textfiles/politics/SPUNK/sp001410.txt

From: Collective Action Notes <cansv@igc.apc.org>

COLLECTIVE ACTION NOTES #9  JAN-MAR. 1996
POB 22962
BALTO., MD 21203
USA
E-MAIL: cansv@igc.apc.org
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STRIKE AND STRUGGLE CHRONOLOGY - U.S.A. MAY- JULY 1995


UNITED STATES

EARLY MAY: A strike by several thousand mostly Latino immigrant
framers shuts down 80-90% of home and apartment construction in
four of California's most populous counties. Framers build the
wooden infrastructure of residential housing. Strikers have
organized flying pickets traveling from construction site to
construction site, pulling out other framers in solidarity.
Immigration officials have isolated and picked-off through
individual arrests under immigration laws several organizers
traveling in their private cars. In response, workers turned to
using a school bus donated by the Carpenters Union to travel
collectively to organize work sites.

MAY 5: Hundreds of supermarket workers and community supporters
rally outside of Ultra grocery store in Washington Heights section
of Manhattan protesting  the company's firing of 80 workers for
signing union cards. Store shuts down mid-day as a result of noisy
protests. Many of the workers were illegal immigrants working 72
hours a week for less than minimum wage.

MAY 8: Oregon public workers  begin a state-wide strike demanding
a 6.5% pay raise. Strike ends May 14 when State officials agree to
open talks on reaching a "compromise".

MAY 15: Several hundred predominately Guatemalan workers at the
Case Farms chicken processing plant in Morgantown, North Carolina
walk out protesting poor working conditions.

MAY 19: Striking Bridgestone/Firestone workers in five midwest
locals including Decatur, Illinois end their ten month strike in
defeat by offering to return to work "unconditionally." The United
Rubber Workers union stated it had to cave in out of fear that
company would use scabs to decertify union; only 60 out of nearly
700 workers are being called back to work.

MAY 19: Division. of Motor Vehicles workers in New Jersey walk-off
job to protest lay-offs due to state's policy of privatization and
sweeping tax cuts. In the process, they defied both a court
injunction and a no-strike clause.

MAY 23: Thirty mostly Latino workers at Valley Manufacturing Homes
(makers of mobile homes) plant in Sunnyside, Washington walk out
protesting management's refusal to discuss working conditions and
wages.  The next day, 120 other workers join picket line, citing
speedup and racist treatment. Police have arrested several workers
for blocking plant entrance and have used pepper gas to disperse
strikers.

MAY 25: Over 1,000 high school students at Lane Tech High School
in Chicago stage a walk-out to protest school budget cuts, the
Contract on America, and Proposition 187.

MAY 26: Wildcat strike in form of a 24 hour unofficial "sick- out"
shuts down most of Long Island Railroad, the nation's largest and
busiest commuter line, stranding thousands of commuters.

MAY 30: Militarizing the on-going battles with squatters, New York
police use an armed personnel carrier to evict squatters from East
Village in New York.

JUNE 2: Migrant farm workers at Moorehouse Strawberry Farm in
Mollara, Oregon strike over demands for an increase in the
existing piece rate.

JUNE 10: Washington Gas Light Co. locks out half its workforce
after union turns down company's final contract offer. The company
wanted contract provisions allowing more "flexibility" in work
rules and assignments. State of Virginia steps in on company's
side by denying unemployment benefits to strikers, although the
District of Columbia had awarded unemployment benefits to workers
living in Washington, D.C.

JUNE 18: Hundreds of mostly immigrant garment workers hold rally
in Brooklyn demanding an end to sweat-shop conditions and the
enforcement of wage laws, which are widely skirted in the
industry.

JUNE 19: Four hundred clerical and sales workers at U.S. West
Direct in Albuquerque, New Mexico return to work after a five week
strike over company contract violations and unfair labor
practices.

JUNE 21: First year anniversary of national Caterpillar strike
(the second strike in four years.) Union (U.A.W) has accused
company of using convict labor in two plants in an attempt to keep
production going.

JUNE 21: Seven hundred Teamsters ( drivers, warehouse and
production workers) strike Pepsi in Los Angeles area over company
refusal to liberalize early retirement benefits. Shortly
afterward, three other locals in Southern California begin
honoring picket lines.

JUNE 23: Thirteen hundred inmates at Lorton Prison in Washington,
D.C. held a four day work stoppage to protest deteriorating work
and prison conditions.

JUNE 25: Second anniversary strike support march occurs in
Decatur, Illinois "War Zone". Between four and seven thousand
union members and supporters rallied on behalf of striking A.S.
Staley and Caterpillar workers.  Despite the verbal support and
physical presence of several AFL-CIO big-wigs - a first since the
strikes began - march is about the same size as the previous
year's as AFL fails to widely mobilize  it's rank and file to turn
out for the march and rally. In contrast to last years event, not
even a token civil disobedience action is held this year

JULY 1: Mostly Third World hotel workers at the ritzy Drake
Swissotel in New York City strike over management attempts to
undermine job rules and working conditions and contract out to
temporary firms.

JULY 3: Turnpike and parkway toll takers in New Jersey strike
immediately before the busy Fourth of July holiday. A sick-in on
July 4th - the heaviest traveled holiday on New Jersey highways -
lasted two shifts until the State obtained a court injunction
forcing workers back to work. Sick-in had mixed effect; many of
toll booths are automated and the Highway Authority brought in
temps and part-time workers to staff the remaining. Union is
protesting "union-busting" stance of the State.

JULY 9: According to a study conducted by the Cambridge Human
Resources Group, the U.S. economy lost $27.6 billion in worker
productivity as a result of the first six months of the O.J.
Simpson trial as workers spent a conservative estimate of 5
minutes a day on company time discussing, listening to or watching
the trial. Researchers warn productivity will drop even more as
the trial drags forward towards a verdict.

JULY 11:   Detroit public transit bus drivers stage a sick-in,
forcing the entire system to shut down for 24 hours. Drivers were
protesting working conditions (mandatory overtime, unsafe buses
and a management history of harassment and suspensions) and a 10%
pay cut imposed on June 10.

JULY 13: Twenty-five hundred workers represented by six different
unions strike the two Detroit daily papers after management
repeatedly stalled negotiations in an attempt to force through
concessions, wage freezes and job cuts. In the first few days of
the strike, the strike quickly turned "ugly" in the words of the
New York Times as12 union  members were arrested for blocking
scabs from entering premises, several strikers separated scab
carriers from their bundles of papers and companies brought in
beefed-up security forces in an attempt to intimidate strikers.
Observers claim strike was provoked by management as an excuse to
close one of the daily papers, which are run as a joint management
exercise between two former rivals.  On July 17, two thousand
turned out to a strike support rally.

JULY 25: Thousands of county workers and supporters take to the
streets in Los Angeles to protest sweeping budget cuts which
threaten to gut Los Angeles County's health care system and other
essential services in poor and working class neighborhoods. Police
in riot gear were stationed through out the march route. If cuts
go through, over 18,000 county workers will lose their jobs and
the county's largest hospital (the biggest in the country) will
close along with dozens of satellite clinics serving predominately
low-income communities.

JULY 27: Protesting the police beating of a Black youth, riots
break out in Indianapolis for two nights. Bricks and bottles were
hurled at police, shop windows smashed and stores looted before
order was restored. On the same night, across the country, masked
youth in the predominately black Coconut Grove area of Miami set
up barricades, threw concrete blocks at cars and set trash cans on
fire to protest the police shooting of a 17 year old July 18.  The
rioters wore pillow cases over their heads and some were estimated
by neighborhood observers to be as young as 12 years old.

JULY 28: Cabdrivers in Prince Georges County ( Maryland suburbs of
Washington, D.C.) return to work after a six day strike. During
the strike, cabbies blocked highways and repeatedly demonstrated
outside of county offices, citing huge cab insurance increases and
profiteering by cab companies as causes of the strike action.

END OF JULY: More than two hundred clerical workers at the Detroit
regional Red Cross strike after contract negotiations break down.
Workers accuse the company of trying to union bust and impose
unnecessary concessions.

_

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CURRENT SITUATION IN THE US:

 A TRANSITIONAL PERIOD - BUT TO WHERE?

Perhaps at no time in the past several decades has American
society been so palpably polarized and ripe for social
explosions.True, social conflict has yet to erupt on any
significant scale but the preconditions are increasing and showing
no signs of diminishing any time soon.

 So far, much of this simmering tension and frustration has been
 tentatively diffused, recuperated and otherwise fragmented into
 either safely controlled scapegoating channels (for the time
 being at least) or else directed out of sheer necessity into
 privatized individual survival strategies.

 As an example of the first tendency, the ruling class has largely
 (but not completely) succeeded in making welfare recipients and
 immigrants in particular 'responsible' for the decline of living
 standards by portraying welfare recipients as freeloaders and
 work-shy. Current welfare 'reform' will effectively translate
 into a post-prosperity capitalist militarization of labor policy
 designed to impose the norms of work discipline and force the
 poorest sectors into the labor market at any cost, where they
 will be in direct competition with unionized workers particularly
 public sector workers.

 For example,  aalready in several major states welfare recipients
 have been driven into so-called workfare programs which are used
 by municipal governments as a way to cut costs by supplanting
 decently paid workers with a cheap replaceable source of labor.
 Along with this use of welfare-waged labor, state and city
 governments have also increasingly turned to temporary and
 contractual workers to break strikes and work actions. This past
 summer, for example the governor of New Jersey broke a strike  by
 turnpike toll collectors on a busy holiday weekend by bringing in
 with brutal swiftness contractual replacements to man the
 tollbooths thus effectively forcing the union to its knees.

Far from being exceptions, this sort of treatment is being
increasingly doled out as a first resort by bosses in the private
sector as well. The gentleman's accord of ritualized strike action
followed by negotiations, cemented by several decades of labor
peace, is being swept away, with employers in even previously safe
sectors going for the jugular.

Even the Wall Street Journal noted earlier this year that
provoking strikes has increasingly become the employer's weapons
in the present period to impose changes in work rules, getting rid
of "inflexible" workers, etc.

 THE OLD WORKERS MOVEMENT

The old workers movement, represented by the AFL-CIO is in serious
decline, a decline and disarray that  probably will not be
reversed  by the election of Sweeney to the head of the AFL. Even
what is being hailed as a new commitment to militance is limited
to token and often symbolic law-breaking i.e. blocking traffic and
courting arrests as a form of carefully orchestrated pressure
politics. But significantly, such tactics do not extend to
mobilizing for wider, more generalized disruptions of production,
which in any case the existing union bureaucracy would be
absolutely incapable of organizing.

But perhaps of even more significance is the erosion and
accelerating break-up of what passed for  worker's culture and
community in the United States. With some important exceptions,
most serious strikes in the past decade and a half have broken out
in outlying areas relatively far removed from major urban
concentrations. We refer here to Phelps-Dodge, Austin,  the
Pittston miners strike, Bath shipyards in Maine, etc. and today,
the ongoing Decatur struggles. These hard fought and bitter
strikes, most of which went down to defeat were often waged in
what amounted to single industry towns.

The era of tightly constructed working class communities organized
around industry, in which people lived and worked in communities
often linked in close proximity to the workplace, a set of
circumstances which permitted a distinct worker's identity
specific to this long boom phase of capitalist development to
emerge has all but disappeared, probably forever. Particularly in
the large cities.

Traditional working class institutions, such as the corner bars
are steadily eroding, casualties of the increased privatization of
leisure, which in itself was  both a measure of technological
development (i.e. VCR's being both widely accessible and
relatively cheap, at least if you were working) and changing
standards of entertainment. You no longer go down to the corner
bar and discuss problems over a beer - instead you stay at home
and pop in a video in the isolated privacy of your living room.
And hope you don't get shot looking out your living room window.

This has created a nostalgic longing for a return to an idyllic
"community" that would replace Capital's relentless march into
colonizing more and more of every day life. This nostalgia is
being cynically exploited by the State, who, as we noted in
previous issues of CAN , would love to transfer as many social
welfare functions as possible to the beloved "community."

Perhaps no where has this been taken to such absurd extremes as in
the Fairfield section of Baltimore, which is now a designated
federal "empowerment" - once again, that magical word! - zone.
Here, less than a couple miles from the glittering array of
yuppified shops (or, excuse us-  "shoppes", as they are now
properly called) and tourist attractions of the Inner Harbor lies
what is arguably the most developed post-industrial ghost town in
the United States. Fairfield makes similar decommodified urban
war-zones such as  East St. Louis, Detroit, and Camden, New Jersey
look positively gentrified in comparison.

The juxtaposition is startling. Once a prosperous, bustling
industrial area with a smattering of residences in between the
chemical factories and storage tanks, the area is now  practically
empty of both industry and people. Miles of abandoned
infrastructure (including a whole public housing project now
overgrown with weeds) stretch in eerie silence. One expects a
sagebrush to come tumbling down the deserted streets.

 Even at the height of prosperity, Fairfield - a Black majority
 town -was woefully underdeveloped. The sidewalks were unpaved and
 many of the houses lacked basic sewage facilities. Today, the
 area has been gutted and scattered among the ruins remain a few
 surviving mostly elderly homeowners. But as a result of it's
 empowerment zone status, small outside armies of social workers
 and urban planners have now descended on an area empty of people
 to "recreate community", starting with the setting up of a
 "village center" to prepare Fairfield for it's new economic role:
recycling toxic industrial waste. What a future!

But to return to our original point, it is more than just working
class leisure and "community' that is being affected. Indeed, it
is a contradictory curiosity that at the same time the work ethic
is being eroded - by capitalism itself (i.e. what we mean is pride
in one's work being rewarded by a decent pay scale, with periodic
increases and a long term, if not life-long commitment on the
employer's part to hire you), its ideological virtues are being
trumpeted so loudly, much in the same pathological way that a
fever often rises right before it is ready to break. And this will
be the source of future contradictions.

Since people's consciousness often lags behind changed reality, it
may take a little while for this sets in fully. But the
traditional bond is gone with even once formerly stable life-long
employers such as IBM and ATT throwing workers away like so many
discarded tissues these days. And the delinking of the work ethic
is a two way street with important ramifications lost in the
usually one-sided coverage of corporate downsizing.

It is impossible to accurate judge how widespread some of the
social indicators for this new worker refusal are. Absenteeism,
theft, sabotage broadly defined, drug use on the job; actions
which are usually narrowly dismissed as being individualistic and
not signs of class consciousness are usually ignored by both
traditional leftists and right-wing industrial sociologists alike.


Typically, what few articles have appeared on the subject in the
management and "human resources" press have generally focused on
upper echelon white collar employees and not on blue collar or the
more exploited sectors of the white collar and service
proletariat. But the indicators are that such behavior is on the
upswing.

One of the rare exceptions to this general neglect that openly
tackled the question of employee disaffiliation was a survey
conducted by Kepner-Tregoe, a management consulting firm who
interviewed more than 1500 workers and managers. The results so
startled the firm that they brought in yet another set of
pollsters to double-check the findings. According to the president
of Kepnoe-Tregoe, "The vitriolic response was amazing. . .Workers
don't like their companies and there is a very fundamental social
change going on in this country regarding workplace relations. .
.The workers hear the verbiage about how 'our people are the most
important assets we have' and they want to throw up." In almost
every single category, ranging from overall job satisfaction to
opinions on the new team assignments, an overwhelming majority of
the workers interviewed clearly rejected management views on the
new 'empowerment' i.e. polite words disguising ruthless downsizing
and increased exploitation through over-work.

If at present such views are becoming widespread, they still are
at the level of individual discontent and have yet to find
collective expression. But as we have noted before, the line
between privatized despair and collective mass action is a very
fine one indeed. And the U.S. working class in particular has a
history of sudden upsurges after periods of seeming calm.
Certainly, the growing alienation at the workplace is a necessary
precondition for future contestation..

THE ROLE OF IMMIGRANT LABOR IN POST-PROSPERITY US CAPITALISM:


Concentrated in most larger US cities are growing numbers of
foreign -born workers mainly of Latino and Asian descent who
occupy the lowest rungs of the labor force and have brought their
own traditional ways of struggle with them. In some ways, they
have been much more militant than native-born workers. For
example, we heard anecdotally of a 1991 strike in Los Angeles at
American Racing Equipment where all the striking workers were
former teachers from a particular impoverished area of Mexico who
had immigrated to the States. Their strike, which was won in 5
days, evidently drew on militant labor traditions they had learned
in Mexico.

At the same time it is important not to overestimate such
developments - or set-up some particular sector of workers as a
"vanguard." As one L.A. reader noted: ". . with the Janitor For
Justice militants (and there are hundreds), their leaders are
using their mass actions - which can be very effective disrupting
production to negotiate deals with corporate bosses which give the
workers peanuts! E.g.: their latest contract said many janitors
would see their pay rise  from something like $5.25 to $6.80 an
hour over the next few years. But the older janitors making $6.80
an hour plus already would see their pay virtually frozen! The
Duranzo 'progressive' leadership of SEIU Local 399 and their
'left' apologists hailed this as showing how 'workers would make
sacrifices for their fellow workers.' What about the bloated
capitalists making 'sacrifices'? Also expanded health care was
negotiated though there may be work hour extensions to 'qualify'
for it."

THE MILLION MAN MARCH

 To understand some of the contradictions of the March, you have
 to first understand the oceans of pain that convulse the Black
 community.. For nearly twenty years as a result of
 deindustrialization, there is an atmosphere of nihilistic and
 fratricidal warfare in the ghetto; an implosion of anger and
 frustration compounded by the visible success of a growing
 minority of the black middle class who are used as an example
 that America has indeed overcome racism and if you haven't gotten
 ahead it is your fault and not the system's. It is impossible to
 convey the frightening and senseless violence that occurs as a
 result of this hopelessness turned inwards. The only comparison
 is that of a war zone, although the enemy is not external but the
 person next to you. For example, the numbers of people killed in
 Baltimore alone since 1970 surpass the numbers in Northern
 Ireland dead in the same period due to the civil war there. So
 the vague call for "atonement" struck a real chord with ordinary
Black people.

But is equally true that most American cities with large Black and
Latino populations are potential tinderboxes, any one of which
could spontaneously explode into a Los Angeles - as witnessed by
the mini-riots that have broken out this year alone in Paterson,
New Jersey, Indianapolis, Miami and Lexington, Kentucky, among
other, smaller localized outbursts.

Having said that, it was quite interesting to observe how the
media essentially built the Million Man March. Even six weeks
before the March, it appeared that there was very little
grassroots infrastructure anywhere in place. Unlike any other
national demonstrations on any issue, which are always ignored and
downplayed both before and after they occur, the Million Man March
was given surprisingly positive media coverage. This could be due
to two factors. One, the demands of the March were considered
non-threatening and thus safe to promote. Two, the media loves to
exaggerate and sensationalize the growing and real racial divide
(which of course, was compounded by the Simpson circus) so the
March may have been viewed as a symptom of this gulf between Black
and white America and thus focused on from this angle. Whatever
their purpose for doing so, the sensationalistic media promotion
had the effect - probably unintended - of turning the event into a
spontaneous referendum on Black pride, which increased the
turn-out all out of proportion to any actual organizing efforts.

 It is undeniable true that the participants appeared to be
 disproportionately better-off . Just the cost of traveling to
 D.C. would have excluded the poorest sector of the Black
 population. We personally witnessed a homeless man in Baltimore
 calling the local march organizers and inquiring if any free
 buses were being provided. He was told if he had really wanted to
 go, he would have saved up the money in advance since publicity
 for the march had been circulating for a couple months!  Needless
 to say, he didn't participate. Nor, probably for the same reason
 did many others.

The role of Louis Farrakan must be placed in perspective. He is
widely viewed as a doctor who can make an excellent diagnosis but
no one is going to line up to take the cure. In other words,
thousands of people will turn out to hear him denounce racism,
which alone among Black national figures he clearly denounces in a
no-holds barred, fiery manner. However, very few people join the
Nation of Islam or even become among it's periphery afterwards.
The Nation is still a tiny group, with only an estimated 10-15,000
actual members. So for now. it's publicity is all out of
proportion to it's actual membership.

In the past few years, Farrakhan has subtly shifted from
attempting to recruit from among the Black lumpen proletariat,
which had previously composed the base for much of the NOI's
support (ex-convicts, etc.) and focused instead on the Black
middle class (students and the college educated professionals. His
prominent role in the March is an example of one more attempt to
shift himself into this strata and position himself to be a player
for the interests of the Black petty bourgeoisie.

 Having said all of that, there is no denying that Farrakhan is
 potentially a very sinister and reactionary figure whose long
 term role could be that of an American version of Buthelezi in
 South Africa.

 Surprisingly few observers, either pro- or con-, point to
 Farrakhan's dependence on government money. The NOI gets millions
 of dollars in contracts to provide security services in the
 inner-city housing projects. Contrast this generous so-called
 "neutral" support with that accorded to the Panthers, Malcolm X
 and even Martin Luther King ! So whatever they may say publicly,
 the rulers clearly see this demagogue as someone worth supplying
 with an economic base. And needless to say, this umbilical cord
 of dollars will be very useful in ensuring Farrakhan also plays a
 role useful to them in return at some future point as well as
 feeding into Farrakhan's attempted metamprhosis into a power
 broker for the masses of Black people. It is not unfeasible to
 see Farrakhan providing the shock troops to put down future riots
 in the inner city for example.

As for the long term effects of the Million Man March, it is too
soon to tell, what if any these may be. Because it had a soft
message which anyone could claim a vindication for their own
political perspective, this will remain  a clouded issue. The fact
that the speakers on the podium included Black elected officials
who have been the most responsible for administering budget cuts,
layoffs and service cut backs in some of the largest cities - all
of which have disproportionately fallen on the Black working class
and poor - suggests that the conflict in class interests can
perhaps be papered over for a one day March but not for a long
range coalition.

And whatever the self-blaming content of the self-help official
message of the Million Man March, it is clear too that the March,
despite itself, was perhaps the first and largest implicit protest
so far against the Contract on America; a fact that the
Republicans have been forced to acknowledge even as they
uncomfortably scramble to find some comforting common ground with
the overall theme of "self-reliance".

What all these admittedly partial observations suggest is that the
old post-WW2 institutional framework which governed class conflict
in the United States is steadily being frayed and whittled away -
a process which has led to a shake-up in old allegiances and a
process which only stands to continue accelerating in the
foreseeable future. No new reforms, in the time old American
tradition of buying off mass discontent through sectional
concessions, are anywhere on the horizon. Instead the immediate
choice looming is merely between how severe the cuts in living
standards are going to be. As the L.A. Rebellion amply
demonstrated, where in stark contrast to the urban rebellions of
the 60's, no new cooling-off money  in the form of poverty
programs and other such measures trickled down to the streets.

Ironically, what were once considered "ultra-left" tactics during
the long boom of prosperity and thus confined to the largely
ignored hopes of tiny and insignificant groups, tactics such as
factory occupations, objectively are now suddenly very practical
and realistic measures. Much in the same way that during the
Depression era, sit-downs in the factories sprung-up as a
common-sense response to the growing numbers of unemployed outside
the plant gates whose desperation would have been used as a
battering ram to smash traditional strikes.

Today, and for the first time in decades, it is all the old
reformist solutions (reliance on leaders, the Democrats, partial
demands, etc.) which appear hopelessly utopian. Of course, these
reformist solutions were not the result of "false consciousness"
but the result of periods of relative prosperity where it was
possible to force the capitalists to cough up the goods, at least
in the short run. And in the short run, they indeed worked. But
for all intent and purposes, now these tactics are dead as a
doornail. There are no new crumbs to dispense anyone's way as the
previously existing objective conditions for most partial reforms
have been wiped out. When struggles break out, they will
eventually be forced to confront this fact, especially if people
are to avoid going down to defeat, as the recent debacle of the
Bridgestone/Firestone rubber workers strike and now Caterpillar
painfully demonstrate the exhaustion of all factions of the
traditional labor movement. And in this transition period to what
hopefully could signify the small beginnings of a new worker's
movement, over time, lessons will have to be learned and
conclusions drawn in the course of the struggle itself.

Some Recent Publications Containing Useful Material On Different
Aspects of the US

RACE TRAITOR # 5 (Winter 96): An editorial on the militias with
which we agree with wholeheartedly. Available for $5 from: POB
603, Cambridge, MA..,02140-0005

PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION #50 (Fall 1995): Good articles on Colin
Powell and the Million Man March. Still, too wedded to the
procrustean bed of orthodox Trotskyism. Available for $1 from:
LRP, POB 3573, New York, NY 10008-3573

CHICAGO WORKER'S VOICE # 8 (October 1995): Articles on  Sweeney
and Labor Party Advocates. Available for $4  from: POB 11542,
Chicago, IL, 60611.

TRADE UNION POLITICS: AMERICAN UNIONS AND ECONOMIC CHANGE 1960S-
1990S. Edited by Kent Worcester and Glen Perusek. Humanities
Press. $17.50 Excellent collection of essays on the U.S. labor
movement in the past several decades. Highly recommended.

WORLD-WIDE WEB RESOURCES:

IWW: http://iww.org./

A-Infos: http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/A-Infos

French Students and Workers On Strike:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~galt/france/

Anarchist Archives: http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/faculty/dwar

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BOOK REVIEW

RE-SHAPING WORK Edited By Christopher Schenk and John Anderson
Published by the Ontario Federation of Labour and the
Technological Adjustment Research Program

The editors of the essays which comprise re-Shaping Work
perceptively state in the introduction to this book that they
believe we in the labour movement have to "devote as much time to
battling the issues of technological change and work organization
as we do on the front of free trade and economic restructuring."
Consistent with this the book's authors analyze many of the
profound changes in w3ork organization which are taking place and
attempt to come to grips with them. The result is a potentially
groundbreaking book for the labour movement in Canada.

Re-Shaping Work is potentially groundbreaking because it is the
first major work produced by the Canadian labour movement which
takes a serious, in0depth look at the issue of work organization.
This is a truly noticeable development because prior to this
book's publication the issue of work organization had been sorely
neglected by most of the labour movement despite its claims to be
seriously challenging the corporate agenda. Indeed, the movement's
failure to adequately address the issue of work organization has
epitomized the shallowness of its opposition to the global
corporate agenda.

This said it is not surprising that the authors fail to map out a
visionary strategy for dealing with the changes being made to the
way work is organized. The strategies they do present are little
more than prescriptions for coping with and trying to mitigate the
adverse effects of work re-organization. What we need but do not
get is a truly comprehensive multi-faceted strategy of resistance
to work re-organization which thoroughly recognizes that it is
integral to capitalism.

One must ask why the authors did not dare to attempt to map out
such a strategy? Is it because they fully understand the radical
implications of seriously challenging the global corporate agenda
(i.e. capitalism)? Or is it because the book's editors were
carefully selective about what to include in a book funded by the
previous Ontario government?

Whatever the case there is a real danger that this significant
book and the important analytical work included within it will
soon be forgotten like so many other documents produced by the
labour movement. But hopefully this won't be the case. Hopefully
Re-shaping work will be widely read by workers and, despite its
weaknesses, encourage the long overdue publication of a multitude
of material on the subject of work organization. In short, it
remains to be seen whether the appearance of Re-Shaping Work will
mark a real turning point for labour in Canada or prove to be just
one more non-event.

Bruce Allen is a Shop Committeeperson and member of CAW Local 199


PRIVATE PRISON FACTORIES

By D.A. Shelton

Fred Gaines, a former factory worker of the Wackenhut Corporation,
was recently laid off from his job as an assembler of computer
circuit boards. He is 52, with two small children, a wife to
support and a $40,000 mortgage owed on his house. The corporation
denied Gaines ' request for severance pay, despite 10 years of
loyal service. Given his 10th grade education and lack of
employment opportunities, this family of four will surely
experience hard times in the near future.

A Wackenhut official explained, "Due to budgetary constraints,
downsizing was appropriate if we are to stay competitive in the
computer assembly market." Yet a few months later, Wackenhut
announced that its former assembly operation was being transferred
to the Lockhard Work Program Facility in Lockhart, Texas. Lockhard
is a private prison managed by a subsidiary of Wackenhut.

It was never mentioned that the inmate workers at this private
prison are paid drastically lower wages than the former employees
at Wackenhut - about 10% lower. Fred Gaines is but one of many
victims affected in the last decade as U.S  companies increasingly
tap into the lucrative multibillion dollar prison industry.

As prison populations across the nation explode, the growth of
private prisons has expanded by 500% between 1985 and 1995.
Eighteen companies have constructed or rehabbed 93 private prison
facilities, thus creating space for 51,000 prisoners incarcerated
in an already overburdened criminal justice system.

For these companies to compete, they are required to bid on
federal, state and local grants. Once a grant is awarded, company
officials examine exploitable, cost-cutting measures to maximize
their profits.

Last June, Esmore Correctional Services Inc., which operates four
brutal private prisons in the U.S. discovered the consequences of
its actions when over 300 immigrants at the INS Processing Center
in Elizabeth, N.J. rebelled against inhumane conditions. these men
and women immigrant prisoners were stored in a converted warehouse
where they were underfed, sexually mistreated and subjected to
daily brutality and abuse.

After a six hour riot,  the prisoners were quickly transferred to
county jails and INS facilities in New York, Pennsylvania and
Maryland. Shortly thereafter the Elizabeth facility was closed
down.

This incident is an example of what to expect in the future, as
this new "Fortune 500" industry grows.

Reprinted from "News And Letters" Dec. 1995 WORLD-WIDE WEB
RESOURCES:

IWW: http://iww.org./

A-Infos: http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/A-Infos

French Students and Workers On Strike:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~galt/france/

Anarchist Archives: http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/faculty/dwar

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