BLUN Pamphlet

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BLACK WORKERSA Call to Action

for Rank-and-FileDemocratic Social

Movement Unionism!

BLACK

ILWU shuts down Oakland port Photo: Delores Thomas



A Black Lef Unity Network BLUN

Labor Working Group Discussion Paper

Contact: Saladin Muhammad,

Convener o the BLUN Labor Working Group

[email protected]

www.Blackleunity.org

Jan. 18, 2012

LABOR DONATED

Photos and layout

by Workers World

Protest for Hotel Workers

during the Million Worker

March in Washington D.C.,

Oct., 2004



Page 1

Te Occupy Wall Street movement hasdrawn major attention to the rule by thecapitalist 1% over the 99%. However, ormany, especially within the working class,

the role o Wall Street as a center o nancecapital has little i any direct meaning in theirdaily lives.

Te early OWS protests and encamp-ments were important media attractionsshowing a growing alienation and resistance by mainly white middle-class orces whosesocial privileges are now under attack by the 1%. Tey help to point out the scale andscope o the economic crisis, while not necessarily the depth. Tese protests also did notreect the real power within the 99% to directly challenge the main economic base o

the capitalist 1% — the points o production and service.With the entry o labor and social movement activists especially rom working-class

Black and oppressed nationality communities, OWS began to take on targets, demandsand tactics that rely on mobilizing the organized power o the working class and itsmost marginalized sectors.

Te leadership by the ransport Workers Union Local 100 in New York, a tradeunion whose membership is 80 percent workers o color, and International Longshoreand Warehouse Union Local 10 in San Francisco, Cali., with a Black-worker-majority membership, were central to inuencing labor’s involvement in the OWS movementand in helping to transorm aspects o the OWS class and peopleo color character in New York, Oakland and other cities.

Rank-and-le members and activists within WU Local 100and ILWU Local 10 who pushed or their union’s involvement inOWS were also members o the Million Workers March Move-ment. In 2004, ILWU Local 10 initiated the call and nationalorganizing or a Million Worker March that mobilized 15,000rank-and-le trade unionists, the unorganized and the unem-

ployed on Oct. 4 at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.When looking at the actions o Occupy Oakland, it is important to remember that

the social consciousness or resistance by Black people and the working class in Oaklandwas also partly shaped by the Black Liberation movement represented by the Black Panther Party that was born and headquartered in Oakland.

Te BPP promoted the struggle against capitalism. Tey called or placing humanneeds over prots, opposition to state repression and or international solidarity. Someo the members o the ILWU Local 10 were members o the Oakland chapter o the BPP.

ILWU Local 10’s port shutdowns in opposition to South Arican apartheid, or ree-

dom or Mumia Abu-Jamal, or justice or Oscar Grant, and in support o labor rights orpublic sector workers in Wisconsin also draw on this history o resistance in the Bay Area.

It is part o the continuing and urther shaping o ILWU Local 10’s tradition and view that the social demands and movements o the working class and the oppressedmust also be taken up as part o the demands and actions o the labor movement. Tishas established ILWU Local 10 as the conscience o the ILWU national union and in



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many ways o the U.S. labor movement.WU Local 100 that deed New York State’s anti-union aylor Law in 2005 by strik-

ing beore the Christmas holidays — impacting production because thousands were un-able to get to work and disrupting the most protable period or sales in the city whereWall Street is headquartered — gave special meaning to Local 100 as the rst union in

New York to publicly announce support and mobilize or OWS.Because rank-and-le trade unionists and social movement activists have intervened

in the Occupy movement and directed it to ocus on targets and struggles against hous-ing oreclosures and in deense o public education and worker rights, among others,the role o Wall Street in the deteriorating conditions impacting the working class andthe oppressed communities has become much clearer.

Emerging rank-and-fle class-struggle perspective breaks with business unionism

Te Dec. 12 blockades o the West Coast ports linked the demand or the right o

peaceul protest or OWS and social movements to ILWU’s struggle against the EGgrain export terminal in Longview, Wash., in deense o labor rights. Tis has madeOakland, a part o the Bay Area which includes San Francisco, not only a ashpoint o the Occupy movement, but a catalyst or the emerging rank-and-le social movementunionism that challenges the orces and policies o capitalism in this period.

Tis emerging rank-and-le class-struggle perspective breaks with business union-ism that separates labor struggles rom the wider struggles and social movements o the working class. Tis must also be seen as an important development or the Black

Liberation movement.Business unionism denes the parameters and scope o working-class militancy andstruggle by the union contract. In doing so, it restricts the tactics and scope o the tradeunions in struggles against capital around social and political issues and international soli-darity that aects the working class and oppressed people in the U.S. and internationally.

Like the demand or regulation o the banks, utilities and corporations, the unioncontract should be viewed and used as an instrument by the workers {to restrain theexploitation o workers by capital }o capital) with core assurances or the working class,not something that holds workers hostage to the dictates o capital.

Te West Coast port shutdowns have triggered an important and growing debatewithin the labor movement, and among some identied as labor’s le intelligentsia,about so-called rules and parameters o the working-class and social movementstruggles against capital where the workers have unions.

Tis debate, while not a newone, is taking place in a new periodthat represents the worst economicand social crisis since the Great

Depression and one o the sharpestattacks on trade unions and laborrights since the period ollowingthe Reagan administration’s attack on the airline trafc controllers.

It is also taking place in a pe-riod where various sections o the capitalist



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ruling class have been able to nance and use the electiono a Black president as a double-edge sword. One sectionrecognized the ragmentation within the Black Freedommovement and the Black working class and nanced thecampaign to elect a Black president to project an image o

the U.S. Empire as having achieved post- racialism. Tisstrategy seeks to hold back the development o massivenational Black resistance as a powerul social orce in thisperiod o capitalist crisis.

Te other section nanced and ostered a racist andneo-ascist popular movement in the orm o the ea Party,whose attacks against the government take the orm o rac-ist attacks on Obama. Tis is designed to derail and splitthe unity o the working class, which the scope and scale o

the capitalist crisis are objectively orging.Tis is one reason why it is impor-

tant that this emerging rank-and-lemovement must be anti-racist, againstall orms o social oppression, andindependent o both the Democraticand Republican parties. Black rank-and-le trade union activists, especially the

Black le, must be an active and visiblepart o this debate.Te EG struggle is an example o orging this unity. ILWU Local 21, representing

the workers at the Longview Port, is predominately white with a conservative history.However, ILWU Local 10, a majority Black local union with respect throughout the U.S.labor movement, was the rst to step orward to support and to help build the ILWU’swide and growing national support or this struggle.

Te act that the EG struggle has emerged at this stage o the capitalist crisis, andwhen there is a popular movement challenging the rule and policies o the 1%, makes it

more than a single, narrow economic trade union struggle. It represents and symbolizesan important ront in the struggle against capital — an understanding that must be parto the politicizing o today’s struggles.

Te EG struggle will have a decisive eect on the power, direction and tactics o the U.S. labor movement and the working-class struggle. We should expect to see majoreorts by ILWU national business unionists to split the ILWU rank and le rom thegrowing solidarity that can strengthen the ghtback against the EG — and against theentire capitalist class that backs EG’s drive to break the ILWU and ultimately destroy the organized labor movement. Tis is a critical struggle that, depending on its outcome,could be either a decisive turning point that emboldens labor or just the opposite.

Arican-American and labor alliance needed to challenge capital

Te current stage o the capitalist economic crisis and the role o the state in weaken-ing and trying to dismantle trade unions to protect the dominance o capital make theunity between labor and the social movements o the most oppressed critically important



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or the survival and expansion o organized labor’s shrinking base.Forging an Arican-American and labor alliance is crucial or building the wider

multinational unity that is needed to eectively challenge capital on its many ronts.Tis includes the struggles or human rights and Arican-American sel-determination.

Te struggle or human rights — or sel-determination and democratic controlover the political system, over the most important aspects o the economy, and over the

social institutions that impact the lives o the millions o working-class and oppressedpeoples — must be seen as a transitional program that better aligns and positions thesocial movements or a more revolutionary change.

Organizing a strong labor movement in the U.S. South — a historical and continuingailure by the U.S. labor movement that undermines labor’s strength as a national move-ment — must become a major ocus o social movement unionism and the struggle ordemocratic control. Te majority o the oreign direct investment in the U.S. is concen-trated in the South, making it a strategic center in the global economy.

As more than 55 percent o Black people in the U.S. live in the South, a strong labormovement becomes a key base o power in the struggle or democratic control, orArican-American sel-determination and against global capitalism and imperialism.

Even aer the victory o passage o the 1965 Voting Rights Act, won mainly throughmass protests, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood by his support o the Memphissanitation workers that a Poor Peoples Campaign needed workers’ power to help makeimpacting demands on the orces that control the economy and all levels o government.

Te program o the MWMM is applicable or today’s struggles and or buildingrank-and-le democratic social movement unionism embodying new trade union activ-

ists coming orward in this period. However, in order to build the initial rank-and-leinrastructure or consolidating this tendency, the MWMM must better organize andinstitutionalize its core network.

As capitalism’s strategy or resolving the crisis has always been to make some con-cessions to sections and layers o the workingclass, based on the imperialist culture and socialsystem o white supremacy, it is important thata program to promote and build the unity o the

working class must be

developed around andled by the most exploitedand oppressed sections o the working class.

Black Workers

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