The featured speakers, left to right: Bill Fletcher jr., Dan La Botz, Eric Blanc

On Saturday, Feb. 3, the administrators of a Marxist email list called “Marxmail” put on a forum called “the new US labor movement”. Speakers were Bill Fletcher jr., former official of the AFL-CIO, board member for the Institute for Policy Studies, author and syndicated columnist; Dan La Botz, founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union and retired college professor; and Eric Blanc, author and assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University.

La Botz led off. He made much of the “genuine strike wave” of last year. He also made much of the reform leaders like Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters and Shawn Fain of the UAW , including the fact that Fain ( newly elected UAW president) has called for a general strike in 2028. La Botz did admit that the Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien “disappointed many in the rank and file” because he did not fight for the part time workers at UPS. La Botz also talked about a “growing left wing presence”, in the unions especially DSA. He warned about a possible political crisis in the U.S. following the coming presidential elections. At the very end, La Botz raised the issue of “an independent political force” for labor, implicitly meaning a working class party. He also commented that this could develop “within and without” the Democratic Party.

Eric Blanc spoke next and talked at great length about a survey he is compiling on such issues as “worker-to-worker” organizing vs. staff levels. Apparentlyhis study was part of his academic career.

Finally, Bill Fletcher jr. spoke. He summarized some lessons from the 1930s. This included the need for a strong leadership “willing to take immense risk” – presumably a reference to such events as the sit-down strikes. He said that the Republicans passed the Taft-Hartley Act as a response. He spoke about labor reaching out to community groups, especially black organizations. He also commented on what he called “the NGOizm”, meaning having to be paid to do organizing. 

Fletcher then went on to say “we have not figured out what to do post occupy”. (Presumably he was referring to the Occupy movement of the last decade.) And he commented on “the great success… [of unions’] making alliances” in the community. He gave the example of the Chicago teachers. Fletcher also commented on the need for unions to connect strike demands (when they go on strike) to the wider needs of the working class. He gave the example of the strikes of the screen actors and of the writers’ guild and the threat of AI to millions of other workers.

I did have a chance to comment, and because my time was limited I had to speak very bluntly. I also had to leave some points out. Below is a summary of my points with some additional points in brackets:

In the first place, any analysis of the situation in the unions has to take a historical perspective of what’s happened inside the unions over the last 75 years. That is that the union leadership – from top to bottom and with hardly a single exception – has carried out a war against all the best traditions of the labor movement of the 1930s and even before. [That war has been carried out both by propaganda as well as against those members who have fought to keep those traditions alive. Such members were red baited, ridiculed, ostracized, threatened physically, and even black-balled.] The traditions to which I refer are those of mass defiance, building a mass movement, struggling to build political independence through the creation of a working class party, and socialism. We always hear, including from many on the left, why a return to those traditions is impossible. [Oftentimes the existence of the Taft Hartley Act is given as an excuse, but the sit down strikes and militant strikes like the Minneapolis Teamsters strike of 1935 were also illegal. The way laws like Taft Hartley will be eliminated is when they can no longer be enforced. That is what struggles like the civil rights movement of the 1960s proved for example – the Jim Crow laws were eliminated when they were unenforceable.

[We should also not ignore a tendency that went along with the strikes of the last two years. That was the tendency to reject contract proposals – “tentative agreements” – by the rank and file. La Botz commented on the former but ignored the latter, thereby ignoring an important part of the mood within the rank and file.]

It was unfortunate that the organizers of the forum had no speaker with a history of struggle within the unions to reverse this war. [That is a slight exaggeration. Both Fletcher and La Botz did spend a short time organizing as rank and file workers, but overall the general point holds. And here, Fletcher’s point about “NGOism” is extremely valid. I will return to this issue below.]

These are some of the questions of the day, rather than the details like ratio of staffers to worker-to-worker efforts in union organizing.

[Had I had time, I would have commented on Fletcher’s points about reaching out to “the community” and also the Occupy movement. I saw how the teachers union in Oakland “reached out to the community” when they went on strike. “The community” was some of the different NGO’s in Oakland, all of which in some way or another are linked to the Democratic Party. What the union did not do was mobilize the teachers to reach out directly to the parents, organize meetings of parents and other community members and directly involve them in the strike. They also did not generalize their demands, such as demanding health care for all.

[I also would have commented on the illusions in reform union leaders like Fain of the Teamsters and O’Brien of the UAW. It’s true that La Botz did criticize Fain’s failure to fight for the part time workers at UPS, but in general he did not combat the illusions. For example, he made much of Fain’s call for a general strike and didn’t point out that Fain’s having put 2028 as the date means that he is completely unserious about that; it was just one more piece of puffed up rhetoric. We have seen these leaders in the past – Ron Carey as Teamsters president and Bill Sweeney as president of the AFL-CIO. There were always great expectations generated in them, but any real change inside the unions will only come from below – from an organized mass rank and file rebellion, including mass wildcat strikes.]

The most critical issue facing us is that of the need for the unions to break from the Democrats. [Both Fletcher and La Botz referred to crises – Fletcher on “the crisis of neoliberalism”; La Botz on a possible crisis after the elections this year. They are both right about that, but how about the political crisis that is front and center? I am referring to Russia’s imperialist invasion and occupation of Ukraine and Israel’s invasion and occupation of Gaza and, in fact, of all of Palestine. La Botz commented on possibly developing a strategy to build a working class party while also working inside the Democratic Party – the “inside outside” strategy. In DSA this is known as the “dirty break” from the Democrats. In fact, those of us who have struggled for our unions to break from the Democrats and for the unions to build a working class party have heard these arguments for years from a layer of the union bureaucrats. It’s nothing but an excuse to do nothing, to keep the unions led around by the nose by the Democrats. That is what DSA is also fostering.

[Just one day before this forum, a group called Labor for Palestine held a rally outside the offices of the UAW, protesting UAW president O’Brien’s endorsement of Joe Biden while Biden supports Israel’s genocidal war. The problem was that Labor for Palestine has no alternative. Whom should labor endorse? Cornel West or Jill Stein? Both of these condemn Israel’s genocidal war but apologize for Russia’s similar war against Ukraine! I don’t know about Blanc, but both Fletcher and La Botz are supporters of both Ukraine and Palestine. These are labor issues and they should have raised them in their presentations.]

What is needed is a clean break from the Democrats. There is no reason why the unions cannot run local and regional working class candidates, independent of and opposed to the Democrats. As far as a presidential campaign – there is a legitimate argument that a working class candidate could split the anti-Trump vote, thereby enabling him to get elected. With that in mind, there is no reason whatsoever that a true working class party could not run a presidential candidate in the red states, where Biden is certain to lose anyway.

I concluded with the question of the hour – that we must struggle for a return to the single most important principle of unionism (and of socialism): International working class solidarity.

Another participant from the audience was Cheryl Zuur. (Disclosure: Cheryl is a personal friend and a close political comrade of mine.) She made some important points about the acceptance of the “team concept” by the union leadership. Instead, what these leaders do is practice militancy in words and opportunism in action. She also pointed out that she, herself, has a long history of struggle within the unions. That includes her having served as the elected president of AFSCME Local 444, a predominantly male blue collar local. As such, she was beholden to nobody but the rank and file – not other union bureaucrats, and not NGO’s or foundations that fund the NGOs.

Despite that, she was not asked to speak, nor was anybody else who has devoted their political lives to struggling in the trenches, basing themselves on the rank and file and the rank and file only.

None of the speakers were willing to discuss these points. In fact, both Fletcher and La Botz expressed annoyance. La Botz did so through a personal email he sent me. I invited him to comment for this review but I did not hear back from him. La Botz and Fletcher should not have responded with annoyance (or worse). They should not have ignored the criticisms. Nobody, no matter how “important”, should consider themself immune from criticism, including criticism from the left, regardless of if it comes from an “unimportant” person.

It was a serious mistake that the organizers of this forum did not invite Cheryl Zuur or somebody else with her background as a panelist. The only explanation I can find is that once again the focus was on the “important” people rather than those who remained in the trenches, actually organizing among the rank and file. What is so ironic is that at least two – if not all – of those who organized the forum oppose any support whatsoever for the Democrats – not now and not ever. Yet they didn’t arrange for a single speaker who actually has organized for the unions breaking from the Democrats. There is a long tradition of those on the left talking very left in revolutionary circles but when they get close to the union movement they drop that talk. Unfortunately, that’s what this forum represented. 

Additional point added 2/06: One other point I raised was the massive alienation of the majority of the rank and file in relation to their unions. Here in Oakland, for example, many union workers I talk with – workers in supermarkets or workers in the streets for example – don’t even know the name of their own union. That’s because the union just is not present in their lives. It’s also a result of that 75 year war I spoke of. I would add that the question is under what circumstances can that alienation be turned around, because without a transformation of the mood no serious change can really be expected. In my opinion, what it will probably be events outside the unions that will change that mood. Possibly the development of the movement against Israeli genocide can play a role. Or possibly a reaction to some outrage perpetrated by the QAnon Republicans and Trump.

For those who are interested in reading more about the US labor movement, Oaklandsocialist has published this pamphlet, What happened to our unions?,, this review of “Striketober” 2023, and more.

The featured speakers, left to right: Bill Fletcher jr., Dan La Botz, Eric Blanc