{"id":2439,"date":"2011-05-10T18:49:32","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T00:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lavozlit.com\/?p=2439"},"modified":"2011-05-10T18:49:32","modified_gmt":"2011-05-11T00:49:32","slug":"latino-immigrants-class-struggle-and-labor-unions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2011\/05\/10\/latino-immigrants-class-struggle-and-labor-unions\/","title":{"rendered":"Latino Immigrants, Class struggle, and Labor Unions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
Written by La Voz de los Trabajadores<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Friday, 06 May 2011 17:41<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"The Immigrant Workers\u2019 Struggle<\/strong>
\nLatino immigrants have been fighting so that their rights as workers are recognized, be they citizen or resident, in this country.\u00a0 The right to work legally, to have a driver\u2019s license, to not be deported, discriminated against, or incarcerated for being undocumented is a fundamental right for every human being.
\nThere is no reason that immigrant workers should be considered outcasts.\u00a0 Their hard work and taxes should be enough to have their rights recognized automatically. Instead, their efforts are repaid with discrimination, over-exploitation, criminal treatment, and permanent denial of all their rights.
\nThis was the sentiment expressed by the Sensenbrenner law that was defeated because of the large immigrant marches in 2006.\u00a0 SB1070 and the other legal attacks at the federal, state, and county levels were overcome in the same way.\u00a0 These policies of the Republican and Democratic parties are in the interest of the large imperialist bourgeoisie and try to create exploiting conditions that are increasingly brutal against the working class in order to raise their profits in this time of crisis.
\nThe leaders of the union bureaucracy unconditionally support Obama and only occasionally criticize other Democrats.\u00a0 They say that the Obama administration has not been able to advance immigration reform and other policies that would benefit workers because the Republicans won\u2019t let them. In reality, these union bureaucrats that have free entry to the government offices and earn the same salary as any company executive are not really concerned with what happens to immigrants and workers.\u00a0 Meanwhile, they can maintain their large privileges that make workers vulnerable to the plans of the bosses and allowing the government\u2019s deportations, the unemployment they\u2019ve created, the reduction of pay and benefits, and the attacks against union rights as has been happening in Wisconsin and Ohio.
\nWhen immigrants or workers join the fight against the bosses\u2019 attacks, these bureaucratic union leaders make radical speeches to give the appearance that they are committed to struggle, but after they have appeased the masses they have no problem\u00a0 negotiating behind closed doors with the bosses and the government so that everything continues in the same way.\u00a0 This is what the union leaders did to stop the large immigrant marches in 2006.
\nFortunately, many immigrant and union activists now are aware that they can\u2019t trust these union bureaucrats and that we need to start a fight to remove these bureaucrats from these positions.\u00a0 To be able to advance this struggle, immigrants and workers have to trust their own strength and at the same time fight against the bosses and against the betrayals of the bureaucratic leaders.
\nA fight has started within the unions to democratize them and to expel the corrupt leaders so that these organizations return to the control of the workers and serve them as tools of struggle against the attacks on their rights.
\nThe immigration problem in the United States is as old as the country.\u00a0 The American economy has always had to resort to waves of immigration to respond to the processes of economic expansion and growth.\u00a0 However, before 1970 American and immigrant workers were able to enjoy a trend of increasing salaries.\u00a0 From 1970 and onward, this trend stopped and wages began to decrease.\u00a0 This process coincided with the worsening of the chronic crisis of capitalism, originated by the falling rate of profit that has lasted to this day.
\nThe Struggles of the Arab People Extends to the United States<\/strong>
\nThe impact in the United States of the revolutions in Arab countries has been seen in the rise in gas prices.\u00a0 It\u2019s the United States government as the head of world imperialism that has designed this economic scheme that today the masses in Arab and Middle Eastern countries are trying to destroy while taking control of their own resources.\u00a0 The problem of immigrants in the United States is the result of the policy that took away economic resources of the South American countries.\u00a0 And the deterioration of the living conditions of the American working class is part of the same policy.
\nThe Revolution in the Western World is closer than ever thanks to the Momentum of the Revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East<\/strong>
\nThe perspectives of the American working class to try to return to the times of prosperity are the same as always.\u00a0 Each economic crisis that hits the American economy is more and more severe and the cycles of recuperation are longer and more complicated because of the outbreak of more and more class struggles and conflicts around the world.
\nIn this sense, the struggle of Latino immigrant workers in the United States will play a principal role in the sector of the working class that is most oppressed and exploited in the country together with other minorities, such as African-Americans.\u00a0 In 2006 immigrants showed the power of their mobilization.\u00a0 And the next time that they mobilize they will express themselves in a more forceful way.
\nFor now, immigrants face hard attacks under the Obama administration with the complicity of the union leadership.\u00a0 A spontaneous explosion of the masses like that of 2006 will be more complicated by the bureaucratic leadership of the unions that will help the government to prevent these fight backs with deportations, lay-offs, persecution, and exploitation.
\nHowever, the workers\u2019 mobilizations that in Wisconsin and Ohio are an encouraging sign which could be crucial for the unity of the working class in the event that these two processes of struggle coincide in another wave of mobilization.\u00a0 And our evaluation of the situation is that in the framework of these mobilizations at the end of last year in Europe and the revolutionary processes in North Africa and the Middle East, the systematic deterioration of the living conditions of the American working class will push the masses to mobilize in a more permanent way.
\nA Fight for New Leadership in the Unions<\/strong>
\nWith such a low level of unionization in the United States and workers feeling like targets of the permanent attacks by the government and bosses reflected in the plans of budget cuts, generating massive lay-offs, and cuts to fundamental union and worker rights, rebellions can arise that are not planned.\u00a0 This is what has happened in the latest events of the mass movements in the United States.\u00a0 We think that it is necessary to prepare ourselves in terms of leadership for these events.
\nIn this way, when struggle arises, the fighters that emerge can advance the construction of workers\u2019 independent and democratic organizations.\u00a0 Today the union structure and the presence of a bureaucratic direction in the union create complacent organizations at the service of the bosses, controlled by the Democratic Party.
\nWorkers\u2019 direct struggle would bring new forms of organization in which the common worker could raise their grievances.\u00a0 This struggle has already been started with the flourishing of pro-democratic movements and opposition to the bureaucracy within the unions.\u00a0\u00a0 This is expressed most strongly in SEIU International.\u00a0 These movements of opposition to the bureaucracy can become spaces where true alternatives of revolutionary leadership for the masses can emerge.
\nEverything depends on the level of radicalization that is reached.
\nUntil now, the opposition movements have more or less expressed revolutionary union programs in which the principle demand is to bring democracy to these union organizations so that workers can advance their struggles.\u00a0 However, there isn\u2019t a single movement of opposition that consciously proposes the break from the Democratic Party and the open fight against the privileges of the bureaucracy.
\nThere are some such movements, but they are\u00a0\u00a0 embryonic and do not have broad reach.\u00a0 But as these opposition movements develop in struggle, the necessity of breaking away from the Democratic Party will be evident for the workers.\u00a0 To reach this level of consciousness it will be indispensable to raise the slogan \u201cNo to privileges of the leaders of workers\u2019 organizations!\u201d\u00a0 This is the only way in which workers of the base will be able to have full trust in their leadership.
\nThe privileges within workers\u2019 organization are a lethal weapon against the unity of the working class.\u00a0 In mass organizations that are truly revolutionary, the function of the leadership is to push forward the objectives and tasks that workers democratically decide in their decision-making bodies.\u00a0 To eliminate privileges would remove all the possibilities that can corrupt the consciousness of the leaders.
\nThe fight against privileges within workers\u2019 organizations is at the same time the most effective form of combating racism and oppression against women and LGBT peoples.\u00a0 Revolutionary organizations or mass organizations that do not have in their program the fight against bourgeois and bureaucratic privileges are weakening<\/strong> the principle of class solidarity and democracy.\u00a0 The rupture and the fight against social inequalities<\/strong> will cause workers to self-identify as a class<\/strong> in struggle against the control of capitalism, which is the system that perpetuates exploitation and oppression.
\nUsing the economic power created by the oppression and pillage of peoples around the world, the imperialist bourgeoisie has implemented a policy to corrupt the conscious members of the working class.\u00a0 The fundamental material of success of these politics has been the concession of privileges to certain workers in order to encourage the competition of some workers against each other.\u00a0 This serves their racist and discriminatory politics.\u00a0 The enjoyable stable economy that existed for years has permitted the imperialist bourgeoisie in the United States to construct an ideology to justify the existence of White racism, oppression, and discrimination against other races.
\nThis has impeded the advancement of the revolutionary consciousness of the American working class.\u00a0 This scheme has reproduced oppression of the rest of the peoples of the world.\u00a0 But things are changing and the economic crisis of capitalism and the attacks of the bourgeoisie against the working class together are creating the conditions in which the entire working class is prone to mobilization.\u00a0 In the vanguard will be the most exploited and oppressed sectors.\u00a0 This is apparent by the fact that in these multiracial unions, in which you find the most impoverished layers of the proletariat, there are the most emerging movements of opposition.
\nA Program to Fight<\/strong>
\n1<\/strong> \u2013 Democracy for workers.<\/strong> As we said before, anti-bureaucratic processes are beginning to form within unions in which the most pertinent slogan is union democracy.\u00a0 This is the first step to advance fights against the politics of the bosses.\u00a0 The bureaucracy is the most important barrier workers encounter the moment they begin to flight against their bosses.\u00a0 If there isn\u2019t democracy, workers cannot push forward their demands.\u00a0 But the fight for democracy within unions is a fight against the privileges of the union leaders.
\n2<\/strong> – No to privileges!<\/strong> The opposition movements within unions that demand democracy without demanding the end to privileges are in danger of losing their fight.\u00a0 Workers\u2019 trust cannot be gained without fighting the union\u2019s hierarchical structure, created by wages and benefits for the union leadership and staff that are two, three, four, or more times greater than the wages and benefits of a regular worker.\u00a0 This structure should be torn down.
\n3<\/strong> – Break away from the bosses.<\/strong> A union constructed with a base that combats the privileges of the bureaucracy and fights for full democracy is a union that can guarantee that its organization will not be manipulated by the bosses.\u00a0 If the workers direct the union, it can be independent from the bosses, and this will guarantee the permanent mobilization of its members to win their demands.
\n4<\/strong> – For permanent mobilization and solidarity.<\/strong> The method of working class struggle is the permanent mobilization of the masses.\u00a0 This method guarantees the revolutionary advancement of the consciousness of workers.\u00a0 Without mobilization, it is impossible to destroy the bureaucracy and even less possible to destroy the bosses.\u00a0 However, the struggle against the union bureaucracy needs a political tactic of class confrontation that allows the education of workers that are trapped in the conciliatory politics of the leadership in order to advance the mobilization.\u00a0\u00a0 On this point, class solidarity is crucial.\u00a0 Fights directed by union bureaucrats are isolated fights that leave workers exposed to attacks by the bosses and government.\u00a0 Only unity of the working class will create conditions for the triumph of workers\u2019 struggle.
\n5<\/strong> – No concessions to the bosses.<\/strong> This point of the program of opposition movements is important because it is the way that union bureaucrats always encage workers at the convenience of the bosses.\u00a0 For the victory of workers\u2019 rights supported by class mobilization and solidarity!
\n6 – Break away from the Democratic Party.\u00a0 In unions the leadership compels workers to participate in politics but always imposes the Democrat candidates.\u00a0 The COPA is the voluntary contribution of workers to political campaigns that is used to pay the campaigns of Democrat candidates.\u00a0 These candidates always promise workers that they will give them more union liberties, more immigrant rights, healthcare for all, and so on.\u00a0 But after they are elected, these candidates leave workers waiting for what will never come, while their wages decrease, there are lay-offs, and there is even more discrimination against immigrants.\u00a0 We are making a call to not commit this political error anymore and for unions to participate in independent politics.\u00a0 There are many union workers that can be good candidates to raise the workers\u2019 struggle to the political level and to fight for their own working class party that can support unions.\u00a0 No more Democrat candidates supported by unions!<\/strong>
\n7<\/strong>– Fight for the defense of immigrant rights and for the rights of other oppressed peoples.<\/strong> This is a crucial point for a program for struggle in the anti-bureaucratic movements and union opposition.\u00a0 The struggle for full immigrant rights should be the demand that reflects the class content of a program for working class struggle.\u00a0 American workers have in their conscience a bourgeois ideology that immigrants are secondary or tertiary workers.\u00a0 This is the same ideology that defends racism.\u00a0 The working class should raise the fight for full immigrant rights and for the rights of all oppressed and discriminated people.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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