As the economic crisis continues, unemployment and foreclosure rates rise, and government programs are threatened with drastic budget cuts, many people are looking for some way they can fight back and preserve their standard of living against further erosion. By now it must be clear even to those who supported him that President Obama does not have a magic wand he can wave to make the problems all go away. On the contrary, as time passes it only gets more obvious that his economic team are firmly embedded in the Wall Street network, and that they have no intention of taking any measures to fix the economy, no matter how badly needed, that will not pass muster with their buddies in the banking, insurance, and financial services industries.

So what can those of us in the trenches do to turn things around? Right now, I know of two groups – one national and broadbased, the other focused on public workers in one particular state – that are trying to organize at the grass roots level to mount a working class based response to the economic crisis and its fallout for ordinary working people. I have my criticisms of both of these groups, but they are both worth paying attention to, so I am posting here in the hope of introducing them to a broader audience.

The national organization is the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign (WERC). The more local one is United Public Workers for Action (UPWA), which, as its name implies, is focused on unionized public sector workers in California. I plan to write a post about UPWA in the near future, but for this go-round, I will focus on WERC.

WERC is holding a teach-in in San Francisco on May 9, 2009 (click here for details), which I hope to attend, and I encourage those of you in the Bay Area to do so as well. But while you’re there, please think about what I have to say in this post.

WERC’s website touts a long list of endorsers, mostly from organized labor; some from academia and left and community organizations; and, most notably for my purposes, the Progressive Democrats of America and the Green Party’s 2009 presidential candidate, Cynthia McKinney. McKinney is on WERC’s Interim National Committee, along with antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and representatives of two Trotskyist organizations: Alan Benjamin from Socialist Organizer, and Bill Leumer and Mark Vorpahl from Workers Action (aka Workers Compass).

WERC’s platform includes the following measures (I have abbreviated them to save space; the full version is on WERC’s website):

1. A halt to Wall Street bailouts.
2.  A moratorium on all home foreclosures, utility shut-offs, evictions and rent hikes. Nationalize the mortgage industry, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
3.  Universal, single-payer healthcare, and a guarantee of fully funded pensions for retirees, along with healthcare and other benefits.
4. Enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
5. Nationalization of the Big 3 automakers, and retooling of the auto industry to build rapid mass transit, solar, and wind systems.
6. A halt to ICE raids, deportations, and the scapegoating of immigrant workers.
7. Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and redirecting all war funding to meet human needs.
8. A massive national reconstruction public works program.
9. Economic security for those who are unable to work, with a living wage level stipend instead of the current punitive, time-limited welfare system.
10. Tax the corporations and the rich – not working people – to finance a workers’ recovery plan.

Needless to say, I support the general gist of these programmatic points, as far as they go. My criticisms of WERC are more about what its platform and program leave out than about what they include.

First, WERC’s platform calls for nationalizing certain industries and for increased taxation of corporations and rich people, but WERC does not explain how we can ensure that the nationalized industries and increased tax revenues will be managed in the interests of working people. Will the newly-nationalized industries demand wage and benefit concessions from their workers in order to stay within budgetary limitations? Will the windfall of new tax dollars be spent on new military hardware, prisons, and covert foreign intelligence operations? Because WERC stops short of calling for workers’ control of nationalized industries and tax revenues, its demands for these measures could easily backfire, resulting in increased power for a government with a right-wing, anti-worker agenda.

Second, WERC does not call for any specific measures designed to achieve the goals it seeks to attain. WERC’s website proclaims that in light of the economic crisis, “We cannot sit back and simply hope that things will get better. The financial executives have organized themselves and lobbied for bailouts. We must now do the same. We must organize ourselves and mount a campaign, insisting that government programs benefit the majority of the population first and foremost, not the super wealthy small minority.” (Italics added.) Do the members of WERC’s Interim National Committee really believe that working people can get what we need just by lobbying and insisting?

The only concrete plans for action alluded to on WERC’s website are to “form committees across the country, organize educational forums, and then aim at building a national conference to promote this campaign. In this way we can begin to win the majority of working people to this agenda.” Again, I have no objection to educational forums, and I agree they are needed and will be helpful. But once “the majority of working people” are convinced that WERC’s agenda is worth supporting, what are the leaders of WERC planning to suggest that they actually do about it? WERC’s website provides no clue.

I would assume that people like Alan Benjamin, Bill Leumer, and Mark Vorpahl, as self-identified Trotskyists, are well aware that the only way WERC’s agenda could possibly even begin to be implemented is through the pressure of coordinated, nationwide militant labor actions, such as strikes and workplace occupations. Why are they afraid to say so openly? Why have they limited WERC’s planned actions to forums, conferences, and “lobbying”? Could it be that they do not want to alienate their allies in the Progressive Democrats, the Green Party, and official union leadership?

This last question brings me to my major criticism of WERC. Any organization that truly wants to serve as a rallying point for militant labor activism must remain entirely independent from all forces – including the established labor bureaucracy – that are politically tied in any way to the Democratic Party or any other political organization (such as the Green Party) that is not expressly and unequivocally anticapitalist. Only resolute political independence from cross-class alliances leaves a workers’ organization free to call for militant labor action and for workers’ control of the economy and the government. Without that freedom, organizations such as WERC can put out radical-sounding demands, but when it comes to taking the steps that are necessary to implement them, their hands will inevitably be tied, and they will be doomed to flutter helplessly on the wrong side of the barricades.

UPDATED: I went to the "teach-in" in San Francisco on Saturday May 9 that was sponsored by the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign, and endorsed by all the Bay Area Central Labor Councils and lots of unions. Several of the official speakers mentioned the fact that this year marks the 75th anniversary of the General Strike in San Francisco in 1934. Yet not one of the WERC-endorsed speakers was willing to admit that only massive militant labor actions like the 1934 general strike will achieve the goals that WERC ostensibly stands for. Instead, all they are planning at this point as far as "actions" is more teach-ins, conferences, and maybe some demonstrations. There are several people on the WERC organizing committee who call themselves socialists, but they are so hand-in-glove with the top layer of the union bureaucracy that they do not even call for the labor movement to break with the Democratic Party.