“We Won’t Let Him”: Unions Nationwide Are Planning a General Strike If Trump Tries to Steal the Election

President Trump has signaled he’s ready to declare victory before all the votes are counted. These unions are saying “hell no”—by planning massive workplace actions.

JEFF SCHUHRKE NOVEMBER 3, 2020

Amid wide­spread con­cerns that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump will attempt to steal today’s elec­tion or refuse to leave office if he los­es, the lead­ers of mul­ti­ple Chica­go-area unions issued a joint state­ment on Mon­day com­mit­ting to take any non­vi­o­lent action nec­es­sary — up to and includ­ing a gen­er­al strike — to defend democracy.

“Every sin­gle vote has to be count­ed,” says Sta­cy Davis Gates, vice pres­i­dent of the Chica­go Teach­ers Union (CTU). ​“We are pre­pared to be in sol­i­dar­i­ty to ensure that our democ­ra­cy is pro­tect­ed in this moment.”

The CTU, Unit­ed Elec­tri­cal Work­ers (UE), SEIU Local 73, SEIU Health­care, Cook Coun­ty Col­lege Teach­ers Union, Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Gov­ern­ment Employ­ees Local 704 and Ware­house Work­ers Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee are call­ing on ​“all unions, com­mu­ni­ty, faith and civic orga­ni­za­tions, and pub­lic lead­ers to unite in vig­i­lance and readi­ness to defend our rights as the votes in the Novem­ber 3^rd elec­tion are cast and counted.”

The Chica­go unions are part of Labor Action to Defend Democracy (LADD) — a recent­ly formed nation­al net­work of union mem­bers orga­niz­ing the labor movement’s response to the threat of a stolen election.

Alex Han, a Chica­go-based labor orga­niz­er help­ing coor­di­nate LADD, says the net­work seeks to tap into the unique pow­er of unions and work­ers to not only protest in the streets, but to cause seri­ous eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion, if necessary.

“One les­son we learned from the sum­mer is you can sus­tain street heat to some degree, but it’s going to dis­solve. We saw this dur­ing Occu­py, we’ve seen this many times,” Han tells In These Times. ​“There’s a per­spec­tive that would say the miss­ing ingre­di­ent is a direct link­age with work­place action, which is the kind of action that could be more sus­tain­ing and sharp­er, and not let street action devolve into a run­ning bat­tle with police.”

LADD has put togeth­er var­i­ous resources—includ­ing sam­ple res­o­lu­tions and a mod­el let­ter to politi­cians — that unions can use to ampli­fy calls to pro­tect the elec­toral process. In the past three weeks, over twen­ty cen­tral labor coun­cils, state labor fed­er­a­tions, nation­al and local unions have issued res­o­lu­tions express­ing firm oppo­si­tion to any efforts to sub­vert, dis­tort or dis­re­gard the final results of the pres­i­den­tial election.

The Rochester Labor Coun­cil is specif­i­cal­ly call­ing on the nation­al AFL-CIO to pre­pare for a gen­er­al strike, while the Ver­mont AFL-CIO plans to hold a gen­er­al strike vote on Novem­ber 21 should Trump lose and refuse to con­cede. The Seat­tle Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion will also con­vene an emer­gency meet­ing of its board of direc­tors with­in a week of the elec­tion to con­sid­er next steps for pos­si­ble action.

Mean­while, the Emer­gency Work­place Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee (EWOC)—a joint project of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca and UE formed ear­li­er this year in response to the pan­dem­ic — host­ed a livestream dis­cus­sion last week on how work­ers can take mass action to ensure a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er. Fea­tur­ing Asso­ci­a­tion of Flight Atten­dants Pres­i­dent Sara Nel­son and EWOC orga­niz­ers Dawn Tefft and Zack Pat­tin, the livestream has near­ly 6,000 views.

“The labor move­ment knows how impor­tant it is to defend democ­ra­cy in this coun­try. We are demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions,” UE Pres­i­dent Carl Rosen explains. ​“We’re pre­pared to do what­ev­er it takes to make sure democ­ra­cy is sus­tained. We know what it’s tak­en in oth­er coun­tries that have faced tin­pot dic­ta­tors try­ing to stay in office after the peo­ple of their coun­try have vot­ed them out.”

As Rosen indi­cates, unions around the world are often the first line of defense against would-be dic­ta­tor­ships. For exam­ple, in the year since Bolivia’s demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent Evo Morales was oust­ed in a U.S.-backed mil­i­tary coup, the Cen­tral Obr­era Boli­viana — the nation’s largest labor fed­er­a­tion—led the fight to restore democ­ra­cy, cul­mi­nat­ing in the recent elec­toral vic­to­ry of Morales’s par­ty, the Movimien­to al Socialismo.

Sorgente: “We Won’t Let Him”: Unions Nationwide Are Planning a General Strike If Trump Tries to Steal the Election – In These Times

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