WHILE BILL Clinton struggles to zip up the burgeoning scandal in the White House, an increasingly vicious political witch-hunt is brewing as the courts and the right wing press gang up to purge the US unions of any hint of class struggle leadership. The first victim of this so far has been Teamsters union President Ron Carey, the militant candidate promoted by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). After he had led 185,000 strikers during last year's inspirational battle with United Parcel Service (UPS), ente wort ON themselves. But U.S. Attorney White, spurred on by the Safires of the press, encouraged them to "rat" on Carey. The important fact is that, despite his mistake in trusting consultants and fund-raisers, Carey demonstrated beyond any question his ability as a genuine working-class leader in standing up against the employers. Rank-and-file Teamsters, and all workers, need the kind of leadership Carey can provide. The Teamster ranks deserve the chance to vote for him again. They should have the right to choose whomever they wish from within their union to lead their organisation. Union members' right to choose their leaders is a fundamental part of the freedom of association that must not be infringed on by government. Government control of unions is a hallmark of fascism and Stalinism. The "Labor Subcommitree" of the U.S. House of RepICOCULALIYCO. headed by Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra (a recipient, according to Alexander Cockburn, of the maximum. legal campaign contribution from none other than UPS — and of who knows how many other less publicly recorded emoluments for his services to the corporations).
Safire announced that Hoekstra was going to go after AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka and President John Sweeney in hearings beginning in December.
Thus we see an entire web of government bodies, court officials, review boards, election officers; auditors, supervisory personnel, congressional investigators (armed with their own investigative legal teams), and the media mouthpieces who publicise, interpret, and play up the preferred angle for all these operatives and their operations.
Gerald McEntee of the public employees' union AFSCME, and Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), have both also been targeted in this broad campaign. In 1995, the votes of Carey, McEntee and Stern were crucial to putting the Sweeney, Trumka, ChavezThompson team in office in the AFL-CIO, replacing the do. nothing heirs of George Meany and Lane Kirkland.
Safire makes clear that the purpose of this whole campaign is to get the AFL-CIO back under the kind of docile leadership it had before, the kind acceptable and amenable members of Congress and editors at the Wall Street Journal find it hard to conceal their glee as they announce that corruption is alive and well in the Teamsters. Pardon me, but they must have forgotten what real union corruption is like.
Older Teamsters who've
been around since the 19/Us know corruption They remember when former president lackie Presser rammed through a sweetheart national contract with trucking companies in spite of a 63 percent vole by arivers and dock workers to reject.
They remember Teamster retirees with thirty years of service being denied pensions on the Daisis of tere They rement ..
from the l hat...
ers. then fir workers into "
could collect kickokk.:
growers in return tor lat.i peace.
In the last few years, though.
[under Ron Carey] Teamsters have had a taste of something different: a union that goes head to head with giant UPS to win benefits for both full-time and barr-me workers A union that ioins forces with other progressive unions to gel a moribuna labour movement back into the business of organising and political action. A union whose officers cut their own salaries and terminate their own lucrative supplementary pension plans.
But no matter which candidate captures the general presidency, today's rank-and-file Teamsters have seen too much to go willingly back to the bad old days. to the profit-hungry "free market" employing class, which for two decades and more has been waging its "one-sided class war" against American workers.
One obvious conclusion from the whole present situation is that labour needs its own independent political vehicle, a labour party based on the unions. Labour cannot leave the political arena to the fat cats, unchallenged. Victories gained on the economic front, on the picket line and at the bargaining table, can be snatched away on the political front, by the employercontrolled web of government in stitutions that we have seen put into operation against the Teamsters -and potentially against the AFL CIO as a whole.
We need to demand that the government back off. "Hands off the unions!"
Will the union leaders see their way clear to fight back as needed their own fates, and the best interests of their members, will be seriously endangered.
* The above article has been. adapted from articles in the US Bulletin in Defence of Marxism.
against the august power of the law and government? If they don't,