How can communists take the lead in mobilizing steel workers around the demands for mill-wide seniority and end to the Experimental Negotiating Agreement (ENA), also known as the no-strike pact? This was the focus for the discussion in the workshop on steel.
One of the workshop participants, a steelworker from the giant Bethlehem plant in Sparrows Point, Maryland, reported on the 11 year struggle against discrimination. Taking up the demand for mill-wide seniority, a demand which strikes a blow at the main form of discrimination in the steel industry, Black workers have recently won an important victory. Black steelworkers were able to utilize legal challenges in the courts, supported by mass actions, in order to gain decisions which recognized the systematic nature of the discrimination Black workers face at Sparrows Point and elsewhere. In the course of the struggle, they built a caucus in the union and a broad united front from the Black community, including CORE, NAACP, Congressman Parren Mitchell, and others.
The Sparrows Point case went part of the way to ending the “jim crow” system of seniority, which keeps Black and other minority workers in the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs. But, of course, no single court decision will end discrimination, and this fact, along with the United Steelworker President I.W. Abel’s opposition to its implementation, means that the struggle has to be raised to a higher level.
While some ultra-leftists argue that the court decision doesn’t mean a thing and should be ignored, and the revisionists would like us to go no further than the court-room, we must take the court decision as a starting point, but not stop there. Within the USWA, and in the rank and file caucuses, we must fight for implementation of the Sparrows Point and other decisions, and we must fight against the “go slow” line of Abel’s International leadership.
It is especially important to win white workers in steel to support of the demand for mill-wide seniority. Many of these workers see the court decision as a direct threat to their positions in the plant and even to their jobs. While it is true that some white workers may be bumped by this decision, it can and must be made clear that this decision will benefit the overwhelming majority of steelworkers.
One concrete benefit will be the increased unity and fighting capacity of the rank and file. The need for this unity is becoming increasingly important in the fight against the Experimental Negotiating Agreement. This no-strike pact, which was not even voted on by the general USWA membership, calls for a 3% raise, and most significantly, for binding arbitration of the 1974 contract between the union and the giant steel monopolies.
There can be no doubt that if Abel and the steel companies get away with the no-strike agreement in steel, than unionized workers in every industry can expert that same deal soon. Taking away the right to strike goes hand in hand with the price-gouging policies of the food, oil and other capitalists.
Already, Right to Strike Committees are being formed in steel plants all around the country. The Right to Strike Committee in District 31, the Chicago-Gary area, has collected more than 8,000 signatures on petitions condemning the ENA. Rank and file demonstrations have taken place at meetings attended by I.W. Abel in New Jersey, Chicago, Baltimore and Fontana, California.
But, if a broad movement of steelworkers is to be built in opposition to the no-strike agreement, then the key link in that movement will be the fight against discrimination and the implementation of the demand for mill-wide seniority. Only a united movement of steelworkers will deal a death-blow to Abel’s class collaborationist policies once and for all.