http://libcom.org/library/operaismo-autonomist-marxism-aufheben-11

Thanks for sharing that. I’ll be looking over it soon.

I would say that union reform work not only leads to defeat but it is also a PRODUCT of defeat as you suggest in Trade Unions and Independent Organizations. We have seen at times of rank and file mobilization people are willing to move without the union backing the action. But at moments when the rank and file is not as confident because of management and police retaliation then people cling to the union bureaucracy for support and then want to try and reform it if it doesn’t offer that support.

Thanks for the links… I’ll have to check those out when I get a chance.

The initial subject of this discussion is an emerging potential for working class resistance to a prolonged experience of class accommodations that uniformly have turned out to be defeats. One strand, thankfully it appears to be a minority, suggests that this should be channeled into union reform where unions currently exist and implies support for parallel approaches to organizing where they don’t. But that approach rests on little more than the very partial and limited truth that activated workers, “…will first look to the union.” It ignores that there have been hundreds of such union reform and revitalization efforts over many decades just in this country without any example – specifically including the TDU experience – that might reasonably be called a strategic success. While some leftists may be unaware of this reality, it will hardly be news for autoworkers.
These union reform politics fit comfortably within a social democratic perspective preoccupied with incremental “successes”. Unfortunately, they also have a foothold among radicals and revolutionaries. For a case in point, read the last paragraph in Shawn Hattingh’s otherwise excellent description of the current wildcat mine occupations in S. Africa. (ZNet, 2/3/10).
For a very good treatment of the underlying political issues from an anarcho-syndicalist perspective, I’d recommend the 2009 paper, “Strategy & Struggle” by the Brighton Solidarity Federation.

Don Hamerquist

Follow-up to NUMMI plant closure and struggles by rank-and-file to hold their local UAW to task for drawing out negotiations for final payouts after the plant closes in April. In organizing the March 4th actions, folks are trying to link with these workers. I guess NUMMI workers were called to a last minute union meeting today, so as we see with many union democracy is at a premium. It’s tough thought b/c many left organizers are trying to jump on the ship of solidarity with these workers. That’s great, but it’s tough though b/c just now they’re coming on long after the plant decided to close instead of when the announcement was first made. And it seems the UAW is not very critical of GM which ditched NUMMI with two weeks notice. This is in part b/c UAW now owns a large stake in GM. Talk about business unionism!

So in the absence of alternatives folks still lean on the grievance procedure, shop stewards, etc. even though they generally know that these mechanisms are broken and management and the union bureaucrats don’t really take them seriously. We are seeing a unionized workplace in which management acts as if the union didn’t exist.

I would say that for this reason the majority of workers aren’t supportive of the union because it is profoundly broken . Many don’t go to union meetings because they are highly alienating, and perceived as a waste of time. Also, some union officials play ethnic patronage and divide and conquer, and the most oppressed layers of immigrant workers are often excluded from power in the union.

But despite this reality, most workers are also not yet excited about building alternative formations. When a minority of workers do build an alternative that shows it can win my sense is that many of these workers will rally around it.

So this brings us to the strategic question of what should revolutionaries be doing in our workplaces? Charlie Post seem to be suggesting orienting toward union reform, working within the unions to change them. But recognizing that many workers are still tied to the unions does not necessarily mean that our main work should be orienting to union meetings, caucusing, etc. In other words, I agree with Charlie Post’s diagnosis (to some degree) but not with his solution. Instead of that solution my comrades and I are trying to build up independent rank and file organization like International Workers and Students for Justice here in Seattle. We don’t attack or dis the union because most workers still feel the need for it. We are not left sectarians or dual unionists. But instead of union reform work we organize with militant rank and file workers – BOTH the workers who wish to reform the union AND the workers who are so pissed off with the union that they don’t see the point of going to meetings or trying to reform it. IWSJ aims to bring both of these groups together to fight management, whether the union wants to support this fight or not.

This may lead to union reform – we hope it does – but as several folks on this thread have suggested, only advancing the class struggle will actually reform the unions. OR it will possibly create healthier and more militant unions to replace them – the jury is out on that. But if we call ourselves revolutionaries our struggle needs to go beyond either reforming or replacing the unions – we need to build rank and file power and organization, through the course of various transitional struggles, constantly asserting greater and greater attempts to control production itself.

Those fuckin bastard officials even called the cops and tried to say the hecklers were put there by management. Right… and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers were a management front as well….

Living out here in the Bay Area, the only auto plant in the area (and maybe in Cali) NUMMI is closing this Spring. 1,000s of workers are being laid off, a good number are people of color. Manufacturing jobs like this are harder to come by in the Bay Area, and their descent wages are not found in the service industry, where many laid off NUMMI workers will likely find jobs…if they find any at all.

Above is a link to a UAW meeting of these laid off NUMMI workers, showing two views from the rank and file and from the “leadership” table of rank and file yelling at their misleaders in UAW for showing little to no fight. Notice how this is too much for the union bureaucrat who lashes out at the rank and file…as he himself is to be laid off. If this is not a microcosm of the state of organized labor and specifically that in auto I don’t know what is. A sad state of affairs!

What we need is a radical reorientation by rank and file workers drawing off the histories of struggles as noted by posts by Will and other above, like the LRBW, writings of Stan Weir and Marty Glaberman, and Selma James showing workers self-activity and creating groups and structures to defends workers that are outside the union bureaucrats seeking to keep the peace. As you can see from the video, it’s hard to keep the peace when the ship is sinking. It’s clear though the SF Chronicle, a conservative paper, is out to air the dirty laundry of organized labor…and the comments show that. But what rank and file organizing that was done (I’m sure there was some but not aware of all the organizing at NUMMI) is expressed as anger and frustration at the union bureaucracy and each other.

As job and public infrastructure are under wholesale attack in CA, hopefully fightbacks on campuses, schools, workplaces and neighborhoods like the convergences planned for March 4th are a start.

This will be brief so if any of it is unclear, I’ll be happy to expound.

I agree very much with ex-kapd’s caveat on the falling rate of profit. Harry Cleaver does a very exceptional job in his Introduction to Reading Capital Politically to place primacy on the self-activity of the working class in compelling a reorganization of capital toward induction of labor-saving technology, the turn to financialization, etc. If the working class didn’t fight back, create its own forms of struggle (beyond the sanctions of the union, though the rise of unions are partly to be explained by such resistance), and in general act as a fetter on the absolute sway of capital, Detroit would still be Motor City.

I feel the trouble with Cleaver is he seems to have a tendency towards subjectivism and that the self-activity of the working class determines everything. I don’t think he tried hard enough to account for some of the things Kim Moody introduces into the subject of, e.g. labor saving technology and what have you. But the struggles of the working class have to be seen as being objectified into the new class relations, production techniques, neoliberalism, etc. something I don’t think Moody considered. When the capitalists introduce new technology they are factoring in whatever brakes the working class have put on their ability to create more surplus value leading to profit.

Moody nor Cleaver it seems can be taken independently. We need a synthesis of the two so that we don’t fall into either subjectivism or economic determinism.

Even though the unions are much, much weaker than in the 1960s/1970s, workers looking to fight their boss usually first look to the existing unions as that instrument…