The Ice Cracks
Noon. February 25.
A gray day in the 40’s.
Chrysler headquarters, Highland Park, Michigan.
A grassy boulevard.
A semi-modern, 1940’s architecture, complex
of offices, plants, parking lots.
Somewhere behind that brick,
that concrete,
that glass,
sits Lido Iacocca,
don of the Chrysler empire,
master of the lay-off,
Simon Legree of the speed-up,
godfather of concessions.
You wouldn’t expect
a brand-new sprout of the workers’ movement
to crack the ice
of Reaganite concessions in the auto industry
on a day like this,
but weather is funny in Michigan
and somehow
the lay-offs had come too often,
the speed-ups had drained too much life,
the concessions had robbed too many pockets
too many times,
and now don Lido proposed to sell
the parts plants,
condemning 28,000 workers to joblessness
or wages not much above the McDonald’s level,
and the workers couldn’t stand it any more.
The seed of rebellion
had been germinating
and now a brand-new sprout,
one among many,
broke through the cold winter soil
and surged upwards.
The UAW hacks,
Lido’s doting lackeys,
felt the hot anger of the workers
on their behinds.
Against their will,
they had to
call a march,
organize buses,
plan militant-sounding orations.
As for the workers,
they came out.
2000 of them.
They came from Ohio,
wearing white-fronted baseball caps,
veterans of wildcats from the Toledo jeep plant.
They came from Jefferson,
militant black workers
whose wildcat backboned the contract struggle
three years ago
and who were now organizing
a fight against job combination and lay-offs
with the Marxist-Leninist Party.
They came from Dodge Truck,
where the assembly line is called I-75
for its speed,
where robots run amok
and two workers do three workers’ jobs.
They came from Sterling Stamping,
where anger against the proposed sale
forced the hacks to call a strike vote
which passed by a wide margin.
And they came from Ford in Utica,
GM in Pontiac
and elsewhere.
They carried home-made picket signs:
“Cooperation and Concessions Mean Good-bye!”
“Keep Acustar, Sell Iacocca!”
“Solidarity with Kenosha, To Hell with Iacocca!”
They came out,
these auto workers,
slandered by the media as slip-shod laborers,
slandered by the UAW hacks as lazy absentees,
slandered as “apathetic” by the “left-wing” opportunists
who praise the hacks
while the hacks suppress
the workers’ every struggle.
The workers came out,
and when each new busload arrived
a cheer went up
as the workers discovered still more
of their own strength.
And as the picket line circled
it blocked off the street,
and as if shaking off the bourgeoisie’s slanders,
the workers spent the first half an hour
hailing each other, greeting
old friends, discovering new,
laughing and joking.
The Marxist-Leninist Party,
party of the revolutionary workers,
hated by the hacks and the company,
was represented by only three comrades,
two of them postal workers,
one a cab driver,
all others being at work.
But still
the Party used the mass gathering
to raise the militancy of the workers
up one notch,
to spread class-consciousness
still wider.
While the workers were gathering and circling,
the comrades approached every one
with leaflets and The Workers’ Advocate
laying out the orientation of the struggle.
Over a hundred took
Party picket signs
saying “No Lay-offs, Fight for Every Job!”
The workers drank up
the revolutionary literature
like dry soil drinks up
a summer rain.
Then,
after the greeters had been greeted
and the jokes had been told,
the workers settled down to serious business.
The demonstration needed
a unified voice.
Two black workers from Detroit
took up a chant
“DON’T SELL... AC-U-STAR!”
Joined by a comrade,
they did it in harmony and rhythm,
exhorting the opposite side of the picket line
as it passed
and soon the line rocked with a single voice.
Militant groups marched down the center
of the circle, chanting
and shaking their signs,
cursing Iacocca.
Fists raised,
private conversations ceased,
eyes turned toward the headquarters
where behind brick and glass
the godfather of exploitation
sat with his 20 million,
his new face-lift
and his failed marriage
to a woman half his age.
On television
this don always seems to be saying:
“Do it my way, or sleep with the fishes!”
But the workers didn’t give a damn
for the threats of this
two-bit automotive mafioso.
The picket line rocked for a good hour.
Then the hacks,
silent till now,
called a rally.
They droned their usual
respectful introductions
and nauseating drones,
but the workers didn’t
want to hear it.
“STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!”
they shouted
till the nauseating drones gave way
and up jumped
the Big Cheese of concessions groveling,
the maestro of bootlicking,
the two-faced demagogue
of the militant phrase
squawked from bended knee,
Marc Stepp,
who once wore a “militant” black turtleneck and a
black beret
while giving away $20,000
of each worker’s pay,
and later sported
a Banana Republic safari outfit
and flirted with Nikki Grandberry of Channel 2
while the militant workers protested
the hacks’ sell-out
inside and outside of the Jefferson local union hall.
Up jumped this dog
to speak to the workers.
And he babbled
something about how we have tried to cooperate
with the company
(”YOU GAVE IT ALL AWAY!” a worker shouted,
“STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!” went the chant),
something about how we can no longer trust
Iacocca
(”NEVER DID!” a worker shouted,
“WHO CAN WE TRUST?” another yelled,
“STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!” went the chant),
and something about how a strike
vote was taken on grievances
at Sterling, etc.
(”STRIKE THE WHOLE COMPANY!” a comrade shouted,
“STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!” went the chant),
till Marc Stepp,
the Great Black Hunter,
ended his joust with the lion Iacocca
and stepped down
in disgrace
and soon
the rally ended
with “STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!
SHUT IT DOWN!”
the chant
as the workers prepared to take home,
back to their plants,
the militancy of this day,
and milled around talking
for a moment,
unwilling to depart from
the scene of their solidarity.
And before the day was out
the demonstration was discussed
on the afternoon shift
in every plant.
In Toledo, at Jeep,
they talked of strike
in their baseball caps,
proud of their militant history.
At Jefferson
they talked of strike
and thought of their laid-off comrades.
At Detroit Forge
they talked of strike
in the heat and smoke
to stop the sale of their plant.
At Dodge Truck
they talked along the 1-75
assembly line
of strike
and how it was the only answer
to the high-handed bosses.
And within three days
don Lido,
the omnipotent mafioso,
had to change his plans.
A strike would cost more
than he would make by the sale,
so he backed off,
yet still planned to close four plants.
The “sacred management prerogative”
to absolutely control jobs, lay-offs and plant-closings
had crumbled before the workers’
militant struggle.
But the hacks,
ever alert to an opportunity
to kill struggle,
bragged of “their” victory,
and the media gushed about
“Marc Stepp’s victory”
and together they buried the strike
and abandoned the workers of the four plants.
And the workers,
aroused but unorganized,
simmered with indignation
at the abandonment of their brothers and sisters.
And,
in ones and twos,
respecting the Party’s long work,
they came around to
the Marxist-Leninist Party
as their only true friend
to actually organize the struggle.
There was a new crack
in the ice.
It joined the cracks
made by the Jefferson work stoppage,
the Curry wildcat,
the contract wildcat three years ago....
It was only a crack.
Immense hard work remained.
But distrust of the hacks
had grown,
the ice had
definitely cracked.
-- April 1988
