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Title: Shutting Down Big Brown Author: K-Dog Date: 1997 Language: en Topics: Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, strike, Revolutionary Anarchism Source: Nov/Dec 1997 issue of L&R. Retrieved on 2016-06-13 from https://web.archive.org/web/20160613080247/http://loveandrage.org/?q=node/13
For fifteen days this August 185,000 Teamsters shut down United Parcel
Service, forcing the world’s largest package delivery company to concede
to all the union’s major demands including wage increases, expansion of
full-time job opportunities and union retention of the workers’
multi-million dollar pension plan.
The strike, which pitted the largest union in the US against its biggest
employer, was the most significant labor struggle in decades. It was
widely seen as an attempt by organized labor to become a major player in
society again after decades of concessions to corporations, shrinking
membership, and declining influence with the rulers.
Over 80% of the parcels delivery business travels in UPS’s brown vans,
which translates into 8% of the US gross national product. The strike
had an immediate impact on the economy, especially the massive retail
chain stores.
The nature of UPS’s business, especially its highly profitable “Next-Day
Air” and “Second-Day Air“ service made the company particularly
vulnerable to a strike. UPS lost millions of dollars as packages sat in
warehouses and customers had to look to other package shipping services.
Despite the pinch on deliveries, the strike was very popular among the
working class. By highlighting the issue of UPS’s increased use of
lower-paid, part-time workers, while earning over a billion dollars
annually, the teamsters successfully struck a chord among many who’ve
been forced into this kind of work. The union presented the strike as a
crusade for all working people, not just UPS Teamsters.
Working for United Parcel Service is no joke, especially for the 60% of
the workforce that labor part-time in warehouses loading, unloading, and
sorting packages. Under UPS’s management-by-stress, workers are expected
to move packages that can weigh up to 150 pounds at a pace of 1,200 per
hour. Not surprisingly, UPS has the highest injury rate in the industry;
over a third of all employees were hurt in 1996 according to company
reports.
The turn-over rate for these highly physical jobs is 400%, and those who
stick it out average less than half the hourly wage of UPS full-timers;
most bring home less than $200 a week. The starting wage at UPS has been
frozen since 1982 when the company successfully pushed through this
two-tier system. Many workers have even taken on two UPS part-time jobs
to make ends meet: full-time work under the same part-time pay.
United Parcel’s turn towards lower-waged, part-time employees has
brought about a change in the composition of the UPS workforce. More and
more Black, Latino, Asian and immigrant workers are being employed as
are increasing numbers of women. In Chicago UPS has brought in dozens of
welfare recipients, largely Black women, as part of President Clinton’s
“welfare-to-work” scheme. Media coverage of the strike made the new look
of the UPS workforce quite evident; Multi-racial/multi-national picket
lines were the rule.
These workers face, in addition to the daily grind, racist and sexist
harassment and discrimination. In California, dozens of African-American
drivers have filed a lawsuit charging the company with systematic
discrimination. None of these aspects of exploitation and oppression
were taken up by the union during the strike.
All across the country, UPS workers kept picket lines solid. The
Teamsters’ bureaucracy ordered members not to interfere with
management’s meager attempts at running things, but in several cities
workers’ rage at UPS boiled over into fights with management and police.
At no time was the strike actually under the control of the oppressed
who labor for Big Brown. At all times the Teamsters’ bureaucracy
retained control and never had their authority challenged from below.
The only network within the Teamsters that exists separate from the
bureaucracy is Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a union-reform
movement started by socialists years ago. TDU has tied itself completely
to the Teamsters “reform” president, Ron Carey, and has no goals further
than a “strong union,” least of all the liberation of the oppressed
masses.
Big strike victories are rare for unions these days but the stars,
planets and moons were perfectly aligned for the International
Brotherhood of Teamsters. Of course a convergence of more material
factors could also explain its victory.
Besides UPS’s vulnerability, the solid support of the ranks and the
popularity of the strike, two other major factors brought on the
victory: The union bureaucracy’s willingness to wage a struggle and the
position of Clinton’s federal government.
The fact that the Teamsters’ bureaucracy was willing to wage a struggle
at all stands out, and there are a number of reasons for this, though
the plight of the part-timer played a much smaller role than the labor
lords and the left would have us believe.
The Teamsters’ president, Ron Carey, has been in a difficult spot. His
reform slate barely won re-election over the notoriously corrupt and
pro-company “old-guard” led by Jimmy Hoffa Jr. The old guard’s control
of many locals and district councils has kept the union divided and
limited Carey’s authority. Carey needed a big win to solidify and
strengthen his position.
Ron Carey, along with the new AFL-CIO leadership, is also ideologically
committed to rebuilding the labor movement, engaging in struggle and
winning reforms. Carey and the new breed of bureaucrats would like to
establish the unions as a “left pole” in society to keep things balanced
and to head off more disruptive forms of resistance to capitalist
restructuring such as riots and wildcat strikes. A revitalized union
movement would obviously also increase the influence and power of the
labor lords.
Another interesting aspect of this strike was the role of the US state.
Hours after Teamsters first set up picket lines, UPS chiefs were
pleading and demanding that the White House declare a national emergency
and forcibly end the strike. It would take weeks for UPS to hire and
adequately train scabs, and since the teamsters’ lines seemed solid, the
only way for the company to put pressure on the union was the threat of
government intervention. Despite UPS’ pleas and requests from the
National Association of Manufacturers and the retail giants, Bill
Clinton didn’t budge; he refused to move against the Teamsters’ strike.
There are divisions among the oppressors about the best way to rule, and
Clinton represents a section of the elite that has some concern that the
push to downsize and disempower the US proletariat is too much, too fast
and could have a destabilizing effect in the long run. Just as union
leaders seek to channel peoples’ resistance into their structures,
Clinton needs to reinforce labor’s ties to his Democratic Party.
The strike at United Parcel Service was a good thing. A new generation
got to witness the strength and leverage working people have when they
withdraw their labor from the machine.
UPS is a particularly strong and arrogant corporation, and it felt good
to give them a slap. But this struggle did not produce any autonomous
workers’ forms or movement, let alone any revolutionary ones.
A revitalized union movement that actually engages in real struggles for
reforms will provide openings for anarchists to build a revolutionary
movement. But as of right now there is no organized anarchist presence
at UPS, or in any other industry. This needs to change. In the 1970s
young radicals in the US sought to connect with the exploited by taking
jobs in factories and other mass workplaces and trying to organize among
militant workers. They brought with them the arrogant, authoritarian,
Marxist-Leninist outlook that dominated radical circles back then and
their experience was decidedly mixed. Still anarchists in North America
should try to draw what lessons we can from that history, as well as
from the current attempts by anarchists in Europe and Africa to
participate in working-class struggles.
Anarchists could initiate or help build networks of independent, direct
action groups in different industries, extra-union organizations that
could relate to the unions when that made sense, without getting trapped
in the reformist logic of trade unionism. Such organizations could have
an independent radical life of their own, fighting around issues the
unions won’t touch (sexism, racism, speed-ups, harassment) using methods
the unions won’t consider (sabotage, slow downs, occupations, wild cats)
for goals beyond the bureaucrats’ boundaries (international
anti-authoritarian revolution).