One Enemy, One Union

No worker will be immune from the tsunami of attacks unleashed by Trump as he remakes the U.S. economy for the bosses’ benefit. Gutted collective bargaining rights and mass layoffs, tariffs and trade wars, rampant inflation and deep recession—the future is anything but bright for working people. Mass transit, like many other vital social services, is on the chopping block as Trump reclaims previously allocated federal funds to reduce or redirect spending to the new priorities of the ruling class. In particular, he is shutting down green initiatives in blue states—putting L.A. Metro’s federally financed Olympics expansion on rather shaky ground. None of this bodes well for Metro’s unionized workforce—or its poor, working-class ridership for that matter.

The Democrats who run the city, county and state are not about to come to the rescue. Their devastation of work- ers’ living standards brought Trump to the fore in the first place, and L.A. mayor Karen Bass is herself about to pick up the ax to chop at jobs and services in response to a near billion-dollar budget shortfall. To hold the line in the face of uncertainty and chaos, it falls to workers to actively defend jobs, working and living conditions and those among the oppressed currently in the crosshairs. But at the moment, the unions—the very organizations that must mobilize such a defense—are ill-prepared for the task confronting them.

The best defense is one rooted in workers’ numbers, common organization and operational unity. But the overall landscape at L.A. Metro is very much the opposite: divisions abound among transit workers. The workforce is around half Latino, who tend to handle the dirtier jobs, laboring beside Asian immigrants, themselves divided by nationality. White workers are a decided minority, largely concentrated in higher-paid positions, whereas black workers and women fill lower-paid job titles. These divisions—by race, by nationality, by craft—are deepened and hardened by divisions in organi- zation. Transit workers are split into three separate unions and multiple locals: ATU Local 1277 (mechanics and service attendants), TCU Local 1315 (custodians and clerical workers) and six SMART locals (bus and rail operators). These dividing lines are further enforced by resetting the seniority of any worker who switches jobs between them.

“Divide and rule” is the name of the bosses’ game, and the union leaderships are willing players, not least by fiercely throwing up barriers to merging the unions in order to pro- tect their turf at the membership’s expense. These barriers only magnify the racial, ethnic and gender divisions that rear their ugly head daily, often in the fight over the scarce bit of “privileges” that Metro doles out. The bosses wield their control over promotions to higher tiers and qualifications to promote an individualistic consciousness among workers, who are pitted against one another for access to overtime, job training and cleaner, easier job assignments (often along racial lines).

This dog-eat-dog scramble among workers to pro-
tect their livelihoods is only going to intensify as things go increasingly downhill. The crackdown on immigrants and other oppressed sectors in society at large cannot but find reflection inside the unions. Every form of antagonism will be further aggravated, and the pressure will be all the greater
to grab more tightly ahold of whatever individual lifeline is
at hand. But at best, this will provide about as much relief as stepping atop a small rock that is part of a rapidly descending landslide down a mountain. Far better to work in unison with as many others as possible to fend off disaster before it gains unstoppable momentum. Workers at one another’s throats for their cut of better jobs, limited overtime and shrinking resources only ensures they all lose out in the end, whereas joint defensive struggle now against the common enemy unlocks the possibility of fighting for more for everyone as soon as circumstances permit.

Industrial Unions Benefit All Workers

For that to happen, though, the deadly brew of divisions must be neutralized. First and foremost, the obstacle of sep- arate organization needs to be overcome through the merger of the existing unions into one industrial union. While not
a full cure, all Metro workers banding together in the same union would be a huge improvement, making it considerably easier to combat every other problem and false polarization afflicting the workforce. For this very reason, a couple of mechanics initiated the Committee for One Fighting Transit Union (COFTU) last year, a mission every transit worker should support.

According to COFTU, while many TCU and SMART members recognize that “united we’re strong,” sentiment among ATU mechanics is more mixed. Skilled workers often think they can go it alone against the bosses. After all, with fewer workers overall sharing their skill set, they consider themselves to be not so easy to replace. But such a calcu- lation is off, especially in times of turmoil like now as the economy careens toward recession and a contraction in the total number of jobs, including for mechanics. If need be, the bosses could even run the transit system for a period of time without mechanics, no matter how great their individual skill—but not so in the case of the bus and train operators. When it comes time to force concessions on a workforce, the bosses often point the finger at the highest compen- sated workers as the biggest problem in need of fixing. A common fear among mechanics is that a merger of the ATU and SMART would leave them a distinct minority in the new union and drown their interests in the sea of operators. But in fact, mechanics have every reason to pursue a merger— strength lies not only in numbers, but also in the combination of the crafts into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Any effort to merge the unions will not likely get very far without a core of mechanics on board. A demonstrated commitment on the part of the better-off section of the workforce to join with their fellow workers will be crucial to counter blowback from the existing union leaderships, which have staked their careers on enforcing craft divisions. Such a demonstration would encourage even more TCU and SMART members to actively campaign for a merger.

The destructiveness of craft unionism is underscored
by the division of the cleaners between the ATU (service attendants) and TCU (custodians). These workers perform functionally the same cleaning job, just in different areas, but receive unequal compensation. Lower pay fuels frustration within the TCU (and SMART too), while the service attendants are led to believe by the ATU leadership that their wages would decrease in the event of a merger. In fact, sep- aration depresses wages, including of ATUers, who accept company offers thinking that “it could be worse,” while TCU and SMART members feel impotent due to the lack of sup- port from the other unions and the betrayals of their lead- ership. To address the frustrations on the one side and the fears on the other, a serious merger campaign would fight for equal pay for equal work at the highest rate and an end to all the bosses’ tricks to create infighting and leave everyone with less. These include tiers (for example, the five levels of bus mechanics), steps (two, three, even eleven years to get top pay) and bifurcated pensions (a lower rate for those hired after 2012).

Accustomed to unions as they have been run by their bureaucracies, many workers of all crafts understandably cling to the small gains they have been able to carve out for themselves. Operators who spent years working split shifts or the extra board—shifts that change daily on as little as eight hours’ notice—or mechanics who finally got a slice of the weekend off—worry that merging unions and seniority lists would strip them of the little they’ve got. But here is the rub. Easily the surest way to defend what workers have now is to focus on forging collective union power. In doing so, the union tops’ bureaucratic inertia can be broken through, and the unions transformed into centers for the fighting defense of the workers as part of propelling their combination into one.

Only by this path will it be possible to bring forward a leadership with a plan to protect the interests of all workers. The point is to use the power of one union to defend gains already won and demand new solutions that come at the expense of the company and not one another. For example, shortening everyone’s workweek without any loss in pay (that is, all receive the same amount they had on their paycheck, or more) would reduce workloads and leave plenty of spots for new hires. The first necessary step to get there, though, is to stand together.