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Last fall’s Congressional elections, which amounted to a repudiation of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party, raised the hopes of many. Democratic Party victors, both in the Senate and the House, ran campaigns that often stressed their opposition to the Iraq war. Moreover, they voiced an economic populism directed against big pharma, big oil, free trade agreements like NAFTA, and tax cuts for the rich. All of this and more suggested a shift in the political center of gravity. No one can be sure whether the Democratic Party will make good on that promise. As we go to press, the House has adopted a vote of no confidence in the Bush plan to escalate its military intervention in Iraq, and the Congress has passed a raise in the minimum wage, and authorized Medicare to bargain with the pharmaceutical industry for a reduction in prescription drug prices. Still the Iraq disaster only deepens, the new minimum wage is woefully inadequate, the Employee Free Choice Act is very unlikely to become law, and we are still a vast distance away from anything resembling universal heath insurance. The Democratic Party remains deeply infected with free market ideology and with the imperial ambitions characteristic of both parties for half a century.
Ending the right-wing ideological stranglehold on
the nation’s politics will undoubtedly require some brand new ideas. First of
all, the struggle to reestablish labor’s rights to organize and strike requires
some bold new thinking. Passage of the EFCA would help. But the act is hobbled
by its own timidity, still intimidated by crippling Taft-Hartley provisions it
fails to challenge. We begin this issue of New Labor Forum with an audacious
cluster of articles about the Thirteenth Amendment and how it might be used to
break free of that prison. James Pope, Peter Kellman, and Ed Bruno argue that
the labor movement ought to mobilize around the amendment outlawing involuntary
servitude—it once did earlier in the twentieth century—as the new constitutional
and moral basis for its rights to organize, bargain, and strike. Jeremy Brecher,
Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith look at the global labor movement and make a
kindred argument that labor rights ought to be grounded in international law.
Maria Ontiveros examines the moral and legal opportunities the Thirteenth
Amendment offers for labor to ally itself with immigrant, civil and human rights
struggles.
Certainly, the decline in union membership makes it that much harder for the
movement to assert itself. In recent years, unions committed to large-scale
organizing have emphasized the importance of targeting key, large-scale
employers in strategic sectors and markets where employment was customarily
long-term. Here, Janice Fine observes that the labor market has changed, has
become more fragmented and transitory. She urges the labor movement to make
corresponding adjustments so as not to neglect workers who move frequently from
job to job. She urges unions to create new kinds of memberships modeled on
experiments taking place around the country in worker centers and professional
associations.
Thinking outside the box has to happen in the building trades as well, according
to Jeff Grabelsky. Union membership has declined even as jobs in the industry
have grown. The organization and technology of the industry has changed, as has
its workforce. Immigrant workers by the hundreds of thousands have taken
nonunion jobs in construction. Traditional jurisdictional lines no longer make
sense. Tensions within the building trades caused some unions to leave the AFL
and affiliate with the CTW. Grabelsky argues that the building trades must
transform their outmoded structures or slide deeper into the crisis that
threatens their very existence.
The current wave of Latin American immigration, impacting the construction
trades and many other industries, comes largely as a result of neoliberalism’s
chokehold on Latin American economies. The recent elections of left-leaning
governments in the region increase the chances for a confrontation with U.S.
domination of the continent. In this issue Dan LaBotz describes the relationship
between these anti-imperial regimes and their national labor movements, and
assesses their prospects.
U.S. labor, unlike the movement in Latin America and elsewhere, has not aligned
itself formally with a particular political party. It has nevertheless been a
stalwart supporter of the Democratic Party. Here, Clayton Sinyai argues
provocatively that U.S. unions should adopt a form of twenty-first century
Gomperism, eschewing political action and reliance on governmental protections
in favor of self-reliance. Elly Leary takes issue with Sinyai’s historical
analysis and warns that his proposal will further isolate labor as a special
interest.
Many argue that China’s official labor federation (ACFTU) is a creature of the
state and the Communist Party, and so not free to defend the interests of its
members. Here, Anita Chan explores the federation’s successful recent attempt to
organize Wal-Mart. She finds that there are ACFTU officials and local unions
determined to carry out grassroots organizing in the growing private sector,
despite the contrary inclinations of the Party and the government.
In this installment of Contemporary Working-Class Voices, Debbie Nathan offers a
poignant street level view of the perspectives and working conditions of nannies
in New York; and Amanda Plumb examines zines written by young workers who
discuss their experiences as strippers, dishwashers, construction workers, and
fishing deck hands.
Robert Pollin’s column, Economic Prospects, analyzes the controversies
surrounding the minimum wage and the living wage. How should a “living wage” be
calculated? Will the new minimum wage (and a higher “living wage”) generate
unemployment? What should be the relationship between the minimum wage and the
Earned Income Tax Credit as alternate ways of addressing poverty? Caught in the
Web, Kim Phillips-Fein’s column, provides an array of valuable web resources
that can aid in the building of a global labor movement.
We are pleased to welcome Sherry Linkon, co-director of the Youngstown
University Center for Working-Class Studies, as co-editor of the Books and the
Arts section. In her inaugural issue, the section opens with a review essay by
Robert Anderson of three books by Democratic Party insiders critical of the
Party’s accommodation and capitulation to conservative, pro-corporate political
trends. Mark Hulsether reviews Camilo José Vergara’s How the Other Half
Worships, a photographic study of poor and working-class inner city places of
worship. Thomas Greven examines Daniel Cohen’s Globalization and its Enemies,
suggesting the book opens up the issue of the fair distribution of
globalization’s benefits, but does not offer policy recommendations that would
generate an equitable redistribution of resources. In a review of The New Spirit
of Capitalism by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, Wallace Katz finds most
original their notion of the city’s democratic restraints on capitalist
hegemony.
Matt Witt’s Out of the Mainstream column includes an eye-opening array of
novels, documentaries, hard-hitting exposés, and other hidden gems. We end with
an appreciation of Tillie Olsen, labor organizer during the depression era and
internationally known writer who depicted the lives of working-class people,
women, and people of color. Here, we publish her poem “I Want You Women up North
to Know.”
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