LAWYERS & PORK CHOPPERS/ Mural Detail - An Injury to One is an Injury to Allby Mike AlewitzVOTE NO(The following talk was given by Mike Alewitz, CCSUProfs4Progress, at the Stand Up, Fight Back:A Socialist Action Forum on the National Assault against Workers and Public Services, May 26, 2011, Hartford. Other panelists included writer Jonathan Pelto and Colin Donnaruma of Save Our SUNY)
Over the past two months, union officials representing government employees and the Democratic Party of Connecticut have given us a remarkable display of solidarity. Unfortunately, it has been a close-knit unity directed against state workers.
An absolute blanket of secrecy was imposed around negotiations for state demands for $1.6 billion in concessions from union workers. Not one local union officer, representative of a labor council, international rep or other union official has spoken out against a massive, malicious media campaign directed against state workers.
While the poor of the state have been told that pampered union workers would be responsible for cutting of social services, while we were portrayed as overpaid freeloaders – union officials remained mute.
During this whole time, you could not even find out the names of the bargaining agents that were supposedly representing us.
Sugar-Coated Poison
Last Tuesday, and again yesterday, I attended a large meeting of college professors anxious to hear a report on concessions demanded by Governor Dannel Malloy. We were not shown the actual agreement–only a summary that is clearly a spin operation to sugarcoat the theft of billions of dollars from the pockets of state workers.
According to State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), it’s great news – No layoffs! No furlough days!
That’s true enough – but here is what the agreement does:
- Eliminates at least 1000 jobs through attrition. That will impact on socially useful programs that serve working people, as well as require speed-up of already overburdened employees.
- Billions of dollars will be lost in wages - transferred to corporate executives and bankers that populate this, one of the richest states in the country, through tax breaks. The students of our state will be indebted to those same bankers for the rest of their lives, paying off school loans from low-wage jobs
- It calls for labor-management committees that are designed to create speed up conditions in the workplace.
- Includes long-term givebacks for 20 years, even though the whole point of opening concessions was supposedly to solve a temporary budget problem.
- Ensures that work will continue to be outsourced to sweatshop companies both in this country and overseas–whether it be information management or grounds keeping.
- Means that tuition will go up, classes will get larger and programs will get cut.
- Will allow for continuing erosion of tenure, shared governance and academic freedom.
- Will inevitably weaken affirmative action, women’s and civil rights.
- Advances the corporatization and privatization of public education.
Along with the theft of our wages and income through loss of pension and retirement benefits, the SEBAC-Malloy cabal has engineered a remarkable giveaway to health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Employees will be mandated to have such procedures as colonoscopies under penalty of noncompliance. This is no joke. You will be charged $1200 a year, if you opt out of a plan whereby insurance bureaucrats and management can enforce such procedures.
Billions of dollars are being stolen from our wages. Despite this fact, professors left the room in a relatively buoyant mood. It could’ve been worse! Why, since we had furlough days this year, and there won’t be any furlough days next year, it’s practically like getting a raise!
We have been fed this kind of anti-worker poison for so long, that we have been programmed to accept cuts that affect others, as long as givebacks don’t hurt ourselves. Dump it on the new hires. Dump it on the next generation of teachers. Dump it on the future retirees. Dump it on the students. Dump it on the community.
How did this come to be? How is it, that professors can stand before students every day to speak and teach the greatest of human aspirations, and then descend to being bought off so cheaply? Think about your teachers and your professors. Are these people selfish? No – and they are no different from other workers in manufacturing or the crafts - we are all responding to the same pressures.
Why isn’t there a fight back? We have seen the mobilizations in Wisconsin - why not here in Connecticut? Why has there not been a generalized uprising against these assaults on state workers and public education?
To understand this, we have to step back and look at the framework and history of working-class politics in the United States.
Roots of the Crisis
The US came out of World War II as the preeminent world power by being able to maneuver Europe, Japan and the Soviet Union into mutual destruction. Then, as now, war aims of the United States had nothing to do with democracy, human rights or anti-fascism – it was a cynical policy based on what would advance American corporate interests.
In order to get millions of people to slaughter each other on the field of battle, you have to promise them things–a higher standard of living, political freedom, an end to discrimination, etc. When the war was over, working-class and anti-colonial struggles engulfed the world. The late 1940s, growing class-consciousness in the United States led to massive strike waves involving millions of workers.
At the same time, the labor officialdom made a deal with the devil - the social pact that came out of the war. In return for increased paychecks and benefits for its members, union officials agreed to align themselves with US foreign policy and to not question the right of the capitalist to rule. In return for labor peace, the members of unions could look forward to a rising standard of living that did not exist for working people anywhere else in the world.
From 1945 to 1975 workers wages rose an average of 250%. In return for being well-behaved Americans, workers could have a one-income household, own a house and an automobile and have access to both healthcare and education for their children.
Throughout the last half of the century, as workers prospered, unions became more bureaucratized and conservative. Radicals were driven out of the leadership of the labor movement. A privileged bureaucracy with bloated salaries arose – top union bureaucrats literally became millionaires. The traditions of labor militancy that gave rise to modern industrial unions were forgotten.
But the United States began to lose its standing in the world. Japan and Germany built more modern and efficient production on the rubble of their bombed cities, initiating another cycle of inter-capitalist rivalry. The prosperity of the 50s and the 60s began to ebb, as the US faced greater international competition. With the realignment of the world’s economy, manufacturing dramatically declined in the United States. The great industrial giants of coal, steel, rubber, auto and shipbuilding virtually disappeared. Huge industrial unions, like the United Mine Workers and the Steelworkers became ghosts of their former selves.
Public Sector Workers
Not all sections of the labor movement were in decline. Although the manufacturing base declined, new sections of the labor movement emerged and began to grow. During the 1970s, militant struggles erupted that led to the widespread organization of government workers and educators. Many of the leaders and ranks of this new movement had been influenced by the anti-Vietnam war, civil rights and women’s movements.
Militant struggles led to an increase in the standard of living in this part of the working class–even as real wages began to decline for manufacturing workers. This was particularly exemplified by the situation of teachers. Up until the expansion of the American Federation of teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), teachers were considered to be “professionals” with few rights and little financial reward. But newly organized teachers fought for, and won, better contracts.
College professors were much slower to appreciate the fact that they are workers–and their confusion about this remains a central political problem to this day. Without significant resistance, the employers have been able to seriously erode the working conditions of professors. Tenure is rapidly disappearing and the vaunted career as an academic, with time for travel and research, has been replaced by contingent labor.
Much of the work performed on university campuses is now outsourced. This rationalization of educational labor has been propelled forward by the changing needs of American capital. The growth of community colleges and four-year public universities followed the expansion of modernized industry during the prosperous post WWII years - but the needs of capitalism have changed. What we see today is a generalized dismantling and dumbing-down of public higher education.
Its the Democrats
In return for higher wages, unions gave up their traditional goal of building a labor party, in favor of support to the Democrats. This mistaken policy has been an abysmal failure, year after year. And yet, yesterday I sat in a meeting and was informed by an AAUP/SEBAC official that we should accept their concession contracts now, so that we can be sure to elect labor-friendly Democrats that will turn things around in the next general election. This, despite the fact that Malloy and the Democrats are leading the assault on state workers – the very politicians labor supported in the last elections!
Union officials like to characterize the assault on labor as Republican, or right-wing. But the truth is that it is a bipartisan effort being led by the Obama White House. Democratic governors are leading the attacks on state workers in Massachusetts, Oregon, California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Hawaii, Minnesota, Maryland and New Hampshire, here in CT and other states.
What Malloy is doing in the state of Connecticut is no different than what happened under the Republican governor of Wisconsin. The only difference is that Malloy is more effective, because he has corralled labor officials into his support.
Malloy referred to the tentative agreement as:
"historic because of the way we achieved it - we respected the collective bargaining process and we respected each other, negotiating in good faith, without fireworks and without anger."
The Democratic governor of Washington stated similarly:
"I did it by going to the table, respecting their collective bargaining rights and we got the job done."
The Democratic governor of Oregon is demanding 20 to 25 percent pay cut for state workers:
"But those concessions will be made across a bargaining table through our collective bargaining process and with mutual respect."
When MA House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to strip public employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO stated:
"It's pretty stunning. These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected. The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they're with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions. . . . “
Not so surprising to us socialists, Bob! What the Democrats are doing in Massachusetts is no different than what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin.
Malloy and Scott Walker and Barak Obama – all the Democratic and Republican politicians from Dennis Kucinich to Michelle Bachman - serve the same masters.
The fight against massive cuts in wages and benefits cannot be separated from the attack on legal collective bargaining. Actually, concessionary bargaining is even more destructive than anti-labor laws passed in Wisconsin. Some of the greatest periods of union activity took place when the laws were least favorable to workers. What really matters is the class-consciousness and combativeness of workers. Despite the passing of anti-labor laws, workers in Wisconsin are stronger today than they were a year ago, because they are no longer under the illusion that they have friends in government.
On the other hand, the deal in CT has completely disoriented, demoralized and weakened workers.
Why do the union officials keep us bound to these creeps? To understand why labor officials refuse to act independently of the Democratic Party, you have to understand their social base. These are not workers - they are professional “leaders.” Bureaucrats.
In 2008, nearly 10,000 union officials or staff in the US brought home salaries greater than $100,000, consuming over $1 billion of their member’s money. They compose a massive, conservative layer of functionaries attempting to preserve the peace.
They identify with the employers and their two parties. So in the fall, union officials will come to us once again, telling us to vote for Malloy and Obama, because they are the lesser of two evils. Once again, they will try to convince us to await the second coming of Christ - hoping to be swept up in the rapture.
Vote No!
So what should we do? If you are a state worker – VOTE NO!
There is nothing unprincipled about voting to accept concessions, if you feel that you have waged a struggle and achieved the best that is possible. But there has been no struggle here. There has not been a single demonstration by state workers or their supporters. This is just a deal cooked up by a bunch of bureaucrats and state officials.
In fact, it can barely be considered collective bargaining–there has been no input from the actual members. On that basis alone, it would be a step forward for state workers to reject this kind of secret, anti-democratic deal.
In the longer run, there is no shortcut to building a class struggle left wing in the labor movement. This is what groups like CCSU Profs4Progress represent–the idea of building international solidarity, political independence and labor militancy.
CT is awash in wealth - stolen and kept hostage by the super-rich. But working people are aware of this. Eventually, the contradiction what is possible vs. what exists will draw us to write new chapters of class struggle. We will get to that point by fighting concessions and organizing international solidarity.
Labor Solidarity Has No Borders
That leads me to the second most important thing we can do - fight against the war. Ending the US wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, is the central issue that faces every single working person in the world.
The importance of the anti-war movement does not just lie in ending the enormous human and material waste. In opposing the wars, we can overcome the central ideological chains that bind us –the idea that we are
Americans, and not workers.
The American Empire is dying. One look at the current clown car of Republican candidates reveals a ruling class with no future and no vision. Both parties exhibit the lowest level of bourgeois politics – appealing to the most backward of ideas of racism and sexism.
The ruling class has only one agenda - to take more. More from your paycheck, more from your retirement, more from your healthcare. There is no limit to their gluttony–and it is the greed itself that drives them. The creation of every new political, economic or ecological disaster is just another opportunity for profit.
Most of us recognize the arrogance and Imperial policies of the United States government. The US has the mightiest military machine that the world has ever known. But equally important as the weapons of destruction that are directed against colonial peoples fighting for their liberation, are those aimed at the working people of this country.
That is an ideological weapon – a straitjacket that we are put into from the time we stick our head out of the womb (or out of the window of the vehicle you arrived in) and you are told that you are special because you are an American.
From that moment on all of the pressure of society is applied to convince you that you are special, you are unique, you are superior, you have a destiny that is ordained by God, and that whatever differences you have ultimately are transcended by the fact that you are an American.
This idea that you are an American and not a worker is the most critical ideological weapon that the ruling class possesses. As long as workers are held in the straitjacket of Americanism, we will continue to be weak. The instant we become class-conscious, anything becomes possible – including taking power out of the hands of these lunatics.
When we sit in our little meetings and forums, that may seem a long way off. But history does not unfold simply as long fluid curves–but has great leaps, often coming when least expected.
The heroic act of a Tunisian street peddler sparked a revolutionary struggle in that country that led to an even deeper social transformation in Egypt. That inspired the amazing events in Wisconsin. Yesterday it was students in Arizona – today mass mobilizations are sweeping Spain.
There will be generalized fight back in the US against these assaults–not because workers want to, but because they have to. People are being driven desperately, day-by-day, inch-by-inch, to the point where they have to respond. We are living in a pressure cooker. The explosion is coming.
NO CUTS! NO LAYOFFS! NO CONCESSIONS!
