#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #USA #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #US, WSA, ideas & action: Class Struggle Unionism: A Review By Tom Wetzel (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 antagonistic to the interests of workers. Since World War 2, a whole legal cage

of repressive labor laws and unfavorable rulings of the elite judiciary have been
crafted to block workers from legal use of the most effective tactics, such as
secondary boycotts, workplace occupations, and effective strikes that shut down
workplaces. Burns proposes a revival of these class struggle tactics, and thus
labor organizations must figure out how to roll over injunctions and violate
unjust laws. The book is both a clearly-written proposal for a new direction and
a look at the dominant approaches in the AFL-CIO-type unions.

Burns explains class struggle unionism by contrasting it with two other
approaches - traditional business unionism and a newer approach that Burns calls
"labor liberalism." Labor liberalism is a kind of evolution from the older
business unionism that has become dominant among the bureaucratic layer of paid
officials and staff in many unions today. SEIU is the clearest example of the
labor liberal approach while the older form of business unionism is still
dominant in the building trades. Labor liberalism tends to adopt the language of
"progressive" left wing politics despite a top-down staff-driven approach that
fails to develop worker leadership of struggles.

The business union practice and ideology was already pretty well developed in the
AFL by the World War 1 era. I would describe its main features as follows:

Acceptance of the capitalist profits system and an orientation to "partnership"
with the employers
Although officers are elected, there tends to be a monopolization of
decision-making authority and union expertise in a bureaucratic hierarchy.
"Collective bargaining" of no-strike contracts by paid officials
A narrow sectoralist practice focused on economic fights with individual employers
Lack of any direct way for workers in different industries to get together to
develop a common class-wide program
Burns focuses on the first two of these features.

Class struggle unionism, on the other hand, starts with a recognition of the flat
incompatibility of interests between working people and the capitalist owning
class. The control of the workplace and society by "the billionaire class" is
seen as illegitimate. Thus, class struggle unionism

Rejects "labor/management partnership" schemes
Focuses on the day to day resistance to management in the shop and works to build
in-shop organization
Sees agreements with employers as temporary truces in the class struggle
Proposes worker leadership of struggles

In contrasting the labor liberalism of recent decades to the older form of
business unionism, Burns notes the strong labor liberal orientation to electoral
politics. Faced with the highly diverse workforce today, labor liberalism takes a
more progressive stance on social questions, such as opposition to racism and
defense of LGBT rights.

Although labor liberals will sometimes pursue confrontational tactics to force
employers to negotiate, they downplay the importance of worker militancy. They
seek to limit the level of conflict with employers to avoid a rupture in the
on-going relationships between officials and management. Labor liberalism has
been associated with publicity "strikes." An example would be a "strike" picket I
attended at a Walmart with activists from various organizations while the
workforce continued to work as usual. The action was organized by a non-profit,
working with the staff-driven UFCW Local 5. The staff-directed nature of that
action fits in with the top-down  character of Local 5. In my conversations with
some workers at supermarkets, I've found that Local 5's workplaces have virtually
nil shopfloor presence for the union.

Labor liberalism tends to seek solutions to worker problems in public policy
(such as a higher minimum wage) or action by politicians. Labor liberalism has an
even clearer emphasis on staff directing struggles than the older business
unionism, and more clearly abandons the day to day struggle over control in the
workplace. Under labor liberal control, unions can be even more undemocratic than
the business unions.

Class Struggle Strategy and Tactics

A revival of the labor movement, Burns says, will require a return to militant
tactics not seen in years and will require violating the law. An effective strike
requires shutting down the workplace, shutting off the flow of inputs and
preventing an employer from bringing in strikebreakers. Workers picketing outside
a workplace are vulnerable to attack, such as violence by scabs or private guards
or police. The advantage of occupying the workplace is that workers are not
immediately vulnerable to violence. Mass picketing has also been employed in the
past as a way to over-power guards or other forces intent on breaking the picket.
But employers nowadays can easily get injunctions against mass picketing and
occupying the workplace is also viewed as illegal. Another effective tactic is to
pressure firms using products of a company on strike - such as picketing a
restaurant using linens from a commercial laundry on strike. But this picket
would be considered an illegal "secondary strike." And yet if an environmental
group picketed the restaurant to protest the methods used to catch their fish,
this would be regarded as a protected activity under the First Amendment.

This means that the labor movement needs popular education around ideas that
would show the repressive labor law scheme as unjust. Class struggle education
would challenge the legitimacy of the oppressor classes set over the working
class, emphasize solidarity, and promote effective tactics. For Burns, escalation
is a key aspect of class struggle tactics. In situations in the past where
violent forces such as police were used to try to break strikes, class struggle
activists escalated the struggle by bringing in the solidarity and support of
larger numbers of working class people who were brought into the fight. Thus the
community wide strikes that brought victory in Minneapolis and in the west coast
maritime struggle of 1934 both illustrate the importance of escalation. In the
Bay Area the events started with a strike of dock workers up and down the coast.
But ship crews had their own grievances and soon the strike was escalated to a
full maritime industry fight. In San Francisco truck drivers who transported
cargo from the docks demanded a strike by the Teamsters union. Soon this spread,
becoming not just a city-wide general strike in San Francisco, but a regional
strike that shutdown Alameda, Oakland and Berkeley as well.

A class struggle unionist approach needs an overall strategy that includes plans
to organize strategic industries (such as manufacturing and transportation), how
to spread worker solidarity across international boundaries, a basic challenge to
capitalist control of the production process and the workplace, and "effective
strike tactics to bring capital to its knees." Burns criticizes the approach to
workplace organizing that focuses on small shops because it doesn't address the
overall problem of working class lack of power in the economy and the need to
challenge the capitalist elite on a grand scale. The discussion of class struggle
strategy and tactics is the strongest part of the book.

The picture that Burns paints of class struggle unionist tactics is very much in
keeping with the syndicalist labor tradition. The difference with syndicalism
comes to the fore when we get to the structure problem, as we might call it - the
domination of unions of the AFL-CIO-type by a paid hierarchy of officials and staff.

The Problem of the Bureaucratic Layer

"Class struggle unionists," writes Burns, "have long believed" that the layer of
paid officials and staff "have different material interests than those of the
members." Burns believes that this paid bureaucratic layer "is not the only cause
of labor's weakness, but is a major impediment to union renewal." Paid officials
want to be able to make deals with employers, and often it is easier to do this
if demands are narrowed. Officials do not have to deal with the harsh discipline
and oppression of the capitalist workplace.

But the reluctance of the paid apparatus to back escalating mass militancy is
also grounded in their fear of threats of state attacks on the union or vast
fines. Yet, Burns believes that union renewal requires a revival of class
struggle tactics and effective strike actions. Under the present legal cage
workers are captive in, tactics such as mass pickets, secondary boycotts,
workplace occupations, or actions that violate "no-strike" contracts would face
injunctions and fines. Huge fines pose a major threat to union assets. Burns
quotes British labor sociologist Richard Hyman: "Those in official positions in
unions possess a direct responsibility for their organization's security and
survival, a role encouraging a cautious approach to policy. In particular this is
likely to induce resistance to objectives or forms of action which unduly
antagonize employers or the state..."

"For established unions," Burns writes, "the question of militancy is
fundamentally a question of protection of union assets." The syndicalist movement
of the early 20th century tried to get around this problem in a number of ways.
Burns quotes Ralph Darlington on one aspect of the syndicalist approach:
"Syndicalists everywhere refused to build up large strike funds or to provide
unemployment, sickness and death benefits for members and their families...to
avoid amassing a large treasury in the hands of a centralized union bureaucracy
that might develop its own interests remote from the members and...oppose
strikes." By World War 1 syndicalists had developed a consensus in favor of a
conception of unions not dominated by a paid apparatus. The idea was a
self-managed form of unionism, or "rank-and-file rule." Various tactics were used
to avoid centralizing power in the hands of a paid executive, such as term
limits, unpaid union secretaries, a strong role for worker assemblies and
councils of unpaid shop delegates.

Burns says there are different approaches for solving the structure problem.
Although he notes that unions without assets might be better at deploying the
militant tactics that violate the present labor law regime, a project of building
new self-managed unions apart from the inherited AFL-CIO-type unions is dismissed
by Burns as "purist." Burns leaves the structure problem as an open question.

Burns repeats a familiar strawman argument against syndicalism. The argument goes
like this: Unions can't be the basis of the revolutionary transformation of
society through an "expropriating general strike," where workers take over
democratic self-management of industry and socialize the economy from below. Why?
Because "most unionists don't start out holding these revolutionary views," Burns
says. But the assumption seems to be that a grassroots self-managed union
movement, of the sort syndicalists advocate, must have worker members organized
on the basis of agreement with a revolutionary ideology, not on the basis of
class fights with the capitalists.

This leaves out the possibility of a process of change in consciousness,
organizational strength, and aspirations over time as workers build unions they
control, and build a sense of power through gains they win. As syndicalist
theorist Emile Pouget put it, the union "is a school for the will." Pouget was
talking about the grassroots, worker controlled form of unionism, which allows
for free development of the links between working class groups and development of
a sense of class possibility as organizational strength and class solidarity
develop. After all, how does the working class become revolutionary? How does it
develop the actual capacity to get rid of the capitalists? If this process
requires mass participation, effective strike tactics, growing solidarity and a
growing sense of class power, wouldn't worker-controlled unions be the best way
to develop this?

Moreover, the Spanish syndicalist union CNT did demonstrate the possibility of
unionism as the driving force in a revolution. The CNT unions carried out a vast
"expropriating general strike" in Spain's industrialized northeast in 1936-37 -
expropriating 80 percent of the economy of Catalonia and 70 percent in Valencia.
Entire industries were re-organized into coordinated, worker-controlled
industrial federations - health care, entertainment, electric power, railways,
furniture manufacturing, dairies, and so on. This wave of worker expropriation
was not "spontaneous." For decades workers in the CNT unions had discussed and
debated the steps to take in a revolutionary situation. A consensus had been
created in favor of direct takeover of the workplaces and creation of democratic
worker self-management, based on the workplace assemblies and election of
delegates to coordinating councils.

The Militant Minority

How can class struggle unionism be rebuilt? As Burns points out, the vast wave of
strikes and building of new unions in the 1930s came from years of agitation and
organizing that preceded it. "During the decades leading up to the 1930s, groups
such as the IWW...and others pushed a program of labor militancy, industrial
unionism," unity across racial divides, and effective strikes. "They put forward
a vision of how to take on capital on a grand scale." Burns suggests that the
absence of a vision like this in labor circles is partly due to the weakness of
the anti-capitalist left.

Burns says that the potential for renewal lies in building up the layer of active
workers who most want change - a militant minority. The phrase "militant
minority" was coined by syndicalists in the early 1900s. Various groups of
radical workers were organized to push for rank-and-file control and a class
struggle orientation in unions in France, Spain, Mexico, and Italy in that era.
Here he quotes Charlie Post: "Without a layer of workers with a vision and
strategy for how to organize, fight and win, the labor officials have been free
to pursue their near-suicidal approach."

Burns reviews the debate between William Z Foster and the advocates of new
unionism. Between 1909 and 1921, a million workers in the USA formed new
industrial unions independent of the AFL. David Saposs did hundreds of interviews
with the members and officers of these unions in 1918-1919. As he reports in
Left-wing Unionism, the members and militants were generally in agreement with
the "revolutionary industrial unionism" of the IWW. Foster hated this new
unionism. He was able to get the Communists to back his strategy for "boring from
within" the AFL unions - via rank-and-file "leagues" formed through the Trade
Union Educational League. But the TUEL was a failure and by 1928 Foster lost
support for his strategy in the Communist Party. In 1933-34 another vast wave of
new unionism unfolded in the USA with 250,000 workers forming new industrial
unions outside the AFL.

Can organized rank-and-file movements change inherited AFL-CIO-type unions into
class struggle unions? Burns quotes Steve Early on the rank-and-file movements of
the ‘70s: "The most successful rank-and-file movements of the long 1970s...rooted
themselves in the workplace and tried to unite members in contract campaigns and
day-to-day fights against the boss, while also attempting to gain control over
union structures so the latter could facilitate rather than impede rank-and-file
struggles." Burns mentions Teamsters for a Democratic Union as an example.
Railroad Workers United would be another example.

At one point Burns says: "Although union reform sounds radical, it is actually a
fairly conservative approach because it is essentially saying the problem is just
bad leaders....Electing new leaders does not resolve the structural issues of the
divide between union staff or officers whose daily existence differs from
frontline workers[and]the constant pressure to compromise inherent in the
bureaucratized labor-relations system..." There are countless examples of people
being elected as union reformers who end up over time becoming much like the
former leaders they replaced.

"One of the positives of building new organizations," Burns concedes, "is that
some unions are so tightly controlled and bureaucratic it's hard to see how they
can change." With only six percent of workers in the private sector in unions,
there is plenty of scope for new worker organizations. And the recent victory of
the Amazon Labor Union in New York City illustrates the potential of building new
grassroots unions at large, strategic employers. For libertarian socialists with
a syndicalist orientation, we also want to see increased popular education
attacking the illegitimate capitalist labor exploitation regime, and the revival
of class struggle tactics. Our goal is the emergence of combative self-managed
unionism on a grand scale.

Tom Wetzel is the author of Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class
in the 21st Century

https://ideasandaction.info/2022/08/class-struggle-unionism-review/
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