[This is being posted in response to Goin' South's Concerns about Wisconsin Diary. The WOID Team has removed all references to the specific union and workplace involved, since the letter might well be applicable to many, many unions.]
WOID XIX-35. Robespierre/Cassandra, an open letter to Union Local X
by Quill Mike.
I)
Dear Union brothers, sisters and in-betweens:
A lesson from History. In 1791, two years into the French Revolution, the Government decided to push for war. Nobody really wanted war but war was necessary, much as our Unit Chair tells us now that “Nobody wants to strike” but then asks the rank-and-file to authorize the union to call a strike. The French Government needed war because it was at an impasse, with a populace that was rapidly losing confidence and a king who was inflexible, just as our union has asked us to approve a strike in case it reaches an impasse in its negotiations with Marquis de Bosse. Back in 1791 a young representative argued that war was the surest way to destroy the liberal,constitutional monarchy of France: war would inevitably create the conditions for a dictator to seize control in defense of the Revolution.The representative was Maximilien Robespierre.
II)
“No one wants to strike?” ‘Scuse me, I live for a strike, and I’ve lived for a strike ever since I cut my first teeth in the Paris strike of 1968 as a member of the CGT, the major French union. But you guys are getting drawn into that process that French historians call La Fuite en avant, the flight forward from an impasse of your own making. This is not to say I don’t appreciate our union, or any other union, for all the wonderful things they do like protecting my rights and getting me raises. But organizing a strike or even a drive? The union bureaucracy doesn’t trust the rank-and-file enough to reach out and organize them, that’s your impasse. So now comes a strike ballot in the mail, and it’s the ultimate insult to the rank-and-file: no discussion, no opportunity to gauge what a strike means, what the risks and opportunities are, no opportunity for the rank-and-file to come together around this issue. As Karl Marx puts it in another context, the Union “organizes the masses by disorganizing the masses.” I’ve worked backstage at the Opera, and I’ve worked at Union headquarters; at least at the Opera I got to carry a spear. I was there on your side when this union was founded, I’m on your side still. But I don’t go in for disorganizing, it’s counterproductive.
III)
Bottom line: You want my authorization to call a strike? You got it. Only I would call on my friends in the rank-and-file and in the bureaucracy to think hard and fast about what a strike means. Hey, we could all get lucky, de Bosse might cave in front of a strike threat. Or, as I suspect, de Bosse might be pushing for the opportunity to break the union and the strike, outsource our work to Madagascar, and fire a hell of a lot of us in the process. Even then there might be a few of us around to actually do something to bring de Bosse to his knees the way we did last time, though to tell you the truth I’m getting a little bit tired of saving this union from itself: you don’t go into a strike hoping to get lucky, you go into a strike because you’re organized to win. Ultimately we could reach the point that’s happened many times before with the Union: the moment where the Union walks away from the strike it initiated because it doesn’t have the will to pursue the strike to its end, and leaves the rank-and-file out on the picket lines, broke, and very, very angry.That’s going to be the moment where each of us will have to choose between the interests of our buddies in the rank-and-file, or the interests of the Union; and I know what my choice will be, because it’s been my choice all along.
Which side are you on, boys, girls, and in-betweens, which side are you on?