It was entirely predictable that the unions would end the strike on management’s terms. They followed a script that has been repeated countless times over the past thirty years. A strike is called that the union has no intention of winning. Rather, it is called to let off steam in order to make it easier to push through concessions. Nothing is done to mobilize broader popular support. The workers are left isolated while the media engages in a slander campaign. The strike is called off as soon as the union deems it feasible, with nothing won and workers ordered back to work before they can read, let alone vote on, the new contract. The unions are reportedly holding mass meetings and conducting a vote on the contract as early as today, with the aim of giving workers as little time as possible to review what they are voting on. There is widespread opposition among the workers, and with good reason. Many are no doubt asking, if this is the outcome, what was the purpose of the strike? That the pattern in the BART strike has been repeated again and again points to the fact that the experience of BART workers is part of a broader process. What is involved is not simply a conflict with one institution or a problem with one set of corrupt union officials. To carry forward the struggle, it is necessary to carefully consider the lessons of what has happened. The BART strike, like every social conflict that erupts in the United States, quickly exposed the violence of class relations in America and the essentially political character of the struggle. In seeking to defend their rights, the transit workers encountered the furious opposition of the state and its institutions. Politicians, both Democratic and Republican, attacked the workers, along with their allies in the media. Workers who make about $60,000 a year were denounced as overpaid and greedy. This in a region where the cost of living is among the highest in the country and where some of the wealthiest people in the world reside. Corporations are making record profits, the stock market is soaring, and it is assumed as a matter of course that CEOs and Wall Street investors should be wealthier than ever. But for workers to attempt to maintain a decent standard of living is considered an outrage... The struggle of transit workers in defense of their rights is embedded in this broader social and political framework. The working class faces the necessity of counterposing to the worked-out strategy of the ruling class its own worked-out strategy, based on its own interests. The unions function not as instruments of struggle, but as instruments for the suppression of struggle. Their first aim is to prevent any opposition from emerging. Over the past thirty years, strikes, once a constant feature of American life, have largely disappeared, even as social inequality has grown to levels that rival the period before the Great Depression. When strikes do erupt, the unions work to isolate and defeat them. This has been the case in every struggle since the 1980s, without exception. It is impossible to point to a single example during this period of these organizations—upheld today by phony “left” groups as the only legitimate representatives of the working class—leading a struggle to victory. The bankruptcy of the unions is determined by their social and political relationship to the profit system. The unions, representing the privileged upper-middle class executives that control them, accept and defend the framework of capitalism, expressed politically in their alliance with the Democratic Party. They base themselves on everything the working class is being driven into struggle against. The agreement that the unions have reached with management must still be voted on, and the Socialist Equality Party urges workers to reject the sellout. However, this is only the first step. New organizations of struggle must be built. The task of constructing a new leadership must be initiated, among BART workers and in every section of the working class, throughout the country and internationally. This leadership must be forged in opposition to the Democratic and Republican parties, the trade unions and all of the institutions of the ruling class. In order to fight, it is necessary to understand what one is fighting against. The defense of every basic right of working people involves a conflict with the ruling class, its state, and the capitalist system. The growing radicalization of broad sections of the population must be given an anti-capitalist and socialist orientation, directed at building a mass movement of the working class to take political power and reorganize society on the basis of social need, not private profit.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 16:09:09 +0000
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