Strikes show where real power lies: interviews from the US

A strike rally of Boeing workers in October (IAM Union District 751)

After decades of decline, the United States working class movement has been showing its power in recent years.

Over half a million workers in the US went on strike in 2023, making it one of the most prominent years for industrial action since 1990. This is just over double what it was in 2022, which was nearly double what it was in 2021.

Around 33,000 airplane workers at Boeing voted on Tuesday to end their seven-week strike after winning a 38 percent pay increase over four years. And, significantly, a whopping 41 percent rejected the deal—and wanted to fight for more.

It comes after an incredible 95 percent of IAM union members rejected a deal pushed by their leaders in September.

Just last month nearly 50,000 dockers on the east coast of the US won a pay increase after just three days on strike. It was the ILA union’s first coast-wide strike since 1977—and completely paralysed shipping in huge port complexes.

Virginia, who works for a trade union in the US, argued that grassroots members are beginning to look to their own power rather than the Democrats. “The labour bureaucracy is entrenched in support for the Democratic party,” she told Socialist Worker.

“It is interested in being a cash machine for the Democrats without any accountability for Democratic candidates.”

She said that there’s a “decades-long acceptance that the Democrats represent workers better” meaning that “there’s great energy inside unions to support Harris”.

But she argued that “among the rank and file a critique of this is emerging”. “There are important segments that recognise the futility of electoral politics to change the basic conditions of working class people,” she said.

“Instead, they look to the necessity of empowering rank and file workers. Power lies within the workers themselves rather than any politician.

“Networks are emerging such as the National Labor Network (NLNC) for A Ceasefire or Labor for Palestine, which are slowly pushing organised labour to the left”.

The NLNC is a network of more than 200 local unions and seven national unions that’s mobilising for a ceasefire—and plans to continue to mobilise whoever is elected president.

Pushing the union movement to the left is “the task we have before us,” said Virginia. “We have our work cut out. But there are sections that are critical of the Democrats for not representing workers as they say they are.

“We need to nurture the critique of our electoral system generally. And we need to point to the structural unfairness within it—the gerrymandering, campaign financing and institutionalised inequalities that exist.”

Virginia said trade unionists who recognise the structural flaws of the Democrats and electoral politics need to convince co-workers. “We need to argue that no politician is going to bring about what we need for ourselves as workers,” she said.

Mike, a teacher in Michigan, explained, “While unions campaign for the Democrats, there’s never been an institutional link in the same way as Labour in Britain”.

“It does cost money to call for higher wages and less hours. It’s not in the material interest of the Democrats, who are a capitalist party, to represent the unions.”

Instead, the Democrats’ strategy is to “just try and gather a disparate coalition and more progressive sections of the capitalist class”

Helen, a coordinator for the National Mobilisation for Reproductive Justice and national organiser for Radical Women, said that “a labour party is an urgent need”. “It would be a turnaround for labour to act independently,” she said.

“If it was clearly anti-capitalist and represented all oppressed groups then that’s something to turn to, because currently people are turning right instead of left.”

Time and time again, the Democrats work to pacify any social movement or struggle—acting as a shock absorber for the capitalist class.

It’s a party that bends to the disgusting politics of the Republicans and in doing so helps to shift US politics further to the right.

To break the cycle of empty pledges and broken promises, the left must break with the Democrats and look to struggle on the streets and in the workplaces. 

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