beginning of June, 110,000 members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers - mostly Black and Puerto Rican women -- staged their first nationwide strike in fifty-three years. The Pennsylvania Power and Light Company experienced its first strike in fiftyfour years when 5,000 linemen, clerks, and plant workers 16 worl be to by ANDY walked out to back up their demand for a cost-of- living escalator provision. Government workers have stood out prominently in this upsurge of trade-union militancy. Strikes by city employees virtually shut down San Francisco in March and Baltimore in July. Government workers, who now number more than 14 million, are one of the fastest growing sectors of the work force. In contrast to the stagnant or even declining proportion of union members in private industry, organization of public workers is increasing quickly. A high percentage of the members of these unions are Blacks and women, who generally occupy the lowest-paid jobs. Groups of white-collar employees who previously tended to view themselves as "professionals" rather than workers have organized and struck for better wages and working conditions. In some cases they have taken over and transformed "professional associations" that had pre iously served as company unions. Forty thousand nurses in Northern California struck for three weeks in June, greater control over working conditions being one of their central demands. A walkout by office and editorial workers at Harper & Row was the first strike in the book-publishing industry since the 1940s. Fall of real wages The current upswing in strike activity is the direct result of the previous two and a half years of government "wage-price controls, " which were imposed by Nixon on August 15, 1971. While prices and profits soared to record-breaking heights, the controls succeeded in their real aim of whittling down wage increases. For union members the average increase fell from 8.1 percent in 1971 to 6.4 percent in 1972 to 5.2 percent in 1973.
kers kin stir ROSE
The intervention of the capitalist government accomplished what individual capitalists could not: holding the wage increases of the U.S. working class below those Washington's imperialist rivals have been forced to grant. The August 31 New York Times approvingly cited "a marked narrowing of the wage differentials of manufacturing workers in the United States and other large industrial countries" as one reason for the strong competitiveness of U.S. exports. The wage limits have meant a sharp drop in real wages since worldwide inflation exploded last year. Although the current round of strikes has raised wage increases somewhat, they still lag well behind the rate of inflation. According to government statistics, the real wages of the average U.S. worker in July 1974 were 5.3 percent lower than a year before. Real wages today are no higher than they were in 1965, and are dropping. This slashing of real wages was made possible by the complete capitulation of the trade-union leadership to government controls. The union bureaucrats failed to explain that the capitalist government cannot and will not control prices. Bound hand and foot to the capitalist political parties, the bureaucrats cooperated to the bitter end, sitting on the committees whose purpose was to hold down wages. A short walkout by New York City hospital workers last November was the only officially sanctioned strike to challenge the wage controls, and it was defeated for lack of support from other unions. Opposition to inflation erupted in other forms. A nationwide meat boycott in April 1973 involved millions of people. In September 1973 Black community organizations in Chicago took the initiative in organizing a demonstration of 8,000 people against inflation, unemployment, and unfair taxes. But because of the default of the union bureaucracy, such actions were limited and sporadic. When the wage controls were first imposed, most workers were
COREATION / LABOR UNIC 20/ *1974* willing to go along, believing that the government would really limit prices. Anger and disillusionment grew as bitter experience proved otherwise. A danger signal for the bourgeoisie was the eight-week strike organized by young rank-and-file carpenters in Northern California last winter -- withou+ officia! union approval -- against a government board's decision to cut back a wage increase in their contract. Direct wage controls have certain liabilities for the ruling class. They tend to expose the antilabor role of the government and raise the danger of wage disputes escalating into head-on confrontations between the unions and the capitalist state. Taking a calculated risk that they would be able to restrain wages without direct controls, the rulers allowed them to lapse last spring. But without the excuse of goverrment controls, union bureaucrats found if much more difficult to restrain demands that the unions take action for higher wages. One indication of the pressure on the bureaucrats is the government report that rank-and-file unionists are now turning down 12.3 percent of all negotiated settlements, compared to 9.6 percent a year ago. As a result of the experience of wage controls, workers today are less inclined to rely on the government rather than their own strength to protect their standard of living. In a recent Harris poll, 60 percent of those surveyed thought the government's economic policies "are doing more harm than good, " up from 23 percent in September 1971. The latest Gallup poll found that the largest proportion of people surveyed -- 44 percent -- thought the federal government was chiefly to blame for inflation. Sixty-eight percent expected the economic situation to worsen in the next six months, while fully 46 percent agreed that "the U.S. economy is heading toward a depression, such as the nation experienced in the 1930s."
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UNITED STATES Disillusionment with and distrust of the government are all the greater in that they are not limited solely to economic quesopened the eyes of millions to the capitalist government's cor- tions. The Vietnam war, the "energy crisis, " and Watergate ruption and criminality. When the government is seen as conspiring with corporate profiteers, workers are unlikely to respond with enthusiasm to exhortations to sacrifice for the "national interest." This is the beginning of the development among the workers of a class-conscious attitude toward the capitalist state. Confusion about government "wage-price controls" is still widespread, however. The latest Gallup poll also found that those surveyed favored -- by a 50 percent to 39 percent majority -- the reimposition of "wage and price" controls. The illusion that there can be "fair" controls is deliberately fostered by the union officials, who still promise to cooperate with controls so long as they are "evenhanded." Escalator clauses & the sliding scale of wages Nevertheless, growing recognition of another method -- the only effective method -- of protecting wages against inflation can be seen in the rising popularity of escalator clauses. This demand is gaining nearly universal acceptance among American workers and has been the central dispute in many strikes. For example, bus drivers struck in Washington, D.C., last May and are still on strike in Oakland, California, against city attempts to cut back or eliminate escalutors they had previously won. This autumn the United Mine Workers are demanding the first escalator clause in the industry's history, while railroad workers unions are seeking to win escalators they had lost in the late 1950s. Labor Department figures on wage increases prove that workers who have escalator provisions end up with significantly higher increases than those who do not, but that in no case do the increases fully match inflation. The importance of the demand for a sliding scale of wages is that it completely rejects the notion that workers bear any responsibility for inflation and asserts their right to complete protection against rising prices. As opposed to any "price control" schemes, it embodies the idea that workers can only rely on their own strength and their own organizations to provide this protection. No escalator clause fully provides a sliding scale of wages. The employers constantly seek to impose limits on the maximum raise, to make wage adjustments less frequent, and to set formulas that guarantee only part of the official rate of inflation. Equally important, all escalators are tied to the government's price index. The struggle for a genuine sliding scale of wages entails rejecting the rigged government figures. The unions the price increases.
The dynamic of struggling for such a demand points toward the workers themselves determining the state of the economy and beginning to control industry in their own interests.
The sliding scale of wages should be presented together with the sliding scale of hours as the answer to chronic unemployment. Unlike the escalator clause, this demand has hardly been taken up at all by the trade unions in the United States.
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As unemployment rises, however, (and Ford's policies are deliberately aimed at driving up unemployment), this slogan will meet with greater receptivity. Limitations of the strikes While the current round of strikes shows a heightened trade-union militancy among American workers, it has definite limitations. Most of the strikes have been small, local, and settled relatively quickly. The garment workers strike has been the only industry-wide action. Neither the top union bureaucrats nor the corporations want a national confrontation, and so far they have been able to avoid one. Settlements providing very poor wage increases were reached without strikes in such key industries as auto, steel, communications, and longshore (on the East Coast). The leadership of the United Steelworkers has concluded an "Experimental Negotiating Agreement" with the steel trust that amounts to a six-year no-strike pledge. This is being hailed by the capitalists and the executive council of the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, the national trade-union federation) as the model for collective bargaining in the future. Major unresolved talks still lie ahead, though. Negotiations have begun in the aerospace industry; a national coal strike, which could be the biggest labor battle this year, is widely predicted for November; and the contracts covering 600, 000 railroad workers expire at the end of the year. The mounting economic crisis has had a certain impact -though limited -- on the union bureaucracy. George Meany, octogenarian president of the AFL-CIO, recently acknowledged there is every indication that we are going into a depression." reality long enough to note, "We are in a recession now, and The most important shake-up in the top union leaderships has been in the United Mine Workers. In a federally-ordered election held at the end of 1972, the corrupt old machine of Tony Boyle was ousted by a reform slate headed by Arnold Miller and based on rank-and-file movements for greater democracy, mine safety, and better health care. The Miller leadership is inexperienced and by no means a class-struggle leadership, but its closeness to the rank-and-file has meant important gains for miners. It has reestablished the right to vote on contracts, opened the pages of the union newspaper to the membership, and begun to launch an organizing drive in mines that had gone non-union. This drive just took a big step forward with the victory of a bitterly-fought thirteenmonth strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, which was seen as a test case by the union and companies alike. Changing class consciousness No improvement in the economic situation is in sight. Ford's declared policies, behind which the U.S. ruling class is united, call for "austerity, " deeper recession, and more cutbacks in government spending for social services. At the same time, no relief from inflation can be expected. The outlook for consumer prices is foreshadowed by the wholesale price index, which rose 3.7 percent in July alone. A new upsurge in food prices is going on, with farm prices rising 3 percent between July 15 and August 15. The attack on the living standards of the working class also includes rising unemployment, speed-up, pollution, shortages,
WORLD'S HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING and a decline in social services -- from health care to transportation to education. The real value of food stamps, welfare, social security, and pensions is dropping. These all combine to foster a mood of insecurity and uncertainty. If the union leadership's response to the attacks on wages has been hopelessly inadequate, its response to broader social questions has been even worse. In all these areas the conservatism of the union bureaucracy stands in growing contradiction to the attitudes that are spreading among the working class, especially among young workers. One significant confirmation of this was a survey by pollster Daniel Yankelovich, who found that the radical attitudes toward business, patriotism, law, the police, religion, politics, sexual freedom, work, and authority that were typical of college students in the late 1960s are now accepted by young workers. Yankelovich found that young people have developed what he calls a "Bill of New Rights. " These include: "To be able to send children to college whether or not they can afford to do so. To participate in decisions that affect their work. To enjoy a secure retirement. To have access to the best medical care whether they can afford it or not. " In other words, these "new rights" are free education through the college level; workers control of production; social care for the aged; and socialized medicine. The most radical attitudes were found among Black, Chicano, and Puerto Rican youth, among whom "the prevailing view is that this is a sick society (55 percent) and not democratic (76 percent). "These youth feel this is a society of "rampant racism. " All aspects of the economic crisis hit hardest at workers of the oppressed nationalities and women workers. Illusions about gradual progress toward full equality are crumbling as the oppression of these groups is exacerbated. While the official unemployment rate for white workers was 4.8 percent in July, it was 9.4 percent for Blacks and 35.3 percent for Black teenagers. In 1973, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the typical Black family had an income only 58 percent of the income of the typical white family; the typical full-time woman worker earned only 57 percent as much as her male counterpart. These gaps are widening.
46 percent agreed There's no way that the Cake The "U.S. economy is rican Wan heading toward
La depression..." One of the most significant national developments in the American labor movement has been the formation and growth of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). Founded at.a conference last March attended by 3, 200 women trade-unionists, CLUW's stated goal is to organize women within the trade-union movement to fight for the special needs of women, including equal pay and an end to job discrimination, full employment, organizing the unorganized, child-care legislation, passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, and democracy and a greater role for women inside the unions. CLUW is being organized in most major cities and is attracting growing numbers of rank-and-file women ur.ionists. CLUW reflects the increased militancy of women workers, who have played the dominant role in strikes of nurses, teachers, stewardesses, garment workers, and often public employees. It is a manifestation of the extension of the radicalization of women, which began among student youth, to the working class. It is a development inside the unions that has the potential to play a major role in transforming them into instruments of class struggle. FOR A LABOR PARTY! The current upswing in strike activity, while it has won real gains for some workers, has not yet gone beyond the established methods espoused by the trade-union bureaucrats: strikes of one union against one employer, conducted only on the level of economic demands. The greatest limitation of the current struggles is their lack of a political expression. The unions are hamstrung in dealing with government attacks because of the policy of supporting the capitalist Democratic and Republican parties. This was especially clear in the union officialdom's utter inability to fight against the wage controls. While there is widespread recognition that today's economic crisis requires political answers, the union bureaucracy tries to channel the sentiment for political action into support for the capitalist parties, especially the Democratic party. Their "answer" to the crisis has been to "elect a veto-proof Congress"
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HAS BANGLADESH in 1974, that is, a Congress with a larger Democratic majority. This was based on the demagogic claim that Nixon alone was responsible for the attacks on workers -- when, in fact, all government antilabor policy is endorsed by overwhelming bipartisan votes in Congress. Now the top AFL-CIO bureaucrats are spreading the equally bankrupt notion that Ford may improve matters; and they are openly enthusiastic about Rockefeller as vice-president. The United States is virtually unique in the imperialist world in that there is no mass working-class political party -- even one of a reformist variety. Regardless of the level of militancy they attain in the economic sphere, the American workers vote overwhelmingly for bourgeois political parties. The American bourgeoisie takes full advantage of this anomaly, endowing