UAW-D Beats Bosses (& the Doomy Left)

by

Rad twitterers stuck on gestural politics have missed what might turn out to be a watershed moment in the history of America’s class struggles. While nobody with any sense is proclaiming a New Millennium for this country’s workers, there may be a new conjuncture around the corner. Thanks to the UAW, as well as Teamsters at UPS, who have won the largest victories for American labor in a half-century. It’s imperative that would-be leftists NOTICE what’s happened in factories and warehouse (and delivery trucks). With a little help from Labor Wave radio, you can listen below to an interview with historian (and former UAW staff organizer) Erik Baker, who has addressed the UAW’s recent wins in Jewish Currents, “Revaluing the Strike.” Baker isn’t beamish but he looks forward to the revival of a militant labor movement: “Rather than viewing strikes as a last-resort bargaining tactic, the labor movement must embrace them as engines of political transformation.” Baker points out the UAW-D reform caucus deserves much of the credit for pushing their union’s program. Baker isn’t one for quick fixes, but going forward, he focuses on one technical “hack” that should boost labor militancy.

It’s very important for people at the bargaining table to push on contract duration…One reason for the decline in the rate of striking in the second half of the 20th C. is that contract duration begins to get longer. For a long time there was an annual bargaining cycle and that meant there was at least the possibility of an annual strike…It’s hard to build a culture of striking if you signed a no-strike pledge for half a decade…

Here’s more from Baker…

 

Professors of cultural studies have taught generations of college students to be skeptical of “common sense.” Profs have taken cues from Gramsci — underscoring how popular habits of heart/mind become vectors for bad ideology — but the Italian Marxist realized there was “good sense” in common sense too. It wasn’t simply hegemony’s horse of instruction. You can hear what he meant by “good sense” when the UAW’s Shawn Fain talks straight to Chris Hayes below, especially when he spits on the “Elon Musks of the world” who lift off on the backs of working people “to fly themselves into outer space or whatever the hell it is they want to do with their spare time.”