File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9804, message 164


Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 23:41:19 -0400
From: jonathan flanders <jon_flanders-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: War on transportation unions


>> Today there are three (3), the railroad implement a computer enhancement
termed OASIS, to existing computer program TCS. To pay for this program
approximately 12 million dollars, it abolished...... <<

Harold Turpin mentions the loss of jobs both to computerization and
conflict between craft unions. Both phenomena have been put to good use by
the corporations to weaken the organized sectors of the transportation
industry. This ongoing gradual bloodletting also weakens the unions for the
bigger blows that are coming. As brother Turpin knows, I am sure, the two
main rail transportation unions in the US, the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers(BLE), and the United Transportation Union(UTU), have come to
blows over representation, to the point that the AFL-CIO felt it had to
step in and mediate the dispute.

The paradox for the working class on the docks in Australia and the loading
terminals in the US is this. How do you fight these corporate giants with
the reduced labor force technology enables the employers to use, even as 
transportation worker's economic power increases, due to the ever more
rapid circulation of commodities through the system, with an ever
decreasing margin for error, and greater penalties(sometimes specifically
contractual), for any breakdowns and delays?

And of course it follows, that companies operating under these increasingly
pressurized circumstances, feel less and less compunction in going to the
mat. One small labor dispute can cost them millions. Their watchword must
be "No more unions in this industry!" All they need is an opening, like a
wink and nod from the Tory government of Australia.

We know that docks today are not unloaded today by a  swarm of thousands of
laborers. It falls on 1400 dockers to galvanize the entire labor movement
of Australia, even the world. That's a lot of speaking engagements and
picket sites to cover, even if you got every union member out on the
circuit. One can hardly blame a worker for feeling overwhelmed in these
circumstances.

The small numbers involved can also lull other workers into fatalism. After
all, it doesn't seem like that much of a deal, not like firing every auto
worker organized at General Motors. So there is much ritual sympathy and
handwringing, then back to work and hope it doesn't happen here. This has
been the story of the last twenty years, with a few exceptions.

I don't have any pat solutions to this few in numbers, great in economic
power dilemma. Organized workers must find a way to reach the millions of
our brothers and sisters who may not be in a union, but who might
sympathize with people like the dockers, and are looking for some
leadership.

I would point, for inspiration, to those anti-war organizers in Columbus,
Ohio, who found a chink in the armor of the corporate propaganda network,
rushed through and spiked the guns of a befuddled Albright and co. That's
the kind of creative leadership and action we need in the workers movement.

Jon Flanders



Jon Flanders  
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jon_flanders/index.htm


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