The world’s working class and people had no side in the war in Iraq and nothing to gain. George Bush, with his narrow band of extreme right-wing ideologues, corporate interests, military fanatics and racists, was willing to spill gallons of other people’s blood for economic and political domination. The corrupt, dictatorial regime in Baghdad, while really powerless in this situation, was willing to sacrifice its people in hope of preserving its rule.
In response to the slaughter, the world’s overwhelming majority, the working people, demand an immediate end to the war and the complete withdrawal of all US, British and other forces from Iraq and the region. Meanwhile, the largest, broadest, most global peace movement ever has developed. Millions around the world, including hundreds of thousands in the US, have taken to the streets. In much of the world this movement is led, in part, by the trade unions. In many countries, strike actions and boycotts were used to oppose the war and to block military supplies.
Here at home the labor component of the anti-war movement was unprecedented. Hundreds of local unions, dozens of central labor bodies and joint councils and many other labor- related coalitions denounced the war. Several international unions condemned the war outright. The AFL-CIO Executive Council seriously questioned the war drive of the Bush administration. In many cities labor anti-war coalitions, which combine labor leaders and rank-and-file activists, have sprung into life – even helping to lead broader, massive anti-war demonstrations.
Labor and Peace
Issues of war and peace have always been critical questions of the class struggle – many times, they become overriding issues. For the working class and the labor movement the struggle for peace is ultimately inseparable from the struggle for economic and social justice.
This is not at all a new idea. Eugene Debs, one of the greatest labor leaders in American history, put it this way in 1918 in his famous Canton, Ohio peace speech: The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose – especially their lives. Debs, one of the great pioneers of industrial unionism, was arrested and jailed for this speech and for counseling young workers to refuse military service in World War I. From his jail cell, Debs received close to a million votes for president in the 1920 election. Debs was not alone in opposing World War I. Most of the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World opposed the war and spoke out. Many locals of the American Federation of Labor passed resolutions condemning it.
In fact, labor anti-war sentiment is deeply rooted in US labor history. Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, made a fiery speech against war at a meeting called by the New York Central Labor Union in 1890, saying: Labor is never for war. It is always for peace…Who would be compelled to bear the burden of war? The working people. They would pay the taxes, and their blood would flow like water … The battle for the cause of labor, from the times of the remotest antiquity, has been for peace and for good will among men. The capitalists and their elected supporters became alarmed at the unity and militancy of the CIO and labor emerging from World War II. Though labor fully supported this just war to defeat fascism, it also expected greater democracy and a more peaceful world to emerge. The labor movement fully expected, also, to recoup equally for the many sacrifices made by workers in support of the war. Corporate and banking profits were up and labor expected wages, health care, pensions and the general welfare of working people to improve also.
Wall Street had other plans. A vicious anti-labor offensive, including the Taft-Hartley Act and the McCarthy red scare, were tools used to put labor in its place. This campaign effectively killed democracy in labor and drove out progressive and militant labor leadership from most of the unions. In time, this led to domination by the right-wing, class collaborationist leadership of George Meany and later Lane Kirkland. Central to the Meany/Kirkland leaderships’ thinking was full support for the US government’s anti-Communist, cold-war foreign policy.
In this process, foreign policy issues were moved out of the local union halls and workplaces and into small committees in the national offices of the AFL-CIO. The Meany/Kirkland leadership argued that unions should leave foreign policy to the experts, including the CIA and State Department agents they welcomed into the house of labor. It got worse. As rank-and-file movements and some labor leaders began to question the war in Vietnam, the AFL-CIO leadership made it clear that any labor council that passed an anti-war resolution would be expelled from the federation.
Regardless, the basic self-interest of working people for peace began to reassert itself in labor. Local unions passed resolutions against the war and some labor leaders spoke out. Eventually this jelled in a national Labor for Peace movement that played a role, with the larger peace movement, in helping to end the war in Vietnam. Another closely related development was going on at the same time. Rank-and-file union activists, many of them veterans of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements, were beginning to be elected to leadership positions in labor. These activists began to have a progressive influence far beyond their numbers, even in top circles of the AFL-CIO.
In the 1960s, 1970s and in to the 1980s, rank-and-file union caucuses were changing the face of labor. These included Black caucuses, Latino caucuses and women’s caucuses. These caucuses tended mainly to deal with questions of promoting more militant trade unionism and union democracy. Most also took on peace and civil rights issues. Very few had a narrow focus on just “bread-and-butter” union issues. After all, that was the kind of trade unionism they were fighting to change. The grass roots caucuses and activists and even some higher level progressive labor leaders began to reintroduce foreign policy issues into labor.
In the 1980s and early 1990s attention shifted to US policy in Central and Latin America. The Reagan/Bush years saw an aggressive big business assault on labor and working people at home coupled with an aggressive foreign policy. Many in labor saw the political connection between runaway shops in places like El Salvador and Nicaragua and union-busting at home to support those same company profits. During this period labor leaders like John Sweeney spoke out against US policy in Central America while the old guard Kirkland leadership continued to aid and give comfort to US government efforts in support of anti-labor dictatorships around the world.
The election of the Sweeney/Chavez-Thompson/Trumka leadership was a watershed event for labor. The stagnation and class collaborationism imposed on labor by the McCarthy-era attacks was coming to an end. Another change was an end to AFL-CIO blind obedience to the foreign policy goals of the State Department. The door was opened for labor to once again assume its natural role as a champion of peace.
After the Sweeney team’s election many unions and central labor bodies began actively questioning US foreign policy. This included things like questioning labor’s own involvement in the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile. What a difference – from Meany threatening to lift charters for opposing the Vietnam war, to hundreds of local unions and labor bodies demanding the Bush administration not invade Iraq.
From “Bread and Butter” Comes Peace
This engaging of foreign policy and peace issues in labor did not happen in a vacuum, separated from other important developments in the class struggle.
In the past, labor was at the heart of great movements. The fight for public education, the eight-hour day movement, the fight for unemployment compensation and Social Security, and the fight against fascism are prime examples. Under the Meany/Kirkland leadership the unions were no longer identified with the great social movements of the day. Nor was labor seen as the social movement around which great coalitions and struggles could be built. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, it was the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, and the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s that helped to shake labor out of its lethargy.
Coming out of the McCarthy era, the center of gravity for rank-and-file movements and for progressive labor leaders who wanted change was the killing organized workers were taking in the workplaces. The massive restructuring of industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s meant the loss of hundreds of thousands of good-paying union jobs. In steel, auto, electrical, rubber and manufacturing in general, union jobs and benefits were being decimated.
Union density, or the percentage of workers in unions, was plummeting. New technologies were not only cutting down the number of workers needed in manufacturing, but were also making it easier for industries to move production around – from north to south, or to other countries. Though it wasn’t called globalization yet, a new wave of that process was beginning. Added to this, was the fact that the business unionism style of Kirkland and friends was not attracting new emerging sections of workers. With the exception of a few unions, most were doing little to organize new members.
Most of the unions that backed the Sweeney team against the old leadership in 1995 were also deeply concerned about the stagnation and declining power of the unions to influence economic and political life. There was no strategy. Labor’s influence at election time and in the halls of Congress was in steep decline.
With the new Sweeney leadership, this began to change rapidly. Debate was on labor’s agenda again. How to build coalitions with other social movements – the African American, Mexican American, Latino, Asian American and other oppressed people’s movements, the women’s movements, youth movements, seniors movements, gay and lesbian movements, civil liberties and religious movements? How to make the unions the champions of all working people, organized and unorganized?
How to bring new vigor and strategy to organizing the unorganized? How to build labor’s independent political action? And yes, how to build ties with peace and solidarity movements? These were the kinds of questions swirling around at all levels of a labor movement that suddenly seemed released from stagnation.
This most recent burst of anti-war sentiment in labor against the Bush administration’s pre-emptive, go-it-alone war on Iraq has been explosive, broad-based and qualitative. Yet it is logically and organically linked to these other developments in labor mentioned above.
It was a good thing the fog was lifting because the new George W. Bush administration was radically renewing the assault on labor. But in the new situation, labor was fighting back like it hadn’t in many years. Important victories like the recent longshore union’s West Coast agreement (ILWU) and the transit workers victory in New York (TWU) are prime examples. Of course, fighting back doesn’t always mean winning, but it does mean lessons are being learned and connections are being made.
Even as the new peace movement continues to grow in labor, it’s instructive to look at the other key components of labor’s fightback agenda. Just a few important examples: the AFL-CIO has opened a broad offensive against Bush’s radical budget and tax give-away to the rich plans. Labor is sponsoring a dramatic new “freedom ride” across the country to champion legalization of undocumented immigrant workers. The AFL-CIO is active in coalitions to protect affirmative action at the University of Michigan. Unions and the AFL-CIO are leading all kinds of campaigns to expose the corruption and criminal activities of some of the biggest corporations. And labor is gearing up to continue to refine its independent political action and mobilization abilities for the 2004 elections.
Once labor moves to a position of again questioning the right of corporations and the government to run roughshod over workers’ lives and rights, certain other conclusions have to be drawn. There is a connection between the company that shuts down your plant to move it overseas and the foreign policy that props up right-wing dictators in the countries where your plant moves. This developing understanding of the link between “bread and butter” issues at home and international affairs and peace are key components of class consciousness.
Fighting Globalization
The worldwide anti-globalization movement of the past few years played a special role in American labor’s radicalization. So-called “free trade” agreements like NAFTA were grave object lessons for labor. Labor quickly got past the (corporate inspired) notion that runaway shops are foreign workers stealing jobs. The same communications technology that makes capital more mobile around the globe also brings workers closer together.
American workers could see for themselves how workers in runaway shops were treated in anti-union havens overseas. The same corporations that destroy whole communities in the US with shutdown create terrible working conditions for grossly underpaid workers in low-wage areas abroad.
Alcoa Aluminum is a great example. Alcoa has shipped thousands of jobs off to the maquiladora areas just over the Mexican border. The steelworkers and the United Electrical workers unions have done a great job using the Internet and other communication technologies to expose the horrible conditions these runaway jobs provide for Mexican workers, including horrible slums and terrible health conditions. Unions like the Steelworkers, also learned the power of international labor solidarity from global campaigns against Bridgestone/Firestone. Another good example is the international ties forged in support of the West Coast longshore union in fighting for a contract.
American workers have also learned how the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are instruments of transnational capital to enforce a global “race to the bottom,” as the AFL-CIO calls it, for all workers. Through participation in global protests against the WTO and IMF vast sections of the US labor movement have learned about the struggles and situations of workers in all parts of the globe. Again, with the same technologies that foster capitalist globalization, American workers have cemented ties of international solidarity, a people’s globalization, with workers and social movements from around the world.
Equally important is that these struggles acquaint workers and their unions with other broad global social movements. American unions and workers build ties and learn firsthand about world farmers, environmental movements, anti-genetic engineering movements, anti-poverty movements, anti-racist movements when they participate in anti-globalization demonstrations like the “Battle in Seattle” march against the WTO. They are also exposed to brutality faced by people and unions in US-backed countries like Burma, Colombia and Indonesia.
The fight against transnational-based globalization has helped to radicalize the world trade union movement also. The growing internationalism of world labor has contributed greatly to the tremendous global peace movement and actions against the illegal US invasion of Iraq. And again the anti-globalization movement, built on broad coalitions of a wide variety of social movements around the world, helped cement the global anti-war movement and link up labor with these other social movements opposing the war.
Labor and the War This Time
It is no overstatement to say that the depth and breadth of American labor’s anti-war actions and response marks a qualitative change in a class struggle direction. That genie cannot be easily put back in the bottle. Still, now with the war in progress an inevitable caution and nervousness set in with the center forces in labor.
The AFL-CIO issued a statement by John Sweeney expressing “unequivocal … support of our country and America’s men and women on the front lines as well as their families here at home.” It also reiterated the AFL-CIO’s belief that the best way to disarm Saddam Hussein is “with a broad international coalition with the sanction of the United Nations.” And it strongly stated that protest and dissent against the war policy is not grounds for questioning anyone’s patriotism. In a cover letter to affiliates Sweeney goes even further. He launches a blistering attack on Bush’s go-it-alone policy which he says isolates the US and undermines institutions of international cooperation.
In addition, the AFL-CIO has been relentless in attacking the Bush/Republican disastrous budget proposals and their radical tax cuts for the rich. They are also organizing against Bush proposals to cut veterans’ benefits. In this way they are continuing to press the link between the war at home and the war in Iraq. This is an important way of winning over the center in labor that is wavering now that war has begun. It is the height of childish leftism to attack the AFL-CIO for its caution. We have to continue to convince the center that their initial misgivings about the war are valid and win them back to opposing it.
The radicalization process in labor will continue as will the anti-war sentiment. We only have to look at the long-range contributions that civil rights and Vietnam-era anti-war activists continue to have on labor to see the long-range possibilities of the current peace upsurge in labor. It bodes well for the class struggle and the future.
(Illustration by John Kim)
