole embarked on a course similar to that of P-9. It advises labor to take the route of the GM/Saturn concessions pact with the
United Auto Workers; to endorse the School Reform Program which eliminates teachers' jobs and introduces incentive pay, following the example of Albert Shanker and the American Federation of Teachers. "No less is required ... if labor is once again to lead," says the Times. What they are talking about is the leadership of the Judas goat that leads the sheep to slaughter. That pretty well sums up the attitude of the employers today - at least those who are willing to sign contracts with the unions at all.
A senior vice-president and chief lawyer for Hormel, Charles Nybert, said Hormel was more willing to negotiate with the UFCW than with Jim Guyette, president of P-9, because the International had a more reasonable approach to the talks. "With the UFCW it was not an all-or-nothing proposition," Nyberg said. "But they are hard bargainers. This is no sweetheart contract."
The labor bureaucrats themselves in wages, vacation pay, and severance pay - according to the UFCW. They hope Safeway can become profitable again and pay the back wages. This deep concern for the financial future of the employers was expressed by
Lewie Anderson, the UFCW vice president who negotiated the settlement at Hormel. He said, "There's just so much you can do. We believe that as business expands, [the P.9 strikers] will get their jobs back.
That Austin plant has the capacity for 2,000 to 2,500 jobs."
This is one issue in the debate within the radical movement as well: Can the union movement protect its members if the system cannot provide jobs? And if it can and should, how will it get started?
The AFL-CIO bureaucrats such as Lane Kirkland argue that concession-bargaining is, and must be, labor's basic strategic approach at this juncture. It is labor's duty to help resolve the problems of the capitalist system.
But Kirkland hasn't a clue as to what's really wrong with the system: "Today we suffer from the consequences of one-way foreign trade - and the steadfast refusal of the Reagan administration to speak up for the interests of the American working people." That's what he told the Steelworkers' convention on August 25. He went on: "Unions understand the need for cooperation where it is essential. We only ask that employers in turn cooperate with us. Unfortunately," he said, "we find too few examples of the latter form of cooperation."
This is true. Kirkland has been unable to find any segment of the that will endorse
International Viewpoint 24 November 1986
his demands for protective tariffs. He pretends not to know that the "cheap goods" imported to this country are the product - in large part - of US capitalist investment abroad.
The so-called radicals - including the Communist Party and other Stalinoids - accept the premise that the well-being of the working class depends on the economic prosperity of the bosses, and that one of the ways to get this is through labortial feature of a genuine class-struggle left wing within the AFL-CIO.
There are growing signs that the time is ripe for a program of change in the US union movement. The year-long Austin strike and the broad support it received from workers across the country could not have happened four or five years ago. There is a general restiveness in the unions, and a growing dissatisfaction with the bureaucracy. Increasingly there is interest and participation in the affairs of the ship was the most important and far-reaching; to fight Hormel and not appeal to its goodwill; to organize the struggle and carry it through to its conclusion; to win back their rights as workers.
(Of course, they had to conduct this struggle according to the rules prescribed by the labor laws of this country, in particular by Taft-Hartley, and by the established practices of the union movement. But in doing this they advanced the consciousnace of themselves and their sunporters ness of themselves and their supporters to the point where they can now challenge some of the unjust laws and most of the self-defeating union practices.)
* Mass unemployment dictates the demand for jobs. It is the responsibility of the union movement to present a program to create jobs, to put the unemployed to work at union wages. This can be done through a public works program to provide the many social necessities which are now sacrificed to the war budget, as well as through a reduction of the workweek with no loss in weekly pay so the available work is divided equitably among those who need jobs.
Defend the union movement. This means organizing legal defence committees to launch a major public campaign to defend workers and union leaders victimized in the courts and on the picket lines. But it also means the beginning of a campaign to educate - both the general public and the union movement - about the necessity for workers' self-defence against police and national guard attacks.
* Working class political action. The unions must begin to prepare the way for the organization of a labor party as the result of the struggle for jobs — a political struggle - and through running union-sponsored candidates as independents in elections.
Again, a major campaign to educate and explain the need for a new political party, one which would advocate a government run by and in the interests of working people, a government which would not call out the national guard to protect scabs or break up picket lines, must be begun by the left wing of the labor movement.
This modest five-point program is a place to begin our discussion. Other points will have to be added as we go along. The militants who have today formed the NAMPU, who exist in a less well organized form in many other unions across the country, need to adopt and begin to advocate this program, or one like it, in order hot wa they are setting for themselves and in order to live up to the promise which the current wave of militancy in the
US labor movement holds out.
9 management cooperation. The difference is that the Stalinists and the self-styled "labor left" argue, against the entrenched bureaucrats, that an aggressive campaign against give- aggressive campaign against givebacks, employing the proper strategy, will in the long run show the employers the evil of their ways and force them (once again) to collaborate with the unions. In the case of the CP, they have carried this approach to the extreme so that they now find themselves in the camp of the UFCW against the P-9 strikers. The CP's line is "labor unity at all cost." A People's Daily World staff writer, Bill Dennison, got so carried away with this that he wrote the following about the P-9 strike: It has exposed the "divisiveness of 'phoney left' organizations centered around a group called Rank and File Against Concessions,' " he said. "They used the legitimate struggle of the Hormel workers to launch a campaign to split and undermine other meatpacking locals, the UFW and a number of other unions.
«The ultimate aim apparently is to break away a section of the trade union movement. Coming at a time of unprecedented attacks against unions by the monopoly corporations and when unity is essential, many view their activities as suspicious at best and at worst a conscious part of the Reagan-era union busting."
This slander is a small reminder of what Stalinism really is and how it functions, an echo from the past when it was an influential political current in the union movement. This time it netted Dennison a temporary writing assignment on the new Unionist, put out in Austin by the UFCW.
Supporters of the P-9 strike - and the organizers of the North American
Meatpackers Union - respond that far from "splitting the union movement" they are trying to prevent the atomization, the shattering, the disorganization of the union movement. This certainly does not mean da man seeks union by their Detroit this year for a Labor Day marched in Chic CIO head] CIO headl Lan (Perhaps if Kir present, the Chi have matched see, increasingly, file movements issues - such as ur
These changing militancy and a consciousness -North American has a chance to a valuable cont will depend large program it deve movement as a w in collaboration with other leftunions such as N UAW, or Teamst Union. The NA to begin to influe of a genuine cl for US labor's lef
Most of the unions - in par like that of the
Watsonville Canr fornia - has and tactics. This for any union l strike action. Bu the basic social movement. What
There are which become what has happ in the course of last few years:
Democra better underst means in pract important cont strike. There only made mobilized thei out those decis of union dem democracy as geois variety).
* Indeper memberships. In 165,000 turned out parade; and 50,000 ago, where [AFL e Kirkland spoke. e Kirkland spoke. dand hadn't been ago turnout might Detroit's.) We also genuine rank-andaround important lion democracy. attitudes - the new Ivances in political indicate that the Meatpackers Union stay alive and make ibution. Its future ly upon the kind of lops for the union hole. This can evolve and consultation wing forces in the ew Directions in the ers for a Democratic MPU has a chance ince the development ass-struggle program : wing. discussion within the ticular during strikes P-9 workers or the lery workers in Caliseen about strategy , of course, is essential eadership engaged in t beyond this there is program of the union should it be? i few, main points very clear in light of ened in Austin and other battles over the cy in the unions. The inding of what this ice may be the most cribution of the P-9 the membership not the decisions but : own forces to carry ions. This is the essence ocracy (working class opposed to the bouridence of the workers that the new meatpackers' union seeks to replace the present union movement, either. It is not a "dual" union. The program of this new union, if and when it is finally and properly formulated, can serve as an essenfrom the bosses. The P-9 strike certainly contributed to a better understanding of this concept. In this respect the very first decision of the
Local P-9 leadership and the member-
International Viewpoint 24 November 1986
DENMARK