Where the UAW went wrong

The troubles of the UAW are emblematic of labors' troubles while it tries to serve the two masters of the workers and capitalism simultaneously

The news that Mississippi auto workers rejected the United Auto Workers (UAW) should not be surprising. Trades-union membership in the US has not only declined but so has support for unions among wide swathes of workers.

Mainstream media discussion would stop there. Even pliant academic research from the nation's best schools would go no further. Our distaste for unions would be more or less comparable to the reaction of consumers to the New Coca-Cola formula. No analysis would follow. Union membership and opposition to unionism would be as natural as the sun rising and setting.

The official talking points would laud the new worker as more self-confident and independent, not wanting to be constrained by corrupt bureaucracies. Spin doctors of corporate media would highlight all the good things government has done in the last 100 years, and conclude we simply have no need for unions or union activism.

Remember all the triumphalism that followed the demise of the USSR and Eastern bloc countries, and how countries like Cuba were predicted to collapse by the following Christmas?

Radicals must avoid these spin-cycles and ask more pertinent questions and even engage in some self-criticism.

The Roots of a Once Militant Union Ripped Out by Class Treason.

The UAW used to be a very radical union, led, like many Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) unions, by members of the Communist Party USA, socialists, and other far-left radicals.

You probably won't hear that from the mainstream media, and the most titled academics will not even add this to their footnotes of research.

The shift rightward to undermine the union did not begin last week in Mississippi, when the workers, 2-1, rejected organizing with a union. Nor did it begin in Chattanooga, TN, where Volkswagen auto workers opposed organizing with the UAW.

The rot began several generations ago, and has been a sustained and deliberate campaign for "hearts and minds," as well as drawing a lot blood of the working class.

A man named Walter Reuther was elected to lead the UAW in 1946 in a very contested election. Reuther was a longtime UAW member, and he had participated in strike actions in the 1930's. He supported civil rights later in the 60's. But he was also buddy-buddy with the Democratic Party, and he hated communists.

After his election Reuther began to assist the government to purge the UAW and CIO of Communist Party USA members, and he expelled unions from the CIO that were led by communists. This 1946 Reuther election, not the Volkswagen vote in Chattanooga, not the vote in Mississippi, was the beginning of the end of the labor movement. This is where our analysis can begin, an analysis that must appreciate those strikes that Reuther had participated in, those civil and human rights he is credited as supporting, have deep roots in the CPUSA annals.

To the comment from Nissan that the workers "have rejected the UAW and chosen to self-represent, continuing the direct relationship they enjoy with the company." I say there is no such thing as "self-represent", there is no "direct relationship" with management.

Reuther Took the Life out of the UAW and the Labor Movement.

The late CPUSA California chair, Dorothy Healey, whose mother was a founding member of the Party, called the CPUSA "the yeast" of the labor movement. Then anti-communists like Reuther had the yeast removed, and this is why the UAW continues to struggle to remain relevant to the working class while it stays allied with corporate political parties, like the Democrats.

"Reuther's election, though, was the turning point in the balance of power in the CIO. Had he gone down in defeat in 1946, had he been unable to secure a sympathetic majority on the UAW's executive board in 1947, I don't think there would have been the expulsions of the eleven Left-led unions three years later. And if those unions had not been expelled from the CIO and we had retained our base in the labor movement, the history of the 1950's might have been very different, not only in terms of what happened to the Communist Party but what happened to American unions." (Dorothy Ray Healey, CALIFORNIA RED A LIFE IN THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY)

"Business" Schools Assist in Anti-Labor Fight

Since the late 60's and 70's, business schools have produced some very cunning innovations to undermine trades-unionism and solidarity. Innovations like Employee Councils, potlucks and staff barbeques. Advisory Committees. Open-door policies. These innovations came at the heal of the purges that class traitors, like Reuther, collaborated with. These innovations gave the appearance to workers that they had a voice with management, that they could knock on the door and get their personal problems resolved. This cultivated a false sense of security in many workers and gave a lot of room for corporate heads and management to do exactly what they've been doing for the last 50 years, precipitously degrade our work lives.

All across the Deep South right now, community organizers are mobilizing to have Confederate monuments removed and put into the dustbin of history. I would add Walter Reuther to this campaign for the serious attacks he led against the advances of the UAW in particular and labor activism in general. If anyone needs to cultivate its self-confidence and the voice and moral strength it has, and seriously reevaluate its collaboration with the pro-capitalist, pro-business school Democratic Party, it is certainly the Communist Party USA.

You cannot win a labor gain tethered to a political party that is pro-profit and pro-racist and expect workers - particularly Black workers, as in Mississippi and Tennessee - to take you seriously.