by Saladin Muhammad
The following remarks were delivered at an ISO forum on the Freightliner 5 at the University of North Carolina Greensboro on 3/26/09.
Franklin Torrence, Robert Whiteside, Allen Bradley, and Glenna Swinford of the Cleveland Five outside the union hall.
The struggles of workers to organize unions in North Carolina and throughout the US South are critical to shaping the consciousness of the working class about building power and transforming society.
The South played a special role in the history of the development of the US capitalist economy. Southern laws and attitudes about worker rights were established and shaped to maintain and justified slavery and super-exploitation, which was the core of the Southern workforce. Racism taught some workers to place racial privilege over worker rights, that is to identify with the interests and ideology of bosses and not with their most oppressed and exploited co-workers.
Thus, the political landscape of the South – its labor laws and working class consciousness, reflect more sharply than in other regions of the country, the history and impact of the divisions among the working class.
The struggle to organize trade unions are an important part of the struggle to overcome these divisions by forging unity through organizing and struggling against the bosses and their powerful machine of employer associations, lobbyists and influence over all levels of government.
We can see this forging of unity with the Freightliner 5, a unity that is a threat to the boss not only in the short term for a union campaign, but in the long term in the struggle for a truly democratic and people centered society.
However, if the trade unions are to be one of the major organizations that empower the workers, they must also be controlled by the rank-and-file workers. Any agreements between the heads of the union and the employers that don’t have the approval of the workers, take away the power from the workers.
Contrary to what most labor bureaucrats and misinformed workers might say, the F-5 struggle is at the core of the struggle to build strong rank-and-file democratic trade unions that give power to the workers.
The firing of the F-5 was a message by Freightliner and corporate power, to instill fear not only in the freightliner workers in Cleveland, NC, but to all workers seeking to organize in NC and throughout the South.
If the unjust firings and treatment of F-5 are not challenged by the UAW and the wider labor movement, it will make organizing in the South even more difficult. This struggle must be built from the bottom up, among rank-and-file workers at Freightliner, and by an alliance of local unions and worker organizations with major community support.
A NC Workers Alliance must be built that begins to connect the many struggles to organize and democratize unions and to build major campaigns that mobilize workers to challenge the injustices of corporate power.
On April 4th, less than a week from today will be the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin L. King whose last battle for justice was in support of the strike of Memphis, TN sanitation workers. This strike was not called by the national union, it was called by the workers in Memphis, and it was not called off by the national union, even though they tried to encourage the workers to go back to work.
The Sanitation workers said they would not return to work until their main demands were addressed. The stand of the F-5 as leaders of the local UAW bargaining committee was the same as the Memphis Sanitation workers – the refused to recommend that the workers accepted an “agreement” that failed to address major issues.
We must begin to take concrete steps toward building a NC Workers Alliance that helps to build massive awareness and support for the F-5 and other struggles; that helps in the process of organizing rank-and-file democratic unions throughout the private and public sectors; and that helps to build the movement to win collective bargaining rights for public sector workers that would be a power advance for the working class.
The F-5 cannot win this struggle without wider support throughout NC. It must be a support that is built wide and deep among workers at workplaces, communities and faith based institutions, so that it is clear that this is a demand from the working class. A victory for the F-5, will not only result in them getting their jobs back, but it will bring a new energy into the union at the Freightliner plant and a new hope for workers seeking to organize in NC and the South.
As part of our annual commemoration of Dr Kings Support for Labor, we have invited the F-5 to attend the BWFJ banquet to distribute information and make brief comments to help promote this struggle throughout NC and other states.
We must all find a way to promote and build support for this struggle. This meeting is one of those steps.
