How many sellouts by 'labor leaders' before the working class needs new unions and a new class struggle vision of unionism?...
Donald Trump and union leaders.After the dramatic appearance of a faction of the leadership of the AFL-CIO with President Donald Trump at a convivial meeting at the White House recently, more and more people have been indicating that they realize that some leaders of "Labor" are really sellouts of the interests of the working class of America. Such sellouts have a long and ignoble history, with very few interruptions, since the outbreak of militant unionism during the 1870s following the explosion of industrial capitalism in the USA 1870s. One of the lessons of the massive attacks on unions by the ruling class (which included sending in soldiers to break strikes more than a dozen times during the 50 years before World War I began for the USA in 1917) is that the ruling class wants to destroy unions. Why, then, would some union leaders break bread and smile for the cameras at the Trump White House? While some of the answers are more deeply buried in history -- including the odious record of white supremacy in many of the craft unions in America -- some are more easily seen and exposed. In The New York Times recently, Naomi Klein published an Op Ed about how this is taking place in 2017 in relation to the struggle between jobs and climate change policies.
But there are many other ways in which traditional "divide and conquer" ruling class tactics have long worked within the so-called labor movement. To listen to some current commentators, the years of the Obama administration was a good time for "labor." This is only true if the people now doing a hagiographic version of recent history ignore the facts. Barack Obama almost immediately sold out on a major promise to the unions after his January 2009 inauguration. And Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, was explicit in his support for union busting policies, ranging from the destruction of the unions in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina to the rapid expansion of anti-union charter schools pushed by Duncan and Obama throughout the eight years of Obama's presidency.
A close examination of the policies of neo-liberal politicians, including Chicago's Rahm Emanuel (who served as chief of staff for both neoliberal Democratic Party presidents since 1990 -- Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) shows that Rahm Emanuel's reported comment -- "fuck the UAW!" -- was translated into White House policy on several occasions. It was only by portraying the alternative (a Republican President) as worse that some union leaders were able to continue to support the Democratic Party in a less than critical manner.
A major split then came when several union leaders (including Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers) pushed through "union" support for Hillary Clinton more than a year before the 2016 election. By pushing an endorsement of Clinton through the AFT executive council despite growing working class support for Bernie Sanders, Weingarten may in fact have done more to hurt the Clinton candidacy, rather than help working people in the fact of the 2016 juggernaut. It is a fact that many supporters of Bernie Sanders went for Trump in the general election after Clinton and the Democrats continued on their self-destructive push to the November 8, 2016 election.
NEW YORK TIMES OP ED BY NAOMI KLEIN....
Labor Leaders’ Cheap Deal With Trump, Naomi Klein, February 7, 2017, The New York Times (published on the Op Ed page in the print edition and also on line).
The alliance that some labor leaders made with Trump is built on sand. The author believes they will come to regret it.
For progressives, Donald J. Trump’s presidency so far has been a little like standing in front of one of those tennis ball machines — and getting hit in the face over and over again. Yet looking back, the blow that still has me most off-kilter didn’t come from the new president himself. It came two weeks ago, when several smiling union leaders strolled out of the White House and up to a bank of waiting cameras and declared their firm allegiance to President Trump.
Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, reported that Mr. Trump had taken the delegation on a tour of the Oval Office and displayed a level of respect that was “nothing short of incredible.” Mr. McGarvey pledged to work hand in glove with the new administration on energy, trade and infrastructure, while one of the other union leaders described the Inaugural Address as “a great moment for working men and women.” When Mr. Trump issued executive orders to smooth the way for construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, the same leaders rejoiced.
A new administration can always count on many organizations to issue pro forma statements expressing a nonpartisan willingness to work with the new leader. Let’s be clear: This was not that. This was a new alliance. As Terry O’Sullivan, head of Laborers’ International Union of North America, put it on MSNBC: “The president’s a builder. We’re builders.”
But the edifice that Mr. Trump is building is rigged to collapse on the very people these unions are supposed to defend. His cuts to regulations will make them less safe on the job, and he may well wage war against the National Labor Relations Board, an agency that recently ruled that Mr. Trump violated the rights of the workers in his Las Vegas hotel to unionize and bargain collectively. His proposed cuts to corporate taxes will eviscerate the public services on which they depend, not to mention public sector union jobs. He supports “right to work” legislation that poses an existential threat to unions. His pick for labor secretary, the fast-food magnate Andrew Puzder, has a long record of failing to pay his workers properly, and he has praised the idea of replacing humans with machines
And Mr. Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, has ruled in favor of employers far more frequently than workers.
Indeed, the more cleareyed unions are openly questioning whether their organizations will survive this administration. The Labor Network for Sustainability, in a report, warns this could be “an ‘extinction-level event’ for organized labor.”
All this is an awful lot of ground to lose in exchange for mostly temporary jobs repairing highways and building oil pipelines.
And it’s worth taking a closer look at the implications of those pipelines, along with the rest of Mr. Trump’s climate-change denying agenda. A warming world is a catastrophe for the middle and working classes, even more than for the rich, who have the economic cushions to navigate most crises. It’s working and precariously unemployed people who tend to live in homes that are most vulnerable to extreme weather (as we saw during Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy) and whose savings, if they have any, can be entirely wiped out by a disaster.
It’s natural to ask: In times of insecurity, why shouldn’t unions worry more about jobs than about the environment? One reason is that responding to the urgency of the climate crisis has the potential to be the most powerful job creation machine since World War II. According to a Rockefeller Foundation-Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisers study, energy-efficient retrofits in United States buildings alone could create “more than 3.3 million cumulative job years of employment.” There are millions more jobs to be created in renewable energy, public transit and light rail.
Moreover, a great many of those jobs would be in the building trades — jobs for carpenters, ironworkers, welders, pipe fitters — whose union leaders have been so cozy with Mr. Trump. These unions could be fighting for sustainable jobs in a green transition as part of a broad-based movement. Instead, they are doing public relations for the mostly temporary jobs Mr. Trump is offering — those building oil pipelines, weapons, prisons and border walls, while expanding the highway system even as public transit faces drastic cuts.
The good news is that the sectors that have made common cause with Mr. Trump represent less than a quarter of all unionized workers. And many other unions see the enormous potential in a green New Deal.
“We must make the transition to a clean energy economy now in order to create millions of good jobs, rebuild the American middle class, and avert catastrophe,” George Gresham, president of 1199 S.E.I.U., the largest health care union in the nation, said in a statement two days after Mr. Trump’s pipeline executive orders.
Other unionized workers, like New York’s Taxi Workers Alliance, showed their opposition to Mr. Trump’s travel ban by refusing fares to and from Kennedy Airport during the protests.
For a long time, these different approaches were papered over under the banner of solidarity. But now some union heads are creating a rift by showing so little solidarity with their fellow union members, particularly immigrants and public sector workers who find themselves under assault by Mr. Trump.
Today labor leaders face a clear choice. They can join the diverse and growing movement that is confronting Mr. Trump’s agenda on every front and attempt to lead America’s workers to a clean and safe future.
Or they can be the fist-pumping construction crew for a Trump dystopia — muscle for a menace.
[Naomi Klein is the author of “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” and “The Shock Doctrine.”]
Comments:
By: Rich Gibson
Labor Aristocrats
George's comments are right on, but Klein, who promotes gentle capitalism and empire, knows nothing about the current state of the unions that are dedicated to serving, not even criticizing, capital and empire. They are counterfeit unions in ideology, in practice, in their corruption, in their nationalism and racism, and in their firm unity (in exchange for pretty good payoffs) with top bosses everywhere.
By: Jean Schwab
Right to Work
I've heard that Trump is considering making Right to Work a national Law. I've watched what happened in Indiana and Wisconsin and it isn't good. We need to put aside our differences and start to work together to get Trump and his buddies out of government.