US AIRLINES, GOVERNMENT, DECLARE WAR ON WORKERS

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit


US AIRLINE BOSSES, GOVERNMENT, DECLARE WAR ON WORKERS 

By Jon Hillson 

LOS ANGELES, Aug 26 (NY Transfer)--War has been declared against U.S.
airline workers.  In the face of a mounting international economic
crisis, U.S. airline bosses are moving rapidly toward radically
restructuring the industry to rescue plummeting profits.

With widespread reductions in flights, the layoff of 100,000 airline
workers - ten percent of the industry - and $5 billion in subsidies
to U.S. carriers in the wake of September 11 failing to staunch the
flow of record multi-billion-dollar losses, the carriers have taken
direct aim on the wages, working conditions, benefits and pensions
of employees.

THE AUGUST ASSAULTS

Starting in early August, and in rapid succession, American Airlines,
the biggest U.S. carrier, announced initial layoffs of 7,000 workers,
while US Airways - the country's seventh-largest airline - filed for
Chapter 11 "bankruptcy protection."

This came after employee unions announced major givebacks, based on
the false belief that such concessions would prevent bankruptcy. US
Airways has yet to announce anticipated and significant layoffs and
station closings. Its pilot group gave back 26 percent in wages in
exchange for a seat on the US Airways board, and a bloc of 19 percent
of carrier stock which, prior to being yanked from the New York Stock
Exchange, was trading at pennies a share. On August 20, the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that US Airways bosses
"admitted" to failing to cite a whopping $6.5 billion of "spending
commitments" in its original bankruptcy filing to the Securities and
Exchange Commission, taking a page from the Arthur Andersen school of
accounting.

US Airways flight attendants coughed up roughly $10,000 each and a
week's vacation, among other concessions, while mechanics and ramp
workers represented by the International Association of Machinists
(IAM) gave up work rules and significantly raised the number of part
time workers the company could use as a virtually permanent third
tier wage group - prior to wage, benefit, and pension cutbacks. How
much deeper these concessions go, and how widespread are the
inevitable layoffs remains to be seen, given that the carrier had
already disclosed eliminating 13 percent of its flights.

This repeats the route offered by IAM officials at TWA, where
repeated concessions by workers only enabled bosses to squeeze a last
nickel from the hides of employees who ranked last in pay among major
airlines. Just before its bargain-basement acquisition by American
Airlines last year, after declaring its third bankruptcy, TWA brass
defaulted on a $500 million payment to worker pension funds.

Absent a fight, thousands of former TWA employees - from pilots to
flight attendants, fleet and customer service workers - have been on
the streets for months, some with over 35 years seniority. Because
they assumed the position, they were left defenseless and anonymous.

United Airlines, the world's second-largest carrier, raised the ante
of its giveback demands, after revelations that it had hired
bankruptcy consultants days after September 11. On August 14, UAL CEO
Jack Creighton pledged the airline would file for Chapter 11 in 30
days should employee groups fail to approve a coming package of
concessions to "lower our costs dramatically."

WALL STREET FOR 'RESTRUCTURING' BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

Wall Street is virtually unanimous in demanding UAL declare
bankruptcy to achieve a restructured airline as a pacesetting,
"leaner and meaner" example for a structurally reconfigured industry.

As a preview of this, UAL announced the layoff of 226 "surplus"
mechanics earlier this summer. "And so it begins," a Los Angeles
mechanic said, upon learning of the cutbacks.

"They are out of control," lamented a senior ramp serviceman after
Creighton's salvo against labor.

United will try "to launch a new business plan that would transform
[it] into a smaller, less costly, more efficient carrier," Crain's
Chicago Business reported August 19. "This will take a multi-pronged
approach," the journal explained, with the carrier "changing its fare
structure, cutting costs, reducing capacity and squeezing more
productivity out of its airlines."

This means major layoffs, intensified work loads, more passengers
crammed into fewer planes, and sharply reduced wages and benefits.

"There needs to be a fundamental restructuring [of UAL], as opposed
to short-term Band-Aid," according to George Hamlin, a senior
vice-president of Global Aviation Associates, an airline management
"consulting firm." In July, UAL announced a code-share agreement with
US Airways. This enables the two carriers to extend routes at the
termination of respective flights. Delta, the country's third-largest
carrier, matched this semi-merger on August 23, linking up with
Northwest and Continental in a similar operation. This tendency
towards monopoly is part of industry restructuring, in an effort to
eliminate competition. Both accords are subject to federal approval.

Washington's "Band-Aid" for UAL included a direct $644 million cash
grant shortly after September 11, and a $464 million tax refund in
March of this year - retroactive to 1997.

These outright subsidies could not stem losses, however, since UAL's
market niche - high-priced "business class" travel - began to
disappear prior to the official announcement of a recession in March
of last year. More than 40 percent of UAL's income had been generated
by just nine percent of its passengers who paid the exorbitant cost
of such upscale travel.

Delta, the third leading U.S. carrier, has announced cutbacks in its
employee health-care plan. On August 20, Continental instituted
sweeping service cuts, retirement of planes, and an increase in its
discounted tickets. Northwest announced it would cut nine percent of
its flights, matching UAL's already publicized figure.

The "business travel" market evaporated as the massive speculative
bubble of the second half of the 1990s burst, and the house of cards
based on fictitious capital collapsed, launching an avalanche of
corporate meltdowns and personal bankruptcies.

More than two million workers have been laid off in the last two
years. Stock markets worldwide have lost approximately $10 trillion
in face value, most of it in the United States - with over $2 trillion
down the drain in the last three months alone.

ECONOMIC CRISIS DRIVES TUMULT IN THE SKIES

With fully half of U.S. working people involved in the stock market
through pension and 401(k) funds, along with individual investments
(in 1929, this figure was two percent) these losses have been
devastating. Some 78 percent of U.S. pension plans are now in the
red.

This collapse has driven a major increase of 1.5 million workers
between the ages of 55 and 64 in the work place, according to the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - a jump of eight percent in the
year, as all other demographic groups declined. The stark statistic
is a measure of how little Social Security is able to cover the
expenses of retirement in the richest country in the world and what a
trap for workers the stock market and 401(k) schemes really are.
Workers are now paying the price for the decision by the unions to
accept such pension plans instead of waging a real fight to defend,
expand and extend this entitlement for all working people.

Meanwhile, Washington continues to eye Social Security - won in
tumultuous labor battles during the 1930s, along with unemployment
insurance - as a target for reduction and semi-privatization,
in...the stock market!

This is the context for the drumbeat of airline restructuring, with
big capitalist investors unable to reap sufficient profits. At the
same time, discount carriers like Southwest Airlines, along with
non-union Jet Blue and regional carriers, nip at the heels of
"network carriers" - American, United, Delta, Northwest, Continental,
and US Airways. Delta and Continental are overwhelmingly non-union,
enabling them to impose cutbacks at will. Together, these carriers
lost nearly $10 billion between October 2001 and June of this year.
Revenues have not met Wall Street's minimum expectations.

The profit crisis is not limited to the United States, as airlines
across the world have gone belly up, or been merged. On August 20,
the London Financial Times announced that British Airways is "cutting
its workforce by 20 percent." Two days later, the same big business
journal reported that Lufthansa, UAL's chief partner in its worldwide
"Star Alliance," believes that Chapter 11 "can actually pose more of
chance than a risk" for survival of the international network,
according to chief financial officer Karl-Ludwig Kray. But capitalist
investors in the major German airline still harbor fears that the
alliance "could collapse." Such international airline linkages are
critical to major carrier profitability everywhere.

'INEPT MANAGEMENT' SECONDARY TO PROFIT MELTDOWN

Many U.S. airline workers see developments after September 11, from
federal bailouts to service cutbacks and employee layoffs, as efforts
by the bosses to take maximum advantage of the situation. "They loved
September 11," says an older ramp worker here. "They got everything
they wanted."

Not quite.

Because of its size and weight in the industry, UAL is viewed by Wall
Street as the place where "restructuring" has to go the deepest.
United claims losses of $2.95 billion in the last 18 months. When it
first announced its plan to acquire US Airways two years ago, it
carried a debt of over $18 billion. Drunk on record profits from the
mid to late 1990s - fueled by $4.5 billion in pilot and IAM
concessions in 1994 - UAL bet the house on the boom bubble, from
massive route-structure expansion to the purchase of wide-body jets
and their sizable "business class" capacity.

United, buoyed by federal bailout dollars in September 2001, banked
on a non-union "airline within an airline" based on private,
time-share "business jet" travel, Avolar. That white elephant never
took off, and died under the weight of the economic crisis at the
cost of $250 million.

Many workers here cite this, and other seemingly ludicrous business
decisions, as the source of UAL's difficulties. This narrow focus is
a product of the long-term approach of the IAM top leadership, one of
whose top officials has been a member of UAL's board since 1994. They
are now searching for a "competent" new chief executive officer. The
May issue of IAM District 141's "Messenger" monthly newspaper
featured headline for UAL: "grow the company." But this dead-end
approach denies the facts of how a profound international economic
crisis of the whole "free enterprise" system play out in the airline
industry, the results of which are far from bottoming out.

On August 19, the Boyd Group, which publishes an annual airline
industry forecast, stated in its 2002 report that "the slump in air
travel... is likely to linger until 2005... [with yearly losses] of
up to $14 billion."

IAM SOLUTION: A BETTER BOSS

The IAM leadership was instrumental in choosing James Goodwin as CEO
several years ago. The top boss was a warmly received keynote speaker
at the IAM District 141 convention in 2000, trumpeting the potential
acquisition of US Airways, which the IAM leadership supported at the
time. Such goodwill was not then shared by UAL pilots, whose
summer-long job action - refusing to work extra hours - brought the
CEO to his knees and won pilots their first wage increase in years. 
IAM district officials turned the convention into a business meeting,
hailing "their" CEO. Elementary obligations of solidarity took a
beating.

Goodwin resigned as CEO earlier this year, denounced by IAM and pilot
officials for predicting carrier bankruptcy if major concessions were
not granted. This is, to a word, exactly what his short-term
successor, Jack Creighton - also anointed by the IAM officialdom -
stated August 14. Goodwin left his post with a multi-million dollar
severance package and pension payoff, approved by IAM and
representatives of the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) on the UAL
board.

United's difficulties are rooted in a world wide economic crisis
which has exploded the airline bubble. Tinkering with corporate
"leadership" and coming up with gimmicks to "grow the company" by
union officials who operate as junior businessmen will have as much
success as all the king's men trying to put Humpty Dumpty back
together again. Meanwhile, as airline bosses rushed to announce
cutbacks, IBM declared the layoff of 15,000 more employees.

CRISIS ABROAD COMING HOME

Concessions have never stopped bankruptcy. They have only enabled
bosses to squeeze workers harder after they vote to cut their own
pay, benefits, and lay themselves off. Today, bankruptcy protection
is the weapon of choice by the employing class, which then submits
plans for corporate reorganization to "restore profitability" to the
courts, which are inherently anti-labor.

Earlier this year, a federal bankruptcy court upheld efforts by LTV,
once-leading steel manufacturer, to void supposedly contractually
guaranteed health-care coverage for 85,000 retired members of the
United Steelworkers of America.

The current economic crisis - which is far from over - is not simply
a "market event" or a series of "corrections" that take a pound of
flesh from working people. Current negative economic indicators match
those of the 1929 stock market collapse, predecessor to the Great
Depression of the 1930s.

With Wall Street publicly fretting about the growing real estate
bubble - and its looming explosion - and expressing worries about the
bursting of the consumer spending bubble - working people here face
the worst economic collapse in decades.

This has already appeared in much of the world. In Argentina,
recently the most prosperous Latin American economy with its highest
standard of living, 63 percent of the population is expected to be
living below the poverty line in 2003. This includes the entire
working class, farmers, and most of the "middle-class." Rich in
natural resources and one of the world's breadbaskets, Argentina now
holds the distinction of having 70.3 percent of children in its
urban centers living in poverty, according to a just-published report
from the country's National Institute of Statistics and Census.
In the 1990s "boom decade," Argentina was Washington's showcase of
capitalist development in the Third World.

U.S. financial institutions are "exposed" to the tune of hundreds of
billions of dollars of unpayable South American debt. This is in
addition to massive losses for underwriting the nearly bankrupt U.S.
telecommunications industry, among other debt-ridden sectors now in
ashes back at home.

A full-fledged banking crisis is well underway, and with it, the
disappearance of worker pension and 401(k) funds. Millions of workers
have lost their retirement "nest egg."

This world framework of crisis sets the agenda for corporate attacks,
as Washington transfers hundreds of billions in tax cuts for the
richest in the country at the expense of social programs, education,
public services and other entitlements, while it demands increased
"sacrifice" from working people.

All this comes during a supposed "recovery" in an economy the
president hails as "fundamentally sound."

UAL BOSSES ON WARPATH

"The world has changed," UAL boss Creighton told employees August 14
in his bankruptcy blackmail message. There is an element of truth in
this statement.

The world of traditional "labor-management relations" has changed.
Decades of behind-the-scenes negotiations, under-the-table
deal-making, "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" bargaining,
and give a little to get a little trade-offs is over. As one coworker
here said, "they are playing hardball." No contract is safe and no
gain is secure. "Laws" written by politicians owned by the
super-rich, overseen by courts that do their bidding, and enforced by
cops who are their private armies will be deployed with a vengeance
against unionized workers termed "greedy" and "overpaid" by the big
business media. Denial of this reality is fatal.

In an August 13 editorial entitled "Straighten Up and Fly Right," the
Los Angeles Times told UAL workers "they must start thinking like
owners and recognize the need for painful concessions." But apart
from $4.5 billion they charitably donated to the carrier to "save the
airline" eight years ago, employees have lost billions in the pyramid
"ownership" scheme then promoted by the bosses and union tops. United
stock plummeted from a high of over $100 five years ago to between $2
and $3 a share today. As a condition of their "ownership," workers
couldn't sell a single share. Aside from losses suffered from a
purchase price of around $40 a share at the time of the Employee
Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in 1994, hopes for retirement with a
little extra have been smashed.

United is Enron with wings.

Meanwhile, UAL imposed a five percent slash of non-union and
management personnel, to convince the Airline Transportation
Stabilization Board that United should receive $1.8 billion in loans.
This, along with preliminary pilot concessions, was aimed at securing
$1.8 billion in federal loan guarantees to meet short-term debt and
other expenses.

Washington, Wall Street, and the big business media have made clear
that without more, and bigger, concessions, the loan won't fly. This
extortion reinforces Creighton's bankruptcy threat. At the same time,
the loan only enables UAL to pay a fraction of its debt, and simply
postpones the inevitable day of reckoning. This show is simply a
corporate microcosm of Argentina's debt dilemma. United workers have
no interest in providing bone-deep concessions as collateral to
enable the bosses to enrich lenders and creditors, thus becoming a
mark for future boss bailouts.

On August 20, pilot officials announced the withdrawal of the
original giveback offer before submitting it to a vote. This
anticipates a proposal of more substantial concessions.

Spokesman for the pilots have already demanded other employee groups
"get on board" the concession bandwagon. "We feel they've been
ignoring reality," said ALPA's Steve Dereby, referring to UAL unions.

Washington is insisting, a UAL mouthpiece stated in the Wall Street
Journal August 21, that "cost reductions have to be deeper, broader,
and longer," underlying government backing for the bosses' frontal
assault on UAL workers.

Representatives of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) - which
refused to take the ESOP sucker bait - have termed the bankruptcy
route "premature," while endorsing UAL's loan application and
rejecting, for now, giveback demands.

"We think the company should be concentrating more on a business plan
that works than filing for bankruptcy," IAM general vice-president
Robert Roach told the New York Times. Roach emphasized that the IAM
has "already stepped up to the plate by deferring retroactive pay."

This refers to $500 million owed tens of thousands of IAM mechanics,
cleaners, customer service and ramp workers for toiling 22 months
after their 1994 concession contract became amendable in July of
2000. Workers voted to approve this unprecedented giveback as part of
their 2002 agreement - delaying retroactively increased back wages due
on the date of contract signing for seven months, and then to be
doled out in quarterly installments. This was based on a promise that
the check would eventually be in the mail. Top IAM officials term
this "a loan."

Over the August 25 weekend, Creighton stated that after "confidential
meetings" with the "financial advisers of the union," where the books
of the company are supposedly to be opened, the bosses will shortly
submit their concessions package to "our unions."

BANKRUPTCY AS 'BUSINESS PLAN' TO RESTORE AIRLINE PROFITABILITY

The real "business plan" that works is, in fact, bankruptcy. And not
just for UAL. But, as the Los Angeles Times editorialized,
"bankruptcy alone won't solve the industry's problems," hinting at a
reduction in the number of carriers. With such likely mergers, tens
of thousands more will be laid off - a central goal of industry
consolidation to drive up worker productivity in the ruthless hunt
for profits and "competitive leverage."

"Bankruptcy is the best outcome for the industry," James Higgins,
airline analyst for Credit Suisse First Boston told CBS MarketWatch
August 16. "It is the market working at its best."

This cold-blooded capitalist assertion gets to the heart of the
challenges facing working people today. "The market working at its
best" means ruin and misery for tens of millions of working people.
Softened and corrupted by decades of concession bargaining, efforts
to "grow" the company, and bonding at the hip with the bosses,
labor's officialdom is incapable of leading a fight to defend the
interests of the ranks. For them, the union is a nothing but a dues
base for full-time incomes that double, triple, and quadruple those
of the ranks - salaries based in part on substantial contributions
from United - along with enhanced benefits and the promise of never
having to punch a time clock again. This elevates them from the
workforce, further ties them to the company, and defines their
central task: to ensure the membership doesn't do anything to
jeopardize the owner of the plantation.

DEFENDING THE BOSSES' BONUSES

The depths to which this "business unionism" can sink was illustrated
in the August 23-25 issue of USA Today, which reported on USAir's
decision to reward 500 "midlevel and senior executives" with $6
million in bonuses, ranging from $7,440 to $156,000 in additional
2002 pay. This windfall "will be shared," the article stated, "based
on the company's performance in 2001, when US Airways lost nearly $2
billion." This is like the insurance company paying workers to buy
new cars after they total their beaters, and then lowering their
premiums. Happens all the time.

Meanwhile, IAM members are set to vote on a wage concession of "at
least 8 percent," according to the newspaper. The US Airways twist on
bosses making out like bandits while they bleed workers dry is
nothing new. But this time-honored practiced is defended by the IAM
officialdom.

"It does not look good when they're giving $6 million in bonuses to
certain people and asking significant wage reductions at the same
time," IAM spokesman Joe Tiberi told USA Today. "But if the entire
upper management were to quit...the company could not operate."

Debby Rater, an IAM cabin service worker at the carrier's Charlotte
hub who, with her IAM mechanic husband Ron, is set to vote on the
concessions package August 28, does not share Tiberi's palpable
concern for the bosses' welfare. The bonus package, she said, is "just
unbelievable. It's like they're taking everything from us to
supplement their income. We're trying to figure out if we can stay in
our home."

This is the logic of the labor officialdom's real "plan:" to submit
to the machine of the capitalist market "working at its best," that
is subordinating human need to corporate profit, no matter the social
cost. After all, what would workers do without "upper management?"

The mounting calamity for the US Airways rank-and-file is symptomatic
of what is facing all unions: the obvious bankruptcy of a whole
approach to "defending" the living standards and rights of labor by
working hand-in-glove with the company, kowtowing to the government,
and living in the hip pocket of the Democratic Party.

THE CASE FOR NATIONALIZING THE AIRLINES

Airline unions would win broad popular support if instead they
demanded the government nationalize the industry, take the carriers
out of private hands and run them as the socially necessary service
that air travel represents. A democratically elected public board,
including unionists, passengers and the community would operate the
industry respecting the rights of the workers who make it run, and
the passengers who fly its planes. Everything from wages, safety and
working conditions, to ticket prices and access to travel would be
determined by real social need, not the cut-throat competition and
private greed that drives union-busting profiteers who want workers
and the flying public to bear the burden of "restructuring" and
"consolidation."

And safety corners will be cut in the restructured industry the
bosses want to create. On August 20, the Federal Aviation
Administration, which has long accommodated the carriers, slapped
UAL's wrist with a proposed $1.5 million fine for "failing to ensure
proper maintenance and inspection for three engines," according to
Reuters. United "failed to comply" with a 1999 FAA "airworthiness
directive" to replace weak engine nuts with stronger ones.

The defective engines were used on 974 flights, including 124 "after
the airline discovered" it had not complied with the order. UAL
declined to comment on the proposed fine.
 
DEAD END STRATEGY OF 'GROW THE AIRLINE'

Until recently, "grow the airline" was the mantra of IAM officials at
US Airways. It then became "concessions to stop bankruptcy." This
approach - which repeated the fatal model of TWA and is now being
emulated by United union officials - only serves to further
disorganize the ranks and whet the bosses' appetite for givebacks and
bankruptcy protection. It substitutes loyalty to "my company" for the
class solidarity that working people require to respond to the
onslaught of the ruling rich.

But for union officials, solidarity is an empty word. Labor's slogan
of "an injury to one is an injury to all" has zero concrete meaning.
And the challenge of organizing the unorganized - central to the
survival of the unions - is viewed as insurmountable. But for the
rank-and-file, acting on and giving life to these concepts are
matters of life and death.

The employers sense the weakness of the unions and smell the fear
oozing from their leaderships. A labor movement that declined over
decades of relative peace and temporary prosperity for some is
completely unprepared for coming depression and the consequences of
war. The bosses believe they can now move in for a kill. Years of
division, inertia and inaction mean one thing: the chickens are
coming home to roost.

INCREASED TENSION ON THE JOB

The unfolding situation has exerted tremendous pressure on UAL
workers. In Los Angeles, this expresses itself as a combination of
grinding anxiety, widespread uncertainty and, among some workers,
growing anger. "I'd rather see it [UAL] go down than give these
bastards another dime," says one ramp worker.

"Why should I bust my ass out there when I'm going to be laid off in
three weeks," says another.

"We better give up something or we'll get something worse," says a
worker.

"Once you give them back something, they always want more," responds
another. "It never stops."

"Where's the union? We don't know anything," says a worker on break.

Meanwhile, a supervisor informs a morning briefing, "There's 28 days
left in the countdown."

RETURN OF 'LORENZOISM'

In the name of airline restructuring, backed by Washington, armed
with bankruptcy laws, and keenly aware of the vulnerabilities of
their "junior partners" in the union misleadership, airline bosses
are now poised to try to carry out what they were unable to
accomplish in the failed union-busting assault launched by Frank
Lorenzo that provoked the 1989-90 Eastern Airlines strike. In this
important 22-month battle, as IAM officials feverishly searched for a
friendly owner, a defiant section of the ranks took back a chunk of
the union to wage a determined fight. They refused to submit and won
broad, national solidarity among unionists, students and in the
community.

The strike became a cause, as workers decided they would rather bring
down the carrier than work under the conditions of a gutted union.
They drove Lorenzo from the industry and scored a victory for all
working people.

This essential chapter of labor history is not known by new
generations of airline hires. Its inspiring story is chronicled in
"The Eastern Airlines Strike: Accomplishments of the Rank-and-File
Machinists," by Ernie Mailhot, a leading IAM strike activist in the
union's New York local. (Published by Pathfinder in 1991, it is
available at: http://www.pathfinderpress.com )

But now "Lorenzoism" is back - without the defeated CEO - in the
guise of restructuring and consolidation.  On August 21, American
Airlines CEO Donald Carty, fresh from announcing the layoff of 7,000
employees, stated that initial downsizing might not be enough. "If
our major competitors go bankrupt, we may well find ourselves
competing against airlines who use the bankruptcy process to take
huge chunk out of their costs," he said. Citing remarks by Carty to
American employees, Reuters reported this means the airline "will
look to even more cost-cutting measures in the weeks and months
ahead."

BIG STAKES IN WEST COAST LONGSHORE CONTRACT FIGHT

In the most important challenge yet mounted by the boss class against
labor - on the West Coast docks - the employers face resistance.
There, 10,500 members of the International Longshore & Warehouse
Union (ILWU) face off against the combined might of the Pacific
Maritime Association (PMA) and the U.S. government.  Should the
dockworkers take any job action, Washington has threatened to
implement the anti-strike Taft-Hartley law - last used by Democrat
Jimmy Carter against striking coal miners in 1978, who successfully
defied the White House.

Indeed, ever since its introduction under the Democratic regime of
President Harry Truman, the back-to-work provisions of Taft-Hartley,
according to the Labor Research Association, have been activated 23
times by White House Democrats, and on nine occasions by Republican
presidents. When push comes to shove, the unions' so-called friends
have always turned out to be their enemies.

Because working people lack an independent labor party to defend
their interests, reliance on the politicians of the supposedly
"lesser-evil" capitalist party has the unions and their allies in an
even deeper hole.

The ILWU has been directly menaced by the government with threats of
National Guard occupation of waterfronts to protect "homeland
security." This is because the United States "is at war," according
to administration officials quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

In response, thousands of ILWU members and their allies in the labor
movement have rallied up and down the West Coast to protest such
union-busting blackmail. They seek to preserve critical gains, from
the union hiring hall to their health-care plan, that the PMA wants to
take away. The bosses want to dump 2,000 ILWU jobs as they implement
new technology.

ANTI-STRIKE LEGISLATION THREAT

Meanwhile, Congress contemplates strict new anti-labor legislation
aimed at the union, which would bring them under provisions of the
reactionary Railway Labor Act (RLA). This statute severely inhibits
the right to strike, and has been used by the Clinton and Bush
administrations against railroad and airline workers. Parallel
efforts in Congress aim to remove the right to strike entirely from
the RLA. Top officials of affected rail and airline unions have
written a letter protesting these steps, hailed in The IAM District
141 Messenger as the way to "block...the compulsory arbitration
bill."

The RLA was approved by Congress in 1926, after boss-organized
violence and scabbing, abetted by the government, crushed a series of
earlier industrial strikes - a decade and more before the great labor
upsurge of the mid-1930s. As the airline passenger industry developed
in the 1930s, the Democratic administration of Franklin Roosevelt
extended RLA protection to the carriers. For decades, rail and
airline union officials have hidden behind its elaborate, 12-step
process leading to "self-help" - the strike - thereby accustoming
rank-and-file workers to play by the government's stacked rules.
 
Such accommodation, in today's "changed world," has simply encouraged
Congress take the obvious next step, and formally outlaw strike
action. More than a letter will be required to thwart such a measure.

Facing a similar challenge on the ground today, the ILWU has urged in
leaflets produced by the union that the Bush Administration's
"endless war" must not be turned "against the workers" and calls for
an end to "attacks on immigrant and worker's rights." But Washington
has already aimed its guns against the Bill of Rights with the USA
Patriotic Act, secret detentions, stepped-up harassment of Arabs and
Muslims and other "homeland security" measures. Direct attacks on
unions and their right to strike is a logical, necessary step in this
war at home.

IMMIGRANTS UNDER ATTACK AT AIRPORTS

The U.S. government's "Operation Tarmac," which scapegoats workers
who don't conform to federal airport "security guidelines" -
overwhelmingly undocumented immigrants who use false identification
to secure work - is of a piece with the war on airline labor.
Hundreds of these workers - most of them in non-union, low paying
service jobs - have been seized in dragnets, denied their rights,
jailed, deported or both. On August 22, federal agents arrested 81 of
these workers at Los Angeles and Orange County airports, culminating
a nine-month operation.

Earlier this year, cops from the Immigration and Naturalization
Service swept through several Los Angeles International Airport
terminals arresting mostly Mexican immigrants flying to jobs in
Denver, Phoenix, and New York. While modest and important union and
community protests responded, the unions as a whole have stood by
passively in the face of such elementary violations of human rights.
Such assaults are entirely calculated to snare the most vulnerable -
supposed "lawbreakers" whose only "crime" is to have been born
outside the United States and come here seeking work as the economies
in their countries shrivel and crack under the weight of U.S.
corporate pillage.

When an injury to one isn't viewed as an injury to all, the
repressive apparatus has a freer hand to take aim at its main target:
the organized working class, whose very future depends on the
broadest possible solidarity, armed with the knowledge that "united
we stand, divided we fall."

WAR AT HOME, WAR ABROAD

Administration war plans against Baghdad - number one on President
Bush's "axis of evil" list - seek at once to conquer Iraq's oil
riches and deal a blow to Washington's and Wall Street's European
capitalist rivals. The stated administration goal of "regime change"
can only be attempted by massive use of ground combat not seen since
Vietnam. This bloody aggression may enrich corporate war profiteers,
but it will cost the lives of thousands of sons and daughters of
working people who have no stake in Washington's next inevitable
and unjust military intervention, and thousands more Iraqi working
people who will defend their country's sovereignty, whatever their
opinion of its current government.

To sustain that war abroad, the ruling rich will wage one with equal
ferocity at home, in the name of fighting "terrorism." As they open
this second front, working people will learn that the real terror
against them is being organized in Washington, in corporate
boardrooms, in the exclusive headquarters of the multi-millionaire
and billionaire class of U.S. ruling families. They, their
government, courts and police will spare no effort to make working
people pay in rights, blood, and treasure for a world and domestic
crisis born of the bosses' greed.

The war abroad and the war at home are one and the same. Workers in
the United States will come to resist both with equal vigor,
regardless of current pro-war positions adopted by "patriotic" union
officials who erroneously believe that flag-waving, like concessions,
will get the government to cut them some slack.

Both these wars are, above all, proof of the fundamental and growing
weaknesses of the U.S. economic and political system, which both
domestically and internationally must increasingly wield the "big
stick" in efforts to resolve its innermost contradictions. Everywhere
the ruling rich encounter organized defiance, their fear and
uncertainty bubbles up to the surface. Behind the bluster of
"homeland security" is fear of the U.S. working class beginning to
assert itself. Underneath the war drums against the "axis of evil" is
anxiety that Washington's untested army will meet determined forces
on the ground of their homeland, that won't be cowed by "smart bombs"
from afar.

Throughout Latin America, this crisis is driving working people,
farmers, youth, women, and retirees into the streets in waves of
rural and urban struggle. Only through such struggles can the immense
majority win a measure of justice and retain their dignity and, most
importantly, forge a new, fighting leadership that sees the enemy for
what it is and acts accordingly.

These combative millions will discover that only by taking power from
the rich and forging a new society based on solidarity and human need
can the source of the worsening nightmare in which they live be
overcome.

Latin America is a preview of what will transpire in the United
States. For millions here, who know that homelessness is a paycheck
or two away, whose pensions have disappeared, who have no medical
insurance of any kind, whose children attend crammed classrooms in
dilapidated schools, and who know from experience that neither police
brutality or racism is an abstraction, Argentina is already here.

INTRODUCTION TO CAPITALISM 101

As the airline bosses and the whole crisis-ridden system on which
they are based marshal their forces to deal heavy blows to airline
labor - using every weapon in their arsenal and taking maximum
advantage of every soft spot they see - the ranks of airline labor
will have no alternative but to rise up, unite and struggle, or
suffer the consequences of surrender. If an aroused rank-and-file is
unable to begin this fundamental transformation in time, their unions
will simply disintegrate under the impact of continuing corporate
attacks and concessions, accompanied by increasingly sever employer
discipline and government repression.

The current economic, political, social and moral crisis roiling the
United States - as its society joins the rest of the world - has
slowly and painfully begun to wake up thinking workers to such
unavoidable facts of life, a process that has just begun. In the
school of hard knocks, this is Introduction to Capitalism 101.

Workers will learn through bitter experience that nothing is worse
than waving the white flag without resistance. And that standing up
and fighting is the first step to forging a labor movement and a new
leadership determined to defend the rights of working people, here
and around the world, whatever the cost.

Copyright (c) 2002 by Jon Hillson

 
=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012             
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org 
=================================================================
 
nytrad-08.27.02-08:23:06-26439