SOt No. 775 "'X.523 22 February 2002 e en mmi ran s! e en nions! WV Photos OAKLAND-For the first time 'any­ February 9: Bay Area longshoremen were at core of labor-centered mobi­ where, on February 9 organized labor lization in defense of immigrant rights. was mobilized here to flex its muscle in defense of its immigrant brothers and sis­ ters targeted under the U.S. rulers' "war rights: Same struggle, same fight-Work­ on terrorism." Some 300 unionists, immi­ ers of the world unite!" Banners of the SF grants, blacks and youth rallied in down­ Day Labor Program; AFSCME Local town Oakland in opposition to the USA­ 444; National Parks and Public Employ­ Patriot Act, the Maritime Security Act ees, Laborers International Local 1141 and the anti-immigrant witchhunt. At the and the Spartacist League joined those of core of this demonstration were over 30 the PDC and LBL on the march. dock workers from International Long­ For many black longshoremen, acting shore and Warehouse Union (lLWU) in defense of immigrants-including the Local 10, including members of the' drill unorganized port truckers-represented a team. They joined transit workers from conscious break with widespread senti­ Bay Area Rapid Transit, water utility ment that immigrants and blacks are com­ workers from the East Bay Municipal petitors, not allies-a lie cultivated by the Utility District, printers, federal park capitalist rulers and their labor lieuten­ workers from San Francisco's Presidio, ants in the trade-union bureaucracy. At day laborers, Asian and Near Eastern League for Social Defense and the Par­ town Oakland, past the headquarters of the rally, they joined forces with the Fili­ immigrants, college and high school stu­ tisan Defense Committee sought above all the shipping employers' Pacific Mari­ pino Workers Association and with the dents, and the revolutionary Marxists of to win workers to the need to tear through time Association and the Federal Build­ largely Latino immigrant workers of the the Spartacist League to declare that the the straitjacket of "national unity" pro­ ing housing the government enforcers SF Day Labor Program, whose spokes­ U.S. working class will fight to defend all moted by the U.S. capitalist rulers and of the capitalist attacks, the multiracial, man Eduardo Palomo declared: "We are the oppressed against their common cap­ break down the poisonous racial and eth­ working-class protesters chanted: "Na­ here to resist the Patriot Act, the law that italist class enemy. nic divisions among the oppressed that tional unity is a lie-Bosses profit, work­ is going to harm all the workers of this In initiating and building this united­ they promote. Marching through down- ers die!" and "Immigrant rights, black continued on page 8 front protest, the Bay Area Labor Black 08 7 25274 81030 7 Mexico The IG, the Unions and the State Defense of the trade unions against the In a January 2002 article on Argentina, Law (LFT) are unconstitutional. The ity" to decide when a strike "exists" and capitalist state is elementary for Marxists. the IG accepts as bona fide workers articles establish that a collective con­ when it does not; it tied the unions to the As the following article by our {;omrades organizations the Peronist unions, whose tract may include the so-called exclusion bourgeois state, demanding their mem­ of the Grupo Espartaqu.ista de Mexico, corporatist pedigrees are no less clear clause [cldusula de exclusion], which bership lists as a condition to "be recog­ translated. from Espartaco No. 16 (Fall- than that of the Mexican CTM, even obligates the boss to hire only union nized," etc. We Spartacists oppose, as a while acknowledging that "all the main members and to discharge any person question of principle, the interference of leaders are part of the [bourgeois] 'Justi­ who resigns or is expelled by the union. the bourgeois state in the unions and in cialist' movement founded by General We are opposed to this attack on the so­ the struggles of the working class. IfiM~W·] Peron." Likewise in Algeria, where it has called "closed shop." As we said: "A Today, even the meager concessions to Winter 2001), demonstrates, the centrist other fish to fry, the IG treats the UGTA, union's right to demand that all workers the proletariat codified in the LFT repre­ Internationalist Group (IG) rejects that despite its links to the military regime, as at a particular shop be union members sent an obstacle to the appetites for even elementary duty by denying that the cor­ a real trade-union federation (see "Alge­ is an important tool in labor's arsenal greater exploitation on the part of the poratist CTM union federation is even a ria Rocked by Mass Protests," WV No. against the bosses who seek to divide the Mexican bourgeoisie and imperialism. It working-class organization because it is 761,6 July 2001). The IG provides crys­ working class and weaken their organiza­ is for this reason that the PAN (National linked to the bourgeois Institutional Rev­ talline evidence of Trotsky's observation tions by hiring non-union labor" ("Mex­ Action Party) government, with the PRD olutionary Party (PRI). Underlining the that centrist opportunism, defined by dif­ ico: Protest Cop Killing of Worker on and PRI behind it, is leading an anti­ opportunism motivating the IG's spurious fering pressures on various national ter­ May Day," WVNo. 758, 11 May 2001). union offensive, under the fig leaf of claim, which is aimed at pandering to the rains, is inherently nationalist. Around the world, the bourgeoisies are "democracy" and the "ending of the Ma­ "independent" union bureaucrats who are in the midst of an offensive against the fias_" The PRI-affiliated unions have been close to the equally bourgeois Party of * * * gains of labor won in the course of a particularly easy target under this fig the Democratic Revolution (PRD), is its Last April, the Suprema Corte de Jus­ decades of struggle. Under the union­ leaf. Far from wanting to "democratize" very different attitude toward corporatist ticia (SCJN-Supreme Court) ruled that busting slogan of the "right to work," the the unions, the bourgeois state is seeking unions in other countries. articles 395 and 413 of the Federal Labor closed shop has been one of their princi­ to weaken the workers organizations and pal targets. Thus, in the United States to smash their struggles, as well as to get the imperialist bourgeoisie has moved a rid of even the right to strike and the large part of its industry to the histori­ eight-hour day. The Bolshevik Revolution and cally "open shop" South, with the com­ Justifying their opposition to the Black Liberation plicity of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy. In exclusion clause, the IG shrieks: "During The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was a Australia, there is an offensive directed the last six decades, the exclusion clause beacon to workers and oppressed peoples in particular against the "closed shop" of has almost never been used to prevent around the world, not least black people in construction workers. the bosses from 'hiring nonunion labor' ," the U.S. It had a direct impac(on the strug­ It should be basic for any organization and "has been repeatedly used to fire gle for black freedom, as Lenin and Trot­ that calls itself revolutionary to clearly reds and militant workers." In fact, since sky's Communist International fought to and sharply oppose the union-busting the 1930s, the principal unions of the make American Communists understand the attacks by [Mexican president Vicente] country, PRI-affiliated as well as "inde­ centrality of the fight against black oppres­ Fox and his courts. Nevertheless, the pendent," have included the exclusion sion to socialist revolution in the U.S. Internationalist Group (IG), a group of clause in their collective contracts, and LENIN TROTSKY Jamaican-born poet Claude McKay, writing ex -Trotskyist renegades that deserted those seeking to become workers have to after a visit to Soviet Russia, where he from our party five years ago, has joined join the union first to apply for a job. addressed the Communist International's Fourth Congress in 1922, underlined the sig­ the anti-union offensive. They recently The exclusion clause, indeed, has been nificance of the October Revolution for American blacks in an essay published in the published (still only in English) a polemic used repeatedly by the bureaucracies, NAACP's Crisis magazine. against us, titled "ICL Supports Anti­ especially the pro-bourgeois gangsters of Union Exclusion Clause in Mexico" the [PRI-affiliated] CTM (Confederation When the Russian workers overturned their infamous government in 1917, one of the (Internationalist, Summer 2001). It is of Mexican Workers), to eliminate all first acts of the new Premier, Lenin, was a proclamation greeting all the oppressed peo­ clear from the title of their article that the those who are perceived as being an ples throughout the world, exhorting them to organize and unite against the common IG believes and fosters the lie that the opposition. But the IG fosters the stupid­ international oppressor-Private Capitalism. Later on in Moscow, Lenin himself grap­ state is opposed to the exclusion clause ity that, upon eliminating union control . pled with the question of the American Negroes and spoke on the subject before the Sec­ because it is "anti-working-class." The over hiring, the bosses will fire fewer ond Congress of the Third International. He consulted with John Reed, the American IG says: "We oppose both the corporatist communists and union militants than the journalist, and dwelt on the urgent necessity of propaganda and organizational work labor laws and the recent Supreme Court bureaucrats.