Don 't say LPA - it's the Labor Party now!

by Wally Kaufman and Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the June 15, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

The 1,367 delegates, observers and guests who came to Cleveland June 6 as Labor Party Advocates left on June 9 as members of the Labor Party.

The largest delegations came from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW), the International Longshoremen 's and Warehousemen 's Union and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees. Delegates from more than 300 other labor organizations also attended, as did representatives from more than 30 Labor Party Advocates chapters. Organizers reported that the convention represented more than a million union members.

In his keynote address, OCAW President Robert Wages called for a "political party which represents the working class," one that will "take our country back" and will "organize workers against organized bosses and capital."

Speaking before a bright orange banner with slogans that included a call for "Constitutionally guaranteed jobs for all," making scabbing illegal, ending all discrimination and establishing a shorter workweek, Wages said a labor party should "organize around a few important issues" that are "close to the people."

Delegates from 44 states ironed out a constitution and a platform calling for a guaranteed right to a job at a living wage, "universal health care, a shorter work week, high quality public education, and an end to corporate welfare."

Although most programmatic proposals that were adopted had come from the convention leadership, a Black caucus of about 50 members offered proposals that strengthened the section dealing with racism and affirmative action and denounced hate crimes and the torching of African American churches.

The constitution and program presented by the convention leadership were adopted by the delegates with only minor changes, despite a flurry of points of order, parliamentary inquiries and other dilatory maneuvers by a small minority.

The fundamental politics of the convention revolved around a document titled "A New Organizing Approach to Politics" that postpones electoral activity for at least two years or until the party is able to recruit and mobilize "sufficient collective resources to take on an electoral system dominated by corporations and the wealthy."

The convention opposed demands from chapters granting them the right to run candidates immediately or in the near future, stating "The Labor Party will not endorse candidates. . . will not run people for office. . ." in the interim period while a committee "develop[s] future electoral strategy" and reports to the second convention.

Although the party says it is an "action-oriented movement" that is mobilizing to "force elected officials and candidates for public office to speak to our issues," the convention failed to express support for a resolution circulated by many delegates calling for the party to "work in concert with all of organized labor" in the 1996 elections. Nor did the leadership answer Jerry Brown's attack on the 1996 election strategy of the AFL-CIO, despite urging on the part of several leading delegates.

But despite these diversions, delegates left Cleveland knowing they had helped establish the Labor Party. And most will go home to their unions and become active participants in, and organizers for, the AFL-CIO's '96 election campaign aimed at dumping the Dole-Gingrich crowd from public life and saving federal programs that help working families.

"We are going to be working to elect Tom Fracano no matter what others do," Ken Warner said. "If you 're going to be in the game, you 'd better be a player." Fracano is director of UAW Region 9 in upstate New York where he is challenging GOP Congressman Bill Paxon, whose labor voting record is, Warner said, "a big fat zero."

In other actions, convention delegates participated in a demonstration organized by the Cleveland Labor Council in opposition to Mayor White's call for the legislature to outlaw collective bargaining for public workers. They also collected more than $6,500 to aid Detroit newspaper strikers and OCAW members in three local unions on strike or locked out in Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Stan Smith, executive secretary of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, said that he has often been accused of living in a fantasy world during the 25 years he has argued for a labor party. "It's no longer a fantasy," he told The World. "This founding convention is a dynamic first step toward workers achieving meaningful political power. Now we 've got something concrete to take to the labor movement - and that 's what we have to do now."

Smith, who "now chairs the San Francisco Chapter of the Labor Party," was one of many who worked to get the convention on record to "work in concert with all of organized labor" involved in the 1996 elections.