https://xcancel.com/TeamsterSOB/status/1813233768137662564
The C-suite long ago sold out the United States, shuttering factories in the homeland and gutting American jobs, while using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag.
They have forged trade deals that led directly to the hemorrhaging of 4 million good jobs to China.
But as O’Brien correctly observed Monday night, that isn’t the Republican Party’s true tradition. There was a time when Republicans knew that American strength depends squarely on American workers—and their way of life: family, neighborhood, church, union hall. Ronald Reagan knew it.
China is ripping us off, and strong tariffs must be maintained and expanded.
Teamsters blaming transgender people, "DEI", and China for the suppression of the labor unions in America. Gives support to family, church, and Ronald Reagan.
Idk, I believe in militancy and also want celebrate the work union members put in to get a good contract. I think it's so easy to criticize unions not being militant enough that it comes across as we know what's best for you and regardless of reality no one wants to follow people who tell them they know their best interests.
This 100%. The job of socialist organizers within the union is to take those wins, protect them, use them to fight for more wins, win leadership positions and ultimately build a school for working class struggle. The jobs of socialist activists outside the union is to support the union so that they get wins. External criticism of unions from the outside breaks internal unity and prevents solidarity from building between unions and parties/external orgs.
You can't do any of that without agitation. You will just burn out while everyone else takes credit for what you're trying to take credit for. This is the usual course of events for Western socialists bumbling into union organizing.
You also cannot provide uncritical support externally and expect to do anything but sharpen the knives that will be used against you by the people that you leave in power there through a lack of organizing and agitation. No socialist program has ever been won through uncritical cheerleading of unions. Unions have petty bourgeois characteristics that must be constantly combatted so that they can become tools for class struggle rather than class collaboration.
Re: internal unity, there is no such thing if you also want socialists in leadership positions. That is going to necessarily create disunity because your socialists will be advocating for something different than the liberals, proto-fash, and staff, and they will all fight you over it. You can support unity of action when it comes to direct actions but if you prioritize unity over agitation then you will have to pretend to be liberals and act like liberals the entire time like some kind of underground operation. There are not enough of us for that level of salting to ever work. There has never been.
Re: alienation from external criticism, this just means you have to be competent in your criticism. It needs to serve building an org within the union, the faction you will have to create if you ever want to succeed. Many Western leftists have no idea what they are doing and are not competent about it, so they do just alienate workers. But that's a reason to become competent, not throw out the tool that has worked time and time again.
The point of the criticism is to draw workers to you because what you say resonates with them. Sometimes it resonstes because they are already pissed. There absolutely were pissed UPS workers and seeing socialists say, "great job!" correctly teaches them that those socialists are full of shit. There are also workers that may not have been thinking of those criticisms but will be convinced by them. The key is to build constructive criticisms on top of congratulating the wins so that you don't alienate workers that are happy to have the contract. Trots tend to do that through their dogmatic and often hyperbolic criticism that is usually couched in esoteric language (either the workers aren't the intended audience or the Trot writing it is incompetent).
Re: Militancy, the UPS contract is denoted by a lack of it and closed door negotiations by staff who reached a TA far too early. The bar is set so low that Western socialists teach each other that just striking at all is militancy. It isn't. Militancy comes from strong worker organizer networks pushing demands, calling the shots on when to strike and when to agree, when to take other direct actions, and doing ds from a nascsntle class conscious perspective where they understand the boss as the enemy.
Your response reminds me so much of a trot tho. Like this is exactly their playbook and no one cares what they have to say.
Unions are not going to bring about the revolution. They are a way to get working people engaged in the class solidarity and organizing in the hopes that some join a communist party. In the imperial core there is no viable communist party. And then that party can not only criticize but can enact change because they are actually working in the unions their criticizing the decisions of.
It will always be easy to criticize wins in a trade union within a capitalist system. Maybe things do get TA too quickly maybe they don't struggle enough. But at the end of the day being the person or group of people that is constantly criticizing workers wins is not going to help people listen to you.