Friday, July 7, 2023

Reds Under the Hood

 “Fighting Times – Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War” by Jonathan Melrod, 2022

This is part memoir and part history of a turbulent time in U.S. politics, when every issue was up for grabs – the late 1960s into the early 1980s.  Melrod was one of those at the forefront of in-plant trade union struggles.  He went from being shocked by seeing a black chain gang in Virginia as a child, to standing up to an archaic teacher at his private high school, to attending the U of Wisconsin at Madison in 1968, a student political hotbed.  There he joined SDS, marched with thousands of others supporting black studies, fought along with hippies defending a People’s Park against the police, participated in the 1970 mass student strikes and became a supporter of the Revolutionary Union (RU).  He worked with Obreros Unidos helping organize farmworkers in Wisconsin.  That connection brought him to the organized labor movement, who called the Latino’s ‘brother.’ 

The September 1970 Math building bombing in Madison motivated Melrod to move to Milwaukee and join the labor movement.  Melrod, a slight guy, worked at toxic worksites inhaling silica dust, plastic fumes, chlorofluorocarbons, leather solvents, degreasing chemicals and the like.  Later he contracted pancreatic cancer because of it.  But he does not regret his progressive activism in the labor movement, which lasted for 13 years.  

UAW/AMC

Melrod finally got a job at a UAW / AMC plant in Milwaukee, which became a hotbed of a different sort.  He had several advantages at the AMC plant.  The plant had an excellent UAW Working Agreement that limited the power of the bosses and supervisors, won by UAW activists long ago.  It was full of young workers, ex-Vietnam veteran black workers and Latino comrades.    AMC’s Wisconsin plants were large and key production sites.  1972 was a time of labor turmoil in auto and across the country, with many strikes.  This upheaval is one reason why the capitalists opted for a neo-liberal strategy in the late 1970s. His ties with the RU helped, though he had already earned an FBI file for his work in support of the Black Panthers.  His work at AMC added to that file, as he was an open communist only a few months after gaining permanent status … a somewhat questionable option.        

The book could be used by present union comrades on how to organize on the shop floor in certain locations.  It goes into union minutia occasionally.  It’s also an entertaining read.  It involves distributing the contract, working to rule, forming a rank & file caucus, issuing leaflets and periodic news bulletins, creating buttons and T-shirts, opposing speed-up and forced overtime, enforcing the contract, in-plant strategies and wildcats - all the while finding allies where you can.  Bars become organizing centers; socials useful in melding comrades. This while opposing the sell-out leadership of the UAW locals and the International.  As you might guess, Melrod was fired quickly after an anti-speed-up struggle.  A grievance was filed with the company against the termination.  The Local 75 Working Agreement allowed the workforce to strike over grievances (!), not just go to a dead-end arbitration.  Melrod and the majority of the work-force stood up to the Union president, who purposely miscounted a hand vote to defeat a possible strike vote. He was terminated.  Melrod won his NLRB suit against AMC for “McCarthy-like tactics,” but it was appealed by AMC, per normal.

More Struggles

While waiting to be rehired Melrod works at a reeking, non-union tannery staffed by black workers; another toxic job at a welding shop from which the FBI gets him fired; and a steel workers union (USW) job in 1974 at a metal-dust-filled plant in West Allis, where he was also tracked by the FBI.  None of these places provided protective masks or anything else. The USW job resulted in a wildcat contract strike against the missing Local and the Steelworkers’ international led by a local Unity caucus, part of Melrod’s doing.  The picket lines were honored by Teamster drivers.  They stopped scab trucks by placing large sharp ‘jacks’ quietly under the tires.  They won some of their demands in a 7 week strike. 

At this time there were still massive civil rights, student, women’s and native movements, so there was plenty of fuel lying around for ‘prairie fires.’  Melrod also worked on an anti-police brutality campaign; support for the Menominee Warrior Society takeover of a reservation abbey, similar to what AIM did at Wounded Knee; the 1976 Bicentennial protest in Philadelphia and a rally in Tupelo, MS against the racist Klan and cops.  All in his spare time!  This was closely connected to his work with RU and its various front groups.

AMC Milwaukee Again, then Kenosha

After 2.5 years Melrod got his AMC job reinstated by the NLRB and the Appeals court. He reentered the plant, was harassed by supervisors and helped launch a campaign against 1,000 proposed layoffs in the Milwaukee plant.  This failed and he was transferred to another local, Local 72 in Kenosha, with 350 others who were not laid-off.  They were there to build one of the shittiest cars ever, the Gremlin.  There was already a Fighting Times caucus at Kenosha.  The first issue was the 1976 industry-wide contract negotiations, followed by negotiations every 2 years.  AMC went after voluntary overtime, the steward system and the right to strike over grievances.  At least 30+ rank and file caucuses in the auto plants united to fight concessions and satisfy a hunger for information, as the officials were keeping a lid on it.

At one point the Fighting Times caucus members were told by an older union activist that they needed to drop the ‘outsider pose’ and run for union offices if they were serious. I’m not going to tell the rest.  What follows is the story of their combative climb up the union ladder, with Melrod going from steward to department chair to chief steward and eventually to the board of the Kenosha local.  He details the small and large internal struggles that led to his victories, along with the characters you meet in any workplace. 

Some of this happened after Maoism shattered in the U.S., leading to the RU splitting in 1978.  He left the organization after that.  It ends with AMC’s partnership/ownership by Renault, and the international battles that ensued over new car models, robots and automation.  In ’85 Renault pushed through a crushing give-back contract, heaped on layoffs, work transfers and the threat to close Kenosha.  At that point Melrod decided to leave AMC and go to law school.

Constant Themes

A constant theme is the do-little to do-nothing attitudes of local and international union leaderships – UAW and USW – complacent as they lose members in the 1970s and still siding with the company. UAW Local 75 had 10,000 members and was down to 2,500 in ‘76.  The other theme is ‘divide and conquer’ – by job category, by skin color, by ethnicity, by anti-communism, by work location or department, by age, by gender.  Anything will do in a pinch.  Racism was one of the most embedded.  The counter-theme is to bridge divides in order to be successful, which he always tried to do.  Another theme is to try to find embedded activists that they could ally with.  And another is the damage to the body and exhaustion working greatly ‘physical’ jobs.  An obvious theme is connecting the trade-union struggles to events outside the factory walls.  A background theme is the role of a Marxist organization in being able to influence and affect events, even in the conservative and anti-communist U.S., by training, guiding and supporting class struggles.

Melrod was in the right place at the right time, as this saga shows.  Many Marxist organizations sent cadre into the factories in the 1970s and ‘80s.  The RU was not alone.  Like much radical syndicalism, it did not attempt to gain political power outside of street protests, but focuses on union struggles most of all.  The stories will ring bells for comrades who worked in factories, warehouses, plants, mines and shops in that period, union and non-union; those who work there now or are planning to; or those who want to know what it is like. The book pictures a radical time in detail, which has faded from view but will return with a vengeance.  It ended in the crushing of organized labor’s great bargaining agreement at AMC.  But labor is rising again.

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms:  “Factory Days” (Gibbs); “Polar Star” (Smith); “Living and Dying on the Factory Floor,” “Autopsy of an Engine,” “Night Shift,” “The Unseen” (Bellestrini); “Red Baker,” “A Contract is a Contract,” “USMCA Fraud,” “The Flivver King” (Sinclair);  “Save Our Unions” (Early); “Tell the Bosses We’re Coming,” “Embedded with Organized Labor” (Early); “Reviving the Strike” (Burns); “Rebuilding Power in Open-Shop America,” “On New Terrain” (Moody).

And I bought it at May Day Books.

The author will be present for a book talk September 30 at May Day.  

Red Frog

July 7, 2023

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