Despite heightened profits, MondelÄ"z was aggressively pushing to cut its labor costs. It wanted to create a two-tier system of health insurance, with new hires paying higher premiums. It also wanted to reduce overtime pay even as it escalates forced overtime. (The company prefers overtime to hiring new workers with benefits.) As a worker marching on the picket line in Richmond, Virginia told a reporter: "I'm a first-time mommy, I have a seven-month-old. I worked 30 days in a row while pregnant. I was doing 12-16 hours pregnant."
On Sept. 18 the BCTGM reached a very modest settlement with MondelÄ"z, ending the strike. The 4-year contract included a $5000 signing bonus, a 2.25% raise for the first year, and a $.60 per hour raise in each of the remaining 3 years. The raise in the first year would be 43 cents per hr. for an average employee earning $19 per hr. The company agreed to drop its demand for a reduction in its health-care benefit. Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO interim president, tweeted: "Congratulations to @BCTGM Nabisco workers, who have won a contract that reflects the fair wages, hours & benefits they deserve." Shuler's idea of what the Nabisco workers deserve would appeal to most CEOs. The president of the BCTGM, Anthony Shelton, made over $288,502 last year. He clearly deserves it.
Hanging over the negotiations was the company's record of outsourcing jobs to Mexico. In 2016 MondelÄ"z made this arrogant offer to the Chicago BCTGM:
"$130 million in equipment upgrades at the 62-year-old Chicago plant if the union accepted $46 million in annual wage and benefit cuts""a 60% cut in pay and benefits, the union calculated. If the union refused, the investment and jobs would go to a new multi-million-dollar plant in Mexico."
The union refused and the company laid off 600 workers. They, like the Amazon workers in Bessemer, were casualties in the unrelenting war of capital against labor unions. More radical tactics are needed. On Jan. 20, 2019, Sara Nelson showed the AFL-CIO how much more they could do.
A month earlier, President Trump had initiated a government shutdown to pressure Democrats into funding his border wall. This shutdown was still in progress when Sara Nelson gave an address on Jan. 20 to the AFL-CIO accepting its MLK Drum Major for Justice Award. She spoke not just to the audience for the event, but to all workers affected by the shutdown, and to the American public:
"Almost a million workers are locked out or being forced to work without pay. Others are going to work when our workspace is increasingly unsafe. What is the Labor Movement waiting for?
Go back with the Fierce Urgency of NOW to talk with your Locals and International unions about all workers joining together - To End this Shutdown with a General Strike.
We can do this. Together. Si se puede. Every gender, race, culture, and creed. The American Labor Movement. We have the power."
On Friday, Jan. 25, Nelson recorded a video message urging AFA members to get to the offices of their congressional representatives and pressure them to end the shutdown: "We're gonna do this for every single person who is hurting out there because this needs to stop now. This is over a month-long lockout of a million people." She was advocating not only for her people, but also for air-traffic controllers, TSA officers and prison guardsall the workers stranded without pay by the shutdown. She warned that the entire air traffic system was near collapse, with serious effects on everyone. Shortly after her message went public, Trump ended the shutdown.
Nelson's embrace of a general strike is in sharp contrast to Rich Trumka. In the weeks preceding the general election of 2020, there were widespread concerns that Trump would not leave office peacefully if he lost. This prompted many unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers to urge consideration of a general strike if Trump rejected the election results. Trumka strongly opposed calling for general strikes at state AFL-CIO conventions because, he said, the AFL-CIO constitution prohibits state chapters from authorizing strikes.
On Oct. 21, the Vermont state chapter (which calls itself MLK Labor) defied Trumka and passed a resolution that, if Trump refused to leave office, "MLK Labor, in collaboration with other labor and progressive forces, will take whatever nonviolent actions are necessary up to and including a general strike to protect our democracy, the Constitution, the law, and our nation's democratic traditions."
In response, Trumka launched an investigation that ended with a letter he sent to MLK president David Van Deusen on June 29. He called this letter a "final warning" that --If you again violate your constitutional oath, I will immediately impose a trusteeship." He reminded Van Deusen that the AFL-CIO Executive Council opposed a general strike "in order to avoid providing Trump a reason to invoke martial law." This rationale was servile and cowardly. The very unlikely prospect that the military would obey a martial law decree under such circumstances was enough to make Trumka and his EC submit.
Will Sara Nelson succeed in implementing her vision of a labor movement? It's hard to assess her election prospects. The election process in the AFL-CIO is complicated and obscure. The basic political unit in the AFL-CIO is the affiliated union, not the individual member. Each union at the national convention will have a vote weighted to its size. Which candidate receives a union's vote will likely be decided in a top-down process well before the date of the national convention. As Ben Tillet explains in an article for Jacobin[BC1] , "While the level of internal deliberation will vary between unions, we should not expect this to be something that union leaders feel they need to ask their rank-and-file members about."
If Nelson were elected, she would still have to deal with our broken labor law. The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act has passed in the House but is stalled in the Senate. It would bring major changes to labor law such as ending right-to-work laws, allowing secondary strikes and boycotts, and facilitating union organizing in the workplace. Although supported by Joe Manchin, it is opposed by three Democratic Senators: Kyrsten Sinema, Mark Warner and Mark Kelly. Even if their opposition could be overcome, the bill could not pass unless all 50 senators support ending the filibuster.
American workers seem to be afflicted by a version of the Stockholm Syndrome in their relationship to the capitalist oligarchy. The syndrome has these characteristics:
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