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This was the one preceding the above"
Hey now!
A discussion that gets to the heart of what unionism
is and what it should be, and conducted in a
civilized manner! This is the kind of dialogue that I
have not seen here in many a moon.
Begging your indulgence, I'll tell you what had the
most profound effect on my thinking of anything I have
experienced as a trade unionist.
In 1988, I went to El Salvador with a group of rank
and file members of a number of different US unions to
"provide accompaniment" for union members who had been
targetted by death squads in that country. The idea
was that, considering the demonstrated ties between
the State Security organs and the death squads, if
Americans were present as witnesses, assassinations of
unionists would be less likely, as the government
would be loath to jeopardize the billions of dollars
it was receiving in military aid from the US.
The people I spent most of my time with were the
Executive Board of ASTTEL, the telecommunication
workers union.
Of the 75,000 casualties of the 1980-92 civil war,
5,000 of them were trade unionists who were murdered
in untold grisly ways for having the temerity, in a
society run by coffee barons who conducted themselves
as feudal lords, to stand up for their basic rights as
workers.
ASTTEL had been particularly severely repressed. In
the months before I arrived there in Oct. 1988, seven
members of ASTTEL's executive board had been
assassinated by the death squads (I, personally, don't
think that level of violence was coincidental, in a
situation where the president of the national phone
company was the brother-in-law of the Minister of
Defense).
The day I arrived, I went to a workplace meeting at a
big line crew dispatch center, with the board members.
Upon taking elective office, all of them had been
fired from their jobs. When a brother was killed,
another would step up to take his place. Bear in mind
that these were poor people when they were working,
and having been fired, the union had nothing
monetarily to provide for them. They relied on their
wive's meager income as market vendors or maids, and
yet, they continued to step forward when called.
When we arrived at the center, they were blocked at
the gate, and the place was immediately surrounded by
soldiers from the Treasury Police with rifles raised.
The board members began throwing the union newsletters
over the fence and addressing the workers with a
bullhorn. The workers all came to the fence, ignoring
the shouted orders from their supervisors, and held
heir fists raised until the union leaders had
finished addressing them. Then, with shouts of "Viva
ASTTEL", they went back to their trucks, and we went
back to the ramshackle office. I was impressed!
One guy who went with us, didn't come back to the
office. Like most union leaders in El Salvador at the
time, he slept in a different house every night, and
all of them followed strict security protocols. There
was an argument as we were getting in the van, and I
heard the guy say he was sick of it. He hadn't seen
his family in weeks, and said he was going home for
the night. He got on a bus alone, and disappeared.
The next day his body was found in a ditch on the
outskirts of San Salvador, with his throat cut ear to
ear. The eighth death squad victim that small union
suffered that year. Shortly afterward, another rank
and filer took his place.
The example of those courageous unionists reinforced
my distaste for the paternal style of unionism
implicit in the "I'll take care of you, but don't ask
any questions" attitude you mentioned, Harry.
A union IS it's membership and I don't really expect
the leaders to be better than the members demand. If
we become saddled with crooks or dictators it is
because we did not exersize our own democratic right
and responsibility to ensure that we have an elected
leadership that sees their role, not just as a job,
but as a sacred trust to defend the rights of working
people, on the job, and in society.
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