Fighting the Us Union Bureaucracy

Scan page 9

Sure article from LABOR NEWS the paper of the US Socialist League - dealing with the questions of ainst bureaucracy in the labour movement.

We reprint below a feat principle raised in the fight ag Millions of rank and file trade unionists are becoming take the workers' dues and refuse to defend the workers on the shop floor.

They ignore the unemployed and unorganised. They frequently hob-nob with the bosses at country clubs, drive fancy cars, and hold phoney conventions at fleshpot resorts like Miami Beach and Las Vegas.

They vote themselves big salary hikes but negotiate contracts which often even fail to meet cost of living increases.

WAGE INCREASE

The Teamsters' convention recently voted the union bureaucrats a 25% wage increase.

Rank and file discontent is growing so fast that the capitalist media is beginning to take notice.

NBC Nightly TV News has been running a series on corruption and gangsterism Union following the "disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa"

Teamsters don't have to be told how undemocratically their union is run. Recently in St. Louis, all 50 UPS drivers voted at a strike meeting not to return to work.

But the bureaucrats in Chicago said back to work,' so their flunkies in Local 688 had to conduct an eight-hour meeting before they could wear the membership down to the point that it would not wildcat the next day.

OPPORTUNIST

opposition in the local ronst In this the as UPSurge-Teamsters for a Decent Contract, also advised the members to return to work-after consulting a lawyer.

Teamsters for a Decent Contract has now become Teamsters for a Decent Union and follows the leadership of the newly-formed PROD (Professional Drivers' Council for Safety and Health) organisation headed by former NLRB lawyer Arthur Fox.

Fox agrees with the conclusion of the NBC. News Special broadcasts that only the federal government, through laws like the Landrum-Griffin Act, can reform the unions.

RACKETS

The Landrum-Griffin Act came out of the McClellan Committee hearings on labour rackets in the late 1950s.

The Kennedy brothers got their big boost on the road to the White House by running a public vendetta against then Teamster President Hoffa.

They were not concerned with Hoffa's Mafia connections but his negotiation of the first central states master contract, which could give the union power to shut down much of industry in a strike.

When Hoffa finally went to jai he left the union in control of Frank Fitzsimmons, who let the mobsters have even more control and backed Nixon for President in exchange for restrictions on Hoffa's parole.

Revolutionary socialists oppose using the bosses' courts and lawyers to free the unions of corruption.

Once the government gets a foot in the door, it will use that to control all the unions' elections and affairs.

Workers must organise on their own to clean up their organisations independently of big business controi, no matter how benevolently it is disguised.

In 1958 the rightward-moving Independent Socialist League of Ed Sadlowski Max Schactman favoured the McClellan hearings and the Left Wing Youth Opposition, led by Tim Wohlforth, opposed the government's attempt to smash the Teamsters' Union.

PRINCIPLED

in this principlea stand, he was supported by the socialist Workers Party, which was then still a revolutionary workers' party.

Today the SWP and Wolforth have changed their views on the role of government courts and cops.

For example they favour calling on Mayor Daly's cops to protect blacks against Nazi Party violence in Chicago's Marquette Park. Using the same logic it gives uncritical support to Steelworkers' union reform candidate Ed Sadlowski:

Andy Rose's articles in the SWP's Militant newspaper support "Sadlowski's fight for a militant; democratic labour movement. (April 9th, 1976).

In doing this the SWP shows how far it has gone along the path to becoming the labour bureaucracy's advisors and attorneys.

WON, Sadlowski's supporters recently won some local elections in the Mid-west steelworkers' union.

During the campaign to get their man John Chico elected President of the Southworks steel plant Local in Chicago, Sadlowski's supporters called in the Justice Department to supervise the election and went to court to get their supporters on the union's ballot-counting committee.

Next year Sadlowski will challenge I.W. Abel for the presidency of the United Steelworkers International Union.

Abel was elected to office as a "reform" candidate against David McDonald in 1965. He th rke In a campaign fund appeal letter written for him by Victor Reuther of the UAW bureaucracy, Sadlowski makes no bones about the fact that his campaign will be modeled after the successful Arnold Miller campaign to replace Tony Boyle as head of the United Mineworkers' Union.

MOVEMENTS

Miller formed the Black Lung movement and Miners for Democracy and used Justice Department law suits and investigations to get elected in 1974.

He promised to move the union's headquarters to the coal fields but it is still in a plush Washington office building.

Mine safety under Miller's regime is not much better, as witnessed by the Oven Fork disaster last March. Moreover, Miller showed his true "democratic" colours by crushing a massive miners' wildcat walkout last summer (see Labour News, Sept. 1975).

Despite all his talk about ending "tuxedo unionism," Sadlowski's campaign appeal does not challenge I.W. Abel's negotiation of the ENA no-strike agreement.

NO PROGRAMME has no programme to get jobs e 100,000 unemployed : teelrs. He has not challe iged Cleveland Steel Works US Steelworker Abel's chauvinistic protectionist propaganda about "foreign imports."

He supports continuing labour's ties with the Democratic Party's fat. cat politicians. Real union militants should take advantage of the opening created by Sadlowski's fake reform campaign to fight for a concrete class struggle programme in the USWA and other unions.

PRESS

The desperate level of violent retaliation resorted to by the extreme right-wing in the US to defend the union bureaucracy is indicated by the gunning down on July 26th of Ben Corum, a 52-year old steelworker giving out leaflets at a Houston factory. • Corum was hit in the neck by the bullet, fired from a passing car. He is one of a team of supporters of Sadlowski's "Steelworkers Fight Back" movement who have been travelling through the Southern States organising the fight against tne bureaucracy:

A campaign is now underway to mobilise support in the local labour movement against such attacks and to strengthen the campaign for union democracy.

THE BATTLE FOR TROTSKYISH AT MONEY FINEMA TEAR PAPPY R PRESS PT.

WHO LEA 2AT .T..

Documents of the Opp expelled from hunkers Revolutiona Party 1974. with leas account of the expulsiot ГОФе phus. 20pm p&p OUT NOW THE TRANSITIONAL The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth by Leon Trotsky VAPA-_i1 COLU with glossary and an intro menıimy sÄhesee linK pe Prík…_38 amnes-IO EM *AIF SAIRIR tH1 MI V04 1905 s8 tt8/s00/ 289018141930/ An analysis of the ses ian policies of the Wor Articles Te'd route and Socialist Press rick famplesm TROTSKYISM TOD BACK ISSUES "Fourth International Problems and Tasks" 'In Defence of A Great blutionary: James Car by Tim Wohlforth... "The Post-war Recor tion of Capitalism" reply to Wolforth's on Cannon. "The Generai Strike" *The Significance Transitional Programm All these titles are a from:

Folrose Books 31, Dartmouth Park London NW5 1H

Scan page 10

FIGHT AGAINST CIVIL SERVICE SACKINGS Jotn ЗОВ PROTECTION URGHU HAVE SCORES S INCLE PAD OFFIETAI T&GWU OFFICIAL'S JOB

----- pull-quotes -----

completely hostile to their union officials. These officials

FOLROSE BODES

workers press SOCIALIST

BEHIND THE SMOKESCREI