Vol. 79/No. 9 March 16, 2015
An anti-labor outfit posing as a socialist current in the working-class movement is trying to convince striking oil workers to quit their union, the United Steelworkers, and weaken their fight against the refinery bosses.
The Michigan-based Socialist Equality Party, which runs the World Socialist Web Site, has a long history of anti-labor disruption aimed at workers engaged in often bitter struggles and at revolutionary working-class organizations like the Socialist Workers Party.
During and after the three-month lockout of Steelworkers-organized rubber workers by Cooper Tire in Findlay, Ohio, in 2011-12, the SEP handed out a so-called Cooper Tire Worker Newsletter, published by the World Socialist Web Site, charging the Steelworkers with betraying the workers. The tire bosses quoted their diatribes against the union in industry publications.
They’ve intervened against the unions in recent years in battles of workers at Caterpillar in Joliet, Illinois; Con Edison in New York; American Crystal Sugar in North Dakota and Minnesota; and elsewhere.
In a Feb. 18 statement posted on their website, Shannon Jones issues “A Warning to US Oil Workers,” telling them to beware “the sabotage of their struggle by the United Steelworkers union.”
Claiming to support “the revival of militant working class struggles,” the anti-working-class group calls for strikers to abandon their unions, arguing all U.S. labor organizations are part of a vast conspiracy with the employers. They don’t build solidarity. Instead, as hard-fought battles drag on they seek to get the ear of workers who get frustrated or discouraged.
Most workers are offended by the anti-union pitch. A Feb. 12 article on the World Socialist Web Site quotes a Toledo strike supporter ranting about a “fat cat union guy” who golfs with management. “Quotes they put in are far from what was said,” a unionist who identified himself as usw4life responded. “I was right there walking and listening to what my fellow union brothers were saying. … They are no longer welcome to visit and talk to our picket line.”
— MAGGIE TROWE