Minneapolis and its meaning
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StumbleUponIntroduction by Lee Sustar
THE U.S. labor movement has always been characterized by periods of decline and defeat, finally interrupted by unexpected and often explosive struggles that prove to be the inspirations for working class militants—those both already in unions and those struggling to organize them. The classic example is the three general strikes of 1934 in Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco, which laid the basis for the sit-down strikes and mass organizing drives of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
Time will tell if the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike victory of 2012 will be such a harbinger of struggle. Yet clearly it holds rare positive examples for a declining labor movement that represents the smallest share of U.S. workers in a century. The CTU showed that what the old-timers called class-struggle unionism can win at a time when most union leaders advocate taking concessions in the name of labor-management partnership, including the CTU’s parent union, the American Federation of Teachers. Moreover, the CTU demonstrated that social movement unionism—when organized labor fights as part of a wider working class movement—is critical at a time when social services are under relentless attack from CEOs and politicians determined to pit public sector workers against taxpayers. The Chicago teachers made it clear that they were fighting not just for their own pay and job security, but for what a union publication called “The Schools Chicago’s Children Deserve”
For these reasons and more, the lessons of the CTU strike is studied and evaluated by union activists and organizers. As a contribution to that discussion, the ISR here publishes James P. Cannon’s 1934 article, “The Lessons of Minneapolis,” which generalizes from the experiences of the Teamsters truck drivers’ organizing drive that led a successful general strike.
Ultra-left critics in the Stalinist Communist Party denounced the deal as a sellout, pointing out that the settlement terms of the strike fell well short of the workers’ demands. Yet Cannon—who helped edit the strike newspaper—freely acknowledges the shortcomings of the deal. He argues nevertheless that the strike was a pivotal victory in that it forced the employers to recognize Teamsters Local 574 as the collective bargaining agent for the city’s truck drivers. That was decisive break in the pattern from an earlier wave of strikes, in which militant struggles had failed to achieve union recognition. By meeting that key objective—the essential first step in rebuilding a shattered labor movement—the Minneapolis truck drivers had achieved what Cannon “opening wedge” for U.S. unions.
Certainly the CTU strike, while it captured the broad sympathy of working-class Chicago, didn’t rise to the level of the Minneapolis showdown. Yet the parallels are clear enough. Like the socialists and leftists who had been elected to lead Teamsters Local 574, the left-wingers elected to lead the CTU in 2010 took over leadership of a broke and dysfunctional union in the midst of a depressed economy with employers determined to deal unions a crippling blow. Both unions had to undertake meticulous, months-long organizing efforts to prepare for a strike. In each case, the unions had to confront the nominal “friends of labor”—Farmer-Labor Party Gov. Floyd B. Olson in Minnesota, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama.
Further, Local 574 and the CTU each had to break from the direction of their parent unions, which had been in full retreat in the face of demands for concessions.
Launching a strike in such conditions requires a conscious and mobilized membership that was capable of making its case to the wider working class. Here, too, a comparison is useful. Certainly the Chicago teachers didn’t have to carry out anything remotely like the highly disciplined picketing and physical confrontations with police and employers’ vigilantes that characterized the battle in Minneapolis. (Indeed, Chicago cops, who have their own beef with Emanuel, were openly sympathetic to the CTU). But by leaving their shut-down schools for mass rallies of tens of thousands—both downtown and in the neighborhoods—Chicago teachers created an atmosphere of social and political confrontation between working people and a mayor who surrounds himself with hedge fund managers and other business elites. Emanuel’s attempt to whip up an anti-teacher backlash simply fizzled.
Two final, related, similarities should be mentioned. First, as in the case of Minneapolis, there are some on the left who look at the concessions in the CTU strike settlement as a defeat or even a conscious sellout by the union’s leaders. This view was expressed by the Puerto Rico-based Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores (MST), whose members played a leading role in a teachers’ strike on the island in 2008. Writing in the MST’s publication Bandera Roja, Josean Laguarta Ramírez called the CTU strike a “significant backward step” because the union accepted a small pay increase and gave ground on the time laid-off workers would be paid. Ramírez even taxes the CTU with failing to halt school closures and the proliferation of charter schools—something far beyond the scope of collective bargaining. Finally, the author accuses CTU President Karen Lewis and her allies of using “lawyerly” arguments to sell a “nefarious contract” to the membership.
Here, Cannon’s central point about Minneapolis is worth restating. Neither the initial truck drivers’ strike or even the brief general strike that followed was capable of achieving all the workers’ aims after such a long period of defeat and disorganization. The notion—advanced by the Communist Party—that the drivers should have demanded the ouster of Governor Olson was simply absurd. What was key is that Minneapolis showed that careful preparation and militant action could achieve workers’ key demand of the day: employer recognition of their union.
As Cannon writes: “This spirit of determined struggle was combined at the same time with a realistic appraisal of the relation of forces and the limited objectives of the fight. Without this all the preparations and all the militancy of the strikers might well have been wasted and brought the reaction of a crushing defeat. The strike was understood to be a preliminary, partial struggle, with the objective of establishing the union and compelling the bosses to recognize it. When they got that, they stopped and called it a day.”
That appraisal roughly fits that of the CTU strike deal. With both major teachers unions abandoning fundamental principals such as opposition to merit pay and the defense of tenure, the Chicago teachers’ strike forced a kind re-recognition of their union as a fighting force. While the union took some hits, they defended ground that that the AFT and key affiliates had abandoned without a fight. That’s an inspiration for teachers everywhere.
Which brings us to a final important comparison between the Minneapolis experience and the CTU’s recent struggle: the importance of leadership. As Cannon writes:
The native militancy of the workers, so impressively demonstrated on every strike front in recent months, needs only to be fused with an authentic leadership, which brings organization, consciousness, and the spirit of determined struggle into the movement. Minneapolis was an example of such a fusion. That is what lifted the drivers’ strike out above the general run. Therein lies its great significance—as an anticipation, if only on a comparatively small, local scale, of future developments in the labor movement of the country. The determining role of policy and leadership was disclosed with singular emphasis in the Minneapolis battle.
The leadership of the CTU, of course, was decades removed from the rich experience and political development that shaped the Teamster militants of the 1930s. Nevertheless, the new CTU leadership, elected in 2010 on the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) slate, consciously saw itself in the militant tradition of the U.S. labor movement. Starting from the assumption that the survival of the union as an effective force was at stake, top officers took a pay cut and poured the money into organizing.
That meant preparing for a strike—not in the halting, defensive way that’s typical in U.S. unions, but by making the case directly to union members what would be required of them. After internal training and series of struggles around issues like school closings—most of them unsuccessful—the union had organized more than a thousand militants who were capable of leading the more than 30,000 CTU members into battle. The scale of the operation may not rise to the level of the Minneapolis truck drivers, but there’s been nothing like it in decades from any major U.S. union local. The CTU, famous for its nine strikes between 1969 and 1987, arguably saw its greatest mobilization ever in the 2012 strike.
Yet the battle has only begun. Emanuel is already pushing back with an aggressive plan for school closures. The CTU will again be tested—this time as a central player in struggle of communities and parents to defend neighborhood schools against the forces. Victory is by no means assured. But the Chicago teachers’ strike showed that class struggle unionism is no longer just for the history books. It’s a living part of the labor movement once again. And it’s the only way forward for organized labor today.
Minneapolis and its meaning
STANDING BY itself, the magnificent strike of the Minneapolis truck drivers would merit recognition as an extraordinary event in modem American labor history. Its connection with the second wave of labor struggles to sweep the country since the inception of the NRA [National Recovery Act], however, and its indubitable place as the high point of the present strike wave, invest the Minneapolis demonstration with an exceptional importance. Therefore it has come by right to be the subject of serious and attentive study and of heated discussion. This discussion, despite all the partisan prejudice and misrepresentation injected into it, is bound on the whole to have a profitable result. The best approach to the trade union question, the key question of revolutionary politics in the United States, is through the study and discussion of concrete examples.
The second strike wave under the NRA raises higher than the first and marks a big forward stride of the American working class. The enormous potentialities of future developments are clearly written in this advance. The native militancy of the workers, so impressively demonstrated on every strike front in recent months, needs only to be fused with an authentic leadership which brings organization, consciousness, and the spirit of determined struggle into the movement. Minneapolis was an example of such a fusion. That is what lifted the drivers’ strike out above the general run. Therein lies its great significance—as an anticipation, if only on a comparatively small, local scale, of future developments in the labor movement of the country. The determining role of policy and leadership was disclosed with singular emphasis in the Minneapolis battle.
The main features of the present strike wave, on the background of which the Minneapolis example must be considered, are easily distinguishable. Now, as in the labor upsurge of last year, the attitude of the workers toward the NRA occupies a central place. But the attitude is somewhat different than it was before. The messianic faith in the Roosevelt administration which characterized the strike movement of a year ago and which, to a certain extent, provided the initial impulse for the movement, has largely disappeared and given place to skeptical distrust. It is hardly correct, however, to say, as some revolutionary wishful thinkers are saying, that the current strikes are consciously directed against the NRA. There is little or no evidence to support such a bald assertion.
It is more in keeping with reality to say that the striking workers now depend primarily on their own organization and fighting capacity and expect little or nothing from the source to which, a short year ago, they looked for everything. Nevertheless they are not yet ready even to ignore the NRA, to say nothing of fighting against it directly. What has actually taken place has been a heavy shift in emphasis from faith in the NRA to reliance on their own strength.
In these great struggles the American workers, in all parts of the country, are displaying the unrestrained militancy of a class that is just beginning to awaken. This is a new generation of a class that has not been defeated. On the contrary, it is only now beginning to find itself and to feel its strength. And in these first, tentative conflicts the proletarian giant gives a glorious promise for the future. The present generation remains true to the tradition of American labor; it is boldly aggressive and violent from the start. The American worker is no Quaker. Further developments of the class struggle will bring plenty of fighting in the USA.
It is also a distinct feature of the second strike wave, and those who want to understand and adjust themselves to the general trend of the movement should mark it well, that the organization drives and the strikes, barring incidental exceptions, are conducted within the framework of the AFL unions. The exceptions are important and should not be disregarded. At any rate, the movement begins there. Only those who foresaw this trend and synchronized their activities with it have been able to play a part in the recent strikes and to influence them from within.
The central aim and aspiration of the workers, that is, of the newly organized workers who are pressing the fight on every front, is to establish their organizations firmly. The first and foremost demand in every struggle is: recognition of the union. With unerring instinct the workers seek first of all the protection of an organization.
William S. Brown, president of the Minneapolis union, expressed the sentiment of all the strikers in every industry in his statement: “The union felt that wage agreements are not much protection to a union man unless first there is definite assurance that the union man will be protected in his job.” The strike wave sweeping the country in the second year of the NRA is in its very essence a struggle for the right of organization. The outcome of every strike is to be estimated primarily by its success or failure in enforcing the recognition of the union.
And from this point of view the results in general are not so rosy. The workers manifested a mighty impulse for organization, and in many cases they fought heroically. But they have yet to attain their first objective. The auto settlement, which established the recognition of the company union rather than the unions of the workers, weighs heavily on the whole labor situation. The workers everywhere have to pay for the precedent set in this industry of such great strategic importance. From all appearances the steelworkers are going to be caught in the same runaround. The New York hotel strike failed to establish the union. The New York taxi drivers got no union recognition, or anything else. Not a single of the “red” unions affiliated to the Trade Union Unity League has succeeded in gaining recognition. Even the great battle of Toledo appears to have been concluded without the attainment of this primary demand.
The American workers are on the march. They are organizing by the hundreds of thousands. They are fighting to establish their new unions firmly and compel the bosses to recognize them. But in the overwhelming majority of cases they have yet to win this fundamental demand.
In the light of this general situation the results of the Minneapolis strike stand out preeminent and unique. Judged in comparison with the struggles of the other newly formed unions—and that is the only sensible criterion—the Minneapolis settlement, itself a compromise, has to be recorded as a victory of the first order. In gaining recognition of the union, and in proceeding to enforce it the day following the settlement, General Drivers Union No. 574 has set a pace for all the new unions in the country. The outcome was not accidental either. Policy, method, leadership—these were the determining factors at Minneapolis which the aspiring workers everywhere ought to study and follow.
The medium of organization in Minneapolis was a craft union of the AFL, and one of the most conservative of the AFL Internationals at that. This course was deliberately chosen by the organizers of the fight in conformity with the general trend of the movement, although they are by no means worshippers of the AFL. Despite the obvious limitations of this antiquated form of organization it proved to be sufficient for the occasion thanks to a liberal construction of the jurisdictional limits of the union. Affiliation with the AFL afforded other compensating advantages. The new union was thereby placed in direct contact with the general labor movement and was enabled to draw on it for support. This was a decisive element in the outcome. The organized labor movement, and with it practically the entire working class of Minneapolis, was lined up behind the strike. Out of a union with the most conservative tradition and obsolete structure came the most militant and successful strike.
The stormy militancy of the strike, which electrified the whole labor movement, is too well known to need recounting here. The results also are known, among them the not unimportant detail that the serious casualties were suffered by the other side. True enough, the striking workers nearly everywhere have fought with great courage. But here also the Minneapolis strike was marked by certain different and distinct aspects which are of fundamental importance. In other places, as a rule, the strike militancy surged from below and was checked and restrained by the leaders. In Minneapolis it was organized and directed by the leaders. In most of the other strikes the leaders blunted the edge of the fight where they could not head it off altogether, as in the case of the auto workers—and preached reliance on the NRA, on General Johnson, or the president. In Minneapolis the leaders taught the workers to fight for their rights and fought with them.
This conception of the leadership, that the establishment of the union was to be attained only by struggle, shaped the course of action not only during the ten-day strike but in every step that led to it. That explains why the strike was prepared and organized so thoroughly. Minneapolis never before saw such a well-organized strike, and it is doubtful if its like, from the standpoint of organization, has often been seen anywhere on this continent.
Having no illusions about the reasonableness of the bosses or the beneficence of the NRA, and sowing none in the ranks, the leadership calculated the whole campaign on the certainty of a strike and made everything ready for it. When the hour struck the union was ready, down to the last detail of organization. “If the preparations made by their union for handling it are any indication,” wrote the Minneapolis Tribune on the eve of the conflict, “the strike of the truck drivers in Minneapolis is going to be a far-reaching affair. . . . Even before the official start of the strike at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday the ’General Headquarters’ organization set up at 1900 Chicago Avenue was operating with all the precision of a military organization.”
This spirit of determined struggle was combined at the same time with a realistic appraisal of the relation of forces and the limited objectives of the fight. Without this all the preparations and all the militancy of the strikers might well have been wasted and brought the reaction of a crushing defeat. The strike was understood to be a preliminary, partial struggle, with the objective of establishing the union and compelling the bosses to recognize it. When they got that, they stopped and called it a day.
The strong union that has emerged from the strike will be able to fight again and to protect its membership in the meantime. The accomplishment is modest enough. But if we want to play an effective part in the labor movement, we must not allow ourselves to forget that the American working class is just beginning to move on the path of the class struggle and, in its great majority, stands yet before the first task of establishing stable unions. Those who understand the task of the day and accomplish it prepare the future. The others merely chatter.
As in every strike of any consequence, the workers involved in the Minneapolis struggle also had an opportunity to see the government at work and to learn some practical lessons as to its real function. The police force of the city, under the direction of the Republican mayor, supplemented by a horde of “special deputies,” were lined up solidly on the side of the bosses. The police and deputies did their best to protect the strikebreakers and keep some trucks moving, although their best was not good enough. The mobilization of the militia by the Farmer-Labor governor was a threat against the strikers, even if the militiamen were not put on the street. The strikers will remember that threat. In a sense it can be said that the political education of a large section of the strikers began with this experience. It is sheer lunacy, however to imagine that it was completed and that the strikers, practically all of whom voted yesterday for Roosevelt and Olson, could have been led into a prolonged strike for purely political aims after the primary demand for the recognition of the union had been won.
Yet this is the premise upon which all the Stalinist criticism of the strike leadership is based. Governor Olson, declared Bill Dunne in the Daily Worker, was the “main enemy.” And having convinced himself on this point, he continued: “The exposure and defeat of Olson should have been the central political objective of the Minneapolis struggle.” Nor did he stop even there. Wound up and going strong by this time, and lacking the friendly advice of a Harpo Marx who would explain the wisdom of keeping the mouth shut when the head is not clear, he decided to go to the limit, so he added: “This [exposure and defeat of Olson] was the basic necessity for winning the economic demands for the Drivers Union and the rest of the working class.”
There it is, Mr. Ripley, whether you believe it or not. This is the thesis, the “political line,” laid down for the Minneapolis truck drivers in the Daily Worker. For the sake of this thesis, it is contended that negotiations for the settlement of he strike should have been rejected unless the state troopers were demobilized, and a general strike should have been proclaimed “over the heads of the Central Labor Council and state federation of labor officials.” Dunne only neglected to add: over the heads of the workers also, including the truck drivers.
For the workers of Minneapolis, including the striking drivers, didn’t understand the situation in this light at all, and leaders who proceeded on such an assumption would have found themselves without followers. The workers of Minneapolis, like the striking workers all over the country, understand the “central objective” to be the recognition of the union. The leaders were in full harmony with them on this question; they stuck to this objective; and when it was attained, they did not attempt to parade the workers through a general strike for the sake of exercise or for “the defeat of Governor Olson.” For one reason, it was not the right thing to do. And, for another reason, they couldn’t have done it if they had tried.
The arguments of Bill Dunne regarding the Minneapolis “betrayal” could have a logical meaning only to one who construed the situation as revolutionary and aimed at an insurrection. We, of course, are for the revolution. But not today, not in a single city. There is a certain unconscious tribute to the “Trotskyists”—and not an inappropriate one—in the fact that so much was demanded of them in Minneapolis. But Bill Dunne, who is more at home with proverbs than with politics, should recall the one which says, “every vegetable has its season.” It was the season for an armed battle in Germany in the early part of 1933. In America in 1934, it is the season for organizing the workers, leading them in strikes, and compelling the bosses to recognize their unions. The mistake of all the Stalinists, Bill Dunne among them, in misjudging the weather in Germany in 1933 was a tragedy. In America in 1934 it is a farce.
The strike wave of last year was only a prelude to the surging movement we witness today. And just as the present movement goes deeper and strikes harder than the first, so does it prepare the way for a third movement which will surpass it in scope, aggressiveness, and militancy. Frustrated in their aspirations for organization by misplaced faith in the Roosevelt administration, and by the black treachery of the official labor bureaucracy, the workers will take the road of struggle again with firmer determination and clearer aims. And they will seek for better leaders. Then the new left wing of the labor movement can have its day. The revolutionary militants can bound forward in mighty leaps and come to the head of large sections of the movement if they know how to grasp their opportunities and understand their tasks. For this they must be politically organized and work together as a disciplined body; they must forge the new party of the Fourth International without delay. They must get inside the developing movement, regardless of its initial form, stay inside, and shape its course from within.
They must demonstrate a capacity for organization as well as agitation, for responsibility as well as for militancy. They must convince the workers of their ability not only to organize and lead strikes aggressively, but also to settle them advantageously at the right time and consolidate the gains. In a word, the modern militants of the labor movement have the task of gaining the confidence of the workers in their ability to lead the movement all the year round and to advance the interests of the workers all the time.
On this condition the new left wing of the trade unions can take shape and grow with rapid strides. And the left wing, in turn, will be the foundation of the new party, the genuine communist party. On a local scale, in a small sector of the labor movement, the Minneapolis comrades have set an example which shows the way. The International Communists have every right to be proud of this example and hold it up as a model to study and follow.
This article originally appeared in 1934 in The New International. Original bound volumes of The New International and microfilm provided by the Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California.
