The Organizer Editorial

Sometimes the world seems to be in a hopeless situation. Poverty and hunger are on the rise; war is escalating; a global pandemic is running rampant; prices and rent continue to increase; a new wave of technology threatens to lay off entire sectors of workers, mercilessly adding to the ranks of the unemployed and unhoused.

However, as capitalism pushes workers to the brink, we are fighting back. In this country alone, a wave of labor militancy not seen in decades has been silently building to a crescendo. While the people have suffered greatly over the last several years, profits have hit record highs and workers across the country are waking up to the fact that these “crises” are manufactured and are preventable. They are taking matters into their own hands with the most powerful tool the working class has: the strike.

SAG-AFTRA Joins WGA in longest Hollywood strike in generations

On July 13, the 160,000-member strong SAG-AFTRA — representing actors and other media professionals — joined the ongoing writers guild (WGA) strike to make national headlines as the first Hollywood shutdown in six decades, costing the industry hundreds of millions of dollars every week. The workers are fighting for a fair share of the industry’s record profits, while also demanding protections against a wave of new technologies.

Streaming services such as Netflix have transitioned from content distributors to major producers, giving them a larger share of the profits and increased control over the budget, leading to brutal cost-cutting in areas like production or wages for content creators, and an increased dependence on new technologies such as AI.

In a nationalized industry, where all workers and society would share and benefit equally in the work, there is no reason that technology like AI should be feared. Indeed, AI could be used to help writers organize their thoughts, allowing them to use their full time to explore different creative directions.

However, within the existing exploitative profit-driven framework, it makes sense for unions to fight for strict protections against this new technology. Public support for the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike is high, and pickets continue across the country.

Threat of strike “changes the game” for UPS workers

As we go to press, members of Teamsters local unions representing 340,000 UPS workers have just voted to approve a new five-year contract, narrowly averting what would have been one of the largest strikes in U.S. history, disrupting package shipments, causing supply-chain lags and many other wide-ranging impacts on the economy.

Prior to the agreement, 97% of voting members approved the authorization to go on strike, and the union organized effective and visible practice picket lines all over the country at the initiative of the rank-and-file. They demanded higher pay, the elimination of the two-tier pay system, more full-time jobs, improved safety conditions, and harassment protections.

This credible strike threat forced management to put an incredible $30 billion in new money on the table and address most of the union’s demands. 86% of members voted in favor of the five-year contract, from the record 58% of members participating in the vote.

However, at least one group of mostly part-time workers did call for a “No” vote on the new contract. These workers believed that the momentum they built for this massive strike had given the union the leverage to hold out for much more to support part-time workers. Their voices should not be discounted.

Could a true demonstration of the power of the hundreds of thousands of UPS workers in strike action have led to an even greater victory than the one being celebrated today? Given the gains won at the bargaining table, the overwhelming majority of UPS were not so sure, which is why they voted to support the contract.

UAW gears up for contentious negotiations in September

The waking of another sleeping giant — the United Auto Workers — may add energy to the strike wave. Current labor contracts for nearly 150,000 UAW-represented employees across the nation’s largest three auto manufacturers, “the Big Three,” Ford, GM and Stellantis (Chrysler), will expire on September 14, and the new UAW leadership has chosen to forego the traditional friendly photo-op handshake between the union and management to kick off the negotiations.

The newly elected president, Shawn Fain, instead met with rank-and-file workers at several plants and has signaled that the leadership represents a break with a regime that, time after time, has thrown up its hands and accepted cutbacks and concessions while the major auto manufacturers raked in record profits.

Anger simmers among academic workers nationwide, may boil over this fall

This fall, yet another strike may be on the horizon that would shake the entire state of California. The California Faculty Association (CFA), the union representing 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches across the 23 campus California State University (CSU) system, has entered into impasse with the CSU in their re-opener negotiations, and has begun organizing contract action teams throughout the state to prepare for a potential strike that could occur before the end of the year.

This massive work action would follow a wave of academic strikes in recent years that has not been seen in the country for many decades. To name just a few:

Columbia University student workers led a ten-week strike in the fall of 2022; part-time faculty at the New School in New York struck for three weeks in 2022; 48,000 UAW-organized graduate workers at the University of California struck for six weeks in the fall of 2022; in January of 2023, 800 unionized faculty at the University of Illinois-Chicago struck for six days; 23,000 graduate students in the Graduate Employees Organization at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor organized a 146-day strike; 9,000 educators at Rutgers University walked out on April 10 for one week; postdocs and staff scientists at the University of Washington just ended a weeklong strike.

In every one of these cases, major improvements to pay and benefits were won as a direct result of these strike actions.

Breaking the stranglehold of the two-party system

These strikes and work actions — which are mainly spearheaded by the rank and file — are confronted with a major obstacle, however. The leaders of their unions are tied at the hip to the Democratic Party, which is precisely one of the two ruling-class parties, along with the Republicans, that is imposing the cutbacks, slashing living-wage jobs, fomenting U.S. wars and interventions, dismantling public services, and promoting division among working people in the U.S. and worldwide.

Workers are going into battle against their class enemies with one arm tied behind their backs. Breaking the ties of subordination to the Democrats, and thereby to the capitalist class, is an urgent task. It requires promoting labor and community fightbacks, deepening – and helping to finance – the organizing drives like the ones underway at Starbucks and Amazon, and democratizing the trade unions.

It also requires putting into action the resolution on independent working-class political action – a Labor Party – that was adopted by the 2017 national convention of the AFL-CIO but has yet to see the light of day. [See other articles in this issue on the efforts launched by Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP) to promote such a Labor Party.]

The world may be in a dire situation, but U.S. workers are showing that we won’t take it lying down. We are waking up to realize that by mobilizing in our own name we have the power to confront and beat back capitalist domination – for a better world than what capitalism has to offer.