NB: You observed and did solidarity with the 1995 Detroit newspaper strike. What happened and why was it important?

Ermler: The newspaper strike was outright pitched war. The police were heavily involved and there were battles against them. The union was in guerrilla warfare around the newspaper distribution sites. It was fueled by the ranks but there was a section of the bureaucracy that knew that it was a test of a union town. For instance, the UAW and some of the other unions were supporting it and had a kind of intelligence network in the upper echelons of the company because they kept moving the distribution sites. The newspaper was a moneymaker because of the advertising so the company had to get it out.

Striking workers and union leaders devised a strategy of preventing the distribution and so the company was moving them around. What would happen is that the UAW and IBT halls were active and would host—and here’s a case where the bureaucracy was active—on a weekend night before the newspaper issue came out and organize car caravans to go out. They accepted other union members and leftists among others. Everyone would move in and block those sites in. The companies had hired private armies—made up partially of returning vets—outfitted with full riot gear and their own intelligence that would shadow militants. People were run off roads. When the local police department—especially in the suburbs—couldn’t help the private armies were there. People would, in solidarity with the strike, attack their fenced-in areas where they had towers guarding sites and pulled them down with trucks and burned cars in front of them. There were pitched battles with these mercenaries. Part of this was sanctioned by the unions. This went on for months.

Eventually what happened was the UAW and some of the other unions along with a coalition of striking unions were threatened by the state that unless they rolled this stuff up they would be attacked with Rico suits. The unions acted then and rolled it up quick. Everything moved then to a boycott and a bunch of union money got siphoned in to produce an alternative paper run by the union. It’s a great idea that outlines the kind of thing we would like to see. But of course the people putting it out had it fairly moderate.

That went on for awhile and they went to non-violent struggle and sometimes blocked the Ambassador Bridge on a weekend. It was largely a white unionist struggle. There were a few key black reporters. The black majority of the city saw no stake in this struggle. There were some attempts to reach out. People really didn’t know how. There was educational work under Action Coalition of Strikers and Supporters (ACOST). They reached out to black community leaders. But it was all too moderate and didn’t know how to link up with struggles in the community.

Locally, in ARA and as a union member me and others were flyering and doing solidarity. A Love and Rage local was coming together around that time in Detroit, but people’s energies in the strike were already waning. ARA flyered with an eye toward uniting the recent high school walk-outs—like at Southwest and Pershing—at the time over conditions of the textbooks among other things. ARA and a few other people were trying to make contact with those students over that. And then at mass meetings I was trying to make motions that people there support those walkouts. But it was too much for a small group of people.

The educational-type work alone of ACOST and visiting black community leaders won out at this time. Eventually, the strike was lost and they were suing for peace and trying to rescue a little bit of a deal. They finally called a giant all-unions march and about 100,000 people came from around the country. Only at this time did we have a Love and Rage local set up. In our flyering we were saying the way to reverse this thing now would be to have a tri-county general strike, the labor movement has to fight through direct action and funds have to be put under union and community control, the infrastructure and educational system has to be overhauled. And we counterposed that to casino building and Hard Rock Cafe building that was going on in Detroit.

Also at that time ARA had done pickets against the new juvenile detention center building in Greek Town. The reaction in Love and Rage was to suppress this flyering which we wanted to run in the Love and Rage paper. The faction that controlled the paper said that the demands were oriented toward labor and community organizing and the demands were too abstract. They branded it ultra-left and “Trotskyite.” This was a small piece of the faction fight in Love and Rage. This faction that opposed us thought the solution to moving anarchism out of the anarchist ghetto was to attach themselves to Anarcho-Maoist stuff that was happening among some young people of color activists on both coasts. And so they wanted to politically drop the explicit anarchism and embrace the history of Che, Mao or Ho on the basis of identity politics.

So our efforts were branded utopian, but earlier in the strike some mass meetings in locals and union officials independently were embracing the idea of organizing for a general strike. The larger union bureaucracy was saying to this, “will take this strongly under advisement.” But the ranks had a sense that they had to organize over and above this bureaucracy and that you can’t rely on them and trust them. But the self-organized structure wasn’t there to sustain it.

NB: What explains the militancy of the Newspaper strike?

Ermler: It was partially due to an attitude on the part of the ranks that this was a Rubicon. That this was a union town and they can’t go any further. Also there was a lot of anger among the rank-and-file of the various unions where there was previously the joint operating agreement where the editorial staffs survived intact, but the people who produced the paper was consolidated and the separate plants and the news were consolidated and there was massive job loss on the blue collar end of the newspaper trade, which they agreed and then came more demands. People were saying, “We went along although some of us resisted, but we aren’t going to put up with it anymore.” There was also that thing happening—like when we were talking about the division between skilled and production workers—when those skilled workers were saying let’s vote the contract down again and they lost their jobs, they wouldn’t plunge to Macdonald’s level wages. They had skills and they may lose 7 or 8 dollars an hour, but they wouldn’t be plunging all the way down.

NB: You now work at the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. What are the workplace and union issues there?

Ermler: There’s been a lot of struggle. Militancy would be stretching the thing, but there’s been demonstration of a lot of unions in resistance to a lot of cuts that have come because there is a general crisis in the budget. Also, taxes and services have been an issue. There’s been joint union and community actions. Lots of ferment and some direct action for some amount of time. In the past, like in the 1970s or early 1980s, if you went to an autoworker’s thing you would see a lot of the left. But the left is shrunk so if you go to a city worker thing you don’t see it. And city workers have largely been off the radar of the Left anyway.

However, you are beginning to see much more Left presence, including some of the new generation, in some of the union leadership and community groups. You have that going on. I said militancy is a stretch, but there is some. Yet it hasn’t gone beyond protests at city council or filing grievances. When the cafeteria workers were fired and outsourced in the school system they did some direct action by blocking school buses.

Now the water and sewage department is a huge institution. Its more than Detroit. It serves 6 million people. It’s on a great scale. It’s one of the largest in the country and even the world. The wastewater treatment plant is one of the largest in the world. So I just wanted to give you an idea of some of the scale.

Here there have been numerous attempts in the state legislature by rightwing forces to try and take control of the department away from Detroit for the suburbs. Rates have gone up, but it is some of the lower rates compared to nationwide. But it’s relative. There’s also a racist thing where a lot of the suburban whites don’t like it that just now the department is controlled by a predominately black city government and a majority of the workers are black.

What’s also at stake is suburban growth. I’m now a roving operator and I’ve seen areas that just a few years ago were woods and fields now have massive condos as far as you go. Water infrastructure has to follow this with new stations and lines. With this you can control where the development goes. So there’s a faction fight between contractors and allies in the government. Another piece of this is that there’s a crisis in the general budget. There’s a severe slashing of city services and workers getting laid off. The Water and Sewage Department and the Public Lighting Department—all part of the AFSCME local—are under the hatchet.

For example, the Water and Sewage Department cleared 570 million for the city. But there’s a tax going on the workers where the less skilled worker positions—like custodial and security—are being decimated by being outsourced. The department is also not expanding the skilled trades workers like maintenance—instrument techs, electricians and millwrights. That has been done over the contract where instead of hiring as city employees the city is cutting its training division as a way of cutting expenses and shopping with contractors.

Some of it is turning to the old building trades unions like in the AFL-CIO. They have had hits in the economy so its not just bringing in non-union people. It’s bringing also union people in who might even be paid more than the equivalent of the workers in the department, but the city has no pension and health obligations to them. The public employee unions are losing out. The interests of the building trades and other unions are set against the city employees that are AFSCME and predominately black. The racial conflict is set up again.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7