What I read and how I felt about it / The myth of free trade unionism

I just finished reading "Blue Collar Empire" by Jeff Schuhrke. A friend of mine in DSA recommended it to me, and I've been reading it over the course of the past few weeks. It gives me something work-related to do when I don't have anything more pressing to do for my current labor organizing job. I feel very lucky to have my current job. The goal of Rank and File Project, which I'm working for currently, is to promote reform movements within existing unions, provide opportunities for rank and file union members to collaborate across different sectors, and to transform U.S. labor movements into vehicles for class struggle. There are definitely boring and annoying things about the job -- clicking through spreadsheets on excel to find information about donors is probably the most annoying thing -- but I feel lucky to have the job, and I genuinely believe in the mission of our work, so overall I feel grateful and I just hope I do a good job and succeed at the tasks I am working at. 

The person who recommended this book to me is a union electrician, and someone who is just extremely knowledgeable about politics, history and theories of political change, so I was excited to read the book on his recommendation. He also gave me "Blood in my Eye" by George Jackson, to read. I'm planning on making that my next book to read. It's in San Francisco so I'll start reading once I'm home. I feel very grateful that I can spend time on the clock reading radical literature like this. I think that if I spent all my time during the week reading books that would not be good, but I do not think a person can be effective as a class struggle unionist and labor organizer if they are not reading history and theory. Otherwise their struggles will be not informed.

 Samuel Gompers, 1st and 3rd President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in the 1880s and 1890s. In the 20th century, the AFL-CIO expelled communists from existing labor unions and allied with U.S. empire to quash liberation movements in the developing world. Shame on you AFL-CIO -- you are bitches for eternity.

The main point of "Blue Collar Empire" was detailing the ways that US labor unions collaborated with the CIA and US empire in helping to install authoritarian regimes throughout the third world. These repressive moves were often done in the name of combatting communism and building up "free trade unionism," a nefarious term cooked up by U.S. capitalists to describe an alliance between organized labor and the capitalist class. Put otherwise, a way of fitting labor unions and workers' rights into a free market capitalist system. That sounds very nice in theory, but in practice it doesn't really work out. First of all, the profits of bosses are made with the sweat and hard work of the workers. Any dollar going into the bosses' hands is money that would be going to a worker if the enterprise were worker-owned. Second of all, and what this book makes more clear, is that unlimited profit and expansion for the owners of capital can only come about through colonial expansion into new markets, and the acquisition of more and more land for the plunder of natural resources. So putting aside the exploitation of workers that happens under so-called "free trade unionism," that system can only work if companies are able to continuously plunder resources from the developing world, which has always involved horrifically barbaric levels of violence. So "free trade unionism" while sounding nice in theory, is really just a fig leaf for capitalist expansion and the murder and conquest that result. This book makes that really clear, so it's a really important resource for any leftists in the U.S. labor movement. It was a bit of a slog to get through, and I feel like it focused primarily on the relevant leaders (and traitors) in the U.S. labor movement. I wish it had quoted more from sources in countries in the developing world who were affected by these policies. And some pictures would have been nice, too, to make it more engaging.

Anyway, next up "Blood in My Eye." Hopefully I won't get in trouble for spending hours during my work week reading, but people at my job are cool, and I think they will appreciate that this is relevant and helpful to the work we are doing: Trying to build a labor movement based in the principles of class struggle and in solidarity with the third world. Long live Lenin -- that dude knew some stuff for sure.