The union's job is to act above and against workers and so it is a tragedy that workers are constantly being sold the idea that the union is their last line of defense against a hostile system. Here we see that the union would be perfectly happy with the elimination of jobs, with the increase in health care payments made by workers and the erosion of wages. As long as they at they at least get a chance at making a bid for the job. Workers at Boeing are in a catch-22 and their is nothing that the union can or will do about it. It is the union that can only administer an ever decreasing sense of job security on the part of workers. If workers at Boeing and elsewhere really want to defend their interests they will have to organize outside of and against the unions. Precisely because it is not possible to honestly view the union role as being any other than completely servile to both Boeing and the Democratic Party. This is because the union is a creature of those who rule.
All capitalists are faced by a falling rate of profit in real terms, in relation to the profits of competitors. This is compounded when bosses make the boneheaded move of thinking that their are markets where there are no markets. Boeing actually thought that Asian markets would be ready and able to line up to buy their new jets. Capitalists have always overextended themselves in the search for new markets because it is a part of the nature of the system that they must do so.
What is most necessary, is the one thing that most likely will not happen. Workers for Boeing need to forge real links with workers outside of Boeing, with those very workers that they will be forced to compete with for work contracts. Ultimately, if workers feel that they themselves are at all worth fighting for - the struggles with their employer are going to have to take on a very different character. It is the ruling class that they are up against and that other workers are up against it as well.
ASm
Internationalist Notes
mar.23 2000