HEAVY LIFTING

...an industrial union can no longer match the economic power of these new giants...

...Having won job and financial security, they protect their prerogatives by clinging to moderate policies and dampening the militancy of the rank and file...

...We are in the midst of a Government-managed depression in which President Carter forced rea1 wages down by decreeing "voluntary" wage guidelines that fell short by 5 per cent of meeting price increases in the past three years...

...But there has been a vast expansion of the reach—and appetite—of conglomerates and multinational corporations...

...Nothing less will suffice...

...But it is no longer labor's style to violate repressive laws...

...Only one-sixth of its investment remained in telecommunications...

...They will be tomorrow's successors to Bob Travis, Roy Reuther, Harry Bridges, Farrell Dobbs, Genora Johnson—the people who brought the movement to life in the 1930s...

...Despite the conservative, lackluster leadership of today's unions, thousands of secondary local officials—young shop stewards, labor educators, and general dissidents^—are waiting in the wings to forge a new and more radical leadership...

...Stevens—and perhaps forced the company to yield—by refusing to weave its cloth, but that would have been against the law...

...Today, our nation needs a planned economy...

...They were just as morally sound as Martin Luther King's marches for civil rights...

...But union officials who now draw high salaries for their soft, safe jobs are no longer inclined to challenge unjust laws by refusing to obey them...

...HEAVY LIFTING Five not so easy pieces for the unions BY SIDNEY LENS If there is a shift to the Right in the United States today, as the mass media and most major party politicians insist, there is also a countervailing trend—a shift to the Left...

...A certain degree of solidarity still distinguishes the labor movement—teamsters, for example, usually (but not always) respect the picket lines of other organizations...

...After a steady rise, in good times and in bad since 1938, the trend was reversed in 1979, 1980, and 1981...

...And if it increases the military budget, it fuels inflation...

...ITT illustrates the point: In 1961, its operations were almost exclusively in the telecommunications industry...

...a redistribution of income, and a reorientation of society away from militarism...

...The auto workers' union— vanguard of the 1930s—is shrinking as the industry reels under the impact of foreign competition, and will lose even more members in the era of the "world car...

...The center of power within the movement until the 1880s was the city central body...

...If it wages war in Vietnam or elsewhere, it rearranges all national priorities...

...But it is a limited solidarity that stops at the borderline of illegality...

...5. We have moved from the laissez-faire capitalism of the 1920s to "controlled" capitalism after 1933, and now to state-managed capitalism...

...Stevens...

...The South remains unorganized, as do such holdout industries as textiles and chemicals...

...Last spring's surge of opposition to U.S...

...Americans are accustomed to thinking in terms of "continuum"—what existed yesterday will go on tomorrow, with minor improvements...

...Half a century later, we may be in the calm before a new and powerful storm...

...But this state of affairs won't last forever...

...The steel workers could have shortened the recent coal strike, or prevented it, by announcing they would not handle scab coal...

...the scales in that confrontation will be the labor movement...

...the decline will certainly continue in 1982 and, perhaps, for years to come...

...more and more coal is dug in non-union Western strip mines...

...Even the construction trades unions, the bastion of the AFL not too long ago, are effectively being challenged by such non-union forces as the Committee for a Union-Free Environment...

...It is unlikely that the rest of labor's leadership would have supported officials of the clothing workers' unions who engaged in such a boycott...

...President Reagan has created an adverse climate for wage improvements by the sharpest attack on the poor in a half century...

...A full century after the German working class gained national health insurance under the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, American unionists are still far from achieving that goal...

...But unions now lose half or more of the National Labor Relations Board representation elections, and they are not penetrating new fields with any vigor...

...To match power with management of a company that earns half of its profits abroad, a union must enroll workers in the company's overseas subsidiaries as well as in most of its domestic operations...

...They need only the historical insight that will help them formulate a strategy for the 1980s...

...intervention in El Salvador was more vigorous than anything we witnessed at a comparable time in the Vietnam era...

...An agenda for a new, radical labor movement will have to come to grips with some basic realities that often escape our attention, though they are of urgent concern...

...Even the Catholic hierarchy has begun to challenge the arms race...

...And the force most likely to tip Sidney Lens, a veteran labor leader, is a contributing editor of The Progressive...

...Clothing workers could have added to the pressure on J.P...

...National unions do belong to international federations, but these have yet to become instruments for concerted economic action...

...The forging of local coalitions should be vigorously pursued, untii the nation is dotted with action groups for every conceivable progressive purpose...

...Today, a new structure must be devised, one conducive to the efforts of a conglomerate's employes to take unified action on a company-wide basis...

...The multinationals have had a similar effect...

...Such coalitions at the grass roots could be the backbone of the new party...

...In a choice between what is legally permissible and what is morally correct, the movement of the 1930s chose the morally correct—and made its greatest strides...

...For labor to continue thinking in old terms, and conceiving of small changes, would be a catastrophic blunder...

...The Taft-Hartley Act, the Landrum-Griffin Act, and other anti-labor laws have cut into union solidarity by prohibiting such practices as "secondary boycotts...

...It was evident that growing numbers of unionists are willing to build coalitions with groups—even radical groups—outside the labor movement, joining in energy coalitions, in antiwar demonstrations, even in coalitions with the unemployed...

...social ownership of such basic industries as banking, insurance, and energy...

...Labor must begin thinking of itself as the fulcrum of a new and different kind of political party—a coalition that would include the antiwar movement, the women's movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the civil rights movement, the Native American movement, and similar forces that share a commitment to basic social change...

...Unions could begin electing stewards, just as they now select shop stewards, to handle community and local grievances—transit fares, housing code enforcement, red-lining, and the like...

...By 1933, six times as many workers were out on strike as had been in 1930...

...The emergence of the conglomerate obviously blunted the strike weapon on which labor had depended since 1886...

...If it tightens National Labor Relations Board rules, it makes it more difficult for unions to organize and negotiate...

...The CIO intro-duced industrial unionism into the mass production industries so that it could keep watch on the economic power of the corporate titans of the day...

...The company dealt with fifteen national unions and scores of locals, none capable by itself of significantly impairing operations by going out on strike...

...Keynesian economics, the play book of America's economy for four decades, ran out of steam in 1971—just as "free enterprise" and "rugged individualism" ran out of steam in 1929...

...Government now makes major decisions affecting workers...

...Here are five critical factors I would place at the top of the list: 1.Labor long ago stopped "organizing the unorganized...

...The sit-down strikes were acts of civil disobedience in the face of a gross injustice—the denial by business and government of the workers' right to bargain collectively...

...If it sets wage guidelines of 7 or 9 per cent, it can compel unions—under present circumstances—to accept such guidelines...

...A new vision is needed...

...A mood of desperation is already building in the rank and file, and it evokes the mood that sparked the labor revolt of the 1930s—especially as real wages decline...

...What all of this means to labor is that independent political action must become the first order of union activity...

...3. In real dollars, workers' living standards have been declining recently for the first time in four decades...

...The Solidarity Day march on Washington was the most massive demonstration in recent labor history...

...What we are witnessing is not a simple swing in one direction but a polarization—a drawing of the lines that will ultimately lead to a decisive confrontation between Right and Left...

...The point is that labor must rethink its structure...

...Some months ago, I spoke at a conference of some 600 local union stewards, shop committee members, and dissidents in revolt against their organizations...

...Granted, a few members, a few shops, a few locals are added here and there from time to time, and there is still an occasional—though rare—victory like the one over J.P...

...The steel workers' union is slumping, too, in basic steel and in fabricating plants...

...Labor must vie with big business for control of the state— but that can not be done through the pro-business Democratic Party...

...And the teamsters' union, America's largest labor organization, is held at bay by large companies such as Overnite and Viking, which have successfully resisted unionization...

...The level of political discourse was higher than any I've heard in the labor movement for many years...

...Today, we face a quantum jump...

...The auto workers who occupied General Motors property in 1936 and 1937 were obviously breaking the law—but if it had not been for the sit-down strikes, the CIO would not have flourished, nor would the movement have attained its present dimensions...

...The coal miners' union now covers only half its jurisdiction...

...Moreover, there is an increasing tendency on the part of management to demand "give-backs"—the surrender of wages or benefits previously won by labor...

...And some mechanism must be established to coordinate joint strikes with unions overseas...

...A union of auto workers was strong enough to immobilize General Motors, and a union of communication workers could challenge International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT...

...since then it has been the national (usually called international) union of employes in the same craft or industry...

...Labor's inability to organize the unorganized, to win social reforms, and to arrest a decline in real wages must be considered in the broader context of two other problems that bear on our ability to formulate a strategy for the 1980s: 4. The structure of capitalism has changed drastically since the 1930s...

...2.Labor has won no major social reform in a dozen years— not even a procedural reform of National Labor Relations Board rules...

...As this process unfolds, much can be done to build an independent political base for labor...

...To make matters worse, the three big unions that gave the CIO its thrust in the 1930s are in crisis...

...There is a partial solution to these reverses: a return to the principles of solidarity and militance...

...We have grown apprehensive of quantum jumps, though our history is filled with them—the American Revolution, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the New Deal...

...It took two or three years after the outset of the Great Depression for radical unionists to begin leading the "labor wars" that changed the character of American society...

...And the auto workers could have helped the rubber workers to victory during the tire strike a few years ago by refusing to put scab tires on new cars...

...If it raises interest rates, thousands in the construction industry are laid off...

...These objectives can not be achieved through an alliance with "good" business-people within the Democratic Party...

...a decade later, it had not only quadrupled its assets but had taken over a hundred subsidiaries in industries varying from hotels (Sheraton) to baking (Wonder Bread...