Peeking into the rock

So actually I discovered this first thing this morning on the front page of the paper. Odd, because the Sentinel doesn't usually feature even the biggest union news unless it's dead local -- berry fields, county government, the University workers. And not even then: all school year the teacher's union was a hair away from a strike and working strictly to contract and the Sentinel only covered it on a minimal basis, and misleadingly.

Well, the point is -- the AFL-CIO has split. The unions making a bolt are growing while most of the AFL-CIO is stagnating or declining. And why are these unions growing? Because they have taken a strong initiative for organizing the unorganized. Because instead of fighting a rear-guard battle to retain benefits for the old-timers, they've gone out and fought new struggles to organize workers that slipped through the cracks in the big organizing drives of the thirties, or whose jobs didn't exist in those days.

The "Change to Win" (sometimes calling itself "Unite to Win")coalition contains seven unions so far (of which only two have left the AFL-CIO so far, and another two are planning to stay away from the big meeting this summer). They are:
Service Employees International Union, who seem to be leading
Teamsters International Union, who have by the way long since mended fences with --
The United Farm Workers who just joined the coalition
The United Food and Commercial Workers
UNITE HERE which is the merger of the needletrades and the hotel and restaurant workers unions
Laborers International Union
Carpenters Union

Those last two are surprising, because the building trades unions have generally till now acted like guilds, jealously guarding their privileges and limiting their membership. I guess the combined pressure of new building technologies and the loss in all respects (wages, jobs, status, working conditions -- including bad laws) has radicalised these two unions at least. I'm also surprised that AFSCME is not on the list, and a couple of others, but mostly AFSCME.

I've already written about how the owning class has been waging class war and attempting to punish employers who break ranks. (there's a long bitter story about United Airlines I may tell another time) It's long past time that working people acknowledge what they used to know: there is a class war, and there is no way to make peace with the owning class except from a position of strength, vigilance, organization, and willingness to take to battle, and to take to offensive battle. The enemy is not confined to the extreme right wing, though they are the vanguard and frequently they most honest about it -- you know how Bush is caught on film saying that "his people" are the "haves and the have mores?" And he speaks of the "ownership society" -- which means "them that owns, rules."

And why is the splitting of the AFL-CIO good news? Wouldn't it be better to stay in a larger organization, with more clout? Clout's only clout if you clout people with it. Who wins -- a big, passive force who apologizes for their existence, or a small, organized, active force that keeps fighting and makes no apologies?

Anyway, historically, when workers' organizations split, they grow, and grow fiercer, and then, they recoalesce as a stronger, more focussed entity. Sometimes.