“We’re Not Backing Down” – Working Class Confidence Grows

Conditions of life and the interests of the working class rarely coincide with one another to such a point that the working class of different firms act at the same time. In the United States the situation for working class action has not seen such a combination of conditions since the strikes of the 1970s, one which the bourgeoisie reacted to viciously with all the power the American state could muster. But now, nearly 40 years later, despite the legal and juridical authority the bourgeois state has wielded to maintain and even increase the productivity of the American economy, and a midst a rapid decline in the living standards of the world working class following the 2008 financial crisis, the working class of this country begins to move for its own needs on a similar scale.

Volvo Trucks

The 2900 workers at Volvo Trucks have rejected concessionary contracts twice since May and have been on strike twice – once for 2 weeks and currently since June 7th. They are members of the United Auto Workers, a union riddled with bureaucratic corruption. Half a dozen national and local leaders were convicted in 2020 of accepting bribes from FCA/Stellantis to ensure labor peace.

But the Volvo strike is a flower growing in the UAW’s bullshit.

A two‑week strike began April 17 with a UAW contract proposal presented two weeks later. One worker told Labor Notes magazine “The UAW has been down here twice for town halls, each time we say ‘take it back, it’s garbage,’ and they just say they think it’s a good contract, but they don’t say why.”

The first contract vote on May 16th was turned down by 90%. They were sent back to work by the union. A second proposal that was virtually identical was also turned down and a second strike has been on since June 7th.

A third proposal was voted down on July 9th.

Issues include abolishing two‑tier wages – where new hires are paid at a lower wage scale – where wages top out at $30/hr for long time workers and $21/hr for new hires. Another issue was a significant increase in out of pocket health care costs.

Warrior Met Coal

It has been four months since the United Mine workers of America local at the Warrior Met coal mine in McCalla Alabama have been on strike. Despite the regime union working with the corporation during the last contract negotiations to help Warrior Met recover from bankruptcy while severely reducing the wages and benefits of the workers at the mines and wash facilities, the company still seeks to gain additional concessions to increase the value that the firm is making. Regardless of the crocodile tears that Warrior Met coal has shed for their overhead costs, the companies CEO has gleefully welcomed the jumps in stock prices that comes with the international clamoring to purchase the high quality coal which is used in the production of steel.

Contract negotiations stalled in April, and with no sign of the firm’s negotiators to budge in the slightest the company would have suspected a decrease in their coal reserves. No workers means no coal, and the workers can not continue to place their lives at risk for decreases in their wages and benefits. The solution of the company was not to concede to these rather understandable demands, it was to hire scabs, at the lower wage of course.

Despite this obstinate attitude from the company, the workers at the mines and wash facilities have been steadfast in their strike. They’ve blocked the entrances to the mine consistently enough to prevent the processing and for the decreased productivity to get noticed. This has made the militancy of the workers there more apparent. The significant push back, both from the scabs who brandish weapons and drive their vehicles through picket lines, but also from the allegations of sabotage and premeditated murder that the mine management has used to justify the actions of the scabs, the militancy of these workers to gain their basic compensation and time off makes it a necessity.

As this strike continues, the workers of Warrior Met learn quickly that their only alliance in the fight is with workers, and they’ve learned that their power comes from their coordinated action to impede their employers profitability.

Health Care Strikes

Nurses and other Health Care workers have been in the forefront of workers’ movement since the outbreak of COVID. Many of the nursing unions in the US are highly militant and run by their membership. The reality is worker actions in health are usually a shift, or a day. It is significant that one nursing strike in 2021 has gone for months.

At Tenet/St. Vincent Hospitals in Worcester, Massachusetts, nurses have been on strike since March with demands of 4‑1 and 5‑1 patient to nurse staffing ratios. Tenet is one of the largest for‑profit health care systems.

900 nurses at Cook County Health in Chicago went on a one day strike for more staffing. 1500 support workers went on strike the following week.

“Summer of Chaos”

The Painters union in Portland has successfully won $4/hour wage increases from contractors through a strategy they called “Summer of Chaos”. After being offered a 25¢ increase by the bosses, the union built a strategy to do random pickets shutting down work at building sites, causing logistical chaos. The first strike of 40 painters was supported by 120 other building trades workers refusing to cross the line. It was announced today – June 30th – that a tentative contract will be voted on which include $4/hour wage increases.

Marathon Petroleum

On January 21st, 200 members of Teamsters Local 120 employed at the Marathon Petroleum refinery in Saint Paul Park, MN went out on strike after Marathon locked them out in an attempt to break the power of the union in the refinery. At stake was not only pay and working conditions for the Teamsters, but the health and safety of the surrounding community and of any potential replacements: as history has shown, when facilities such as these employ poorly-trained, underpaid workers, disasters happen. One need only look to the 2018 explosion at the Husky Energy refinery in Superior, WI for confirmation of this fact. Marathon wished to replace these skilled, well‑paid workers with low‑bid contractors, even notifying a local union contractor that there was no upcoming work for that firm, in spite of the fact that it was widely known that a shutdown was scheduled for April. The health and safety of all workers is threatened when companies are allowed to employ workers with inadequate training, low pay, and supervision whose sole concern is the bottom line.

In spite of the fact that local authorities severely restricted the ability of the Teamsters to maintain an effective picket outside the refinery gate by limiting them to 3 picketers, they did not give up. They also expanded their efforts to informational pickets near Speedway gas stations, which were the primary customer for the fuel produced at that refinery. The union was also pressing for a bill that would have required refineries to employ workers with training equivalent to a union apprenticeship. Finally, after nearly six months, the Teamsters announced victory, just four days after rejecting what the company called its “last, best, and final offer”. On June 26th, the union and the company reached an agreement, which, while allowing eleven fired Teamsters to go back to work, eliminates the minimum staffing requirement, and appears to eliminate several job classifications, opening them up to rat contractors. The union’s desired bill was rejected by the Minnesota State Senate, but it’s reported that the decision to accept the company’s offer was influenced by legislation which, if passed, would require refineries to have their own, full‑time, paid fire departments. The Teamsters are scheduled to return to work on the 6th.

Restaurants, Groceries and Food Manufacture

In the “service” sector workers have been not returning to post‑COVID work, which has pushed wages up significantly. As of the last Federal reports, there are 1,600,000 job openings in food. According to the Washington Post “A Pew Research Center survey this year found that 66 percent of the unemployed had “seriously considered” changing their field of work, a far greater percentage than during the Great Recession. People who used to work in restaurants or travel are finding higher-paying jobs in warehouses or real estate, for example. Or they want a job that is more stable and less likely to be exposed to the coronavirus – or any other deadly virus down the road.”

This refusal to take work is driving wages up dramatically. Shops that had proudly paid minimum wage and resisted the “Fight for $15” campaigns with talk of replacing workers with various machines have suddenly shown their true colors by paying $18‑20 and hour.

During COVID, walk outs had become common in these jobs. They continue to be so. Just in the last 2 weeks of July we have seen:

Donuts!

Workers walked out on strike at the famous Voodoo Doughnut shop in Portland, Oregon. Poor Air Conditioning and company water were not enough to protect the workers from the 117°F/46°C temperatures.

Fritos!

500 Frito‑lay workers in Topeka Kansas have been on strike for the first time in the plant’s history since July 2nd. Horrendous over work, deplorable working conditions and little to no compensation, both for base pay and hazard pay have brought the long coming strike to reality. Workers at the facility have brought up issues of hazardous working conditions, complaints of frozen and smoke filled factory floors, callus treatment of workers who die on the job, and lump sum payments in lieu of raises spurred on a drive to negotiate a better contract by the union local at the facility. However contract negotiations quickly broke down as Frito‑lay refused to accept the demands the working class put forward, so much so the employer gave workers an ultimatum which sparked the strike. The workers in the facility refuse to return to work until Frito‑lay concedes to their demands, but only time will tell how many of them will be met and what the regime union negotiators are willing to give up.

Pickles!

35 Grocery workers at Dill Pickle Grocery in Chicago went on a 2 day strike the first week of July to make the management follow the recent contract. This is usual because the workers refused to sign away their freedom to strike, an all too common section in American labor agreements.

Hooters!

A dozen workers at a Houston Hooters Restaurant walked out demanding the store’s Air Conditioning be repaired after a month doing without. The AC was repaired in 2 days and the store reopened.

Burgers!

Workers at a Jack in the Box in Sacramento, California walked out in protest of the restaurant’s broken Air Conditioning, which they say the owners have a habit of not repairing properly.

Kroger!

2000 Kroger workers in Arkansas have also walked off the job, after the grocery chain made the decision to move all of them off their union negotiated health care plan onto the company’s private plan.

Public Workers

New Orleans City Council raised wages for workers – example garbage collection – done by contractors to $15 an hour. Legally speaking, the city council cannot raise wages for city employees whose wages can be as low as $11/hr. To protest the discrepancy in pay, as well as work safety, city maintenance workers went on a sickout.

City Workers in In Elizabeth City, North Carolina went on strike after the city council refused wage increases. The workers’ union, as members of UE Local 150, find themselves in a legal gray area. According to North Carolina law they can join a union but can’t agree to contracts. This provision calls for them to be in constant organization and ready for attacks on working conditions.

Concluding Remarks

This recent strike wave is an indication of a renewed working-class movement in embryo, a result of the catastrophic decline in wages which has decimated the American petite-bourgeoisie and labor-aristocracy, throwing millions of workers and small capitalists into the ranks of the proletariat. As this ‘middle class’ fades away, the social “peace” that the bourgeoisie concluded with opportunism and yellow trade-unionism following World War II dies with it, a process that began in the 1970s and accelerated following the 2008 financial crisis and COVID‑19 pandemic. With union membership at a historical low and Stalinism long out of fashion, mainstream opportunism is reduced to impotent pleas for the Democratic Party to reverse its “abandonment” of the working-class. “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”.

The coinciding strikes that took place in the 1970s brought concessions for individual factories and labor unions, but also brought with it a degradation in the internal class unity of workers in the United States. This degradation, along with the persistent lack of internationalism, gave room for the bourgeoisie to swiftly break the trade unions that facilitated the strikes, move jobs overseas, and ultimately take back what concessions they were forced to give out.

While these recent strikes are not a unified class force, the spontaneous eruption of widespread class-activity regardless of locality, sector, or trade; minimally influenced by opportunist currents or parties; and under an unfolding economic and political crisis; offers the most favorable objective preconditions, since the Stalinist counter-revolution, for the emergence of a generalized class-consciousness and powerful labor movement. The labor movement is starting nearly from scratch, except with the tremendous advantage of the superior productive forces and of over 170 years of experience. The power of the working class comes from the size of its organization, thus wherever possible workers should seek to unify their economic organizations such as unions into larger organizations. This potential, however, can only be ensured by conducting coordinated class action for immediate, class-specific demands which benefit the class as a whole for instance:

• higher wages
• equal pay for equal work
• shorter working hours
• pensions for unemployed, elderly, and disabled workers
• COVID‑19 workplace protections

Furthermore, while international solidarity has always been necessary for the workers’ movement, in the era of globalization this has never been more relevant. Any struggle that limits itself to a national scope, let alone a local or sectoral scope is a non‑starter. Capital knows no border, neither should Labor.

Internationalism encouraged autoworkers to call strikes at FCA (Fiat Chrysler) plants in Italy in against working conditions at the FCA plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan. They and other ICP supporters circulated leaflets in FCA plants around the world encouraging similar strikes.

At the Port of Genoa, dockers also refused to work cargo bound for the Saudi war in Yemen. And again with arms shipments to Israel. This is practical proletarian internationalism.

Part-and-parcel with an eye towards organizing an international association of workers means rejecting the notion that the working-class has anything to gain from electoral democracy and loyalty to the “nation” or state. The US state, like all existing states, is the apparatus through which the bourgeoisie exercises its rule. This cannot be changed or modified, despite the existence of electoral democracy; no ruling class has ever allowed itself to be voted out of power. Similarly, the “nation” merely denotes the territorial market and its participants, unified by a common language and culture, which is policed by this state. Thus the US state, the “nation”, and the American working class are all the property of the American bourgeoisie. Consequently, the American working-class must break with the ideologies of nationalism/patriotism and electoralism which keep its destiny bound to those of the American bourgeoisie and its state. This also means breaking with the ideology of “anti-fascism”, which subordinates the working-class struggle to that of defending the democratic form of the bourgeois-state against the fascist form, as if the form of the state was determined by anything except the will of the bourgeoisie. The only true “anti-fascism” is a class struggle against capital.