The owners of the dye-houses, grouped in two employer's associations, demanded workers take a 15 percent pay cut, give up three paid holidays, and accept cuts in medical benefits. Workers responded to these demands by organizing a militant strike. The bosses quickly agreed to a modest 30-cent pay raise over the contract's three years.

In this strike, many pickets said that they felt that the union is stronger than it was during a walkout in 1993, where workers were forced to accept deep concessions in order to get back to work. On the picket line at Continental Dye and Finishing, I met a worker who had been hired as a scab in 1993 and who was now pulling picket duty along with his co-workers.

The run-up to the strike overlapped with a heightened campaign by local bosses to blame foreign competition, particularly with China, for the problems the textile companies face in making the kind of profits the bosses require. Justifying the bosses' concessionary demands, Mark Kluger, an attorney for seven of the dye-houses, explained in the pages of the Paterson Herald News, "The foreign competition is hammering us. This trade agreement with China that has just been signed—their labor costs are not comparable to ours—they are far, far lower. We're not saying that we're trying to come up with the same labor costs as China. What we're saying is that this is the reality with which we must deal."

Union officials ride the same protectionist bandwagon. Luis Ginorio, the head of the Dyers District of UNITE, is quoted in the same article as saying, "NAFTA has had a big impact on us. But the new trade agreement will have an even worse impact. We can't compete with China. Or with North Carolina or South Carolina, for that matter." Ginorio pointed out that the 1993 strike resulted in cuts in wages and benefits, adding "So we've already helped the companies out.... We've already made the concessions."

Democratic Party congressman William Pascrell, a former mayor of Paterson, joined this united front of bosses and union officials for a rally outside Kalksteins Silk Mill on November 30. UNITE called the protest to demand an end to "unfair trade and sweatshops," and for "protecting our jobs," higher wages, and a "safe environment." It was timed to coincide with protest actions against the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle. Looms at the silk mill were idled for half an hour as managers encouraged workers to attend the rally. They joined other local bosses on the platform—including one from a nonunion shop notorious for long hours and low wages. All were sporting UNITE! union baseball caps.

Pascrell sharpened the bellicose anti-China thrust of the brief speeches by bosses and union officials, pointing to the difficulty of competing with workers who labor for "three bowls of rice a day," saying that lost jobs in the United States were "blood on the barbed wire of trade war." Silk mill owner Theodore Lederman protested the import of finished silk cloth from China, while stressing the importance of continuing to ship in raw silk yarn from China and Korea, which is worked up in his mill.

It is particularly important for garment and textile workers to closely examine where the union officials are trying to lead us with their anti-China rhetoric and their attempts to get us to view workers abroad—and in other parts of the United States—as competitors. Competition among workers is something that benefits the bosses. It is the fundamental character of our existence as workers under capitalism: we are forced to compete with each other for jobs.

In times of high unemployment and social crisis, the employers are especially quick to utilize this fact. They tell us, sometimes outright, "You don't like the way things are? Someone else out there would be glad to have this job, for less!"

Unions are organizations that arise because of this conflict, whose initial purpose is to join workers together so the bosses can't pit one against the other. Ultimately, our unions need to address the interests of all the exploited and oppressed, and fight to overturn the wages system as a whole.

When the bosses and the union officials say, "We can't compete!" our answer can be, "We, working people, don't want to compete. Let's join together in a common international revolutionary struggle!"

Targeting China aids the employers and their government in another way. Chinese workers and peasants in their tens of millions carried out a mighty social revolution in 1947-49. They not only overturned a century of colonial and imperialist plunder of the country, but expropriated capitalist companies, turned land over to peasants, and abolished a host of exploitative and oppressive laws and practices.

Today, the U.S. government is starting to prepare to win back China for exploitation by the wealthy American owners of banking and industry. That will take going to war with the people of China. Rather than aid those plans, we need to solidarize with the Chinese workers and peasants, learn about their revolution, and oppose Washington's long-term war plans.

The strike by dye-house workers offers a concrete alternative to the non-struggle and pro-company framework of the union officials. Workers start from the need to wage a militant fight right here and now against the employers and their attacks on wages, conditions on the job, and benefits. We need to extend this to an international level and chart a course of revolutionary struggle against the government and their bosses, rather than helping them to prepare for war against working people in other countries.

Weaver and UNITE member Juan Guirales was active in visiting the dye-workers picket lines and in building support for the strike amongst his co-workers in the silk mill. He notes, "We saw a lot of solidarity and sympathy for this strike. Little by little working people are coming together—the dye house workers showed a strength that can be an example to other workers." Commenting on the outcome of the strike, Guirales added, "The gain from the strike was not really too much—and workers will have to do it again in three years time. But the union came out stronger."

While not exactly celebrating a measly 30-cent pay raise over three years, dye workers are proud that the concession demands were pushed back and the union strengthened. Strike notices and picket line photos adorn the walls in at least a couple of the factories.

Andy Buchanan is a member of UNITE in Paterson, New Jersey.  
 
 
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