NYC City Council and Bureaucratic Unions Sign Away Worker’s Right to Strike
Not long ago, the president of the bureaucratic and anti-worker RWDSU, and the New York City Council took to the press to congratulate themselves on a historic achievement: the “Labor Peace” bill that sailed through City Council on November 23rd. This ‘historic’ achievement has amounted to little more than a footnote in the news of the past month, having hardly been reported at all. However we feel it necessary to revisit this footnote, as it clarifies the function of anti-worker bureaucratic trade unions in relation to the employers’ political organizations.
“Labor peace” agreements are hardly anything new. They have been employed since the 1980s, where municipalities began to demand them from employers as a condition for developing using public resources, whether it be public land, direct financial assistance, or tax exemptions.
These agreements demand that employers not interfere with a unionization campaign in exchange for receiving a legally-binding promise that the workers that the union seeks to represent will not strike or engage in any workplace action whatsoever. This is a familiar tactic: the employers and their political parties will permit or even encourage the certification of unions on the condition that workers surrender their principal weapon of struggle: the strike. They will happily allow an organization to call itself a union on the condition that it will not in any way disturb the flow of profits.
However there are certain particularities to this new law that should not be ignored. Businesses covered by the law are new retail, food service, or food distribution establishments located in new developments that receive more than $500,000 in either cheap land, low interest loans, or tax breaks. Small businesses, as well as establishments located in Hunts Point or Brooklyn Navy Yard are exempt from these requirements. Upon the opening of the establishment, a labor organization has 90 days to begin negotiating a labor peace agreement, which upon acceptance, can last longer than 10 years.
It should be kept in mind that the number of developments that receive city funding is relatively slight, and when one accounts for all of the various exemptions, it becomes clear that this bill is hardly historic at all, and is completely incapable of reversing the decline of union density even of the past few years. This great reversal in the decline of the bureaucratic unions in New York is even less likely given that it has been under their very leadership that union density has declined, the standard of living of the masses has plummeted, and the majority of the labor movement has been subsumed to the needs of the employers.
The main point remains that both the City Council and the president of the RWSDU are effectively taking a public bow in celebration of giving themselves the power to deprive thousands of workers of their right to strike. Given the current structure of this bill, a labor organization and an employer can deprive a group of workers of their basic means of struggle against their employers with no input whatsoever from the workers in a given workplace. It takes merely the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen to make this immense imposition against worker democracy.
In early April of last year, the RWDSU lost in their attempt to unionize the Bessemer Amazon facility, with only 738 out of 5,800 workers in favor. RWDSU president Stuart Applebaum claimed that they suffered the loss due to the intimidation campaign by Amazon during unionization efforts, but we know that the results were not simply due to external causes. Recall that RWDSU chose to respond to Amazon’s attacks on union dues by telling the workers that they would have no legal duty to pay because Alabama is a right-to-work state. This was a missed chance to explain the need for individual sacrifice, which is necessary for the betterment of the working class as a whole, and the function of dues money in building a strike fund. At the same time, RWDSU’s reply raises a more fundamental question: do the leaders of the big trade unions today mainly use dues money for the class struggle against the boss — that is, to organize strikes?
Unions that do not struggle against the employers as a class cannot possibly further the interests of workers. Given that these peace agreements are often followed by contracts that themselves forbid strikes, it becomes clear that organizations such as the RWDSU are no friends of the workers.
Likewise, it is clear that the working class has no friends on the City Council. This bill, which can potentially deprive thousands of the right to strike, was approved nearly unanimously, with overwhelming support from both political parties. The same figureheads that on one day bemoan the poverty, degradation, and weakness of their constituents will, on the next day, deprive the very same people of the means with which to improve their conditions of life.
The question remains: what is the purpose of such monstrous and deformed labor organizations? Why would the bosses and their politicians even bother cultivating such false unions?
In the economic sphere, a union that rejects the path of struggle can present no serious threat to the steady flow of profits or to the current order. However, it can ensure that the zeal of individual capitalists in squeezing the working class does not threaten economic ruin. Such organizations can ensure that a fraction of the working class can continue to earn just enough to maintain demands for consumer goods, to pay the rents demanded by landlords, etc., ensuring that the capitalist class as a whole can continue to make profits on its investments, while the working class is able to reproduce its labor-power for sale to capital.
However the main benefit for the bourgeoisie is in the realm of politics. For decades, the various bureaucratic unions have been essential to the functioning of the Democratic party, which receives this invaluable support in exchange for empty promises of labor legislation, or other reforms, deferred after every election cycle. It is absolutely essential for the employers and their politicians to bind a certain section of the working class to its various reactionary projects to prevent the very possibility of a resurgence of genuine labor militancy on the one hand, and on the other, of the working class developing a perspective on society that is independent from that of the exploiters. The fact that these organizations serve to bind the working class to its exploiters is illustrated by the interpenetration of bureaucratic unions with the capitalist parties and the state: the VP of New York City’s Economic Development Corporation – the institution charged with overseeing the city’s investments in developments – is none other than SEIU Local 32BJ official. The incorporation of the labor movement takes on heightened significance in the context of the recent upsurge in labor militancy on an all-US scale.
If we want to transform the conditions of workers in the restaurant sector and breathe new life into the labor movement, we must reject the groveling and compromising perspective of the labor bureaucrats. We must take a perspective that not only emphasizes the independence of the working class, but also defends the right to strike at any time for any reason. A choice of two paths has been presented to us, and we must choose correctly or suffer the consequences for years to come.