BY SUSAN ZARATE

CLEVELAND - Some 1,400 delegates and observers attended the founding convention of the Labor Party here June 6 - 9. The new party is structured as a group to put pressure on the Democratic and Republican parties, without running candidates of its own in the elections.

The convention was sponsored by Labor Party Advocates, an organization founded a few years ago with the backing of the top officials of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW). Its leading figure is Anthony Mazzocchi, a former international officer of the OCAW and now assistant to the union's president Robert Wages.

Official delegations from the United Electrical Workers (UE), the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE), and the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) attended the convention, along with many OCAW officials. The majority of the convention sessions were chaired by Wages.

Local officials from many other unions also attended, including unions representing automobile workers, machinists, steelworkers, government workers, teachers, and social workers. Delegates were sent from many chapters of the Labor Party Advocates, organized on a geographic basis. Leading up to the convention, a number of groups calling themselves socialist or communist built the event.

Relatively few rank-and-file union members attended the convention. A group of young people who have signed on to the AFL-CIO's "Union Summer" campaign were present the first day or two, but their attendance dwindled sharply after that.

No to ban on endorsing Democrats
Almost all discussion and debate at the four-day convention centered on proposals for the new party's constitution and program. Early on, a proposed amendment to the constitution that would prohibit the Labor Party from endorsing Democratic or Republican party candidates was overwhelmingly defeated. Opponents of the amendment, including top officials of the OCAW, said such a decision would irrevocably split the party.

While the proposed program, "A Call for Economic Justice," included some demands favoring affirmative action, a shortened workweek, and "an immigration policy that does not discriminate on any basis," no discussion on these issues reached the floor of the convention. Nor was there any discussion about Washington's deepening war drive, recent U.S. attacks against Cuba, nor any other international issues.

This narrow "American" focus of the Labor Party was pointedly raised by one convention participant at a reception hosted by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), which had a sizable delegation at the convention.

After an address by FLOC leader Baldemar Velázquez, María Guardado, an activist in an immigrant-rights coalition in Los Angeles spoke up. "I am a survivor of torture by the death squads in El Salvador," she said, noting that the CIA and other U.S. governmental agencies trained these murderers.

It is Washington's foreign policy and the economic stranglehold that U.S. big business maintains on the Third World that causes much of the misery around the world, Guardado explained. "There was one small reference to immigration policies in the [Labor Party] program document, but the fact that workers are forced to come to the U.S. as a result of U.S. foreign policy isn't even being talked about at the convention....The Labor Party doesn't have to be like the Democrats and Republicans who support such a foreign policy. And how about an end to the embargo against Cuba?"

On the third day, a proposal was issued jointly by the constitution and program committees which concluded, "The Labor Party will not endorse candidates of any kind, will not run people for office, and will not spend any Labor Party resources on electoral campaigns, at least until we prove capable of recruiting and organizing sufficient numbers of working people around a new agenda."

An amendment put forward by delegates from the longshoreman's union to soften this stand was defeated after long debate. Arguing against the amendment, Constitution Committee member Maryanne Young said, "If we are a unified voice, maybe one of those other parties would listen to us."

Throughout the course of the meeting, there was often acrimonious debate between the delegates from the international officialdom and the left-wing radicals and activists in the trade unions. A weighted voting procedure was established, however, which gave the officialdom virtual veto power on all questions. For example, a representative of each international union was given a voting card worth 100 votes. At-large delegates had cards worth only one-fifth of a vote. Other union officials got weighted votes in between.

Sweeny: `Wrong time for labor party'
Recently elected AFL-CIO president John Sweeny spoke before the Cleveland City Club on June 5, but pointedly did not attend the Labor Party convention. In his speech Sweeny said this is the wrong time to be talking about a labor party. Forming a new party, Sweeny said, is "a monumental task and we only have six months until November." He continued, "Shame on us if we start splitting off or distracting our activists....We should save the creation of a labor party to a non-presidential year." The AFL- CIO recently announced it was donating $30 million to get President William Clinton and other Democrats elected in 1996.

Except for a special point on "solidarity" towards the end of the convention, there was little talk of ongoing labor disputes, despite the fact that a number of unionists attended from various strikes and lockouts around the country. Those who came looking for support included striking newspaper workers from Detroit and members of OCAW Local 7-517, who have been locked out by the UNO-VEN refinery in Lemont, Illinois, since March 24.

There was some debate over abortion rights. The original Labor Party platform included a vaguely-worded statement of support to "informed choice and unimpeded access to a full range of family planning and reproductive services for men and women." A delegate from the California Nurses Association proposed the party go on record as supporting a women's right to choose abortion. This was rejected. One local official of the OCAW declared, "While I'm for it, my members just wouldn't understand why this should be part of a labor party platform."

Susan Zárate is a member of OCAW Local 1-5, and SWP candidate for San Francisco board of supervisors.  
 
 
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