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 --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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