Socialist Viewpoint

Will Labor Strike Against Iraq War?

By Charles Walker

Some British labor leaders have warned the Tony Blair government that there could be massive strikes by their members, if Iraq is attacked. One leader noted that some railway workers were already refusing to transport cargo destined for a war against Iraq. A political strike against the war would have the support of the majority in Britain opposed to war, the leaders asserted. Australian unions with some 75,000 members have promised to hold rallies and strikes the minute the U.S. military launches an attack on Iraq.

There are voices too in the U.S. that are suggesting that organized labor strike to prevent the war. They maintain that the war against Iraq, as well as the “war on terrorism,” are being used by the administration as a cover for an attack on labor’s living standards and, more generally, for an attack on everyone’s constitutional rights and protections. And indeed, the Patriot Act, the threatened de-unionization of tens of thousands of government workers and the use of the Taft-Hartley Act against the West Coast dockworkers alone provide a solid case that the government is on the warpath against the biggest part of the population, the wage-earners.

We have had political strikes by unions. For example, in Seattle, there was a stevedores’ strike in 1918 to halt shipments of arms to Russian counter-revolutionaries. Much later, the ILWU refused to handle scrap metal destined for Japanese steel mills and the Japanese military, then attempting to conquer China. More recently, the ILWU took action to protest South African apartheid. Sad to say though, organized labor’s record of using its incredible power over profits to further broad social issues is almost nonexistent. That’s not to say that there haven’t been general strikes in defense of the right to organize and the like. But there have been no U.S. strikes, certainly no mass strikes, against racism, imperialism and war—worldwide barriers to humanity’s progress.

A strike to oppose a war against Iraq then, would be unprecedented, signaling a profound change in the way workers see themselves and their power to change the things about life and society that they don’t like and rightly fear. If workers carried out mass strikes to end the projected war on Iraqis, why should they not use that power over the job in defense of all workers, unionized or not? Surely, the dockworkers, the airline workers and the steel industry retirees, just to name a few recent victims of the capitalist government’s attacks on their unions could rest easier knowing that they could rely on getting full strike support from their fellow workers when the government outlaws their right to strike against employer attacks on their living standards. After all, that’s what’s meant by the long-standing labor slogan, “An injury to one, is an injury to all!”

It’s been noted by others that among the hundreds of thousands of antiwar protestors, there are many trade unionists. But most of those union members don’t think of their unions as social protest or social justice organizations. They expect their unions to negotiate and enforce good labor contracts. But nothing, in most workers’ experiences, would lead them to think that unions are obliged to do much more. In fact, most union members these days pay their dues on time, but tend not to go to local union meetings and have little contact with their union officials, unless their officials show up on the job. In fact, one way not to meet up with most unionized workers is to wait for them to attend a regular membership meeting.

That means that antiwar labor groups best chance of organizing other workers is to go where the workers are, their work sites. There they could begin to talk with and educate their fellow workers about their common stake in ending the likely war. The antiwar campaign could be directly taken to the workplaces, where, after a time, it might be possible to form work-site antiwar committees. Such committees could lead to their local unions becoming antiwar organizations, increasing the chances for a massive labor action against war.

Fortunately, there are a small but increasing number of labor antiwar groups that recently have sprung up. Their actions to reach out to the rank and file of unions now, in addition to winning support for antiwar resolutions from union officers and executive boards, in most cases, will be absolutely necessary to building for massive labor actions later on.

It seems visionary, at least, given the seemingly profound demobilization of union ranks to even think about a massive antiwar strike. But the turnout of thousands of workers at recent antiwar marches and rallies and the appearance of antiwar labor organizations should mean something. Maybe it means that U.S. workers are ready to be convinced to take unprecedented action!