US labour rally DEMONSTRATORS and organizers alike rejoiced in the size of the turnout in Washington D.C. on August 31 in response to the call by the AFL-CIO trade union federation for Solidarity Day 2. The idea behind the call was to mark the decade of labor abuse since the massive demonstration of labor solidarity in the nation's capital on September 19, 1981, and to send a message to the employing class and the politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties that working people have been browbeaten for too long. FRANK AND SARAH LOVELL
VEN though fewer union members marched down Constitution Avenue this time than ten years ago, the marchers numbered in the hundreds of thousands, estimated by the US Park Police at a quarter million. Despite the 95 degree heat, the huge crowd was festive and an atmosphere of a gigantic family picnic prevailed.
A special issue of AFL-CIO News, the biweekly national publication of the 14million member federation, asserted: "As with Solidarity Day ten years ago, we march for fairness, equity and opportunity and against the forces of reaction and greed who assert 'economic rights' over human rights."
AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland echoed the tone of this statement. He said: "We are here to remind our elected representatives that they were put there to 21 serve, not the faceless marketplace, but
USA the aspirations of real people," These aspirations, as summarized in the AFLCIO slogans, include the following: health care reforms; labor law reform; civil rights and equal rights guarantees; federal investment in education; protection of US manufacturing industries; "fair trade" agreements with other countries to replace recent "free trade" treaties; federal funding of city and state governments; workplace safety and health; environmental cleanup; and legislation to protect the right of strikers to return to their jobs.
The massive demonstration for these general objectives was officially endorsed by a coalition of more than 180 religious, environmental, civil rights and union organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, American Jewish Congress, National Organization for Women, Women's Strike for Peace, Friends of the Earth, National Wildlife Federation and Young Social Democrats. Members of the coalition have their own agendas in addition to the demands of the AFL-CIO leadership, and some different interpretations of the demands.
### Contrasting moods
This, then was the official face and surface appearance of the demonstration. But the composition and contrasting moods of free for the day. There were no closed turnstiles to create bottlenecks, causing long lines outside the Metro stations. Everything moved more easily and quickly that time, even with more demonstrators at hand.
Another difference was the political attitudes and economic expectations expressed then and now. During the past ten years union members by and large have learned that not much can be expected from the political structure in this country, and their faith in the economy is shaken. This was expressed in signs carried by the marchers, and by their conduct.
The first large contingent leading the march consisted of thou sands of members of the American Federation of State, Country and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), all wearing green T-shirts and carrying a variety of signs against the massive layoffs of public workers and for national health care reform to cover the 37 million in uninsured families of the working poor and unemployed in this country. Other very large contingents were the United Steel Workers, United Auto Workers (both with delegations
### Teamster reform
BIG changes are underway in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, known worldwide for its connections with organized crime. Its June 1991 convention accepted a serles of rules changes, including the right to vote for top officials and to ratify contract supplements, and quadrupled strike pay.
And, Instead of the union's officers being chosen behind closed doors, three slates of candidates were nominated for the union's top offices. They will face a one-member, one-vote election in
December.
Many of the organizational changes came as part of the 1989 agreement between the US government and the
Teamsters which ended the government's racketeering lawsuit against the union. One consequence of this agreement was that convention delegates were elected by members, with the result that some 300 committed reformers - organized around the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) movement which has campaigned for the reform of the unlon since 1975m were among the 1,900 delegates.
According to a supporter of the reform ticket, TDU Organizer Ken Pfaff, "for the first time in the history of the union, offithe demonstrators presented a different
We arrived at the offices of the Communication Workers of America (CWA Local 1180) in Lower Manhattan at 5.30 am to board a bus to Washington. The Local had chartered eight buses and several motor vans. One of the first people from every state), the International Union of Electrical Workers, Local 1199 hospital workers of New York, the Communications Workers, the American Federation of Teachers, the Teamsters, United Mineworkers and the many others that comprise the
1991).* something must be done to stop the drift into unemployment and poverty, is what set the miners apart — this combined perhaps with their distinctive combat suits. Many of the same public workers and teachers who demonstrated angrily in Albany marched in Washington behind tame slogans and in a different mood. This certainly confirmed the truism that the general character of a demonstration is determined by its organizers and conditioned by the demands they raise.
The union contingents included a high percentage of Black and other minority workers, and women workers. This contrasted sharply with the many massive antiwar demonstrations in Washington since the 1960s which were largely white, and consisting mostly of students and others from the middle class. Union marchers at this demonstration were of all ages from retirees to young apprentices. And they came from all over the country.
A small United Transportation Union (UTU) contingent representing railroad workers, marched. But the rail unions were nowhere prominent or featured in the demonstration, which is curious because at the moment they are the sector we met at the union was a young woman telephone worker, one of a hundred or so who came early. She had a bundle of Labor Notes, a nationally-circulated monthly publication that tells what's happening in the unions. She gave us a copy which proved to be a useful guide to a better understanding of the occasion.
The great majority of Local 1180 members who made the trip were Black. On our bus, the majority were women, also several well-behaved children. In Washington the CWA had set up a large tent where lunch was served before the march, which began promptly at noon. Other unions also had tents where free food and refreshments were served to their members.
Small groups gathered to talk about where they were from and their changing conditions of work as they waited for contingents to form and join the march. Almost invariably in these groups someone was there who had been at the 1981 demonstration. Naturally, the two demonstrations were compared and contrasted. We were reminded that ten years ago the 22 unions had taken over the Washington subway system and everybody rode for
AFL-CIO. Each union had its own distinctive color and the marchers wore red, blue, green, yellow, white T-shirts with the names and logos of their different unions.
The miners wore their camouflage combat suits and carried signs in support of the main AFL-CIO demands, but they also raised their own demands for mine safety and conducted themselves in a more determined and disciplined way than the other contingents. A teacher in the New York University system remarked that the miners did not come to Washington for a picnic and obviously had a more important mission in mind.
This observation prompted a question as to how the intent of an unregimented group like the miners can be detected simply by their conduct and appearance in the line of march. His answer was that their demands were more decisive than most others and that their determination was reminiscent of the angry demonstrations of public workers last spring in Albany, the New York state capital, against severe cutbacks in social services and education and the impending layoffs. That same sense of urgency, the realization that
International Viewpoint #213 • September 30, 1991 cers must consider the opinions of their members. The rank and file have started to call the shots and by the end of the year we can be in the driver's seat."
(Information from Labor Notes, August
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picture.
USA of organized labor under most serious attack from the government.
Why weren't railroad workers given special attention? And why was not the entire labor movement called upon to pledge solidarity with them in their present struggle to save their unions? According to an article in Labor Notes by Peter Rachleff entitled "Anger grows over rail contract disaster; 40,000 jobs lost" one top union official, Richard Kilroy of the Transportation Communications Union, and also president of the AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Department, was kicked out as president of his union at its convention in July after he had connived with the rail carriers and government boards to bring on the contract disaster.
Another rail union president has since been kicked out by angry members, and two more are expected to get the same treatment soon. This may explain why there were no enthusiastic expressions of solidarity from the speakers stand for the embattled railroad workers. Today they are in a similar situation as the air traffic controllers (PATCO) in 1981, one of the triggers of the first Solidarity Day demonstration. And, just as the top union officialdom failed then to help the PATCO strikers, so now, ten years later, they are prepared to sacrifice the railroad workers.
In organizing and publicizing Solidarity Day 2 the top AFL-CIO officials talked about seeking to redistribute wealth and win a voice for labor in government. Their special issue of AFL-CIO News cited Labor Department data showing a decline in average real wages of 21.1% since 1979. It demands "social and economic justice... job opportunities... decent wages and working conditions." It says "These are the goals that should be part and parcel of the economic policies of he nation."
Without exception the demonstration agreed that this is what they want. Their problem is how to get it. As the country continues its decline and multinational corporations and banking consortiums continue to skim off an increasingly large share of wealth, the unions lose members and political influence. But if the union movement hopes to reverse the downward economic trend and redistribute the national wealth it must find solutions to the problems of the economic system and mobilize its members politically. This is what the union bureaucracy is incapable of doing. Just as the speeches at the rally avoided both the problem and its solution, so the scattered chants and slogans of the marchers were misdirected or inadequate. One of the most repeated chants was "Bush has got to go".
### Silent marchers
Since there was no follow up response on how Bush can be made to go, the implication was that he must be replaced by a Democratic party candidate in the 1992 presidential election. A group of silent marchers (as many were) carried signs which said "One Republican Party is enough", , implying that there is no difference between the two anti-labor parties and it might be stretched to mean that labor ought to have its own party. The absence of leadership in the face of the present crisis of the labor movement was unintentionally exposed by a large contingent of auto workers. They came with squad captains carrying bullhorns and prepared to make a noise. Their leaders had failed to tell them what to shout, so they did what they are accustomed to do. They shouted "UAW, UAW, UAW" most of the way down Constitution Avenue. For Lane Kirkland and other top officials the impasse remains only an embar-
### LABOR NOTES
Is an independent monthly bulletin, sponsored by many local labour leaders, that aims to "put the movement back into the labor movement"
It holds annual conferences to discuss labour-related Issues, the last of which brought together some 1000 delegates. Labor Notes can be obtained from 7435 Michigan
Avenue, Detroit, Michigan
48210, USA. An overseas subscription is $15 a year. * rassment. The depth of labor's crisis has not yet penetrated their consciousness. They remain steadfast and complacent in the harness of the Democratic Party machine.
In response to questions earlier this year on the labor party issue, Kirkland told the Los Angeles Times labor writer, Harry Bernstein, that union leaders are unhappy with the treatment they are getting from the Democrats in Congress. When House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt supported Bush' request for "fast track" authority to negotiate the administration's "free trade" treaty with Mexico, labor leaders denounced him and the Democratic Party.
### Democrats criticized
The president of the Missouri AFLCIO, Gephardt's home state, said: "Basically, the Democratic Party has not delivered on a national basis. As time goes on, the feeling from working people may be that they should articulate their own concerns." The head of the St. Louis Labor
230,000 railroad workers walked off their jobs on April 17 in response to massive attacks on their working conditions, including for example, a proposal to extend the area in which rail workers can be ordered to work to up to 900 miles. The changes were presented as recommendations by a government-appointed Emergency Board.
The strike was solid from the beginning, but barely 18 hours after it began, Congress ordered it ended. The 400-5 vote in the House of Representatives was matched by "unanimous consent" in the Senate, where only Kennedy and Hatch were present. President Bush was awakened to sign the bill into law.
In fact, a "compromise" had already been arranged behind the backs of the workers by their unions the appointment of a new Emergency Board, whose terms of reference include a "presumption of validity" for the original Board's findings, that is, the original recommendations will stand unless specifically rejected. While awaiting the new Board's recommendations, managements have been approaching different sectors of railworkers with offers of separate deals. However there is much anger among railworkers about the behaviour of their union leaderships and some activists are discussing calling a national rank and file conference this autumn. (Information from Labor Notes, June 1991) *
Council was more pointed. He said: "I have heard more about a labor party or a labor-farm coalition than I have in the past 15 years." But this was soon forgotten. Kirkland still thinks labor party talk is "a formula for wandering in the political wilderness." Some contingents in the Solidarity Day parade carried signs demanding "off the fast track" ", a demand rejected last June by large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
Leading Democrats were invited to address the Solidarity Day rally, but none came. New York governor Mario Cuomo and New York City mayor David Dinkins accepted but both sent regrets the day before the rally.
The organizers had to be content with Jesse Jackson and Geraldine Ferraro, sufficient to demonstrate that union officials still look to Democratic Party politicians for answers to the social and economic problems of the country and its workforce.
Evidence mounts that working men and
September 30, 1991 • #213 Internationa/ Viewpoint
USA
BoSS women are fast shedding illusions in the Democratic Party. Polls taken of union members for Labor Party Advocates, a recently formed group headed by Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW), show that workers in all parts of the country favor the labor party idea.
In CWA Local 1180 for example, a poll a year ago showed that 49% of the membership agreed that "its time for the labor movement to build a new political party of working people that would be independent of the two major political parties." Some 62% agreed that "both Democrats and Republicans care more about the interests of big business than they do about the interests of working people."
### Labor Party Advocates
Labor Party Advocates reports steady growth since it started membership recruitment early this year. It issues a regular bimonthly progress report and expects to call a constitutional do not yet have firsthand experience of strikebreakers crossing picket lines can readily understand that chances of winning strikes will improve if "replacement workers" cannot be guaranteed permanent jobs.
The same Gephardt who only last June was denounced for his
"betrayal" of labor's goals is now the guiding hand in support of this anti-scab bill, Workplace
Fairness Bill, as it is officially titled. According to a Labor
Notes article: "Gephardt, along with the rest of the House Democratic leadership, made sure Congressional Democrats ignored pleas from Eastern [airlines] strikers, voted to break the rail strike, rammed through the free trade, fast track authority for
Bush, and helped to ditch a Canadian-style health care plan for one so weak it was approved by the American
Medical Association."
This is the leader to whom labor officialdom and its Washington lobby looks for favors. He has no trouble convincing other Democrats to vote for bills the labor lobby wants enacted when they all know this legislation faces certain veto when it reaches the desk of the president.
When all the speeches were over and the demonstrators were heading for the subways, we got on the wrong line which took us to the Pentagon. A group of miners was with us. They at least had no faith in politicians. They have been beaten, fined and imprisoned by Democratic party sheriffs, judges and congressmen in their states. And they have learned that when they organize to elect one of their own, it is possible to defeat the corrupt political representatives of the coal barons. In both West Virginia and Kentucky union officials running on union write-in tickets have defeated entrenched Democratic incumbents in the state legislature and other elective offices.
On the way back to our bus at RFK stadium, we talked with other demonstrators from Indiana, members of the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE). One of them had been at the 1981 Solidarity Day demonstration.
He remembered that the subways had been free that time. Another of the group said that this might be a sign that the unions have lost some of their influence in Washington. He said that their local union had protected wages and working conditions pretty well during the past decade, but the owner and founder of the Franklin pump company where they worked had recently died at age 94. "A fine gentleman, " he said.
### Good employers
This reminded us of the AFL-CIO's basic organization policy which is to collaborate with "good" employers; union members are taught that if business isn't well managed and financially successful the workers will be out of jobs.
On the bus back to New York we met another demonstrator from AFSCME District Council 37, very proud of her union. She is near retirement age, works as a biochemist and lives in a lower middle class community, the Stuyvesant Town development. She told us that without the unions life in this country would be much worse. Another passenger was a retired member of the Teamsters union also just returning from Washington. For him the demonstration showed what working people through their unions, can do. "No one got hurt, no one got robbed, no one got shot, and everyone had a good day," he said. And this may have been the sentiment of most dem-
CANADA convention when 5,000 local MEXICO onstrators, including those who union leaders have signed up. understand that these demonstraHardly anyone in unions today tions - organized the way this actively opposes the labor party one was, more to ask favors than idea, except top officials and to make demands - are the best some hangers-on who get paid to way the union movement has of distribute political literature for lobbying Congress. At least the Democratic politicians. But nei- basic aims of the union movement ther is there a popular grounds- FREE are publicized, and for a change, well to immediately set up a millions of people have a chance Labor Party structure and field TRADE to hear what unions stand for and working class candidates in comhope to accomplish. ing elections. As always there were also those
The most popular sign and who came with the intention of chant of the march was "No more helping to bring about badly needscabs" and "scabs have to go". ed changes in the lives of working This refers to legislation to out- CORPORATE people without having to beg polilaw the "permanent replacement" GREED ticians who are only interested in of strikers which is sponsored by their own welfare. They share the 24 relate to personally. Those who almost every union member can the AFL-CIO. It is something ©.941 HUCK /KONOPACKI LABOR CARTOONS + ON PCK FOR THE IUE NEWS day is coming. * confidence of many that a new International Viewpoint #213 • September 30, 1991
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