The state of American unions is not something that is just now being attacked, but has been for decades, much by its own leadership. Business union leadership have relied on the NLRB and the Democratic Party to rule on their behalf on labor issues for so long that much of the militancy that built the labor movement is nowhere to be seen, much less encouraged. Ever since the McCarthy period where Communists and militants were expelled from unions, business unionism has settled for mediocre contracts, sinking wages, shrinking benefits, and losing union density. Many workers have become tired of excuses given by leadership defending the bosses and not putting up a fight for their members.

Now, with the one mechanism unions relied on to settle on their behalf unable to function, workers will be searching for answers. The trend towards independent unionism will almost certainly increase as business union leaders will be unable to satiate the rank-and-file membership. In the coming years, a split may form as workers start to become more militant and class-oriented.

In winning workers over to the class-oriented trade union movement, the rise in spontaneity and dual unionism will unfortunately also occur as some will take the path of the Anarchists and the International Workers of the World (IWW). We must work to push workers away from destructive tactics that objectively hurt the labor movement and instead work to build an anti-monopoly coalition of broad progressive sections of the population, led by the working class.

The post EDITORIAL: With the NLRB in Limbo, Unions Must Reorient to Political Independence first appeared on Labor Today.

The disastrous results for the Democratic Party saw many other unions, including the AFL-CIO, start to publicly acknowledge the problems with the two-party duopoly that plagues American politics. In her post-election statement, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler finally admitted that “it is clear that the economic struggle working-class people are facing is causing real pain and neither party has sufficiently addressed it.” (My emphasis) UAW President Shawn Fain also has made it clear that “both parties share blame for the one-sided class war that corporate America has waged on our union, and on working-class Americans for decades.”

These statements have given mainstream credibility to what we at LUEL have been pushing this entire election cycle; the working class needs a labor-led anti-monopoly coalition that will bring all the progressive elements of the country together to create an independent working-class political party. We, however, understand that such a movement cannot be built overnight, by simply declaring its existence. It will be a long hard struggle, which will take a massive push in rank-and-file organizing not seen in decades. UE said it well in their September statement on the elections:

“The formation of an effective, independent, working-class labor party will be no easy task; it cannot simply be wished into existence. The extreme polarization among working people, our country’s ‘first-past-the-post’ elections, laws that severely hamper third-party candidates, and the influence of big money in politics all buttress the two-party system. Building an effective labor party will require challenging these structural obstacles to democracy.”

Many LUEL members have already started reaching out to fellow workers in their workplaces about an independent political option for the working class. We have seen that while many workers agree with the state of our political system, there is a lot of work to do to convince the working masses that it is possible to mount a real fight against the capitalist duopoly. The time is now to join the fight for the labor-led anti-monopoly coalition and independent working-class political party.

The post EDITORIAL: Labor’s Shift toward Political Independence Must Be Pushed in Anti-Monopoly Direction first appeared on Labor Today.

The capture of all three branches of the US government by insurrectionary forces and the “peaceful” transfer of power to a Trump Musk government is only the beginning of a fascist take-over. This is a government that supports and is based on the end of bourgeois democracy and a dictatorship. The rapid decline of US capitalism and imperialism economically and globally is leading directly to Trump and a fascist movement which includes tariff trade war, growing threat of world war and mass repression and fascism internally.

Trump using “shock and awe” will immediately free his fascist and racist supporters from prison and they will be organized and funded by fascist billionaires to target, crush and murder Blacks, Brown, Leftists and unionists. Trump and his fascist supporters including Turning Point US will remove 60,000 Federal workers in all departments of the capitalist state and replace them with his fascist supporters like Musk to implement his transformation of the present capitalist state into a fascist capitalist state.

As in Nazi Germany, Trump has put in place the Capitalists themselves in his proposed cabinet to administer the state for the elimination of unions, the privatization of all public education from k-12 to universities, privatization of public services and public healthcare and the complete privatization of Social Security and Medicare. This fascist government will launch mass immigration raids to deport millions of immigrant workers and arrest thousands of political activists including the hundreds of thousands who have mobilized against the US supported and funded genocide in Gaza, the pogroms in the West Bank and destruction in Lebanon. We need to build a united front against fascism and deportation and fight in the unions to form defense committees for all immigrant and undocumented workers and their families.

Internationally besides threatening to invade Panama, Venezuela and Cuba are also targets. The Trump Musk government will escalate the support of fascist regimes around the world from Argentina with Millie to Italy and Germany with the AfD. This agenda is supported by the largest capitalist billionaires in the world from Musk, Bezos, Thiel, Ellison and David Sacks. They will also move to support a military coup and dictatorship in Korea. The fascist supporters of Yoon are calling on the incoming Trump government to give full backing of Yoon’s criminal declaration of martial law and for him to crush the working class and all opposition.

The central fightback to this fascist government will come from the working class and the trade unions who are target number one since as institutions they have real power. The trade union bureaucracy instead of preparing for a fascist government is telling workers to rely on the Democratic party to defend our rights and living conditions. This is dangerous and ludicrous.

We need to prepare for a general strike against any effort to create martial law here and impose a direct fascist rule. Unlike the fightback in Korea, the US union bureaucrats are paralyzed with fear and do not want to mobilize the working class for action but that is exactly what is needed and critical.

We call on all organizations and those who want to build a mass working class united front to join together and prepare for the coming battles. Trump 2 will not be Trump 1 and the denialism and American exceptionalism is a dangerous and costly illusion.

The post UFCLP: Time For a United Front Against Mass Deportations and Fascism first appeared on Labor Today.

UAW President Shawn Fain released a statement on November 13^th discussing the election and that the issues of today remained unchanged. In it he also states, “As we have said consistently, both parties share blame for the one-sided class war that corporate America has waged on our union, and on working-class Americans for decades.” And yet, Fain was the one who lauded Kamala Harris and Tim Walz during his DNC speech for “standing shoulder to shoulder with the working class” and also credited Joe Biden among the striking workers for contract wins against Ford, GM, and Stellantis. But these two things cannot exist simultaneously. Either both Biden and Harris were on the side of the working class or they were not. Fain’s comments about how “this was never about party or personality” flies in the face of everything business unionists proclaimed leading up to the election. Furthermore, Fain says the UAW, “will never support the destruction of the union movement”, but campaigned for a presidential candidate that actively worked to prevent a rank-and-file led railroad workers strike in 2022.

The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) President, Jimmy Williams Jr. released a statement stating, “the Democratic Party failed to offer a compelling working class agenda”. And yet, unions spent months of time, energy and money campaigning for Harris. The AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions have long been an appendage of the Democratic Party so it is likely that these unions will learn nothing and line up to support Democrats in the next election. The timid criticism of the Democratic Party post-election, instead of shifting towards independent political action, appears like damage control from leaders attempting to rein in their rank-and-file who are less than enthusiastic to continue supporting Democrats year after year.

Unlike business unionists, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) provided a more nuanced approach when referring to the 2024 election. They specifically mentioned that Biden has an awful record on many issues and that they were not endorsing him (and by that extension Harris as they criticized her clearly undemocratic nomination), but that they had seen some gains under the Biden administration and encouraged working people to vote “in order to live to fight another day” while also pushing for independent political labor movement. The UE has since gone on to further advocate for a labor party and deepening the political struggle. This is where our decision now lies. Instead of waiting another three years for business unionist leaders to endorse another Democrat amid sinking popularity, we need to “get serious about building a true political alternative, a labor party that can unite and speak for the working class”. Unions such as the Teamsters, International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), UE, and United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 3000 all decided to not endorse either candidate in this election, showing the opportunity is brewing for a labor-led anti-monopoly coalition.

The post EDITORIAL: Opportunism of Labor Leaders Evident from Post-Election Statements first appeared on Labor Today.

For over half of a century, working people in the U.S. have seen stagnating wages, worsening working conditions, the loss of good jobs, and constant increases in the cost of living. This is the result of corporations’ never-ending thirst to squeeze as many profits out of workers as possible. Throughout this time, both major parties have been complicit in this corporate assault. They have maintained their power, and a corrupt two-party system, by dividing the working class along lines of race, gender, and education. Frustration with the Democrats and their unwillingness to confront corporate power or offer real solutions to working people’s economic concerns led many working people to vote for Donald Trump on Tuesday, giving him the margin of victory.

While working people largely voted for Trump in the hope that he will improve the economy, Project 2025, the 900-page blueprint for a second Trump administration, will only worsen the economic problems working people face. One of the most dangerous political threats that the labor movement, and the working class, has faced in generations, Project 2025 proposes a variety of measures to weaken unions in the private sector, and bluntly states its objective to eliminate them completely in the public sector. It also seeks to weaken or eliminate virtually every law that protects workers, from OSHA to the minimum wage to laws against child labor.

Furthermore, we know from Trump’s first term that a Trump NLRB will seek to remove National Labor Relations Board protections from hundreds of thousands of graduate workers by classifying them as simply students, not workers, despite all of the paid labor that they provide to their universities. We also know from Trump’s history, and the rhetoric he has used throughout his campaign, that he will continue to demonize immigrants and encourage attacks on them — and we know that employers will take advantage of those attacks in order to silence immigrants who are union leaders.

Faced with these threats, the labor movement simply cannot afford to retreat into a defensive crouch as it did after the election of Republican presidents in 2001 and 2017. Our unions must be prepared not only to militantly defend workers, but also to lead a broad and militant social resistance to Trump and the Republican Congress. The policies that they will seek to enact, both legislatively and through executive branch action, will hurt everyone except the super-rich.

As the airport occupations in 2017, the mobilization to defend the Affordable Care Act in 2018, and the general strike threat in response to the federal government shutdown of 2018-19 all show, the anti-worker Republican agenda can be defeated, and the labor movement must step up to the plate and help lead such struggles.

The strike, labor’s ultimate weapon, will be a key part of working-class resistance to a second Trump administration. In the higher education industry, where UE is the leading union of private-sector graduate workers covered by the National Labor Relations Act, university administrators will be faced with a choice of whether or not to side with Trump’s attacks on graduate workers and immigrant students. Those who stand with Trump must be met with fierce resistance and militant action, including large strikes by majorities of workers. UE is prepared to engage in aggressive struggle to ensure that universities respect labor rights and that international graduate workers are not targeted. We call upon the entire labor movement to close ranks with this sector of the working class and any others that come under special attack.

Trump won because the Democrats have largely failed to clearly take the side of the working class, either while in office or on the campaign trail. While Harris claimed to be fighting for the “middle class,” she offered few concrete policy proposals beyond a vague claim that she would cut taxes. Had Harris campaigned vigorously on a platform of reining in corporate power, investing in green jobs, and providing universal healthcare, she would have given working people a more compelling reason to vote for her than simply opposing Trump.

Harris was also hurt by her unwillingness to condemn Israel’s year-long military assault on the people of Gaza, with a significant number of potential Democratic voters feeling that they could not vote to “endorse genocide.”

This election has demonstrated, once again, that the current two-party system is incapable of uniting working people around a vision for progress. We reiterate the position taken by UE’s General Executive Board in September: “Working people need an independent political organization to fight for our interests against the corrupt two-party system, and we call upon our locals and members, the rest of the labor movement, and our allies in other social movements to get serious about building a true political alternative, a labor party that can unite and speak for the working class.”

In the immediate future, the labor movement faces an existential threat. The most anti-union elements of our society will have the full power of the federal government at their disposal, and have made clear their intentions to destroy us. We must respond by uniting our membership and uniting our class; engaging in militant struggles, including strikes, to defend our rights and our unions; and leading a fight for a future that puts people over profits.

Carl Rosen
General President

Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer

Mark Meinster
Director of Organization

The post UE: Labor Movement Must Unite Working Class to Resist Corporate Agenda, Fight for Real Solutions first appeared on Labor Today.

It may appear that the situation in America is hopeless for the working class but in fact, there is still a path to better living and working conditions in the country. That path is the building of an anti-monopoly coalition. This anti-monopoly coalition is the key to revitalizing democracy in the US and returning America to “We The People”. The anti-monopoly coalition must be made up of the downtrodden and all patriotic Americans who love peace and democracy, all led by the bastion of American democracy: a militant class-oriented labor movement.

We have seen over many decades the AFL-CIO strategy of tailing the parties of the bosses, particularly the Democratic Party, is not meeting the demands of the working class. In 2024, we are starting to see the need for independent political action for the working class coming to a head with unions like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) refusing to endorse a Presidential candidate from either of the two parties of the bosses: neither the Democrats nor Republicans. Other unions like the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE), are going a step further and are calling for an independent electoral party for the working class. It’s time for the rank-and-file of the American labor movement to work to build an anti-monopoly coalition.

The post EDITORIAL: The Time is Now for a Labor Led Anti-Monopoly Coalition first appeared on Labor Today.

LUEL Supports the Jill Stein Presidential Campaign

Labor United Educational League believes that the Green Party platform is the most progressive on the ballot for the 2024 presidential election. No other candidate is calling for the repeal of Taft-Hartley, a Federal Jobs Guarantee, and the end of US military intervention around the world. Neither Trump nor Harris has even mentioned Taft-Harley. The promotion of a class-oriented platform is critical not only for this election but for future elections. In assessing which candidate on the ballot represents the best path forward in developing an anti-monopoly and class-oriented consciousness in this country, the Labor United Educational League sees the platform of Jill Stein as the best choice for American workers this election.

Discussion of the pro-worker and anti-war policies of the Green Party is essential for all members of LUEL and such policies should be brought to every worker possible.

The Green Party platform can be found at: jillstein2024.com/platform

In solidarity,
Labor United Educational League

https://labortoday.luel.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/LUEL-JillStein.pdf

The post LUEL Statement on the 2024 Presidential Elections first appeared on Labor Today.

The statement notes that corporate control of both major parties has resulted in worse and worse choices every election cycle, but recommends that working people make the strategic choice to vote for Kamala Harris in this election, to preserve the favorable organizing climate that labor has enjoyed under the Biden-Harris administration.

Members of the GEB, who are elected rank-and-file leaders from local unions across the country, had a frank discussion about the difficulties of talking about politics in their local unions. Bud Decker, Local 329, said that while he hates politics, there is “no way to get rid of them,” because if anti-union politicians have their way “there will be no unions.” Margaret Dabrowski, Local 222, said that without unions engaging in political action, “any laws in your city, any laws in your county” that affect the lives of workers can be made worse.

Scott Slawson, Local 506, gave a concrete example: pensions, which were eliminated in many workplaces — including at Wabtec — following the mis-named “Pension Protection Act” passed in 2006 by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush. “This is why we need to be political, this is why … workers need to band together and get into these fights,” he said. “These are the freedoms that are being stripped away from us when people say we get too political.”

Carl Rosen emphasized that the statement was not an endorsement of Harris. UE only endorses candidates, he said, when “we think they have a program that represents what working people need.” Nonetheless, he called the threat of a second Trump presidency “a real clear and present danger,” noting that “a Trump White House will probably undo, as quick as they can, the right for graduate workers to form unions.” Director of Organization Mark Meinster emphasized that if Trump is elected, “extreme anti-union forces will be running the show” in the federal government, forces that will likely seek to pass a national “right-to-work” law.

“War is profitable, people are making money off of war”

During the political action report, Rosen detailed the leadership role that UE has been playing in mobilizing labor voices for a ceasefire in the Middle East, which prompted a vigorous and passionate discussion of Israel’s continuing military assault on Gaza.

Ramona Malczynski, Local 1466, reported that her local’s involvement in demanding a ceasefire has prompted backlash from a few members, but they haven’t withdrawn their membership. “We genuinely put out the message, let’s talk about this,” she said. “If you disagree, let’s have a conversation.” She contrasted the $30 billion in military aid that the U.S. government is sending to Israel with the human needs in the state of New Mexico, one of the poorest states in the country, where children are going hungry and addiction problems are “massive.” She also noted that many members of her local are from the Middle East and are concerned about the war spreading regionally.

Slawson warned that the Middle East is a “tinderbox” and that “there is a real possibility this could escalate further.” He said that “We have to stop condoning … just indiscriminate killing, and that’s what’s happening. The ceasefire’s about ending a genocide is what it’s about.”

Dabrowski remarked on the different treatment of Israeli and Palestinian deaths in the media, and said that the war is continuing because “War is profitable, people are making money off of war.”

Training New Leaders in “The UE Model”

In his organizing report, Meinster detailed the efforts underway to support the leaders of UE’s new graduate worker locals, “training them on how to be UE leaders and how to operate as a UE local.” Locals 197, 256, 1103 and 1122, which settled first UE contracts covering over 10,000 workers in the past 13 months, have elected hundreds of stewards and are engaged in actively enforcing their contracts. “That’s where you really start to change the power relationship” in the workplace, Meinster said.

The union is engaged in member-to-member training of new local officers, grounded in UE history and principles. “The UE model, when people really buy into it, they learn it and they are able to teach others,” he said. He also reported on continued organizing efforts in higher education, among public sector workers in the South, and in manufacturing.

Delores Phillips, Local 1118, gave a report on the Women’s Leadership Program (see page 14), which led to a robust discussion of the various targeted leadership development programs that UE has initiated over the past two decades. Both Malczynski and Sekia Royall, Local 150, spoke about their participation in the Leadership and Staff Development Program, which was initiated in 2021, and Antwon Gibson, Local 610, noted that “I go back to the Young Activist Program” that UE ran in the 2000s.

The post UE: General Executive Board—Build a Labor Party to Unite the Working Class first appeared on Labor Today.

Following President Joe Biden’s debate performance on June 27, the Democratic Party scrambled to figure out how to deal with his rapidly falling poll numbers. This was a welcome development: polls had long shown the majority of working people unhappy with the choice between Biden or Trump.

However, the manner in which party leaders engineered Biden’s replacement at the top of the ticket with Vice President Kamala Harris was thoroughly undemocratic, and bereft of any meaningful discussion of the issues driving large numbers of the party’s potential voters to abandon Biden — most notably, revulsion at his administration’s financial and moral support for Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza and the ongoing shift of income and wealth from working people to the rich and corporations. Also absent was any kind of debate about the kinds of policies that the Democratic Party must stand for and campaign on if it hopes to win votes from working people.

These are precisely the kinds of debates that the presidential primary process, however flawed, encourages. Bernie Sanders’ campaigns in 2016 and 2020, waged on a platform that largely reflected UE policy, brought the issues of workers’ rights, livable wages, and universal healthcare to the center of U.S. politics. This scared the corporate power brokers who hold institutional power in the Democratic Party. In 2020, they coalesced around Joe Biden — a weak candidate who was barely able to beat Trump in the general election — in order to blunt Sanders’ momentum, and in 2024 they ensured that there would be no primary challenge to Biden.

The effective control of the “Democratic” Party at the national level by an unelected and unaccountable set of fundraisers, operatives, and retired politicians has resulted in working people being faced with worse and worse choices in the electoral arena. As the Republican Party has become ever more rabidly anti-worker, the Democrats have been content to cobble together thin majorities based entirely on “lesser-evilism,” rather than on any positive platform for working people. As a result, corporations become ever more powerful and working people become ever more disillusioned and cynical about democracy.

Working people desperately need an independent political organization, based on a political program that can unite us, which can fight for that platform in the electoral arena — in short, a labor party.

The base for such a party exists. Millions of working people are still in unions, and unions are more popular today than they have been in decades — with higher approval ratings than either major party. During the recent primary season, nearly three-quarters of a million voters cast their votes for “uncommitted” delegates in protest of the Biden administration’s policy towards Gaza. In Nebraska, union leader Dan Osborn, running as an independent, has a fighting chance of unseating an incumbent Republican Senator. Sanders’ presidential campaigns have inspired a new wave of strongly pro-worker candidates to run and win office across the country. In Pittsburgh and Chicago, Congresswoman Summer Lee’s UNITE PAC and the United Working Families, respectively, have successfully taken on the Democratic Party machine and elected solidly pro-worker candidates at all levels, including mayors of both cities and, in Allegheny County outside of Pittsburgh, the county executive.

The growing strength of this movement is reflected in the new Democratic ticket. Electing a woman of color as president would be a historic development, an important symbolic breaking of the kind of barriers that have been an obstacle to working-class unity. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was selected as Harris’s running mate because he would be more acceptable to working-class voters, unions, and people angry about Biden’s Gaza policy. The labor movement in Minnesota has generally been very pleased with the pro-worker policies that he has supported as governor.

However, merely influencing the face that the Democratic Party shows to voters is not enough. We need an organization that can fight for bold pro-worker policies, mobilize people in the streets — and win elections.

The formation of an effective, independent, working-class labor party will be no easy task; it cannot simply be wished into existence. The extreme polarization among working people, our country’s “first-past-the-post” elections, laws that severely hamper third-party candidates, and the influence of big money in politics all buttress the two-party system. Building an effective labor party will require challenging these structural obstacles to democracy.

In the face of these obstacles, many of our closest allies, including Summer Lee and UNITE PAC, United Working Families, and Bernie Sanders, have sought to strategically use the Democratic Party ballot line. Nonetheless, if we do not aim for the goal of a truly independent political party, and begin to take steps towards that goal, we will be trapped in our existing, corrupt system forever.

While we move towards our ultimate goal of a labor party, we have to remain conscious of the fact that elections continue to take place and their outcomes impact workers. There remain real differences between the existing two parties, especially when it comes to labor, and especially our ability to organize and build our strength.

Former President Donald Trump has a clear track record when it comes to labor: his appointments to the National Labor Relations Board did all that they could to make it harder for workers to organize unions, and harder for unions to engage in aggressive struggle to improve our conditions. His appointments to the Supreme Court were the deciding votes in the Janus case, which imposed “right-to-work” conditions on public-sector unions across the country, and in a variety of cases attacking the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ workers, most notably the Dobbs decision which revoked women’s right to obtain abortions. As his running mate, Trump selected J.D. Vance, an extreme right-wing lawyer and venture capitalist who has been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Big Oil and Big Tech in the Senate.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the “Project 2025” blueprint for a second Trump presidency put together by the conservative Heritage Foundation lays out a clear program of busting unions and rolling back legal protections for workers. Project 2025 proposes a vast increase in the power and politicization of the executive branch — essentially, if Trump is elected, the most extreme anti-union forces in the country will be running the federal government.

Biden has been a disappointment on many fronts, including the fact that on his watch U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has initiated the layoff of hundreds of UE members at service centers in three states. However, his National Labor Relations Board has been the most worker-friendly board in decades. His administration’s economic policy has helped maintain the low unemployment that has given workers the confidence to take on their employers in a more militant way. While Harris has little in the way of a record to judge her on, if elected we can reasonably expect her to continue to appoint pro-worker members to the NLRB and judges who are less overtly hostile to worker interests.

We therefore reaffirm, as we stated in June, our belief that “[a] second Trump presidency would make it far more difficult to organize — and to build the labor party we need and deserve.” We also reaffirm our recommendation that workers strategically vote against Trump by voting for the only viable candidate running against him — which is now Kamala Harris. We encourage our locals and members to have conversations about the real dangers that a second Trump presidency poses to labor, and to ensure that UE members are educated about the issues and registered to vote.

However, we recognize that, in the long run, merely voting for the lesser of two evils is incapable of producing any kind of positive good for working people. Working people need an independent political organization to fight for our interests against the corrupt two-party system, and we call upon our locals and members, the rest of the labor movement, and our allies in other social movements to get serious about building a true political alternative, a labor party that can unite and speak for the working class.

The post UE: The Path Forward for Working People in the 2024 Elections and Beyond first appeared on Labor Today.

At a time when labor militancy is on the rise, Fain has continued the path of labor misleaders falling in line behind the Democratic Party. Where O’Brien went into enemy territory to give the closest thing to a class-based speech a Business Unionist can give at the RNC, Fain, while also using the language of class, showed up to play fealty to Democratic Presidential Nominee, Kamala Harris. Harris, who in her only chance to back up her pro-worker rhetoric with action, went missing in action when she had the opportunity to use her power as Vice President to override the Senate Parliamentarian’s blocking of increasing the federal minimum wage in 2021. A move that contradicts Fain’s claim that Kamala Harris is a “fighter for the working class.”

What these speeches make clear is that when push comes to shove, the misleaders of labor will fall in line with the Democrats rather than see the workers’ fight all the way through. One noticeable example was the silence of the majority of labor “leaders” as the Biden Administration brought the hammer down on railroad workers as they were about to go on strike over disastrously dangerous working conditions, increasing the possibility of a major accident like the East Palestine, OH derailment in February of last year.

While much of the substance behind O’Brien’s and Fain’s speeches is true, their coddling of the two parties of monopoly capital shows the rank-and-file members that they are not prepared for the fight against what Shawn Fain calls corporate greed. In reality, the fight is against monopoly capitalism, and their financial backers, the system which pits workers against ever-increasing profits. Without a full-on struggle via anti-monopoly labor, the working class as a whole, will continue to fall behind.

We cannot agree more with Shawn Fain when he said, “We need a defender of the working class in the White House, someone who is one of us, and someone who knows how to fight.” The only way to do this is the building of a Party built out of an anti-monopoly coalition led by a class-oriented trade union movement. Hitching our wagons to either Party owned and operated by our bosses is not a path forward for an offensive fight from labor, we need our own Party that unites all the truly progressive forces in the US.

While it is too late to build an anti-monopoly coalition to affect the 2024 National elections, now is the time to start the struggle. Workers who are not regularly active politically are more engaged, now is the time to reach them. All class-oriented trade unionists need to heed this call and start pressuring your unions to steer resources away from political campaigns and toward organizing the unorganized. Step up, stand up, and organize the rank-and-file of your locals. Join the campaign started by Railroad Workers United in the struggle for nationalization of the railroads. Come, join LUEL and lead the fight, we have nothing to lose but our chains!

The post EDITORIAL: Political Conventions Show the Only Path Forward for Working Class is an Anti-Monopoly Coalition first appeared on Labor Today.