THE INTER-UNION ORGANIZER

Newsletter of the inter-union organizing committee - Vol.1, No. 4 Summer 2015

Why we need the Inter Union Organizing committee:

CONTENTS
Why we need the IUOC...............1
Lessons in current negotiations...6
In this issue we look at the economy, the causes of economic crisis, the role of public works and
what workers need to understand in order to develop a winning strategy.

Today the governor and HR in their

contract proposal and budget have
shown their intention is to make public workers, the recipients of social
services, the students and the elderly
pay for the falling profits and the ongoing economic crisis. The governor
wants employees to pay more for your
medical in retirement and to raise the
workers contribution share to pensions. This, while the crisis of medical care, of student debt and seniors
without pensions cries out for an economic system that serves the people
not Wall Street.

THE INTER-UNION
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE IS COMPRISED OF RANK
AND FILE MEMBERS OF VARIOUS
STATE AND PUBLIC
WORKER UNIONS

Do the bosses hate us or do they need to keep wages suppressed for their profits to survive?
World economic crisis of capitalism puts workers under the gun:

Since the onset of the 2008-9 Global Economic Crisis governments around the
world and especially here in California have colluded with the elite, the big
shareholders of finance capital (the 1% whose holdings are fused in a union of
banking and industrial capital), to drive down the social wage (that portion of
all the produced wealth that goes to wages and benefits for workers both in the
private and public sectors). These attacks include cutting the p ortion of social wealth set aside to care for those who cannot work, the children in poverty, the disabled, the elderly, schools, and public services. This offensive
against the 99% is euphemistically called giving workers a haircut or trimming entitlements.
This is the way big business and governments operating in the free market
prefer to counter the structural causes of the crisis. The tendency of the rate
of profit to fall demands that either the social wage (that portion of all the
produced wealth that goes to the workers) be chiseled back, or the owners are
impacted by the diminishing returns on investments which leads to economic
collapse (Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the Savings and Loan bankruptcies
from 1989-1994) or corporate bankruptcies which congress bailed out with
your tax dollars, such as Chrysler (1980) and more recently GM, Chrysler
(again) and Ford in (2009.) As it becomes harder for big capital to make a
dime on each dollar invested in production, the rate that profits fall over time
accelerates the magnitude and frequency of the regular cyclical crises which
workers feel the brunt of.
Individual companies profits (at the wage workers expense or by driving out
other competitors) may increase in the short term and the rate of profit may,
as it has from time to time bucked the long-term downward trend. But the
big shareholders of finance capital know that declining profit rates are forever
nipping at their incentive to invest in production.
The 1%ers (who control most of the capital resources) find it harder and
harder to make productive investments to manufacture new products (use values) which can be marketed as commodities (exchange values) to obtain profit
in the form of surplus value (the return to capital after commodities are sold
for money and the labor, the raw materials and the fixed capital costs are paid
for.) This disincentive for productive investment has forced many of the big
holders of finance capital (banks/financial institutions, big corporations and
individual billionaires) to invest in speculative bubbles.

CONTACT US: cdphiuoc@gmail.com

Contract workers welcome. We demand the
organizing of all the unorganized workers.

Bubbles in housing, in commodities (oil, grains/food

stock, metals), in the stock market or currencies provide
monetary gain for some large investors at the expense
of most investors (the small, the individuals and those
whose life savings are trapped in publicly controlled
pension/investment vehicles like CALPERS.) Because
without profitable new commodities being produced,
todays markets, consisting of speculative bubbles in
one sector after another, create accumulations of fictitious capital (gains taken from speculative bubbles, not
from increased manufacturing and GDP growth.)

productivity to counter the declining rate of profit that

pushes them from one speculative bubble to the next.
This increased rate of productivity is the basis for our
demand to reduce the workweek to 30 hours with no
reduction in pay.

The disincentive of the falling rate of profit vs. the actual cost of production results in stagnation, and economys growth and employment rates slow down as relative GDP diminishes. Decreased production and lower
employment levels put downward pressure on wages
and you (the average worker) become more expendable
to your employer. Even well trained chemists in state
The Federal Reserve (and central banks internationally) service are referred to as worth a dime a dozen. The
prints money with no accumulated value (congealed savage race to the bottom can only be ended in favor
labor power) backing it up; this is called de-valoriza- of one side or the other, the worker or the banker-the
tion or quantitative easing. This process creates infla- finance capitalist.
tion--the price of bread goes up to compensate for the
worth-less money. So when they pay your pay check This means that to make up for the missing source of
with the same old dollar it too is worth-less! In days of profit-new production- the investment classes demand
old when money was scarce, nation/states would melt that their pound of flesh come from the social wage,
down the gold and add copper, the oz. of gold bullion the sum of all workers wages (direct and indirect,
would thus be worth-less. The trillions of dollars The meaning your take home and your social spending and
Fed printed out of thin air will slowly work their way safety nets.)
into the real economy and when they do these worth- This is the class struggle. The bosses impose furloughs, speedups, lockouts, or wage cuts and freezes,
less dollars will create hyper-inflation.
which can be countered by solid wage demands backed
This is what the central banks do to your money and by strikes and labor solidarity by the workers; but our
this worth-less money is then used by the big capital- unions play by the team concept so the leaders work
ists in the speculative bubbles of the various markets to with the bosses to prevent the membership from fightaccumulate the larger share of the worth-less money to ing back with class struggle methods and political indethe personal vaults, bank accounts and corporate stock pendence (more on this below).
share of the 1%. Oxfam reports today the 1% hold
close to 50% of all historically produced wealth. They Public Works serve the for-profit economy.
have accumulated it at your expense!
In the propaganda war against public workers and their
Profits taken through speculation are ultimately ficti- unions, the 1% through their various outlets (the corpotious as they are not based on production of new use rate media, talk radio, TV, the written press, the pollvalues finding their way to market. The ruling classs ing agencies and the think tanks), claim big governhoards of money are worth-less. Until you demand ment is a drain on the economy and that the union (and
more for your wages the ruling class can buy you (your even non-union) workers who take jobs in government
ability to workyour labor power) for less! But the are bellying up to the trough and draining the public
real variable cost of production, the actual labor price, coffers while providing services which could better be
the socially average and necessary labor time neces- provided by private industry.
sary required to produce objects/commodities remains
the same or is reduced as productivity increases, due to Their propaganda throws into one big pot all the probdevelopment of workers skills, logistics and techno- lems. First they try to conflate the politicians into the
Then they try to
logical improvements that allow the worker to produce same pot as the public workers.
blame the corruption of top administrators who finamore in less time.
gled over-bloated retirements (from spiking), nepotism,
The increase in productivity means less labor time and favoritism on all public workers. Then wasteful
is needed to produce the same product so either the management practices, often the product of legislative
unions win and the laborer can take this unneeded la- regulation, are propagandistically used to tar the entire
bor time home as vacation or compensated time off, or work force as the culprit who set off the states, the nathe capitalists keep you working and use your increased tional and the global economic crisis, which they claim
2

stymies free enterprise at every turn.

This propaganda is an ongoing barrage used to turn the
consultant and small shop owner, the artisan and the
private sector worker into the embrace of the loving
arms of the bosses and the 1% and against their unionized brothers and sisters in the public and the private
sector employ, here and around the world.
Its most horrific consequence was seen when Americas
home grown fascist terrorist, Timothy McVeigh turned
his anger against the government into violence against
the lives of rank and file public workers and their families at the Alfred P. Murrah federal building killing 164.
But more insidious, and deliberately tied to the interests of big capital, is the class war conducted against
workers today being directed by the ALEC (American
Legislative Exchange Council) and the Koch brothers
in their legislative and electoral offensive against our
livelihoods. Yesterday they attacked workers in Wisconsin and today they get Jerry Brown to do it here!
The overwhelming majority of public workers receive
moderate salaries, can barely afford homes, college tuition is out of reach for many and the austerity is enforced by contracts which provide for no regular cost
of living allowances (COLAs). Our rotten contracts allowed furloughs (lockouts!), accepted increased medical insurance premiums and increased workers contributions to pension funds. And our union leaderships
even told us to share the pain while they pushed us
to accept sell out contracts! The propaganda and the
reality do not jibe.

cal, territorial, state, & federal) and creating venues for

business as a result of infrastructures. In some cases,
the company town for example, an individual company
or a consortium of mutually interested entrepreneurs
develops infrastructure. But with its increasing complexity, business required the state and the government,
through its bureaucracy, to create platforms; infrastructures, standard practices and rules that allowed business
to navigate common terrain and either thrive or perish
on an equal playing field.
Requirements of the economy which were either not
profitable to create or enforce, or which could not be
created or maintained by consortiums of oligarchs and
monopolists, fell to the hands of government to create
and maintain. The public good financed by taxes and
other revenue streams is brought into existence by government via the labor of public workers.
So while public workers may not farm a grain of rice,
or mine an ounce of coal, or fabricate a single manufactured good, their essential role in the economy is predicated on the requirements of production for mutual and
interconnected use of the commons (air, water, land and
space.) Such resources and infrastructure which no one
capitalist could either claim, build or maintain are harnessed and organized for their mutual and profit making use by the government.

Invariably competing sectors of industry and investment collide and the resultant complexity of governmental rules, standards and regulations are compromises reached by competing interests finding common
ground while seeking power and advantage in future
To counter the bosses propaganda that says we are the ventures.
leeches on society, that we are the cause of the problem,
that it is our overpriced medical benefits and our under- The controlling capitalist class, more blatantly now
funded pensions that are the cause of the decline in the than ever, produces the text for legislation and directs
economy, every worker and every public worker must its hand-picked and wholly-owned legislators to pass
be clear on the role of public works in the real economy, laws and enforce their decisions by acts of law, viowhy they exists, who they serves and how they best lence or intimidation. Dont pay your taxes the taxman
can be used. This is a discussion the 1%, their me- comes with the state marshal. Dont pay your mortgage
dia, their twin political parties and your union leaders the sheriff comes and puts you on the street. Both the
do not want you to have. Because when the majority state coffers and the bankers profits are protected by
understands and acts on the facts in play, them 1%ers those assigned to protect and serve.
days will be numbered and workers themselves will determine how to organize production and how to share While the propaganda has created a mystique of a legislative class beholden to big labor, which picks the
the socially produced wealth.
pockets of the public via the dictates of the Democratic
Public works have always been directed by the needs Party, the historical reality is quite different. The workof the economic class that dominates the state. If the ing class is almost completely excluded from the probusiness of America is business, and it is, then the task cess of rulemaking and tax distribution.
of the government is to help business to thrive, and it To maintain the organization of the capitalist economy,
has. The entire history of the republic has been one to provide the resources needed despite its regular flucof gathering resources to central governing bodies (lo- tuations in and out of recession, the government serves
3

as a safety net first and foremost to protect the capitalist

class. If the crisis lets too many people starve you get
rebellion, so if jobs cannot be profitably created food
stamps are printed. If the economy pollutes the air or
water to the point where poisoning the people and the
environment threatens big business, then regulations
are established. Sometimes regulations are concessions
to labor but more often than not agencies like OSHA,
established to protect the worker, are actually driven by
the power of insurance companies in conflict with unrestrained manufacturers. The minimum wage, public
education and social security are established not out of
labors political power and demand but to assure business it has a work force that is educated for the tasks,
compliant due to training and indoctrination and can
purchase enough of the commodities produced to keep
the markets alive.
Labor leaders and labor candidates rarely run for office
and most legislators are lawyers or business people.
Some union leaders like former SEIU president Andy
Stern have told us that labor has no need for its own
party because the Democratic Party is its party, but that
lie should have been clear to all when Obama brought
the top honchos from Wall Street to manage the economic collapse and only brought in labor when it was
time to tell the UAW and public workers alike that it
was time to take a haircut!
The alliance between labor and the Democrats has never
been an assertion of labors power in government. Labor has never exerted power superior to or even equal
to that of the ruling capitalist class. The alliance between labor and the Democratic Party has always been
a mechanism to keep labor under control and from asserting its own political independence. This mythology
is more obvious now more than ever. It has been the
Democrats both here (in California) and in Washington
who have enforced the austerity and cut backs on the
social wage in response to the global economic crisis
that we are 7 years into and are yet to emerge from.
During the post-world war economic boom and following the passage of the Taft Hartley act that outlawed
sympathy strikes, taking the wind out the sails of labor,
a labor-management peace was cemented by regular
increases in workers incomes and the subordination of
labor to the dictates of the ruling class
The economic crisis imposed on State and Public
workers
An unrelenting attack on the trade union movement and
on the rights of public workers to organize has been a
cornerstone of how the ruling political class has fended
4

What would a real fighting union do to win us a

decent contract and to protect us from bullies.
1) Organize action committees in every job site
tied to steward committees which meet regularly
and take action to enforce the MOU against bully
supervisors and management violations by keeping the members prepared for joint job actions at
any time!
2) Organize inter-union committees to take
united action to win decent contracts together by
demanding joint contract expiration dates and
joint MOU signing dates.
3) Teach the membership and prepare the
membership for the types of job actions that win
including those that formed the unions in the first
place: Strikes, political and general strikes that
unite all workers to win up to and including jobsite occupations.
4) Stand by the old labor slogans No Contract
No work and An injury two one is an injury to all!
5) Break with the Wall Street/corporations and
bankers political parties the Democrats and Republicans by stopping funding their campaigns
and stopping phone banking for them. Instead we
need organized labor to form a Workers Party that
fights for Workers Government that is responsive
to the interests of the workers assembled not to
the bankers and the super-rich.
6) Only a workers government can guarantee a
living wage for all, guaranteed pensions and guaranteed medical and protect and deliver quality education for our kids and jobs for all upon entry to
the job market.
7) Assure all contracts have a Cost of Living
Allowance (COLA) that adjusts regularly to keep
pace with inflation.
To win we must form class struggle caucuses in
the union to oust the rotten leadership which ties
our hands by the class collaborationist association with the politicians and political parties of the
1%. Build a fighting workers/labor party and prepare united strike actions to win decent contracts.

win basic objectives (jobs for all, guaranteed decent

wages, universal quality health care, free education and
Before Occupy emerged, the Wisconsin public workers, pension for all.)
taking a cue from the Egyptian workers, occupied the
state house, leaving the entrenched union bureaucracy Our fighting workers/labor party can unite all working
chasing behind trying to put the toothpaste back in the class people and their organizations with the struggling
poor and oppressed people by fighting for:
tube.
off effective organized class-wide resistance.

As the workers share has been driven down and your

take home pay, although slightly higher in dollars and
cents than in 2001, does not have the same purchasing power it did then. This is how we are made to pay
for their crisis. This imposition of the austerity on all
workers across the world hit the state of Californias
public workers with stagnating wages, furloughs, increased contributions to CALPERS and increased contributions to medical premiums, without our contracts
providing compensatory wage increases.
These cuts, this austerity, this unrelenting attack on our
wages and conditions of work is imposed by both political parties and with the assistance of the unions class
collaborationist leaderships.
During the furloughs our unions leaders acted as the
transmission belt of the ruling classs program into
our organizations, both by limiting our struggle to the
courts and by admonishing workers to Share the Pain
and Be happy you have a job. They told us to depend
on lawyers, courts and friendly politicians for support
and contained the membership by refusing to mobilize
for united actions instead, they joined the bosss chorus
and told us that we have no right to strike and of course
never broached the question of our class political independence and the need for a fighting workers/labor
party.
These observations guide the Inter-Union Organizing
Committee (IUOC) to meet and to publish The Organizer, in order to prepare the memberships not to
discard the unions and organizations that claim to represent us, but to transform them into vehicles that fight
and win decent contacts and not to sell concessions as
victories.
To win, we advocate all job sites create regular interunion organizing committees that challenge the sold
out leaderships for power. To do this, we advocate and
promote class struggle methods that prepare the memberships for united and determined job actions, both
organizationally and legally. To win, we advocate the
committees adopt transitional programs that take our
concrete day-to-day demands and link them in a bridge
to workers power by building the organizational forms
and a fighting labor party through which workers can

Jobs for all. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay.
Where the commanding heights of the economy cannot provide work they will be nationalized without
compensation to the big shareholders and then be run
under worker self-management and public democratic
control.

Free education from pre-school to graduate school.
Take profit out of education and make it free and universal. Provide social and not atomized free quality 24
hour child care available to all

Universal quality socialized medical care. If the hospitals and big Pharma cant provide then they should be
nationalized and put under patient, worker, nurses and
doctors democratic control.

History shows that only a workers party at the head of a
workers government will embrace such a program and
set about accomplishing it. The imperial fortunes of our
capitalist class are so in decline that the mantra of the
two parties is we dont do big anymore. But everything big has in fact been the work of the working class
from the days of the pyramids down today. The InterUnion Organizing committee links the basic demand
for a decent contract to the fight for full employment
and the survival of the working class and to the formation of a workers government that secure these benefits
for all!

Since 2000 Social Security (SS) colas have increased a

sum total of 36.3 percent. SS colas are directly linked to
the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which determines the
rate of inflation every year. State employees have been
furloughed and asked to contribute more to retirement
and health benefits, while only being promised a small
compensatory raise which only just covers the additional
amount we are required to pay for fringe benefits. The one
time payout many are getting is probably just enough to
pay down a few bills. With all the take always and give
backs we are still behind by 36.3 percent. Now the CSI is
a nationwide average, yet we live in the Bay Area, so with
40%??? Why arent your unions fighting for a 40% raise
or more???
5

There are lessons in the current

negotiations for all State Workers!
There is no question about the pay disparity between
Engineers and Scientists, between a predominantly male
BU-9 and a predominantly female BU-10. There is no
question about the pay inequality between BU-10 and our
peers in municipal governments and private industry.

But regardless of the logic or good business of paying

workers a decent wage, the Governor has hitched his horse
to forcing you to pay into post-retirement medical insurance.
Instead we should have single payer health care like they
do in all the European industrialized nations and even in
such economic backwaters like the Green Mountain StateVermont.

Because the Governor has dug in his heels the state workers
There is no question that over the last 15 years raises given need a new strategy. The rank and file opposition forces at
with one hand were taken away by the other, either as increased CAPS are advocating such a change. But change will not
come from one small bargaining unit no matter how much
contributions
to
noise they make.
pensions, premium
A new level of
increases for medical,
militancy from all
70 days lockout/
state workers and
furlough pay stolen
along side all public
from us in violation
workers is needed
of
our
contract
because we are all
and of course the
under attack. Not
unrelenting
slow
only by the Governor
decay of the value of
but by the likes of
the dollar on one side
ex San Jose Mayor
and the outrageous
Chuck Reed who is
cost of housing,
promoting a ballot
education and the
initiative to make
basic basket of goods
local and municipal
on the other.
pension
payments
subject
to
voter
Retroactive COLAs
approval.
back to 2001 would
The Governor has
California State Scientists Rally (Photo Sacramento Bee)
make BU 10 whole;
chosen
PECG,
CAPS,
Local
30
and
the
CCPOA be the first
but the governor knows that if we gain that, so should the
to
accept
his
misnamed
pension
reforms.
We need to reject
rest of the state workers suffering alongside us! CAPS and
any
contract
proposal
that
increases
the
vesting
time for new
other union leaderships prefer not to fight for retroactive
hires
and
forces
us
to
prefund
retirement
benefits
any further.
COLAs for all workers. Many leaderships, like the CAPS
leaders want us to differentiate and stand alone and make the
fight for parity; as if our counterparts across the table really We can no longer afford to ignore: the economic crisis,
care one iota about what is fair or good science or beneficial our stagnating wages and the attacks on our pension and
medical benefits.
for the state.
HR will only move under pressure! They only respond
when workers organize for power, thru solidarity and
action! That is exactly what the CAPS leadership denies
usand why the membership needed to initiate these
actions independently!
Lets get real the current state budget is $167 billion. Almost
$50 billion more than during the furloughs when we were
admonished by union leaders to Share the Pain. It would
take only $3.7 billion to give every state worker the 30% the
amount needed to restore our purchasing power to the year
2000.
What would that do for the economy? Most of the money
would get plowed back into auto repairs, roof repairs, PG&E
payments, food, gasoline and college funds. In other words
the money would come to us but would be spread around
and spent and most of it would be spent in- state helping to
stimulate the economy and bringing in tax income.
6

1) ORGANIZE EMERGENCY AND REGULAR MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS TO INITIATE DEMOCRATIC

MASS ACTION OF THE MEMBERSHIP, ESTABLISH STRONG STEWARD COMMITTEES AND ACTION COMMITTEES AT EACH JOB SITE THAT
BUILD THE SOLIDARITY WITH OUR CO-WORKERS AND LABOR NEEDED TO WIN!
2) TELL HR TO STUFF THEIR TAKE-AWAY PROPOSALS. WE WILL NOT SIGN OFF ON THEIR ATTACK
ON PENSIONS AND MEDICAL BENEFITS! WE DEMAND PAY PARITY NOW THROUGH COLAS RETROACTIVE TO 2001! ORGANIZE THE CONTRACT
WORKERS! FIGHT AUSTERITY FIGHT AND THE
BILLIONAIRES PAY!
3) TELL THE POLITICIANS NOT ONE MORE DIME!
RETURN PAC MONEY TO THE MEMBERS ASK
MEMBERS TO CONTRIBUTE TO ORGANIZING
ACTION FUNDS AND FOR LABORS OWN CANDIDATES ONLY!

Workers need a program that fights

for a clean planned socialist economy!
Two conferences on the future of Railroad Safety were convened,
first in Richmond, CA on March, 14, with a follow up on the
21st in Olympia, Washington. In the spectacle of the American
left a list of endorsers including various syndicalist, socialist,
and environmentalist NGOs, CBOs gathered under the banner
of safety with little else to unite them. Some advocated for letter
writing to politicians for better conditions, some told us all you
need is love, while the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) and
its Third Camp leader Mike Parker from Solidarity and Labor
Notes, who in the last Mayoral campaign withdrew and threw his
and the RPAs support behind long-term Democratic politician
Tom Butt, brought the popular front to this conference in the guise
of non political opening statements by the spokesperson for the
Democratic Mayor.
Despite advocacy for general strike and social revolution from the
floor, the main gist of the conference was on the issues of safety,
logistics and trade union solidarity with active participation from
Tesoro refinery steel workers who were still on strike. The common
sense and good trade unionist instincts of Rail Road workers long
trapped in conservative craft unions has birthed the Railroad
Workers United (RWU). RWU adopted the following principles of
good industrial trade unionism, Unity of All Rail Crafts, An End
to Inter-Union Conflict, Rank-and-File Democracy, Membership
Participation and Action, Solidarity, No to Concessionary
Bargaining. The attack by the transport industry bosses on labor
including the unsafe demand for one man crews, long trains and
long hours has increased the other hazards inherent in rolling stock
with bomb like loads of chemicals and fossil fuel products. The
failure of the craft unions to united workers around their interests
has resulted in back biting and general weakness by dividing the
various categories of RR workers. In the face of the failure of
the craft unions the movement toward industrial unionism that
the RWU represents is progressive, long overdue, and cannot be
won unless the workers embrace class struggle methods to fight
anti-labor laws which prevent rail strikes, general strikes and
secondarysolidaritystrikes. This requires that the rail workers
unions unite and declare their class political independence from
the twin parties of the bosses who indoctrinate the union leaders
and the membership into submission to the anti-labor laws and
into the regular political activity of supporting the labor friendly
candidate.
Even militant industrial trade unionism cannot win unless it
breaks the chains to the Democratic and Republican parties and
this requires a political fight which the syndicalist IWW supporters
of the RWU are dead set against. The IWW members explicitly
tell RWU members that they do not need their own workers party.
Prominent IWW/Occupy leader Elliot Hughes was overheard
in the lunch line telling workers they do not need a labor party.
Despite the attendance from Soc Alt, Speak Out, Socialist Workers
Party and the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee only
the Communist Workers Group advocated for class political
independence, to challenge the labor bureaucracy for leadership
with class struggle methods and for a workers party that fights for
a workers government, to much applause and waving red flags

(IWW leader Steve Ongerth was the time keeper waving the red
flag). The following leaflet was distributed:
We need safe decent jobs, quality education, medical care,
pensions, and housing for all! We need massive infrastructure
programs with investment of billions to employ the unemployed,
to make the transition to clean energy production. Millions are out
of work or have sub-living minimum wages and survive in poverty
while the owners of the energy and transport industries attack
working conditions and violate our safety both at work and in our
homes and in the wild. The energy extraction and transportation
industry under capitalist ownership driven by the profit motive
will not and cannot make this work safe, therefore our program
requires the expropriation of the extraction and energy industry as
well as the transportation industry and the commanding heights
of the economy because they are all intertwined. Only social
ownership of the means of production, workers self-management
and a rational socially planned economy can provide a road out of
the economic and environmental crisis. To advance the conditions
of workers we submit that this conference resolves and calls upon
rail workers to initiate strike actions that stops the Obama/Buffet
fossil fuel dependency and perpetuation plan; to call on steel
workers, auto and electrical workers to launch the general strike
that initiates the retooling and massive implementation of clean
energy solutions (solar, wind and geothermal) now!
We can learn well from what railroad union organizer, socialist and
wobbly, Eugene V. Debs taught workers over one hundred years
ago. On December 10, 1905 at the Grand Central Palace in NYC
Debs admonished the crowd of workers and forward thinking
people, socialists, anarchists and trade unionists:
The Industrial Workers is organized not to conciliate, but to
fight the capitalist class. We have no object in concealing any
part of our mission; we would have it perfectly understood. We
deny that there is anything in common between workingmen and
capitalists. We insist that workingmen must organize to get rid
of capitalists and make themselves the masters of the tools with
which they work, freely employ themselves, secure to themselves
all they produce, and enjoy to the full the fruit of their labor.
He then asked the rhetorical question: Why should you be
dependent upon a capitalist? Why should this capitalist own a
tool he cannot use? And why should not you own the tool without
which you cannot live?
So today we have to ask what has changed? Is there any reason
to make common ground between the workers and the capitalists?
Consider Debs analysis of the economics and see if it sounds
familiar:
Every few years there is a panic, industrial paralysis, and
hundreds of thousands of workers are flung into the streets;
no work, no wages; and so they throng the highways in search
of employment that cannot be found; they become vagrants,
tramps, outcasts, criminals. It is in this way that the human being
degenerates, and that crime graduates in the capitalist system, all
the way from petty larceny to homicide.
Jailed for organizing the 1894 Pullman rail workers strike Debs
7

read from Marx ultimately guiding these comments:

At the beginning of industrial society men worked with hand
tools; a boy could learn a trade, make himself the master of
the simple tools with which he worked, and employ himself
and enjoy what he produced; but that simple tool of a century
ago has become a mammoth social instrument; in a word, that
tool has been socialized. Not only this, but production has been
socialized. As small a commodity as a pin or a pen, or a match
involves for its production all of the social labor of the land; but
this evolution is not yet complete; the tool has been socialized,
production has been socialized, and now ownership must also
be socialized; in other words, those great social instruments that
are used in modern industry for the production of wealth, those
great social agencies that are socially made and socially used,
must also be socially owned.
The actual workers organizations here today can either declare
the truth that the early IWW and Debs fought for as the clarion
call of the working class and likewise declare that this assembly
also resolves that: We deny that there is anything in common
between workingmen and capitalists. We insist that workingmen
must organize to get rid of capitalists and make themselves the
masters of the tools and initiate the call for strike action to
defeat the capitalist offensive. Or by lack of declaration turn
the political leadership of this assembly back to the NGOs who
organized it.
Today in the shadow of the legacy of Eugene V. Debs, workers face
the decades old subservience of the trade union leaders to the ruling
class. Through which the bosses orchestrate their will by control
of the labor aristocracy maintaining and perpetuating a backward
consciousness across the working class that traps workers behind
the misleaders, the so called progressive layer of Democrats, the
NGOs that pose as environmentalists and fake left outfits like the
Richmond Progressive Alliance, Socialist Alternative, libcom.org,
the IWW (redux) and the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee
who all come together at this conference under the banner of
workers safety and environmental concern and conspire to keep
the workers separated from their historic transitional socialist
program.
Today this Rail Safety conference (http://www.railroadconference.
org/) sponsored and supported by a host of seemingly pleasant and
progressive NGOs have tied this assembly by a thousand threads
to the big bourgeoisie1 . This seemingly educational forum can
either serve the interests of the working class or it can serve as
the embryo of the Popular Front which shackles labor to capital in
all forms of cross class alliances up to and including state power.
If the assembly does not declare for the program of the working
class the program of the board members of the NGOs dominates
by default. If you care to follow the links of the sponsors you will
find:
The Lands Council is backed by co-owner of Keystone Software
now owned by Tude City IMS running logistics for big rail,
ocean and lake vessels. Behind the Communities for a Better
Environment you have Liberty Hill Foundation behind which
you find the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and the
California Endowment which includes the likes Russ Gould who
8

served as Senior Vice President for Wachovia Bank. Dan DeLeon

joined The California Endowment in 2008 as Vice President and
Chief Financial Officer and he was the L.A. regional vice president
of Finance for Time Warner Cable. Climate Solutions at its web
site promotes the CERES Washington/Oregon Business Climate
Declaration which is supported by anti-union Whole Foods and
Charter School promoter Microsoft and of course CERES backs
the Obama Climate Action Plan. The CERES Mobilizing Business
Leadership for a Sustainable World has Anne Stausboll sitting
on their board. She is the CEO of CalPERS and was the chief
investment officer of CalPERS at the peak of the real estate bubble
and crashed workers retirements in the bubble after employers
withheld contributions during the fat years! She sits on the
advisory Board of the Toigo Foundation which is a tool for the big
bourgeoisie governed by the likes of Carlye group and JP Morgan.
Then you have the Washington Environmental Council on
whose board Jim Hanna from Starbucks environmental affairs
department sits. And behind it all is the main conference sponsor
Backbone Campaign whose board member Sandra VanderVen is
the senior organizer at Fuse Washington and still volunteers for
MoveOn.org and in Fuse you have the likes of Dean Nielsen
principle of Cerillion N4 Partners a political consultant who
worked for Clinton in 92 and for Solidarity in Poland, Gore/
Lieberman, EMILYs list, the NEA, NARAL and the Democratic
party in several states.
To counter the program of the NGOs we need our workers program.
It starts with the fight to turn unions into class struggle organs and
leads to a workers/labor party that fights for a workers government.
The path is via a Transitional Program based on a method that
exposes the current need (e.g. jobs) and resolves it by shortening
the work week 30 hrs. work for 40 hours pay. The incompatibility
of the workers needs with the inability of the capitalists to resolve
the crisis leads step by step to the expropriation of the capitalist
class.
But unfortunately the working class misleaders from
Socialist Alternative, the IWW and the TWSC have something
in common with their bourgeois partners at this conference, their
unwillingness to raise the historic program of the working class.
This is how the fake left acts to pave the path for the triumph of the
popular front and the defeat of the working class. Workers need
their revolutionary party and world party of socialist revolution
to defeat the fakers and break the illusions in the popular front
from Richmond California to Cape Town, So Paulo, Athens and
Caracas.
Endnotes
1.See the board of directors of all the NGOs that sponsored this
and the boards of directors of the NGOs that fund those NGOs
and whom the board members of the sponsors work with and for.

CONTACT US: cdphiuoc@gmail.com

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