The struggle of more than 100,000 railway workers in the US has once again revealed the true face of the Democratic administration. Faced with the imminent strike action in the sector, to demand, among other things, such basic rights as paid sick leave, Biden and his team have prohibited their right to strike by resorting to the anti-union legislation of 1926. And to make matters worse, he has counted with the votes of all DSA representatives in Congress, except Rashid Tlaib.
By supporting this ban, Ocasio Cortez and her supporters have crossed a decisive red line that has opened a crucial debate in the ranks of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Extreme precariousness among railway workers
Conditions for railway workers have worsened dramatically. Since 2016 the workforce has been reduced by 25% and many more cuts have been made. The consequences have been a brutal deterioration in the working conditions and an increase in job and in the provision of the service itself. The crew on many trains is limited to a single worker, so the chances of fatal accidents have increased exponentially.
In addition to long-distance travel, during which rest time is away from home, workers must ensure that they are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and are often given two hours' notice to come to work. If they are sick, they must also go to work at the risk of being dismissed. One of their most heartfelt demands is to get 15 days paid sick leave.
In contrast to these nineteenth-century working conditions are the obscene privileges of the CEOs of the five companies that control 90% of the railways. These individuals, in the last three years alone, have been paid more than $200 million.
This scenario is not unique to the sector. Nor is it the deep discontent of the railroad workers, which is spreading inexorably through broad layers of the American working class. This is what explains the fear of the big American capitalists that the example of the strike threatening to paralyse the railway network could become a spark that would ignite beyond the railways.
Biden to the rescue of rail bosses
The twelve unions representing around 115,000 railway workers had been negotiating a new collective agreement for three years. Three years marked by the pandemic and by the work considered "essential" and carried out on a piecemeal basis by their employees. This September, Biden dusted off the 1926 Railway Labor Act (RLA), which allows the president to intervene in labour disputes that "substantially threaten to disrupt interstate commerce". The result was the submission of a "pact" proposal that did not recognise any paid sick days - the workers' main demand - and included wage increases well below the 9% inflation rate in 2022. Four unions representing around 60% of employees rejected the "agreement". The rest of the unions said that if a strike was called, they would respect the picket line.
Biden used the House of Representatives to preemptively ban any strike on the railways and forcibly imposed the collective bargaining agreement.
This sets a terrible precedent and is further evidence that the capitalists and their political representatives are increasingly resorting to repressive and Bonapartist measures against the basic rights of workers around the world. When the "cumbersome democratic formalities" of bourgeois democracy do not serve the interests of the big barons, they are abolished, full stop!
President Biden, while demagogically claiming to support unions and workers' right to organise, or $15 an hour, is in fact a staunch representative and faithful defender of the interests of the American capitalists.
This is the real face of the Democratic Party and President Biden. It is particularly stark in the context of a deep crisis of world capitalism, and with the US bourgeoisie in the midst of a bitter struggle with Chinese capitalism for world supremacy. The US capitalists will not hesitate for a moment to subject their own working class to the most deplorable conditions in an attempt to emerge victorious in this competition.
The banned strike and the DSA: either with the workers or with the capitalists
Only one of the representatives of the "progressive left" of the Democratic Party voted against the strike ban. All the others, several members of the Democratic Socialists of America, including its best known face, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, voted in favour of this strike-breaking measure.
This marks a turning point for the DSA. Its representatives have moved to the other side of the barricade and this has many implications as well as vital lessons for the future.
Since the emergence of the massive movement in support of Bernie Sanders there has been a debate about whether or not to work within the Democratic Party, whether or not it was useful to advance the ideas of socialism in the US. We have already had many examples of the Democratic Party being corrupt to the core, involved to the highest degree with the big capitalists, who are the real owners of the party.
This is in no way contradicted by the fact that the masses use whatever they have at their disposal to defend themselves against the neo-fascist attacks of Trump and his ilk, as they have done in the mid-term elections. And on the electoral terrain there is no class alternative for the workers and youth. But the Democrats stand for what they stand. We have seen it with the war in Ukraine, with the mistreatment of migrants, with the fiasco of their social policies. We have seen it when they did everything in their power to prevent Sanders from running for president - twice! But this anti-strike imposition is of a level of classism and reaction that has nothing to envy Trumpism.
What is the difference between having socialist MPs and not having them if, when push comes to shove, they take an anti-worker stance and approve strike bans? This question is now being asked by many supporters and members of the Democratic Socialists of America. So much so that the DSA has had to issue a statement[i] in which it stands in solidarity with the railway workers and their right to strike and condemns the behaviour of Ocasio Cortez and Cori Bush - something that has never happened before. In this press release, its National Political Committee also commits itself to a broad discussion of this issue in the rank and file of the DSA. Next August they will hold their national congress.
The DSA has become a reference organisation for millions of youth and workers in the last period. In the coming months and years there will be very profound struggles in the US and those who have swollen its ranks or look to the DSA for leadership at crucial moments in the class struggle need a viable alternative to fundamentally change the course of events.
There is strength and determination to raise such an alternative. But it is indispensable to break with the Democratic Party. We have just had a good demonstration of how far lines can be crossed when you tie yourself to Biden's logic, which is the logic of the system. The solution is to build a party of our class and for our class.
Uniting the forces of the combative and revolutionary left, both political and the labor movement left, in this task will be key for the masses in the US to be able to respond to the offensive of the far right and win. Fighting this battle within the movement and within the ranks of the DSA itself is a central point for revolutionary communists today.
