Members of the Independent Socialist Group (ISG) joined with almost 5,000 other attendees at this year’s Labor Notes conference in Chicago, April 19-21. The conference, which is organized every two years, brings labor activists together to discuss rebuilding a fighting labor movement, including how to organize reform caucuses in our unions and how to overturn strike bans like the Railway Labor Act.
ISG was excited to participate at a time when the labor movement is on an upswing and workers look to unions to improve their living conditions. Simultaneously, the labor movement is struggling to achieve a decisive win against corporations armed with vast sums of money, union-busting lawyers, and the corporate two-party political system. Union density dropped to 10% in 2023, and workers at Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s are still without a contract. The United Auto Workers, in their effort to unionize US plants of foreign car companies, have won one unionization effort at Volkswagen but lost another at Mercedes-Benz (read more on page 4).
We in ISG shared leaflets and papers that call on the labor movement to take up socialist tactics to make a breakthrough in the fight against the capitalist class. Unions need to pool resources together–meaning funds, organizers, and members–to launch mass unionization campaigns. Most workers are at-will employees with few benefits or job protections, low pay, and often under-scheduled in terms of work hours. Unions also need to coordinate bargaining, actions, and strikes against multiple worksites and companies at once, as was done in the mass strikes that brought the labor movement to its peak strength in the ‘30s and ‘40s.
Unions must also break from the dead-end Democratic and Republican parties to help build an independent workers’ party. Our unions spent over $700M on supporting candidates from the two corporate parties in the 2022 elections. These same parties break strikes; give companies massive bailouts, tax breaks, and subsidies; call police in to break picket lines; and help companies use scab labor. A workers’ party, built with the help of unions, can bring all working people together to fight for things all of us (union or not) need, like universal healthcare, free higher education, student loan cancellation, quality affordable housing, fare-free public transit, and higher pay.
ISG attended many sessions to discuss these ideas with other attendees, including sessions on illegal teacher strikes, universal public healthcare, public-sector budget crises, and politics in the labor movement. Many supported our call for an independent workers’ party free from corporate interests and funding. ISG and Railroad Workers United member Nick Wurst also spoke on a panel about the need for public ownership of key industries like the railroads.
ISG is committed to fight both internally within our unions and externally as supporters to bring socialist ideas into contract battles and unionization efforts. Ultimately, we aim to build a socialist world run by and for working people that can meet everyone’s needs, where all will have quality living and working conditions, and we know unions will play a vital role in fighting for that change.
Independent Socialist Group 