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Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; MY FAVORITE GAME OF ALL TIME IS SUPERMAN 64

Economic conflicts - over the distribution of wages and profits, over the relationship between creditors and debtors, and over the taxing and spending powers of the state - have come back into prominence since the global economic downturn hit us half a decade ago. In the United States both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movement can be read at least in part as generational reactions to the heightened political and economic anxiety of our times. The recession has placed everyone in a defensive mindset and seems to have opened the door for a new kind of political coalition building.

One of the most obvious manifestations of these conflicts have been strikes. Strikes actually disrupt the physical processes that keep the rest of our system functioning smoothly. Unlike almost any other form of protest that is legally sanctioned in our society, strikes have the actual capability to bring things grinding to a screeching halt.

In Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa there are seemingly ever more militant strikes every year.

Often these strikes are brief. The production line gets turned off for a few hours at a time or the workers walk off the job for a single day. These kinds of stoppages may sound trivial, but in our present era of just-in-time production these kinds of temporary strikes can be devastating and create massive head aches for managers and owners.

Other strikes are more devastating and involve shutting down the entire economy of a country, either by targeting key infrastructure like ports or rail, or by appealing to workers across many sectors to cease working simultaneously.

Sometimes these strikes work, sometimes they don't. However, there's one broad trend here that seems striking. North America, once a hotbed of labour activism and a place where some important labour victories were cemented and then exported seems to be unsure of itself.

I think the following article on the history of strikes in the USA helps provide a sense of why that might be, and it also offers a potential way forward. Strikes have essentially been domesticated in an American context: an elaborate set of legal regulations and laws hem in what sorts of strikes are acceptable and what form they can take.

Jacobin posted:

The Strike and Its Enemies

Seth Akerman

In a noted 2008 essay, Mark Fisher reflected on the pervasive sense of capitalism’s permanence, a feeling he termed “capitalist realism.” But despite its gloomy tone, the piece ended on a note of hope:

quote:
The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.

For Occupy Wall Street, the hole in the curtain was definitively torn open on October 14. In the dead of night, when word went out that Michael Bloomberg was sending the police to Zuccotti Park to force an end to the month-long occupation, an emergency call for help went out from OWS. In response, New York City’s Central Labor Council urged its 1.3 million members to rush to the square to protect the encampment from the cops, and by early morning roughly a thousand people, including hundreds of trade unionists from the Communications Workers, SEIU and the Teamsters, had gathered and linked arms in defense.

On nearby Liberty Street, a cop was overheard asking a colleague: “How are they going to arrest all these people?”

The same question was dawning on City Hall. As the crowds gathered, according to the New York Times’ reconstruction of what followed, the Bloomberg machine was besieged by “an intensifying sense of alarm.” “This is not going in a good direction,” a state senator warned the mayor’s aides over the phone. Calls poured in through the night from officials who feared “that sending scores of police officers into the park would set off an ugly, public showdown that might damage the reputation of the city as well as its mayor.” In the end, of course, Bloomberg blinked and that morning’s raid was called off – giving the occupiers and their defenders not only a crucial month-long reprieve, but the unfamiliar and exhilarating feeling that they could defeat New York City’s massed forces of guns and money. What happened that morning was important: the occupiers had defied the laws of private property — and through the power of numbers and solidarity they had gotten away with it.

A lot of the younger contingent in Occupy Wall Street had never had many dealings with the unions that had rendered this act of solidarity. And despite the promising, if halting, attempts at cooperation, many of them – especially those who consider themselves to be on the movement’s radical edge – are openly dismissive of unions. And why shouldn’t they be? Not only has the organized section of the working class shrunk relentlessly to just 12 percent, but by all appearances its organizations long ago turned into the kind of hopelessly desiccated simulacra of resistance that young radicals and proto-radicals avoid like the plague. In the public mind, union “activism” in recent years has been associated with images of defeat: hundreds of identically t-shirted workers bused in to forlorn protests on the National Mall; stultifying rallies featuring scripted speeches delivered in front of slogan-printed backdrops; and the occasional kabuki “strike” that seems more like a sullen and oddly masochistic PR stunt than an instance of direct action.

But while it is easy to see the external qualities that make the labor movement appear to be just another feature in the landscape of capitalist realism in the eyes of the young advocates of militant direct action, few really understand how this situation came about. How did a movement, a practice, that once could inspire radicals with street battles and occupations, bravura feats of solidarity and heroism – that once tore holes in the curtain of capitalist hegemony almost as a matter of course — morph into the slick and routine management of decline personified by Andy Stern?

There are shelves of books on labor history that recount important aspects of this story, from state repression to working class racism to party politics. But a little book published this year by Joe Burns, a union negotiator in Minneapolis, demystifies what is probably the most tangible element in modern labor’s aura of lifelessness: the virtual disappearance of the strike. And in telling the story of the strike’s disappearance, Burns inadvertently reveals that young radicals who scorn unions and the aging bureaucrats who run them have more in common than one might think.

* * *

At the center of Burns’ story is what he calls “the traditional strike,” which was the heart of trade union activity from the beginnings of labor history until its virtual disappearance after the 1970s. The crucial characteristic of the traditional strike — its sole reason for being — is that it forces capital to stop production. Although this fact may seem slightly obvious, its significance for both workers and radicals has been largely forgotten.

In the earliest days, when the labor movement was dominated by skilled craft workers who could not be easily replaced, a strike could simply consist of workers putting down their tools until their employers had met their demands. But with the advent of mass production, the majority of workers were now unskilled or semi-skilled and simply walking out on their jobs would only get them fired and replaced with scabs. Therefore, the strike became a military confrontation in which workers had to physically prevent the restarting of production using scab labor. Hence the images of confrontation that run through American labor history: The Homestead strike, where thousands of workers lined the riverbeds to defend the town against invading Pinkertons. The urban streetcar strikes of the early twentieth century, featuring “a new form of guerilla warfare, with hand-to-hand combat, night raids, cavalry charges, fighting from rooftops and behind barricades, and retreats in which the wounded were evacuated under heavy cover.” Or the 1934 Toledo Auto-Light strike, where picketers “broke into the plant and battled hand-to-hand to force the company, which had hired 1500 scabs, to stop production.”

The traditional strike was an open and unabashed physical attack on the private property rights of the capitalist, and this fact was never denied by the mainstream leaders of the trade union movement. Perhaps the most convincing feature of Burns’s account is that despite the author’s personal identification with the radical strand of the union tradition, he goes out of his way to draw on examples from the most conservative figures in labor history: the Samuel Gompers, the Dave Becks, the George Meanys. These leaders not only accepted but took for granted that the labor movement must use or credibly threaten to use force to shut down capitalist production and that without this tool, nothing could be achieved by the trade union movement. “A strike can only be effective if and when it brings about a cessation of production. It is an absolute interference on the part of workers with the right of employers to make profit.” So said Homer Martin, the conservative former Baptist minister handpicked by the Gompersite AFL leadership to serve briefly as the first UAW president (before being overthrown by a more militant faction).

Radical tactics could only exist with a radical theory to support them. The act of blockading a private building in defiance of the police, the resort to forceful measures against scabs, are acts so deeply at odds with the law-abiding instincts of most people – working class, middle class or otherwise – that they will not do them without a clear account in their own minds of why such behavior is justified. That is why in the era of the traditional strike the labor movement was obliged to hold and propagate a counter-capitalist ideology based around the simple slogan that “labor is not a commodity” – the notion that it is illegitimate to treat human labor as something to be bought and sold for a market-clearing price, and that striking workers are therefore justified in using all necessary means to disrupt its sale. From the nineteenth century until well into the 1950s, this rallying cry was so ubiquitous in the world of mainstream, non-socialist unions as to be a platitude. A simple Google Books search shows the phrase littering the pages of union journals from the Gilded Age onward. Walter Reuther was hardly a fiery radical, but when confronted with proto-neoliberal arguments about the sanctity of the free labor market, as he was on one occasion in 1953 while testifying before Congress, his ready-made reply was crisp: “Labor is not a commodity which you go and shop for in the free market place.”

Unions not only believed stopping production was their sole effective means of striking; they considered it to be, ultimately, their only source of power. Again, this notion was a truism, enshrined in college labor textbooks. A 1956 industrial relations text baldly stated of “the strike, the boycott, and the picket line” that “there can be no collective bargaining, if, from the union’s standpoint it cannot utilize these means.” As late as 1980, a labor economics text explained simply: “The union’s ability to strike, and thus halt the employer’s production, is essential to the collective bargaining process….[I]t is the potential of a disruption in production that induces employers to strive to effectuate agreement with the union.”

All this should give some sense of why the near disappearance of the production halting strike since the 1980s is a phenomenon of such far-reaching importance.

* * *

A large section of Burns’s book is devoted to meticulously tracing the path that led to today’s situation. Companies entered the post-WWII period sufficiently scarred by the militancy of the 1930s and sufficiently cowed by popular acceptance of working class direct action that an “unspoken norm” developed, according to which management responded to any breakdown in collective bargaining by shutting down production on its own. This prevented the outbreaks of violence and embitterment associated with strikes and provided a calm atmosphere in which negotiations could take place.

But meanwhile, during this period of relative harmony, the judicial and political systems were quietly and insidiously entrapping the unions in a little understood web of repressive measures that collectively make up what Burns calls “the system of labor control.” The system, which developed gradually from the late 1930s through the 1960s, functions as an organic whole. No one piece destroyed the strike on its own; rather, each element carefully reinforces all the others. One of the system’s remarkable aspects is how juridically unorthodox it often is: as law scholars regularly point out, many court decisions clearly contradict the stated text of the National Labor Relations Act. Meanwhile, labor legislation often resorts to startlingly coercive state intervention to achieve its capitalist ends. The system is too elaborate to explain here in full, but a few details will give a flavor of how it operates.

---The most familiar element, the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, explicitly made solidarity a crime by outlawing the secondary strike — the crucial technique of striking or picketing in support of workers at another firm. In one blow, the production-halting potential of strikes was drastically curtailed. Tellingly, under current law, peacefully standing outside a toy store handing out fliers urging a boycott is considered protected speech if done by a college anti-sweatshop activist; but it is an illegal act subject to fines and arrest if done by a union worker employed in a striking shop.

---The traditional capitalist insistence on freedom of contract was swept aside in the 1959 Landrum-Griffin Act, which declared null and void voluntary agreements between an employer and a union exempting the workers from handling “hot cargo” — that is, products made in struck shops.

---Over the years, a series of court decisions have ruled on the “intermittent strike.” This is a particularly effective technique in which workers strike for only an hour or two without physically leaving their jobs, making orderly management practically impossible while leaving workers largely invulnerable to replacement by scab labor. The intermittent strike has been ruled to be an unprotected strike act and therefore punishable by firing. But the finding so clearly runs counter to the literal text of the National Labor Relations Act that judges have been all but forced to admit that their real objection to the technique is its effectiveness. As one federal appeals court wrote, an intermittent strike “unreasonably interfere[s] with the employer without placing any commensurate economic burden on the employees.”

These measures placed serious obstacles in the way of successful strikes. But the real ticking time bomb of labor law was the Supreme Court’s 1938 decision in NLRB vs. Mackay Radio giving employers the right to permanently replace striking workers. One of the most criticized decisions in legal history, the “Mackay doctrine” discovered a previously unknown distinction between “discharging” striking workers – which the court acknowledged was not permitted by the NLRA – and merely “replacing” them permanently with scabs. As a result of this decision, the United States remains one of the few democratic countries in the world where strikers can be permanently replaced.

Once capitalists regained the initiative in the 1970s and 1980s, permanent replacement was the critical weapon that allowed them to go on the offensive. The postwar gentleman’s agreement that companies would shut down their own production rather than risk a confrontational strike came to an abrupt end. Now management actively sought to provoke strikes, with the intention of keeping production running and permanently replacing the workers, thereby getting rid of a union once and for all. Almost overnight, striking became a suicide mission for workers. The strike rate collapsed.

There are still strikes, of course, now and then. But they tend to be strikes of a new kind. Recent years have witnessed the growth of the “one-day strike,” for example, in which the union announces that it will strike for a day and then come back to work. The aim of the one-day strike is simply to generate publicity; it has no real value in stopping production. It would no doubt mystify Samuel Gompers if he were here to see it, to say nothing of Bill Haywood.

* * *

Since the 1980s, the very idea of the production-halting strike has gradually dropped out of circulation among labor leaders. Today it is virtually forgotten. In its place has sprouted a panoply of alternative panaceas for restoring labor’s strength – social unionism, community partnerships, the focus on organizing — all of which avoid the central issue. In discussing this evasion, Burns scores the timidity of the dominant thinking within the labor movement. Yet in doing so he (inadvertently) calls to mind something unexpected: the ironic parallel between the anti-union radicalism within the Occupy movements and the well-ensconced union bureaucrats themselves.

In a crucial passage, the author astutely sketches the contradictory profile of the labor “progressives” who have taken leadership roles throughout the AFL-CIO in the last fifteen years. These figures have brought desperately needed changes to the labor movement’s stance towards immigrants, race, women, and foreign policy. And yet he concludes:

quote:
During the late 1970s and 1980s, when many of these activists entered the labor establishment, the leadership of most international unions was intensely conservative and hostile to progressive ideas. Working within a labor movement that lacked an aggressive or cohesive left wing, many formerly progressive policymakers accepted the new, management-centric order that was being created within the movement by the employer onslaught of the 1980s. Adapting their own ideas to match this new conservative reality, these activists created the one-day strike, the corporate campaign, and social unionism—tactics that functioned comfortably within the existing structures imposed by management and the legal system. As a result, for the past two decades, many of these “progressives” have been essentially pushing a pragmatic, non-confrontational agenda, whose main ideas can be summed up as follows:

1. Unions must only fight within the bounds of the law
2. Workers and the workplace are not at the center of the struggle
3. Middle-class progressive staffers know more than workers and thus should take a lead role in union strategy
4. Progressive union staffers do not have different material interests than rank-and-file workers
5. Building organization, rather than confronting management, should be labor’s main mission
6. One can accept the fundamentals of capitalism and still devise effective trade union tactics
7. Ultimately, workers must rely on the power of the government in order to make gains
8. Militancy is naïve and should be marginalized
9. To argue that unions need to break free from the current labor system is too radical

“Taken together,” he concludes, “these ideas amount to an extremely conservative philosophy of trade unionism, a philosophy that would have been summarily rejected by previous generations of union leaders, on the left and right.”

Meanwhile, today’s generation of young radicals, like the progressive labor bureaucrats have spent all of their formative years living in the era of capitalist realism — the era of There is No Alternative. And it’s perhaps for this reason that each tenet of the union bureaucrat philosophy that Burns recounts finds its distorted mirror-image in the views of the young anti-union radicals. After all, the prevailing attitude in certain precincts of the Occupy movement is that unions by their very nature will never break the law. That workplaces are not at the center of the struggle. That middle-class intellectuals and full-time activists should take the lead role in strategy and that these groups do not have different material interests than rank-and-file workers. That building “communes,” rather than confronting capital, should be the movement’s main mission. And, above all, that one can tacitly resign oneself to the permanence of capitalism and neoliberalism and still devise effective movement tactics. The irony is poignant. When Burns writes that “conservative trade unionists such as Samuel Gompers were more radical than even today’s labor left,” the same could be said of many of the Occupy movement’s young intellectuals.

What is refreshing about Burns’s approach is that he rejects the fatalism of both the union bureaucrats and anti-union radicals. Instead, he makes a practical yet audacious proposal for breaking free from the system of labor control so that workers can once again directly challenge the dominance of their employers’ property rights.

He argues that a militant current within the existing unions could support the creation of independent worker organizations possessing no assets and no property. These organizations would be able to violate Taft-Hartley and other laws: to strike and organize using tactics that defy the authorities and target the shutdown of production without fear of losing years of accumulated strike funds in lawsuits or court fines. There are precedents: the Mineworkers’ sponsorship of Communist-led steelworker organizing in the mid-1930s; the establishment of AFL federal unions in the same period, most of whose members ended up joining the CIO. The basic concept was even endorsed by the American Federation of Teachers in a 2005 memo on possible future labor strategies.

The idea is straightforward, but it is sufficiently unconventional and risky that it is hard to imagine it happening in the absence of a, once-in-a-generation radical upsurge. Burns published his book last May — four months before the occupation of Zuccotti Park. Since then, a radical mobilization that many of us doubted we would see in our lifetimes has erupted. If we, as activists, students and intellectuals are serious about challenging capitalism, we will ask how we can help to foster a militant rank-and-file led workers’ movement. Because there are millions of them and far fewer of us. And without mass radicalization within the working class, sooner or later the oppressive curtain of capitalist realism will descend on us once again.

Perhaps the time has come to start taking a more militant stand. One of the most striking aspects of Occupy Wall Street is that it didn't really address people as wage earners: it talked to people as citizens, or as debtors, or even as parents, but it outside some isolated examples it doesn't seem as though Occupiers had much interest in taking up the tradition 19th and 20th century concern of the socialist left: wage labour. In part this may reflect an anarchist current in OWS (anarchist unions have tended to prioritize working less whereas socialist unions prioritized higher wages) but either way I would suggest that this strategy represents a real failure.

It is as workers that we are at our most powerful. The work place is still the main locus of glass struggle, its just that workers have been consistently losing for so long they've lost their appetite to fight back. A revived left wing movement must focus its energy on reminding people that as workers they posses real power.

Of course right now one of the biggest problems we're facing is a lack of jobs, so it comes off a little naive to be exhorting to everyone that they try to re-politicize the workplace at a time when most people aren't getting enough hours of work to sustain themselves at a comfortable level.

However we can see some examples of successful protest movements that work within this broad tradition of targeting societies vital infrastructure. Two examples I'd encourage people to research, and which we may want to discuss in this thread, are the Quebec Student Protests of 2012 which managed to basically topple a sitting (albeit unpopular) government that tried to raise tuition rates for university, and the Idle No More Native Canadian movement, which seems to have lost some momentum recently but which has proven remarkably effective at seizing public attention and which has so far prompted a surprisingly conciliatory (albeit fluffy) response from Canada's hardline conservative government.

# ? Feb 20, 2013 17:19

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# ? May 24, 2013 08:29

Orange Devil: Sep 30, 2010; Waar is da feestje?

HIER IS DA FEESTJE!

I know this doesn't add very much and it'll look a bit odd after the big effort-OP, but this seems like the right thread for it and I'd like to know more about it so I'm just adding this here anyway: today 100 million people are on strike in India. If anyone has more info on that, please share.

# ? Feb 20, 2013 19:21

Peven Stan: Feb 1, 2006

The Taft Hartley Act basically made solidarity strikes illegal and today unions are pretty much okay with it. Once labor got brought into the fold it just became another industry for the people involved. See for example, how the "militant and progressive" NUHW and California Nurses Association are constantly going on strike but to protect their own coffers they won't authorize strike funds for the people striking.

# ? Feb 20, 2013 19:32

Thundercracker: Jun 25, 2004; Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.

As an aside, if militant striking and labor does take off expect to see all the (survelliance) drone and warrantless wiretapping issues to finally hit home. It's one thing for a lot of Americans to accept it if it's heathen foreigners, but another when it's Americans (even leftist Americans).

Anyone who's willing to get into the thick of it, good luck, you'll need it. Don't make the same mistake OWS did and be shocked when they come at you with overwhelming force.

# ? Feb 20, 2013 20:12

Magres: Jul 14, 2011; Bring me some men who are stout hearted men.

Thundercracker posted:

As an aside, if militant striking and labor does take off expect to see all the (survelliance) drone and warrantless wiretapping issues to finally hit home. It's one thing for a lot of Americans to accept it if it's heathen foreigners, but another when it's Americans (even leftist Americans).

Anyone who's willing to get into the thick of it, good luck, you'll need it. Don't make the same mistake OWS did and be shocked when they come at you with overwhelming force.

I'm genuinely scared of what will happen if/when things finally break into more openly hostile confrontations between workers and our corporate overlords. I wouldn't be surprised to see things get seriously violent against protestors. Our legislature has become so heavily tamed and used as an attack dog against labor that any protests with real bite are going to be breaking a lot of laws, and I don't think law enforcement is going to be encouraged to show any restraint in subduing people.

Magres fucked around with this message at Feb 20, 2013 around 20:56

# ? Feb 20, 2013 20:53

Iggore: May 6, 2009

Helsing posted:

Two examples I'd encourage people to research, and which we may want to discuss in this thread, are the Quebec Student Protests of 2012 which managed to basically topple a sitting (albeit unpopular) government that tried to raise tuition rates for university,

Good timing. The Parti Québécois will be hosting a major summit on education next week in Québec, and one of the topics that will be adressed is the right of students to strike and how this right could fit and be managed within the frame of the law. There are numerous pros and cons, and I think that this will put at stake the very legitimacy of student strikes in the futur.

# ? Feb 21, 2013 00:25

pickett: Mar 8, 2009

So many American labor unions are zombies of their former selves, often used as tools by management to control workers even more. I think the term is "sweetheart" union or something like that. I feel that if American workers really want to gain control of their workplace current unions need to become more militant or an entirely new labor movement needs to be established, something like how the labor unions of the 20th century had to establish themselves against than segregated trade unions of the 19th century.

# ? Feb 21, 2013 22:01

Siphan: Jul 2, 2007; To the Cheneymobile!

All we have to do is look at sweden's general strike last year or the year before to see where america has failed. Unions acted in solidarity to demand a living wage when the government tried to pull some austerity rear end bullshit so they can pay off bankers. If Americans all said gently caress this at the same time the capitalist class would have no choice but to meet the demands. I mean what are they going to do make no money haha not in this lifetime that is all that they know.

# ? Feb 21, 2013 22:22

nachos: Jun 27, 2004; Wario Chalmers! WAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Hard to unionize or do any collective organizing when America has turned itself into a nation of freelancers. Are there any other countries with such a high number of contractors?

# ? Feb 21, 2013 22:34

Juffo-Wup: Jan 13, 2005; Juffo-Wup is the hot light in the darkness. All else is unfulfilled Void.

nachos posted:

Hard to unionize or do any collective organizing when America has turned itself into a nation of freelancers. Are there any other countries with such a high number of contractors?

That number is probably inflated though, by the huge number of employees that are mis-classified as contractors to save their employers a few bucks.

# ? Feb 21, 2013 22:38

General China: Aug 19, 2012

No discussion about the enemy of a strike can be complete without this

Jack London posted:

After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab.

A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out.

No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab has not.

Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British army. The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled promise from his employer.

Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.

I can't say I disagree with it.

But I have to disagree with this bit of blatent thunder stealing;

Helsing posted:

North America, once a hotbed of labour activism and a place where some important labour victories were cemented and then exported seems to be unsure of itself.

Britain invented socialism, the labour movement and the strike and exported it to the rest of the world. The US may have run with it and there were important labour victories but you are claiming far too much credit. But Jack London was a sherman and we aint doing much better.

General China fucked around with this message at Feb 21, 2013 around 23:02

# ? Feb 21, 2013 22:39

LP97S: Apr 25, 2008

Siphan posted:

All we have to do is look at sweden's general strike last year or the year before to see where america has failed. Unions acted in solidarity to demand a living wage when the government tried to pull some austerity rear end bullshit so they can pay off bankers. If Americans all said gently caress this at the same time the capitalist class would have no choice but to meet the demands. I mean what are they going to do make no money haha not in this lifetime that is all that they know.

Well as long as Sweden has a third world state to export sweat shops to they're just as complicit.

# ? Feb 21, 2013 22:49

Davincie: Jul 7, 2008; Kies mij!

Magres posted:

I'm genuinely scared of what will happen if/when things finally break into more openly hostile confrontations between workers and our corporate overlords. I wouldn't be surprised to see things get seriously violent against protestors. Our legislature has become so heavily tamed and used as an attack dog against labor that any protests with real bite are going to be breaking a lot of laws, and I don't think law enforcement is going to be encouraged to show any restraint in subduing people.

I am 100% convinced the workers will lose due to 1. General apathy from much of the USA
2. The incredible amount of power that corparations enjoy in your country
3. The fact that the USA is not afraid to use weapons against its own workers as previous large protests and riots have proven.
It's going to be the Columbine Mine massacre all over again, but this time with bigger weapons then a few guns. That is if it will ever escalate that far which I highly doubt.

# ? Feb 21, 2013 23:14

Deep Thought: Mar 7, 2005

Not really a fan of this article. Isn't a bit strange how it recognises the fact that unions are essentially conservative now; that they've abandoned class struggle for reconciliation, yet at the same time it hopes that these yellow unions would support the creation of 'red' shell unions? They're surely opposed to each other, and funds for any breadline would probably be better spent on lobbying in the eyes of today's union officials.

Another peeve is that the student, activist and intellectual vanguard approach has been done to death, yet the end is a call for a continuation of it. The urgency there is a bit strange too, like activists better hurry up and radicalise the workers before the crisis is a distant memory and capitalism is cool again.

General China posted:

Britain invented socialism, the labour movement and the strike and exported it to the rest of the world. The US may have run with it and there were important labour victories but you are claiming far too much credit. But Jack London was a sherman and we aint doing much better.

Wikipedia would tell you that ancient Egypt recorded the first strike in history over two thousand years ago, so it was them that must have exported it to Britain, actually!

Deep Thought fucked around with this message at Feb 22, 2013 around 15:11

# ? Feb 21, 2013 23:50

Orange Devil: Sep 30, 2010; Waar is da feestje?

HIER IS DA FEESTJE!

Davincie posted:

I am 100% convinced the workers will lose due to 1. General apathy from much of the USA
2. The incredible amount of power that corparations enjoy in your country
3. The fact that the USA is not afraid to use weapons against its own workers as previous large protests and riots have proven.
It's going to be the Columbine Mine massacre all over again, but this time with bigger weapons then a few guns. That is if it will ever escalate that far which I highly doubt.

The only part of that which matters is 1., since 2. and 3. have been worse in the past, hard as it may be to believe. The Gilded Age was not a nice time for labour, to say the least. Furthermore, if and when it does come to hostile confrontations, at least some part of the American working class must have gotten over that apathy and over their fear. It'll be very interesting, and it certainly can fail, but it won't be due to police violence. In fact, I still think police violence is the best thing that can happen to any protest movement in the US, and provoking it ought to be a priority. When they start shooting at you, you know you're doing something right. The day that doesn't sound so extreme anymore to a significant number of Americans is the day something will change.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 00:01

mugrim: Mar 2, 2007; "You know when they tell you about 'the man'

That's me.

I'm 'The man'"

Orange Devil posted:

The only part of that which matters is 1., since 2. and 3. have been worse in the past, hard as it may be to believe. The Gilded Age was not a nice time for labour, to say the least. Furthermore, if and when it does come to hostile confrontations, at least some part of the American working class must have gotten over that apathy and over their fear. It'll be very interesting, and it certainly can fail, but it won't be due to police violence. In fact, I still think police violence is the best thing that can happen to any protest movement in the US, and provoking it ought to be a priority. When they start shooting at you, you know you're doing something right. The day that doesn't sound so extreme anymore to a significant number of Americans is the day something will change.

I'm still doing my reading on Unions (Currently on There is power in a union), but part of the reason as I understand it that numbers 2 and 3 were overcome back in the day was union alliances with organized crime. I don't see organized crime offering that kind of support any more though it would certainly changes things a bit.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 00:07

Magres: Jul 14, 2011; Bring me some men who are stout hearted men.

mugrim posted:

I don't see organized crime offering that kind of support any more though it would certainly changes things a bit.

Edit: emphasis mine

I don't think that it would, personally. I could be very wrong (history isn't my strongest subject), but I feel like companies weren't as overwhelmingly powerful back during the rise of American Labor Unions as they are now. A single workshop (my impression is that single independent manufacturing shops were more common then than the megacorps we see now) wouldn't be able to field the security to keep their property safe against a city, state, or region wide organized crime group, but the kinds of national and multinational corporations we have today easily could, and I think they would. It would take a concerted national effort to overwhelm their ability to throw private security at the problem to keep it in check.

Magres fucked around with this message at Feb 22, 2013 around 04:09

# ? Feb 22, 2013 04:07

Oxphocker: Aug 17, 2005; PLEASE DO NOT BACKSEAT MODERATE

The teaching profession is in need of a massive nationwide strike to reclaim ground since NCLB. Working conditions are getting worse, evaluations are starting to be based on bullshit reasons, certification costs are going up, and learning is going down because the system has been hijacked by testing companies who want to sell more poo poo instead of actually educating students. The public treats us like crap and districts/states have no incentive to actually address long standing problems in the educational system. But I don't it will ever happen.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 06:08

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; Kiss Me, I'm Hateful!

I don't know about that. It isn't exactly the high school system, but the professor's union here in PA very, very nearly went on a massive, state-wide strike this year. High school teachers in a district in the county I'm from went on strike twice in recent memory.

PA has a Republican governor and a pretty conservative state government. It can happen. I'm hoping that a nationwide teacher strike happens. You're right, it needs to happen.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 06:45

mugrim: Mar 2, 2007; "You know when they tell you about 'the man'

That's me.

I'm 'The man'"

Magres posted:

Edit: emphasis mine

I don't think that it would, personally. I could be very wrong (history isn't my strongest subject), but I feel like companies weren't as overwhelmingly powerful back during the rise of American Labor Unions as they are now. A single workshop (my impression is that single independent manufacturing shops were more common then than the megacorps we see now) wouldn't be able to field the security to keep their property safe against a city, state, or region wide organized crime group, but the kinds of national and multinational corporations we have today easily could, and I think they would. It would take a concerted national effort to overwhelm their ability to throw private security at the problem to keep it in check.

Companies back then used to literally work children to death and have the police come on site and shoot employees if they protested. They would literally own the town you lived in and force workers to rent their working equipment so they'd be perpetually in debt. It's not that none of this happens in America now, but the practices are not as standard.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 12:33

Kurt_Cobain: Jul 9, 2001

I am sympathetic to the idea that the capitalists couldn't make money if everyone went on strike and would therefore need to capitulate. But really, without a social safety net, people living from pay check to pay check and other similar harsh realities of a 'free market' mixed with our world's advanced oppression technology the strikers would never be able to out last the power. OWS is about as good as it will get until a worse capitalism crisis occurs. As for taking a more militant stand, yes, if you want to achieve your political dreams breaking some sweat, getting beaten, maced, locked up and all that will certainly be the bare minimum required. Our society has white washed much of this out of our history, probably so none of us get any bright ideas.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 13:26

CombineThresher: Apr 10, 2006; GIT R DONNE

Kurt_Cobain posted:

I am sympathetic to the idea that the capitalists couldn't make money if everyone went on strike and would therefore need to capitulate. But really, without a social safety net, people living from pay check to pay check and other similar harsh realities of a 'free market' mixed with our world's advanced oppression technology the strikers would never be able to out last the power. OWS is about as good as it will get until a worse capitalism crisis occurs. As for taking a more militant stand, yes, if you want to achieve your political dreams breaking some sweat, getting beaten, maced, locked up and all that will certainly be the bare minimum required. Our society has white washed much of this out of our history, probably so none of us get any bright ideas.

It's also understandably difficult to find people who will risk getting beaten up (or worse) by riot police and jailed, or possibly considered a domestic terrorist, for a cause that isn't a sure thing by any means.

I agree that more militant action is needed/required for labor to get out of its rut, but I think getting them there will require better leadership than the left has to offer right now.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 13:49

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010; LIKES: GUMMI BEARS

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Kurt_Cobain posted:

I am sympathetic to the idea that the capitalists couldn't make money if everyone went on strike and would therefore need to capitulate. But really, without a social safety net, people living from pay check to pay check and other similar harsh realities of a 'free market' mixed with our world's advanced oppression technology the strikers would never be able to out last the power.

CombineThresher posted:

It's also understandably difficult to find people who will risk getting beaten up (or worse) by riot police and jailed, or possibly considered a domestic terrorist, for a cause that isn't a sure thing by any means.

People constantly say that protesters and strikers have it so much worse this generation than they did in any previous generations, including the heydays of their movements, but is that really true? It's not like there was a robust social safety net back in the 1890s, when it wasn't uncommon for the National Guard or even federal troops to be called in to attack the strikers. I understand that our generation has a pathological need to insist that maintaining any kind of effective protest movement now is just so much harder than it was for Eugene Debs or MLK, but I don't think that has any basis in reality.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 16:02

CombineThresher: Apr 10, 2006; GIT R DONNE

Main Paineframe posted:

People constantly say that protesters and strikers have it so much worse this generation than they did in any previous generations, including the heydays of their movements, but is that really true? It's not like there was a robust social safety net back in the 1890s, when it wasn't uncommon for the National Guard or even federal troops to be called in to attack the strikers. I understand that our generation has a pathological need to insist that maintaining any kind of effective protest movement now is just so much harder than it was for Eugene Debs or MLK, but I don't think that has any basis in reality.

I'm not saying it's harder or worse to protest now than it was in the heyday of the Pinkertons, only that it's hard to convince people to risk their lives and livelihoods for an intangible without really good leadership and/or support and/or advocacy. Internet revolutionaries forget that in their calls for militant action, mostly because the greater portion of them will rest comfortably above the conditions they're telling other people to run headlong into for the good of leftism.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 18:05

Orange Devil: Sep 30, 2010; Waar is da feestje?

HIER IS DA FEESTJE!

I think the deciding factor is and has been material conditions. Leadership and such is probably necessary to take those conditions and steer them in the right direction (socialism) and raise class conciousness, but militancy I do believe derives primarily from material conditions. It's no coincidence that the Arab Spring coincided with record food prices.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 18:29

Deep Thought: Mar 7, 2005

CombineThresher posted:

I'm not saying it's harder or worse to protest now than it was in the heyday of the Pinkertons, only that it's hard to convince people to risk their lives and livelihoods for an intangible without really good leadership and/or support and/or advocacy. Internet revolutionaries forget that in their calls for militant action, mostly because the greater portion of them will rest comfortably above the conditions they're telling other people to run headlong into for the good of leftism.

Are improved working conditions really an intangible? Anyway, the conclusion up there in the article is pretty much affirming what you've said: that militant union members who want to use such tactics need support and advocacy.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 19:02

Yoda: Dec 11, 2003; A Jedi I am

Information has really made it harder too. Back in the 1890s and 1930s you faced the gun, but barring being shot by your employer/bombed by the government you would at worst get beaten, spend some time in jail, and be fired and/or blacklisted from that employer. Now if you get in trouble once it permanently affects your ability to find a job in any market or location. That charge will follow you and hamper your ability to find gainful employment for the rest of your life, so not only are you risking your immediate and near immediate livelihood, but your ability to function as a member of society for the entirety of your existence.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 20:34

Folderol: Sep 29, 2007

Personally, I don't think taking a more militant stand would be very effective in creating more general progressive change in the US in the current environment, at least not if that comprises striking in a truly high impact way. Setting aside the current legal framework, imagine the Teamsters were able to strike nationwide, bringing all inland transportation to a grinding halt overnight. With the levels of union participation in the US today, around 11.3%, I can't imagine most people wouldn't react with alarm and anger rather than with solidarity. And (in the context of goods, anyway) with relatively free international trade, the specter of competing foreign firms with a lower cost base may loom over union-employer talks, limiting the direct and more local effect on the employer that is the immediate strike target.

To really get some traction, I'd imagine there would need to be broader labor consciousness, with increased union participation among labor, and with the huge number of office / non manual labor workers who are as dependent on their employer as any factory employee at least understanding they're in the more or less the same economic boat (or even better being organized beyond the government employee unions that seem to be the only unions that broadly cover those types of workers currently). I would also think there would need to be some constraint in terms of trade, though obviously that is extremely unlikely in the context of the US government as it is currently set up.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 20:42

Orange Devil: Sep 30, 2010; Waar is da feestje?

HIER IS DA FEESTJE!

Yoda posted:

Information has really made it harder too. Back in the 1890s and 1930s you faced the gun, but barring being shot by your employer/bombed by the government you would at worst get beaten, spend some time in jail, and be fired and/or blacklisted from that employer. Now if you get in trouble once it permanently affects your ability to find a job in any market or location. That charge will follow you and hamper your ability to find gainful employment for the rest of your life, so not only are you risking your immediate and near immediate livelihood, but your ability to function as a member of society for the entirety of your existence.

Capitalists used to collude to keep troublemakers out in the olden days too.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 21:03

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010; LIKES: GUMMI BEARS

DISLIKES: JEWS, BLACKS, GAYS, HISPANICS, GYPSIES, ABORIGINES

Folderol posted:

Personally, I don't think taking a more militant stand would be very effective in creating more general progressive change in the US in the current environment, at least not if that comprises striking in a truly high impact way. Setting aside the current legal framework, imagine the Teamsters were able to strike nationwide, bringing all inland transportation to a grinding halt overnight. With the levels of union participation in the US today, around 11.3%, I can't imagine most people wouldn't react with alarm and anger rather than with solidarity. And (in the context of goods, anyway) with relatively free international trade, the specter of competing foreign firms with a lower cost base may loom over union-employer talks, limiting the direct and more local effect on the employer that is the immediate strike target.

The point of strikes isn't to foster solidarity, it's to remind people and capitalists alike that we need the workers, not the other way around. The point of work stoppages isn't to magically conjure up popular support, it's to remind people (and more importantly, capitalists) that workers are too valuable and important to risk pissing off. Strikes are supposed to be unpopular, since it makes "just give the workers what they want so they'll go back to work" that much more appealing while also turning the threat of striking into an actual threat with real power during negotiations. The job of a protester or striker is not to convince the entire electorate you're friendly and harmless, it's to convince the capitalists and the politicians that you're too dangerous to gently caress over. There is some value in courting the average voter, but if you're refusing to threaten the system - and those who benefit from your labor and the system it represents - for fear that you might inconvenience someone, it's virtually impossible to accomplish anything. Neither labor rights nor civil rights were won in the ballot box, we took them by force on battlefields all over America, often in the midst of people who weren't particularly happy about it.

Main Paineframe fucked around with this message at Feb 22, 2013 around 21:13

# ? Feb 22, 2013 21:11

Folderol: Sep 29, 2007

Main Paineframe posted:

The point of strikes isn't to foster solidarity, it's to remind people and capitalists alike that we need the workers, not the other way around. The point of work stoppages isn't to magically conjure up popular support, it's to remind people (and more importantly, capitalists) that workers are too valuable and important to risk pissing off. Strikes are supposed to be unpopular, since it makes "just give the workers what they want so they'll go back to work" that much more appealing while also turning the threat of striking into an actual threat with real power during negotiations. The job of a protester or striker is not to convince the entire electorate you're friendly and harmless, it's to convince the capitalists and the politicians that you're too dangerous to gently caress over. There is some value in courting the average voter, but if you're refusing to threaten the system - and those who benefit from your labor and the system it represents - for fear that you might inconvenience someone, it's virtually impossible to accomplish anything. Neither labor rights nor civil rights were won in the ballot box, we took them by force on battlefields all over America, often in the midst of people who weren't particularly happy about it.

I guess I'm just taking the position that from a political perspective, large scale efforts are likely to be counterproductive as things stand. It doesn't look like you disagree, just bear in mind that those impacts aren't necessarily harmless. Laws restricting the scope of labor organization didn't come from nowhere and aren't necessarily an anachronism.

Outside of that environment, the second part of my point, was that our trade framework can make effective action difficult, at least in the context of goods. Not just because of the threat to move production offshore (or simply to a right to work state), which for a major manufacturing facility could easily involve a period of years and significant incurred costs, but because of current competition that maintains existing foreign production.

I heartily agree that we need more effective action, I just tend to think that the first priority is broader organization and and action on trade, in each case to strengthen the hand of unions when the time for a strike arises.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 21:34

Powercrazy: Feb 15, 2004; *~I'm Back Boyz~*
_{If you can read this your style sheet is a PoS.}

Orange Devil posted:

Capitalists used to collude to keep troublemakers out in the olden days too.

Yea but now the capitalists have outsourced that avenue to your local police department and there is a national crime database for super convenient blacklisting.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 22:25

Kurt_Cobain: Jul 9, 2001

Main Paineframe posted:

People constantly say that protesters and strikers have it so much worse this generation than they did in any previous generations, including the heydays of their movements, but is that really true? It's not like there was a robust social safety net back in the 1890s, when it wasn't uncommon for the National Guard or even federal troops to be called in to attack the strikers. I understand that our generation has a pathological need to insist that maintaining any kind of effective protest movement now is just so much harder than it was for Eugene Debs or MLK, but I don't think that has any basis in reality.

Definitely agree. The strength and desire needed to take a stand has probably always been somewhat the same. The strength of the people in the fight? Today I think given your point it is not the same. Most of the people I know have not been exposed to real conflict. I have co-workers who cannot even handle minor confrontation, it is hard to imagine how they would act in the middle of riot police and a black bloc.

# ? Feb 23, 2013 00:23

shots shots shots: Sep 6, 2011; Basically A Stupid Idiot

Powercrazy posted:

Yea but now the capitalists have outsourced that avenue to your local police department and there is a national crime database for super convenient blacklisting.

Also, we have stuff like facial recognition and datamining now. There are a bunch of private databases about you that detail a lot of personal things about your life somewhere out there.

Private databases are probably more of a threat since there is basically no oversight on use, and very smart people work at those places joining together lots of disparate data to synthesize/extrapolate other data about you.

# ? Feb 23, 2013 00:54

lothar_: Sep 11, 2001; Don't Date Robots!

Welp, you folks have convinced me to never engage in any kind of meaningful resistance and to cower in fear and hope I scrape by for the rest of my life. Thanks for the info!

# ? Feb 23, 2013 04:47

Radbot: Aug 12, 2009; Please remind me to get a job so I can stop spending all day posting in D&D about how I'm an unemployable failure

lothar_ posted:

Welp, you folks have convinced me to never engage in any kind of meaningful resistance and to cower in fear and hope I scrape by for the rest of my life. Thanks for the info!

At least you're realistic.

# ? Feb 23, 2013 04:58

Ardennes: May 12, 2002; It is always about people...

lothar_ posted:

Welp, you folks have convinced me to never engage in any kind of meaningful resistance and to cower in fear and hope I scrape by for the rest of my life. Thanks for the info!

Yeah, we might be in for a "long collapse," the public by virtue of a terrified by a very technologically advanced police state won't effectively be able to put pressure on those in power until they point that the nation ceases to function normally, and at that point not even security forces can adequately be paid and equipped. It will happen in bits and pieces until the United States, the lynch pin of the system also collapses.

Ardennes fucked around with this message at Feb 23, 2013 around 05:06

# ? Feb 23, 2013 05:00

*PUNCH*: Jul 8, 2007; naked on the internet

Ardennes posted:

Yeah, we might be in for a "long collapse," the public by virtue of a terrified by a very technologically advanced police state won't effectively be able to put pressure on those in power until they point that the nation ceases to function normally, and at that point not even security forces can adequately be paid and equipped. It will happen in bits and pieces until the United States, the lynch pin of the system also collapses.

Not to derail the thread too much, but it's really hard to speculate on this. You've got a good point about our government's power and overwhelming force. At the same time, I think it depends quite a bit on how the economy behaves. For instance, I have some hysterical trader friends who think everything's going to go to poo poo in 2016; if we do indeed experience another big panic like in 2008, don't underestimate the government's ability to act irrationally and over-reach. Despite how conspiratorial the web of power might look from this vantage, the past twelve years are proof of its waning sanity.

Anyhow -

quote:

He argues that a militant current within the existing unions could support the creation of independent worker organizations possessing no assets and no property. These organizations would be able to violate Taft-Hartley and other laws: to strike and organize using tactics that defy the authorities and target the shutdown of production without fear of losing years of accumulated strike funds in lawsuits or court fines. There are precedents: the Mineworkers’ sponsorship of Communist-led steelworker organizing in the mid-1930s; the establishment of AFL federal unions in the same period, most of whose members ended up joining the CIO. The basic concept was even endorsed by the American Federation of Teachers in a 2005 memo on possible future labor strategies.

I have a hard time believing we'll get any organization on major fronts (like retail labor) with the current level of organization in the US. But groups like this could be useful in gaining footholds. What would a group like this look like, though? In order to maintain the specificity of a strike, there will definitely need to be an organized chain of command. But who's to do it?

# ? Feb 23, 2013 07:16

Mans: Sep 14, 2011

Are there any strike funds in the U.S.? Because that's what made strikes so strong back in the day. Everyone gave a bit of money each month and when the strike came they could survive on those funds. Imagine if the teachers had such a fund and closed school for two weeks. The impact would be so devastating that something WOULD have to change. We are lacking on the lessons our ancestors had learned and that shows direly with our incapacity to make changes. One million unemployed protesting is useless, one million workers striking is what we need.

# ? Feb 23, 2013 15:35

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# ? May 24, 2013 08:29

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010; LIKES: GUMMI BEARS

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Mans posted:

Are there any strike funds in the U.S.? Because that's what made strikes so strong back in the day. Everyone gave a bit of money each month and when the strike came they could survive on those funds. Imagine if the teachers had such a fund and closed school for two weeks. The impact would be so devastating that something WOULD have to change. We are lacking on the lessons our ancestors had learned and that shows direly with our incapacity to make changes. One million unemployed protesting is useless, one million workers striking is what we need.

The major unions have them, but from what I've heard there's been some instances lately of unions calling strikes but not opening up their strike funds because they don't want to spend the money.

That said, teachers are often reluctant to strike for fear that they'll be accused of hurting children's educations, and also because teacher strikes are illegal in the majority of states. The Chicago teacher's strikes last year were a fairly big success for the teacher's union and didn't seem to attract a whole lot of vitriol, though.

# ? Feb 23, 2013 16:09

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