By Stanley Aronowitz
As previously reported on this blog, two weeks ago, the School Reform Commission appointed by Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett unilaterally cancelled the union contract of 15,000 Philadelphia teachers and staff personnel. The union president Jerry Jordan promised to “fight” the brazen action of the commission. Later in the week a number of the city’s union leaders met to consider mass action to protest and hopefully reverse the decision. Jordan said that direct action such as a general strike must await the union’s efforts to exhaust its legal options. The assembly bowed to his caution. But parents and teachers demonstrated at City Hall anyway.
However, as in Madison Wisconsin almost three years ago when 100,000 public employees occupied the state capitol to protest the right-wing Republican governor and his legislative allies to strip them of bargaining rights, the union leaders called off the protest. Instead they supported a Democratic Party proposal to recall Governor Walker and four of his Republican senators. The recall failed to unseat the governor and two of his allies, so the recall failed. But similar efforts to thwart direct action in Ferguson, Mo. by substituting a voter registration campaign were rejected by many black people protesting the murder of Michael Brown. The streets are still crowded with protesters.
This is a moment of decision in the labor movement and progressive social movements. The right-wing offensive against workers and the poor — many of whom are workers — continues unabated, but Labor remains tied to the Establishment. It still mostly sees its options limited to the courts and the legislatures, even though events show that these are, at best, partial arenas for confronting the brutal, unrelenting attacks. Even though the recent climate march, which by some calculations attracted more than 300,000 people (including some unions) shows reason to look in a different direction, Organized Labor has by and large not gotten the news.
The time for relying on electoralism and the law is over. Yes, where possible we may make some progress in these arenas, but if Labor and the Black and Latino freedom movements have any future, it’s in the streets, on the picket lines and in occupations of public and private spaces and workplaces.
Stanley Aronowitz is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center.
