New directions for labor "NEW DIRECTIONS for Labor," a conference held in Detroit, Michigan in mid-November, attracted more than eight hundred participants, the vast majority of whom were trade unionists. This was the fourth conference sponsored by Labor Notes, a progressive monthly newsletter.
effective boycott - and an international representative for the United Mineworkers.
Following the international panel, the conference broke down into nine workshops, covering topics from the "AFL-CIO's global foreign policy," "How to take on the multinationals," to workshops on the labor movement in a specific country. In some cases, the network of trade unionists active in solidarity work was able to discuss specific solidarity activities.
More than a dozen activists of the battle against Hormel came to the conference. At this stage, the union has been placed in trusteeship by the international union, a weak contract has been negotiated and ratified by the scabs working in the plant, members of the union not working in the plant have been barred from
DIANNE FEELEY
The conference had three interrelated themes: highlighting international solidarity in the face of rising "protectionism" on the part of business, government and trade union bureaucrats a focus on successful tactics for mobilizing the rank-and-file and carrying out successful union struggles; and a discussion of the strike against the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota by Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW).
The underlying premises of the conference were based on counterposing new directions for the old -and failing - program of US labor. Today only 18 per cent of the entire US work force is even unionized. The conference counterposed to "business unionism" a concept of "social unionism." That is, a unionism that understands that concession bargaining is bargaining away worker rights.
A second premise of social unionism is solidarity: an injury to one is an injury to all. For this to be operative, labor's social responsibility spans generations, racial and sexual lines, and even the boundaries of the nation-state. Another crucial premise is the concept of union democracy, for that gives the rank-and-file the vision, the training and the skills to grasp what the workplace and the society as a whole must become.
At the opening session trade unionists from around the world brought greetings:
* Amon Msane, chief steward of the Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union of South Africa in a 3M plant in Elandsfontein (near Johannesburg, spoke about the crucial role the trade-union movement is playing in the fight against apartheid. COSATU, the non-racial trade-union federation which has more than half a million members, 10 is almost a year old. Yet it has played an increasingly important role in integrating the struggle of the working class at the workplace with the community-based struggle.
* Leto Villar, leader of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU - May 1 Movement) in Manila, the largest labor federation in the Philippines, spoke about the role of unions in the fight for democracy.
* Octavia Lara of the September 19th Garment Workers Union in Mexico spoke of how the women workers in the textile industry began to organize themselves in the period following the 1985 earthquake. Their organizing takes place in the context of high levels of unemployment and the fact that all but the unions associated with the government in power are considered "illegal." International trade union speakers
* Alberto Eulalio, director of the Brazilian Metal Workers Union, spoke about how to build a strong and militant union under conditions where both the employer and the state use strong-arm tactics, including occupying the factory and dispersing assemblies of the workers.
* Jose Geremias Rivas, of the Social Security Workers Union of El Salvador, now living in exile in the US, described the rise of the new trade union federation, UNTS, and their call for peace and justice in the face of the growing militarization of Salvadorean society.
Also present was Numonde Ngubo, founder of the South African National Union of Mineworkers, who came to the US in 1983. She is the director of the Shell Boycott - an increasingly
In the plant have been barted from meetings, and the United Support Group - the backbone of the strike support activity - was expelled from the union hall. The UFCW trustees in charge have dismantled the facilities the strikers had set up: the Santa's Workshop, the clothing exchange, and the food-shelf. The massive mural on the side of the union hall - the work of more than 100 rank-and-file members and their families - was sandblasted, although strikers obtained a temporary restraining order preventing further destruction of the mural.
But if people believed the P-9 struggle was over, the conference demonstrated that the strikers are still "P-9 proud." They are still fighting against the imposition of the trusteeship, and they have re-established the United Support Group in a nearby building.
In both the panel on P-9 and over a dozen workshops that followed up the presentation, it became clear that the struggle of P-9 has resulted in some important victories for progressive trade unionism. First, the preparation the P-9 local put into their strike and support work had led to establishing some excellent working class self-organization that has not existed in the US since the unemployed movement of the 1930s. They have organized their spouses, children and retirees into a support network. They leafletted working-class people not just in their own town or their own state, but fanned out in the months before they called the strike into all of the states bordering their own.
Second, the level of strike support activity - even in the face of attacks by the International UFCW, the trade union officialdom and the Communist Party - surpasses the level of national support that has existed before. For instance, the number of food caravans to Austin, the number of unions who have adopted a P-9 family,
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986
POLAND and the sizeable rallies in defenco and the sizeable rallies in defence of P-9 that have been held around the country indicate a sustained level of commitment.
Unfortunately the international union, although initially agreeing to sanction the strike, double-crossed the local, moving in to make a deal with the owners, and freezing out the strikers. The international union has been extremely vindictive towards P-9. It has attempted to paint its leadership as irresponsible in its demands and tactics; use its power to isolate P.9 from all trade unionists; and side with Hormel in ensuring that those who do go back to work in the plant disassociate themselves from the old P-9 and from any boycott uf Hormel products.
The tragedy is that the P-9 strike could have been won. Although the meatpacking industry is in turmoil, the Hormel plant in Austin is an efficient attitudes of male co-workers.