The state of the labor movement as May Day approaches

May Day, the international workers day, is rapidly approaching. It’s a good time to take stock of the latest developments in the labor movement. Last year was called “the year of the strike”. However, right now there are no major national strikes taking place. What’s going on? The main point to understand is that contract expirations are when the vast majority of strikes take place. If no contracts happen to expire during a particular time period, it’s pretty unlikely that many strikes will take place. It’s therefore important to look at upcoming contract expirations when attempting to chart the possible future course of the class struggle. There are a number of important contracts to look at.

Flight attendants. Most major carriers are working under contracts that have long been open to amendment, sometimes for years. Under the byzantine Railway Labor Act, contracts do not expire but become open to amendment. This process has been dragging on through all the stages of the Act, but flight attendants feel that enough is enough. Many attendants have not seen a raise since 2019. They are also burdened with a pay system that only starts full pay when the plane pulls away from the gate. Hours of work therefore go unpaid. Managing passengers in overcrowded, often late, planes is increasingly difficult. The situation is becoming intolerable. The different unions have been collaborating in a successful series of national airport pickets. Pressure is building towards a possible strike.
Stage hands. Both IATSE’s basic Hollywood agreement and its local contracts expire on July 31. The entertainment industry was rocked by last year’s writers and actors strikes. It’s too early to assess where the negotiations will go. It should be noted that there is now an opposition current in the union, the Caucus of Rank and File Entertainment Workers.
The contract for 32,000 aviation workers expires on September 12. The Boeing machinists are a well-organized union with a high profile employer. Management has played hard ball so this will be an important negotiation to follow.
University of California. The contract for 18,000 professional and technical workers expires on October 21. UPTE/CWA Local 9119 has been conducting a vigorous contract campaign. I was intrigued by one of the issues faced by this local, cages per worker. The local represents workers at the Division of Laboratory Animal Medicine. Each worker is responsible for the incredible number of 456 cages. I thought I was fairly familiar with contract language and union terminology, but cages per worker was a new one for me!
The UAW has 7,000 members at Daimler Truck North America. Three days before the contract expires, negotiations were still going on. This struggle takes place in the context of the UAW’s new growth in the South.

Studying the contracts that come out of these negotiations will give us an accurate picture of where the class struggle stands.

New organizing

If things have been quiet on the strike front, they haven’t been quiet when it comes to organizing. The centerpiece of new organizing is obviously the magnificent UAW victory at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The NLRB election took place on April 19. The results were unambiguous. The union won 73% of the vote. The turn-out was 84% of the 4,300 workers in the plant.

The victory is significant for many reasons. The union had previously lost two elections in the plant. The VW victory represents a beachhead in the union-hostile South. Perhaps the biggest lesson is that union combativity is the best way to win new supporters to the union. The UAW’s Stand Up strike last fall brought real gains to the lives of union members. These successes are well known in the working class. They give workers a real reason to want to join the union. Union struggles become seen as the best way to win palpable improvements in daily life. The Chattanooga victory, therefore, is the child of the Stand Up strike.

The next step in the UAW’s Southern organizing drive is the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama. 5,200 workers will vote between May 13^th to 17^th on whether to unionize the factory. A victory at Mercedes will establish a real momentum for the UAW’s organizing campaign in other plants such as the Hyundai facility in Montgomery, Alabama.

There is another important organizing drive at the KCVG Air Hub. Amazon Labor Union supporters have been working for some time to organize this vast facility. Not surprisingly, management has been harassing them at every turn. On April 23, the union’s NLRB case was being heard in Cincinnati. Amazon was represented by the notorious union busting law firm of Seyfarth Shaw. The young organizers at KCVG ALU will need the solidarity of the rest of the labor movement. In this regard, it’s very encouraging that they have reached out to the Teamsters for assistance.

Union organizing has not just been taking place in large industrial plants. The AFSCME Cultural Workers United section has been making steady progress in museums and other educational institutions. They now have 35,000 members. While AFSCME has organized public library workers for some time, the move into private libraries and museums is very welcome. Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium is the latest to join the struggle with the Shedd Workers United being announced on April 19.

The Starbucks Workers United campaign has probably been the most publicized union organizing campaign in the country. Almost 500 stores have unionized, however not a single one has negotiated a first contract. Management has been dragging its heels hoping to wear down the young activists divided into their small stores. Starbucks has insisted on bargaining a separate contract for every single store. The union obviously wants a national master agreement. Management has agreed to discuss a “national framework”. But proper bargaining is only just now beginning.

Labor Notes

The left-wing Labor Notes magazine held its bi-annual conference from April 19-21 in Chicago. It was an outstanding success! A record 4,700 trade unionists participated in over 250 workshops and meetings. The conference confirmed Labor Notes’ status as the center of the left wing in the American labor movement. Labor Notes’ focus on union democracy, militancy, and rank and file mobilization has resonated with thousands of active trade unionists. Labor Notes monthly newspaper, website, and host of educational events has become a reference point for this layer of the labor movement.

The overall approach and structure of the conference was similar to past ones. However, a number of new developments can be noted. The conference was very young. There was a large number of first-time attendees. A good portion of participants were from new unions in higher education. The number of Black trade unionists attending was higher than in the past. Organizing a smoothly running conference of 4,700 is a real achievement. It shows the considerable organizational strength Labor Notes has now built up.

The large flight attendant delegations were a new feature of the conference. Historically, Labor Notes has been closely linked to the Teamsters for a Democratic Union caucus. Now there is an additional ally. The Unite All Workers for Democracy caucus in the UAW has emerged as a durable, organized, national force. The UAWD is now seen as an important force by a considerable number of auto workers. The work of the UAWD was an important thread of the conference.

To conclude, it’s common to end articles of this type by making some optimistic predictions about the future. This is generally because there’s not a lot to be too optimistic about in the contemporary situation. This article is going to end differently. Look at the past week: Friday the UAW victory at Volkswagen, over the weekend the massive Labor Notes conference, and over the past few days, a tsunami of student demonstrations to defend Palestine. Not a bad week for socialists. Not bad at all.