GRIPE SESSIONS vs CLASS STRUGGLE…a critique of Wendy Thompson and the Auto Workers Caravan, and a call for autoworker resistance by whatever means necessary

I attended the rally in 1996 as did many other supporters of auto workers from around the country and Canada. It was well attended but I was a bit surprised that the event was a rally held some distance from the entrance to the auto show. I was not the only one in attendance that day that wondered why we were picketing one thousand feet or so from the entrance to the event and a couple of them told me that this was an agreement the organizers had with the police and authorities.  There was no attempt to picket in front of the place or in any way disrupt the event which I thought was a mistake.  But it was good to be there.  I had gotten some support from my Local for the Soldiers of Solidarity and we donated $500 to their efforts.

As we picketed up and down about 1000, feet or so from the event, a few auto workers wanted to cross the street and picket but were told by organizers that they were to limit their picketing to the assigned area.  These type of agreements are commonly made between the Labor hierarchy, and the authorities even during strikes these days as they have become nothing but 24 hour protests designed to let off steam rather than stop production. .  But about 150 auto workers decided to ignore “protocol” and just started across the street and I went as well as I believed it was a good idea.

We crossed the street and it woke the police up who were quite happy earning their overtime, confident in the fact that, as agreed, nothing would occur that was scripted and outside the guidelines agreed to between the parties. We crossed the street and made a left turn down the sidewalk towards the auto show.  The cops immediately left their perches and rushed across the street putting barricades up to prevent us from moving closer to the event.  The area outside the auto show is public property people assumed and we could peacefully picket there.  The cops held us at the barricade and the mood around me was defiant and electric.  People were shouting that “the criminals are in there” and kept chanting.  The cops definitely seemed sympathetic to a degree and when one demonstrator asked why we were being stopped from our constitutional right to picket the event the cop told him that the agreement was to stay on the other side in the area assigned. But it was clear people felt better, at least they were doing something.

We pushed the envelope a bit and stood there chanting for a while.  The mood was very good as people felt they were at least confronting the authorities in a small way rather than just pacing up and down passively challenging nothing.

The group turned around and started marching back up the sidewalk to cross the street again and rejoin the main group and I followed.  As we crossed the road a few auto workers suggested we do the same on that side of the street, march up to the barricades and gather there demanding our right to go and picket.  I didn’t think there was a mood for this and wasn’t really in favor of it but a few more supported the idea so it changed my mind and I went along with them as did some other friends from Chicago, a carpenter and a teacher.

What happened next was bit disturbing.  Wendy Thompson, who I assume is one of the organizers as her name is on the e mail I received.  Came up to me and attacked me and the two people from Chicago saying that we had no right to be there, that we were from California and were “not even UAW members”. Some of the auto workers that were witness to this divisive tirade were a bit shocked by it. It’s certainly not a strategy that is good for the workers movement.  In my 25 years of activity in the Labor movement though, I have found that the  basis for this type of personal attack is that the attacker does not agree agree with one’s political views or ideas about strategy that can take our movement forward and having no viable answer to them makes personal attacks.  I clearly supported the more aggressive approach that a large group of rank and file auto worker’s took and she didn’t. Some leaders don’t like to lose control for one reason or the other, normally its because they don’t really have faith in the ranks to lead.  The rank and file who heard her remarks didn’t support them so they never had the intended effect of introducing division amongst us although her position clearly helped to keep the event within the limits acceptable to it by the authorities.

I think that the real differences though are worth discussing.  I see that the upcoming rally or protest is pretty much the same, basically a collective gathering where workers can air their complaints and demand justice.  But the bosses are not moved by this, nor are their political representatives. I think it was Frederick Douglas who said that power never concedes anything without a demand.  But the demand in itself is not what forces the power to concede anything; it is the action taken to wrest it that matters.

The other and most damaging aspect of this strategy is that workers eventually get demoralized as it is really a gripe session strategy as opposed to a strategy that is designed to win.  Protests like this don’t work, especially protests that are in reality just an airing of grievances. A number of auto workers I spoke to in 2006 agreed that it would have been much more effective to have organized a picket outside the event that people would have to pass through even though they wouldn’t honor it as most of them would not be the best types to say the least.  This, coupled with a planned sit down inside and disruption of the event would have been a tremendous boost to morale and would have had a far greater effect nationally.  Code Pink does this so it’s not the end of the world and it lets the bosses know that we are not going to allow business as usual when they attack us. We can hound them like they hound us rather than whine to them about how bad they are treating us and that they should be nice. And Obama’s disgusting and cowardly silence regarding the Gaza massacres should show anyone with a inkling of sense where his loyalties lie.

The Chicago furniture factory occupation a couple months ago was a step in the right direction and this strategy is what will open the door to saving  jobs in auto and it is what built the UAW in the first place.   Building committees inside plants and linking these committees with communities also fighting back and having a stake in a reorganized and job providing transportation industry is also crucial.  Millions are faced with losing their homes and groups are emerging that are beginning to use fight to win direct action tactics. Workplace struggles cannot be limited to one workplace, one Union, one issue.  We have to generalize this struggle.  There is a group in Detroit that is fighting evictions both legally and using more traditional methods that rely on our own strength.  Despite the reduced numbers, auto workers still have considerable economic power especially when the non union plants are included and they should be. As a retired higher paid member of the working class I always made the point with my co-workers that if we don’t want the lower paid to scab on us in the event of a strike we have to build relations with them and fight for them and with them for the type of jobs we had; decent wages and benefits.

The Financial Times editorial in defense of the massive infusion of public money admits that leading up to this crisis, “The financial services industry engorged itself, ran up large profits and paid its staff huge bonuses.”  And this is just the tip of the iceberg, it is not just financial services that made billions.  There is no need for us to go backwards.

I would argue that tactics I have suggested while fighting for demands that meet society’s needs as opposed to what are acceptable to the capitalist class and the Democrats are tactics that will open the road to victory rather than leave workers demoralized and feeling that there is nothing we can do; that the enemy is invincible.  They capitalist class has shown they cannot manage society, they cannot manage auto or the production of decent transportation for society.  The need for the public ownership of auto and the transportation industry as a whole under workers control and management is crucial and is the only lasting solution to this crisis.  No matter how well intentioned, endless protests and public gripe sessions that don’t challenge the enemy’s interests don’t work except to demoralize worker’s and re-enforce the view that we can’t win; they de-activate people.  It’s almost impossible to draw people in to political activity with its subsequent sacrifices around a program of concessions or repeated pleas for help and fairness  from the perpetrators of the violence.

Richard Mellor

On Jan 2, 2009, at 5:22 PM, List Admin wrote:

—– Original Message —–

From: Tiffany Ten Eyck

Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 2:48 PM

Subject: [labornotesdetroit] Auto Workers Call for Jan 11 Auto Show Rally

Auto Workers Call for Rally at Detroit Auto Show January 11

Auto workers have called for a rally on January 11 at 1 pm on Jefferson Ave. outside of press day of the North American International Auto Show. With news of the Bush administration’s $17.4 billion loan to the auto industry being tied to game-changing concessions that could erode wages across the board, auto workers will rally for long-term solutions for the auto industry’s problems that don’t unfairly blame workers for failed corporate policies.

Join us January 11. Dress for winter! Bring a sign!

Download a flyer at www.autoworkercaravan.org.
Contact Wendy Thompson at 313-892-7974 or wthomp4490@aol.com.

Labor Notes on the loan: Auto Workers Told to Take Concessions, Abandon Retirees

More Background:

The auto loan calls for conditions that would gamble half of the fund paying for retiree health care in company stock, while wages and working conditions are expected to be “competitive” with those of workers in non-union internationally-owned transplants in the South. Auto workers in the South will continue to lose ground at the same time, as their companies look to index their wages with state averages rather than UAW standards.
Lowering wages and weakening work conditions in auto will only further erode wages and benefits of all workers and will do nothing to help alleviate the auto industry’s crisis. Auto worker wages make up only 5% of the sticker cost of a Big Three vehicle. Why are auto workers making the sacrifices?

The last rank-and-file led auto worker rally of the Detroit auto show was in 2006 after Delphi announced bankruptcy, threatening the jobs and benefits of thousands of auto workers while executives banked the big bucks.

Auto workers have called for long-term solutions to the crisis facing U.S. industry such as green conversion and environmentally sustainable production. Workers have also been advocating for support of a national single-payer health care program that would level the playing field for U.S. workers. The fight for union contracts is also a central theme, with workers backing the Employee Free Choice Act, which makes the road to unionization fairer.

Auto workers have invited workers in all industries and the community to the rally, knowing that if the Bush administration and their allies in Congress are able to get these concessions, wages and benefits of all workers will suffer.

Fight For Health Care for All
Stand up for Union Jobs
Build Green Industry

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“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” (Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.)

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