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Labor’s Plusses and Minuses

March 22, 2017
history, politics, strategy, unions
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Does the progressive movement have its leadership today?

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Richard Trumka, President of AFL-CIO

Leadership is everywhere – popping out of our computer screens every time we look! The problem is that they are nearly all self-appointed, untested, and mostly unqualified.

The most popular leaders – Senator Sanders, Senator Warren, Mrs Clinton, etc – all suffer from tunnel vision — a single-minded determination that we will win at the ballot box, while the truth is that democracy keeps shifting away like sand in an hourglass.

Not that elections aren’t critical – but they’re not the only form of struggle. The best leadership available today is the American Federation of Labor/Congress of Industrial Organizations, the AFL-CIO.

Not That Labor Leadership Is Perfect

What we really need is a mass workers’ political party beholden only to working families. We don’t have one, and I don’t see one on the immediate horizon. But when it does come, it is most likely to come out of the AFL-CIO.

Here are some of the positive arguments for AFL-CIO leadership of the progressive movement:

  1. Unions have more money than all the tiny little organizations that are begging for contributions every day.
  2. They have physical buildings, meeting places that are long-established in communities. Here where I live, nearly all the progressive groups try to get into the Communications’ Workers Hall, and the AFL-CIO encourages them.
  3. Say what you might against the better-paid union members, they are solidly working class. If you think about it, most of the progressive groups vying for leadership are actually led by preachers and professionals – people in the ideologically uncertain “in between” class.
  4. While the AFL-CIO works hard on elections, they also work hard year-round on lobbying, organizing workers, participating in protests, economic struggle, and organizing mass demonstrations
  5. Since the leadership turnover of 1995, AFL-CIO leadership has affirmatively tried to end its old policy of isolation. For example, they no longer call for deportation of all undocumented immigrants – they call for organizing them. They have active Constituency Groups trying to organize working people as interest groups such as women, Latinos, gays, etc. Some of the better labor leaders are also coming out strong for public presence and improved communications. They also established Working America to incorporate, politically, all American workers whether or not they work under union contracts.
  6. Many unions maintain a relationship with their vast numbers of retirees and, consequently, greatly increase the union’s political clout. Non-union retirees, like non-union workers, are pretty much on their own, and largely helpless, as political entities.
  7. Increasingly, unions are partnering across national lines. It’s not there yet, but it’s on its way to becoming a world movement.
  8. The basic idea of unionization is cooperation of all workers in a workplace, consequently today’s unions tend to be anti-racist, anti-sexist etc. Women in unions, for example, have already largely achieved the American dream of equal pay for equal work.

OK, There’s a Downside

The reasons that union movement leadership isn’t as good as a mass Workers Party could also be listed:

  1. Individual unions, which make up the AFL-CIO and provide its revenue, are defensive organizations with one dominating purpose – to defend their members against their particular employer. Broader social concerns aren’t the main business of union locals nor of their national leaderships. This constraint has less of an influence on labor’s federation, the AFL-CIO, but it is fundamental to understanding the union movement.
  2. As mentioned above, union members tend to make more money than non-union members; consequently, they don’t share exactly the same viewpoints. While many workers dream of making $15/hour someday, some union members are already making $35!
  3. Union contracts are based on seniority. That means that older longer-term workers tend to displace the younger workers. There is almost no other way to keep bosses from applying work rules unfairly, so seniority rules in union contracts. The aging of the union membership is a harmful consequence. “Who has the youth has the future,” goes the saying, and some of America’s unions try hard to cultivate younger leaders, but seniority keeps pushing them out the door!
  4. While the unions fight hard against losing jobs to outsourcing, they have virtually no defense against losing jobs to automation. This was not always true – the CIO (pre-1955) always fought for shorter working hours – but it seems to be true now. The reason may be that workers, including union workers, are also consumers. As consumers, they are debt-ridden and addicted to overtime pay. They may be averse to discussing shorter working hours as a social solution.
  5. To someone outside the unions, it may seem strange, but some union leaders tend to want to keep things the way they are rather than embrace change. The reason, believe it or not, is fundamental democracy within the labor movement! The present corps of union leaders were democratically elected by their members just the way things are. Any change, especially change that involves mobilizing the membership, is change that will “rock the boat” before the next union elections. If the membership undergoes change, how will the next union elections turn out? This has to be on the minds of local union and national union leaders, but is less of a problem for the AFL-CIO federation.
  6. The AFL-CIO, I think intentionally, has no real sense of history. Without an honest history, they tend to ask people to believe the self-serving union histories that exist. In those histories, all labor leaders of the past were heroes who never actually made a mistake.
  7. Unions aren’t intentionally revolutionary. Their revolutionary potential comes from their consistent advocacy for workers’ rights. The AFL-CIO’s anti-capitalism doesn’t come by intentional design, but from the nature of things. Bosses continually accuse union organizers of trying to destroy their own workplaces, but it isn’t true. Unions simply want a better deal for workers within existing workplaces, not a revolutionary overturn. The union struggle, then, might be seen as eternal, with unions always fighting bosses and always wanting to win in the immediate sense, but never wanting a decisive victory.

Summing Up: Stick With the Unions!

AFL-CIO leadership is today the best option for the progressive movement. An actual Workers Party that seeks power would be better, but a true mass Workers Party is more likely to come out of the AFL-CIO than from the imaginations of radical activists, the Democratic Party, or anywhere else. Consequently, those of us seeking progressive leadership should look to join a union, organize a union, join Working America, and/or, at the least, consult with the AFL-CIO for leadership in the progressive movement.

Is Protesting Enough?

March 20, 2017
civil rights, economy, elections, history, politics, strategy, unions
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In our lifetimes, we have never seen the American people as ready to fight as they are right now. Case in point: the January 21st demonstrations put more protesters on the streets than ever in American history.

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Is It Enough?

At the same time that our potential strength is growing, the challenges are growing, too. The far right, the dark money people, the Koch brothers, all of the worst of America’s ruling rich, are far stronger than ever. They were bad enough when they were just the crazies in the John Birch society  the Tea Party and Ku Klux Klan, but now they hold state power!

Does it seem likely that these merciless and unscrupulous power mongers are going to be “touched” by our sentiments? Will they have a “change of heart” after they hear our arguments at Town Hall meetings? Does anyone think they will give up state power just because people carried signs?

What About the Next Elections?

If everything were the way it used to be, or the way it usually is, the Democrats could expect to win big in the 2018 mid-term elections. There is a lot of enthusiasm for fighting the Republicans, thanks to the Republicans. Also, the party in power normally loses in mid-term elections. A lot of our leaders, thinking things are the way they used to be, or the way things usually are, are focusing entirely on the next elections. We’ll warm up in the local elections that occur between now and then, and then we’ll be “really ready” in November, 2018.

American Democracy Is On the Wane

We should fight in the local elections at hand. We should get ready for the 2018 mid-terms. We should continue building giant protests. We shouldn’t concede anything. But is it enough? Even if we think it’s enough, can we be sure?

Consider that the level of democracy that we enjoyed just a few years ago is being eroded away. When Bill Clinton was President, for example, we thought our voting rights were secure. Not only that,  we more or less expected to continue expanding American democracy just as we had more or less consistently since 1776. We’ve seen big money take over our elections with the blessings of the Supreme Court. We’ve seen a President appointed by the same court. We’ve seen the near-sacred Voting Rights Act gutted. We’ve seen unfair redistricting and myriad voter suppression laws become common. Just recently!

Maybe we have enough democracy left to assert ourselves in 2018 and put America back on the path to freedom. I hope so, but I’d like to have something stronger just to make sure.

What Else Is There?

Here in the United States, we know almost nothing about the kinds of economic struggles that are common in other parts of the world. The only truly successful economic boycott we know of was the United Farm Workers’ fight against grape growers. We’ve never seen a successful political strike in our lifetimes. Union organization has almost stopped completely in America due to the combined hostility of bosses and governments.

Those are the things we have to learn if we want to win.

Luddites Were Wrong–But So were We

February 18, 2017
strategy, unions
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The Luddites took matters into their own hands when they saw that machines were destroying their jobs. They smashed the machines!

luddites

The argument in favor of new production equipment has always been that it brings down prices as it increases the total amount of wealth. The argument against it is that it doesn’t benefit the workers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps figures on productivity — the amount of wealth that one worker creates in an hour — and it’s incredible how much it has changed. They publish annual or quarterly changes in productivity, but one can use a spreadsheet to show the cumulative effect. From World War II to present, one worker makes more than four times as much as he/she did in an hour!

We didn’t get four times as much in wages and benefits. Instead, we suffered loss of jobs and diminishing power in the workplace as organized labor rolls dropped by two-thirds during the same period.

We have a fighting program against outsourcing, which also takes away our jobs, but American workers seem helpless against automation.

It Wasn’t Always That Way

The American labor movement used to have the correct answer to automation. When the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a fighting organization (1938-1947) they demanded “30 for 40 with no cut in pay” in virtually every contract fight. It means that they wanted to work thirty hours for forty hours’ pay. Not long after labor took its wrong turn in 1947, they gave up the demand for shorter hours. It’s hardly ever heard of today.

One thing that CIO militants did win was cost-of-living-adjustments (COLA) in contracts. As the government’s measure of inflation went up, union wages were adjusted upward. The formula used was never quite fair, but the general idea was very good. They used to call COLA an “escalator clause.”

Why No COPA?

Union negotiators could have demanded a cost-of-productivity-adjustment. Instead of higher wages, it should have given us shorter hours. If a person doubles their productivity, then, they should only have to work half as long! If we had done that successfully, we wouldn’t have lost a tremendous number of union jobs. Our unions would be just as big, and have just as much political clout, as they had in 1947!

Why didn’t they? Why don’t they now? That’s kind of a mystery.

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on the “Workers Beat” radio talk show, 89.3FM in Dallas and KNON.ORG everywhere. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

 

When Should We Strike?

February 5, 2017
economy, education, history, strategy, unions
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To go on strike basically means to stop working until some particular demand is met.

strikelondon

Since Trump was elected, I have received two calls for a general strike. One was for January 21, the other is pending, February 17.  No exact demands accompanied on either one. I think it’s dangerous business, but must be considered.

What Is a Strike?

The word comes from British sailors who would “strike sails” and refuse to take their ships to sea. A “general strike” in a given area means that everybody, not just one particular organization or category of people, stops working until their demands are met. General strikes may not be over economic issues, but political.

Since the U.S. government moved against the union movement in 1947, the only union strikes we have seen were limited to one union, the few other unions legally able and willing to participate, and whatever community support a local union could get. Usually since 1947, American union locals have faced their employers virtually alone.

Prior to 1947, in fact in 1946 in Houston, there were general strikes in America. Probably the most dramatic and best-remembered was the strike for the 8-hour day, worldwide, May 1, 1886. Like most general strikes with potential for change, it was met with armed violence from the employers and their government.

We hear of general strikes in other countries from time to time. Over there, unions are involved but it is unlikely, given their legal situation, that organized labor would call any  general strike in America today. That doesn’t mean somebody else couldn’t!

Strikes Are Part of Economic Struggle

A strike is not the only form of economic struggle, as differentiated from armed struggle or electoral struggle. Any kind of refusal to cooperate with the employers’ system of production fits the description. Workers might, for example, try a “slowdown.” Lately, union leaders call it “work to rule” and ask employees to do only what they are required to do legally and by contract, nothing more. In modern strikes, especially since Reagan, people sometimes lose their jobs. With slowdowns, there’s less risk of job loss. But a slowdown is a harder to organize and carry out.

Economic boycotts are economic struggles. The United Farm Workers carried out an effective one in the early 1970s against grape growers. Economic boycotts, like general strikes are very easily called by some unthinking hothead, but extremely difficult to carry out.

The employers and the government may be counted on to team up quickly against any kind of economic struggle by workers.

Who Wins? Who Loses?

According to the employers, workers always lose every strike. Even if the strike has short duration, the workers at minimum have to go some time without income. The strain on families and friendships is terrific. Nowadays, when many workers are carrying heavy loads of debt, the thought of a strike, even for a few days, terrifies everybody.

According to the workers, we win pretty much every strike. Even if our demands weren’t met, we feel that we’ve stood up for our dignity and for the dignity of all working people.

But putting points of view aside, the actual winner of a strike is generally the side that holds out one day longer than the other side. “One Day Longer” makes a good workers’ slogan and is the title of one of my songs.

“Winning” for us means getting whatever we wanted. “Winning” for the bosses means getting whatever they wanted plus the ability to take retaliatory action against every worker that crossed them.

A Strike Is Serious Business

A successful strike is one that grew out of careful analysis of the situation and had good planning and strong leadership. A good example was the three-month strike recently carried out by the Fort Worth Symphony Musicians. Somebody needs to write a book about that one.

Calling a strike without careful analysis, good planning and strong leadership is irresponsible and likely to get lose and get people fired. It isn’t much better than calling “fire” in a crowded movie theater.

But We Need Economic Struggle, and We Need It Now

I can only think of one thing worse right now than an irresponsible call for economic struggle — and that is no call for economic struggle.

Every American who is not a fool knows we need to resist the attacks underway. Economic struggle is, right now, our best option.

Don’t Go Off Half-Cocked

We need careful study and careful planning to win any economic struggle. Fortunately, we have the ability to do that thanks to modern communications. We could, for example, call for a “virtual strike” over a certain demand and for a certain day. We could make our preparations virtually. We could sign up the people willing to participate and, afterward, evaluate the results. Then we could call another one and see how it goes.

Study up, think it through, and share your thoughts.

–Gene Lantz

I talk about these things on KNON.org’s “Workers Beat” program at 9 Central Time every Saturday. 89.3FM in Dallas. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

Who Understood International Relations?

February 1, 2017
economy, history, politics, unions
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At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a popular theory that the capitalists of the Earth had reached some sort of detente and would have no further use for war.

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Another theory said that the capitalists were no different from gangsters fighting over their “turf.” Creating world wars was an intrinsic part of their very nature.

World War I and then World War II validated the second theory and completely discredited the first. Modern monopolistic capitalists were willing to kill millions in wars to establish their financial control over different parts of the planet. Their national armies were basically at the service of the bankers. Each “nation” was in fact a separate military operation, each opposed to the others.

This was explained in 1916 in a very important booklet named “Imperialism” by V.I. Lenin. There’s a short version on-line.

The big wars temporarily worked out great for the victorious bankers, despite having been hard on the millions killed, imprisoned, or maimed and on the nations who lost.

The New Theory Was Really the Old

Then in the 1980s, a new version of capitalist peace on Earth began to circulate. It was especially boosted when the Soviet Union failed. Opponents of the new theory called it “neoliberalism” rather than the classic name “imperialism.” Those who promoted the idea, which included virtually all the information sources in the rich countries, called it “globalization.” (I called it “gobblelization”).

The new theory, like the old one, held that the capitalists of the world had brought about a new world order based on extending the benefits of the “invisible hand” of capitalist markets to all the world through “free trade.”

Is It “Free?” Is It “Trade?”

The name “free trade” was a tremendous publicity success. Who’s against freedom? Who’s against trade?

Through long hard work, a few workers’ organizations, particularly unions of the world, explained that these so-called trade deals were nothing but agreements between capitalists at the expense of the workers in their respective territories. Time and a flood of actual data proved we were right. The capitalists were only agreeing among themselves that they would move their operations around to obtain the lowest possible wages and the fewest possible pollution controls.

Just as they had previously used their government’s armies to obtain their wishes, the bankers were now using their respective government’s negotiations. The ends were the same. The bankers from the countries with the biggest armies obtained more advantages over the countries with less clout. Only the 1% of any country benefited.

A Lot of People Bought Into the “New” Theory

Nevertheless, the idea that capitalism had established a new and lasting peaceful relationship persisted, and a lot of people thought it was true. Then, in 2016, came super nationalism, came Brexit, came Donald Trump.

The British poked a hole in the European Union from which it may not recover. The Scots tried to leave the British. Polls showed that near-Nazi nationalists were gaining electoral power in several major capitalist states. President Trump declared “America first” and spit in the faces of several other nations.

Will Capitalism Ever Bring Peace?

People must now review the two theories of international relations. We have to ask ourselves, “Are the bankers who control the major capitalist countries creating a peaceful world, or are they actually no different from gangsters fighting over turf?”

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org and 89.3FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9 Central Time. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

Sort Out the Issues on Immigration/Refugees

January 30, 2017
civil rights, politics, strategy, unions
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January 28 was significant for learning about immigration and refugees.

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On the day after President Trump spit in the face of a large world religion, we were confronted with a dramatic historic page-turning and an opportunity to learn a lot.

There are a wide range of positions

Americans are divided on this issue. Positions range from outright racism and jingoism — hating all foreigners — up to my guest on the “Workers Beat” program on http://knon.org and 89.3FM in Dallas. Joshua Hatton gave his position as “abolitionist” and compared it to the brave Americans opposing slavery before the Civil War. They, too, helped people move from South to North, and they, too, opposed any effort to deport people back. The Fugitive Slave Act, tested in the Dred Scott decision, is said to be a major cause of support for the Northern side in the Civil War.

There were so many calls that I didn’t get to ask him if there were any difference between his “abolitionist” position and the old “sin fronteras” socialist position. “Sin fronteras” means “no borders.” In other words, workers could move back and forth across national borders with the same ease that capital does.

The argument is that national borders were created and operated by capitalists to defend their interests and are actually a hindrance to working people on both sides of the border. In 1999, the new leadership of the AFL-CIO labor federation, changed from “deport them all” to “let them in and then organize them.” In other words, solidarity is our strength and division is our weakness. Still, I expected most union people, and most politicians, too, to duck the issue as much as they could, since nobody wants to fight when your own people are divided.

Some politicians really stepped up

Congressman Marc Veasey of Dallas/Fort Worth has been saying for some time that he opposes Trump’s anti-immigrant actions. He held a meeting on that fateful day, January 28, at Kidd Springs Park. The subject was DACA — Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals. He had a young woman, Diana Radilla, tell what it was like to be raised undocumented. He also had Congresswoman Linda Sanchez from California. They spoke up strongly on keeping DACA intact.

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I didn’t realize that morning that crowds were forming in airports. That evening, when I did find out and went to the DFW airport to join the protests, the first person I saw was Marc Veasey. The second was our Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. Here were two leading Democrats going far beyond electoral politics to stand with us, 1000 members of the rabble more or less, against anti-immigrant racism!

Would the unions duck?

Contrary to what the bosses like to tell us, unions are scrupulously democratic. Elected union leaders have to consider every move in terms of how much flak they are going to catch from their members. Consequently, I would have expected them to “lay behind the log” on immigration issues as much as they could. I was wrong again.

On the night that we were at the DFW airport, my good friend Rick Schoolcraft turned up. He’s from my own aerospace local. Gary Livingston, from another aerospace local, had been there all day. His aerospace local probably leans as far right as mine does, but there he was.

The next day, I asked permission to use the Dallas AFL-CIO communications network to encourage more participation at the airport. I couldn’t reach the principal leader, Mark York, but his political director, Lorraine Montemayor, told me immediately to go ahead. So I put it on the web site, sent out 4,000 emails, and used labor’s social media to encourage more turnout.

An hour or so later, I found out why I hadn’t been able to reach Mark York. He was already out there, injured ankle and injured shoulder and all, in the middle of the airport protest! Mark was live-streaming the protests and complimenting other unionists, including Darryl and Stacy Sullivan from the Teamsters, for joining the protests. So much for ducking!

What’s Next?

There is a lot of political space between “reasonable immigration/refugee policy” and “Welcome all.” I don’t think the American public is nearly as pro-immigrant/refugee as my radio guest Joshua Hatton or my fellow protesters at the airport. But people are learning fast as we are being prodded by President Trump and incipient fascism.

We learn quickest when we take action. Policy and leadership are emerging, so don’t count out the American people, even on the complicated and difficult issues!

My video of the DFW protests, 3.5 minutes, is on You Tube.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on http://knon.org and 89.3 FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9 Central Time. If you are interested in what I really think, click here.

 

 

 

 

Are You Afraid of Your Government?

January 25, 2017
history, politics, strategy, unions
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There are probably two reasons for Americans to not be afraid of their government.

price-of-dissent

One of them is that they are just good, clean, honest people who can’t find it in their heart to think ill of others. The other is that they probably just never did much of anything.

Those who have stepped, even a tiny toe, outside the ring of expected behavior have probably been spied on and  recorded at the least. They may have also been intimidated, smeared, fired from their jobs, blacklisted, beaten, shot, and/or murdered.

Our government, local and national, has been doing those things all along.

Book review: Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, editors, “The Price of Dissent. Testimonies to Political Repression in America.” University of California Press, 2001.

The book is a collection of original testimony from people who stepped outside the ring and found Big Brother waiting there. It also mentions things that happened in earlier times, such as the wholesale murders, whippings, arrests, deportations, and illegal persecution of labor activists throughout American history. The chapter titled “The Unrelenting Campaign against the Industrial Workers of the World” is especially enlightening.

The first hand explanations from activists of the 1950s-1980s, though, aren’t just history lessons. They are up close and personal, hard hitting and sometimes a little difficult to read. Witnesses to the Black Panthers murdered in Chicago, the students shot down at Kent State, and civil rights victims of murder and mayhem in the American South are especially effective. I don’t know why they left out the time that the Houston police fired 1,000 bullets into the dormitory at Texas Southern University and the police sniper who killed Carl Hampton a few blocks away, but I guess there were just too many episodes to fit into one book.

Texas isn’t left out completely, because they interviewed my good friends Jose Rinaldi and Linda Hajek about the FBI agent in our Dallas CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) anti-war group. Agent Frank Varelli was commissioned by the Dallas FBI to do nasty things to our friendly little group of peaceniks. Among the horrors he committed was informing the murderous death squads in El Salvador about the names and arrival dates of deported Salvadorans and visiting Americans from here.

He told us his name was Gilberto Mendoza, and he gushed gratitude to our group for standing up for Central Americans. As I remember it, he gushed that over and over again, every time he showed up. I got tired of him and thought he was an idiot, but I didn’t spot him as an agent. In fact, I interviewed him for The Hard Times News. I never look for agents, I just ask everybody I know to do a lot of work. Agents never want to do any actual work.

In 1987, the Dallas FBI got behind on Varelli’s paychecks. To pressure them, he went to the Dallas Morning News, and they ran a full front-page expose! I think Varelli liked the notoriety, because the next thing you know he came to one of our meetings, without his Mendoza disguise, and explained the entire thing!

Varelli did ugly things, and most of the folks were shocked. I wasn’t, because I had already participated in an ACLU lawsuit against the Houston police and a national lawsuit against the Justice Department. I wanted to sue the pants off the FBI over Varelli, but was outvoted.

Our government does ugly ugly things and always has, but they always say, as the book shows, every time they get caught, that they won’t do it any more.

–Gene Lantz

Hear “Workers Beat” on 89.3FM in Dallas and knon.org everywhere every Saturday at 9 central time. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

Recommended Herd Behavior

January 18, 2017
politics, strategy, unions
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I just can’t get away from these cow metaphors. I grew up in the country and worked, for a while, in a dairy. You can learn a lot from cows.

stampede-cows

But what I’m actually trying to wrap my mind and yours around is how to deal with the difficult political situation we’re in. The question came up because of one of my earlier posts. It drew a comment, more or less, to the effect that one of the major tasks confronting progressives is re-educating or replacing our union leadership.

I Used To Be a Lot More Intelligent Than I Am Now

Long ago, I was a member of an organization that didn’t like the union leadership. In fact, I don’t think we liked any leaderships. Not in the women’s movement, not in the civil rights movement, not in the anti-war movement, not in any of the progressive movements. It’s not that we were anti-leadership anarchists, it’s just that we thought we alone knew best. We only liked one leadership, ourselves. Everybody else, everybody in leadership of any organization, was just wrong. We were the smart ones!

The result was that we almost always got into squabbles with the leadership of any organization we tried to relate to. We had a reputation for it, and knowledgeable activists didn’t look forward to our company.

Build Up Our Side, Don’t Tear it Down

I don’t think that we need, at this time, arguments with the leaders of the unions or of any progressive organization as a way for the progressive movement to go forward. I can’t say that I actually agree, point-by-point, with the leaders of any of the organizations that are doing so much and moving so many people into action right now. But I’m sure glad they are building the movement!

We should be deliriously happy to see so many people starting to get active, and we should encourage it in every way possible. When it’s appropriate, we can make our suggestions on program, on tactics, on strategy, or even on broad ideology. But we should do it in a friendly helpful cooperative way, not an argumentative or confrontational way.

Arguing and confronting are what we do to our enemies, not our friends.

How to Get Cows to the Right Place

Cows tend to meander along. It’s kind of hard to figure out why they go where they go, what influences them, who they look to for leadership, what they try to avoid. We’ve all seen the stampedes in the western movies, where some poor old cowboy gets killed while trying to “turn the herd.” Death by stomping.

It’s mighty hard for a cowboy to do it. But it’s even harder for a single cow. And in this metaphor, we aren’t cowboys. We’re cows, stampeding right along with everybody else. It would be inadvisable to get in front of a mad stampede and try to argue. We’d get stomped and maybe hurt some of the other cows, too.

We’ll be more effective if we go along with the herd and do our best to nudge one here, poke one there, moo loudly when appropriate, moo softly if it will work better, and try to get the herd over where we all need to be. That’s leadership in a cow stampede. Also in a mass movement.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org and 89.3FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9AM central time. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

Is the Working Class Staying Alive?

January 12, 2017
economy, history, politics, unions
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Book review: Cowie, Jefferson, Stayin’ Alive. The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New Press, New York, 2010.

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According to this author, the American working class met its death in the 1970s. Some of it was suicide, some of it was homicide, some of it was chronic depression.

He goes to great length to talk about how America’s powerful labor unions lost their clout, but he spends a lot more time and energy talking about the culture of the 1970s. “Saturday Night Fever” gets about as much play as the Hardhat attack against anti-war protestors.

Combining political and cultural changes isn’t a new approach. One of my favorite books is George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight. Labor and Culture in the 1940s. University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 1994. Lipsitz explains where labor went wrong, 1940s and 1950s, while Cowie merely comments at length on the resulting shipwreck in the 1970s. Of the two books, Lipsitz’s is by far the stronger and more informative.

Cowie weaves a fascinating tale with very few heroes, but some stunning villains. One of the biggest reasons given for labor’s downfall is AFL-CIO President George Meany, who deliberately split the Democratic Party and destroyed the hopes of presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972. The vivid description of these events is the strength of Cowie’s book, but its weakness is that he doesn’t explain why. He says that Meany hurt the union movement very substantially because he was a “cold warrior” who didn’t want a peace candidate to carry the Democratic Party standard. But he doesn’t explain why Meany was such a “cold warrior.” Maybe Cowie didn’t know.

Back in those days, and for some time before and after, the AFL-CIO got a lot of money from the CIA. That’s why Meany was a cold warrior.

Cowie also explains that a lot of labor’s strength disappeared when steel plants were shuttered and when other American industries went overseas. He doesn’t say why. He doesn’t explain that international competition had recovered from World War II by the early 1970s and American corporations were forced to compete with excellent German and Japanese imports.  Maybe he didn’t know.

Cowie explains that labor was blindsided by clever politicians like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. He explains that they made mistakes of commission and omission and they just weren’t farsighted leaders. He didn’t say why. He didn’t explain what Lipsitz’s book had explained so well, that the militant leadership of the American union movement had been expelled and blacklisted during the post war witch hunt. Maybe he didn’t know.

The unions may have squandered their basic strength and their political clout in the 1970s, or at least they may have done better than they did. But the inference that the American working class just evaporated is just wrong. People still work, nearly all of us still work, and the working class is just what it was and has always been — the only people who can stand up to capitalism.

Cowie’s great strength is in vivid description. Whether you lived through the 1970s or are just curious about how things got as bad as they did for working people, this is a good book to read. The AFL-CIO promotes it through Union Communications Service. That’s how I found it and I’m glad I did.

–Gene Lantz

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