Yeah American unions have become pathetic. Too much Cold War brainworms combined with Reaganism caused them to hand over all of their power.
One of the more common union busting tactics for the last 50 or so years has been to give in to union demands for senior employees on the condition junior employees wouldn’t benefit. They’d fire/layoff newer employees and not allow them to fill positions created by someone retiring. Then viola! You have a new workforce who resent unions and don’t have to pay them better.
Done on a large scale, it created generations of Americans against unions. Any sort of institutional knowledge about how to organize has been lost. Most Americans don’t know people were getting shot for scabbing well into the 1950s. One of the good things to come out of Occupy Wallstreet was the rediscovery of labor history among younger workers.
Yeah American unions have become pathetic. Too much Cold War brainworms combined with Reaganism caused them to hand over all of their power.
this is ignoring and erasing the savage impact of the red scares and mcarthyism which led to that. These weren’t just media propaganda that ‘communism bad’ but also violent waves of events over a century, with some of their worst waves in the 1900s-1930s and the 1950s-1970s, which literally made it illegal to be a communist both in law and practice; with full scale outing/‘doxxing’ and forced-purges of every single communist, anarchist, socialist, any militant at all from all of the rank-and-file and leadership positions of unions and workers associations, from every board of civil rights and community organizations, every school board and faculty from the university level all the way down to even middle school teachers being threatened with criminal prosecution if they didn’t quit, every level of governance and civil service, etc. On top of COINTELPRO style surveillance, sabotage, frameups, jailings, torture, murder, etc. of any suspected or even suspected of having sympathies.
Any who didn’t comply had every method at the state’s disposal arrayed against them to crush them, repress them, criminally charge them, blacklist and sanction them and pressure others to not deal with them, and discredit and malign them in the public and provoke stochastic terror and repressions against them, if not just killed by the cops and pinkertons themselves etc. Even speaking positively about communism let alone being a party member if overheard and reported would be made to end your career and social comfort and safety and possibly freedom or life, by any means they could. It’s from all of this that you still in the USA on government forms and immigration forms and military forms have to disclose if you are or have ever been a member of a communist party. You can be denied citizenship over it.
But all this left behind only anti-communist liberals, as everyone who didn’t abide by the purges was destroyed. It broke and smote all militancy in these unions and organizations which is what led to this complacency and class-collaboration and corruption (which then in the 1950s opened the door to their dealings with organized crime; whose mobsters had plenty of their own government crooks in their service too — a legacy of things like prohibition meaning government figures and bootleggers working together to make off like bandits behind the charade of fighting ‘the war on alcohol.’) and this is what all paved the way for the criticisms and disdain for unions we see today; half of which isn’t even wrong but is applied to organized labor in general instead of these specific corrupt, bloated, class-collaborationist reactionary unions that were all that were left in the wake of anti-communist purges amounting to bureaucratized white terror.
There has indeed been a rediscovery however. IWW has seen a big resurgence in the last decade though; and never gave up their principles even when they, and anyone else who tried to organize the broad masses together on real revolutionary lines were smashed into irrelevancy. For them it’s constitutionally verboten to ever sign a contract with a no-strike clause for instance (which amounts to handing over all power and leverage completely), and nobody with hiring or firing power is allowed in the union, nor any cops, etc. Class collaboration is explicitly condemned and they understand and teach that labor law is a (flawed) shield but direct action is the sword and the primary tool of the working class. They also allow dual-carding to connect unions together. Their all-industrial unionism is as opposed to collaborationist and worker-vs-worker competition-between-unions which only benefits the capitalists; and is an exceptional way in my mind for regular working masses to develop working class consciousness and solidarity-in-struggle to build revolutionary mindsets and motivations; with which a little bit (of a good deal) of Lenin would create an actual revolutionary capability among them to fear. Plus their preamble goes hard as hell.
Preamble to the IWW Constitution:
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system.”
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
Wow that’s interesting I have definitely met many of those kinds of folks.
In general it just feels like the whole NLRB certification process serves teach American Union members that the legitimacy of their political power is handed down to them by the state as opposed to being self evident and independent from state power.
you can read my above comment about the hand-in-glove role the red scares played to then leave class-collaborationist and state-reliant unions afraid of their own power; but the IWW teaches it as: that labor law is the shield, and direct action is the sword. The shield can make it so the bosses are more wary of attacking in certain points (or have to go through lengths to obscure and shield their attacks) which can buy room and time for the most effective strikes (pun kind of intended). And it takes time and expenses from the bosses to face the labor violations down.
But because it does take that time and takes that time from you, while those are happening your comrade who was unjustly fired would still need to eat, hence why those labor violation charges are worth filing but first and foremost the attacker is struck down by an immediate parry and thrust; such as an instant walkout and demanding rehiring of the comrade if they want the gears to turn again, backed ideally by having already spread channels of communication and support in the wider community who can back your actions or take part in them in various ways (whether boycotts, strike funds, joining the picket and pressing out scabs, fax-blasts and call complaint spam, spreading news, etc.). And with the internet you can even get some of those methods of support from outside your community too which is cool.
Yeah American unions have become pathetic. Too much Cold War brainworms combined with Reaganism caused them to hand over all of their power.
One of the more common union busting tactics for the last 50 or so years has been to give in to union demands for senior employees on the condition junior employees wouldn’t benefit. They’d fire/layoff newer employees and not allow them to fill positions created by someone retiring. Then viola! You have a new workforce who resent unions and don’t have to pay them better.
Done on a large scale, it created generations of Americans against unions. Any sort of institutional knowledge about how to organize has been lost. Most Americans don’t know people were getting shot for scabbing well into the 1950s. One of the good things to come out of Occupy Wallstreet was the rediscovery of labor history among younger workers.
this is ignoring and erasing the savage impact of the red scares and mcarthyism which led to that. These weren’t just media propaganda that ‘communism bad’ but also violent waves of events over a century, with some of their worst waves in the 1900s-1930s and the 1950s-1970s, which literally made it illegal to be a communist both in law and practice; with full scale outing/‘doxxing’ and forced-purges of every single communist, anarchist, socialist, any militant at all from all of the rank-and-file and leadership positions of unions and workers associations, from every board of civil rights and community organizations, every school board and faculty from the university level all the way down to even middle school teachers being threatened with criminal prosecution if they didn’t quit, every level of governance and civil service, etc. On top of COINTELPRO style surveillance, sabotage, frameups, jailings, torture, murder, etc. of any suspected or even suspected of having sympathies.
Any who didn’t comply had every method at the state’s disposal arrayed against them to crush them, repress them, criminally charge them, blacklist and sanction them and pressure others to not deal with them, and discredit and malign them in the public and provoke stochastic terror and repressions against them, if not just killed by the cops and pinkertons themselves etc. Even speaking positively about communism let alone being a party member if overheard and reported would be made to end your career and social comfort and safety and possibly freedom or life, by any means they could. It’s from all of this that you still in the USA on government forms and immigration forms and military forms have to disclose if you are or have ever been a member of a communist party. You can be denied citizenship over it.
But all this left behind only anti-communist liberals, as everyone who didn’t abide by the purges was destroyed. It broke and smote all militancy in these unions and organizations which is what led to this complacency and class-collaboration and corruption (which then in the 1950s opened the door to their dealings with organized crime; whose mobsters had plenty of their own government crooks in their service too — a legacy of things like prohibition meaning government figures and bootleggers working together to make off like bandits behind the charade of fighting ‘the war on alcohol.’) and this is what all paved the way for the criticisms and disdain for unions we see today; half of which isn’t even wrong but is applied to organized labor in general instead of these specific corrupt, bloated, class-collaborationist reactionary unions that were all that were left in the wake of anti-communist purges amounting to bureaucratized white terror.
There has indeed been a rediscovery however. IWW has seen a big resurgence in the last decade though; and never gave up their principles even when they, and anyone else who tried to organize the broad masses together on real revolutionary lines were smashed into irrelevancy. For them it’s constitutionally verboten to ever sign a contract with a no-strike clause for instance (which amounts to handing over all power and leverage completely), and nobody with hiring or firing power is allowed in the union, nor any cops, etc. Class collaboration is explicitly condemned and they understand and teach that labor law is a (flawed) shield but direct action is the sword and the primary tool of the working class. They also allow dual-carding to connect unions together. Their all-industrial unionism is as opposed to collaborationist and worker-vs-worker competition-between-unions which only benefits the capitalists; and is an exceptional way in my mind for regular working masses to develop working class consciousness and solidarity-in-struggle to build revolutionary mindsets and motivations; with which a little bit (of a good deal) of Lenin would create an actual revolutionary capability among them to fear. Plus their preamble goes hard as hell.
Preamble to the IWW Constitution:
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system.”
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
Very GOOD post
Wow that’s interesting I have definitely met many of those kinds of folks.
In general it just feels like the whole NLRB certification process serves teach American Union members that the legitimacy of their political power is handed down to them by the state as opposed to being self evident and independent from state power.
you can read my above comment about the hand-in-glove role the red scares played to then leave class-collaborationist and state-reliant unions afraid of their own power; but the IWW teaches it as: that labor law is the shield, and direct action is the sword. The shield can make it so the bosses are more wary of attacking in certain points (or have to go through lengths to obscure and shield their attacks) which can buy room and time for the most effective strikes (pun kind of intended). And it takes time and expenses from the bosses to face the labor violations down.
But because it does take that time and takes that time from you, while those are happening your comrade who was unjustly fired would still need to eat, hence why those labor violation charges are worth filing but first and foremost the attacker is struck down by an immediate parry and thrust; such as an instant walkout and demanding rehiring of the comrade if they want the gears to turn again, backed ideally by having already spread channels of communication and support in the wider community who can back your actions or take part in them in various ways (whether boycotts, strike funds, joining the picket and pressing out scabs, fax-blasts and call complaint spam, spreading news, etc.). And with the internet you can even get some of those methods of support from outside your community too which is cool.