The Northwest strike: the end of the AFL-CIO and political lessons for the working class

The backstabbing is being carried out by organizations representing all factions of the trade union movement—the AFL-CIO, the breakaway Change to Win coalition, independent unions. There is no section of the official labor movement that upholds the most elementary principles of working class solidarity.

Northwest is utilizing hundreds of strikebreakers, but the key to its success in continuing to fly is the refusal of the Air Line Pilots Association and the International Association of Machinists (AFL-CIO), as well as the Professional Flight Attendants Association (independent), to honor the picket lines of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), and the failure of the Teamsters (Change to Win) to halt deliveries to the union-busting airline.

As of this writing, there is no mention of the Northwest strike on the website of either the AFL-CIO or the Change to Win coalition. The World Socialist Web Site called the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, the leading union in the Change to Win group, to ask for their response to Northwest’s union-busting. Neither returned our calls.

This shameful spectacle occurs at an airline that in recent years has wiped out thousands of union jobs and imposed massive wage and benefits cuts, and unilaterally imposed a new contract on mechanics and airplane cleaners in AMFA destroying more than 50 percent of their remaining jobs and slashing wages by more than 30 percent.

Northwest has made no secret of its intention to carry out similar attacks against the rest of its workforce, and will use the auspices of a bankruptcy court, if necessary, to relieve itself of its $3.6 billion pension obligation and impose across-the-board cuts in retirement pay.

Northwest’s offensive against its workers is part of an industry-wide attack that has seen the destruction of pension plans at United Airlines and US Airways, and a broader corporate onslaught on jobs, wages, pensions and health benefits that has already spread to the auto industry and will rapidly embrace every other sector of the economy.

Backed by the government and the courts, corporate America aims to roll back every advance made by the American working class in more than a century of struggle. Nothing is off limits, including the legal eight hour day, restrictions on child labor and the most elementary health and safety protections.

Tragically, the working class has been left virtually defenseless by the impotence and treachery of its old organizations. The problem is not that workers are unwilling or unable to fight. The entire history of the American working class testifies to its enormous capacities for struggle and sacrifice. The problem is that the fundamental perspective upon which the trade unions are based is false and reactionary.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/nwa-a24.shtml