BY GREG McCARTAN
NEWARK - After several months of activity to link up with
the growing resistance of workers and farmers in the region,
Socialist Workers Party members here and in New York held a
convention for two evenings and decided to form a New
York/New Jersey party district.
The district is made up of the New York and Newark SWP branches, whose members were convention delegates. They elected a District Committee, which will have overall leadership responsibility for the party's work, including the district industrial union fractions in the area, work with exploited farmers and their organizations, jobs committees which organize to help get party members hired into plants in a number of industries, and in defense of the Cuban revolution.
Delegates discussed central issues of politics in the U.S. class struggle as well as the proletarian norms and methods of functioning essential to build a party of worker- Bolsheviks based in the industrial unions.
Joining the meeting were members of the Young Socialists in the area, members of the Philadelphia branch of the party, and several at-large party members. Joel Britton and Greg McCartan represented the party's Political Committee.
What most marked the meeting were the recent steps forward by the Newark and New York branches in what the party calls the "third campaign for the turn." This campaign is aimed at increasing the numbers of party members working in garment shops and textile factories organized by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE); in meatpacking plants organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW); and in coal mines organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). The goal of this drive is to transform the work of all eight of the party's industrial union fractions and its integration into a growing mass vanguard of working people in this country.
Building UNITE, UFCW, and UMWA fractions
Since last October the number of socialist workers in UNITE
here has grown from two to eight and the number in the UFCW
from zero to six. Together with the Philadelphia branch,
party and YS members here have also begun regular sales teams
and work among coal miners in Pennsylvania as part of
building a fraction in the UMWA.
In the reports and discussion delegates described shop- floor skirmishes by meatpackers, the strike by members of the UMWA locals 803 and 1531 against the Jeddo Coal company in Pennsylvania, an organizing drive that is getting a deep response from workers at Continental Airlines, and responses by vanguard workers to an attempt to weaken the union at the Metro-North commuter railroad.
Participants in the meeting assessed they are lagging behind the possibilities to bring workers and farmers involved in and leading these struggles to the convention of the Socialist Workers Party in San Francisco April 1- 4 and an active workers conference in Ohio in early August. Building on the accomplishments so far to begin prioritizing collaboration with these fighters as an axis of the work of the branches was seen as decisive in the next stage of the third campaign for the turn.
Washington's wars and military threats
"Every day brings fresh evidence that the imperialist
rulers are trying to numb working people to the brutalities
and attacks they visit on Iraq and other what they call
`rogue states,'" said Joel Britton, reporting to the meeting
for the party's Political Committee. "They are preparing to
deploy thousands of additional imperialist troops in
Yugoslavia."
Britton pointed to Romanian miners who marched across their country demanding an end to government closings of coal mines and an increase in wages. Such actions "give fresh meaning to our assessment a decade ago that imperialism had lost the cold war and will have to directly take on working people in the workers states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union," he said.
Whole areas of the world are going through new levels of economic devastation, he said, "the latest being Brazil where the effects of this new stage of the world capitalist crisis marked by financial upheaval and breakdowns will mean sharply rising long-term unemployment and severe austerity measures by the government."
In the United States, Britton said, "we see the continued polarization of bourgeois politics and the development of Bonapartist figures such as Governor Jesse Ventura in Minnesota." He also pointed to fascist-minded currents, such as that of Patrick Buchanan, who are looking to the future as they build a cadre to seek to counter and defeat in the streets the greater struggles of working people that are coming.
"Working people see the drive to impeach Clinton by the Jefferson Davis Republicans as one aimed at the their rights and the social conquests of oppressed nationalities and women," he said.
Within these world developments "a mass vanguard of working people and farmers, numbering in the tens of thousands in this country is acting and growing," the SWP leader said. "We meet these fighters in strikes, organizing drives, at rallies of farmers, at conferences, in women's committees in the unions, and elsewhere."
Britton pointed to an event February 5 organized by members of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Union (PACE - formerly the OCAW) locked out at Crown Central Petroleum in Pasadena, Texas, that will mark the third year of their struggle February 5. As part of their reaching out to other struggles, Crown fighters recently linked up with workers fighting a mass firing by Freshwater Farms, a catfish processor in Belzoni, Mississippi.
The Crown workers invited the catfish workers to the anniversary event as well as Titan Tire and other strikers, Steelworkers locked out at Kaiser Aluminum, the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA), and the National Organization for Women.
This gives a small taste of this growing vanguard in this country, Britton pointed out, including the fact that groups of workers and farmers who have been working together for some time have come forward." We have an opportunity to work side-by-side with them, jointly shouldering responsibilities, getting to know each other, and looking to join our forces."
These groupings are marked by a "militancy in trade union struggles, staunch opposition to the methods and perspectives of the trade union officialdom, and an initial anti- capitalist view, usually starting from the need to defend their unions against government intrusion into their strikes." The SWP, while a small party with no social weight, can have an impact on the outcome of strikes and struggles, Britton said. "Since we are a nationwide party and our industrial union fractions function in a number of unions, we can help bring working people together and help bring struggles together."
Centrality of books and pamphlets by Pathfinder
"We also have the weight of our political weaponry in the
books, pamphlets, and New International magazine distributed
by Pathfinder Press," the SWP leader said. "These are the
written-down historical lessons of working-class struggle and
the fight for socialism. Being able to read about the history
of the struggles of mine workers, the roots of government
intervention in the unions and how it can be fought against,
and about the struggles being waged today can be an enormous
help to unionists on the front lines for whom these lessons
have immediate application.
"How strikers and others use and need these books," Britton said, "helped us see the extreme importance of the efforts being made by the party and Young Socialists members in Pathfinder's printshop to insure we can continue to have these necessary political weapons available." Along with steps being taken by the branches and industrial union fractions in the third campaign for the turn, Britton described the concurrent drive by the printshop staff to raise productivity by increasing rates, reducing scrap, and maintaining equipment and machinery in top running condition.
The strike by UMWA members at Jeddo, which has been going on since March 26, 1998, is in the anthracite coal region of eastern Pennsylvania. Party branches have begun doing more serious work with the strikers, Britton said, including building solidarity in the unions they are members of in the region.
Socialist unionists have gotten a better feel for the Jeddo strike lately by getting more regular teams there and joining events such as a spaghetti dinner hosted by the UMWA locals.
Possibilities to transform the work of fractions and branches of the party abound, Britton said, and other vanguard fighters are helping to show how to function as part of these fights.
"We go to strikes as fighting workers bringing solidarity. We can work with other co-workers to take a collection on the job where we can't get official endorsement and money from the union local yet," Britton said. "We can get the strikers' story into the Militant and keep working at it together."
Struggle of working farmers
A major aspect of Britton's report and the discussion
focused on what steps to take to deepen collaboration with
working farmers, including building solidarity with the
ongoing struggle of farmers fighting to defend their land and
against racist discrimination led by the BFAA and other
organizations, primarily made up of farmers who are Black.
"The most important thing we can do to build solidarity with this fight, and to build the March 2 rally in Washington to oppose the proposed settlement the Clinton administration is trying to use to end the struggle against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is to put these farmers into contact with more farmers and their organizations," Britton said, "and with vanguard unionists."
"The issues these farmers are dealing with come out of the crisis facing working farmers, out of conditions of being debt slaves under capitalism. Their connection to the land and determination to continue to grow food and fiber is in common with other U.S. farm families," he said, and their struggle is setting an example and pointing the way forward for all exploited farmers in this country.
Britton explained that the Clinton administration's USDA has been fighting these farmers for years during which they have organized meetings, conferences, rallies, and other protests. They also launched a class-action civil rights lawsuit charging the USDA with widespread discrimination in providing loans and other services.
The Clinton administration then began a counter offensive, describing as a "done deal" a provisional monetary settlement and pressing farmers to accept the proposed $50,000 compensation payments and end the fight. In this, Britton said, they have the help of the leadership of the major civil rights organizations, trade union officialdom, and elected officials who are Black - forces that are part of the liberal wing of the Democratic party. They are all campaigning along the lines that "while the settlement isn't everything the farmers wanted they should accept it and stop raising hell."
The government's settlement offer received prominent coverage in the liberal big-business media along with statements by prominent civil rights officials, some farmers who were part of the lawsuit, and others supporting the move.
Without recognizing this shift, Britton explained, socialists workers organizing support for the farmers struggle can inadvertently stumble into setbacks for their unions and the farmers' cause.
Communist workers have found quite a bit of interest in the farmers struggle among many other workers. Ellie García, for example, a member of the United Transportation Union (UTU) in Newark, sold 26 copies of the Militant to other rail workers, many of whom particularly wanted to read about the fight. Two co-workers joined her in Washington to hear Grant speak at Howard University the day after the district convention.
In meetings to prepare the convention socialist workers in the UTU discussed how they made a misstep by deciding to press for official support for the farmers' fight at one union meeting, which took place soon after the government counteroffensive had begun. They were unprepared for the discussion and opposition expressed by some union members to the local taking up the farmers' struggle.
This experience helped all of the party's union fractions step back and get a more accurate view of recent developments and to learn or relearn the importance of knowing the views of a broad number of workers and union officials in weighing how to pursue solidarity with a struggle in the union. "These experiences help us get more oriented to farmers and fighting workers, social forces who can provide a long-term basis of support for the next steps in the farmers' struggle," Britton said.
Shake-up in rail unions
Party members in the UTU were recently approached by two
members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) who
work at the Metro-North commuter rail road in New York for
collaboration on an important struggle that has opened up
there.
Over the past half year, a merger between the UTU and BLE has been under negotiation by top officials of the union with direct prodding by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka. The two unions recently announced they will form a new union, the North American Rail and Transportation Union (NARTU).
Doug Hord, who worked on the railroad before volunteering to work in Pathfinder's printshop, explained in the convention discussion that the rail unions have historically been divided along craft lines as the officials of the unions put their interests above those of the union membership. The continued existence of numerous craft unions, rather than organizing on industrial basis, has weakened the power of workers in the industry and been a source of constant divisions among the membership. "Being opposed to craft unionism is part of our program," Hord explained. "It will be very useful to collaborate with fighters at Metro-North to become part of this discussion."
Over the past two decades the rail bosses themselves have eliminated many jobs and classifications in their drive to cut costs. The leadership of the various unions failed to organize a fight to defend crew sizes, work rules, oppose job combinations, and other crucial aspects of union rights essential to safety and the lives and livelihoods of rail work workers and the public. Two-tier wage structures were allowed.
These attacks have borne down most heavily on workers in freight but also hit those in passenger rail as well. Since the mid-1980s in freight new workers are hired for the position of conductor/engineer. They must accept "forced promotion" as a condition of employment. This concession by the union officials gives the company flexibility to use these workers in either job.
Based on this the UTU officials filed for a representation election with the National Mediation Board on the basis that there is now a new classification of worker, the "train and engine service employee." BLE officials protested to the AFL- CIO that this was a raiding operation, a position that was upheld by the labor federation. After pressure from AFL-CIO tops, officials from the two unions agreed through a series of negotiations to form the new union.
Two members of the UTU and BLE locals at Metro-North drew up a letter opposing the merger and proposing their local membership sign cards for a representation election for a breakaway outfit called the Association of Commuter Rail Employees (ACRE). The letter condemns the "failed policies" of the UTU and BLE; claims that the "wage package, benefits, and working conditions we [at Metro-North] have negotiated for ourselves far exceed anything either of these former Internationals have achieved"; and promises "to protect individual craft distinctions and provide craft autonomy" in the new setup.
Ruth Nebbia, a member of the UTU at Conrail, said supporters of the Militant organized a plant gate sale at Metro-North. One engineer stopped and talked for 15 minutes, and explained how he was opposing ACRE. More than 700 of 1,000 union members have signed cards for a representation election, according to workers at the gate, many because they are fed up with the policies of top UTU and BLE officialdom. Nebbia said that workers explained that a significant minority of engineers were wary of this move, especially since they were in the middle of contract negotiations with the bosses.
"The two union fighters who approached the party see this divisive move to form ACRE as a real danger to the union. They are discussing with co-workers how this kind of craft oriented, split-off union will weaken rail workers," Nebbia said.
"Our stand," Britton said, "is not to join in the `pro- merger' campaign by the UTU and BLE officials. Socialist workers explain why we need to build a fighting labor movement and advocate the establishment of an industrial union in the rail industry. If it comes to a membership vote, socialists will vote `yes.'" While there is no rank-and-file struggle propelling the merger, he said, "ending the craft division of union members operating the trains creates the potential for rail workers to be a bit more united.
"This is just one example of something happening in our unions where fighters step forward and where we have a chance to knit or reknit contact with vanguard layers of our class," Britton concluded.
Phyllis O'Rielly, a leader of the party and Young Socialists in the district, explained that "progress in building our fractions and in what we're doing among vanguard fighters is the key to recruiting to the YS. What we're beginning to do helps show young people the kind of effective revolutionary organization they can be a part of."
Eva Braiman presented a report to the meeting on the tasks of socialists workers over the coming months.
"We want to get on a campaign, and put at the heart of what we do, of collaboration with vanguard workers and farmers in our area to come to the party convention in San Francisco and the active workers conference in Ohio this summer," Braiman said. "We need detailed discussions in the branches and fractions about who is interested in going, how we can work together to get there, and what classes or other activities we should do together."
Braiman is a member of the UFCW who works in the lower Manhattan meatpacking district. "A young meatpacker," she said, "is interested in attending the convention and said he thought it would be the kind of place you can really talk to people who understand what we're going through."
Braiman related an example of a struggle against forced overtime that took place shortly after she was hired. Workers had protested to the boss continued forced overtime on Saturday and 80-hour weeks. The boss kept promising one more Saturday would be it. Then the next Monday he announced forced overtime for the next nine Saturdays.
"A group of nine workers, all women, marched into the office and told him `we're not animals, we need a life,' and that there shouldn't be any more Saturday work. That was the last Saturday we've worked since," she said.
Following this protest and other examples of militancy on the part of workers in the plant, Braiman put up signs in the break room advertising several Pathfinder books. Six workers purchased 16 books then, and six more later. One subscribed to the Militant. Braiman pointed out "how crucial it is to have a plant gate team outside each week to carry out political work. During the December assault on Iraq by Washington, the team was there handing out a statement from the Militant, which made a big difference in the discussions I was able to have on the job that day."
Building on the "initial progress we've made in the third campaign for the turn," Braiman said, "means getting more of us into meatpacking, garment shops, and working to get hired in coal mines."
Andy Buchanan, a textile worker in Paterson, New Jersey, and a member of UNITE said, "With only a few months in these industries, we are getting in touch with layers of workers we weren't in contact with, and with developments in industries we didn't know about."
In his report Britton described discussions held the previous day in the district fraction of socialists in the UFCW. They reviewed a political misorientation in the union and undemocratic functioning in the fraction that threatened to undermine initial progress if not corrected.
Socialists orient to getting jobs in UFCW-organized beef and pork slaughter houses and processing plants. The socialists' concentration on factories in the red meat industry comes out of their participation in a series of struggles that broke out in the mid-1980s in the Midwest packinghouses, including the strike by packing house workers at Hormel in Austin, Minnesota.
In rebuilding the UFCW fraction in New York and Newark, the Newark branch of the party probed, then decided not to build a fraction at a plant that makes hors d'oeuvres. This decision was undemocratically reversed by the steering committee of the UFCW national fraction, after informal discussion with a couple of individuals, bypassing the Newark branch.
Prior the convention, district fraction members passed a number of motions - which were made available to the delegates - addressing these questions and reported they came out of the meetings with a stronger fraction.
A number of delegates spoke to the importance of concentrating their forces in the red meat kill, cut, and processing plants, as well as why reconquering party democracy and the responsibilities of leadership bodies goes hand-in-hand with the third campaign for the turn.
"We need to work collectively to meet the challenge of building this fraction in meatpacking, and not to bend to what might seem like an easier road," said Gerardo Sánchez, a volunteer in the print shop who had previously been a meatpacker in Iowa. Dissipating the focus on the strategic red meat industry by building the fraction in food processing or other UFCW plants "would weaken, not strengthen the fraction," he said.
"We are building a combat organization of the working class," said one delegate newly hired at a packing plant. "This means we have to take ourselves and our decisions seriously and not accept less-than-adequate explanations for decisions we are also responsible for making."
Britton said that "we are building a disciplined party of professional revolutionaries, a cadre party. We are also building a party of thinking, self-acting cadre who take initiatives, reach out to struggles and work to advance the proletarian and democratic functioning of the party. We are building a cadre party and a party of cadres."
The progress in getting hired in UFCW and UNITE shops is a result of getting a regularly functioning jobs committee going in the branches. The branch in New York, for example, decided that the committee would meet four nights a week to discuss new experiences and what to do the following day. To qualify to be a members of the committee means spending at least some time one day a week going out and putting in applications, in addition to calling targeted plants. Centralizing the work was also crucial, delegates reported, to avoid unnecessary mistakes.
UFCW member Mike Galati explained how workers can get skills needed to keep jobs in the meatpacking industry and what the party is relearning about the structure and struggles in the industry today. For example, where he works, "the boss says he has to keep wages low to compete with packing plants in the Midwest that hire workers from Mexico. But I know that workers there make substantially more than we do."
Members of the UNITE fraction recently hired into garment shops described the size and centrality of the garment industry in the region, and raised initial ideas of how party members can gain skills to hold down sewing jobs.
Another developing struggle discussed at the convention was that of workers at Continental Airlines to win union recognition. A weekly plant gate team of socialists at the Newark airport, one of the airline's hubs, sold 24 copies of the Militant to Continental workers in two weeks.
The party's work in defense of the Cuban revolution will be a priority of the district committee. New York is a center of activity for those who defend the revolution and oppose Washington's embargo and 40-year drive to topple the revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro.
Summing up the meeting Britton said the members of the party in the district "have begun the fight to catch up to vanguard workers in this country. What we have discussed is happening in the class struggle qualitatively changes the number of other fighters we can be working with and who will be interested in the party convention in April and active workers conference this summer."
Greg McCartan is a member of UNITE in Boston.