unions
Articles about unions and the nature and function of labor or trade unionism.
Counter-Planning on the Shop floor, by Bill Watson
It is difficult to judge just when working-class practice at the point of production learned to bypass the union structure in dealing with its problems, and to substitute (in bits and pieces) a new organisational form. It was clear to me, with my year's stay in an auto motor plant (Detroit area, 1968), that the process had been long underway.
What I find crucial to understand is that while sabotage and other forms of independent workers' activity had existed before (certainly in the late nineteenth century and with the Wobbly period), that which exists today is unique in that it follows mass unionism and is a definite response to the obsolescence of that social form. The building of a new form of organization today by workers is the outcome of attempts, here and there, to seize control of various aspects of production. These forms are beyond unionism; they are only secondarily concerned with the process of negotiation, while unionism made that its central point.
An open letter to rank and file labor activists
An open letter by the IMPACT group in Ohio, USA, to rank-and-file workers. The letter cointains short accounts of sell-outs and closed-door deals done by union leaders, as well as suggestions for grassroots activity.
1968-1971: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers - A.Muhammad Ahmad
A short history of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers - a radical union of black auto workers. The articles includes other information about the car industry, race and struggle from 1910 onwards.
THE LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS (A HISTORICAL STUDY)
(By A.Muhammad Ahmad)
INTRODUCTION
Unions back down, public sector workers split in pensions deal
The government has claimed a victory in the pensions crisis after they secured their target for total pensions savings up to 2055.
Negotiations between the Trade and industry Department and the Trades Union Council wound up last month after an agreement was reached that existing workers would be exempt from plans to raise the age of retirement and sever the link between pensions and final salaries.
Answer to Dave Douglas - Cajo Brendel
Brendel replies to Douglass's criticisms of a summary of "Autonomous Class Struggle in Great Britain".
Dear Mr. Douglass,
Summary of the book "Autonomous Class Struggle in Great Britain" by Cajo Brendel (Cajo Brendel)
Cajo Brendel outlines his book on history of the class struggle in Great Britain in the three decades after World War II.
The autonomous class struggle which the book refers to is not even a specifically British phenomenon - it is a formula describing the increasing number of official and unofficial strikes in the first three decades of post-war capitalism all over the world.
Goodbye to the Unions! - A Controversy About Autonomous Class Struggle in Great Britiain
A debate between Dutch Council communist Cajo Brendel and NUM official Dave Douglass about the nature of trade unions.
CONTENTS
- Introduction (Henri Simon)
- Summary of the book "Autonomous Class Struggle in Great Britain" by Cajo Brendel (Cajo Brendel)
- Some thoughts as I read the pamphlet "Autonomous Class Struggle in Britain" (Dave Douglas)
- Answer to Dave Douglas (Cajo Brendel)
- Rise and Decline of the Shop Stewards Movements as a Mediating Force (Theo Sander)
Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution - Rod Jones
Alongside the Russian workers' attempts to create socialism -- not as some abstract far-off utopia in a political party program, but through confronting and changing the concrete reality of their everyday life -- were the activities of socialist parties, supposedly sympathetic to working class aspirations. This pamphlet tells the story of the Russian workers' struggle, in particular the efforts of the factory committees.
The success of the Bolsheviks in defeating the working class and crushing all hope of socialism is the other side of the story. Today's supporters of Lenin and Trotsky still parade their writings and their politics as relevant to the working class and to socialism.
Trade Unionism
"... there comes a disparity between the working class and trade unionism. The working class has to look beyond capitalism. Trade unionism lives entirely within capitalism and cannot look beyond it. Trade unionism can only represent a part, a necessary but narrow part, in the class struggle. And it develops aspects which bring it into conflict with the greater aims of the working class."
Pannekoek's text first appeared under his pen name "J Harper" in the American journal International Council Correspondence, (Vol II No 2, Jan 1936).
The workers have to deal with their own reality and that transforms them
Based on his experience in auto factories, Glaberman discusses the contradictions of the union's role.
