(cw transphobia) Teamsters President endorses "Pro-labor Conservativism"
(cw transphobia) Teamsters President endorses "Pro-labor Conservativism"
https://xcancel.com/TeamsterSOB/status/1813233768137662564
The C-suite long ago sold out the United States, shuttering factories in the homeland and gutting American jobs, while using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag.
They have forged trade deals that led directly to the hemorrhaging of 4 million good jobs to China.
But as O’Brien correctly observed Monday night, that isn’t the Republican Party’s true tradition. There was a time when Republicans knew that American strength depends squarely on American workers—and their way of life: family, neighborhood, church, union hall. Ronald Reagan knew it.
China is ripping us off, and strong tariffs must be maintained and expanded.
Teamsters blaming transgender people, "DEI", and China for the suppression of the labor unions in America. Gives support to family, church, and Ronald Reagan.
You're viewing a single thread.
All the fucking labor notes hacks in TDU and all the socialist orgs that didn't condemn their shitty UPS contract should be ashamed of themselves.
I thought UPS workers liked their contract.
Apologies for the late reply, this is the first chance I've gotten around to it.
During contract negotiations 97% of UPS Teamsters authorized a strike. This was widely lauded as an impressive show of militancy. Later only 86% of the 58% of eligible UPS Teamsters voted for the contract, or a little under half of the Teamsters at UPS. Rushing a contract vote and not engaging members in it is a regular tactic of union leadership that wants to reach a compromise and their ability to mobilize a strike vote shows that union officials were more than capable of reaching more members.
Shortly before the contract vote, A small group of Teamsters were organizing against it. They released this article in Cosmonaut and did an interview on Revolutionary Left Radio detailing extensively how many of the supposed victories in the contract were far from that. Employee tiers remained, the air conditioning concessions that were widely celebrated were overstated, and concessions had been made.
Shortly after the contract ratification Labor Notes, who loudly supported the TA before the vote, released this article detailing the many Teamsters that would have preferred a strike.
As detailed in the Cosmonaut article, communists, socialists and progressive labor widely supported the TA even after the actual rank and file Teamsters had overwhelmingly voted in favor of striking. Now we are seeing the opportunist reactionary labor aristocrat Shaun O'Brien that they all fell in line behind show his true colors.
The responsibility of socialists and any class struggle labor organizers was to tell UPS workers that while they are glad they got those raises and concessions, they could have got a lot more through militancy and membership-driven bargaining.
Idk, I believe in militancy and also want celebrate the work union members put in to get a good contract. I think it's so easy to criticize unions not being militant enough that it comes across as we know what's best for you and regardless of reality no one wants to follow people who tell them they know their best interests.
This 100%. The job of socialist organizers within the union is to take those wins, protect them, use them to fight for more wins, win leadership positions and ultimately build a school for working class struggle. The jobs of socialist activists outside the union is to support the union so that they get wins. External criticism of unions from the outside breaks internal unity and prevents solidarity from building between unions and parties/external orgs.
You can't do any of that without agitation. You will just burn out while everyone else takes credit for what you're trying to take credit for. This is the usual course of events for Western socialists bumbling into union organizing.
You also cannot provide uncritical support externally and expect to do anything but sharpen the knives that will be used against you by the people that you leave in power there through a lack of organizing and agitation. No socialist program has ever been won through uncritical cheerleading of unions. Unions have petty bourgeois characteristics that must be constantly combatted so that they can become tools for class struggle rather than class collaboration.
Re: internal unity, there is no such thing if you also want socialists in leadership positions. That is going to necessarily create disunity because your socialists will be advocating for something different than the liberals, proto-fash, and staff, and they will all fight you over it. You can support unity of action when it comes to direct actions but if you prioritize unity over agitation then you will have to pretend to be liberals and act like liberals the entire time like some kind of underground operation. There are not enough of us for that level of salting to ever work. There has never been.
Re: alienation from external criticism, this just means you have to be competent in your criticism. It needs to serve building an org within the union, the faction you will have to create if you ever want to succeed. Many Western leftists have no idea what they are doing and are not competent about it, so they do just alienate workers. But that's a reason to become competent, not throw out the tool that has worked time and time again.
The point of the criticism is to draw workers to you because what you say resonates with them. Sometimes it resonstes because they are already pissed. There absolutely were pissed UPS workers and seeing socialists say, "great job!" correctly teaches them that those socialists are full of shit. There are also workers that may not have been thinking of those criticisms but will be convinced by them. The key is to build constructive criticisms on top of congratulating the wins so that you don't alienate workers that are happy to have the contract. Trots tend to do that through their dogmatic and often hyperbolic criticism that is usually couched in esoteric language (either the workers aren't the intended audience or the Trot writing it is incompetent).
Re: Militancy, the UPS contract is denoted by a lack of it and closed door negotiations by staff who reached a TA far too early. The bar is set so low that Western socialists teach each other that just striking at all is militancy. It isn't. Militancy comes from strong worker organizer networks pushing demands, calling the shots on when to strike and when to agree, when to take other direct actions, and doing ds from a nascsntle class conscious perspective where they understand the boss as the enemy.
Your response reminds me so much of a trot tho. Like this is exactly their playbook and no one cares what they have to say.
Unions are not going to bring about the revolution. They are a way to get working people engaged in the class solidarity and organizing in the hopes that some join a communist party. In the imperial core there is no viable communist party. And then that party can not only criticize but can enact change because they are actually working in the unions their criticizing the decisions of.
It will always be easy to criticize wins in a trade union within a capitalist system. Maybe things do get TA too quickly maybe they don't struggle enough. But at the end of the day being the person or group of people that is constantly criticizing workers wins is not going to help people listen to you.
Your response reminds me so much of a trot tho. Like this is exactly their playbook and no one cares what they have to say.
What I'm describing is the basic approach taken by every successful communist party that made use of unions. Any adjustments I make are an attempt to work around the specific challenges of organizing in the heart of capitalist empire.
Trots ape this but in a Trot way that is ultra and often self-defeating and a lot of that comes down to how they communicate and whether they build well and authentically among the workers. Trots trying to do union things often come across as preachy and inauthentic because they are being preachy and inauthentic and they are bad at faking it. Our task is to be competent and authentic, not ignore the time-tested tools of building socialism with unions.
Trots also cite Lenin, call themselves communist, and emphasize class struggle. Is it wrong to do these things? Of course not. The devil is in the details and how you approach discipline. Strategy and tactics must align. Trots tend to fail at this because they are ungrounded and stick to dogmas (and even language!) that barely even worked in the 1910s in the Russian Empire. Their writings are de facto masturbatory.
Unions are not going to bring about the revolution. They are a way to get working people engaged in the class solidarity and organizing in the hopes that some join a communist party.
The usual hope is that unions can be used as part of class struggle organizing, yes. They are not themselves the labor movement nor a socialist party, they are a localized realization of the labor movement that is easily coopted into both liberalism and fascism to defang and kill us and those like us, and even self-defeat the labor movement as a whole. Thus is the central contradiction of trade unionism, their tendency for self-defeat through class collaboration, through liberalism. It's whybther are imperialist unions. Our task re: doing anything constructive with uniond is to foment class struggle both in and outside of unions. Trots also say this, they are just bad at it. Lenin and Mao said it too and it is a very common sentiment among communists of most tendencies. Union members don't even need to join a socialist party in order to engage in cognizant class struggle, though you will naturally engage in party building by simply doing a good job organizing and being a magnet for those you work with - they will want to know more about what you are doing and will join your reading groups if you ask.
To be an effective magnet, however, you cannot be noticeably inauthentic. The best way to avoid this is to be authentic. If that is not possible, you should at least be competent. Uncritical cheerleading sets you up for inauthenticity and handcuffs your ability to organize a movement within a union. You must have struggle, you must note failures, it just needs to be done effectively so as to court the workers.
In the imperial core there is no viable communist party. And then that party can not only criticize but can enact change because they are actually working in the unions their criticizing the decisions of.
There are small communist parties in the imperial core. Some of them engage in class struggle work in unions. I mentioned FRSO somewhere in this thread. They have a focus on the Teamsters. They have members among the Teamsters. They worked with TDU. They cheered the contract with no constructive criticism that would direct workers into a sustainable reform movement. TDU got this childish as their president, lol.
FRSO is small. But it would benefit from doing soft constructive criticism in its messaging so that it can build a proper class struggle, militant movement, which TDU clearly is not. Otherwise you will be "underground" and facilitating liberalism and fascism and burning out your organizers on that. It is worse than embracing sectarianism and making no attempt at class struggle, though not worse than what Trots do.
It will always be easy to criticize wins in a trade union within a capitalist system. Maybe things do get TA too quickly maybe they don't struggle enough. But at the end of the day being the person or group of people that is constantly criticizing workers wins is not going to help people listen to you.
It isn't so simplistic. We should reject a dichotomy of "we either just criticize workers' winsthem, the time or we uncritically cheerlead every TA and ratification vote". The former is not what I suggested and the latter is what the would-be major communist parties are doing.
What should be done follows from an analysis of how these trade unions actually function, who is in them, who is in leadership, and what you want to accomplish. All of these things have to align and be accurarely grounded for us to be effective and intentionally work towards our ends. The solutions will be a balancing act due to the nature of having opposing forces in the spaces we want to influence.
That last point is important.
Are you going to cheerlead a union full of chuds that builds the Brown People Bomber 3000? DSA libs are going to do that. They already do that. So what is your orientation? Do you ignore that union? Do you try to join it and actively make it easier to bomb the brown people? If so, what is your plan for contradicting this later? How many people do you need? With whom will you operate? Will you criticize that union and from what angle? In that scenario, it is almost certainly pointless to do anything at all in that union until our organizations are more powerful. You will build better by having a consistent anti-imperialist line that foments class struggle outside that particular union.
Or perhaps there is just a union that is run by the usual incoherent liberals, full of reactionaries, radlibs, etc. They make widgets at the widget factory. Their leadership is entrenched and always supports the Democratic party. They do typical collaborationist bargaining and staff are probably on the dole. Your organization decides they want to use this union as a venue for class struggle. What do you do? Do you praise the current bosses' work, uncritically? Surely you will rapidly find that you have enemies in the union. This is not because you are being a dogmatic Trot. It's because you want to do something that other people don't - and that threatens their positions and career trajectories. That thing might be something as vague and liberal as TDU. They will fight you to the death over it. You will self-isolate if you uncritically praise the current leadership's outcomes while also saying leadership needs to be changed. Everyone knows that's inconsistent and the exact people you want to attract will write you off. You want to capture the people who are unhappy with the outcone or who can be made to understand it as inadequate. There are too few of us. Any project within a trade union must be premised on massive growth and political education. You can't do that without identifying problems and bringing people in to work on them.
Anyways back to messaging. Rather than constantly crapping on contract wins or harping on about "union bosses" like a Trot, this is why you should use constructive criticism that celebrates the wins but notes where more is needed and what to do about it. Your message should build your org and/or projects. It should appeal to the dissatisfied and those who are okay with the contract but still wanted more or who saw some bullshit in the process and likes that you think it is bullshit, too. And it should hsve sonething tangible that they can do beyond feeling good. Trots just throw shot into the ether, they barely think about audience. They all write exactly like each other because they are literally copying a polemic approach as a dogma. They profess that if you build it (a lengthy esoteric polemic), the working class will come.
Does this make sense?
All the fucking labor notes hacks in TDU and all the socialist orgs that didn't condemn their shitty UPS contract should be ashamed of themselves.
This was the og post that I disagreed with. Condemning the UPS contract as shitty and throwing shame at socialists for not condemning it is unnecessary shit throwing and will not help build up socialist orgs or undo the contradictions within trade unions. I also read theory and agree with most of what you wrote in the latest comment, but I think it's quite a divergence from the original comment.
Sure I'd be in agreement that simply condemning them is a bad idea. I don't think I even thought to point that out re: OP. I think it's because aside from 1 or 2 accounts here I never see any criticism of the backseat cheerleader approach.