By Class Struggle Education Workers/UFT
The following was written by a teacher who has been active in
fighting for broad union support for the school bus workers strike.
FEBRUARY 16 –
The school bus strike has been called off and the drivers and matrons forced
back to work. Mayor Bloomberg is crowing, and lambasting “special interests.”
You mean like Wall Street bankers who destroy workers’ jobs while living the
high life?
But the onus is not just on the lying billionaire would-be dictator. The
Democrats and the New York City labor bureaucracy beholden to them greased the
skids.
A statement from ATU Local 1181 leadership says they “suspended” the
strike in the face of the mayor’s “intransigence” and will try again next year
when the Democrats are in at City Hall. Hello? By then, it’s too late.
Over a month on the picket line, and drivers and matrons forced back with
nothing to show for it, and the union far worse off – because the scab contracts
will be in place.
The Democrats pledged to
“revisit” the issue if they get elected. WTF? That's not even one of their
empty promises.
The New York Times headlined, “School Bus Drivers End Strike, in Win
for New York Mayor.” It’s a big loss for the experienced and responsible bus
workers and for the kids and parents who depend on them. Now their safety will
be in the hands of the lowest bidder.
What’s wrong with the premise that says one man’s intransigence can sink
the unions?
School bus drivers and matrons did far more than their part. Building
mass picket lines in the freezing cold, braving snow and sleet and rain for
nearly five weeks, coming out for rallies and demonstrations, willing to go anywhere,
speak to any group who wanted to hear their cause.
It would have taken the combined determination of the whole NYC labor
movement to break Bloomberg’s union-busting. But labor leaders didn’t “walk the
walk,” they barely mumbled the talk.
Weeks
into the strike, the UFT (the teachers union, the powerhouse most closely
linked to the bus workers) belatedly sent some officials and their minions out
on a couple of picket lines, and, finally invited 1181 president Cordiello to
speak for five minutes at the UFT delegate assembly.
Unity Caucus (UFT president Mulgrew’s machine) handed out flyers about
“Union Unity” and promised to walk the Brooklyn Bridge in a support rally for
the bus workers.
On a Sunday – what’s that supposed to mean? A real march that occupies
Wall Street, or ties up the bridge at rush hour on a weekday, could do what was
needed – shut the city down! But far from bringing out the membership last Sunday,
there was a skeleton crew. Did they even have 50 people? This out of a
working membership of 80,000 teachers alone, to say nothing of the scads
of Unity-paid retirees they pack our Delegate Assemblies with.
Ditto for the TWU, sad to say. Transit workers showed the way in a
massive strike in 2005 when ALMOST NOTHING moved. But they left open a way for
a trickle of traffic -- in fear of the Taft-Hartley law’s secondary boycott
ban, they didn’t picket out Metro North and the LIRR.
Now the union bureaucrats hide behind the no-strike Taylor Law, fearing
anything that suggests mass action, let alone the spectre of the dreaded
“S-word.”
That’s why the Taylor Law is the labor bureaucrats’ favorite weapon – to
paralyze the membership and keep them in thrall to “respectability” and impotence.
How does this play out? Look at what
happened at the UFT Delegate Assembly January 23rd when I put up a motion to support
ATU with a mass city labor rally! The Unity-loyal delegates (majority) went
ballistic, shuddering and screeching: Eek! A rally – no way!
When they finally called a rally, it was to showcase Democratic mayoral
hopefuls, and prepare to end the strike. These are the same fakers who were
singing the praises of the late unlamented racist mayor Koch, who closed
hospitals in Harlem and stood on the Brooklyn Bridge egging on yuppies to come
to work during the 1980 TWU strike.
So what about Friday’s joint statement of all the Democratic party candidates
telling the workers to go back to work, end the strike and pledging that any Democrat
who beat Bloomberg next year would “revisit the issue”? It gave the 1181
leadership, also chained to the capitalist parties, the cover to call off the
strike.
On a smaller scale, this is a replay of what happened in Wisconsin,
where a militant labor struggle was abandoned on the altar of support to the
Democrats.
That’s how it works these days. That’s what the Democrats are there for.
That’s what the labor bureaucrats are there for. It’s the system, not
individual bad guys. The Democrats are no “friends of labor.” Obama and
Cuomo are leading the attack on teachers unions.
Click on image to the right for PDF of leaflet
By the way, where was UFT’s M.O.R.E. “opposition” caucus in all of this?
A few of its more dedicated members came out on the picket lines. The caucus itself,
not so much – you could say they were pretty much MIA. Supporting a strike
might “alienate” its base. There’s no way to overcome the labor bureaucracy
with “more democracy” as long as oppositionists duck the issues of class and
racial oppression.
From Day One, Class Struggle Education
Workers was out on the picket lines. We organized a forum to support our
sisters and brothers of ATU Local 1181. We said their strike is our fight, too.
CSEW connected the strike to the “educational colonialism” of charter schools,
closing schools and to the war on working people from Wisconsin to the West
Coast docks.
Any strategy to
put the muscle back into labor MUST be a fight to throw off the chains that
keep labor bound to the capitalist parties, and to oust the “labor lieutenants
of the capitalist class.” We urgently need a class struggle leadership in the
workers movement.
–Marjorie
Stamberg
Class Struggle Education Workers,
UFT delegate, District 79