There are over 50 million unorganized workers in the U.S. who comprise 73 per cent of the working class and suffer under unbridled exploitation in the garment, textile, electronics and food industries.
A majority of these unorganized workers are Chicanos, Afro-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Asians, other oppressed nationalities and women. (Only 12 out of every 100 women workers are organized.)
The monopolists have used this pool of unorganized labor, especially in the South and Southwest, to create competition by pitting worker against workers, nationality against nationality, in order to drive wages down and to bust entire unions.
In addition, runaway shops are constantly fleeing the organized cities into these unorganized regions.
Today, organized labor has its most stable roots among the skilled and craft workers and in large industries where wages are three to four times greater than in the unorganized sweat shops. Within the labor movement, it has been the trade union bureaucrats who have been the main obstacle to “organizing the unorganized.”
They are afraid of organizing because they fear huge battles with the capitalists and, most importantly, that it will mean a general disturbance to their nests of business unionism with the rise of new leaders, the growth of the Left and their own displacement. In general, they have always shrunk from organizing the unorganized.
Even when driven into organizing campaigns through pressure (or being offered a local on a “silver platter”) they have continuously refused to lend real support and at best they only trail along.
Historically, it has been the Left that has taken up this task. Communists have had the energy, courage, political understanding of the necessity of organization and long-term interest, and have always represented the interests of the entire working class and not just a privileged stratum.
By organizing the unorganized, the Left has the chance to gain the confidence of thousands of workers and of building links between the national movements and the working class struggle as a whole.
Aside from discussing the overall significance of this task, the workshop centered on two main points: 1) how do communist tactics differ from those of the bureaucrats; and 2) how can we combat the obstructionist role of the labor aristocracy?
There was unanimous agreement on the need to build up the self-reliance and initiative of the workers during organizing drives since the kind of union established depends on how this is done during a union campaign.
Comrades who have been involved in numerous campaigns in the last few years, stressed the need to get members to see themselves as the actual organizers of the union and to involve fellow workers by developing a division of labor where everyone participates.
Furthermore, the workshop stressed the importance of using a Marxist-Leninist, scientific approach in analyzing the various sections and groups of workers such as skilled and unskilled; different nationalities; men and women; old and young; advanced, middle and backward. This analysis was emphasized in order to make the union campaign and the organizing committee the broadest united front of the workers.
One method of avoiding bureaucracy is to link up the basic demands of the workers to the need for organization, and to fight the bureaucrats’ idea of “no struggles until we get the union in.” One person suggested keeping an on-going list of grievances, compiled by organizing committee members in their departments.
How do you fight paternalism by the company and really convince the hesitant worker of the need for a union? It must be proven to these workers that, far from losing security (a common fear), that the union is one of the best ways of gaining security under this system.
Many comrades related negative experiences where they lost elections by narrow margins because they neglected work among the more backward or hesitant workers. It is not enough just to “talk union” but the workers must be convinced that at least their most immediate economic demands can be won more readily with a union.
Will raising the special demands of minority or women workers against discrimination hurt or help a union campaign? It was pointed out that unless these issues are taken up as concretely as possible and chauvinist ideas combatted, trade union and class-consciousness cannot move forward.
Organizing efforts can also be used to build broader unity beyond the immediate shop or area as exemplified by many of the recent struggles such as the Farm Workers, Farah, Oneita, the Woodcutters, etc. which have forged a united front that links labor, the oppressed nationality movements and the community in general. This is absolutely vital in building solidarity and in teaching workers who their friends and enemies are.
Several members of the workshop are presently organizing independent unions. These are especially necessary in areas where the labor bureaucrats have refused to organize. However, the workshop concluded that refusing to organize into the AFL-CIO as a matter of principle would be a mistake; since it would hinder our long-range goal of moving the entire labor movement to the left and crushing the domination of the labor aristocracy.
We can’t make our strategy “running the other way” and creating tiny, left-led locals detached from the general labor movement. Since the labor bureaucrats present such an obstacle, our battle plan for isolating them must be well-planned.
This means that we should utilize contradictions among them since different unions have more and less willingness to organizing and some use red-baiting more than others.
We must pick and choose the best grounds for challenging them, do the necessary work of winning the workers before meetings, and challenge the bureaucrats on issues which can unite the workers and teach lessons.
The main principle is not to rely on bureaucrats for doing the basic organizing work but to build our own base for the union among the workers. Sometimes we may go to the union representative to get things done, but everything should not be done through them; for example we should try to build confidence in the organizing committee to publish their own newsletter. On the other hand unnecessary squabbling or antagonisms over minor issues has a negative effect.
The trade union bureaucrats have a long history of using the Left to organize the unorganized, then kicking the leftists out afterwards; therefore, we must see to it that the workers and the Left hold on to their victories and that the bureaucrats and monopolists’ anti-union policies are smashed.