Internationalism highlighted at Labor Notes Conference
By Barry Sheppard
DETROIT — Worker fights back against the neo-liberal capitalist offensive were a major theme at the ninth biennial conference of Labor Notes, held over the April 20 weekend.
Representatives from Korea, France, Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Canada and five other countries spoke in the main sessions and workshops about important developments in the labour movements in their countries to about 1200 participants from 90 unions in the US.
Since 1979, Labor Notes has gathered together a cross-section of activists who want to "put the movement back in the labor movement". Its monthly newsletter of the same name covers trends in the unions, reform movements such as the Teamsters for a Democratic Union and the news, good and bad, about ongoing strikes and lockouts. The newsletter has 6000 subscribers.
Labor Notes also has published a series of books on strategies rank and file workers can use in workplace struggles, from fighting sexual harassment to opposing labour-management "cooperation" programs.
Every two years, Labor Notes hosts a national conference at which workers and union activists can meet to discuss and debate major issues confronting the labour movement, as well as meet people from their own unions from around the country.
While massive worker resistance to the capitalist offensive has not yet developed in the US, participants at this year's conference got a taste of such struggles that have emerged in other countries. By bringing spokespeople for these battles together, the conference helped focus on the beginning global fight back and helped to "recharge the batteries" of class struggle fighters here.
Lee Sang-Hyun, director of the organising department of the Korean Federation of Trade Unions, told the story of the rolling general strike earlier this year against drastic changes in the labour law. Especially interesting was the federation's program of rank and file education. Lee reported that in preparation for this fight, every member had participated in at least one local workshop.
He also described the fast growth of the federation in the past year. This was a political strike against anti-labour legislation by an illegal union that demonstrated enough muscle to get the government to back down on some of the onerous provisions!
Raul Oviedo, of the Argentinean Metal Workers Union, and Horacio Romo, secretary of foreign relations of the Electrical Workers of Mexico, told parallel tales.
In both Mexico and Argentina, the main union federations have been closely associated with the ruling government parties for decades. In Mexico, it is the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and in Argentina, the Peronist movement. The PRI used its control over the unions to discipline the working class. The Peronist movement, whether in power or out, played a similar role.
In both countries, nationalist traditions against aspects of imperialist penetration and control have crumbled before the neo-liberal onslaught. As a result, the PRI and the Peronist governments have begun to implement the dictates of the IMF and World Bank to undercut the "safety net" and roll back workers' rights and living conditions.
The result has been a crisis in the traditional labour unions and a split in the union movement in both countries.
Francine Bavay from a new union formation in France, SUD, which roughly translates as "Solidarity for Democracy and Unity", spoke of the general strike among public workers at the end of 1995, which stopped the government from cutting social wages and benefits.
This massive strike struck a chord of sympathy among private sector workers, too, who tended to support the public workers' demands even when their strike caused a considerable amount of inconvenience.
At the end of last year, truck drivers shut down the major French highways and ports in a strike to make further gains in the social wage, including retirement at 55. (The drivers are now charging that the agreement they won hasn't been implemented by the owners, and they are threatening to renew their action.)
Leah Casselman, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, and other speakers from Canada told of the massive day of action last October against cutbacks in social services and the social wage — the largest demonstration Canada has ever seen. Also on hand were workers from the Canadian Auto Workers, who spoke of their strike and factory occupation last year.
Marta Ojeda, a Mexican worker from the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, spoke about the need for cross-border solidarity between workers in Mexico, Canada and the US in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Under the agreement, it is easier for capital to flow from the richer countries into Mexico, but the flow of labour northward is restricted and controlled. Since NAFTA, living standards have been sharply reduced under the neo-liberal offensive.
Ojeda told a story about the wrong way to fight NAFTA. She went to Canada to try to get union support for Mexican workers attempting to unionise the same company's factories in Mexico. A union official there told her that his union could not give any solidarity to the Mexican workers, "because we have to fight to keep our jobs in Canada".
She pointed out that if the employers want to shut down their Canadian operations and move them to Mexico, there is little to be done to stop it. "If you have to lose your jobs", she said, "lose them with dignity and solidarity". The only real answer to the increasing globalisation of capital is the labour movement becoming more international, organising across borders in the spirit of worker solidarity, not chauvinist division, a point made in many other ways during the weekend.
The president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Baldemar Velasquez, drove this point home in the closing session of the conference. FLOC organizes farm workers in the mid-west, as the United Farm Workers does in the west. Many of the workers whom both FLOC and UFW organise are migrant "illegal" workers from Mexico.
Velasquez said that not only must labour come to the defence of the "illegal" workers, but it must also defy national borders more generally. For example, tomato pickers FLOC is organising move back and forth to fields on both sides of the border, and they have to be organised in both countries.
There were many other themes taken up in the many workshops and fraction meetings.
Ken Paff, national organiser for the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, spoke at the fundraising banquet about the long, hard and sometimes bloody fight against the gangster-ridden and thoroughly corrupt old guard that was thrown out in the early 1990s.
Throughout this battle, the TDU held on tenaciously in the face of threats and actual violence and other gangster tactics of the machine, and finally won with the election of reform leader Ron Carey. However, the struggle is far from over, and the TDU plans to keep organising independently of the Carey leadership while working with it.
The Detroit newspaper strike (now lockout) was another theme. At one point the participants adjourned for a spirited demonstration in the streets in support of the newspaper workers, and the conference was used to build the upcoming AFL-CIO supported march in June in Detroit in support of the embattled workers.