South African farmworker's rallies

Denia Jansen, chair of this rally, and Mercia Andrews, one of its organizers (who can be seen walking at the front with a white top, bushy hair and who puts a hat on) were arrested during the general strike on 4/12/12 with others for organizing workers and charged with incitement, intimidation, and participating in an illegal strike. They will appear in court again on January 21. Martin Legassick This rally of farmworkers in Ashton, 2/12/12 was organized by Mawubuye Land Rights Forum and the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union both of whom have been patiently and heroically organizing Western Cape farmworkers against racist and repressive bosses for years. In eighteen years the COSATU union responsible for farmworkers, the Food and Allied Workers' Union, with all its resources, has organized only 3% of farmworkers nationwide. The Trust for Community Outreach and Education was a third organizer. Martin Legassick

South Africa: Activists arrested for supporting striking farmworkers

This article was written by Helga Jansen-Daugbjerg. She is a member of the Rita Edwards Branch of the New Women’s Movement.  Please send messages of support or inquire about donations or other solidarity actions you can take by contacting them here: ritaedwards.nwmbranch@gmail.com

Mercia Andrews and Denia Jansen are among more than twenty people arrested this week for their role in supporting striking farm workers in the countryside of the wealthy Western Cape Province. Both women are long-time activists in the land and agrarian sector and have been at the forefront of supporting the work of the farm worker strike committees.  They were arrested and charged irrationally with intimidation and incitement to violence.

Are we months away from our world-class stadiums holding those who oppose a regime bent on breaking its bond with its people? Four years ago, my words would have had a ring of the overly-dramatic. A year ago the, workings of state, albeit ineffectual, served as a placebo against the realities facing us. South Africa is a country at a cross-roads for whom destiny now calls. Change must come.

2012 will certainly be remembered as a year of revolt by the poor who have nothing left to lose, and for repression by a state more out of touch with its people than ever before. The Farm Worker revolt is no different to the Marikana miners awaiting death on the mountain, or school children left illiterate by a system that deserted them before they were even conceived.  An echo from the past rings in every burning farm, in every witnessed killing of a Marikana miner, in every child who will repeat the poverty and anger of her parents 20 years from now - unless irrefutable change happens in South Africa.




The change that must take place is beyond the tragi-comedy of Manguang and the ANC. Beyond the Animal-Farm-like characters of those who believe that leadership is a god-given place at the trough. It is even beyond the reality of those of us living this moment. Change must take place for the clichéd ‘future of South Africa’. We are the ancestors our descendants will mock and rail against for not doing what should have been done – bringing about the change.

It is no small irony that the poor work in the most economically successful industries in our country.

Twenty-two years ago descendants of slaves worked the wine and fruit farms of the Western Cape, and migrants came from all over Southern Africa to dig up the minerals. Nothing has changed in their lives except the extreme levels of poverty – and if we do not act, nothing will change.

News of the arrests of those supporting the striking farm workers were met by activists in the close-knit NGO community in Cape Town with a numbing finality. It is as if we have been expecting this - first the Marikana Massacre and now the Farm Worker Strike repression. While Mercia Andrews and Denia Jansen, and the many others arrested this week will have their day in court inJanuary 2013, having spent a night in jail, the reality of the arrests can only mean one thing – we are in the thick of a dark and hard period in our country. 

Like the struggle against the inhumanity of apartheid, the struggle against the inhuman system of inequality requires all our energies. It is being led by those for whom restitution and dignity are the first prize. For the rest of us, we must heed their struggle in the name of change. Change, like a storm, will wreak destruction and pain and loss. But this too will pass and mark the time for a change we can be proud of, for it is of our making.

South African farmworkers resume strikes

Below is a report on the farmworkers strikes in South Africa from Lauren Paremoer of the "New Women's Movement Branch" As she explains, the strike which was put on hold pending a government investigation has continued.  Readers can contact them at ritaedwards.nwmbranch@gmail.com.

In August this year farm workers rose up in Cape Town, South Africa. Their call: R150 per day. Currently farm workers are earning between R60-R70 per day. However, there have been reports of workers, especially women, who earn less than this. Farm workers are the most marginalised workers in our economy, with very little unionisation.

Wine is one of South Africa’s biggest exports. According to the statistics released by the South African Wine Industry, wine producers earned a total income of over R3 619 million in 2011.[1]

The strike initially started in Du Doorns in the Hex River Valley in November and spread to at the very least 15 farming districts. Organisations working on farms have united under the banner the Coalition for Farm Workers Living Wage and Decent Living Conditions.

In late November, the strike was suspended to give government time to properly address the issue of decent living wages. In this case it is the South African government that sets the minimum wage and not farmers.

After being assured by the Minister of Agriculture – Tina Joemat Petterson that government would increase wages by 4 December, labour minister Mildred Olifant reneged, stating that wages can only be adjusted only in March 2013.

Strike action resumed on 4 December with mass action in every affected town. It was here that two prominent activists – Mercia Andrews and Denia Jansen – were arrested and held overnight in jail with two more people. 18 others in the Citrusdal area were also arrested and later released.

During this time the Western Cape general secretary of Cosatu, Tony Ehrenreich declared an end to the strike, saying that negotiations would be done on a farm to farm basis in an agreement with Agri-SA. Cosatu’s position is that the strike will resume on 9 Januay 2012, if negotiations failto deliver on a satisfactory solution. Despite the union’s statement and continued intimidation at the hands of the SAPS and private security companies hired by farmers, the Coalition for Farm Workers insist that the strike will continue until the workers themselves decide to call it off.

Lauren Paremoer 
Rita Edwards Branch - New Women's Movement
ritaedwards.nwmbranch@gmail.com

The vultures gather round to scoop up a non-union Hostess Corp.

Last week, one of the 1%'s bankruptcy Judges  gave the Hostess bosses permission to liquidate the company and sell off its parts.  Along with ridding themselves of fixed stock, the coupon clippers that own it are also ridding themselves of any obligation to that other side of the capital expenditure in the labor process, some 18,000 workers.

The bosses have many ways of violating contractual agreements with workers, violence, starvation, the military (always a dodgy option), the police, and their courts which is more favorable.  Being in bankruptcy is another way the coupon clippers can relieve themselves of these obligations. They do this even when the company is not broke like Delphi, the auto parts manufacturer that was once part of GM.

Not a week ago, the general line was that the Hostess simply wasn't a viable business, "Nobody wants to have anything to do with these old plants or these union or these contracts", said Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn.  They blamed the Union for running the business down of course which is only true in the sense that US workers are too expensive on the global market with rights in the workplace the bosses can do without.  Bangladesh offers a more lucrative environment for profit taking. The real issue though is the contracts, that the workers are Unionized.  Despite years of defeats, and elimination of Union power on the job thanks to a cooperative, employer friendly leadership, the bosses would much rather have no Union at all; and why not go for it, they feel very confident after years of concessionary contracts.

Rayburn also commented last week that the only hope for a buyer would be if a, "..liquidated Hostess would be free of its collective bargaining agreements.".  The judge has opened that door for them and suddenly, "Hostess is an attractive target, with its nationwide distribution of Twinkies, Ho Ho's and Ding Dongs."  (Who on earth dreams up these names?).  We should make no bones about it; the name of the game here is close down the show and open up non Union. It is part of the ongoing war to drive US workers wages and conditions closer to those in Vietnam and India.

The front runner for scooping up the remnants of Hostess Corp is Flowers' Foods a company with a healthy 90% of its employees non-Union.  "Flowers is unlikely to rehire Hostess employees as union workers.......and isn't interested in assuming labor contracts" the Wall Street Journal reports. Despite the Union officialdom claiming there are "good" unionized employers and "bad" non Union ones, the only reason we have Unions at all is because workers fought heroic battles for the right to organize against the most violent opposition from the bosses. We have Unions because we fought and died for them.

Is this the end of the Hostess struggle? It would seem so. Back in the eighties during the Eastern Airlines strike, the boss shut the company down and the Labor officials called it a victory.  For the boss, a man named Lorenzo, it's simply shifting capital around, for workers it's a greater loss.  The thought of taking over the company doesn't enter the heads of the strategists atop organized Labor.

The attacks we have been facing for decades have definitely heated up since the bailout.  On the other hand there have been some powerful  responses to the assault of capital; the student movement of a couple of years ago, some big strikes like Verizon and the Southern California grocery strike that was lost entirely due to the UFCW leadership's capitulation to the employers. We also saw 100,000 on the streets of Madison Wisconsin that was successfully channeled in to an electoral campaign for the Democratic Party.  With the Team Concept as their primary policy and no alternative to the market, mobilizing the potential power of organized Labor and the millions of non-Union workers and our communities in to an offensive of our own can only lead to chaos as far as the Union officialdom is concerned.  The capitalists must be the job creators, profit is sacrosanct and workers' can't control our workplaces or society.

There's no escaping the fact that the bosses are becoming more aggressive and emboldened.  But we will see further challenges to this offensive as the class struggle heats up.  Too much confidence is a dangerous thing and there's no doubt the US bourgeois will make some serious blunders up ahead. 

It would also be a mistake for us to forget our history and the explosive nature of the US working class.  After the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 and by 1931 the United Mine Workers, one of the few industrial unions shrunk from 400,000 to 60,000 members and the AFL membership was declining by 7000 members a week until by 1933 it was down to a little over 2 million.  We all know what happened then.  Three general strikes followed in 1934 and then the great factory occupations and growth of industrial unionism culminating in the 44-day Flint sit down and the rise of the CIO.
I am not saying that the situation is exactly the same as at that time there were numerous left and radical forces withing the working class.  Socialists led the general strike in Minneapolis, the Communists in San Francisco and the followers of AJ Muste and the unemployed organizations the Toledo general strike, all in 1934. But it would be a mistake, one that liberals make to readily, to write off the US working class.  Even without the huge workforce in the service industries, the docks, the airlines, communication and heavy industry are still Unionized and the organized sector will be convulsed and radicalised by a generalized movement against the bosses offensive.

Walmart protests throughout the world.

These developments against Walmart are very positive and a long time coming. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the leadership of the Union most heavily involved in the drive, like the entire leadership of organized Labor, have the business view of these organizations. They see the Unions as employment organizations with them as the CEO's. To win Walmart would be a huge revenue enhancer in the form of dues.

As far as the already existing members in the retail grocery outlet, the UFCW leadership like their colleagues throughout the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federations, have presided over a never ending slide backwards through their cooperation with the employers and their Team Concept approach to the Labor/Capital struggle.  The Team Concept, the dominant ideology of the trade Union leadership holds that workers and bosses have the same economic interests.  This means that workers must take measures (concessions) to assist their own individual employers in winning "market share" at the expense of their rivals. 

This disastrous world view leads workers in one company competing with workers at a competitor for who can work the hardest, fastest and most cheaply. It has the same effect globally as workers from one country compete against workers from another.  The bosses can only win when the game is played this way.  It is a disastrous race to the bottom and makes solidarity organizing and the building of a generalized offensive of our own much harder.  Any rank and file movement from below that wants to fight back in a serious way and opposes this relationship the Union heads have built with the employers and their Democratic Party based on Labor peace is seen as hostile and suppressed with the help of an army of full time staff at their disposal.

To Unionize Walmart would be a great step forward as long as we recognize that the other struggle, the more complex battle within our organizations to change the concessionary and employer friendly policies of the leadership, and the leadership themselves is the much harder war that has to be fought.

Bankruptcy Judge to negotiate contract for striking Hostess workers.

Mediation paves the way for capitulation

by Richard Mellor

I see that the bankruptcy judge dealing with the Hostess case decided not to allow the company to close down the business. Instead, the judge intends to hold mediation sessions today (Tuesday) between the two sides, the Hostess bosses and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (phew!), more commonly known as the Bakers Union. The judge wants to see if he can "Broker a new contract" according to the Wall Street Journal.

The company has been claiming that the strike by the members of the Bakers Union has crippled the firm to such an extent that it cannot recover and is unable to continue producing Twinkies and Ho- Hos. (Is there something wrong with me that I have never eaten foods with names like these?).  Hostess bosses claim that the company doesn't "Have the wherewithal to continue operations amid the work stoppage" the WSJ reports.  The judge, being the kindhearted person that he is stated that "My desire to do this is prompted primarily by the potential loss of 18,000 jobs".

That said, the Union leadership and their lawyers agreed to place the lives and living standards (not theirs though) of the dues paying members in the hands of a former lawyer turned judge. The proceedings will be confidential which will no doubt mean that the members of the Union won't know what is going on behind closed doors until the deal is presented to them.  The Hostess bosses are happy with that, "We need all the help we can get" said Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn and the Union's lawyer, Jeffrey Freund made it clear that the "union" was respectful of the judges decision.  Aren't we all such gentlemen here?

The interesting part of this is that the coupon clippers that own Hostess asked for permission form the bankruptcy court to impose a concessionary contract on the workers in October. The Union, for whatever reason refused to participate in that process and the court acceded to the company's request. The imposed five year contract included an 8% pay cut along with "pension modifications" which usually mean increased costs or reduced benefits for workers.

Not long after this, the Union called a strike and the workers' walked off the job.  As I commented earlier, the Teamsters accepted the concessionary deal.  The judge said that he was a little perplexed as to why the Union never fought the imposed concessions through the courts.  As someone who is not privy to all the details of these proceedings, it would seem that the Union made the right decision, relying on the power of the strike, of withdrawing labor as opposed to relying on the courts where money and the bosses' rule.  Perhaps the leadership of the bakers' Union thought the Teamsters would join them in a much stronger show of force, it's hard to say.  But my view is it is more likely that the leadership, like most of them simply had no clue what they were doing.

At very least, on would think the Union, in conjunction with strike action, would have used the courts as well as a secondary front of attack. It appears that we are at a point where the bosses have used the scare tactic, threatening to shut down operations and eliminate the jobs altogether, so the judge steps in to negotiate a concessionary contract that the Union officialdom can sell to their members. When the choice is no job or a paycheck that you can scrape by on, the choice is an obvious one.  In fact, this is often the choice that Union officials offer to their members, layoffs or wage and benefit reductions.  Then when their members choose the latter, the leadership can blame them for refusing to fight.

As this process unfolds, vulture capitalists are circling the dying carcass. Flower Foods, a Georgia corporation is "hoping to get iconic brands on the cheap" the Wall Street Journal reports. And private equity ( a coupon clippers club) firm Sun Capital is hoping that they can buy up the remnants of the dying firm at bargain basement prices and hopefully negotiate a concessionary deal with the Union leaders so the workers can keep their jobs at half the wages.

It all depends on whether the judge can "Get Hostess to tweak its labor contract proposal in a way the union can accept."

It is most likely the good judge can although not its not guaranteed.  The Hostess bosses, like all employers are feeling very confident.  They know that the Union officials understand their point of view and that a battle to make the bosses pay is not on the Union leaderships agenda. The workers once more remain passive observers as two sides, both hostile to their interests determine their futures.

But the situation in the US is so dire, the crisis so acute and the mood so volatile, we can never be quite sure when the bursting of the logjam may occur.

For more on this dispute see:
http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-trade-union-leadership-has-no.html
http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2012/11/afl-cios-answer-to-hostess-bosses-hope.html
http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2012/11/hostess-and-union-leaders-agree-on.html

Hostess and the Union leaders agree on mediation

This is the follow up on the earlier bog.  It seems that the leadership of the Baker's Union and Hostess corp have agreed to mediation to settle their contract dispute, the Wall Street Journal reports.  This is "a move that should allow the company to avert liquidation" it says.

So we have the same old strategy from the employers and the same old answer from the Union. A mediator is not an independent arbitrator.  A mediator is on the employers' team.  So the "hope" that I referred to in the previous blog has materialized in the form of a mediator.  The employers' threatened to shut production down permanently, just like they do when they threaten and carry out the threat of moving production abroad, the Unions struck and the employers show willingness to talk and meet them at the table of negotiation for their concessionary platter. The Union officialdom has already made it clear there will be no talk of gains. More damage control is on order.

Meanwhile corporations hoards trillions in cash, wealthy individuals stash an estimated $26 to $32 trillion or more in offshore tax havens, US capitalism's war machine continues to run wild on borrowed money that we taxpayers will have to pay back with interest, and the heads of organized Labor still live a comfortable, conflict free life.

There's a bad moon rising.

AFL-CIO's answer to Hostess Bosses? Hope.

By Richard Mellor

"While Hostess Brands is trying to scapegoat the workers and members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), the real cause of the company's collapse can be traced back to its crony capitalism and consistently poor management. " AFL-CIO on Hostess dispute.

Taking an example from Barack Obama's playbook, Frank Hurt, the president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union says that he is in a "position to be hopeful" in the wake of the Hostess Brand's attempts today to have a judge accept the company's bankruptcy plans to close 36 plants and layoff 18,000 workers.

It seems that what Mr. Hurt and the entire trade union leadership are being hopeful about is that some good capitalists will step in and buy the business; rescue workers from the "crony capitalists" that have ruined it .  The Wall Street Journal opened it's piece on the dispute today, "The Union that brought the 85 year old baker of Twinkies and Wonderbread to its knees....", this is the dominant voice of capital in the US, this is their opening salvo in a report about these events.  The capitalists know their "line of march".

Hurt is hopeful, that there is "more than a good chance"  that some of these good capitalists will "swoop in to buy the profitable parts of the company and give his members their jobs back" the WSJ adds.  It seems the hopeful Union official has misunderstood the work arrangement.  If these jobs were the workers' jobs, "his members" jobs, they would still be in them.  His members own the ability to work, their life activity, that the owners of capital simply bought and used over a period of time just like they would buy a chair or a vehicle.  The right to work does not exist in capitalist society. They do this because in the process of producing commodities with this life activity (what we call work) the owners of capital extract more value than they lay out in the process.  This is where profit comes from once they sell the finished product.  When better opportunities arise, the owner of capital, in a capitalist society has every right to employ their capital somewhere else. This is what they mean by freedom.

So the good Union leader can "hope" all he likes, the process will be played out.  We did not "hope" Unions in to existence unfortunately, our lives would have been a little easier but history a lot more boring.  As the good Union leader hopes Donald Trump might come along and out of the goodness of his heart purchase the use of his members life activity again, the bosses make their position clear.
"Nobody wants to have anything to do with these old plants or these union or these contracts", says Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn, referring to the good and the "crony" capitalists. Rayburn explains that there was some interest from a group of coupon clippers that own Pabst Blue Ribbon but their interest was based on a nice bankruptcy and that a "..liquidated Hostess would be free of its collective bargaining agreements."  Investors buying the company certainly wouldn't do so if it meant hiring back the workers who had struck. It's, "..beyond wishful thinking" says the CEO who earns some $2 million a year. They know the class lines and make sure they are on the right side of them. Their politicians, the courts, the police, the military ( a somewhat more risky element) are all used ion the battle to eliminate the workers' organizations.

Ken Hall of the Teamsters, whose union accepted the company's concessions, has no answer to the bosses either.  He supported the concessions although he will not have to work under the contract he tells his members is inevitable. Hall's three salaries totaled more than $250,000 in 2008 according to the TDU.  He doubts the bakers' Union leadership's view that someone will come in and buy the company, "Our view is that this is going to be a fire sale.", he tells the WSJ. He is right as the comments from the coupon clippers show.  As I stated in an earlier piece on the Unions, the bosses are not afraid of the Ken Hall's of this world.  Every leading labor official in the country has made it clear openly and emphatically that there will be no resistance to the bosses' efforts to drive US workers down to the levels of our brothers and sisters in India or Vietnam.  The coupon clippers are very confident after years of cooperation from the heads of organized Labor, even cooperating with them in the firing of uncooperative local leaders as the UAW leadership did in the dispute between one of their locals and the Freightliner corp in Cleveland NC.

We do not have to look far to see an alternative to the "hope" tactic.  Every dispute at the point of production must be generalized and linked to the struggles in our communities against foreclosures, or home robbery as it should be called.  Against the lack of health care, the cuts in education the crisis of youth unemployment and the growth of the prison industrial complex.  The war against public sector workers and the services we provide is the same struggle. The public sector, the most unionized sector, is being blamed for the economic crisis just like the coupon clippers at Hostess are being blamed  by the Wall Street Journal.  Factories like Hostess should be occupied and appeals be made to all workers and our communties nationally to come to the aid of these workers.

The idea that we can rely on the so called "good capitalists" or their politicians to rescue us is a proven failure.  Every freedom we have, every benefit and progressive social legislation, every right we have, has been won through the struggle of organized workers against organized capital. We can only rely on our own strength and only have to look at our history and our best traditions to see what works.  Workplace occupations, mass direct action and through that, independent political action is the road we must take.  Being prepared to violate their laws, challenge their authority through mass direct action was what broke the back of Jim Crow, General Motors and the Industrial capitalists who murdered workers with impunity in their rapacious quest for profits.

We reject that we have to compete with other workers domestically or overseas.  Workers throughout the world are fighting for their lives and futures against the very same forces that are destroying our lives here in the US; we must unite with global workers' against global capital.  If we look closely we will see that the workers who were shot in South Africa for striking the mines there, were shot by forces under direction of the very same forces that are savaging workers here.  Our first step is to reject austerity and backward motion.  But we have to recognize that we have to go further.  The wealth in society is our collective product.  How it is used in future production should be determined by those who collectively created it. If we decide we stop producing Twinkies and apply capital in a different way then we do so for the collective benefit of society.   But no one loses the right to work.
We have to control how we produce life which means we have to take it from the hands of the clique that presently owns the capital which is an essential part of the production process.  But it is only that portion of it spent on human Labor power that adds value and creates the wealth that the coupon clippers amass which makes it our distinct product.

History changes. How we produce the necessities of life changes. The only thing constant is change said Marx.  Every ruling class teachers that the system of production they govern is the only system of production and will last for all time.  Human history proves this false. Workers don't control the production of ideas in society that are taught in their schools, and especially universities, and we don't own, manage and control the means of producing the needs of society either------but we can and it's time we did.  The future of humanity is dependent on it.

The Trade Union leadership has no answer to Hostess

Once again, a local isolated to fight global capitalism alone

I got this below from Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO.  It is the standard stuff. Of course he's right about the coupon clippers being vultures and all that, the same vultures that support Romney, support Obama, the same class that is. The may squabble about the details, the pace of the offensive, but they are united in their war against workers and the middle class.

Delphi, the auto parts maker also declared bankruptcy in order to renege on contractual obligations.  The two political parties, the courts, the media and the police are all used against workers in their offensive to take back 150 years of gains and have us compete with our brothers and sisters who are earning $3 a day in the factories of Vietnam.

The problem is that Trumka and the Labor hierarchy have no plan to stop it.  They support the Democratic Party whose politicians are savaging workers at home as well as waging predatory wars for these vultures abroad. 

The labor leadership has the same world view as the bosses.  Capitalism is the only system of production possible and the market is god.  They use terms that the coupon clippers do, "market share" and "crony capitalism".  Crony capitalism is a term the Wall Street Journal, the major mouthpiece of the coupon clippers' uses to describe nations, capitalist economies run by autocratic regimes that don't obey the rules. Healthy capitalism, organized theft, has rules to it.

So what Trumka is saying, is that capitalism is not at fault, "Crony Capitalism" is. But the shifting of production to cheaper, more profitable climes is exactly what capitalists do; that's their right.  Responding to global competition by destroying organized Labor and Unions built by the heroism and sacrifice of generations of American workers and using the state and the weapons in its arsenal to do so is simply the norm.

Trumka and the Labor Hierarchy also blame what is happening on "bad decisions".  "Poor management".  Anything but the system.  Anything but the market. Anything but the objective truth that Labor and Capital are two opposing sides; that capital is accumulated at the expense of Labor and in to fewer and fewer hands.  He talks about the worker's offering concessions but those nasty bosses simply want more. It's all about greed in the abstract, it's a totally apolitical view of the world.

Look at our history.  We have unions and living standards that were once the envy of the world because workers fought and died for them. (There is also the extreme exploitation of workers in the former colonial countries of course)  The problem with Trumka and the rest of Labor's officialdom is that concessions don't work.  Weakness breeds aggression as they say. Look at the horrific conditions workers in dictatorships and the third world suffer working for these same US "good" capitalists. It's not about individuals, good capitalists versus the crony ones, it's about the capitalist system itself.

Never having a national political party of our own has meant that so much of our progress has come through huge industrial struggles and battles in the streets, this and the crass, arrogant and brutal nature of the US capitalist class.  The present heads of organized Labor only have a position of concessions, of damage control.  They never have to work under the contracts they force on their members and the obscene salaries that many of them earn are also factors in their decisions but secondary to their view of the world.  They have no alternative, they do not believe that there is another way to organize the production of social needs; they are wed to the market, this is the cause of their failed approach.

The solution to the bosses' threatening to move production is to take it off them; but we need a party to do that.  In Hostess' case, the workers should occupy the factory and the local and national labor movement and our communities mobilized to support them and demand more jobs, more leisure time, more control, over production.; no to austerity and an end to their predatory wars.  The coupon clippers bleed these industries dry and have no absolute right to own the means of production or the right to destroy a community and generations of families that built it simply to increase their profits. This is a right we need to deny them.

The role of the Labor leadership has delayed the formation of a new movement, a direct action mass movement like the civil rights movement of the fifties that broke the back of the apartheid regime in the south and the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930's that forced the mighty GM to accept a Union. At some point this obstacle will be breached and there will be splits and fissures opening up within organized Labor, especially as movements outside of it have an effect on its internal life.  New leaders will arise, old ones will fall like rotten apples on a tree when the slightest breeze picks up.  Rank and file caucuses fighting to win, not die a slower death will arise in the workplaces and Union halls.

The pathetic whining from Labor's leadership for the bosses to be nicer, kinder, gentler capitalists will give way to an offensive that will take us back to our traditions that built our organizations in the first place. Meanwhile, Trumka and company will continue to ask us to send an e mail to this or that big business politician and that this will bring social change,  so in  the short term we will suffer more unnecessary hardships until the tide turns and it is beginning to do so.

Here's the AFL-CIO's fighting plan of action (Yawn)

Richard, Wall street vultures are blaming workers for getting rid of your sweets-and that's just not right.

You might have heard that Hostess Brands, the company that makes Twinkies, Ding Dongs and other desserts, filed for court permission to go out of business, and that it's blaming a worker strike for the shutdown.

The Wall Street hedge fund managers who run the company have squeezed every cent out of Hostess for eight years. And they've put their friends with no experience in the baking industry in high-level management positions.

Hostess workers believe in their company, and we need to stand with them-sign our pledge to support workers, not greedy CEOs who will cut and run for a quick buck. [ http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=5109 ]

What's happening here is a classic Bain Capital-style assault-blame the little guy to cover the greedy corporate policies that are gutting the middle class.

It's not just happening to the workers who make the great products Americans love. What's happening at Hostess is happening to workers all over this country. It's wrong. And it has to stop.

Crony capitalism and poor management drove Hostess into the ground, not the workers who are now paying the price. In this struggling economy, the greedy corporate executives are willing to let 18,000 people lose their jobs-just so they can pad their pockets.

Hostess' executives are now blaming workers who've offered their company multiple concessions and want it to succeed. This is what's wrecking our country.

Workers have borne the brunt of bad decision-making by executives who didn't know anything about the baking business. And they're the ones getting fired?

These brave workers need to know we stand with them-and we'll stand with everyone who will take a stand against the corporate race-to-the-bottom.

Support South African Farmworkers' strike: DLF press release

Democratic Left Front: press statement, 15/11/2012

SUPPORT THE FARMWORKERS STRIKE!
FOR A NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OF R150 A DAY!
          
            With the support of the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers' Union (CSAAWU) and of Mawibuye, the Democratic Left Front rejects the declaration by COSATU yesterday of a suspension of the farmworkers' strike for two weeks, but continues to support the call for a one-day general strike in two weeks time. It is clearly evident that the farmworkers have rejected the call to suspend the strike and the call reflected inadequate consultation with the strike committees. Moreover the police have now shot and killed at least one person -- Michael Daniels, a 28 year old farm worker – and possibly three in Wolseley. This continued brutality by the police is intolerable, and only reinforces the determination of the farmworkers to prolong the strike, and to win their demand of R150 a day minimum wage and improved living and working conditions. We call on COSATU, to avoid spreading confusion, to withdraw its declaration that the strike is suspended for two weeks.

            Farm workers do backbreaking work to produce food and drink for everybody in this country and many overseas, yet they are forced to work under unsafe and unhealthy conditions, to drink dirty water, live without electricity, live with poor toilet facilities, on poverty wages, suffering threats of evictions, and violent physical and verbal abuse and intimidation at the hands of the bosses. Workers in De Doorns earn R69 a day, of which, scandalously, R30 is deducted by their bosses for electricity, etc.

            CSAAWU’s joint Speak-Out Campaign, with Mawubuye, TCOE and the DLF, aims to bring an end to the oppression and exploitation of farm workers and farm dwellers by coming together to build solidarity, strength and hope amongst the rural working class. Workers have been intimidated and threatened when they try to build organization and when they speak out against abuses. Workers are dismissed, evicted, denied electricity and water and verbally and physically abused when they want to be together. Five worker leaders have been victimized by suspension on Leeuwenkuil farm in Agter-Paarl for this.

            Now farm workers have had enough! They have said they cannot accept being treated as little more than animals, being used to enrich a small elite of farmers who live in luxury, feeding off the continued exploitation and impoverishment of the workers and the rural communities in which they live. They can no longer accept being largely ignored by the very government that is supposed to ensure all workers receive a living wage and are treated with respect and dignity. Workers have no trust in an industrial relations system which had failed them thus far, merely keeping them in continued wage slavery. Enough is enough!

            The strike, which began in De Doorns, has spread to Paarl, Riebeeck West, Malmesbury, Moorreesberg, Ceres, Prince Alfred Hamlet, Saron and Citrusdal to the west and north and to Worcester, Robertson, Ashton and Bonnievale to the east and south. The demands may vary from area to area, but a general demand is for a minimum wage of R150 a day and improved living and working conditions. Workers are showing that it is only by their own efforts and self-organisation that reforms can be won and society transformed.

            On 13 November CSSAWU, in a coalition with the De Doorns Workers Committee, COSATU, Sikhula Sonke Trade Union, the Black Agricultural, Wine and Spirits Initiative (BAWSI), the Black Agricultural workers Union of South Africa, Mawubuye Land Rights Forum, Women on Farms Project, Trust for Community Outreach and Education, Surplus People’s Project and Food Sovereignty Campaign, met with the Minister of Agriculture, Ms Tina Joemat-Petersen. We explained that the workers wanted not less than R150 a day. This was in response to Ms Joemat-Petersen's speech to farmworkers in De Doorns when she supported the farmers paltry offer of R80 -- which was an insult to the dignity of workers and their families swimming in a sea of poverty.

            In more than 18 years, the ANC in government, either nationally or provincially, has done little or nothing to alleviate poverty among farmworkers in the Western Cape. The DA is no better. It has supported the farmers. Now Zille is asking Zuma to call the army in! The workers were right to refuse her a hearing. A few days ago provincial ANC chair Marius Fransman spoke to the farmworkers -- rather than dealing with the issues he launched a political attack on DA leader Helen Zille for going to Nkandla. Playing politics again instead of attending to peoples needs. And covering up for the exorbitant spending of R248 million of public money on the personal residence of President Zuma.

            CSAAWU has called for a R4500 a month minimum wage for farmworkers. We now demand, as a start, that the government increase the minimum wage on the farms to R150 a day. We reject the farmers' position that negotiations should take place farm by farm. This is an attempt to divide and isolate workers who have come together. The coalition told the minister we would refuse to negotiate any more on behalf of the workers until this was done. The workers will continue to press for this demand. De Doorns workers, who have already struck for two weeks, will suffer most but are prepared to continue to the end. They particularly need support with donations of food and money.

            Agri-South Africa's claim that there is "no crisis" on the farms is absurd, even from their own point of view. There is a crisis of extreme poverty, sometimes starvation -- which is the responsibility of the inhumanity of Agri-SA. We reject the DA's claim that these strikes are "politically motivated". They are motivated by people's needs for an acceptable life. They are self-organised, from below, like the strike of mineworkers, of which the epicenter is Anglo Platinum in Rustenburg. This is the sense in which Marikana has come to the Western Cape.

            We call on Mildred Oliphant, Minister of Labour, to intervene and urgently declare a national minimum wage for farmworkers of R150 a day. We call on Gugile Nkwinti, the Minister for Rural Development and Land Reform, to step in also. He is responsible for rural development, yet his department sorely neglects the interests of oppressed farmworkers.
          
            Police brutality will not stop the strike. Nor will farmers' violence. Workers' lives must be respected. We call on the Minister of Police to resign because his police now have another death, that of Michael Daniels, on their hands -- following the 34 dead on August 16 in the Marikana massacre, Andries Tatane, and countless others. Police activity must be reined in by the government, with no use of live ammunition, rubber bullets etc against workers demonstrating for the means of survival.

            Should the government not respond, the Democratic Left Front will support the call by the coalition for a 1-day general strike to demand a R150 legislated national minimum wage for farmworkers, and improved working and living conditions on the farms. We call on all the farmworkers' strike committees, meanwhile, to spread the strike. We also call on the strike committees of mineworkers to support the farmworkers demands and organize for this general strike.

            Together with the strike committees, with CSAAWU, with Mawibuye and with all other coalition members willing to support it, the Democratic Left Front is calling a mass rally of farmworkers at the Sports Stadium, Nkqubela, Robertson at 11am on Saturday 24 November. We call on all progressive forces to mobilize for this rally and to make donations for transport, banners, T-shirts etc.

FORWARD TO R150 A DAY FOR FARMWORKERS!
STOP VICTIMISATION OF FARM WORKERS!
FORWARD TO R12, 500 MINIMUM WAGE FOR MINEWORKERS AND FOR ALL WORKERS!
FOR UNITY OF MINEWORKERS AND FARMWORKERS!
FORWARD TO A ONE-DAY GENERAL STRIKE!
DOWN WITH CAPITALISM!
FORWARD TO SOCIALISM!

South African farmworkers' strike

Farmworkers show what they think of the cops

As reader are aware, the strikes in South Africa are not limited to the mining industry.  Farm workers have also taken action and like the workers in the mining industry these struggles have taken place without or in opposition to the established leadership. In the case of the South African Communist Party, they have openly collaborated with the bosses and the state in the violence against workers.  We share below a report on the recent strikes of farm workers in the Western Cape.

The Farm Workers' Strike: It's Far From Over
By Anna Majavu · 15 Nov 2012    http://sacsis.org.za/s/

The mines and the farms are two enduring symbols of old white colonial theft, of the minerals and land. Because of the monopoly of the National Union of Mineworkers, whose leaders and officials have long preferred compromise and co-determination over worker control, it has been difficult for mineworkers to strike – until the Marikana massacre.

It has possibly been even harder for farm workers to strike.

Human Rights Watch estimated recently that less than 3% of South African farm workers are organized. Most farm workers earn the minimum wage or well below, with many in the Western Cape still paid partly in alcohol even though white farmers claim that the ‘dop system’ was done away with years ago. Striking farm workers often face losing their homes on farms, where they have buried family members and where their children go to school.

Yet this week, farm workers went on strike in their thousands in rural towns in the province, with the added promise by Groot Constantia workers in the city of Cape Town of an imminent strike there.

Yesterday, COSATU and acting Labour minister Angie Motshekga declared the strike suspended for two weeks. This is not the case. Much like Marikana, COSATU and the ANC have no influence over this strike, which the farm workers have vowed to continue.

When the farm workers strike began in De Doorns last week, it took the ANC, DA and Cosatu by surprise. The farm workers in this small town 140 kilometres east of Cape Town blocked the N1 highway, set fire to the vineyards, and demanded a wage of R12 500 per month. This was a clear reference to the Marikana workers’ demand for the same monthly wage, which has since spread throughout the mines.

The Zimbabwean refugee rights group, PASSOP, rushed to the scene because the De Doorns farm workers had also allegedly looted Somali-owned spaza shops in the town. PASSOP officials who lived in the town for a year after the 2009 xenophobic attacks there, pointed out that the strike appeared to be spontaneous and not organized by any union.

In the Western Cape, farm workers tend to belong to non-COSATU unions, namely Sikhula Sonke – a women led farm workers union, and the independent and more leftist Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU).

The press is now reporting the Black Association of the Wine and Spirit Industry (BAWSI) as saying farm workers have suspended their strike. BAWSI is not a farm workers union, but a pro-ANC lobbying association with workers and businesspeople in it ranks, which aims to increase the levels of Black ownership in the wine and spirit industry. BAWSI has no authority to speak for 15 000 farm workers in the region.

The COSATU farm workers union, the South African Agricultural, Plantation and Allied Worker's Union, collapsed more than ten years ago. The Food and Allied Workers Union, another COSATU affiliate, was then designated to organize the farm workers but never did.

However, the De Doorns strike presented an ideal opportunity for COSATU to strike a blow against the DA, and COSATU quickly positioned itself as the voice of the strike, downgrading the farm workers demands to a modest R150 a day, or just R3300 per month.

COSATU claimed credit when workers on other farms as far as 70 kilometres away quickly took up the call for a R150 minimum wage. And after a general meeting in Franschoek, hundreds of workers affiliated to Sikhula Sonke downed tools on 13 November in solidarity with the De Doorns strikers, spreading the strike further.

However, these solidarity strikes were not of Cosatu’s making. By November 13, thousands of farm workers in Prince Alfred Hamlet in Ceres, in Wolseley and in Robertson had set up burning barricades, were setting fire to farm equipment and were being attacked by police. The workers were also calling for an end to labour broking on farms.

COSATU and ANC leaders had by then changed tactics and insisted that farm workers suspend their strike for two weeks while the government gazettes the new minimum of R80 per day on offer from the white farmers association.

The Cape Town-based Workers International Vanguard League has had activists on the ground in the area for the past week and reported that after the farm workers refused and vowed to continue the strike, police and militias made up of farmers then invaded De Doorns on the night of 14th November, opening fire on workers.

According to the activists, farm workers have agreed to be paid R150 per day and say they will strike until president Jacob Zuma gazettes this amount.

COSATU and the ANC have clearly not learnt any lessons from the mineworkers’ strike where their bid to crush workers who attempt to self-organise and take militant action, has been a flop.

In the farm workers strike, the DA at first openly sided with the farmers after arrogantly assuming that the disorganized farm workers’ strike would not last more than a few days. Once the strike spread, as the mine workers’ strike did, Helen Zille blamed COSATU for inciting violence, declared that only president Jacob Zuma could end the farm workers strike by increasing the minimum wage on the farms and repeatedly implored Zuma via Twitter to send in the army to crush the strike.

There is no reason why the white Western Cape farmers could not raise the wages of farm workers immediately - if they wanted to. In fact, Zille has known for a long time that the white farmers in the province are reluctant to pay even the existing minimum wage of R1500 per month. She is also aware of other abuses against farm workers – they are regularly transported like cattle on the backs of open trucks, and die in well-publicised accidents.

The DA, COSATU and ANC are all aware that Sikhula Sonke camped outside parliament three years ago in protest against a white farmer who forced workers to live in pigsties, and that CSAAWU is campaigning publicly against farmer Willie Dreyer from Leeuwenkuil farm in Agter-Paarl.

Dreyer allegedly evicted farm worker Patrick Philander, his wife and four children and laid false charges of attempted murder against him and another CSAAWU activist, Amos White, after they recruited other farm workers into the union.

And the internationally-publicised Human Rights Watch report into South Africa’s fruit and wine industries last year found farms to be “ripe with abuse” – with farm workers having their water and electricity disconnected, being harassed in the middle of the night by farmers’ guards and their dogs, being exposed to pesticides and being prevented from joining unions.

The ANC has previously fostered disunity between workers in De Doorns instead of trying to improve the workers’ lot. Three years ago, ANC ward councillor Mpumelelo “Poyi” Lubisi was named in affidavits supplied to the Legal Resources Centre as being a mastermind behind a xenophobic attack, which displaced 3000 Zimbabwean farm workers.

At that time, PASSOP spokesperson Braam Hanekom described De Doorns then as a “cut-throat environment that is a recipe for tension” with farmers hiring workers through “a thousand labour brokers” who took the lump sums and paid farm workers whatever lesser amount they were desperate enough to accept on any given day.

The farm workers can expect no help from the party, which rules the province – the DA, because the DA supports labour broking and white farm ownership monopolies specifically and the free market in general. The ANC and COSATU are only using the workers to score temporary political points against the DA and now seem as eager to end the strike, as they were to end the Marikana miners strike. As in Marikana, De Doorns represents the worst of South African party politics. Like the mineworkers, South Africa’s farm workers have long lived in slavery-like conditions and deserve the support of all to continue their strike and keep blocking the highways.
Majavu is a writer concentrating on the rights of workers, oppressed people, the environment, anti-militarism and what makes a better world.

24 hour strikes and protests throughout Europe

Europe wide strikes and protests in 23 countries. Then we have the miners strikes in South Africa that are threatening to disrupt global production of Platinum and they are being joined by striking South African farm workers. The heavily censored US mass media reports little if anything about this. After all, there's an important sex scandal to cover.

South Africa: farmworkers' strikes spread

From Martin Legassick

The South African papers today report farmworker strikes in all the areas marked on the map above. Democratic Left Front bodies such as CSAAWU and Mawubuye have formed a coalition with the De Doorns strike committee (the first to initiate, about a week ago), Western Cape COSATU and other bodies to take forward the strike movement. The DLF-COSATU link is a first and a big achievement. De Doorns workers earned R69 a day (with R30 a day deducted by the bosses for electricity etc!) and are demanding R150 a day. It is the start of the grape harvest season. In De Doorns the workers burned some vineyards. This is as important as, and no doubt inspired by, the mine strikes.

Amplats workers defiant, strike continues

Striking mineworkers at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) would not return to work, a miners' representative said in Rustenburg on Saturday. "The workers decided they won't go back to work. There are conditions that are unfavourable," Evans Ramokga said. "The strike is still on."

Hundreds of striking workers were gathered at a mass rally at the Olympia Park Stadium in Rustenburg on Saturday morning.The crowd was singing and dancing as police in Nyalas and vans kept watch over proceedings. A police helicopter was circling overhead.

On Friday Amplats management re-opened discussions on miners returning to work.
"The outcome of these discussions is that management has revised the initial offer to a once-off allowance of R4 500 [gross of tax] to be paid to each qualifying employee," it said in a statement.
"[This was] comprising a R2 000 loyalty or hardship allowance and a R2 500 safe start-up allowance to be paid two weeks after employees have returned to work and have commenced actual work."
Ramokga said the rally was also to ensure the safety and stability in Rustenburg and to stop violence.
"We are here mourning for our comrades who passed away during the strike all over the country."
He said they were also holding the rally to demand a living wage and better living conditions for all.
The workers said they would not oppose returning to work if their salary demands were met.
"We are looking for money. If they give us what we need, we can go back to work," said Simon Gqaza, an employee at Amplats for the last three years.

"I need R16 000. If they give me that money that I'm looking for I will go back to work anytime."
Amplats fired 12 000 workers after they failed to appear for a disciplinary hearing. They had been on a wildcat strike since 12 September, demanding to be paid a minimum of R16 000 a month.
The company then made the workers a re-instatement offer, which was not accepted.

Organised
During the rally the Democratic Left Front (DLF) handed out pamphlets and a spokesperson addressed the crowd offering support to the miners.

"Mineworkers are no longer prepared to accept the starvation wages offered by mine bosses, while they reap huge profits," the pamphlet read.
Spokesperson Vishwas Satgar said the DLF made a contribution because rallies have become a vocal point of solidarity.

"[We made the contribution] because we believe in the worker's cause. [The rallies] are a platform to amplify their cause, demands and struggle," Satgar said.
"We've made a modest contribution."

He could not give a specific amount, but said it was anywhere between R10 000 and R50 000. However he emphasised that the contribution was not only from them but also solidarity organisations who supported the miners.

"There's a strong feeling that the violence needs to come to an end."
He said he hoped the rally would send a strong message to mine bosses that a serious offer had to be put on the table.

The Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) also gave its support for the workers.
Spokesperson Mametlwe Sebei told workers the strike effort and strikers were becoming stronger by the day.
"We are strong because each and everyday we are becoming more organised."
He said workers were united.
"There is no compensation on the demand for a decent wage."
Spokesperson for the Marikana Support Campaign Rehad Desai also offered his support and called for miners to close down Amplats smelters.

The lawyer for the families of the killed Marikana miners and Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union in the Farlam commission into the shooting, James Nichol also addressed the crowd. He explained how he witnessed the shooting in his London home and decided to come to South Africa to assist.

"When the miner go down the mine he goes down poor and when he comes up he comes up poor."
In the meantime mine bosses continued to become richer, Nichol said.

Nob Hill and Raley's workers still on the lines

I spent some time on the picket lines again today. As I pointed out in an earlier blog, the workers may be out of the store, or most of them as there are some scabbing, but it's not a strike in the sense that there's any real effort on the part of the UFCW leadership or the leadership of the local labor movement to actually shut these places down.  Shoppers were going in and out and a number of them weren't very sympathetic. "You're lucky to have a job" was a comment I heard more than once from shoppers going in.

One Union staffer that was there, a person I've known for some time, immediately informed me that the Union's tactic with the shoppers crossing the line was to "kill them with kindness".   We have become so accustomed to a passive and non disruptive approach, the idea that we should actually prevent people from crossing picket lines.  When we go on strike we are are supposed to feel proud of the fact that we are not actually asking for anything, just to "keep what we have" as one striker put it to a shopper. The idea that we are living in hard economic times is also strong as this is what the bosses tell us and the top Union officials repeat it.  But as one worker said when this subject came up, "Our Union officials get raises and decent salaries, they seem to do alright in these difficult economic times."  What will encourage workers to honor our lines in these situations and actually join our struggles is if they see that we are fighting for them, that we are fighting for more Union jobs, more benefits and a better life for all workers and our communities.

The idea that no paid Union official should be paid no more than the average wage of the workers they represent was was a popular idea as well as all officials receiving the same strike pay as the workers when they're out on the line.

The Union leaderships argument that the customers are the key to victory (in other words this is a boycott with the workers out on the line) and that they will "agree to shop somewhere else when they are educated about our issues"  shows how disconnected they are from the public as well as the needs of their own members.  On this line and as I mentioned in the previous blog, so many workers have no benefits and if they do, work three jobs in order to earn enough to pay the rent with one of the jobs hopefully providing some benefits, that they are not so sympathetic to those who do have them.  They feel as I said, and not without some justification, that the Unions care only about their own members and do nothing for them.  This is not completely true as these days, the Union hierarchy refuses to defend the standard of living of their own members.

The goal of the UFCW hierarchy in this dispute as in all others seems to be the same, damage control.

For local readers there's a Nob Hill in Alameda, also in Walnut Creek and there's a Raley's in Pleasanton.

UFCW Local 5 strikes Nob Hill and Raleys

by Richard Mellor

Northern California grocery workers, members of UFCW Local 5 working at  at Raley's and Nob Hill stores are on strike.  I have been on a couple of picket lines that last few days and it appears the Union leadership's strategy and tactics have not changed.  The picketers have been instructed not to impede scabs, either shoppers or scabbing co-workers.  The strikers must be polite and not engage or "harass"them I was told.

The workers are actually on strike in the sense that they are not at work but there is no real effort on the part of the Union leadership or the local Labor movement to shut down these operations. I am not familiar with all the details but from what I gathered talking to workers the issues are wages and benefits as usual.  The bosses are determined to lower wages further and eliminate benefits altogether over time.

Readers may remember the 2004 grocery workers strike down in Southern California. It was very successful in pretty much shutting down operations and the UFCW sent a lot of workers up north to man informational pickets calling for a boycott by shoppers up here. I was on those picket lines almost every day. I wold stop there for lunch at work and also after work. Some of us were also active in a solidarity group we formed to assist the rank and file in understanding what was going on and to try to help them counter the leadership's concessionary policies.  From the beginning the leadership's position was concessions.  This is the standard position of the entire leadership of organized Labor which has contributed to the drastic reduction in living standards and Union power in the workplace over the years.

In the 2004 strike as picketers up here urged shoppers to not go in, one shopper asked me who was stocking the shelves in there. "Aren't they in the same Union?" he asked me.  "They are, but a different local" I replied, and he says, "And you're asking me not to shop when their own brothers and sisters are working behind a picket line?"  I accepted he had a point, but he still should not cross. the UFCW here would not pull their members off the job as it would have been a contract violation and the Union hierarchy, gentlemen and women that they are would not violate an agreement with the employer.

That strike was eventually defeated although the Union heads often paint defeats as victories if they can end the dispute with slightly fewer concessions than the bosses' asked for.  But the present President of UFCW Local 5, Ron Lind was also in the forefront of that sellout.  In the heat of the dispute he announces in the press that the bosses were being too greedy, too damn unfair and aggressive, that unlike them, “We want to make changes with a scalpel, not a chain saw.”

Well that was reassuring------to the bosses of course.

The heads of organized Labor have only a defensive strategy, damage control is their position. They plead as Ron Lind did eight years ago for the bosses to just be a little nicer, a little less aggressive.  Union officials like Lind can afford to be patient.  The 2004 strike lasted five months during which officials still get to take home their $150,000 (and much more for some) paycheck. During strikes, all paid officials should be earning strike pay just like the folks on the line and no paid Union official should earn more than the average wage of the workers they represent.

One worker on the line told me today that the problem is that the boss isn't afraid of the Union and they "need to be a afraid of us."  He was right about that. The officialdom, as Lind did in 2004, let the boss know that concessions are OK, just the level of them is up for discussion. 

On the line today, as people walked past (the entrance is always kept free of picketers) some strikers would ask very nicely if the scab would consider shopping somewhere else as the company was trying to take away their benefits.

We got in to a discussion about the situation in the US.  One guy said it's not like the old days that people "don't care" any more. Another was arguing that most workers today don't like Unions at all. I explained that I had a different view.  When we ask people not to cross because the boss is taking away our benefits, many workers will say,"What benefits? I don't have any benefits."  This happened numerous times when I was on the lines in 2004.  Some young workers are working three jobs with one of them the benefit job.  A lot of workers feel, with some justification, that the Unions haven't been there for them and that they care only about their own members.  In the 2004 strike, and with most contract settlements, new hires get screwed as I mentioned in previous blog.  Not being hired yet they aren't able to vote on  a contract that will give them lower pay and worse benefits.

This causes a lot of hostility on the job and toward the Union on the part of those who were sacrificed and had no say in i; it weakens the Union. All of these things don't affect the officials though, they don't have to work under the conditions of the contracts they tell their members to accept and their wages and benefits aren't affected either.

The answer to winning over other workers and workers in the communities is not to confine our demands in any dispute simply to those issues that only affect the workers on strike.  To defeat this offensive of the corporations we have to build a wider movement and go on an offensive of our own. We demand what we and all workers need to live a decent and productive life, we reject what high paid officials and the bosses tell us is not realistic. If we listened to them we'd never have won anything including the right to a Union. If a worker considering crossing a picket line sees the power of organized Labor being brought to the table and thousands of workers out there fighting for jobs, health care, increased benefits etc. it will become a pole of attraction.  Power is what attracts, not the passive pleading approach of our leaders today.

I went to Local 5's website to see what sort of inspirational stuff was up there. What were the demands of the negotiators.  I wanted to see what the Union was fighting for. This is the closest I got on the front page:

"Collective bargaining, or negotiating a contract that covers all facets of work under which the local's members are employed, is not easy business. Particularly in the worst economy since the great depression, coming to agreement with employers who want to slash wages and benefits, can only succeed with the full participation of the membership. To that end the union has set up a dedicated email address (negotiations@ufcw5.org) where members can provide ideas and proposals for contract talks."

Not very inspiring. It would appear that it's business as usual trying to come to an agreement with the boss that wants to "slash wages and benefits".  Coming to an agreement on how much to slash can only be done with the participation of the membership, says the Union.  Even better, winning higher wages and more  benefits, a shorter workweek which would create more jobs for those young people that might cross our lines is also only possible with the participation of the membership, but not the participation that the present leaders of our union want, a passive acceptance of the status quo.  We must reject the idea that there is a bad economy, this is not so, there is money everywhere. When we want to participate to fight back, this participation is frowned upon and suppressed.

Many workers I have met on picket lines in the last few years are there for the first time as due to the refusal of our leadership to organize a fightback, strikes have declined drastically.  The officialdom call workers off the job without any real preparation for winning or serious involvement in the process on their part.

We are in a struggle on two fronts really; one is against the boss which every worker understands in our gut.  The other is against the concessionary policies of our present leadership from the highest levels on down. This is more difficult as anyone that stands against these policies will be labelled a trouble maker and divisive. Going on the offensive demanding jobs, increased benefits like vacations and sick leave and such and for increased wages and an end to two tier systems bringing all up to the higher tier not to mention pensions we can live on.  This is what will inspire our own members.  reaching out to our communities and the low waged linking up their struggles with ours in a generalized movement against the corporate offensive, this is what will win.

In the general strike in Oakland last year when 30,000 occupied 14th and Broadway and then shut down the docks for three shifts, the cops refused to interfere. They didn't interfere because the crowd was working people, women with children, the disabled, black, white, Asians Latinos, everyone. Thousands of workers and our families.  This is power, not indiscriminate individual vandalism and smashing windows. This is reactionary self indulgence and is not the method of the working class. This doesn't mean the cops won''t wade in, but it reduces the chances in the beginning anyway.

The present leadership of our Unions are wedded to the Team Concept, the view that the boss and workers are on the same team and that we have to help them compete against their rivals for profits and market dominance.  This is the the basis for their betrayals and concessionary policies. Their obscene salaries and perks are secondary features. They will not take the road that will lead to victories because it brings them in to conflict with the bosses and they have built a relationship with them based on the above policies and Labor peace.

We have to build opposition caucuses and groupings in our locals that openly campaign against these policies and offer us an alternative program and strategy, a direct action fight to win strategy that built our Unions int he first place. Building oppositions along these lines that can challenge the present leadership will be a pole of attraction to thousands of rank and file workers who have given up on our Unions and be the springboard to the communities, youth and all those suffering the consequences of the market and the policies of the 1%.

After the 2004 strike Ron Lind said: ”We could have gone for a bigger wage increase, but it would have had to come out of our health-care benefits plan…….” I'm sure not "his" health care plan. This reveals the limits of Ron Lind's thinking.  For him, and all the top leaders, what is the point of going after gains.  What we gain on the one hand we'll lose on the other is his excuse for giving away hard won gains.  We'd have to rob peter to pay Paul. The idea that our gains should come from the bosses pocket doesn't enter in to it. How can it? The boss is a team member.

The boss of what was then Albertsons made his position on the 2004 strike very clear to his buddies at the top.

"[The strike] was very costly, but [the settlement] was one of the best investments our company ever made" Business Week 1-4-05.

They know what they're doing.

Note: If you are a grocery worker, trade Union member or worker that wants to influence the direction we are headed in or change your union, contact us at: we_know_whats_up@yahoo.com

More here

MARIKANA SUPPORT CAMPAIGN PRESS RELEASE

AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL

30/10/2012

Yesterday evening, the Amplats workers had a meeting to discuss the false allegations from the national media that they have signed an agreement with management on their conditions of reinstatement.

The management announced that it expected workers to resume their duties this week and that they have reached a compromise with the worker. Yet none of the strikers have showed up at work, they have crushed and disagree with the terms of the proposal.

Last night, the police disrupted the strikers' meeting outside Jabula village, dispersed the workers with rubber bullets and arrested 14 of them, going into people's shacks and harassing them.
This morning, the strike committee called for a general meeting in response. One of the shafts couldn't make it in time as it had already been dispersed by the police.
About 6000 workers met at the Bathopele shaft.

As they were leaving, the workers were confronted with a massive police blockade of about 40 police cars. The police shot heavily at them, and blasted their vehicles with live ammunition. They shot and wounded a worker in the legs. Most workers dispersed and fled as they were under heavy fire.

The workers are adamant that they will not go back to work unless they at least get a living wage for all of R12 500. After their meeting with management yesterday they called for a peaceful resolution of the issue. Again, the management is showing that they will only end the strike through brute force. This is the second time this week that rubber bullets, teargas and stun grenades are used against the Amplats workers in Rustenburg.

More on South African strikes

We are putting a fair bit of South African stuff up but there really is a critical situation in that country as wildcat strikes in the mining industry continue following public sector disputes and the likelihood of further strikes in  the transportation sector.  The collaboration with international capital on the part of the leadership of the miner's union, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP) has led to the formation of independent workers' organizations and rival unions.

The South African working class returns to the forefront of the struggle against global capitalism and its collaborators. They need our solidarity and support.  We are also facing a savage assault on our living standards which is being waged by the same forces that are shooting striking workers in South Africa.

The article below gives an excellent account of the mood and the subsequent turmoil erupting within the traditional organizations.

RM

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This is from the Daily Maverick

Analysis: War is not going to return NUM to the top

• Sipho Hlongwane
• 

  29 October 2012 01:57 (South Africa)
  
  On Saturday, leaders of NUM, Cosatu and the Communist Party marched in Rustenburg to reclaim the territory. The march didn’t exactly go as planned; the tactic of confrontation rather than talks rarely brings lasting results. To find its way back to the top of the mining sector, NUM will have to do much more than just fight. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.

On 16 October, several thousand workers gathered on a hilltop inside of Gold Fields’ sprawling KDC West operation just outside of Carletonville. It was the day that the company handed down an ultimatum to all workers: quit striking or lose your jobs. Company reports stated that most obeyed, but about 1,500 didn’t. They were waiting for Senzeni Zokwana, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to come and formally make them an offer.

It was one actually made by the Chamber of Mines on behalf of the company, but the striking workers wanted their union to make the offer. Zokwana had also apparently promised to come and speak to the workers. What he didn’t seem to grasp was that this was Last Chance Saloon for NUM. He didn’t pitch up, but his opposite number – a fierce rival at the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) – did. Joseph Mathunjwa met the miners and managed to convince most of them to join his union.

Then came reports claiming that NUM had been booted from the premises. Management had come around and locked the offices, we were told, and the union was suspended because more than 90% of the staff had joined AMCU. It sounded quite improbable. For one thing, unions are usually given about six months to regain their 50% + 1 majority before losing the status of bargaining partner. Phone calls to the company and NUM quickly quashed that rumour. But the fact that the workers we phoned wanted us to believe that the old union was dead and gone away was telling in and of itself.
In many of the places where wildcat strikes have broken out, we have gone to talk to people, and very few of them are willing to entertain NUM anymore. At Lonmin, the sentiment is one of profound hatred. What had happened is that the old union negotiated a pay rise last year. Then a demand for R12,500 sprang up, and somehow the miners believed that AMCU were the people who could get it for them. Not NUM, whom they thought were a block to a better wage. That’s quite amazing. Things got to a point where people like Daluvuyo Bongo, the NUM secretary at Lonmin, were murdered.

Photo: Cosatu official Billy Zulu is beaten by Amplats strikers at Olympia stadium Rustenburg. 27 October 2012, Rustenburg, North West. Photo Greg Marinovich
The demand that NUM must go is an integral part of many of these wildcat strikes. The atmosphere in the area has been anything but peaceful. The decision by Cosatu to march in Rustenburg was therefore always a brave one, but not necessarily a clever one. Predictably, it didn’t go well. NUM people got engaged in a heavy physical struggle with striking Anglo Platinum workers. The rally only went ahead because of a heavy police presence that forced NUM's way through to the Olympia stadium.

Just before the rally commenced, Cosatu said: “Right at the heart of where the mining crisis began – Rustenburg – on 27 October 2012, we will be convening a Workers Rally, which will kick-start with marches on various challenges that beset our society. Through the Workers’ Rally, we will mobilise our members to stomp the length and breadth of the country, mobilising society towards solidarity protests which will be anchored around the Section 77 Notice, whose primary aim is to achieve radical transformation in the economy through the full implementation of the Freedom Charter.”
From the perspective of the striking Amplats workers, the decision by NUM and Cosatu to march in their newly-established turf was a declaration of war. The union is seen to be on the side of the companies and the government, and thus inherently opposed to the demands of the workers. Can they really be surprised that they were greeted with rocks and jeers?

It would have been a better idea for Cosatu and NUM to try to reclaim their majority and privileged position in the mining sector by negotiating their way back into the hearts of the workers. Exactly the things that they haven’t been doing since the uprising began.

Police pull a Marikana solidarity activist, Rehad Desai, away from Cosatu members who attacked and stripped him in front of SACP's Blade Nzimande, Cosatu's Zwelinzima Vavi & Sidumo Dlamini and NUM's Frans Baleni at Olympia stadium. 27 October 2012, Rustenburg, North West. (Greg Marinovich)

At the rally on Saturday, South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande said, “NUM is the only best capable union to represent mineworkers in South Africa.” But is it for him to say? The rejection of the “only best capable union” has been strikingly clear.
Cosatu’s aggression is understandable in the face of the persecution of its local leaders. The deaths of men like Bongo cannot go unanswered. But the march did not purport to mete out justice. Rather, it claimed the far more difficult task of regaining lost ground by reclaiming jaded and disillusioned hearts. And as such, it couldn’t have been a bigger failure. It simply served to reinforce the narrative of belligerence and arrogance that the workers have written of the mineworkers’ union.

If Cosatu and NUM are serious about reclaiming the platinum belt, then they need to go to the workers hat-in-hand and ask them how they want to be represented. The time for issuing orders and platitudes is over. If they don’t, AMCU will make sure that the workers know that the ANC-affiliated unions called for the police to arrive, rather than for the workers to get what they wanted. The very same way every miner in the country will find out that the NUM is supporting SAPS application to the Farlam Commission.

The truth is that AMCU is untested as a union. But NUM has been tested and failed, and workers are clearly raring for change. It will be almost impossible for NUM to force its way back to the hearts of the miners it lost. DM
Main photo: Police open fire on striking Anglo Platinum miners as they and Cosatu members clashed at Olympia stadium Rustenburg. 27 October 2012, Rustenburg (Photo Greg Marinovich