Table Of ContentRebel Rank and File
Rebel Rank and File
Labor Militancy and Revolt
from Below in the Long I 97os
Edited by
AARON BRENNER, ROBERT BRENNER,
AND CAL WINSLOW
VERSO
London • New York
First published by Verso 2010
© the collection Verso 20 1o
© individual contributions the contributors
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Verso
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-173-1 (hbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-17 4-8 (pbk)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset in Bembo by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in the US by Maple Vail
Contents
Foreword: Mike Hamlin VII
Preface: Aaron Brenner XI
Acknowledgments XX1
Overview: T71e Rebellion from Below, 1965-81
I.
Cal Winslow I
2. T71e Political Economy of the Rank-and-File Rebellion
Robert Brenner 37
3. Conflict, Change, and Economic Policy in the Long 1970s
Judith Stein 77
4. Understanding the Rank-and-File Rebellion in the Long 1970s
Kim Moody I05
5. T71e United Farm Workersfrom the Ground Up
Frank Bardacke 149
6. Rank-and-File Movements in the United Mine Workers of America,
Early 196os-Early 1980s
Paul J. Nyd en 173
7. The Tumultuous Teamsters of the 1970s
Dan La Botz 199
8. Militancy in Many Forms: Teachers Strikes and Urban Insurrection,
196?-74
Marjorie Murphy 229
9. Rank-and-File Struggles at the Telephone Company
Aaron Brenner 251
IO. Rank-and-File Opposition in the UAW During the Long 1970s
A. C.Jones 281
I I. American Petrograd: Detroit and the League of Revolutionary
Black Workers
Kieran Taylor 311
12. "A Spontaneous Loss of Enthusiasm": Workplace Feminism
and the Transformation of Women's Service Jobs in the 1970s
Dorothy Sue Cobble 335
13. The Enduring Legacy and Contemporary Relevance of Labor
Insurgency in the 1970s
Steve Early 357
List of Contributors 395
Index 399
Foreword
Mike Hamlin
In 1967, John Watson and I began publishing a revolutionary newspaper,
The Inner City Voice, designed to educate, mobilize, and organize blacks
under the leadership of black workers. This led to collaboration with
General Baker and our subsequent involvement with factory workers at
the Chrysler Dodge Main plant in Hamtramck, Michigan, including the
formation of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and
the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit.
During that time, if any of the workers had revealed themselves as leaders
of a militant movement such as ours, they would have been immediately
fired or worse. As a result, I chaired the meetings and, with General Baker,
became a principal spokesperson for DRUM. We were in the lead in
1968 during the two strikes DRUM led at Chrysler's Dodge Main and
Eldon Avenue plants. The risks were great, the pressure enormous, but
it was exhilarating, and the success impacted black workers not only at
Chrysler but throughout the auto industry and workplaces of all types. It
also brought back militancy to the working class and broke the shackles
that had suppressed the class struggle during the McCarthy period. These
strikes pointed to and paved the way for the rank-and-file movements of
the seventies.
For blacks, and especially revolutionary blacks, this period is important
to look at for a not so obvious reason. As we fought through the fifties and
sixties, we had no practice model to guide us. We had to improvise and
react spontaneously to events as they developed, which took an enormous
toll on the participants, especially the leaders, and left them unable to
participate in any process of consolidation or provide effective leadership
in the organizations, institutions, and forms of struggle they had developed.
Another result, almost universal in the black community, was that vanguard
elements of black liberation and black workers' struggles were either in
prison, dead, in hiding, mentally ill, exhausted, or in organizations not
committed to mass action.
Vlll FOREWORD
We therefore have a limited view of the rank-and-file struggles of the
seventies. Now, as we deal with the impact of the current economy and
the degradation of the working class, it is absolutely essential that we study
the bold and powerful rank-and-file movements of the period. One reason
it is important that black and white workers understand these struggles is
that I can remember when leftists in this country argued that workers had
no revolutionary potential. Our experience in the League ofRevolutionary
Black Workers should have put that notion to rest. Likewise, the rank-and
file efforts of the seventies were part of a class struggle that was guided by
class consciousness. The great weakness of the time was the inability of the
leadership of these movements to link up.
The essays collected here are important because they present many of
the lessons that we learned in the course of the class struggle in the sixties
and seventies. If there is one axiom for revolutionaries, it is that you must
study history and learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before
you. We failed to do this and paid a terrible price. Hopefully these essays
will spark a dialogue within the working class, and I look forward to it.
Venceremos !
Mike Hamlin, Detroit
(Mike Hamlin was a founder of the Dodge Revolutionary Union
Movement [DRUM] and the League ofRevolutionary Black Workers.)
Un.ion supporters, J.P. Stevens & Co, North Carolina
Preface
Aaron Brenner
Between the early 1960s and 1981, American workers engaged in an
extraordinarily high level of workplace militancy, exhibiting a sustained
rebelliousness not seen since the 1930s. The most obvious manifestation
of their combativeness was one of the largest strike waves in U.S. history,
during which workers twice set records for the number of strikes in a
single year. Rank-and-file contract rejections, collective insubordination,
sabotage, organized slowdowns, and wildcat strikes provided further
evidence of workers' militant mood. Though the level and intensity of
workplace agitation never reached the peaks of unrest achieved in 1877,
1919, the 1930s, or 1945, workers' bellicosity was great enough to provoke
military intervention on several occasions and presidential action numerous
times. It inspired dozens of anti-labor injunctions, thousands of arrests,
numerous calls for anti-strike legislation, and ever more systematic and
coordinated efforts on the part of corporate managers to organize against
the labor movement.
Workers with a history of militancy, such as those in auto, mining,
and construction, accounted for much of the unrest, but so too did flight
attendants, teachers, communications workers, nurses, clericals, letter
carriers, and farm workers. Their protests preserved and expanded wages
and benefits, workplace prerogatives such as seniority rights, and workers'
confidence and dignity. In the public sector, the militancy led to a massive
expansion of government sector unionization. On a large scale, strikes
such as those by Memphis sanitation workers to finally win real workplace
equality, or by West Virginia coal miners to win passage of Black Lung
legislation-the rare American political strike-represented historic
achievements with lasting impact. On a smaller scale, thousands of wildcats
addressed immediate grievances against the indignities of work, such as the
guilty-until-proven-innocent nature of workplace disciplinary procedures,
the arbitrariness of supervisors, or the horrendous pace of work.
Particularly striking about the new labor insurgency was the fact that
