Unionists form Labor Party
[This week's Letter from the US is a guest column by Caroline Lund, who attended the founding convention of the Labor Party. She is a member of the United Autoworkers union and of the socialist organisation Solidarity.]
The weekend of June 6-9 made history in the US. Some1600 trade unionists met in Cleveland, Ohio, and formed a Labor Party.
After the constitution of the new party was approved on the third day of the gathering, wild applause, stamping and whistling broke out, as people vented their satisfaction that we might finally see a challenge to the US two-party system by working people.
The new Labor Party is not really a full-blown party. The convention voted not to run or endorse candidates for two years, while engaging in "mass recruitment and political actions that go beyond the electoral process to shift the national debate towards our agenda".
Examples of such activities are a campaign to restore the right to organise unions (which is a right on paper but not in reality) and a campaign for a constitutional amendment granting everyone the right to a job at a decent wage.
At its second convention two years from now, an electoral committee will present a strategic plan concerning electoral action. The two-year moratorium was seen as a way to ease the recruitment of more unions — most of which are supporting Democratic Party candidates, including Bill Clinton, in the 1996 elections.
Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader was invited to address the convention from the floor (he was an at-large delegate to the convention) and received a standing ovation.
Enthusiastic applause also greeted former Democratic Party politician Jerry Brown, who lambasted both Democratic and Republican office-holders, including Clinton, as hypocritical vultures feeding on the people.
The 1400 elected delegates came from unions representing some 1.5 million workers. The number of union members in the US is around 16 million; only around 15% of workers are in unions.
The Labor Party is backed by nine unions so far, including the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, the United Mine Workers, the American Federation of Government Employees, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers and the International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union.
The program approved by the convention is quite radical. It calls for the constitutional right to a job, a minimum wage of $10 per hour, a 32-hour work week, publicly funded health care for all, free public education through university, defence of affirmative action and opposition to bigotry or discrimination based on race, gender, disability, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
The two main political debates were over the two-year moratorium on electoral activity and over the right to abortion.
The approved platform calls for "informed choice and unimpeded access to a full range of family planning and reproductive services for men and women". An amendment called for adding the explicit right to "safe, legal abortion" as "a woman's private decision". Most speakers against the amendment said they felt the existing wording was already pro-choice and that inclusion of the word "abortion" would make it harder to recruit some unions. While the amendment was defeated, this will certainly be a continuing debate in the Labor Party.
One of the most inspiring sessions was an appeal for solidarity from strikers at the Detroit News and Free Press and several other striking or locked-out unions. The Detroit newspaper strike has lasted nearly a year, and is seen as a critical battle for the whole labour movement since Detroit is such a strong union town. More than $7000 was collected toward these strike solidarity funds.
The Labor Party is still small and weak compared with the huge power and might of the corporate enemy. But the battering that US workers have taken, and the growing disgust with the dead-end, two-party system may create a fertile field for its rapid growth.
For more information contact: Labor Party, P.O. Box 53177, Washington, D.C. 20009, USA. Phone: 202 319 1932, fax: 202 319 1930.