An Injury to One is an Injury to All? U.S. Labours Divergent Reactions to Trump
- Details
- Published on Saturday, 12 August 2017 22:45
- Written by editor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1467 .... August 13, 2017
_____________________________________________________
An Injury to One is an Injury to All?
U.S. Labour’s Divergent Reactions to Trump
Jonathan Rosenblum
Arshiya Chime is a union member helping to rescue the world from climate change. Once she gets her doctorate degree later this year from the University of Washington, she will become a highly prized mechanical engineer, helping economies become less dependent on oil while protecting the environment and creating jobs. But Chime, a leader in her graduate student employees union, United Auto Workers Local 4121, is not welcome in Donald Trump’s vision of America. As an Iranian immigrant, she’s denied the right to freely travel. If Trump’s Muslim travel ban orders ultimately are upheld, Chime would probably have to take her expertise to another country, because U.S. firms... won’t want to hire someone unable to work on foreign projects and attend international conferences.
Chime is not alone. About 30 per cent of her fellow graduate student employees at the University of Washington are international students, many of them from countries included in the Trump travel ban. When the White House announced the ban in late January, Chime’s union rallied with other labour groups, immigrant rights organizations, faith allies and political activists, staging impromptu airport mass marches and shutdowns. Chime and other UAW 4121 leaders mobilized public opinion by speaking out at press conferences, organizing teach-ins, and by joining the lawsuit that ultimately blocked Trump’s ban.
Other union leaders, unfortunately, seem to have forgotten the picket line refrain, "an injury to one is an injury to all." The same month, but a political galaxy away from the boisterous airport demonstrations, construction union leaders exited an Oval Office meeting to rave about the new president’s pledge to boost infrastructure spending. "We have a common bond with the president," gushed Sean McGarvey, head of North America’s Building Trade Unions. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka praised Trump for talking up jobs in his first joint congressional address and could barely manage a milquetoast riposte to Trump’s xenophobic attacks on people like Arshiya Chime.
The divergent labour reactions frame the stark choice facing the U.S. union movement: build fighting working class solidarity, or a hunker down in a desperate every-union-for-itself strategy.
Today’s situation is perilous. Unions represent barely 10 per cent of the U.S. workforce, down from 33 per cent in the 1950s. Union leaders across the political spectrum are quick to pin blame for the present crisis on relentless union-busting and hostile politicians. That’s accurate -- but not a complete explanation. Corporate America’s insatiable profit drive is only half of our problem; the other half is the movement itself. The disastrous situation didn’t materialize overnight. Rather, the seeds of today’s ruinous harvest were planted 70 years ago.