Us Oil Workers Face Afl-cio Scabbing

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A DROP IN THE BUCKET After more than two months on strike the 60,000 members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers continue to face the union busting attempt of the major oil companies along with the scabbing by AFL-CIO construction and maritime unions.

The strike however is growing and winning support from important sections of the labour movement.

In Los Angeles over 5,000 workers from many unions including the ILWU, shut down the harbour in an act of solidarity and marched through the harbour district.

Closed down

At the Good Hope refineries plant in Louisiana, a mass picket line blocked traffic for two hours on March 2 and was successful in closing down the refinery for the day.

The major impediment to a victory in this struggle continues to'be the scabbing by AFL-CIO unions.

In Seattle, the Trinidad Corporation which has tankers under contract to Shell is paying both licensed and unlicensed personnel overtime all the time at the dock so that they won't leave the ship and be faced with an OCAW picket line.

This is also the case in Martinez, California. The Chestnut Hill and the Austin have provided launch service to avoid pickets so members of the National Maritime Union, the Master, Mates and Pilots, the Marine Engineers Union and the Radio Operators can continue work.

Picket Boats The Inland Boatman's Union, which is recognising picket boats in the harbour area if they manoeuvre between the Reconstruct the Fourth Internotional !

No. l Mer. 1979 •DISCUSSION BULLETIN 60г THE TRANSITIONAL PROGRAMME IN TODAY'S CLASS Founding document of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee Available, price 75p including postage from WSL, BM BOX 5277 LONDON WC1V 6XX tow boats and tankers, has been threatened by the Shell Company, which is contracting out to bring in non-union tow boats to assist in docking.

Texaco is running launch services between the marina in Anacortes, Washington and the Shell and Texaco piers, enabling the ship crews to "avoid" crossing picket lines.

In the 1948 Union Oil Strike although the National Maritime Union was willing to walk off in support, Lundberg of the Sailors Union of the Pacific broke the strike through scabbing by his membership. The same scabbing is going on today.

In the Bay Area hundreds of union carpenters, boilermakers and other AFL-CIO Building and Metal trades are crossing the picket lines in organized contingents directed by their union officials, yet these workers could quickly bring a victory to the strike if they walked off the job and were joined by the maritime workers who move the oil and the shipyard workers who repair the scab tankers.

Refuse Despite the national importance of this struggle, the AFL-CIO leadership has refused to use its power to order a halt to the scabbing.

In San Francisco on 20 February, supporters and members of OCAW. lobbied the 35,000 member 46 county District Council of Carpenters to stop the scabbing.

At the recent midwinter meeting, of the AFL-CIO executive council, the new president, Lane Kirkland took the time to invite Defence Secretary Brown for a pro-war diatribe on the necessity of the draft! Yet there "was no time" to discuss how to build support workers.

In fact, the council with only two opposition votes (Wimpisinger of the IAM and Hardy of the SEIU) voted to support the draft, yet refused to call for support to the oil workers and an end to the scabbing by the many AFL-CIO unions and Internationals.

No boycott call The AFL-CIO and Goss also refuse to call for an international boycott of oil to the US.

While Kirkland supports blockading Iranian and Russian goods he refuses to lift a finger to fight for the International Transport Federation to block the shipment of all oil to the United States.

While the strike has been weakened by this organised scabbing by AFL-CIO unions and their leadership, the oil workers themselves stand solid in their determination to see the struggle through.

Oil workers know that with a nearly 20% inflation rate they must win major gains if they are to survive intact.

Since this is only a wage and health care cost re-opener, other issues, such as safety along with wages and pensions, are again up for negotiations in January 1981, and this strike would be for nothing if major gains are not made now.

There have already been many settlements among the small refineries that provide for a health care cost contribution of $125 a month and 55 cents per hour plus a 5% increase, yet this is still far far behind the real rate of inflation.

It is imperative that a real cost of living escalator clause based on an inflation index determined by the trade unions OCAW UNION NEWS be the major issue along with full medical and dental coverage.

Goss and the membership elected negotiating committee have dropped the demand for a full. escalator clause and the settlement with the small refineries falls far behind what. oil workers need now.

It is time that OCAW and the rest of the trade union movement took up the political issues that confront every OCAW member along with the rest of the labour movement.

Near the top of the list are the pirates and gangsters who run the oil companies.

The AFL-CIO has already called for the nationalisation of the oil companies and this should be supported and publicized by OCAW. • The nationalisation of the oil companies under workers control would do much to stop the massive profiteering, gouging and the national union busting offensive by big business, the Democrats and Republicans. Yet Goss refuses to make a peep about the question of nationalisation.

The solidarity that is now building up throughout the country for the oil workers must be supported and built, yet it is not enough.

This solidarity should be directed towards the formation of i workers party that is independent of the Democrats and Republicans, and that will represent the oil workers along with the millions of other American workers.

OCAW can give a political lead to the four million other workers whose. contracts expire in 1980 and point the way to the solidarity of the labour movement and its political independence. Victory to the 60,000 OCAW workers.

Reprinted from of Francesco Cossiga's minority Christian Democrat government in Italy, at least served to draw attention to a little-known fact-that it was in office.

Resignation was the most decisive, positive act which this miserable, passive administration has taken since it came into office in August 1979.

Since the positions of the main parliamentary parties in Italy are such that a majority government is: impossible, Cossiga represented the only logical • solution-an invisible The trouble was even Cossiga occasionally had to materialiseeven if in a diminutive way-in front of the Assembly to ask for a vote.

Last week he put his nose around the door • and even before the vote was taken was scurrying away to present his resignation to President Pertini and so open up Italy's 39th post-war government crisis.

The reason for the resignation is to be found in the crisistorn Socialist Party. Up to now Cossiga has survived against Communist Party "opposition" as a result of the parliamentary abstention by the Socialists who hold the balance of power.

No guarantee Their leader, Bettino Craxi announced not that the party as such had changed to join the CP in opposition, büt rather that he, as leader, was no longer able to guarantee which way his parliamentary followers would vote!

This announcement reflects an internecine battle between right and left in the party.

The right is prepared to join a coalition with the Christian Cossiga or Ne ), US RIKE striking oil workers Democrats.

The left, on the other hand, want to go into clear opposition unless the CP is admitted to the government-a step which the Christian Democrats rule out.

So Cossiga's resignation leaves the squaring of the Italian political circle as difficult as ever.

The last crisis (following the 1979 general elections) took 160 days to resolve.

Europe

This time there is pressure to do it in a hurry, since it highlights the crisis of leadership in the bourgeoisie not only in Italy but also at the level of Europe since Italy is supposed to be chairing the EEC ruling Council of Ministers.

But the only solution the Italian ruling class can devise to the crisis so far is to try to • get Cossiga to form another invisible government.

And the Communist Party has already volunteered, with its customary deference to the wishes of the bourgeoisie, not to rock the boat as long as a few verbal concessions are made to it in the new government's In that case why was it necessary for Cossiga to resign?

The answer is that in Italy the government: crisis is a method whereby the politicians are given a formal reminder that the only alternative to keeping the Christian Democrats in power is another general election.

And for most of Italy's parliamentary politicians these days elections are viewed as a fate worse than death.

If the parliamentarians cannot agree on a govenment, they are more or less unanimous about the negative consequences of any participation of the masses in politics.

Elections are regarded as punishments for not agreeing to some parliamentary compromise.

So the permanent crisis of bourgeois rule in Italy drags on.

At a time when the Italian ruling class requires a lion to resolve its problem they are obliged to accept the leadership of a mouse-and an invisible one at that.

In the meantime the government of Italy daily passes more into the hands of a few top civil servants and the heads of the Police who implement the range of reactionary "anti-terrorist"

repression laws with which parliament (with the strong support of the "opposition" Communist Party) has equipped them.

Brici::

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ialist League (DC), USA. LOCAL STRIKE AGAINST The resignation last week