constructive options, like union organizing, leads to violence.
Labor
[Harvard professor] Elaine Bernard and [union official] Tony
Mazzocchi have been talking about creating a new labor-based party.
What are your views on that?
I think that’s an important initiative. The US is becoming very
depoliticized and negative. About half the population thinks both
political parties should be disbanded. There’s a real need for
something that would articulate the concerns of that substantial
majority of the population that’s being left out of social planning and
the political process.
Labor unions have often been a significant force—in fact, the
main social force—for democratization and progress. On the other
hand, when they aren’t linked to the political system through a labor-
based party, there’s a limit on what they can do. Take healthcare,
for example.
Powerful unions in the US were able to get fairly reasonable
healthcare provisions for themselves. But since they were acting
independently of the political system, they typically didn’t attempt to
bring about decent health conditions for the general population.
Compare Canada, where the unions, being linked to labor-based
parties, were able to implement healthcare for everybody.
That’s an illustration of the kind of difference a politically
oriented, popular movement like labor can achieve. We’re not in the
day any longer where the industrial workers are the majority or
even the core of the labor force. But the same questions arise. I
think Bernard and Mazzocchi are on the right track in thinking along
those lines.
Yesterday was May 1. What’s its historical significance?
It’s May Day, which throughout the world has been a working-
class holiday for more than a hundred years. It was initiated in