Gains for Left at River Rouge

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THERE IS a new force to be reckoned with in UAW Local 600 [the carworkers' union branch at Ford River Rouge, in Detroit - and the largest union branch in the world].

That force is the United Front Slate (UFS). The UFS is made up of 19 workers from several plants at the Ford Rouge complex, including assembly, stamping and engine. They are black and white, skilled and unskilled, and include a leading woman militant.

But most important of all, they are united on a class-struggle programme. For this reason, their campaign is important to all of US.

Slimy

The UFS calls for skimming off the slimy layer of labour traitors that has been floating on our hard-earned dues dollars for too long.

It spells out the need for independent working-class political action. It calls for nationalising oil, energy and utilities under workers' control and without compensation.

The UFS candidates also argued for the formation of a workers' The United Front Slate was formed when the Committee for a Militant and Democratic UAW (CMDUAW) - a caucus based mainly in production and supported politically by the Revolutionary Workers' League - began to meet with the 600 Organiser (a caucus based mainly in skilled trades) and a leading independent militant from skilled trades.

The meetings hammered out a programme of class-struggle demands to serve as the basis for an election slate.

The sight of two militant caucuses crossing fists for a common assault on the company and its friends, the union bureaucrats, inspired other militant workers to join the United Front Slate.

From the beginning, the United Front Slate agreed that all tendencies on the slate had the right to present their differences on political and tactical questions not covered by the UFS programme.

This Abridged from Fighting Worker, the paper of the Revolutionary Workers' League of the USA.

sectarianism and a real lesson for everyone involved.

It proved that political differences do not have to be barriers to joint action, in this case the fight to overthrow the bankrupt leadership of the largest UAW local in the world.

The recent election campaign at UAW Local 600 represents a modest gain for class-struggle opposition forces in the UAW.

Percentage

Although the percentage of votes for each socialist candidate increased little over the last election, the blamber of highte seniority willing to stand on such a Willy workers programme increased dramatically, and i consequently there was a dramatic increase in the actual number of votes won.

United Front Slate candidates received, on an average, between 15 and 30% of the votes received by the top bureaucratic votegetters, and came in ahead of many out-bureaucrats.

They also out-polled Communist Party-supported candidates running on a reformist programme.

This demonstrates that there is a significant percentage of autoworkers who are interested in a class-struggle/ socialist alternative to their union leadership, and that the number of workers willing to stand openly for this alternative is increasing.

The task that now faces class-struggle militants at Ford is to consolidate the gains of this united front and move forward into a broader arena of struggle.

The RWL is convinced that the quality and seriousness of the militants actively involved in this united-front effort will make further joint work a real and exciting possibility, as well as a real step forward for the workers at Ford Rouge the labour movement.

He sees it rather through progressive union leaders who will come out for a The reality is that the trade union leadership in the US in general does not want a Labour Party, because it would open up a Pandora's Box of political questions.

At the conferences we have had in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, every question arose in relation to a Labour Party - the question ot racism; of defence committees against the KKK; the question of South Africa; US intervention in El Salvador, and the fact that the AFL-CIO openly supports it (through the American Institute of Free Labour Development).

Discussion also took place on the question of unemployment and plant occupations. All these political problems • are immediately raised in a discussion of What programme for Labour?"

The union leadership are aware that a Labour Party would accelerate that political discussion, and promote political struggle in broad layers of the labour movement.

Conscious

So they are very conscious in their opposit in to

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Sociatis! Urganis er Aug IS! 31 Pag 1981