Masks of Democracy:
Labor Suppression in Mexico and the United States

LA BOTZ ON MEXICO:

"Mexican workers face long hours, low wages, and dangerous and unhealthy workplaces and communities. Women workers are subject to additional problems in the workplace and in the community, and child labor remains a serious problem. The lack of union democracy has made it difficult for Mexican workers to solve these problems. Moreover, as recent studies show, the Mexican government systematically violates the human rights of workers and other citizens, and it engages in widespread fraud and corruption."1

Violent state repression: "Among the many reasons why Mexico's working poor cannot raise up their voices to protest fiscal austerity measures, the abuse of their bodies in the workplace, or the sacrifice of their children to cheap labor strategies, is the likelihood that they will be tortured as a result of their activities. Trade unionists, peasant activists, and human rights campaigners, along with criminals, are routinely victims of the brutal methods of torture used throughout Mexico to extract confessions. The fact that torture is prohibited by the Mexican Constitution while its perpetrators are rarely brought to justice, is just one example of the widespread corruption that infests the government."2

Undemocratic state-run unions: "Workers have the theoretical right of free association and to form labor unions. In the Constitution and in Federal Labor Law this right exists, but in practice it does not exist. In practice, the workers form legal labor unions under great duress, and can rarely elect their own officials. In recent times there have been many struggles by workers to take over their union executive boards, but these struggles have met with the use of Police violence to repress them."3

Legal barriers to the formation of democratic unions: "In Mexico democracy doesn't exist because the law itself makes it impossible. In the Federal Labor Law which regulates Article 123 of the Constitution, it is stated that the workers cannot freely register their unions. Registration of the unions is not at the will of the workers, but rather by decision of government authorities such as the Secretary of Labor and the Federal Board of Conciliation and Arbitration. This allows the government to interfere in company-union relations by deciding to whom they will give registration and to whom they will not. When there is a problem a firm quickly registers a company union, which by decision of the authorities overrides any union, which may already exist, and thus negates their actions."4

La Botz takes roughly 200 pages describing Mexico's history, legal system, its move toward privatization, the Maquiladoras and then president Salinas' labor record to conclude, "All evidence indicates that workers in Mexico are not better off than they were pre-modernization, but have lost much of their ability to exercise fundamental labor rights over the last two decades, a condition that shows no sign of improving over the coming years."7

La Botz describes the problem, but he leaves it to his sponsor, Professor Ray Marshall the President of the International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund and former U.S. Secretary of Labor, to promote a solution. Professor Marshall, does not use the Mexican situation to argue for the empowerment of Mexican workers to achieve democratic self-determination. Instead Marshall suggests that, "international trade should be based on governing rules... the best approach probably would be a joint International Labor Organization (ILO)-General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) undertaking"8

Professor Marshall's strategy, imposing an top down bureaucratic solution, is in keeping with, what I will show in a later section is, a longstanding American ruling class strategy. The basic principal is to use social welfare concerns as a smokescreen to advance the power of the ruling elite. In this case Marshall is using working class concerns to justify expanding the power of ruling class bureaucratic control structures. This system of misdirection, which serves to achieve ruling class objectives for top down social control, can best be described as 'Liberal' crypto-totalitarianism. This top down totalitarian system of social control is not designed to empower working people and the bureaucratic system of social control is enforced with the active repression of alternative strategies for social reform.

AMERICA'S RULING CLASS:

"It is business control over politics (and by 'business' I mean the major economic interests) rather than political regulation of the economy that is the significant phenomenon of the Progressive Era. Such domination was direct and indirect, but significant only insofar as it provided means for achieving a greater end - political capitalism. Political capitalism is the utilization of political outlets to attain conditions of stability, predictability, and security to attain rationalization in the economy. Stability is the elimination of internecine competition and erratic fluctuations in the economy. Predictability is the ability, on the basis of politically stabilized and secured means, to plan future economic action on the basis of fairly calculable expectations. By security I mean protection from the political attacks latent in any formally democratic political structure. I do not give to rationalization its frequent definition as the improvement of efficiency, output, or internal organization of a company; I mean by the term, rather, the organization of the economy and the larger political and social spheres in a manner that will allow corporations to function in a predictable and secure environment permitting reasonable profits over the long run.10

"This identification of political and key business leaders with the same set of social values-ultimately class values-was hardly accidental, for had such a consensus not existed the creation of political capitalism would have been most unlikely. Political capitalism was based on the functional unity of major political and business leaders. The business and political elites knew each other, went to the same schools, belonged to the same clubs, married into the same families, shared the same values-in reality, formed that phenomenon which has lately been dubbed The Establishment. Garfield and Stetson met at Williams alumni functions, Rockefeller, Jr. married Aldrich's daughter, the Harvard clubmen always found the White House door open to them when Roosevelt was there, and so on. Indeed, no one who reads Jonathan Daniels' remarkable autobiography, The End of Innocence, can fail to realize the significance of an interlocking social, economic, and political elite in American history in this century."11

AMERICAN STATE REPRESSION:

"The I.W.W. was the decisive influence in the evolution of federal policy... in eliminating the Wobblies, government officials passed legislation, evolved techniques, and learned lessons that shaped their later course of conduct... The decision of the federal government to enforce an increasingly conformist view of what radical thought and words it would tolerate also created perplexing problems for a generation of Americans. The issues then raised are still of crucial contemporary significance in an age whose own methods are rooted in the patterns established before the New Deal."12

"The chairman of the Butte council of defense warned the army, 'The minute the military here stop detaining men for seditious acts we have got to take it into our own hands and have a mob, and we don't want to start that. I can get a mob up here in twenty-four hours and hang half a dozen men.' W. A. Clark of the Clark mining interests spoke for his fellow businessmen when he predicted that riots and bloodshed would follow the withdrawal of troops. 'I don't believe in lynching or violence of that kind,' Clark professed, 'unless it is necessary.'13

"When John Foster Dulles popularized the expression 'massive retaliation,' he imagined the future exterminatory response of the United States to any Soviet threat. Yet he aptly characterized the punitive program against domestic dissent, a gigantic preemptive first strike almost limitless in its reach. That mindset expressed the logic of the campaign against the Wobblies and the very thinking that engineered the Palmer raids, but it was now vastly extended and institutionalized to ludicrous extremes of overkill.

This Orwellian system had a relentless, often witless momentum, a capacity for surveillance and disruption that must be seen both in its massive dimensions and in its appetite for at tacking even the most trivial symbols of dissent. There were, for example, 300 federal, state, and local laws against subversion; 100 personal characteristics that made one a security risk 700 reasons the McCarran-Walter Act gave for denying visas or entry papers to foreigners; 197 organizations registered with the Subversive Activities Control Board; and 3 large indexes of suspects (Security, Communist, and Reserve) that were to be candidates for emergency detention. The House Committee on Un-American Activities compiled its index of one million suspects, while the F.B.I. files probably contained some twenty million names. Thirteen-and-a-half million members of the work force (20 percent of the total) were subjected to the loyalty-security program....

Covert intrusions that violated constitutionally protected associations and privacy characterized the over accumulation of information about others. Wiretapping and other electronic innovations played a major role, but so did 'mail covers,' 'trash covers,' and access to bank records. In some cases, 'black bag' jobs (burglaries) supplied data that informers had not obtained. Meanwhile state and federal investigating committees orchestrated rituals of exposure in which 'naming names' served as the rite of passage from the ghetto of suspicion. The media's pitiless publicity in its coverage of un-American activities meanwhile transformed career-long reputations into public infamy for those named in the hearings."14

AMERICAN 'LIBERALISM'

* "the ideal of a liberal corporate social order was formulated and developed under the aegis and supervision of those who then, as now, enjoyed ideological and political hegemony in the United States: the more sophisticated leaders of America's largest corporations and financial institutions."15

* "Corporate liberalism... appealed to leaders of different social groupings and classes by granting them status and influence as spokesmen for their constituents on the condition only that they defend the framework of the existing social order."16 (emphasis added)

* "businessmen have been 'able to harness to their own ends the desire of intellectuals and middle class reformers to bring together 'thoughtful men of all classes' in 'a vanguard for the building of the good community.' These ends were the stabilization, rationalization, and continued expansion of the existing political economy, and, subsumed under that, the circumscription of... dangerous ideas for an alternative form of social organization."17 (emphasis added)

Given the loyalty of 'Liberals' to corporate interests, one should expect to find 'Liberal' reforms structured to serve their corporate masters. The historian Gabriel Kolko provides a lot of support for that case. In the book, The Triumph of Conservatism, Kolko describes how even the most famous example of 'Progressive Era' mythology, the reforms enacted after the publication of Upton Sinclair's book 'The Jungle', actually served the interests of business.

"Historians, unfortunately, have ignored Upton Sinclair's important contemporary appraisal of the entire crisis. Sinclair was primarily moved by the plight of the workers, not the condition of the meat. "I aimed at the public's heart," he wrote, "and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Although he favored a more rigid law, Sinclair pointed out that "the Federal inspection of meat was, historically, established at the packers' request; . . . it is maintained and paid for by the people of the United States for the benefit of the packers; . . . men wearing the blue uniforms and brass buttons of the United States service are employed for the purpose of certifying to the nations of the civilized world that all the diseased and tainted meat which happens to come into existence in the United States of America is carefully sifted out and consumed by the American people." Sinclair was correct in appreciating the role of the big packers in the origins of regulation, and the place of the export trade. What he ignored was the extent to which the big packers were already being regulated, and their desire to extend regulation to their smaller competitors."18

AMERICAN SOCIAL CONTROL

"the I.W.W. rejection of the ethics and moral code of the capitalist system shocked the Progressive, who always imagined himself to be an ethically superior person, morally justified in his actions. Compared with conservative Republicans, progressives were more aware of the economic basis of ideologies and more inclined to investigate and correct the worst abuses of modern capitalism. But they also turned with greater fury on the radicals, whose "social pangs" would not be eased by this moderate reform."19

In the book Copper Crucible Rosenblum documents Phelps Dodge's 'Progressive Era' campaign to assert control over Arizona society to set the stage for crushing their local labor movement.

"The counteroffensive by management grew to include the control of every aspect of Arizona life-economic, political, social and even religious. The mining men intimidated editors, threatened ministers, bought sheriffs, seduced lawmakers and bullied union leaders. They rigged elections and manipulated the legislature.... Between 1915 and 1918, the companies, led by Walter Douglas, completely reversed the direction of Arizona politics and destroyed the liberal influence in the state."20

It should also be made clear that repression works, as Preston writes,

"By the time of Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration, official antiradicalism had marginalized or defeated four radical union movements (including the I.W.W.), isolated and disrupted two major radical political parties, drastically curtailed mainstream union activity and solidarity, and imposed a pervasive self-censorship on Americans who might consider alternatives to the established consensus."21

Allen used the Irish in Ireland experience, particularly the subjugation of Catholics by the Protestant Scot-Irish majority in Ulster, to develop the "four essential operative principles of social control in a stable civil society constituted on the basis of racial oppression:"

"1. The oppressor group must be in the majority. This might be called the Sir William Petty principle, after the person who first formulated it. This principle may incidentally serve to give racial oppression a "democratic" gloss.

2. From this "majority principle," and from the pyramidal structure of class society, it follows that the majority of the oppressor group is necessarily composed not of members of the exploiting classes, but of an intermediate social control stratum of laboring classes, non-capitalist tenants, and wage-labors.

3. These laboring-class members of the oppressor group are to be shielded against the competition of the members of the oppressed group by the establishment of economically artificial, "anomalous" privileges - artificial because they subordinate short-term private individual profits to considerations of social control.

4. Just as the system of capitalist production presents cyclical crises and regeneration, so the system of racial privileges of the laboring classes of the oppressor group is adapted and preserved, come what may of economic crisis, impoverishment, famine, intramural conflict, natural calamity or war, in order to maintain the function of the intermediate buffer social control stratum."22

At the beginning of his career Gompers exhibited support for black workers. However, it is clear that it was only after Gompers dropped his focus on racial solidarity, that the NCF was formed and the AFL started getting the support of industrialists. For black worker the results were disastrous,

"the fixed policy of most AF of L affiliates was to limit union organization to skilled craft workers. This had the effect of excluding women and foreign-born workers, the vast majority of whom were unskilled, but it was especially tragic for black workers. At the end of the nineteenth century, those few Negro workers in the North who were employed in industry were mostly unskilled factory hands. Advancement into the skilled trades, if not denied them by employers, was blocked by the craft unions."23

"After the successful strike of the Industrial Workers of the World, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, John Golden, president of the conservative AFL Textile Workers wrote Easley that many of the manufacturers there had gained 'a very rapid education' in the benefits of conservative unionism, and that 'some of them are falling all over themselves now to do business with our organization.' Golden claimed that since the strike his union had been able to form seven new locals in Lawrence, and that the union had also won wage increases in a strike at mills in New York."24

While the AFL never moved away from its racist class based roots, the CIO's comparatively strong stands against discrimination and organizing activism by Communists within many left-leaning locals had allowed it to emerge as powerful force for integrated working class solidarity during the 1930's and early 1940's. As Philip S. Foner notes,

"In February, 1943, the NAACP Bulletin pointed out that 'the CIO has proved that it stands for our people within the unions and outside the unions.' By the time the war ended, nearly every Negro organization looked upon the CIO as 'the black man's greatest hope for social and economic progress in the postwar world.'"25

"the Communists and their leftwing allies fought to make certain that the principles of racial equality espoused by the CIO in organizing drives were put into effect. F. Ray Marshall points out in this connection that 'Communists . . . were unquestionably a force for equalitarianism in the CIO. By raising the race issue to gain Negro support, the Communists forced white leaders to pay more attention to racial problems."26

"the purpose of the Red-baiting attacks on the CIO was to destroy the 'center-left' coalitions, which were achieving the organization of the unorganized. No one stated the case better than Walter Reuther did when he said that the purpose of the Red scare was to turn worker against worker. 'So let's all be careful,' he warned, 'that we don't play the bosses' game by falling for the Red scare. Let's stand by our union and fellow unionists. No union man, worthy of the name, will play the bosses' game. Some may do so through ignorance. But those who peddle the Red scare and know what they are doing are dangerous enemies of the union.'"27

"A study of the screening process on the West Coast concluded that 'approximately 70 per cent of the screened members of the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards have been Negroes.' In the 'screening' process, as in the federal government's "loyalty" board hearing for government employees, any activity against Jim Crow was proof of a suspected person's disloyalty. Black workers were asked: "Had you ever had dinner with a mixed group? Have you ever danced with a white girls" White workers were asked whether they had ever entertained blacks in their homes. Witnesses were asked: 'Have you had any conversations that would lead you to believe [the accused] is rather advanced in his thinking on racial matters?"'28

"In the last war we joined with the Communists to fight the fascists; in another war we will join the fascists to fight the Communists."29

CONTINUING REPRESSION

"The International bureaucracy contrasts sharply with the responsiveness of the local officers. The International requires, and can afford, a team of paid professional experts: organizers, field representatives, education directors, research economists, statisticians, and actuaries. These 'porkchoppers' do not have regular contact with the rank and file and once in office are extremely hard to oust. Most utilize highly specialized skills that the rank and file can neither understand nor directly oversee...

To a much greater extent than is possible in governmental politics, the International administration personifies the union. It can "educate" the rank and file to think of the administration and the union as somehow identical. It can make them think that a vote against the administration is also a vote against the union and everything it stands for. It can extol its own activities in "building" the union and protecting the organization from its enemies and it can castigate the "destructive" activities of the opposition...

Certainly the existence of a large number of 'layers' between the rank and file and the International officers makes it more difficult for the officers to know what the rank-and-file members want and for the rank-and-file members to control the officers. The administration of the International can mend its fences and consolidate support fifty-two weeks a year, but the opposition must wait for the few caucuses in the early days of the International convention before making its plans. Prior to that, contact must often be made by letter or mimeographed "opposition bulletin." While the administration is always able to use official publicity for its purposes, many unions prohibit the publication of opposition newspapers or the formation of opposition factions. Consequently, even if the opposition is not driven underground, it is forced to become conspiratorial. The semihysterical attacks to which it must resort in order to gain attention are no match for the friendly handshake of the International representative or the slick-paper journal written by the professional publicity man."30

In fact, numerous examples, some of national significance, exist to support that notion. These include the Staley Strike, Hormel/P9, Pile Drivers Local 34 of The United Brotherhood Of Carpenters & Joiners Of America, a California SEIU local and Local 304A of the UFCW International Union. I will confine this analysis to the Hormel/P9 strike because the history is well documented and suggests a coordinated effort by numerous 'Liberal' organizations to undercut the rank-and-file.

Here is Peter Rachleff's lengthy discussion of the UFCW leadership's betrayal of their P/9 local, during the Hormel strike, from the book Hard Pressed in the Heartland,

"Over the first half of the 1980s, no local had been able to stand up to the corporate pressure for concessions or the international union's acquiescence. Local P-9's willingness to take a stand thus threatened the international union nearly as much as it threatened the Hormel corporation. Both the UFCW and the AFL-CIO knew that Local P-9 represented a dangerous example for other labor activists and rank-and-file unionists. P-9 quickly came to symbolize democracy and membership participation, a willingness to oppose corporate demands for concessions, regardless of international union agendas or strategies, and a form of "horizontal" solidarity that threatened the vertical, bureaucratic hold that international unions exercised over their locals. As thousands of workers poured into Austin to express their support, we likened their experience to "catching a virus" from P-9. But the UFCW and the AFL-CIO were determined to prevent the spread of this virus.

How far were they willing to go? As far as they had to, it seems. As the chapter on the revitalization of P-9 showed, UFCW president William Wynn and National Packinghouse Division Director Lewie Anderson openly opposed the campaign against Hormel from the very start. They tried to isolate Jim Guyette and depicted P-9 as a "go-it alone" rebel local. Yet, when P-9ers voted by more than 90 percent to strike in August 1985, the international had little choice but to grant official sanction and approve strike benefits of $45 a week. The UFCW leadership continued behind the scenes, however, to undermine the strike, with the frequent collusion of other labor leaders. The strike's character as "rank-and-file" vs. "leadership" was clear. And the willingness of the leadership to let P-9 lose (perhaps even their desire to let P-9 lose) was equally clear.

Twice in the fall of 1986, the Minnesota AFL-CIO leadership and UFCW Region 13 sought to undermine food caravans being organized by the Twin Cities P-9 Support Committee. They contacted local unions and discouraged them from contributing, urging instead that they send cash to Region 13's office in the Twin Cities. As we have seen, Wynn also sent telegrams to international union presidents around the country, urging them to discourage their locals from participating in other support programs, claiming that the money would go to Ray Rogers.

The UFCW went further. Lewie Anderson and Region 13 Director Joe Hansen met secretly with retired P-9 business agent (and Guyette opponent) Dick Schaefer and leaders of the "P-10" dissident faction, even while the strike still had the official sanction of the international union. Such meetings went on both before and after the 'P-lOers' chose to cross their own picket lines. In fact, the very week that the National Guard took up its positions, Lewie Anderson appeared on Ted Koppel's 'Nightline' television show to undermine Jim Guyette and support the minority anti-strike faction in P-9.

The UFCW also sought to limit the effectiveness of the campaign against Hormel. When P-9ers visited other plants, UFCW officials and local officers frequently intervened and tried to prevent communications. President Wynn had explicitly ruled out a boycott of Hormel products or extending the strike to other plants when he had granted strike sanction in August 1985, and he continued to hold firm to these positions. When P-9 sent roving pickets on its own to Ottumwa and Fremont, and hundreds of workers were fired for honoring these lines, Wynn offered no resistance to Hormel, saying that they were within their contract rights. Instead, he heaped blame on Rogers and Guyette.

Ironically, one of the tools in the UFCW's efforts to crush P-9 was the Communist Party (CP). Hormel vice president and chief henchman, Charles Nyberg claims to this day that he and CEO Richard Knowlton saved Austin from 'communism' by defeating P-9. Yet, the best known 'left' organization in the United States helped defeat P-9! The Communist Party sided with the UFCW and opposed P-9 as soon as the split between the local and the international became apparent. In particular, they were instrumental in developing a cover story for the UFCW attack against P-9 that could be sold to progressive elements in the labor movement who did not have firsthand contact with P-9. The CP argued that P-9 had 'broken solidarity' with the Hormel chain, that they had opted to "go it alone" when they thought they had the upper hand, and now they wanted other workers to risk all for the preservation of P-9's privileges. These arguments all forms of the 'big lie' for those who had been to Austin-were circulated in the pages of the Daily World and picked up by the UFCW and used extensively to their advantage"31

It is also interesting to note how Hollywood, which produced the 'award winning' video, American Dream, about the Hormel/P-9 strike spun their story. Here's Rachliff on the movie,

"This 'critically acclaimed' movie has done something to the members of Local P-9 and their supporters that the Hormel Company, the United Food & Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), and the Minnesota National Guard could never do-turn them into "hapless victims." Granted, the P-9ers lost their strike, their jobs, and their union. But while they were victimized, they were never victims, something completely lost in Koppel's documentary. What moved thousands upon thousands of P-9 supporters was not the strikers' victimization. What fired imaginations from one corner of this country to another was their living, breathing vision of a participatory, democratically-controlled union creatively fighting concessions. Local P-9 had gone from an apathetic union, like so many others-lucky to get a quorum at a monthly meeting-to a union-unlike almost all others-lucky to find a meeting room big enough to hold those who wanted to attend. The excitement this generated led 3,000 local unions to send aid to P-9. It also sparked the support of farm activists, peace and justice activists, Native American activists, and thousands of others, who saw their hopes reflected in this struggle. Every bit of this material ended up on Barbara Koppel's cutting room floor.

At the same time, American Dream presents the International Union's hatchet man, Lewie Anderson, as a tough-talking, hard-nosed union bargainer in contrast to P-9's leadership and advisers who are presented as confused, inexperienced, and out of touch with reality. Worse than these character distortions, American Dream also gives Anderson one opportunity after another to predict that this strike will fail, without ever exploring the critical role he and the UFCW played in undermining it-in discouraging other unions from sending assistance, in denying P-9 the right to block production at Hormel's seven other unionized plants, in rejecting P-9's call for a boycott of Hormel products, and in organizing a minority of dissident P-9 members to disrupt union meetings and even to cross sanctioned picket lines. American Dream actually implies that the UFCW had the "right" position-not to take on Hormel at all, or to return to work on the company's terms when they began to hire 'permanent replacements'-at the same time it whitewashes the union's role in destroying a strike it publicly claimed to support."32

Returning to Professor Marshall's strategy for Mexico, we find that his approach conforms to the 'Liberal' crypto-totalitarian agenda. By moving the solution to Mexico's Labor problems to international bodies like GATT and the ILO, Marshall will effectively exclude any real participation by Mexican workers in the decision process. Any 'solution' produced by this system will inevitably favor business, which has always been the reality behind America's facade of 'Liberalism'.

Marshall's plan actually goes one step further and works to destroy national autonomy for the Mexican people. His solution ratchets up the system of control to create a global crypto-totalitarian 'Liberal' ruling elite. One even more divorced from the aspirations of Mexican workers.

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