In the immediate aftermath of this year’s May Day, and April’s national “Hands-Off” demonstrations (both discussed previously by Marx21), Virginia Rodino conducted the following brief interview with Carl Rosen of the union UE. It was one of a series of interviews in preparation for a forthcoming article on resistance to Trump to be published in International Socialism, but is of interest on its own.
Carl Rosen is the General President of UE (the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America), one of America’s more progressive unions. UE has been a partner in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, and has a longstanding international collaboration in the Mexican Frente Auténtico de Trabajo. Rosen has been a member of UE since 1984, was a participant in Labor Party organizing in the US, and recently in the May Day national organizing.
Virginia Rodino is the Executive Director of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, AFL-CIO; president of the Maryland chapter of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO; and a member of the Communications Workers of America, Washington-Baltimore News Guild Local 32035. She is a Marx 21 member in Baltimore, Maryland, and co-author of “Fighting Trump: resistance in the US” to be published in the summer International Socialism journal.
Photo: UE Local 150 members marching on May Day in Raleigh NC. Courtesy United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
Virginia had a couple of questions:
1) Do you think April 5 and May 1 rallies are the start to a working class fightback — if not, how would you explain or describe them?
2) What do you think was different this year in the organizing leading up to the May Day rallies (the level of coordination, call from CTU)?
3) How do we prevent organizing for mass collective action in 2028 not to dissolve into electioneering for the Dems?
Carl Rosen:
There are some differences especially in concept – April 5 rallies were just basically anyone who was disgusted with Trump for whatever reason…
It was more or less the more activist portion of the Democratic Party that was there primarily, and the crowds seemed to be overwhelmingly white and upper middle class, and it’s absolutely great that they’re prepared to be out in the streets and make some noise, but while there was a little bit of union mobilization for them, in some places more than others, and obviously much of the labor movement did sort of officially endorse them, I wouldn’t say they themselves were a sign of a working class fightback, and they weren’t necessarily organized around class issues although obviously the objectionable things that the Trump Administration is doing are attacks on the working class.
On the May 1 rallies: Obviously May 1st has its history as being an international workers day and the initial impetus to build them bigger than usual came from 2 places. One, the immigrant rights community which recognized that we need to stoke a fightback there and which was mostly working class based – when you harken back to the big mobilizations in 2006 and that period, that was very largely working class folks who were out in the streets then, representing who most of the immigrant people in this country especially those who felt especially threatened, especially those who were undocumented, etc. which was what that fight was about. Were almost entirely very solidly working class
The other impetus were unions that saw this as a place to start to build a working class fightback. So it was intended to be that and that is why CTU called the conference they did and got a couple hundred folks together trying to figure out how to fan the flames, and scheduled and mobilized for it.
My sense was that though– and I was in Chicago and the nature of it in Chicago is very possibly different than elsewhere– what happened in many places is that the same forces that called people out on April 5 to the streets ended up calling them out for May 1st.
So you had, and I think especially in places where there’s not much of a union movement it was sort of a white middle class thing.
There is no doubt at what I saw personally in Chicago that the immigrant rights community mobilized those it could but nowhere near the big numbers of earlier years. In part because of the fear level, in part because – I think – folks who were around 20 years ago pretty quickly felt like “Well, we came out in huge numbers and there’s still bad people in charge and they’re still doing bad things to us. So maybe this in itself isn’t enough and maybe I’ll go to work and not lose a day’s pay.”
But I think it’s the fear factor more than anything else that kept people away. But the immigrant rights groups did a decent job of mobilizing. Workers centers and such definitely got a few thousand people out there. Unions got some amount of folks out there but it looks to me that in most unions it was mostly staff that were there, which is not totally unusual. But it was at least good that they had their staff there because in the past they wouldn’t even have their staff there. And then there were the usual assorted left groupings, most of which are mostly white, but not necessarily well-off whites.
And then there was a good chunk of again the same sort of folks from April 5, middle class white folks.
In Chicago because there was some amount of immigrant mobilization there were definitely brown folks, there were not a lot of African Americans. It was some amount, and where they existed, for example, Warehouse Workers for Justice is a workers’ center that is able to bring out both Latinos and African Americans, so you would find folks there.
Certainly I don’t think there were many organizations that were rooted in the black community that were mobilizing for it. The civil rights movement was not present. And we’re going to have to figure that out at some point. So that whole section of the working class was missing [in Chicago], and I bet they were elsewhere, too.
I think [the Bernie/AOC rallies] are fabulous, and we need to continue to stoke that, but I haven’t looked carefully at them but I would assume it’s again attracting sort of the more left liberal section of the Democrat Party. Although Bernie has the capacity to break beyond that, and has at times. A lot of the working class folks who voted for Trump could vote for a Bernie if they were given the opportunity, but the powers that be in the Democratic Party have made sure they don’t have that opportunity. [They would rather have Trump than Bernie.] That was basically the decision they made, I agree.
So May 1, in the sense that there was a coalition that came together to plan for it that were various working class organizations, the better section of the labor movement pulling along some even not great sections of the labor movement, immigrant rights groups, other NGO type groups that have actual roots in other communities in some places, yes – that’s the start of a working class fightback, I would say, and their plan is to hold it together, have more meetings. I think some folks saw this as part of building a May 1st sentiment that builds each year up to May 1 2028 where the autoworkers have called for joint actions, including potentially strike actions. So yes, the start of it – not certainly we have not achieved a working class fightback but there are folks consciously working on it which is a necessary first step.
What was different from other May Day rallies – the attempt to coordinate across cities, the attempt to consciously get other people to form them, these mass calls – none of that was ever done before. What CTU did here was brilliant and extremely well played. It shows what you can do when you elect really good leadership in even just one local – a local with some resources, obviously – that has class consciousness, that has a certain level of fearlessness, willingness to lead by example, so when they issue a call, there’s a lot of folks who answer.
I mean it’s sort of like with UE for many decades, when the UE says something on it there’s a whole section of people across the country in the labor movement, not necessarily always in positions of power, but toiling in the labor movement who say “Hmmm, if UE’s putting that out, we ought to think about it, maybe that makes sense for us to be taking up, too.”
So CTU is certainly at that place at this point, and they’re making use of that and that’s great. And they’re going to continue to do it.
We have to cross 2026 first, how do we make sure that what we’re doing here doesn’t just result in electing any old Dems in 2026, because if it does, and that continues into 2028, we’ll end up with even worse Republicans down the road.
I think there’s probably two things that we need to do: 1) We need folks to run outside the Democrat Party as independents, or run, if you’re in a hard blue area like a city or something like that, run against the Democratic Party even if you’re running in the Democratic primary, if you know what I mean. And there are a few people here and they’re elected like that and we need more of them, but better to get elected as independents, but best to be elected as outside of the Democrat and Republican parties with some sort of labor party type working class party, something, some name associated with something other than Republican or Democrat. And it’s what Bernie is certainly promoting, the idea of running as independents. There are some of us in Labor that would like to move it beyond that to something that has a Labor nomenclature of some sort to it.
So:
1) We’ve got to actually be electing people who are out there well to the left of the current Democratic Party mainstream that forces the political debate in this country to a better place. And
2) We need to be fighting in the streets and in the workplaces for an agenda for working class folks. And May 1, 2028, if it’s a day of strikes around the country, those strikes need to be for issues that make sense to the workers in those workplaces, otherwise they aren’t going to strike. And therefore it’s not going to be able to be a “political strike,” especially an electoral strike. There’s no way you’re going to be able to get people to go on strike to elect a Democrat in November. In fact if it seems to fall that this is an anti-Trump thing you’re guaranteeing a section of the workforce who refuse to strike. What we have to do is to pick some issues that the bosses can’t resolve. Things like actual real retirement security, which is going to probably mean getting rid of private pensions and replacing them by doubling Social Security. Because almost nobody has private pensions anymore and people who have 401Ks, unless they’re fairly well to do they don’t have a 401K that they’re going to retire on.
And healthcare. We’re going to have to have a solution that goes well beyond Obamacare and moves us toward Medicare for all.
So if your strikes are over those issues, you may not stay on strike until they’re resolved because obviously that’s going to take a while, but that again will define things. Like the UPS strike in the mid 90s put the issues of family-supporting jobs on the agenda politically. It was a brilliant strategy for getting public support for the strike, and it helped them win some things they wouldn’t have won otherwise. But it also helped change the electoral debate in the country. We need a lot more of that. And I think that comes with finding some issues to strike over that will make a real difference for the working class and that will force a change in the political debate in the country.
Marx21 US 