Strikes and Class Consciousness

Weekend Edition March 28-30, 2014

Stepping Up the Assault

Strikes and Class Consciousness

by RON JACOBS


Strikes by labor have a way of bringing individuals’ consciousness to the foreground. This is especially true when the workers on the picket line primary work is serving the public. Teachers, police, firemen, public works and transit workers fall into this category and, when they strike the public feels the difference. In the place I live—Burlington, Vermont—the transit system drivers have been on strike for a week and a half. The local media, from the Gannett-owned daily paper to the so-called alternative weekly, has varied in its coverage of the issues, with the bulk of the stories presenting management’s side without challenge. To its credit, the Gannett paper did a feature which did a good and fair job of presenting the drivers’ side of the dispute.

In what can only be termed disingenuous and transparent, all of the media outlets have pretended to represent the riders’ view by sharing anecdotes about individuals affected by the strike. In presenting these stories, there have been very few (if any) that question management’s ongoing refusal to bargain in good faith as the cause of these riders’ frustration. Instead, the media’s presentation places the responsibility for the disruption of these riders’ lives in the lap of the drivers. In other words, their demands for a fair contract are given as the reason there is no service instead of management’s refusal to bend on the key points proposed by the union. (As a point of clarification, management has presented essentially the same contract to the drivers at least three times over the past year and all three times it has been soundly rejected.)

In the conversations carried on while walking the picket line in support of the drivers and in the comments sections of local media outlets, I have noticed a commonality among those who oppose the strikers. In general, these folks tend to be rightwingers ideologically opposed to labor unions or younger folks who seem to have never been part of a unionized workforce or have always been in management. I am not sure what conclusion can be drawn from this fact, but the question of consciousness certainly comes into play.

However, it is in the anecdotal stories presented in the media where the question of consciousness is truly glaring. Virtually every one of the individuals whose story of how their lives have been negatively affected by the strike are either at the mercy of public programs designed to help them survive (Social Security disability, VA benefits, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, etc.) or working minimum wage jobs without any job security. Besides perpetrating the myth that it is mostly the poor and disabled who ride public transit, this presentation plays on an element of pity that not only denigrates the individual whose story is being told, but also pulls on the heartstrings of the well-meaning media consumer. In doing so, the issues of the drivers becomes secondary and, by becoming secondary, so do similar issues faced by workers everywhere. In addition, the media’s anecdotal stories replace a meaningful discussion of how the struggle of the bus drivers for a say in their working conditions and salary is the struggle of all working people.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/28/strikes-and-class-consciousness/