Which Way Forward for the Labor Movement?

As the U.S. faces a governmental crisis unprecedented in our lifetimes, movements, including the labor movement, are scrambling to figure out how to resist and overcome a tsunami of attacks. 

With the executive, judicial, and legislative branches in the grips of neofascists, the normal checks and balances of constitutional bourgeois democracy are failing, and without them, we will need to rely solely on our own power, something U.S. Americans have not yet prepared to do. 

For the most part, labor has relied on our political system, even while acknowledging its flaws. In particular, unions have relied on the Democratic Party, legal challenges to repression, and, occasionally, largely symbolic demonstrations. However, since unions represent the organized working class, they have the power on their own, if they choose to use it, to disrupt the economy.

First, organized labor must break with the Democratic Party, as much of a ruling-class party asthe Republicans. Never a true friend of the working class, over the past 50 years, it has become increasingly anti-labor and pro-war. Though it sometimes gives lip service to the needs of those facing identity-based oppressions, it has consistently failed to fight back against, and often participates in, real attacks on them. For example, the Democrats have attacked immigrant workers with same vigor as the Republicans and have promoted spending over half the federal discretionary budget on the military, with devastating impacts on marginalized people at home and abroad, most recently the Palestinians. If the Democrats had stood up fully for our rights and benefits and fought to allocate governmental resources to meet our desperate needs for affordable housing, medical care, and living-wage employment, we would not be facing an authoritarian coup d’etat that has already resulted in thousands of federal workers losing their jobs. Supporting the Democrats has never been an effective strategy.

There is nothing inherently wrong with using the legal system to resist assaults on democratic rights, essential benefits like Social Security and Medicare, and policies that mitigate climate change. However, no matter how many lawsuits are filed and how many courageous regional judges uphold existing laws in our favor, ultimately, our rights will be tested in the Supreme Court, which, in keeping with the current agenda, has already taken away labor’s right to an agency shop, overturned the right to abortion, and gutted the Voting Rights Act.

Likewise, mass protest in the streets reinforces public opinion in our favor, but it is not likely to be very effective if not backed by real power.

So where is that power? 

The Ongoing Question: What Is to Be Done?

There is only one force that has the real power to fight back and win: the working class, because without our labor, the economy can’t function. To use our power, though, requires organization. Unfortunately, labor’s misleaders have allowed unions to be weakened to the extent that barely 10% of workers belong to one. Even so, this 10% still constitutes a huge number of people, many working in key industries such as transportation, shipping, and utilities, on which all other industries depend. We should not underestimate the power these workers can wield if they choose to use it.

Here is what Socialist Organizer thinks labor should do:

1. Continue organizing the millions of workers who want a union. No matter how bad the conditions become, growing our ranks will help.

2. Conduct a massive educational campaign within unions. We need to explain theimplications of the current administration’s attacks on all working people and why workers must reject the tactics of both Republicans and Democrats, which pit us against each other by race, gender, nationality, etc.; one directly via extreme racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., and the other via an elitist tokenism that aggravates existing divisions. Our victory will depend on sufficient solidarity, grounded in resisting racism and other oppressive ideologies that exist among us. 

3. Break with the Democratic Party, once and for all. Working people need a political voice of our own, not the voices of cowardly opportunists bought and paid for by corporate interests. We urge our readers to join Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP), which is in the process of organizing a national conference about how to build a labor party.

4. Last, but hardly least, we must encourage serious discussion among union leaders and rank-and-file members alike about preparing for a general strike, if needed to defeat a full fascist takeover of the U.S. This is a not something to take lightly, but if our political situation continues to worsen, it will become necessary.

None of this will be in the slightest bit easy. It will require every union activist to step up courageously to fight for these proposals within their own unions, labor councils, and state federations.