What Can We Do, Part II — Labor

Dave Kamper, a past union organizer and writer on labor issues, commented on Inauguration Day that compared to the beginning of Trump’s first term,

it feels like most of the institutions we count on to protect democracy are weaker now. The courts. The media. The Democratic Party.

One institution, however, is without doubt in a stronger position to fight fascism now than in 2017: the American labor movement.

For example, “Michigan has repealed right-to-work, and Wisconsin courts are poised to strike down the worst of Scott Walker’s Act 10.” The Janus decision, while obviously not a win for public sector unions, was nowhere as devastating as had been feared. Teachers’ unions were energized by the 2018 #RedforEd campaign, and “now are more strike-ready and more focused on the common good than at any time in my lifetime.” Most of the Ivy League has graduate employee unions, along with other “near-Ivy” prestige universities like Stanford and Duke. Organizing campaigns by the Flight Attendant Union (and IAM with ground crews), Teamsters (at Amazon), and UAW (breaking out of its Detroit stronghold), are generating huge enthusiasm. In fact, Shawn Fain’s “Stand Up” strike wave was a major humiliation for the auto industry. Kamper sees pro-union activism among young people —as evidenced by Starbucks baristas — to be especial cause for optimism.

Unions are vital as an axis of anti-fascist resistance, and potentially wield enormous power in that capacity. As Bill Haywood said, all workers have to do to defeat capital (and the fascist state, I might add) is put their hands in their pockets.

Sara Nelson and the Association of Flight Attendants did more to force Trump to cave on his government shutdown, in January 2019, than the Democratic leadership did. Following her Jan. 20th call for a general strike, Trump agreed within hours to reopen the government. 

In 2014 BDS activists participating in the weeklong #BlockTheBoat campaign, in protest of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, successfully blocked Israeli ships from unloading their cargo and caused a major disruption to commerce. This was not, of course, a union action, although there was some piecemeal collusion with the activists by longshoremen and teamsters. But the ILA would be even better positioned to carry out the same kind of blockage, on a wider scale.

Note that both these examples involve the logistics/transportation sector. Teamsters, airline workers, longshoremen, and railroad workers are some of the most heavily unionized in the American labor force. And their industries are best positioned to cripple the economy. In the past, actions by transport workers repeatedly threatened to turn into regional or national general strikes as a result of workers in other industries joining out of sympathy. But even without sympathy strikes, strikes in transport industries alone are a powerful weapon; without the ability to transport stuff from where it’s produced to where it’s consumed, there’s not much point keeping the factories running or the produce picked. 

Logistic workers should keep the Flight Attendant Union’s actions, and Trump’s capitulation, in mind; joint action by workers in the airline, trucking, railroad and shipping industries, and by workers in Amazon distribution centers, to shut down the economy might play a vital role in thwarting any fascist power grab this time around. 

Note also the vital role transportation industries would play in carrying out some of the most egregious policies that Trump has floated, like mass deportations or unprovoked attacks on our neighbors. Both the movement of arrested migrants by the tens or hundreds of thousands to detention centers, and the mass movement of troops and materiel in support of a foreign war, absolutely depend on the civilian transportation sector and its workers. As the old song goes, “fleets and armies of all nations will at our command stand still.”

And that’s not all of it. At Trump’s inauguration, we saw a line of billionaire oligarchs — one of them a self-revealed Nazi who spent millions buying votes for Trump — seated on the platform. Workers, unionized or not, can do a great deal both to undermine the profit models of all these oligarchs’ enterprises, and to undermine their effectiveness as tools on behalf of the Trump regime.

That “unionized or not” is important. Labor unions need to appeal to workers in workplaces without officially recognized unions, and remind them that legal certification isn’t necessary for workers to form de facto minority unions — i.e., informal and uncertified unions that include whatever portion of the work force that wants to participate — and engage in the kinds of direct action on the job the Wobbly pamphlet “How to Fire Your Boss” describes. A great deal can be done under cover of anonymity toward sabotaging the propaganda operations of Elon Musk at X, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, and Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, and leaking all their dirty laundry to the public. And whether or not their unions are legally allowed to strike, there are millions of federal workers who rank too low for Schedule F classification who can quietly act on behalf of their public constituencies, take “good work” actions, or put sand in the gears of harmful or punitive policies.

Fascism is not self-executing. It requires the active cooperation, skills and effort of millions of people. We can withhold it.

The Center for a Stateless Society (www.c4ss.org) is a media center working to build awareness of the market anarchist alternative