The Independent Socialist Group is at the Labor Notes and Railroad Workers United conferences this week in Chicago. Our leaflet below is for both conventions.
We invite all interested to join us online next week for a public meeting discussing how we can build the labor movement and why our unions should help organize a workers’ party.
How can we build more militant unions and why do we need a workers‘ party to organize against the Democratic and Republican corporate parties?
Thursday June 18th
7pm – 8:30pm Eastern
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83150449615
Public support for the labor movement is very high, but it hasn’t translated into big gains for our unions. Only 10% of all workers are in unions, despite half of all non-union workers saying they would join a union if they could. 43% of new unions still don’t have a first contract after 2 years. Corporations like Amazon refuse to negotiate. Pay for many union jobs is too low. Mass layoffs are mostly not challenged. Corporations use their vast sums of money to union bust, backed by the two corporate political parties. We need a new approach.
A breakthrough for labor will take more militancy, active solidarity, rank-and-file democracy in our unions, and organizing to build a working-class political party, fully independent of both the Democrats and Republicans.
The NLRB election process has always presented obstacles to unionizing, and Trump’s attacks have made it worse. Historically, workers have gone on strike to force corporations to recognize the union. In the 1930s and 1940s, mass strikes built the labor movement to its peak in the 1950s, when 1 in 3 workers were part of a union. We need to bring back union recognition strikes to overcome deadlocks in union organizing and winning first contracts.
No single union can take on major corporations alone. Unions need to unite to win big campaigns. Winning a union contract at Amazon or a major pay increase at UPS could be strong examples for other workers around the country to join unions and fight for first contracts. Solidarity action, including strikes, are vital if we want to make a breakthrough.
Solidarity strikes are currently illegal, but unions have had to break unjust laws throughout history. The idea of a “general strike” is in the air, and general strikes are “illegal” but they’ve been very effective. Most general strikes in the US started as solidarity action in support of other workers on strike. With the high public support for unions, a general strike could be organized as the culmination of a series of escalating actions, even just initiated by a single union.
It’s vital for unions to help build a workers’ party to unite the entire labor movement and connect it with the rest of the working class. Unions waste their resources and endorsements on the two corporate parties. Both the Democratic and Republican parties allow corporations to illegally union bust. They supply police at picketlines to assist scabs and arrest striking workers. They use the legal system to ban strikes. Both parties refuse to repeal anti-union laws or fight for pro-worker legislation. Unions could use some of the $32 billion of their net assets to support pro-labor independents and launch a workers’ party.
A workers’ party could:
- pool together resources from unions and the broader working class to assist organizing mass union drives at major corporations.
- help organize broader campaigns for key political demands and social benefits.
- organize mass meetings that bring together working people, union and non-union, to discuss and determine demands and tactics for winning them.
The only way to permanently secure good standards of living for all workers is through socialism, meaning the public ownership and democratic control and planning of the economy. It will take a political and social revolution to take this power out of the hands of the capitalist class.
Revolutionary socialists have been on the frontlines of organizing our unions. Socialists and communists led the 1934 general strikes that built the CIO and massively expanded the labor movement. Socialists also put forward demands for a workers’ party to organize against capitalist interests. A revolutionary socialist understanding of capitalism points to the need for a socialist society, here in the US and internationally, so we can end the exploitation of our labor and the environment once and for all.
The labor movement should organize mass union drives and contract campaigns, a workers’ party, and build for a general strike around key demands:
- Union rights for all! Labor law reform to make it easier to join a union and win a first contract.
- Union contracts with $30/hr starting pay, cost-of-living adjustments above inflation, paid sick and parental leave, and safe working conditions.
- A $30/hr min wage, universal healthcare, rent control, public housing, and paid sick leave and parental leave for all workers!
- Abolish ICE, end the billionaires’ wars and genocides, and stop the ongoing mass gutting of healthcare, SNAP benefits, and other social programs.
- Take key industries, corporations, and banks into public ownership and democratic control, with elected representatives from the working class (unions, workplaces, working-class communities, etc.) planning production and investment.
Independent Socialist Group 