[Peace-discuss] why support the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride

[Ricky Baldwin]

Thanks for posting that, Carl-

I’m not sure how you meant it, but I think it shows
what we’re up against in the labor movement and in a
way progressive politics generally.  Of course we have
no way of knowing what the actual debate was like in
this particular union local, but the stated position
of the winning side – not supporting the rights of
immigrant workers because the big unions haven’t done
enough to support citizen workers - is both naïve and
dangerously cynical.  It’s also a good example of the
deep divisions within the labor movement.  The old
guard must now always dress up their conservatism in
progressive language – because grassroots reformers
have taken the moral high ground so effectively – but
this is still a backlash.  (Expect more of it as the
economy worsens.)

This letter reminds me of the argument made at one
central labor council (Philadelphia, I think) against
passing an anti-war resolution in the months before
the US invasion of Iraq when hundreds of unions were
doing just that.  Someone said: we didn’t speak up
against previous acts of US imperialism in Vietnam,
Panama, Haiti, etc. so we shouldn’t do it now.  (The
Council did pass the resolution, by the way.)

Maybe we shouldn’t support the rights of working women
because our unions haven’t done enough to support
working men?  (Don’t laugh.  This argument actually
still has some currency with some angry white men I’ve
worked with.)

Maybe black workers don’t deserve our support until
the unions do more for white workers?  (Variants of
this argument have appeared among white workers from
the American Civil War right through the New Deal and
into the 1960s, 70s and 80s.)

Maybe the skilled shouldn’t support the rights of the
unskilled?  (That’s the original AFL policy.)  

For decades, the AFL-CIO and most American unions
pushed an anti-immigrant agenda.  California growers
were even able to call in Teamsters at one point not
too long ago to beat up organizers and picketers with
the United Farm Workers.  They have gradually reversed
course only in the last few years, under intense
pressure from increasingly Latino and Asian
memberships and in the wake of plummeting strength in
almost all sectors of the economy.
 
So the concern expressed for immigrant workers
expressed here is not touching, buried as it is in a
statement of reasons for refusing to support them. 
Such doublespeak is worthy of management.

But the worst part may be the incredible
short-sightedness of this activist pose.  It is a
suicidal strategy for labor.  It encourages the same
kind of knee-jerk reaction, dressed up as it may be in
more enlightened rhetoric, that has led generations of
striking workers to use violence to discourage scabs,
or replacement workers – instead of organizing them,
as some have done.  The logic is not rocket science,
as they say.  Whenever workers win even marginally
significant victories, the bosses turn to more
desperate workers (new immigrants, Southern blacks,
children in Indonesia, etc.).  But if those workers in
turn organize, they can work together to corner the
boss.  It’s one kind of what’s called “whipsawing.” 
But if the two groups of workers instead choose to
battle it out over what crumbs the boss lets fall from
his table, they both lose.  American labor history
gives us many examples of workers who took each path,
and the results have not been too surprising.

One of the best examples may be in the UAW’s initial
refusal to help Mexican autoworkers organize
independent unions.  American-based automobile
manufacturers, with the help of the US and Mexican
governments, crushed the Mexican workers, took the
American jobs, and laughed all the way to the bank. 
(The UAW has now largely realized it’s mistake, and is
supporting independent unions in Mexico and
elsewhere.)

This letter also seems to expect a more militant
stance from ‘big labor’.  But at the same time, it
betrays a lack of understanding of the basics of the
scrappy solidarity that is undoubtedly labor’s best
side.  The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride is not only
aptly named, representing as it does the struggle of a
growing underclass of workers doing the jobs and
taking the abuse that black workers in the rural South
once did (and sometimes still do).  

(As an aside, I’d note one parallel: the tomato
pickers’ call for a national boycott of Taco Bell
brought national attention to almost antebellum
conditions in the fields – with the effect that some
growers have now been convicted on federal charges of
human slavery.  Many farmworker camps in Florida have
also been found to serve as virtual prison camps for
undocumented workers, where they are closed in behind
locked gates at night or under armed guard to prevent
escape.  And, no, I’m not kidding.  This, in all
actuality, is the effect of NOT supporting such
campaigns for these workers’ rights, not to mention
the effect on the precariousness of other workers’
positions.  In Sweden, labor unions recognize that if
they bargain to improve the conditions of the lowest
workers, then that becomes a level below which the
more privileged cannot fall.  Enlightened
self-interest, they used to call it.)

But this event is also a means of building coalitions
– like the hotel workers strike going on right now in
downtown Chicago – and making allies that can stand
together for a broader agenda to benefit all workers. 


I am deeply saddened by the prevalence of the
tetrograde sentiments expressed in this letter.  I
also fear the consequences, but I take heart when I
see the shop-floor agitation and grassroots
coalition-building that is making inroads into ‘big
labor’, like the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. 
Their bravery, patience and persistence is a model for
us all.

If anybody has made it this far, I hope to see you at
the rally on Monday.

Si se puede-
Ricky 

--- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>
wrote:
> [Here's another take on the matter. --CGE]
> 
> 	A Community Labor News Feature
> 	Visit our site at www.CLNews.org/
> 	Join the discussion at www.CLNews.org/forums/
> 	======================================
> 
> At the August meeting of my Local, AFSCME 444 in
> Oakland CA, we voted not
> to donate money to the AFL-CIO's Freedom Ride after
> a presentation by an
> AFL-CIO staffer.  At September's membership meeting
> the following letter
> was introduced and passed and will be sent to John
> Sweeney, AFL-CIO
> president.
> 
> Richard Mellor
> 
>
---------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> September 18, 2003
> 
> Dear Brother Sweeney:
> 
> On August 21, 2003, AFSCME Local 444 received a
> guest speaker from the
> AFL-CIO. This brother made an appeal to our local
> that we support the
> "Freedom Ride" for the rights of undocumented
> immigrant workers.  After
> considerable debate we voted not to make a donation.
> Our reasons had
> nothing to do with any reluctance to support the
> rights and interests of
> these workers.
> 
> We understand that the substandard rights and wages
> of undocumented
> workers is used to drive down the wages of all
> workers here in the US. If
> they are prevented from coming here, this means an
> even larger pool of
> cheap labor in those countries and even more
> companies
>  leaving here to take advantage of that situation.
> We also understand the
> hardship and suffering these brothers and sisters
> must feel, being unable
> to return home to visit their families and friends
> there, for fear of
> being unable to return back to this country.
> 
> However, we are very skeptical of what this "Freedom
> Ride" is really all
> about. The original Freedom Rides were part of a
> mass mobilization of
> hundreds of thousands of young people and others to
> fight against a
> vicious racism in the South. They openly defied the
> law and they had no
> real support from the Democrats or Republicans. We
> must say that the
> present "Freedom Ride" does not do justice to that
> name or the heritage of
> that struggle.
> 
> We are profoundly critical of the refusal of the
> AFL-CIO to seriously
> mobilize any sector of its membership to fight
> against the attacks
> American workers have faced in recent years. The
> results are there for all
> to see. While productivity has grown by 66% over the
> last 30 years, the
> average wage has grown by 7%. In their never-ending
> drive to maximize
> profits, the corporations break the law at every
> turn. So do the
> politicians. Yet the AFL-CIO slavishly obeys every
> union-busting judge and
> anti-labor law, and the result is lower wages, fewer
> decent jobs and
> weaker unions year after year.
> 
> The AFL-CIO and the heads of its affiliated unions
> have refused to
> mobilize their members,and their surrounding
> communities,to fight for
> higher wages and better conditions on the job.
> Instead they pressure their
> members to accept one cut back after another.
> Politically, they insist
> that labor must remain as the spear carrier for the
> Democratic Party. As
> far as increasing the competition between workers
> here and abroad for who
> will work cheapest ("globalization" and "free trade"
> it's called),there is
> no difference between the Democrats and the
> Republicans.
> 
> This policy of the leadership of the AFL-CIO and its
> affiliated unions has
> failed miserably. AFSCME Local 444 represents blue
> collar workers in the
> local water district, EBMUD. We have fewer workers
> doing more work and
> each contract negotiations it becomes more difficult
> to maintain our
> benefits, wages and contractual protections.
> 
> Our members are forced to live further and further
> from their jobs because
> they cannot afford to buy homes closer in. Their
> children face an
> underfunded public education system that is failing
> them as a result. Once
> they graduate, they face an increasingly uncertain
> future. We all face an
> environment that is being wrecked by the
> corporations and is destroying
> our health and that of future generations.
> 
> Your failure to lead a real fight for a better life
> for all workers in
> this country - and internationally - is demoralizing
> and also leads to
> divisiveness. In the absence of such a broader
> fight, millions of workers
> see the idea of full citizenship for undocumented
> immigrant workers as
> more people fighting for fewer jobs and resources.
> 
> We know that the AFL-CIO leadership claims that they
> merely follow the
> policies of the affiliated unions. This is
> misleading. The International
> leadership of the affiliated unions collaborate
> together to maintain
> "labor peace", meaning lower wages and worse
> conditions.  The leadership
> of the AFL-CIO (from the national level on down to
> the various central
> labor councils) does everything in its power to help
> the leadership of its
> affiliates keep its membership in line.
> 
> We look forward to the day that the labor movement,
> or some section of
> it,joins with the present youth movement as well as
> community groups and
> fights for what working people, citizen and
> immigrant alike need;
> guaranteed jobs with a $15 per hour minimum wage
> free, nationalized health
> care, affordable housing, a healthy environment,
> good schools, full rights
> in the workplace for all.
> 
> To win such demands, organized labor must do two
> things:
> 
> 1)Organize a mass mobilization starting in the work
> places and working
> class communities. This mobilization would do true
> justice to
>  the images of the civil rights movement, as opposed
> to your present
> "freedom ride".
> 
> 2) Break with the Democrats and run candidates who
> represent working class
> and poor people, as a step towards building a mass
> workers' party in the
> United States.
> 
> When the AFL-CIO takes this path, we would be happy
> to make a sizeable
> donation and fight towards these goals.
> 
> 	Sincerely, 
> 	Reggie Moore 
> 	President, on behalf of AFSCME Local 444
> 
>
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