[marxmail] Mayor Mamdani, DSA Leaders, and Business Unionist Labor Leaders Are Selling Out New York Public Sector Unions - CounterPunch.org

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Title: Mayor Mamdani, DSA Leaders, and Business Unionist Labor Leaders Are Selling Out New York Public Sector Unions

Workers Strike Back vs. DSA: constructive comrade criticism or new sectarian politics? https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/08/28/mayor-mamdani-dsa-leaders-and-business-unionist-labor-leaders-are-selling-out-new-york-public-sector-unions/ Mayor Mamdani, DSA Leaders, and Business Unionist Labor Leaders Are Selling Out New York Public Sector Unions Kshama Sawant Photograph Source: InformedImages – CC BY-SA 4.0 In the latest chapter of the “Democratic Socialism in Office” saga in New York, the City Council recently unanimously passed sorely-needed one-time $10,000 bonuses to public school teaching assistants, through the RESPECT Check Act, and democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is working hard to overturn it. The teaching assistants, who work with students with disabilities, are grossly underpaid and overexploited, with annual salaries starting at under $34,000 and topping out at under $57,000 after about 15 years of work. This is in a city where the minimum individual pay to get by is around $80,000. Not surprisingly, over 1,800 teaching assistant positions, also known as paraprofessionals, remain unfilled. The City Council’s legislation is strongly supported by the United Federation of Teachers, the union that represents over 200,000 workers in NYC’s public school system. Despite the dire conditions faced by the paraprofessional public school workers, and himself having acknowledged that a NYC family needs an annual income of over $300,000 to be able to afford childcare, Mayor Mamdani opposes the $10,000 bonuses. Mamdani, currently the most prominent leader of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), has announced that he will be suing the City in order to repeal the bonuses. Mamdani’s Pro-Union Claims vs. Reality How could Mamdani possibly justify this while calling himself “pro-union”? Mamdani claims his opposition to the bonuses is meant to uphold the sanctity of collective bargaining, where unions organize for wages, benefits, and other workplace rights. In his public statement, Mamdani waxes eloquent about collective bargaining being “how working people make their voices heard and win the wages, benefits and protections they deserve. It’s a fundamental pillar of a fair economy.” Mamdani adds that the legislation granting the bonuses to workers “sets a dangerous precedent: allowing politicians to bypass workers and their unions and dictate the terms of employment themselves.” He claims that his lawsuit against the City Council’s bill to give these essential bonuses is supposedly meant to “protect the right of every union to negotiate on behalf of its members, to fight for the workplace they deserve and ensure that workers–not politicians–determine their own futures.” Bosses routinely walk all over legal precedents as they attack workers to maximize their profits. A socialist in office should not join the bosses and use legalistic excuses to act against workers’ interests. Mamdani’s remarks constitute political gaslighting, where he is presenting what is a straight-up anti-union and anti-worker action as if it is intended to protect unions. It was the organized anger among rank-and-file workers that forced the City Council to pass this even one-time $10,000 bonus (although the original RESPECT demand was permanently closing the gaping wage differential for the paraprofessionals). Any elected person who calls himself a socialist has an obligation to strenuously support the bonuses, not fight against it. It is horrific that Mamdani has taken the extraordinary measure of actually filing a lawsuit against the bonuses. First of all, Mamdani and the City of New York are the bosses of public-sector unions like UFT. By opposing the bonuses, Mamdani is playing the role of a ruthless boss who is denying a small measure of justice for some of the city’s poorest public-sector workers! Mamdani is also doing the bidding of the NYC elite, who are not only undoubtedly incensed at UFT members getting these bonuses but also loath to allow such a precedent to be set for tens of thousands of underpaid rank-and-file members of other public-sector unions. This is the real “precedent” at issue here, not the allegedly pro-union whitewash offered up by Mamdani. Contrary to his claims of wanting to protect unions, Mamdani’s threat of lawsuit instead comes from the fact that he wants to be in compliance with the Taylor law. He has said publicly that the legislation is in “direct violation” of the Taylor Law. The breathtakingly anti-union Taylor Law, which includes a strike ban on public sector unions and other draconian measures, was passed in 1967 in retaliation for strike actions by New York state’s public employees, particularly the 1966 strike by NYC transit workers. Strikes by NYC public-sector workers were already banned by the 1947 Condon-Wadlin Act, but the forces of the capitalist state found this law practically unenforceable because it required firing all striking workers. The Taylor Law, by lowering the penalties for striking, made it easier for the capitalist state to enforce the no-strike clause (although public-sector workers have nonetheless broken the law and gone on strike). However, because it was written specifically to undermine the labor movement, the Taylor Law also prohibits authorizing payments like bonuses outside the collective bargaining process. All of this put together means that NYC’s public-sector unions are not legally allowed to win concessions in the form of City legislation according to the letter of this viciously anti-union law and at the same time, the “collective bargaining rights” included in the law are extremely limited because strikes are illegal (of course, union leaders need to be willing to organize strikes regardless of the law). Overturning this odious Taylor Law should be a top priority of Mamdani and other “democratic socialists,” not to enforce it against some of the city’s poorest-paid workers. In 2018, rather than repeal the Taylor Law, both NYC Mayor de Blasio (whom Mamdani has celebrated as the best NYC Mayor in his lifetime) and NY state Governor Cuomo together upheld it. According to even the DSA-linked magazine Jacobin, the Taylor Law’s strike ban “makes red-state anti-strike laws look like pieces of fluff.” Yet “progressive” Democrat de Blasio and Cuomo fought to protect it in response to the revolt by public school teachers that year, which was sparked by the historic strike by the West Virginia teachers. The Jacobin article also says, “The next time a Republican governor works up the nerve to enforce anti-strike laws against public workers, they’ll have the satisfaction of piggybacking on those Democratic friends of labor, Cuomo and de Blasio.” It’s notable that Mamdani does not even have the excuse of having to deal with a Republican in the Governor’s mansion, and is doing this on his own steam. Workers Need to Fight Against the Bosses AND their State Perhaps the most insidious aspect of Mamdani’s cover story is denying basic relief for workers on the basis that it represents unwanted interference from politicians, while in reality, allowing politicians to directly attack workers and unions. We have, of course, seen this ploy repeatedly from both Democratic Party politicians and many labor leaders tied to them. That is no accident, because the Democratic Party isn’t a workers’ party, it’s a party owned lock, stock, and barrel by the capitalist class. To work within the framework of the Democratic Party is to work with the bosses to represent their interests. Workers can have no illusion that any rights will be granted to us by legislation from either the Democratic or Republican parties, both of which represent the billionaires, unless it is wrested from their hands through the power of class struggle by workers. Capitalism is a system in which the daily status quo is the billionaires and multimillionaires carrying out a brutal class war on billions of working people. If we play by their rules, we get more of the same. The only way workers can win anything is to go to class war back against the bosses. Especially by going on strike and shutting down the profit machine. This is the most far-reaching leverage we have as workers and why the defense of a law that bans strike action is so completely unconscionable for someone calling himself a “democratic socialist.” Tragically, the overwhelming majority of the labor leadership for decades has been “business unionist.” Meaning, they have made peace with capitalism and its institutions like the Democratic Party. Instead of fighting for workers, business unionist leaders prioritize cordial relations with the bosses and their political parties. The dominance of business unionism has led to a precipitous decline in the American labor movement and undermined the militancy that underpinned earlier historic victories. The business unionist leadership has been the single biggest obstacle to rebuilding a fighting labor movement for decades, as living standards have plummeted and attacks on unions have escalated, both under the Democrats and now under the Trump administration. A staggering 94 percent of union contracts contain no-strike clauses, with business unionist leaders agreeing again and again to sign away this principal avenue of worker fightback. The alternative to business unionism is class struggle unionism, based on the recognition that capitalism is a zero-sum game and that the only way for workers to win anything is to wrench it from the hands of the bosses. Like it or not, under capitalism there is no peace between workers and capitalists, and the “peace” constructed by business unionists has led only to decades of defeats for workers. The only question under the bankrupt system of capitalism is who wins in the class war at a given moment, bosses or workers. Business unionism has meant that the institutions of the capitalist state, in the form of local, state, and federal Democratic and Republican administrations, have carried out endless attacks against unions. Three of the most stunning recent examples are Trump’s firing of 300,000 federal public-sector workers, the 2022 blocking of the railroad workers’ strike led by Democratic President Biden and supported by the Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress, and the giant 2013 sellout of Boeing workers by the Democrat-controlled Washington State government on behalf of the Boeing executives and wealthy shareholders. Democratic Party politicians and labor leaders have criticized Trump’s attacks on unions, but neither has attempted to build any real fightback. Rather than lead strike actions during the historic protests against ICE killings in Minnesota in January of this year, key union leaders warned union members against striking by reminding them of the no-strike clauses in their contracts. Under Biden, all House and Senate Democrats except Rashida Tlaib voted to break the railroad workers’ strike. Progressives and DSA electeds like AOC astonishingly tried to claim it was somehow in the interests of the railroad workers, when in reality, it was an act in defense of the billionaires. It helped the railroad bosses and capitalists as a whole avoid a huge disruption to profits and their system had these workers successfully shut down freight transportation. Not a single Democratic politician or labor leader expressed any fears that their bill to break the railroad workers’ strike would set “a dangerous precedent: allowing politicians to bypass workers and their unions and dictate the terms of employment themselves.” So much for the sanctity of collective bargaining. Not even Mamdani spoke out of concern for this precedent from his position on the New York State Assembly at that time. During the recent historic strike of New York City nurses, the hospital bosses spent upwards of $100 million in hiring out-of-state scab nurses in an attempt to undercut the strike. New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul signed, and repeatedly renewed, an executive order making it easier for the bosses to hire the scabs. Mamdani did not accuse Hochul of trying to “bypass workers and their unions and dictate the terms of employment” using her elected office. On the contrary, Mamdani endorsed Hochul for re-election during the strike. Socialist elected representatives need to take the side of the workers, not the bosses, including when that means being at odds with Democratic politicians or even the labor leadership. In 2021, rank-and-file Pacific Northwest union carpenters launched a strike after voting NO on four tentative contracts lauded by their business unionist leaders. Although the union leadership was forced to nominally support the strike, they did everything in their power to undermine it. As a revolutionary socialist on a Seattle City Council chock-full of “progressive Democrats” at the time, I was the only elected representative willing to support the rank-and-file strike. The leadership of the carpenters’ union, along with most of the prominent labor leaders in the region, publicly denounced my support for the strike as “interfering” and as “outsiders coming in and agitating our members.” Nicole Grant, then Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the King County Labor Council, said she’d “never seen anything quite this serious in the course of my career, where a small faction of Marxist extremists, with the backing of an elected official, have been able to not just wreak this much havoc inside of a union but been this undermining.” Following the heroic strike, I announced legislation to improve investigations into wage theft that is rampant in the construction industry, an ordinance requiring contractors to pay 100 percent of the parking costs for Seattle construction workers, and a bill to restore all workers’ right to strike. The business unionist leaders not only refused to support any of these demands, but instead attacked my City Council office for allegedly a lack of “collaboration.” Monty Anderson, Executive Secretary of the Seattle Building Trades Council, said: “You know, we collective bargain. We don’t need Councilwoman Sawant in the middle of our bargaining process…” These examples show that, according to the logic of business-unionist labor leaders and DSA electeds like Mamdani, direct state intervention is okay only if it attacks workers and unions. If a legislative action happens to benefit workers, they will consider that unholy interference with their sacred process of collective bargaining. Business Unionist Labor Leaders Need to be Swept Aside Michael Mulgrew, the long-time UFT President, has threatened “all-out war” unless Mamdani supports the bonuses, but it appears to be nothing but bluster in the face of the pressure from rank-and-file UFT members. Mulgrew has taken no steps to organize any real struggle. He has not announced any rally or protest against Mamdani’s threat of a lawsuit. Moreover, Mulgrew’s own preference for City Council legislation to get the bonuses is no doubt meant to deflect away from what is most urgently needed: strike action. Business unionist leaders like Mulgrew are hand in glove with the Democratic Party and have their own track record of spectacularly selling out workers. Mulgrew has had 17 years as UFT President to lead struggles for major gains for the membership. Instead, the paraprofessionals have continued languishing at poverty wages. Meanwhile, Mulgrew pays himself nearly $400,000 a year. In 2014, Mulgrew and UFT leaders made a deal with Mayor de Blasio to fund meager wage increases for UFT members. Sadly, this was robbing Peter to pay Paul, as it used a billion dollars of the union’s own $1.8-billion Healthcare Stabilization Fund, which was meant to address skyrocketing healthcare costs for the rank and file! One of the most stunning betrayals by Mulgrew and the UFT leadership was to force the Medicare privatization plan, Medicare Advantage, on the 250,000 UFT retirees. Fortunately, this was later reversed under phenomenal pressure from UFT members. Working people and union rank and file need to recognize that neither the Mamdani and DSA strategy nor business-unionist labor leaders offer the working class any way out. Both are based on appeasing the bosses, not organizing workers to fight back. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin, whose currency is keeping the peace with the billionaires and multimillionaires. It is clear from Mamdani’s own extensive public statements that his opposition to the bonuses legislation is in no way intended to be a challenge to the UFT leadership‘s business unionism, but meant to keep his own good relations with the NYC elite and the stability of the capitalist state by enforcing even the most blatantly anti-union laws hurting the most exploited workers. So far, NYC DSA and their four elected City Councilmembers have not raised a finger in opposition to Mamdani’s anti-worker maneuvers. NYC DSA co-chair Grace Mauser said recently, the DSA leadership is “very serious about governing and we know that that means a working coalition and we know it means compromise.” The problem with this is that it is fundamentally unsocialist. As socialists, our job is not to maintain peaceful “coalitions” with the powerful, but to fight tooth and nail against them and their rotten system. Seeking to build alliances with the establishment has meant Mamdani endorsing not only Hochul, but also Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Jeffries is an arch Zionist who has played a leading role in the bipartisan funding of the Gaza genocide. The New York Times has reported recently about Jeffries holding a private meeting with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to see “how Democrats and the [Trump] administration could work together.” The genocide, much less the brutal occupation of Palestinian lands, is simply not going to be ended on the basis of politicians saying they support the Palestinian cause and then turning around and actively give cover to the perpetrators. Mamdani keeping the peace with the political establishment has also meant continuing the proposed demolition and privatization of the last half a million NYC public housing units. Most importantly, building coalitions with the powerful means Mamdani, AOC, and other DSA elected officials are completely refusing to use their positions to build movements that will mobilize the hundreds of thousands working people, as I did during my decade as revolutionary socialist on the Seattle City Council. As an elected representative, I had absolutely no intention of ever “governing” the capitalist state. My responsibility at every moment was to fight for workers, and disrupt the rotten status quo by mobilizing and organizing the working class. My task was to expose the true nature of the Democratic Party and its politicians as servants of the bosses, and of capitalism itself and the need to overthrow it. This clarity allowed me to use my lone office to build mass movements and win historic victories, such as the nation’s highest minimum wage and the Amazon Tax, that DSA-elected officials have not matched. Working people need a new party of our own that can help build militant mass movements and fight against both parties of the billionaire class. _._,_._,_ Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#43225) | Reply to Group | Reply to Sender | Mute This Topic | New Topic POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. Your Subscription | Contact Group Owner | Unsubscribe [arch...@mail-archive.com] _._,_._,_