It [is] too
much the way of [mainstream politicians] to talk of this terrible [crisis] as
if it were the only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been
sown—as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to
it—as if observers of the wretched millions … and of the misused and perverted
resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably
coming, years before and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. —
Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities”
Working
people in Flint ,
Mich. , are suffering mightily from the
poisoning of the city’s water supply that resulted from callous decisions by
government officials—from the unelected emergency city manager, on up to the
governor and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. All of these
officials acted in the name of austerity and cutting costs. But as is so often
the case, the tragedy in Flint is not merely the result of
individual bad actors but flows from an economic system that pits the wealthy
few at the top against the vast majority who work for a living.
Despite the
fact that global wealth and U.S. labor productivity per capita have
both been increasing exponentially for more than a generation, the small
unelected handful of financiers and industrialists that own and control our
economic and political systems—the so-called one percent—have been promoting
the narrative that times are hard and we must all tighten our belts. By “all”
they mean everyone except those “indispensible” titans of capital who
are currently calling the shots.
But in
reality, the wealth created for each man, woman and child in the U.S. (as measured by GDP per capita) increased from $13,933
in 1981 to $54,629 in 2014 (in constant 2015 dollars.) That’s an increase of
292 percent! For Tunisia , the increase in the same period
was 244 percent; for Greece it was 300 percent. Similar gains
can be cited for other countries (source: World Bank).
Collectively, the planet is awash in wealth.
Nevertheless,
the false narrative of scarcity has been used to justify austerity in Greece , Spain , Portugal , Ireland , France , elsewhere across Europe , and all throughout the U.S. And now we have Flint .
Between
2006 and 2013, overall revenue to the state of Michigan decreased by 25%. Since 2006,
Democratic and Republican officials have appropriated $6.2
billion in local sales tax and other revenue to cover state budget shortfalls.
This has been done despite a law requiring those funds to be shared with
municipalities. The result was predictable: city after city across the
state—from Pontiac , to Lansing , to Detroit and Flint —has had to cope with calamitous
budget deficits.
What caused
the decline in revenue? In part, it was due to corporate
tax giveaways approved by the previous Democratic governor. But the biggest
factor in the budget squeeze has been the decline of the auto
industry. From a peak of 1.5 million United Auto Workers union members in Detroit in 1978, the number crashed to
400,000 in 2013 as corporate execs moved
production south or overseas in search of cheaper, nonunion labor.
Then there
was the auto industry bailout. In 2009, the federal government loaned $29.4
billion to GM and Chrysler on the condition that the UAW agreed to allow delays
in payments to the union health fund for retirees, reduce payments to laid-off
workers and deepen the two-tier wage program enabling new hires to be paid less
for the same work. Later, GM would receive another $36 billion as it entered
bankruptcy. At its peak in 2003, the U.S. auto industry employed 1.1 million
workers. By 2006, 43% of those jobs had been eliminated.
A Michigan state law passed in 2011 allowed
for the appointment of “emergency managers” to preside over cities deemed
insolvent. Once appointed, the emergency manager rules supreme. Elected
officials—including the mayor, city council and school board—can do nothing
without the manager’s approval. In April 2014, the bureaucrat that was imposed
on the city of Flint switched the city’s water supply from the Detroit system to the Flint River , hoping to save a few bucks. What
resulted was a massive epidemic of lead poisoning, due to the different
chemistry in the Flint River and a long history of using the waterway as an industrial
waste dump.
A September
study by the Hurley Medical Center in Flint confirmed that
the proportion of Flint children with elevated lead levels has nearly
doubled since the water source was switched. The tap water drawn from the river
also contains illegal levels of cancer-causing trihalomethanes and other
toxins, and is implicated in the spread of Legionnaires Disease.
A massive
effort will now be needed to restore clean running water to Flint residents and
to deal with the long-term health effects from the poison brew people have been
forced to use for drinking, cooking, and bathing for over a year.
No auto
executives or members of the ruling rich were harmed in the making of this
story. The Michigan localities that have suffered the
most are majority working class and Black. The population of Flint is over 56% African American. Forty-one
percent of city residents live in poverty, and
the real unemployment rate
for Michigan is over 11 percent. In this conflict so far, it is working
people who have taken all the blows. But it wasn’t always that way.
Given Flint ’s iconic history, it’s more than a
little ironic that the current crisis has its roots in the greed of the auto
industry giants and their political plenipotentiaries. A generation ago,
another battle was fought in Flint between the auto barons and the
working-class majority. In that fight, which began in December of 1936, the
balance of power was decidedly different.
The United
Auto Workers union (UAW) was founded in 1935 in the wake of a militant labor
upsurge that began sweeping the country the year before. Key battles in Minneapolis (truck drivers), Toledo (Electric Auto-Lite), San Francisco (general strike), Akron (rubber workers), and Huntsville , Birmingham , and throughout the South (textile
workers) set the tone. But the big automakers had yet to be breached.
In the
1930s, as now, there were competing ideologies for how the working people could
best fight for their rights. The most conscious, radical workers saw the
bosses, their government, and the major political parties as members of the
same team, against which the 99% had to wage an uncompromising fight. But the
leaders of the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) saw
things differently. As Art Preis described in “Labor’s Giant Step”:
The CIO
leaders were class collaborationist to the bone. They sought “peaceful
coexistence” between predatory capital and exploited labor—between robber and
robbed. They believed they could persuade the employers that unions are a
“benefit” to the capitalists themselves and thereby secure gains for the
workers by the simple means of “reasonable discussion” across the conference
table. …
Fortunately for the success of the CIO, the concepts of the top CIO leaders did not always prevail. The strident notes of the class struggle broke through the “class harmony” chorus and set the dominant tone during the decisive days of the rise of the CIO. The bridge to victory proved to be not the conference board, nor the inside track to Roosevelt in the White House, but the picket line—above all, that “inside picket line,” the sit-down.
An ongoing
organizing drive in the Flint auto plants was met with
stonehearted resistance by General Motors. The straw that broke the camel’s back
came on Dec. 30, 1936 , when management provocatively
transferred some union supporters. Workers at Flint Fisher Body Plant 2
responded by sitting down and refusing to leave the factory. Later that night,
workers saw managers attempting to remove critical machinery from Fisher Body
Plant 1. The workers at Plant 1 put a stop to that by sitting down as well. The
shutting down of these two plants brought GM’s auto production to a screeching
halt.
The strike
spread to 15 other GM plants, from Detroit to Kansas City . Finally, the crucial motor
assembly operation at Chevrolet Plant number 4 in Flint was occupied. Ultimately, 93% of
GM’s production workers joined the fight. Preis explains:
Victory or
defeat for the GM workers depended on a simple strategy: keeping their buttocks
firmly planked on $50 million worth of GM property until they got a signed
contract. GM’s strategy was to get the workers out of the plants by hook or
crook so that the police, deputies and National Guard could disperse them by
force and violence.
The bosses
hit the strikers with injunctions, but the sheriff charged with delivering the
first of these was laughed out of the plant. The company attempted to recruit
scabs to retake the plants, but soon gave that up. Management cut the heat to
Fisher Body Plant 2, and police attempted to prevent deliveries of food and
supplies to the strikers. Outside, picketers stormed the police blockade. A
battle ensued; police guns were answered by bolts and bottles hurled by the
workers. Eventually, the strikers aimed a freezing stream from a fire hose at
the cops, successfully turning them back. When the dust settled, 24 strikers
were injured; 14 had been shot.
Politicians,
from the Democratic governor to President Roosevelt, sided with GM. The
governor positioned 1500 National Guard troops to be ready to retake the plants
by force. Meanwhile, fellow unionists poured into Flint from Toledo , Pittsburgh , Detroit , Lansing , and elsewhere, and formed a cordon
of solidarity around Fisher Body Plant 1.
GM threatened
to turn the heat off again, but the strikers threatened to expose the plants
firefighting equipment to the cold, freezing the gear and thus invalidating
GM’s insurance coverage. Management was livid and demanded that the governor
give the order to retake the plants. Governor Murphy passed the buck and tried
to pressure CIO President John L Lewis to reign in the strikers. Lewis
explained, truthfully, that he hadn’t started the strike and he couldn’t stop
it.
In the end,
GM surrendered. The strikers had demonstrated sufficient determination and
ingenuity for GM to realize its plants would be destroyed if they tried to
remove the workers by force. The first UAW contract with GM was signed on Feb.
11, 1937 .
The working
people of Flint won that monumental battle in 1937, but the corporate
titans have never given up on the overall war. This is the critical context for
the Flint crisis of today. The forces seeking
to victimize working people in Flint now are the same ones that
confronted autoworkers in Flint three quarters of a century ago.
Those seeking to fight against austerity and mount an effective response to the
current water crisis can learn much from that pivotal chapter in history.
Today, as
in the 1930s, it’s crucial to understand who is on our side and whom we’re up
against. At the second convention of the UAW in 1936, the body unanimously
called for the formation of a labor party. It’s no coincidence that the workers
who successfully fought back the GM colossus understood that the Democratic and
Republican parties were both in the boss’s hip pocket. This realization was
essential for navigating the rough terrain as the struggle unfolded.
But by the
late 1940s, those who preached class collaboration and relying on the Democrats
as “friends of labor” had gained the upper hand. Socialists and other radicals
who, like the Flint sit-down strikers, recognized the major political
parties for the big business appendages they truly are were driven out of the
labor movement and isolated. Unions like the UAW turned their back on the
lessons of the Flint sit-down strike. As a consequence, the UAW is a mere
shadow of its former self, reduced in numbers and diminished in power.
Throughout its steady decline, UAW leaders have held fast to their
class-collaborationist outlook. The results of this approach can be seen in
scattered, broken pieces all around us, including in Flint .
Today,
Democratic and Republican party politicians shed crocodile tears, expressing
the utmost regret for the calamity that has befallen Flint . But their concern rings hollow.
These are the heirs of the politicians who mobilized the press, the police, and
the National Guard to side with GM and the other corporate behemoths in the
labor upsurge of the 1930s. These are the political parties that have been
running our country for generations, with the result being what we see in Flint and all around us.
Witnessing
the suffering of the residents of Flint , it is no exaggeration to say the
Democratic and Republican parties, along with the system they uphold, represent
a deathtrap for working people.
But there
is a way out. There are steps we can take to avoid future disasters like the
one now unfolding in Flint . This path serendipitously addresses many of the
other problems we face—from endless war, inequality and exploitation, to
racism, unemployment, and environmental destruction. This road has just one
rule: human needs must come before profits.
And there
is but one way to get there: by recognizing that only working people—the vast
majority of the population and the producers of all of society’s wealth—have
the power to build a just and rational world. For that power to be realized, we
must organize collectively and independently of our foes at the top of the
economic pyramid, refusing to be taken in by their lieutenants in the
Democratic and Republican parties.
While no
fight is ever an exact blueprint for another, the guiding principles of
solidarity and independent political action, demonstrated in abundance by the
heroic Flint sit-down strikers, remain essential tools for the struggles of
today.
>> The article above was written by Bruce
Lesnick. Bruce is a long-time political activist who lives and writes in Washington State . This article is reprinted from Socialist Action.
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