Neue VeranstaltungshinweiseEs wurden keine neuen Veranstaltungshinweise in der letzten Woche veröffentlicht Kommende VeranstaltungenNorth America / Mexico | Workplace struggles Keine kommenden Veranstaltungen veröffentlicht France at a Crossroads 06:59 Jan 16 1 comments Apoyo a los y las Trabajadoras de los Servicios Públicos en Rosario (Argentina) 01:37 Dec 31 0 comments Labor in the age of Duterte: The Pacific Plaza strike 00:20 Mar 14 0 comments The Google Walkout: An International Working-Class Movement 18:55 Nov 05 1 comments [South Africa] Stop the repression of casualised/contract workers in Ekurhuleni! 07:27 Sep 29 0 comments mehr >> |
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Shut it Down! 0 comments Building Working-Class Defense Organizations: 0 comments New anarchist organization: First of May Anarchist Alliance 1 comments Recent Articles about North America / Mexico Workplace strugglesSeize the Hospitals! ...But How? Aug 01 23 Vermont Labor Takes Sharp Left Turn: Van Deusen Elected Vt AFL-CIO Pre... Sep 17 19 Shut it Down! Jun 14 18 Workers of the Skies Unite!
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Friday June 16, 2006 10:22 by Kdog - Twin Cities IWW GMB
The 2005 Northwest Airlines Strike Our perspective... was simple: “What will it take to win this strike?”
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Spring zu Komment: 1 2 3 4While I was not involved in this strike, K-Dog's account doesn't seem to square with the information out there. Wasn't AMFA's negotiating position that if NWA needed concessions, they should get them from other, less skilled employees than mechanics? How does this fit with solidarity with their co-workers? If non-striking nwa workers were in fact ready to act in solidarity, the labor law these workers are covered by makes them some of the few that could have honored amfa picket lines without risking their jobs. So why didn't they? Part of the reason may have been amfa's negotiation positions -- it's hard to believe it was official IAM opposition to honoring the picket lines. Most unions are simply not organized enough to find a way to enforce a ban like this.
This negotiating position, if accurate, unfortunately fits with AMFA's reputation as an organization that raids others based on sometimes racist appeals to mechanics to seperate themselves from 'knuckle draggers' (baggage handlers) and form a union based on skill. AMFA is also noted, to my knowledge, for a distinct lack of organizing unorganized workers, instead concentrating on workers who are already 'organized', however real that may be. This, in fact, is where much of the afl opposition comes from, rather being purely an 'independent' vs. afl union thing. Many of them have been the subject of repeat amfa raiding attempt which are based on the elitist idea that skilled workers are better of on their own, rather than in industrial organizations. Also, it should be noted that some change to win unions did publicly side with amfa, although I do not know how concrete or long-lasting that solidarity was.
I also wonder what K-Dog thinks of the decision to strike when it was widely known that nwa had been training replacements for months. Faced with this situation with verizon, cwa and the ibew chose to fight inside, rather than strike, while not announcing that would not strike, forcing the company to keep paying the expense of keeping managers and non-bargaining unit employers ready to go in the event of a strike. Eventually, CWA/IBEW succeeded with this tactic in acheiving a contract that I believe addressed the core issues of job security.
Finally, K-Dog suggests that the struggle against many of the massive layoffs/buyouts in the auto (delphi, to be followed by the other us manufacturers), steel and other industrial sectors is a fruitful place for anarchist/revolutionary unionist collobaration with activitated rank and file workers. While this may produce impressive direct actions, will it help build a movement? Many leftists, anarchist and otherwise, have struggled with rank and file workers against plant closings and mass layoffs over the last 25+ years and very little of a lasting movement has been built from this. As plants closed, rank and file activists often moved away or into unorganized workplaces. While there are a few stories of former union activists organizing their new workplace, it is far from the typical experience.
Would it be better for anarchists prioritizing workplace organizing to focus their efforts on sectors of the economy that are expanding and where new organizing, dramatic contract campaigns, and strikes are taking place -- such as health care, hospitality, security, education, construction, wireless telecommunications, public services, and others-- as a contribution to building a radical, hopefully eventually revolutionary, pole in the labor movement?
James,
Thanks for your comments. It is good to have debate and discussion.
Well, you say my take doesn’t compute, but I’d say you’ve been taken in by IAM bureaucracy propaganda. You seem to be grasping for reasons not to support the mechanics/custodians strike at Northwest.
I’ll try and deal briefly with the points you raise:
1.”Wasn't AMFA's negotiating position that if NWA needed concessions, they should get them from other, less skilled employees than mechanics?”
Well that’s what the IAM bureaucracy said, and they got their “leak’ from Northwest, so you can see that there is good reason to question this report. AMFA officially denied that allegation. That doesn’t rule out that it is possibly true, but this wasn’t the main thrust of the strike. I would also note that in all the work groups’ separate bargaining there was a bit of trying to slough off the cuts on other groups. None of the work groups or their unions came out clearly against all concessions for all the work groups. But this became the spirit of the AMFA strike. Much more so then the other unions.
Twin Cities AMFA Local 33 (the biggest and maybe most important AMFA local for Northwest workers) never made those kind of comments, and in fact continually pledged to support any other work group that came out with them. And AMFA did indeed support those few baggage handlers and Flight Attendants that honored the strike.
Also we should be clear that AMFA represented both the mechanics and the custodians and cleaners at NWA.
2. “If non-striking nwa workers were in fact ready to act in solidarity, the labor law these workers are covered by makes them some of the few that could have honored amfa picket lines without risking their jobs. So why didn't they? Part of the reason may have been amfa's negotiation positions -- it's hard to believe it was official IAM opposition to honoring the picket lines. Most unions are simply not organized enough to find a way to enforce a ban like this”
I’m afraid this is really naive. While it is true that IAM baggage handlers had the contractual right to honor the picket lines, their officers advised them not to. Workers that did were not eligible for any strike pay. The baggage handlers had no confidence that their bureaucracy was willing to fight for them. This made workers very cautious. Animosity with AMFA was a much bigger factor for the leadership than the rank and file. IAM was still sore about losing that dues base.
As far as your claim that IAM’s opposition would be hard to enforce, this is again unfortunately not true. IAM got the AFL to put out a letter to everyone of it’s local labor council’s ordering them not to support the AMFA strike. This was a big deal, it meant that when an IWW Fellow Worker who is also a delegate from his mainstream union to the Minneapolis Central Labor Council tried to raise a motion in support of the strike at the council, the President refused to allow it to be heard. Many workers spoke in favor of it anyway, and it probably would have passed, but the Local council president broke the by-laws in order stifle any vote.
In my own mainstream union Local, myself and other wobbly dual-carders tried to raise support for AMFA against the vicious opposition of our local executive board. We mostly won, but it was always a very hard fight.
3. AMFA is elitist and “raiders”
Well again, that’s one way to look at it, and certainly the way the sellout IAM bureaucrats tried to sell it. My article argued that yes, the AMFA workers were overconfident that their skill set would be too hard to replace, and that this gave them a stronger position to fight from.
It is also true that the mechanics’ side of AMFA is the most white, male and high paid workgroup (other than the pilots) in the airline. There were definitely divisions amongst the Northwest working-class along these and others. But those divisions were there before the mechanics and cleaners left to join AMFA. Those divisions exist in our class, and it is something that has to be taken on. In my estimation, the time when workers are most open to challenging themselves and their privilege and to smash those divisions is when they are in struggle. IAM did not and has not organized workers to struggle.
Bottom line: The mechanics and cleaners voted democratically to leave IAM and join AMFA, not mainly to get away from the other workgroups at Northwest, but from the IAM sellout leadership.
4. “I also wonder what K-Dog thinks of the decision to strike when it was widely known that nwa had been training replacements for months.”
You raise an interesting idea: an inside fight. I am not sure if this would have worked, but certainly worth discussing. My doubts stem from a) NWA’s willingness to shove the new contract down their throats- including massive layoffs. and b) airline safety- what the mechanics do- is a bit dicey to mess with. The capitalist press certainly would have put the pressure on, the FAA too. But thinking creatively is important . . .
5. “Would it be better for anarchists prioritizing workplace organizing to focus their efforts on sectors of the economy that are expanding and where new organizing, dramatic contract campaigns, and strikes are taking place?”
Why does it have to be either/or? My article didn’t argue that. Simply put, the capitalist reorganizing, downsizing and outsourcing of the economy is creating resistance (this includes in some of the sectors you point to). We should be with that resistance.
solidarity,
kdog
It is certainly true, as James says, that the strategic opportunities are better in some industries than in others. Here in the USA, the "landlocked" industries -- the work that can't readily be moved offshore -- present a better strategic possibility: public utilities, transportation, retail, construction, restaurants, building service & maintenance (includes janitors and security officers). But they all present their own problems as well. And we have to be concerned and involved where the struggles actually occur, as Kdog says. The struggles at NWA and Delphi also bring out the decomposition in the AFL unions. It was instructive that mechanics, cleaners and flight attendants all dumped AFL unions at NWA.
I wanted to address Kdog's last question:
"There is a need for an organized pole of consistent revolutionary anarchist / syndicalist ideas and action that can relate to and help develop this resistance. I think comrades in the WSA, NEFAC, NWAF, exFRAC, ARA and individual anarchist militants need to discuss whether the IWW or some other common front is needed to serve as such a pole."
I've been a libertarian syndicalist since the late '60s, but I've never been a member of the IWW. At this point in the USA, I think a different approach is needed. To build a social base for Left-libertarian ideas within the working class, it is necessary to be involved in mass struggles and mass organizations as they develop and exist. We have a social base if our ideas have some influence on people and the course of events, beyond our own activist/ideological groups. This implies that we also have some contribution we can make to develop these struggles and how people organize. There are various kinds of mass organizations or struggles that we should pay attention to here, or help to further. This can include rank-and-file oppositions inside the top-down AFL or CTW unions, or we may have opportunities to help to develop new unions, or other kinds of mass organizations. Class struggles also occur in the community, there are mass organizations in tenant organizing, among public transit riders, and so on. There are struggles around issues of social concern such as health care, extreme incarceration, police brutality. So, a reason that an organization like the IWW can't be the pole Kdog refers to is that it is too narrow, since it defines itself as a union. Here it is useful to bring in the "dual organization" concept. A revolutionary activist organization has one sort of role to play, and mass organizations have a different role to play. I think it is a mistake to think of the organization of revolutionaries as limited to the "battle of ideas", as merely a propaganda group. We need to be able to also do practical organizing, and build mass organizations, where we can. Much of the radical left exists largely as propaganda groups, in the USA. But building a social base for ideas presupposes going beyond that, and doing the practical organizing, and helping to build mass organizations. We need to be sure our debates on this subject do not suffer from a static picture about working class consciousness. The USA is a rather conservative country, but it has gone through periods when things were different. People can change and consciousness can change. We must believe this if we believe that the working class has the capacity to liberate itself. But if so, then how? How does the working class change in its consciousness? I think that developing a sense of power, rather than powerlessness, of the potential to change things, is needed in order to interest large numbers of ordinary folks in ideas about radical change. That's because people have to believe it is possible to change things. So, this suggests the importance of building collective actions, and building organizations that permit ordinary people to engage in collective struggle, and to develop a sense of their ability to control their own struggles and organizations. Ultimately a different kind of unionism is needed in the USA. The top-down business unionism we have tends to retard working class consciousness, it leads people to not think in terms of the possibility of more meaningful changes. And the island of bureaucratic business unionism is shrinking, despite the huge centralization of bureaucratic power going on in unions like SEIU and UBCJA.
More from the history of aviation struggle...
From the libertarian socialist publication
Root & Branch No. 1 (1970), pp. 6-7
--------------------------------------------------------------
Two days after Nixon broke the letter carriers' strike the air traffic controllers walked off their jobs and stayed out for three weeks. The controllers called in sick, attempting to avoid the still legal penalties for striking.
The air traffic controller has the most difficult job in the aviation industry. The airline pilot's workload is reduced by the auto-pilot, the co-pilot and the flight engineer. And the pilot is limited to 85 flying hours a month. Controllers face constant pressure and must make hundreds of correct- immediate- decisions ten hours a day, six days a week.
The controller uses radar and radio to keep planes separated. Often the pilot does not even know where he is. When planes head toward busy airports for landing, the controller brings them in separating them by the legal limit of 3 miles. And 3 miles at 180 knots approach speed is only 1 minute of flying time. The controllers had to organize against the FAA to maintain this 3 mile limit. Controllers have told me that there are near mid-air collisions in the clouds that pilots never know about. When planes change their routing to avoid thunderstorms the safety margin is especially thin.
The controller is at the mercy of antique and inadequate equipment. At the Kennedy Approach Control center the radar failed while a controller was bringing six planes into JFK. The controller sent the first plane up, the second one down, the third to the right, and the fourth to the left. The fifth one he told to continue straight ahead. And to plane six he said "I'm sorry buddy, you're going to have to stop right where you are."
When the radio transmitter fails, the controller must watch silently on radar as targets converge and hopefully keep on going.
During the 1960s the volume and speed of air traffic increased phenomenally. But the government spent little money on improving and modernizing the air traffic control system. From 1964 to 1968 no controllers were hired. This meant that each controller had to handle many more planes. To prevent delays the controllers were forced to violate the government's own safety rules.
In 1968 the controllers threw out a government union and organized PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization). They began "Operation Air Safety" in the summer of 1968. They collectively refused to squeeze planes dangerously close together.
Since 1968 the government has been hiring controller trainees. But it takes 3 to 4 years to train a man for radar traffic control. In the meantime the regular controllers have the added burden of training the new men in addition to doing their jobs. Often the trainees learn by controlling actual planes. In Puerto Rico nineteen persons lost their lives when a plane was sent into a mountain by a trainee. His instructor was busy with regular duties.
The major high-density control centers were the heart of the "sick-out." Most of the present controllers were hired in the 1956-58 period and are now in their mid-thirties. Their health and ability to control traffic is failing due to the constant strain. A recent medical survey of controllers found 68 percent have chest pains, 81 percent vomited blood, and 95 percent had visual disturbance (double vision). The FAA will not let them transfer to other less intense centers. To retire they must have 30 years of service or be 55 years old.
Last summer FAA boss, John Shaffer, testified before a congressional committee that the controllers were not underpaid or overworked. Spontaneously controllers across the country called in sick for several days. Since that time, the FAA has stepped up harrassment of PATCO members. PATCO lost its dues checkoff privilege.
Before the recent strike the FAA had refused to negotiate the PATCO demands: 20 years retirement, 30 hour week, higher pay, and better equipment. The final blow came when the FAA gave involuntary transfers to three Baton Rouge PATCO members. Three thousand five hundred controllers called in sick out of a total of 8500 workers.
During the sick-out, the controllers came under intense pressure from the FAA and the airlines. The airline organization (the Air Transport Association) sued each controller individually for damages. The suit is still pending. The FAA sent telegrams of dismissal and suspension to the "sick" controllers. The government forced the PATCO officers to call off the strike; and the officers publicly ordered the men to return to work. In consequence, the issues were confused for the public and for other aviation workers.
The FAA used supervisors who had little current experience and trainees to keep the system going during the sick-out. The rate of near mid-air collision was four times normal. The controllers tried to get the pilots to support their action. But ALPA (Airline Pilots Association), the pilots' organization, is very conservative. ALPA denied the FAA would let them fly if conditions were unsafe. The FAA claimed the airways were safe, because the pilots were flying.
The controllers went back after a compromise was mediated by a federal judge. The FAA promised negotiations and no reprisals when the controllers returned to work. After the men went back, however, the FAA transferred PATCO officers to clerical jobs. PATCO went back to the federal judge who had worked out the compromise and he ordered the FAA to return the men to their regular jobs. The three Baton Rouge men have since been fired.
The FAA has started negotiations with PATCO on the controller demands. The FAA promises action, but the controllers are waiting to see what will happen. Many of them are talking about working for the Canadian Air Traffic Control system.
There have been some changes. In the New York Center the men are now working a five day week. The workload is the same but the overtime has been reduced. The airlines have not gone back to their regular schedules and the men are enforcing "flow control" procedures on the airlines. That is, planes now wait on the ground to prevent delays in the air.
The airlines operate with average flights only half filled. Much airline congestion is caused by competitive pressures. Each airline wants its flights to leave at the rush hours.
PATCO is both a workers' movement and a traditional trade union. PATCO officers would be happy to mediate between the men and the FAA. PATCO wants arbitration and dues checkoff. It attempted to conduct the sick-out within the legal system. There were no demonstrations at airports or FAA centers to spread the strike. The controllers were able to stop half of all airline flights during their strike, but they did not win their demands.
The controllers' struggle has changed their political views. They are more sympathetic to the current student strike against the war. They have understood the necessity of direct action. Traditional trade union methods cannot deal with the basic problems in the aviation industry. The airlines are buying expensive jumbo jets which they do not need, and their losses increase. With profits declining the airlines will step up their pressure to compromise safety. Major airlines have already begun to lay off workers.
Only a revolutionary movement for workers control of industry will guarantee jobs and safety. Aviation workers who daily risk their lives -- as well as the lives of thousands of passegers -- in unsafe conditions must begin to build that movement. The controllers may go on strike again if the FAA does not submit to their demands. When the controllers go out again, they should not be alone. Pilots, ground workers, and other FAA employees should join them to fight resolutely for air safety, better working conditions, and more jobs.