:: rawblogXport ::

:: Monday, December 11, 2006 ::

Class struggle in the USA - by Kim Moody, Workers' Liberty
One union, under Hoffa, tried to organise Overnight and fluffed it, but this is what has to be done. Transportation, manufacturing and these huge new big-box retailers. You cannot change the balance of class forces without getting those.
These bureaucratic unions could do that. To organise the South, you have to be for conflict, not partnership, because Southern capital is not interested in that (nor is German capital or Japanese capital, which is now Southern capital).

You also have to take on the race question. Every attempt to organise the South without addressing that has failed.

So how will any of this happen? I always come back to the same thing, the unavoidable thing - the rank-and-file.

There's always rank-and-file activity in American unions. You can go through the list of unions, and there's been some kind of opposition in every one. Often, it's very small. Usually it's crushed, but it's there because working conditions push it there. As working conditions get worse, it'll continue. I believe that something like a rank-and-file upheaval is needed - both inside the unions and outside them, particularly in terms of immigrant workers who come into the unions and bring a different idea of what a union is.

posted 7:19 AM :: reference link :: 0 comments ::

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