Hunts Point Strike: Fightback is possible!

An important strike is taking place at the Hunts Point grocery distribution hub in the Bronx. The purpose of this article is to argue that strikes like this are one of the main ways that working class people change their view of the world. This point takes on a special importance in this country at a time when right wing ideas have an important echo in the working class.

Hunts Point Teamsters

Hunts Point Produce Market is a large wholesale distribution center, similar to the old South Water Street area in Chicago.Fourteen-hundred members of Teamster Local 202 went on strike on January 17. There are two main demands in the strike: a $1.00 per hour wage increase and a 60 cents per hour increase in the health benefits fund. Current base pay is between $18-21 dollars per hour. The Market has been deemed essential during the pandemic and has stayed open. In this situation, six workers have died from Covid and an estimated 300-400 have become sick.

Hunts Point plays an important role in New York City’s food distribution network. 210 million pounds of food pass through it each year. Management says that this accounts for 60% of New York City’s consumption. For this reason, the strike has received considerable media attention. A constant stream of politicians, including Andrew Yang and AOC, have visited the picket line.

However, supporters have not been the only visitors to the picket line. On Monday evening, 300 police stormed the picket line on Edgewater Road. It’s well worth watching the videos that are widely available.There is a striking contrast between the NYPD riot police literally charging the picket line and the behavior of the Capitol Hill Police on January 6. Many commentators have rightly counterposed the police response to the far right riot with the response Black Lives Matter marchers would have received. We can extend this point now: compare police response to the far right with their actions against the striking Teamsters.

The effects of strikes

The New York Teamsters strike is obviously very important in its own right. But for socialists in this country today, strikes like this have a broader significance. Strikes, and other forms of collective actions, are one of the main ways in which working class consciousness changes. Ideas and arguments play an important role, but practical experience in real life is crucial.

Two things happen during strikes and workers demonstrations. The first is that workers see that collective, concerted action is the best way to improve their lives. Pay raises, improved healthcare, and greater job security are tangible gains. Workers see that working together against the employers actually makes their daily lives better. This helps workers to see who the obstacle to better lives is—the employers. Working together in a strike shows workers who their allies are—other workers regardless of their race, nationality, or gender. Overcoming these divisions is a long and complicated process, but united class action is the way in which it happens.

The second point is the impact of the strike on those observing the strike. The visibility of the picket line, the show of support from other workers and the energy of the strikers create a pole of attraction to others. They show that the status quo can be challenged and that resistance is not futile. They show that a force for change does exist.

I’d like to give a personal example of this from the 2019 Chicago teachers strike. The CTU demonstrations were a sight to behold. A large number of demonstrators wore red, the CTU color. Strikers arrived and marched in workplace contingents. The demonstrations were loud with marching bands and noisemakers everywhere. There was a sea of union-made large banners and placards that zeroed in on the main demands of the strike. An efficient network of marshals took charge of the demonstration.

I made a point of observing the reactions of passers-by to the march. People stopped to look. Applause was frequent. The audience felt that it was in the presence of a dynamic and vigorous force. People rally behind a force that seems to be on the move, to be “going places.” Socialists describe this process as the workers movement drawing in other forces behind it. The CTU strike, of course, didn’t permanently change the consciousness of the whole Chicago working class. But it did show that this perspective of workers action is not a pipe dream or a fantasy. It’s a perspective that it is possible and that we have to work toward.

When people see a vibrant movement, they become open to the ideas and world outlook of that movement. The 1960s youth radicalization is a good example of this. Young people did not read James Baldwin, Herbert Marcuse, and Che Guevara and then decide to go on demonstrations and antiwar protests. They were drawn to the actions in the streets and then wanted to find out the ideas of the movement. This led to studying and adopting the ideas of the movement.

The same point is true for the working class movement. When the working class movement is seen as a movement of action and struggle, people become open to its fundamental world outlook. Ideas of class solidarity and unity come forward. Ideas of blaming other workers and races for the actions of the employers recede. This process is not spontaneous or easy and active socialists have a vital role to play.

Trump supporters

This point is sharply posed in America today. Right wing ideas, symbolized by Trump, have a strong following in the working class. Obviously, hardcore far rightists, the forces that attacked the Capitol Building, are never going to be won over to perspectives of class unity and solidarity with the oppressed. We are discussing a different layer here, workers and poor people who felt the bottom fall out of their lives due to deindustrialization and economic decline. They feel that the wealthy do not care about them. They blame immigrants, workers of other skin colors, and the personal failings of other working class people for their plight. They mistakenly believe that Donald Trump, a corporate insider if ever there was one, was speaking “truth to power” against the elite.

These are workers who have to be won away from their current ideas and to the perspectives of the working class movement. How can this ever be done? It won’t primarily be by argument and discussion, important as that is. It will certainly not be by downplaying issues such as racism, sexism and xenophobia or in an attempt to find a “common ground.”

Success will be through victories in the class struggle showing these workers that collective class struggle can improve their lives. Examples of class unity and actions can show a different view of the world to those who feel left behind and without control. Practical examples, in the real world, can begin to break down old prejudices. This is why socialists see every strike, such as the one going on in Hunts Point today, as examples, however small, of the way in which workers can come to fight the bosses, not each other.