Chapter 4 – The Trade Union Movement

Gathering thousands or even millions of workers under the same organization formally in charge of defending their economic interests, unions have an undeniable organizational value. However in the current day, unions have no political or material independence, and are subject to the bourgeois state through different mechanisms. The leaders of the unions and their employees – the union bureaucracy – are a social layer who use their positions as a source of income, prestige and stability, and are usually disconnected from the interests and reality of the workers they claim to represent. Bureaucratic leaders function fundamentally as pressure belts for conciliation with bosses within the movement, and often work to limit and disorganize workers’ struggles to a level acceptable to capital.

Bureaucracy is characterized not only by the material privileges it takes through its control over the union apparatus, but also by its inability to present a political project counterposed to that of the bourgeoisie. Without an opposing project, it always seeks to subject workers to the “reality” of today’s society, serving as a support base for some capitalist government, party or politician, often playing the role of electoral assistant, without questioning the structure of exploitation, the capitalist class and bourgeois state. This political pressure eventually reaches even the most honest union activists if they do not have a revolutionary perspective. A union movement that truly defends the interests of workers against capitalism can only exist under Marxist leadership, and Marxist leadership can only exist in unions supported by the militant activity of working class.

The strike is the most important mean of struggle for the proletariat, because through it our class expresses its capacity to stop production until its demands are met, one of the main factors that gives the working class social power. In addition, the strike has an important pedagogical character, as it shows workers that they, not capital, are the irreplaceable element of production, who make every gear in the economy turn. The failure to organize effective, well-prepared strikes, which do not allow scabs, which are more than symbolic one-day strikes, and which unify different sections of workers from at least one strategic branch of industry, commerce, transport or distribution has been the most distinctive feature of the current union movement.

The bureaucracy reflects the passivity of the masses in a given period, but quickly becomes itself a powerful obstacle to the organization of struggles when discontent explodes. Without the ability to stop production, popular uprisings have limited strength. In recent years,  mass rebellions against “reforms” and “austerity measures” in many countries have found purposeful silence from unions, despite the clamor for action among many workers. At most, one-day “general strikes” were carried out, which have little effect on the capitalists’ profits when the bosses are prepared in advance. Unions are thus alienated from the burning issues affecting workers.

It must be kept in mind that the union movement, especially at the present time, does not include a large number of precarious and informal workers from the new forms capitalist exploitation takes. Outsourced workers, as a rule, are not included in the struggle by the official unions because they are not “part of the company” even when they work side by side with others. Other new trades, such as those employed by apps, the so-called “uberized” and “gig economy” workers, who lack a direct connection to their bosses and other workers, also tend to lack organized unions. There is also no culture among the existing unions to represent unemployed workers, even those who have been in a particular trade for many years.

We want to be part of a workers’ insurgency against this reality of fragmentation, apathy and bureaucratic control within the unions. We defend unified and broad unions, which aim to organize all workers in a certain industry, including permanent, temporarily hired, informal and outsourced workers; and to carry out actions of solidarity, but also of political education, with the unemployed, putting pressure on companies to hire more workers and reduce working hours without reducing wages; to fight the hiring of outsourced workers without equal rights, against layoffs and cuts to rights and wages.

The huge reserve army of labor – the mass of unemployed – is a trump card in the hands of the capitalists to instill fear and apathy in our class. Without fighting unemployment, without unifying outsourced, informal and permanent workers, it is impossible to fight the bosses on an equal basis. Marxists press the unions to take on these agendas concretely and will struggle to undertake exemplary actions in this direction while the unions do not lead them, to point the right way. We also defend the organization of committees by workplace as a basis for these actions. The creation of new unions for the trades arising from the productive reformulation of capitalism, such as app workers, will also play a significant role in the organization of the proletariat and in which Marxists must seek to participate. We want the unions to be at the forefront of the revolts and rebellions of the workers and the oppressed, to gain confidence from the masses of all oppressed classes.

The regeneration of the union movement can only take place from within, with leaps of consciousness from the experiences of struggle and, also, from the influx of a new generation of workers, who are trained in a new militant culture. Marxists must build factions of their own (either open or underground, as the situation dictates) together with the most militant elements in the rank and file of unions, in spite of and against the bureaucracy. This Marxist union faction must include the militants from the revolutionary organization as well as those militants who agree with its program for the union and are willing to fight for it, without the need for immediate adherence to the general political program.

We defend a rotation of union leaders to curb the tendencies of bureaucratization, wide freedom of participation for the various political tendencies of workers, against the curbing of debates and gangsterist practices of exclusion. We are against the state-controlled union tax: we advocate that unions be self-financed directly with the contribution of their affiliates. We are also against any interference by bourgeois justice within the unions, a weapon often used by the bureaucracy, but which many on the left have naturalized.

The focus of Marxists is not the control of the union apparatus, although it may in some cases help the organization of workers, but rather the rooting of socialist consciousness among the proletariat. For this reason, especially in the first steps of the Marxist organization, union elections should not be the focus, although posts of representatives by workplace can quickly be won. We argue for the unions to carry out political education for their members, to assist in the process of raising workers’ class consciousness, not only about immediate economic issues, but about the historical interests of our class in the struggle for socialism.

In some specific cases, the split to form a new and more militant union against an old bureaucratized one will be necessary. When the preconditions exist to separate the masses of workers from the union bureaucracy, the formation of a more militant competing union can be progressive, even if it is initially a smaller one. But the creation of “unions” that consist of empty shells only leads to the exclusion of Marxists from the real unions and the liquidation of efforts for insertion into the workers’ movement.