BART Strike Called Off by Union Leaders

by Jack Gerson

Bay Area bosses must be jumping for joy! After four days, the strike by two Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) unions -- ATU 1555 and SEIU 1021 -- was called off last night by union leaders who had met yesterday evening with Jerry Brown's labor secretary, Marty Morgenstern. The strike was called off just as it was about to really put the screws to business in Oakland and San Francisco, who depend on BART to deliver much of their labor power and their customers.

Many workers take vacation or extended Fourth of July weekends for the first week of July, so everyone knew that the strike's impact was really going to be felt starting next Monday. The BART workers I spoke to on the lines knew it; BART management knew it; Jerry Brown and Marty Morgenstern knew it;  Bay Area business bosses knew it; and ATU and SEIU officials knew it.

So why would they call off the strike just when its impact was about to hit?

Well, they will say, the strike wasn't called off. It was just suspended for 30 days.   But lets face it, the union leaders have let the air out of the balloon. Under the best of circumstances it's very difficult to get workers to go out a second time when the time and effort they expended the first time seems to have been wasted. And with these union leaders at the helm, these are not the best of circumstances.

Then, they'll say, the public is upset because the strike makes it harder to get to work and harder to get around. The mainstream media has kept up a steady stream of editorials and articles savaging "greedy workers" who "hold the public hostage" with  "outrageous demands".  We've previously discussed how the BART workers' demands are not outrageous at all but rather are quite modest (see http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2013/07/bart-workers-facts-about-why-theyre.html).           And we know who's been doling out the pain for years -- home foreclosures, cuts to essential services, privatizing and downsizing public education, looting the public treasury (trillions to the "too big to fail" banks), destroying the environment and frying the planet, and it sure hasn't been "greedy workers". No, it's been the banks and corporations that run this country and ruin this world, and the politicians and managers who do their bidding -- and the mass media talking heads and assorted hacks who obediently do their PR work. The BART strike was a threat to the capitalists because here were workers who said, "Enough!" to attacks on wages, pensions, service, and health and safety. Because of this -- because it was a strike against cuts, a strike against"shared sacrifice", a strike against austerity -- this strike was in the interest of all working people, of the public at large. Sure, transit strikes are inconvenient and can make getting around a real pain in the neck. But if we don't start taking austerity on now, in the not too distant future we will have nothing left -- no social security or pensions, no jobs at adequate pay, no affordable health care or housing, no decent public education.

The way to minimize the inconvenience is not to give up and give in, but to stand together and fight: to (1) build community support by explaining widely and clearly why it is in the interest of the whole working class community to support this fight against austerity; and (2) spread the strike. The longer the picket line and the stronger the fight, the shorter the strike.

But alas, the ATU and SEIU union officials have done little to build community support and nothing to spread the strike. They did not actively portray the strike as a fight against austerity. Nor did they reach out to the community by demanding -- or even talking about the need for --  free and adequate expanded mass transit.

As far as spreading the strike, the most natural place to start would be to the AC Transit bus drivers whose routes cover Oakland and surrounding communities, as well as the routes from these communities to San Francisco. In fact, the AC Transit bus drivers, like the BART train drivers, are represented by the ATU (the bus drivers are in ATU local 192; the train drivers are in ATU local 1555). And the bus drivers contract has expired, so they could legally strike on 24 hours notice!  But despite considerable pressure from rank and file bus drivers who wanted to walk out during the BART strike -- both to show solidarity and to maximize the strength of their own fight -- the ATU leadership blocked the AC Transit drivers from striking (as discussed previously on this blog -- see http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2013/07/bart-strike-out-of-mouths-of-union.html)

The second most logical place to spread the strike would be to the Oakland city workers represented by SEIU 1021. Yes, that's the same SEIU local that represents striking BART workers. Like the AC Transit drivers, the Oakland city workers contract is expired. And in fact, they did go out on strike. On the first day of the BART strike, July 1. For one day. And then, after making many speeches and having let their members blow off steam, the SEIU 1021 officials marched them right back to work on July 2.

Why wouldn't they fight? Why wouldn't they spread the strike? Why wouldn't they promote an aggressive community alliance against austerity? Well, for the most part, union officials have long since made their peace with the system. They fundamentally don't believe that workers can defeat capital, and even more fundamentally they see themselves as part of the system. They have bought into the idea that workers have to sacrifice ("shared sacrifice") to fix budget deficits, just as the private sector union bureaucrats long ago bought into the idea that the unions have to help "their" corporations prosper. So the public sector union bureaucrats follow down the disastrous road that has led to the near-extinction of private sector unions: the "team concept" of class collaboration. They  want to show that they're "team players", on the same team as Jerry Brown (and Barack Obama, and Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, etc.) -- just like UAW President Bob King strives to prove that he's on the same team as the CEOs of Ford, GM, and Chrysler.

But it's not the working class that's responsible for those budget deficits -- the culprits there are the banks and corporations that looted trillions over the past several decades in a gigantic expropriation of wealth from the working class, and who now accelerate this expropriation by gross privatization (trying to commodify education, water -- everything; trying to take back all the hard-fought gains won by the working class over decades).  This is a society whose priorities are upside down. They need to be turned right side up, and that's going to  require a complete break with the policies of nearly all of our current union leaders, "the team concept" that substitutes class collaboration in place of class struggle.

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BART Strike: Out of the mouths of Union consultants.

A BART/AC Transit strike could make real gains

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Continuing the thread about the labor disputes here in the San Francisco Bay Area with the BART (subway) workers on strike and the AC Transit (bus drivers) out of contract and still negotiating, I read an interesting couple of comments in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning.  The  (AC Transit) bus driver’s Union leadership has chosen not to strike alongside the BART workers although they can legally do so and are in the same union, the ATU. Every bus driver I spoke to at the Board Meeting last week agreed that if the two walked out together and coordinated their a strike, the chances of winning would be increased. “ Unity is strength” is a slogan every worker understands. The City of Oakland workers could also strike.

Greg Harper, the president of the Alameda County Transit Board which governs the transit agency is very happy that the drivers didn’t go on strike with the BART workers. The drivers, “Really understood the situation, and we really appreciate the fact that they came in,”  (to work), he tells the Chronicle. 

His remarks are followed by the following comments, “The thing about the bus driver is that that they are right there with the public. They even know the names of their passengers and they are deeply committed to provide service.”

Perhaps it is Harper’s underling, I thought, maybe the company lawyer. No, these remarks come from the mouth of Sharon Cornu who the Chronicle describes as a “transit union spokeswoman.”  She is happy that the BART workers fight against the bosses, a struggle over putting food on the table, is made considerably more difficult by the decision of the AC Transit drivers Union leadership to have their members stay on the job. It helps neither bus drivers nor train operators that this is the case.

To the folks who pay the dues that contribute to the obscene salaries many of the top labor officials make, and who hire so called “consultants” like Sharon Cornu.: Here is the problem with our movement today.

I saw Ms Cornu at last week’s AC Transit Board meeting. I didn’t recognize her at first and thought she was a former employee of AFSCME, my former Union.  She was slinking around trying to make connections with Union officials promoting herself as a consultant. She is quite the popular one.  She is a former staffer to Jean Quan the Mayor of Oakland that had the cops brutalize Occupy Oakland.  She has been the Governor’s Minority Business of the Year person and she was the head of the Alameda Labor Council, the state arm of the AFL-CIO and the AFL-CIO’s National Field Director

Ms Cornu is very well educated like many of those in the lower rungs of the right wing trade union bureaucracy graduating magna cum laude from Brown University, a famous US liberal college. 

This is nothing new. Labor’s full time apparatus consists of many former and sometimes present leftists and highly educated folks like Ms Cornu.  The trade union bureaucracy, not too well up on labor history and economics, find them very useful as advisors on such affairs and spokespersons at times like these. The folks atop organized labor do not like too much publicity either, in fact, its preferable that the members they represent and who’s hard earned dues money lubricates the wheels of the organization and pays their salaries don’t know who they are which is sadly the case.

The answer to this criticism from above will be that the members decide or the “members have spoken”.  This is the officialdom’s example of how democratic they are.  The same line is dragged out when they bring the bosses message to their members at contract time, you can strike though we haven’t prepared for one and don’t believe we can win one or you can accept 20% wage cuts.   “And by the way, we are in difficult times and shared sacrifice is needed to save the country from collapse.” The members choose the cuts and democracy has run its course.

I have been accused, including by some socialists, of having a principle of denouncing the trade union bureaucracy. But this is not the case. If any union leader or group of our leaders take steps forward, abandons the Team Concept and labor/management partnerships and really fight for gains for their members and the working class as a whole, then I support that and would gladly use my time helping in that regard. What myself, and others like me refuse to do is ignore the extremely negative and class collaborationist role the trade union hierarchy plays. A role supported by academics and liberal intellectuals and folks like Ms Cornu who are looking to make a nice career off of the backs of working people. The strikes we have lost over the last 40 years from the P9 Hormel strike to Eastern Airlines, Teamsters Newspaper strike in Detroit, the Staley war, and the California grocery workers strike in 2003 were all due to the role of the trade union leadership at the highest levels.  Added to this to be honest, is the role that so many leftists also play by refusing to openly challenge these policies and campaign for an alternative among the ranks. By doing this they consciously or unconsciously act as a left cover for them.

If we do not make this clear, that these decisions like the AC Transit unions decision to help out while their brothers and sisters are on strike, comes from the top down, then we have to blame the members which is what happens.   But leadership has responsibilities and in times of heightened class struggle leadership is crucial. I was at the AC transit board meeting last week and there was a tremendous mood for unity there.  Workers are clearly angry.  Sometimes the anger can and will overcome the obstacle of their own leadership and the leadership lose control for a while.  But a powerful combination of the bosses and our own leaders is not an easy one to confront But confront it we must if we are to halt the bosses efforts to take back what has taken the US working class 150 years to win.

It’s the same with demands in times like these; the strategy of the trade union hierarchy and its academic advisers is damage control. The union leadership echoes the 1%’s claims that we are in hard times and that we are weak and them strong, that we need shared sacrifice (us and Warren Buffet together) and that we can’t win. They are good at telling us what we “can’t” do. The average member looks at this scenario, correctly sees to challenge it would mean a huge struggle yet there’s no real opposition out there (the left really has no significant impact on workers lives) so they bury their heads and slip further back hoping for better times. But better times are not coming; we cannot avoid a fight. Also, our health care is connected to our employment, this is another trick.

I would bet my house on it that in the present situation and with the anger that exists not just among union members but in society as a whole, were there serious and established fighting caucuses in the unions offering an alternative to the concessionary stance of the leadership we would see a more widespread strike and also organizing and involvement of the unorganized and our communities, even if such a caucus wasn’t represented in the leadership. The anger in society is suppressed by the union leadership and their allies in academia and directed in to electoral politics and their friends in the Democratic Party.  It has yet no organizational form. Most of these people like Ms. Cornu whose comments provoked me to write this commentary, (my opponents call it a rant) are agents of the Democratic Party in the workers’ movement.

I am not condemning education or all academics.  Many people from privileged backgrounds have sacrificed their time and their lives for workers and our movement.  But they did it abandoning their own class position. But those who have power and influence in our movement use their privileged status also to bully workers intellectually.  I know from personal experience that this can be a difficult thing to overcome. Race and gender oppression holds us back; but class oppression cannot be underestimated---class consciousness and recognizing who are our best allies can give us a powerful advantage.

Read more about this dispute by scrolling down or checking the "popular posts" to the right.

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Militant talk from the AFL-CIO as Obama cuts social security benefits

Politico.com reports that, "President Obama's labor allies are unhappy about cuts to entitlements and benefits that are expected to be proposed by the administration in its forthcoming budget." Politico is reporting on the AFL-CIO's response to Obama's olive branch to his friends across the aisle, an offer to cut social security benefits.

I received the AFL-CIO's response earlier today from Damon Silvers, the organization's policy director.  What we have to understand here is that the likes of Mr. Silvers and other members of the Labor hierarchy are Obama's allies, not the 12 million or so members that the organization is supposed to represent.  In the e mail to the troops, Silvers called,  the proposal "Obama's really bad idea.".  Silvers is so incensed, he even titled the e mail "Obama's really Bad Idea".

He's a militant character that Silvers. Our living standards are in good hands with folks like Silvers at the helm.

Back in 1996 the newly elected President of the AFL-CIO John Sweeney warned the bosses that continued attacks might lead to him to organize "blocking bridges." That was before the election, after it this became "building bridges", not with the members whose interests he was supposed to represent, but the bosses.

Perhaps we're now seeing a new face of the previously moribund Labor bureaucracy. Perhaps, after years of collaboration in the form of the Team Concept and prostrating themselves before the bosses and their political representatives, the folks atop the Labor movement are changing course. I mean Silvers really let's Obama have it. In one short e mail he says that Obama's attack on social security is:

a "bad idea"
"Bad policy"
"unconscionable"
"wrong"

This is some pretty tough talk.  Silvers goes further. he warns that the only way to stop these cuts is that we have to tell the President and the other millionaires in Congress that we're not going to tolerate them and Silvers has a petition all written up for us to sign. He is hopping mad and Obama better watch out. I can tell that because in the e mail he says we should sign the petition NOW. Capital letters, that's very threatening in e mail speak. Not only that, I found out today I can join the AFL-CIO's "text action team". Oh, boy! I'm gonna love this. Here's the petition:

"Benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare are unacceptable. I’m calling on you to oppose any and all cuts to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid benefits and focus on immediate solutions to get Americans back to work, like repealing the sequester and ending tax loopholes for corporations and the richest 2%." It can be found here

Were the consequences of the Labor hierarchy's collaboration with the bosses not so dire we could laugh at this pathetic response to a violent attack on workers' and our families as it went viral on You Tube just like Gangnam Style. Gangnam style took a little more thought to put it together but the reality is that Silvers and the rest of his colleagues atop the AFL-CI0 are traitors, are enemies of the working class. They are somewhat like the old Stalinist bureaucracy without state power.

Silvers insults us. Why would he be surprised?  What happened to EFCA, the Employee Free Choice Act.  I had paid Union staffers pushing this every chance they could get, it was the most revolutionary thing since the wheel.  It was great for the bureaucracy, they could get new members without doing anything at all. Obama shafted them on that one.  Then there was the "public option" in the health care debate. There was NAFTA under Clinton, who also repealed Glass Steagall claiming it was "No longer appropriate."

We saw 100,000 people in the streets of Madison Wisconsin, does Silvers and his chums atop the AFL-CIO think us so stupid that signing a petition asking Obama to help us will make a difference?
The minority of us that remain in Unions have to face the fact that we are in a war on two fronts.  One is against the bosses' whose goal it is to drive us back to conditions that existed before the rise of the CIO and the other is against the likes of Silvers and the stifling bureaucracy that is the bosses representatives inside our organizations.

We cannot avoid this battle if we are serious about fighting back against the austerity agenda of the bosses and their two political parties. We have said before on this blog that to do this we must openly campaign against the hierarchy's policies, against the Team Concept in all it's manifestations, and we have to build fighting caucuses around a program that demands what workers, union and non union, need and link this struggle to our community struggles and the pressing social issues of today, the unemployed and to workers internationally.

We must return to the direct action fight to win tactics that built our Unions in the first place, occupations, mass picketing, defying the law as the Occupy Movement has shown.  We must reject their realism based on the return on investments and implement ours based on social need.

That Silvers and his friends would even suggest such a worthless strategy after what millions of workers are going through shows what contempt his kind have for the people whose contributions pay his salary.  These officials, many of them Ivy League educated, are like rotten apples in a tree that appear secure.  The slightest breeze though and to the ground they fall.  Stand up and fight, there's  no other alternative.

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Socialists and the Labor Bureacracy

Calif UFCW officials giving the boss their Person of the Year award in 2009.  Workers are rightly disgusted by this.  Socialists must show those workers wanting to fight that we have an alternative strategy and tactics to this and that we openly campaign for our alternative and build organizationally for it.

by Richard Mellor

I was reading a piece put out by a left organization the other day and there was something missing in it, something that in my opinion is crucial to not omit when discussing the Unions and even the working class in general, organized or not.  There was absolutely no mention of the role, the extremely negative role, played by the Labor bureaucracy. 

This is very common.  One socialist I had a discussion with who has a Union position told me that there was no point in confronting the leadership because the mass of workers don’t go to meetings. But there is a major reason workers don’t go to meetings; they hear the same arguments from their leaders that they do from their boss; “You must be realistic, you have to give concessions, we all have to share the pain.”.

Why go to a Union meeting to hear that?  We don’t seek out confrontation with the Labor officialdom, but anyone that is serious about fighting the boss, about building a movement that can drive back this offensive of capital, will inevitably come in to conflict with the leadership whose policies are based on cooperation and Labor peace cemented in the Team Concept philosophy. This world-view which is the primary reason for the leadership’s betrayals  (their obscene salaries, perks and corruption are secondary features) maintains that workers and employers have the same interests. This doesn’t mean that we don’t support the leadership when they act in our interest or shift to the left due to pressure from below.

Another factor that drives workers in to some form of activity besides the bosses’ attacks is if they see a fighting alternative.  This is why we have to openly confront the leadership’s policies, explain why they do what they do and what they should be doing.  As we do this, we must openly build fighting caucuses within the movement that can take leadership roles and where we can, actually lead struggles on a fight to win basis. Our main enemy is the boss, but they have allies in the Labor hierarchy with their army of staffers that are used to enforce the leadership’s pro-management policies and head off any movement from the ranks that threatens this relationship the Union hierarchy has built with the employers based on Labor peace. We are fighting a war on two fronts brothers and sisters; one against the boss, and the other against the pro-management policies of the Labor leadership which is harder, more complex.

We have to help workers and Union members see where the obstacle lies.  It is not in the super conservatism of the members, or that organized Labor is weak despite the declining numbers, or that the members don’t care. We have seen some historic battles go down to defeat despite rank and file workers being willing to make great sacrifices.  They went down to defeat primarily due to the role of the Labor leadership from the highest levels on down, so we cannot ignore them in order to have a peaceful life.  I should add, that many leftists ignore them not because they’re bad people, I personally think it’s because within the left and socialist movement there is a very strong, what I would call, petty bourgeois or middle class influence. They don’t know how to talk to workers no matter what their color or ethnic background, or how to help them fight at the point of production, on the job. I think that many of these people don’t really believe that workers will fight back, that workers can lead or that the working class can govern society.  Therefore they pay lip service to the working class and use the term Rank and File a lot for the dues paying Union member, but actually orient to the left bureaucracy of the Unions, other left organizations and left academia.  They try to sidestep the working class, look for a quick substitute; in reality, they often have contempt for workers. I am not saying that the best of these elements should be ignored, but it is to the working class we must orient and sink deep roots despite all its faults if we want to stop this capitalist offensive and replace it with one of our own.

The average member hates the Union officialdom.  I’d like to share a few simple concrete examples as to why this is.

I was talking with a guy the other day; he is a black worker who wants to fight back. He went to his Union hall because he is having difficulty getting a contract. I drove him down there.  It’s a nice building worth quite a bit of money no doubt.  In the parking lot there were some nice cars.  The one I parked next to was a Cadillac Escapade or whatever it’s called. No luck, there.  He has to contact some other guy who has them.  The guy he has tried to call hasn’t been returning his calls.  Maybe he is busy in negotiations helping the boss get a better deal and can’t answer the phone.  But this worker who pays dues was told there were no contracts at the hall.  Is he supposed to believe that? It drives workers from the Union which is what the officials want. He has to travel a long way on public transport for this fruitless effort and it can be infuriating and actually turn workers against Unions.

Another friend of mine, a female worker who is a good shop steward and has been for years, was representing this other worker at the hotel. I have known her years and I know she’s a solid rank and file steward in the real sense. She could have joined the hierarchy years ago. She gets a call from the Union office.  The staffer said that the boss called the Union to complain that she was being disruptive, not cooperating.  Need I say more.

Another guy who I was helping was working with the Union in getting his hotel Unionized.  It was successful.  They have a $1 an hour raise, a five year contract with a no strike clause, Union dues to pay and he calls the office because he wants a contract and some help getting some co-workers to sign up as stewards.  They seem to be ignoring him now the Union has its foot in the door.  But he’s persistent, calls many more times and eventually the Business Agent calls back, They are not able to devote any time to the hotel at the moment as there’s the Obama election and all the staff are busy organizing, “Growing the Union”, was his term which means more revenue.

Here’s a good one.  The person the UFCW Western States Council leadership picked as their 2009 person of the year was none other than the CEO of the corporation their member’s work for Save-Mart’s Bob Piccinini. (photo accompanying this commentary)  Workers’ are not stupid; they see this class betrayal even if they may ascribe the wrong motives to it.

It is concrete things like this that occur in millions of workplaces millions of times a day. This is why the bureaucracy is hated by the average Union member. It is the role of revolutionaries and genuine activists to fight this openly help workers that want to fight build caucuses that can challenge the leadership and let workers/members see that there is somewhere to go, some force that offers an alternative to business as usual. It is a daunting task thinking that you are fighting the boss and our own leaders and many workers can’t see a way to win it.  We have to help them see that we can.

The experience during the Longview/ILWU struggle and examples like these are proof positive that the role of the Labor bureaucracy cannot be ignored.

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