The hard work spent holding stalls, petitioning and raising awareness of the campaign really paid off as we managed to get local print, radio and TV coverage, hopefully spreading the message that there is a way to fight back to the thousands of those, like us, who are struggling to find employment.

Despite moves by the council to prevent us giving a statement with our petition because of an administrative error, it went off without a hitch.

I highlighted the rapidly increasing scale of youth unemployment and the failure of government to address the problem. The speech was met by a large round of applause led by the public gallery and joined by a sheepish council, who looked rightfully ashamed of their inaction in the face of the current crisis.

Overall the support shown by members of the public for the campaign is encouraging, as it demonstrates there is real backing for our generation’s struggle in the face of the biggest recession since the 1930s.

Jack Jeffrey, Bristol Youth Fight for Jobs & Bristol Socialist Party

The numbers taking part in picketing at Fishponds and Yate far exceeded the legal limits of six. At the Fishponds depot, pickets had a large dragon’s head and outfit, apparently designed to suprise managers as they drove delivery vans!

Striking workers in Yate got around directives from management saying that anyone blowing whistles at scabs would be disciplined, by installing a remote control fart machine by the gates.

Many of the workers were looking forward to a national strike in September.

Martyn Ahmet, Bristol Socialist Party

Mark Baker, Bristol PCS member

The refuse collectors were due a pay rise in November and claimed a 5% increase in line with inflation at that time. Their employers, Sita, deliberately delayed negotiations and offered 2.75%, exploiting the recession to hit the workers’ terms and conditions.

Pam Jennings, Unite negotiator, explained that Suez group, of which Sita are a part, made £16.5 million profit in 2007 and get any costs plus 16% on top paid to them as part of their contract with the council. The madness of privatisation means council tax payers have to pay more to have their bins collected by a private company, who then don’t pay their workforce a living wage to collect them.

The company claims it can’t afford to pay the workforce what they should have. These workers have received no pay rise since 2007 and have many members such as road sweepers on, or just above, the minimum wage.

Sita UK’s website boasts: “We treat waste materials as a resource” - it’s a pity they haven’t treated their workforce as a valuable resource too.

The work was privatised in 1994 and although employees who transferred had their terms and conditions protected by TUPE legislation at the time, Sita have driven down pay and conditions for those starting since that time - for example new staff get no sick pay for the first three days of sickness. This is accompanied by an increasingly bullying management style towards the workforce.

A support group was set up including trade unionists and Socialist Party members. The anger and the organisation obviously worried the council, who have not so far even invoked penalties on the errant company. As one bin worker said: “Our pay rise is four or five months late every year. They’re not so slow to impose penalties on me if I don’t pay my council tax for a few months”.

Now the workers have accepted a 2.75% pay rise with the promise that future pay negotiations would be held at the Acas arbitration service, which workers will see as preferable to relying on Sita. But they will expect real improvements on issues such as pay and bullying management.

• Equalisation of age of consent for homosexuals - August 2001
• Anti-discrimination in employment legislation - May 2003
• Anti-discrimination in the provision of goods and services - April 2004
• Civil partnership legislation - December 2005
• Hate crime legislation - March 2007

 
If the government had been totally committed to equality from the start then it would not have taken them so long to bring these protections and laws into being and would not have allowed unelected peers to scupper bill after bill promoting equality.

Over 11 years in government New Labour has felt the need to follow trends, opinion polls and to keep tabloid journalists on side and sweet. No serious attempt was made to pose a radical alternative ideology or ‘morality’ to that offered by the Tories and conservative opinion.

In the run up to the equalisation of the age of consent, members of the government proposed appeasing the bigots with two-tier age of consent laws to ‘protect’ 16- and 17- year olds from predatory older men, completely mixing up discussions on the the issues of paedophilia and homosexuality and giving credence to the views of the likes of Norman Tebbit and the conservative right.

Civil Partnerships and Marriage - equal yet different -
Again out of fear from the right and perhaps from the religious beliefs of the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the legal union of homosexual couples has been instituted by New Labour in a form of marriage apartheid, where straight couples may may, but not enter into civil unions and where same-sex couples cannot marry, but may enter into civil union.
In order to counter claims from the right that civil partnerships were a means of instituting same-sex marriage, the government felt the need to wheel out spokespersons to clearly emphasise that civil partnerships are quite different and separate from marriage.
Legally the difference is minimal, but it could be argued that the mere difference in the name of the institution implies a second class status, equivalent to marriage, but just not as good as.

Education - failing gay youth
Thatcher’s Section 28 of the Local Government Act prohibited the intentional promotion of homosexuality by local authorities (and therefore the schools and services within those authorities). Although this did not specifically prevent schools from tackling homophobic bullies, many schools resisted positive discussion of sexuality and turned (as many continue to do so) a blind eye to homophobia in the classroom in general - out of fear from the authorities and perhaps outside bigotry.

Section 28 may be gone, but it took New Labour years to remove it and still today the vast majority of schools have no specific policies regarding homophobic bullying. Whereas racist bullying is logged and trends managed, the same cannot be said of homophobic bullying.
New Labour and Tony Blair’s obsession with allowing more faith schools to open and the private control of acadamies to fall into conservative evangelical christian hands has only impeded progress in the prevention of homophobia in schools.

People expected New Labour to blaze a trail in promoting equal rights…
…rather the dragging of feet to the current position of legal equality that we ar at today has shown just how New Labour attempts at all times to face in all directions at once. Attempting to appease the little Englander, the tabloid press and moral groups rather than promoting radical change.

As the prospect of elections becomes ever more likely, we are seeing New Labour and the Tories veering ever further to right, by emphasising and promoting the place of the traditional family as the bedrock of British society and marriage with children as the ideal family situation. By implication all other personal arrangements could be taken to be abnormal or undesirable.

In the 1980s the Labour Part had enabled significant headway to be made by gay activists in influencing the Greater London Council and other left-wing councils/local authorities by promoting more enlightened attitudes within local authorities and schools and support the development of gay community services.

Thatcher’s governments and her idolisation of so-called ‘Victorian’ social values, the scaremongering and blame laid at the door of the gay community for the AIDS/HIV epidemic and Labour’s relentless drive to right-wing appeasement, set gay rights back by decades.

New Labour shares in the shame of the Tories for having taken such a softly, softly approach to homosexual liberation in it’s 11-year term.

Gay Neo-Liberalisation - the Capitalists cashing in
The capitalists have definitely capitalised on this gay liberation. The business community spotted the profit possibilities that could flow from this more self-confident, increasingly out, gay population.

Moving in to develop the gay club scene, gay glossy magazines and gay lifestyle fashion and to mov in and take over what was once a demonstration of political solidarity - the Pride demonstrations. Gay liberation has become more like gay neo-liberalisation.

Gay liberation is being sold as something that can now be achieved by spending the pink pound in the ways advised by the pink pound profit mongers.

This commercialisation can appear to be an escape from the bigoted world, but it is as hollow as the words and actions of the capitalist politicians of the past.

Class divisions exist as they do between all groups and without the pink pound to spend the gay poor or working class are left excluded from this holy grail of liberation.

Gay struggles must be viewed as part of the large class struggle between capitalist and proletariat. The next steps towards liberation can only be achieved by working together, not just as part of the gay community, but also with other groups, promoting ideas through unions and workplaces.

There is no pink pound to be found in the classroom, therefore the capitalists have seen no reason why they should help to liberate gay youth from the horrors of homophobic classroom culture.

Only a socialist society, with democratic working class control and management ofindustry and society’s resources, would promote unity and cooperation. Under these conditions, prejudice would begin to evaporate and personal relationships would be free from the restrictions imposed by capitalism.

‘Mainstream politicians, some of whom even have the audacity to claim for their moats to be cleaned, are out of touch with the lives we lead.

‘I stand on the principle of elected representatives taking a worker’s wage in the tradition of previous Socialist Party representatives such as Dave Nellist, Pat Wall and Terry Fields.

‘The No2EU - Yes to Democracy campaign is the first time since the formation of the Labour Party that a trade union has taken part in an electoral alliance on an all-Britain scale.

‘It encourages me, as a young trade unionist, to think I am seeing the beginnings of the reconnection of young people with the trade unions and left-wing politics.

‘No2EU is another step towards re-forging the bond between the working people and politics that represents them.’ 

Speakers to include:

Cllr Dave Nellist
Coventry Socialist Party Councillor, former Militant Labour MP and West Midlands region No2EU candidate
Alex Gordon
RMT Executive and South West No2EU candidate
Rae Lynch
Bristol NUT activist (pc) and South West region No2EU candidate
Roger Davey
Health worker and South West region No2EU candidate

15,000 jobs are to go this year in BT. That’s around 10% of the workforce. In the last financial year we lost another 15,000, of which 5,000 left in the first 3 months of 2009.

Permanent, Contractor and Agency. 30,000 workers left to worry about bills, where the next wage will be coming in from, weighing up the finances. The violence and fear of mass unemployment continues under the recession. But never mind, the Bankers have been bailed out, no trials or bringing to book for them. MPs of all parties, nearing a General Election, previously happy to oversee and support “light touch” legislation for the Banks are scrabbling around like rats in a sack, raiding the public purse before they get thrown out of office. For example, retired darling of Westminster, Tam Dalyell, Labour MP had £18,000 of book cases shamelessly made to store his copies of Hansard before he left the job.

For BT workers, they’ll just get a cardboard box to store the P45’s in. This after experiencing a Pay Freeze while seeing non-executive directors pocket a 50% raise on their £60,000 per annum salary for a basic week of 20 days per year.
Senior Managers, who have left in the wake of the BT Global fiasco, have had their contractual terms legally honoured by the company including Global’s Chief Executive, Francois Barrault.
For many of our agency and contractor colleagues, all they’ll get is the legal minimum notice to quite. For many, these are workers who saw on average a fall in pay 14%.

And workers left behind will be sweated to squeeze out more performance and profits from their labour to pay for the crisis. Disciplinaries are being used to manage people out of the company; the high level review at the appeals stage has been removed. Regrading and shift patterns will be reviewed. The screw is being turned. The counter revolution on the shop floor gathers speed. Even Level 1 line managers can be heard voicing discontent at having to deliver on the new Performance Management decrees.

Yet the CWU still believes that if we sit down, be nice, maybe (just maybe) the BT Board will see heart and stop wielding the knife. There should always be negotiations, but not at the price of sacrificing independent Union action in the workplace to defend hard won terms and conditions! A measure of the mood in the workplace can be seen by the fact that BT is still prepared to pay for Industrial Peace by doubling their payments towards solving the Pensions Deficit. Pleading with the Regulator, they have been given 20 years, instead of the current 10 to solve the shortfall in funding.

However, with more workers who would have paid into the Pensions Pot leaving the business, the Pension funding is far from being solved. The CWU urgently needs to build its organisation and reputation throughout Telecommunications if it is to be seen as a credible organisation to defence Jobs, Terms and Conditions through the Industry.

The price of rubbing BT’s belly for now? Pensions Cut, Pay Cut, 30,000 Job Losses, members managed out of the company under an increasingly harsh discipline code and attendance patterns up for review.

No wonder BT is still a profitable company. The financial press report that dividends on BT shares are 7%, higher than many other FTSE listed companies. BT would like to raise £1.5 billion for it’s fibre to the cabinet project. The City will want to see more blood on the floor, more profit extracted from the remaining workforce before it releases the cash. It can’t be ruled out that, like the Banks, the workforce will witness a Hedge Fun or two, launch media attacks on the company to talk down its share values. Then, move in for the kill.

BT sees itself as the custodian of the national infrastructure. If that is the case then we say that it is too important to be desroyed and broken up by the Private Sector. Look at what has happened to Rail! A disaster for workers and travellers.

There is work to be done. In this day and age every home should have Broadband that is reliable and cheap. It is time for Royal Mail and BT to be brought together again in one Publicly Owned, resourced and managed utility.

The CWU’s Defend Royal Mail Campaign must now also demand that BT be renationalised. But this must not be renationalisation so that the utility can be resold to the Private Sector sharks when the work economic crisis is over. It should be renationalised paying compensation only in the case of proven need; the workforce must run is democratically. BT workers, agency and contractors know what to do to deliver a telecommunications service. The City and Private Sector Board will not allow them to do so. So, the Free Market which they represent must be removed and ownership transferred to the Public Sector.

RENATIONALISE BT NOW - DEFEND JOBS AND OUT INDUSTRY.
NATIONALISE OTHER TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES WITH COMPENSATION ON PROVEN NEED ONLY.

FOR TELECOMMUNICATION TO BE EXPANDED AND DEVELOPED AS PART OF A NATIONAL PLAN TO DELIVER THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL.

In the June 4th European Elections the following Trade Union candidates will be supporting the renationalisation of Telecommunications and opposing the EU Directives that allow the pillaging of our Industry by Big Business and the City Financiers. No2EU - Yes to Democracy will be contesting the 6 South West seat in the European elections on June 4th 2009 on a platform of opposition to the Lisbon Treaty, against the EU-led privatisation of our public services, for workers’ rights and in protest at the corrupt EU gravy train.

Alex Gordon -
Rail Maritime & Transport Union - National Executive - Bristol

Rae Lynch -
Bristol National Union of Teachers Committee (personal capacity)

Nick Quirk -
Rail, Maritime & Transport - National Executive - Plymouth

Roger Davey -
Swindon & Wiltshire Health Unison Branch Chair (personal capacity)

Paul Dyer -
Barnstable Trades Union Council Secretary (personal capacity)

John Chambers -
Retired Transport and General Workers Union official - Cornwall

Bob Crow, Secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union says “Millions of working people feel abandoned by the mail political parties, which support EU diktats demanding the privatisation of our public services from the Post Office to our rail networks”.

All the mainstream parties now support privatisation of utilities. Even parties like UKIP and the BNP want to remove “Red Tape” in Europe. But that is just to allow UK companies the tools to attack Trade Union terms and conditions in BT further. At a local level this will translate in to allowing Private Companies to run cash starved and privatised local services with a casualised, poorly paid workforce. We  have experienced enough of that!

Come along to discuss how in the light of the Westminster expenses scandal, it is now time to build support for these independent working class representatives in the European Elections. No support for the Liberal/Labour/Tory/UKIP/BNP privateers.

For more information about the Socialist Party and the No2EU - Yes to Democracy slate call …

Robin Clapp (Bristol) - 07759 796 478
Sue Powell (Gloucestershire) - 01452 412 720
Mike Luff (Bristol) - 07881 417 218

~ For more Socialist Party - CWU news CLICK HERE ~

Workers’ Rights
This was clearly shown in the Lindsey oil refinery contruction workers’ dispute earlier this year. It was the EU ‘posted workers directive’ and subsequent European Court rulings that enabling the Italian-registered company, IREM, to employ workers not covered by the union-enforced national construction industry agreements. Only determined action by workers at Lindsey and other construction sites was able to defend the jobs, rights and conditions of all workers, regardless of national origin.

European Privatisation
The part-privatisation of Royal Mail, the first step to its complete sell-off, is also linked to EU directives to introduce a deregulated postal services market. It is true to say that the New Labour government is implementing these directives ahead of the EU timetable - but that only shows the need for a workers’ alternative to pro-market politicians in Westminster, as well as Brussels!

Big Business Parties…
New Labour and the Tories don’t need any encouragement to put bankers’ bonuses ahead of our jobs, pensions and public services. But the EU makes sure they don’t falter. The April summit of EU finance ministers, for example, gave Britain six months to come up with plans to cut £35 billion from public spending to meet EU ‘Stability and Growth Pact’ finance rules. The EU’s public spending criterea had already given New Labour an excuse to privatise capital projects, such as new schools and hospitals, by means of private finance inititatives (PFI) and the disastrous PPP on London Underground - which increases the costs of public services and subsidises corporate profits.

Democracy
The No2EU - Yes to Democracy campaign will also expose the undemocratic character of the EU. Voters in France, The Netherlands and Ireland have already rejected the proposed EU constitution, now re-packaged as the Lisbon Treaty. But the big business parties are pushing ahead with it, determinded to implement the new wave of privatisation, public service cuts and attacks on workers’ rights it will unleash, New Labour has dumped its 2005 manifesto pledge for a referendum on the constitution.

Protest Vote
The No2EU - Yes to Democracy campaign, by giving workers a voice, can shake the establishment parties. The European elections will be the first ballot box expression of the enormous anger people feel at the devastating consequences of the economic crisis. But where will that anger go? There is a real threat that the far-right BNP could win European Parliamentary seats in June. No2EU - Yes to Democracy is an alternative for workers, who rightly disgusted with the mainstream capitalist parties, may otherwise cast a protest vote for the BNP.

The Socialist Party supports and is part of the No2EU - Yes to Democracy coalition. We recognise that many problems, from the economic crisis to planet-threatening global warming, can only be solved at an international level. If society remains organised as it is today, on a capitalist basis, divided into competing nations, the prospects for humanity will be bleak indeed. Fundamental change is necessary, based on democratic public ownership of the major companies that dominate the globe. We need a socialist Europe, not a bosses’ EU.
Backing the trade union initiated No2EU - Yes to Democracy campaign in June’s election is the first step towards building a force that can unite with workers in Europe and across the world to fight for a better future.

Come to the ‘No2EU - Yes to Democracy’ South West Campaign Launch:

Date/Time: Monday 11th May - 5:30pm
Location: GWR Staff Association Club, Temple Meads Station, BS1 6QQ

Lead-off given by Martyn Ahmet at central branch meeting Tuesday 14th April

Introduction

In 1934 workers in the US were stirred by a series of dramatic strikes in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The union involved was the General Drivers Local 574 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), an American Federation of Labor affiliate, the principal union of workers in the US at that time.

In those fights, Local 574 went from a being a small “business union” unit that focused on organising a few skilled workers, to being a mass organisation that drew in hundreds of previously unorganised workers.

This change, recounted in Farrell Dobbs’ book ‘Teamster Rebellion’, resulted from the emergence of a new, militant leadership that gradually gained control and proved its competence in the eyes of rank-and-file members who wanted to use the union’s power in defence of their class interests.

It is this feature of the strikes that makes them relevant for us today.

As the economic crisis deepens and attacks on ordinary people’s living standards accelerate, the question of how to fight back will be posed more and more to a growing layer of workers.

For many workers the union is often invisible in the workplace, or not seen as a vehicle for defending workers’ interests. How to change that situation around, is an important question for socialists today and the 1934 strikers offer some useful lessons in that task.

Context: The world of the early 1930’s

What was the context for the struggles that erupted in Minneapolis in 1934?

In October of 1929, the New York stock market crash heralded the beginning of a deep going recession, both in the United States and most other western capitalist countries.

Between 1929 and 1933 industrial production plunged nearly 50 percent. Wages were driven down and millions made unemployed.

By 1933, one out of ever four workers was jobless. An estimated 1.5 million homeless wandered the roads of the country in search of work. Working farmers were driven off the land as farm foreclosures skyrocketed.

In response, an increasing number of employers used the threat of unemployment to cut back on wages and working conditions of those still in work.

For instance, in Minneapolis, where in early 1934 approximately one third of the population was unemployed, trucking companies, which were to be the focus of the dispute, paid between 10 and 18 dollars for a 54 to 90 hour working week. It was often the case that employed workers needed supplementary public assistance in order to support their families.

Significantly, the farming area surrounding the city of Minneapolis was even more devastated. Net farm income (in 1932) was only 6% of what it has been in 1929.

Working class response

What was the working class response? How did workers respond?

Initially most workers seemed stunned by the impact of the recession. Between 1929 and 1931 there was little or no response. National hunger marches occurred in 1931 and 1932. In 1933 workers began to resist in localised strikes, many of which were defeated.

One of the biggest obstacles to launching an effective fight back during this period was the American Federation of Labor (APL) itself.

Founded in 1886, the dominant view amongst its leaders was that of “business unionism”.

Based on the idea that union strength would come through collaboration with the employers and that the unions should not involve themselves in political struggle.

This was reinforced by the craft nature of its organisation. Each union was limited to the skilled workers in a particular trade. The result was an unwelcoming attitude to the mass of unorganised workers seeking effective union representation and a bitterness by many workers towards the “job trust” approach of AFL units.

If anything, membership in unions actually declined in the early years of the Depression.

The Teamster Union (which Local 574 was part of), which has been led since before World War I by Daniel J Tobin, itself had 80,000 members and a conservative bureaucracy that received high wages and expenses.

Most officials lived in splendid isolation in Washington and more often than not sided with the employers in labour disputes.

Still, despite all these obstacles, the greatest upsurge in US labour history was kicked off by three citywide strikes in 1934. 

1. The autoworkers in Toledo
2. Longshoremen in San Francisco
3. The Teamsters in Minneapolis

Minneapolis 1934: The Communist League of America

Local 574 was a unit of the AFL for organising workers in the coal industry in Minneapolis. Typically moulded on the “business union” idea the Local’s business agents had signed a closed shop agreement involving a small number of workers in return for not getting involved in any organising drives for the whole industry.

The transformation of Local 574 from a moribund instrument of class collaboration into a vehicle for leading and organising workers struggles was undertaken initially by a small group of socialists involved in the coal industry where 574 had jurisdiction.

The story is told by one of the group, Farrell Dobbs, who was recruited to that effort in the fall of 1933. Dobbs himself, a former Republican voter, was radicalised, like so many others, under the impact of the Depression.

These socialists were members of the Communist League of America (CLA). The CLA had been formed in 1929 after members of the American Communist Party had been expelled for supporting the views of Leon Trotsky in the internal struggles of The Communist International.

Initially the CLA tried to win members from the CP to their view, but when Stalin’s political direction resulted in the defeat of the working class in Germany, the CLA began the task of rebuilding the socialist movement in the US.

The Minneapolis branch of the CLA was some 40 members strong, the majority of whom had been won from the local CP in the expulsion. Key members had long experiences in the Minneapolis labour movement, such as 45-year-old Vincent Ray Dunne and 50-year-old Carl Skoglund, both of whom worked in the coal industry.

The CLA was therefore well placed to launch its campaign.

In ‘Teamster Rebellion’, Dobbs explains the local party’s perspectives: 

• Workers were radicalising under the impact of economic depression.
• To mobilise them for action, it was necessary to start from their existing level of understanding
• In the course of battle a majority could be convinced of the correctness of the CLA’s trade union policy. They would come to understand that the leadership within the AFL was largely responsible for the fact that not a single strike had been won by an union in the city during the previous decade.
• To drive the point home it was imperative to show in the opening clash with the bosses that a strike could be won.

Dobbs explains: “Of course, they could not assume immediate leadership of the union. Their role as leaders would have to develop and be certified through the forthcoming struggles against the employers. To facilitate that objective it was necessary that all party members in the city understand and support the projected Teamster campaign. Toward that end the whole concept was thoroughly discussed in the party branch and firm agreement was reached on the steps to be taken.”

At each step of the way the CLA was confronted with organisational and political challenges as the struggle unfolded. 

• How to overcome the resistance of the local AFL officialdom and business agents to a militant struggle for workers’ rights.
• How to win allies within the working class movement to support for Local 574’s struggle.
• What tactics to employ in dealing with Minnesota Governor Floyd B Olson.

In the course of the struggle they had to deal with: 

• Redbaiting attacks from the leaders of the national union (the IBT).
• Attacks from the Communist Party itself (as being sell-outs of the workers).
• Physical (and deadly) assault from goon squads organised by the employers and the city police.
• Arrest and incarceration at the hands of the National Guard.

It was the response of the CLA and Local 574’s leadership to these, and many other, challenges that was to characterise these struggles as something new in US politics.

The very first challenge posed was winning a majority within the executive board of Local 574 for a unionisation drive. This was achieved by the socialists forming a volunteer organising committee as a means of putting pressure on the executive. This was achieved with support from sympathetic individuals within the Board. With the support of a few key individuals within the Board, a majority was achieved and a unionisation drive was launched and meetings organized with workers to draw up initial demand on the employers.

Strikes One and Two

There were three strikers organised by Local 574 in 1934. The first in winter (February 7^th-10^th), called “the opening wedge” by Dobbs, hit the coal employers by surprise, achieved a swift victory and boosted the confidence of workers.

The second strike, which lasted 10 days, followed an unprecedented three-month period of intense preparation by the Local.

Firstly the volunteer committee was upgraded to the status of an official body of the Local.

Then the organising committee began to take in members from all sectors of the trucking industry, breaking the IBT norms of confining members to truck drivers and helpers only; representing a shift from being a narrow craft to being a broader industrial form of organisation.

Combined with democratically conducted mass meeting, which helped to integrate new members and establish rank and file control, these actions allowed militant workers to come forward and strengthen the work of the committee and gave more and more authority to the organising committee in the eyes of the workers.

As part of the preparation the union reached out to get formal support from the Central Labor Union (the equivalent of the Trades Council for the city) and get Governor Olson on record as supporting strike, something that was essential to building the broadest possible support for the strike.

Who was Governor Olson?

Olson, the Farmer Labor Party and AFL Officialdom

In politics, working people in Minnesota tended to support the Farmer Labour Party (a state-wide movement based upon an alliance of trade unions and farmers’ organisations). Nationally the FLP supported the “New Deal” policies of incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But in Minnesota, it contended for public office against both Democrats and Republicans. Its political strength was reflected in the election in 1930 and again in 1932 of Floyd B. Olsen, the FLP candidate for governor.

Olson’s key aim was to advance his personal political career. His performance in public office fell way short of the hopes and expectations of workers who had elected him.

The AFL labour officialdom in Minnesota was faced by a local ruling class that was virulently anti-union. The most powerful and wealthiest capitalists were organised into an organisation called the Citizens Alliance.

In the face of these challenges, AFL officials looked to Governor Olson for leadership and protection.

The CLA’s policy, and the one carried out by the Local 574, was one of reaching out to the members of the FLP to put pressure on Olson and to get him on record as politically supporting the working class.

This, they did, in order to make it more difficult for him to block the union at a later date.

So, when the strike began on May 16^th the union put in place: 

• A strike committee of 100 with broad representation from the striking firms.
• A fully functioning HQ, which contained kitchen facilities for feeding the strikers, an improvised hospital and a repair shop to service cars used by cruising picket squads.
• Picketing teams, which has been planned in advance and which were organised militantly and effectively under the direct leadership picket captains from the strike committee.
• A women’s auxiliary to build support in the wider community.
• They were also able to establish agreements with farm organisations, which were designed to avoid conflicts and undermined the ability of the employers to so division amongst the strikers.
• Likewise, they took the lead in organising the unemployed into a union auxiliary known as the Federal Workers Section. They championed the struggles of jobless workers in their fights with the authorities for improved relief payments. In so doing solidifying unity.

The response of the Citizens Alliance was to get the cooperation of the Mayor and the police, along with the recruitment of special deputies, to break the strike.

Street battles were waged between strikers and deputies who posed the issue of self-defence. The street fighting, militantly organised by the union, ensured the non-movement of scab trucks and sealed victory for the strike.

What was won? - Olson intervened

Principally: the extension of union recognition with further pay rises to be decided in negotiations after the strike.

The Citizens Alliance immediate set to work to undermine the agreement through victimisation of union members and ignoring the settlement provisions. It was clear to the CLA and the Union that the employers were laying the basis for a new conflict.

Strike Three

The third strike began two months later and lasted almost five weeks.

It was characterised by increased reliance by the employers on the repressive apparatus of the local state and by attacks from the IBT leadership in Washington on the local leadership.

In response, Dobbs explains, the class struggle leaders took the new step of creating an official union newsletter, The Organizer, which was to appear daily during the next strike. It enabled the militants to reach out to all the workers, mobilize their support and counter the boss’s propaganda. The CLA provided journalistic support in the form of a couple of central leaders including JP Cannon.

The attacks on the union leaders by the IBT provoked outrage amongst the rank and file. Dobbs explains that the democratic nature of how the local conducted its affairs; and the recognition that the socialists had proven themselves, in battle, as competent and effective class struggle fighters with clear sighted leadership, lead many union members to see the attacks as an attack on the union membership as a whole.

The question of self-defence was again sharply posed following the killing on July 20^th of two strikers following mass picketing, but this time in a different manner.

The police action had generated sympathy for the strikers through broad sections of society, including the middle class. The union called for a one-day strike of all transportation unions as a protest against the violence.

In the meantime, members of the union were arming themselves with weapons, such as shotguns, revolvers, hunting knives and “… various types of souvenirs from World War I!” The local leadership immediately moved to disarm the members.

It would have been a grave mistake to physically confront the police, thus provided a pretext for severe repression against the strikers.

A settlement proposed by mediators called for recognition of the union wherever it could win a representation election conducted by the Labor Board. On wages, the unions wage rate demands were rejected and reduced by the mediators.

Governor Olson endorsed the proposal and called on both the union and employers to accept it. If not he would impose a strike settlement and declare martial law.

Face with a difficult decision, the leadership of Local 574 recommended acceptance (not without some opposition) of the deal.

However, the employers rejected it!

Martial Law and the end of the strike

On July 26^th Olson put the city under martial law; the Local reacted by preparing to resume mass pickets. Olson ordered the troops to seize the strike headquarters and arrest the union leaders. Then, hand in hand with the conservative AFL officialdom, tried to induce the “headless” union to call off the strike.

The reaction amongst the working class of the city was swift. Mass picketing was resumed and broad support for strikers in all sections of society, and in particular pressure from the ranks of the Farmer Labor Party, forced the release of the union leaders.

The fight became a war of attrition, which ended on August 21^st when new mediators proposed a settlement that would allow a Labor Board election to determine union recognition and a decision on wages to be made through arbitration.

Conclusion

Basic to the whole struggle has been the winning of union recognition. With that accomplished, Dobbs explains, any lag on other matters would be only limited and temporary. Now firmly established in the industry, the union was in a position to make steady advances.

“On balance, the workers had won a sweeping victory and Local 574 had emerged from the struggle as a major power in the Minnesota labor movement” - Dobbs.

As Dobbs put it in the afterword to the last volume of his Teamster series, Teamster Bureaucracy, the accomplishments of the rank and file militants who made Minneapolis a union town in the mid-1930’s “were made possible through the interplay of two basic factors. One of these was the skilful and considerate leadership of the workers by revolutionary socialists. The other was our championing of trade union democracy. Full membership participation was encouraged in the organization’s internal affairs. Freedom to express all points of view was upheld, as was the workers’ right to set policy by majority vote.”

Afterword

In March 1935 IBT president, Daniel Tobin, expelled Local 574 from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. However, in August 1936 Tobin was forced to relent and recharter the Local as 544. The leaders of 544 went on to develop the area and conference bargaining that exists today in the IBT.

Local 544 remained under socialist leadership until 1941, when eighteen leaders of the union and the Socialist Workers Party (the successor to the Communist League of America) were sentenced to a federal prison, the first victims of the anti-radical Smith Act, a law eventually found by the United States Supreme Court to be unconstitutional.

Farrell Dobbs would eventually become SWP national secretary in 1953, a role he held until 1972. His historical memoirs of the Minneapolis struggles are recounted in the four volume Teamster series - Teamster Rebellion, Teamster Power, Teamster Politics and Teamster Bureaucracy

(Dobbs with Trotsky, 1940)

Location: - Cruciform, Lecture Theatre 1, University College London (UCL) WC1 6BT (near Euston and Warren Street tube and rail stations).

10:00 - 11: 00 - Registration

11:00 - 12:30 - Opening rally (speakers include Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary; Tracey Edwards, PCS Young Members’ Network; and activists from the campaign)

12:30 - 13:30 - Lunch break

13:30 - 15:00 - Workshops (topics include: current workplace struggles to save jobs, organising the Youth Fight for Jobs campaign, the politicians’ reaction to the crisis and defending your rights at work) 

15:00 - 15:30 - What way forward for the campaign? discussions, resolutions and voting.

15:30 - 16:30 - Closing rally (speakers include Sean Figg, national campaign organiser, activists from Greece and more…)

Please let us know if you intend on attending the conference

For further details please contact Richard Bell 07988 047442 or e-mail admin@socialistpartybristol.org.uk