International Worker No 239, Saturday, September 13, 1997 No victory for workers The bitter truth about the American UPS strike This is an edited version of the US Socialist Equality Party's analysis of the Teamsters' union sell-out of the United Parcel Service strike. The International Workers Bulletin declines to join in the chorus of hosannas from union officials and the media for the settlement that ended the 15 day strike at United Parcel Service. The real character of the agreement was revealed when thousands of UPS workers were handed pink slips as they reported back to work. The company was able to carry this out with impunity because it had the tacit sanction of the Teamsters leadership. In addition to the layoffs, 45 to 50 workers were fired outright in reprisal for strike-related actions. The union took no action to force the rehiring of the victimised workers. UPS immediately declared that it would layoff as many as 15,000 employees, to make the workers pay for the company's losses. Teamsters President Ron Carey accepted this without protest. The UPS settlement, far from demonstrating some new militancy within the union leadership, provided a shameful display of subservience to the bosses and a further debasement of an elementary principle of working class solidarity -- the precept that workers who walk out together, go back together. The union bureaucracy goes along with these reprisals because it, no less than management, wants to reassert the company's authority and intimidate the rank and file. This is a prerequisite for carrying out the essential quid pro quo contained in the new contract: in return for continued UPS participation in the Teamsters' pension funds and a token increase in full-time positions, the union will collaborate in an intensified drive to boost productivity and profits. The mass layoffs are the first step in the restructuring of UPS to cut costs even more ruthlessly than in the past. For all of Carey's rhetoric about "corporate greed," his response to UPS's complaints about lost business was to urge UPS workers to rally behind the company. He asked drivers to help the company win back disaffected customers, underscoring the thoroughly corporatist relationship of the union to management. From the Teamsters and AFL-CIO leadership, the declarations of victory at UPS were entirely predictable. This is a bureaucracy whose every word and deed is motivated by cynical self-interest. No less predictable was the rush of the various middle class "left" organisations to congratulate their friends in the union leadership. But from the standpoint of basic principles of working class solidarity, the needs of UPS workers and the interests of the entire working class, the contract can be judged as nothing other than a betrayal. A pro-company deal On Wall Street, the contract was greeted with undisguised enthusiasm. Its announcement was followed by three straight 100-plus runups of the Dow Jones Average, more than reversing the 247 point plunge the previous Friday. In all fundamentals, the agreement upholds the interests of the company. It maintains the two-tier wage structure and barely puts a dent in the exploitation of part-time labour. It gives UPS five years to revamp its operations before the next contract. The pay increase for full-time workers, an average of 3% a year, is below the national average for 1997 and will result in a decline in real wages. The Teamsters pared back their pay demand for full-timers to help UPS offset the cost of a larger raise for part-timers. Even this was tailored to the company's needs. UPS knew it had to lift the pay scale for senior part-time workers in order to reduce employee turnover and enforce labour discipline. But, with the Teamsters' co-operation, it maintained poverty-level entry wages for new part-timers. After going along with no increase in the $8 rate for 15 years, the Teamsters accepted an increase of only 50 cents. There are a host of other regressive provisions, which workers will only begin to learn about after the ratification vote. The 10,000 new full-time jobs to be created by combining existing part-time positions will have a lower pay scale than existing full-time jobs. By the end of the contract, these workers will make 24% less than regular full-time workers. Thus the new contract not only retains the two-tier wage structure between full-time and part-time workers, it extends this divisive and discriminatory principle to full-time workers as well. The only area where the Teamsters held out was on the issue of pensions. The union turned back UPS's proposal to split away from the Teamsters multi-employer funds and establish a separate fund because this question went directly to the immediate interests of the Teamsters bureaucracy. Involved in this matter are not only huge financial resources which undergird the salaries and perks of union officials; control of the pension funds provides the bureaucracy with a crucial material base for maintaining pressure on the rank and file and keeping them bound to the union apparatus. A travesty of democracy As for Carey's talk of rank and file involvement, the real nature of the internal regime of the Teamsters was exposed when the strikers were ordered back to work without even being told the rudiments of the agreement. The conduct of the strike belied the bureaucracy's pretence to be leading a crusade on behalf of American workers. The union made clear that it was not challenging the profits of the corporation. Despite overwhelming sympathy from workers, neither the Teamsters nor the AFL-CIO mobilised broader layers of workers behind the walkout. Instead the unions told workers to rely on the Clinton administration, and built up the credibility of a government that slavishly defends big business. Clinton worked behind the scenes to strangle the strike. On August 17, he implicitly raised the threat of a Taft-Hartley back-to-work order, declaring that a good contract was on the table which the Teamsters would be well advised to accept within 24 hours. The union saved him the political damage of making good on his threat by quickly coming to terms. Union leaders and press commentators have reserved their most lavish praise for Carey's use of Madison Avenue techniques to sway public opinion. Far from strengthening the working class, such an approach represents a further repudiation of the class struggle. Workers are by no means indifferent to public sentiment. But to the extent that the unions rely on public relations gimmicks, they are only binding workers more tightly to the official public opinion that is easily manipulated by the ruling class, with the aid of its corporate-controlled media. Workers can win the active support of the broad public only by demonstrating the strength of the working class and its resolve to fundamentally reshape society in the interests of the masses of people. To make the UPS strike the starting point for a genuine fight against the spread of part-time, temporary and low-wage labour would have required the industrial mobilisation of workers on a mass scale and a political struggle against the Clinton administration. A struggle against the profit system Such a battle could be carried through only if it were based on the understanding that the demands of workers for decent-paying and secure jobs threaten the entire basis of corporate America's profit boom and, therefore, require a conscious struggle against the profit system. The union leadership, because it is completely tied to the capitalist system, opposes any such mobilisation of the working class. Carey, AFL-CIO President Sweeney and others have hailed the UPS contract as a turning point for the unions and an end to 15 years of defeats going back to the smashing of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike. In assessing these claims, workers should bear in mind that these union leaders were complicit in the betrayal of PATCO and the labour debacles that followed. To the extent that workers, confused by the media and the lies of union officials, see the UPS strike as some kind of vindication of the labour leadership, the danger grows of even greater disasters. Every worker should ask, if all that was required to bring a multi-billion-dollar corporation to its knees was a two week strike, why have the unions presided over one defeat after another? In fact, the past period of smashed strikes and broken unions was the result of a deliberate policy carried out by the union bureaucracy to break the resistance of the working class to mass layoffs, wage cuts and speedup. In this way, the AFL-CIO unions sought to demonstrate to big business their usefulness in policing the labour force, while they encouraged the spread of labour-management structures to make union officials junior partners with the bosses. Far from the UPS settlement representing a departure from the unions' complicity with big business, it is a continuation of the same policy. However, changed conditions dictated that it be implemented in a somewhat different form. Objectively speaking, the UPS workers were in a stronger position than PATCO workers and others. At present there is a more favourable labour market and a social climate marked by popular anger over growing economic insecurity and inequality. Such factors contributed to nervousness within the ruling class and reluctance on the part of UPS to employ strike-breakers. And they underlay the campaign in the media to refurbish the image of bureaucrats like Carey and Sweeney, and suggest that defeats like PATCO were a thing of the past. For the present, a pro-company settlement, which the bureaucracy could proclaim a labour "victory," was deemed more advantageous than a confrontation that could spark an explosive reaction in the working class. The media seek to breathe new life into the moribund union apparatus because the ruling class fears, above all, a movement of workers that breaks free of capital's labour lieutenants. But the greater the resistance of the working class, the deeper the crisis of the labour bureaucracy. Inevitably a new period of social convulsions will bring workers into a collision with the AFL-CIO. The treachery of the union leadership cannot prevent the eruption of massive social struggles. Neither UPS nor American capitalism can retreat from an offensive against the working class, which is dictated by the imperatives of the global capitalist market. Notwithstanding its betrayal, the UPS strike signalled a growth of working class militancy and the coming of great class battles. There are critical lessons to be drawn from the UPS strike. It has underscored the two basic requirements for a real revival of the workers' movement. First, the need to build genuinely democratic mass organisations of workers in the factories and work sites, such as factory committees, to organise the day-to-day struggle in defence of workers' interests. These organisations must be completely independent of the trade union apparatus. Second, the need to build a new political party of the working class, to unite all sections of workers in a struggle against the capitalist system. This party must be based on a socialist programmememe, which proceeds from the needs of working people for jobs, housing, health care and education, not corporate profit. Its guiding principles must be the fight for the international unity of the working class in the struggle against global capital, the political independence of the working class from the capitalist parties and politicians, and the establishment of social equality. The Socialist Equality Party has been formed to build this new party of the working class. We call on all workers to consider carefully the policies which we advance and make the decision to join and build the SEP.

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