'96 GRASS-ROOTS EFFORT LAID SEEDS OF TEAMSTERS VICTORY.

Byline: Kevin J. Kucera

LABOR Day, 1997, will arrive hard on the heels of the successful end to the United Parcel Service strike of 185,000 Teamster members.

Comments by ``experts'' - media, economic, political, labor - are divided with the edge going to an acceptance of a ``labor victory,'' although a number of ``experts'' warn of negative impacts - on the economy, the stock market, UPS workers and so on.

As a working man, president of the International Association of Machinists Burbank Local Lodge 1600, talking with my fellow workers, both in union shops and serving on in-plant organizing committees in soon-to-be union shops in the San Fernando Valley, it is clear that there is an emerging consensus among us on where we are, how we got here, and where we are headed.

In 1992, conventional wisdom had it that the American labor movement had become a small ``special interest'' group, dependent on the Democratic Party for its continued existence. Limited by timid leadership with no political action structure based in the community, the AFL-CIO and its affiliates were nothing more than a cash cow, a source of campaign contributions to many Democratic Party leaders.

We had watched, over the 10 years since the air traffic controllers strike, working class wages stagnate, health and welfare benefits deteriorate, and union jobs disappear because of the end of the Cold War and outsourcing of jobs. In a word, ``downsizing.''

We also lost (temporarily) our basic negotiating lever - strike action - as a result of hard-nosed employers' wholesale use of ``replacement workers'' (strike breakers) to force ``give-back'' concessions.

In 1993, the political pendulum swung and the Reagan-Bush years ended with President Clinton's election (with labor support). Working men and women, union and nonunion, in our country were confronted with what became the watershed event that affects the American worker to this day.

Campaigning in 1992, Clinton announced support in principle of the Bush administration-initiated North American Free Trade Agreement, giving lip service to the inclusion of labor, human and environmental rights in NAFTA.

NAFTA squeaked through the U.S. Congress with the White House leading a bipartisan coalition. Popular resistance to the treaty, which did not contain any labor, human or environmental guarantees, led Clinton to publicly attack the AFL-CIO for using ``strong-arm tactics'' on members of Congress in a vain effort to prevent passage.

Suddenly, U.S. labor was using muscle we weren't supposed to have.

Rank-and-file union members had been galvanized into a last-ditch unsuccessful fight to save their jobs and working conditions from the threat of ``free trade'' as opposed to ``fair trade.''

Failure of AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and his allies to recognize the depth of union member opposition to NAFTA caused a return in 1994 to AFL-CIO passivity and deferral to Democratic Party leadership. A turn-the-other-cheek policy meant thousands of union members sat out the 1994 elections. Those that didn't voted in protest for Republican candidates not identified with the NAFTA debacle.

This, with other deficiencies, including lack of support for union organizing, created a leadership crisis in the AFL-CIO. In October 1995, a coalition led by manufacturing unions (steelworkers, autoworkers, machinists), with key public sector and transportation unions, voted Kirkland's hand-picked successor out and elected John Sweeney of the Service Employee Union (the Justice for Janitors Union) as AFL-CIO president, along with Richard Trumka of the Mine Workers Union as AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer and Linda Chavez-Thompson of the American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees (the largest public sector union) was named AFL-CIO executive vice president.

Following this, and in line with the campaign commitments of the new AFL-CIO leaders, in March 1996, delegates representing 100,000 members to the Sacramento California State Conference of Machinists unanimously approved a ``Grassroots Political Action Plan.'' This plan called for an ``independent labor political action'' to be based on rank-and-file union volunteers in the voting precincts, contacting face-to-face union and nonunion working people regardless of party affiliation or nonaffiliation, turning out the vote on a Labor Issues Agenda in targeted marginal (swing) districts.

Each candidate, evaluated by their positions on the labor issues, were reviewed by each voter who then decided themselves who to vote for.

Headquartered at the Machinists Union Hall in Burbank, the Labor '96 operation targeting east San Fernando Valley districts reached maximum mobilization four days before the November election with over 1,400 union volunteer precinct workers showing up daily until Election Day.

The success of this effort unseated an incumbent Assembly member in Pasadena, electing a labor-endorsed candidate; in the Burbank-Glendale area a union business agent was elected to the Assembly; and the labor-endorsed candidate took the Senate seat. No labor-backed candidate had been previously elected in these districts.

Since November, our attention has been directed to the redeployment of enthusiastic rank-and-file union members into shop-organizing efforts. Many organizing leads were generated through our contracts with nonunion working people. It is too early to evaluate the results of this ongoing redeployment.

As we move forward to the Labor '98 operation, it is clear that the Teamsters' victory, as we see it, at UPS marks another major milestone in the resurgence of the American labor movement.

The Teamsters have demonstrated once more the ability of organized working people to recognize that an injury to one is an injury to all and in union there is strength.

My union, the machinists, and our sisters and brothers in the AFL-CIO, are determined to regain control of our lives, to regain the leading role of organized labor in guaranteeing, as we were able to do in the 1940s and 1950s, the opportunity for all American working people to realize the ``American Dream.''

We will do this by continuing to ``organize the unorganized,'' both in the shop and in the community.