Putting workers into US politics

The great majority of the USA's trade unions have bought into the Bush-Gore contest, throwing money and staff behind Al Gore. But one union, the California Nurses' Association, has backed Nader. The leaders of both the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers have said they might back Nader. Although these statements are designed as attempts to win more favours from Gore rather than as serious commitments, they can help to open up debate inside the unions.

Nader is a longstanding campaigner against the abuses of big corporations. He defines the issues like this: "Over the past 20 years we have seen the unfortunate resurgence of big business influence, generating its unique brand of wreckage, propaganda and ultimatums on American labor, consumers, taxpayers and most generically American voters. Big business has been colliding with American democracy, and democracy has been losing...

"Try applying people's yardsticks instead of the measures of record GDP, corporate profits and stock exchange prices. A very different picture emerges.

"Because the benefits of this boom have accrued to the wealthier and especially wealthiest classes, the majority of Americans are left behind. There is over 20 per cent child poverty, 25% for pre-school children.

"There are about 47 million workers, over one-third of the workforce, making less than £10 an hour... The majority of workers still, after 10 years of overall economic growth, make less today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, and work 160 hours longer per year than workers did in 1973."

Nader's main campaigning planks are universal public health care, labour rights, and curbing big-money influence in politics.

Although Nader is a member of the fledgling Labor Party set up by US trade unionists in 1996, he is not a Labor Party candidate. Most of the unions backing the Labor Party still want to keep a foot in the Democratic Party, and the Labor Party has tried to deal with this by endorsing no candidate.

Nader aims to build a "blue-green" - worker-environmentalist - alliance behind his candidacy. He has been nominated by the Green Party, although he is not actually himself a member of the Green Party. His campaign is not working-class politics - he defines himself as a "progressive populist" - but it does offer great leverage to the small socialist groups in the USA who are trying to develop working-class politics.

Tony Mazzochi, a leader of the Labor Party, told the Green Party convention that nominated Nader: "We are unabashedly a class formation! We have no bashfulness about our position. Our concerns are strictly the concerns of working people. And when we say working people we use that term generically: those who work, the average Joe or Jane that works, and those who would like to work but are denied that right.

"On education our program is rather simple. We have analyzed the cost of public education for graduates and undergraduates in public institutions. And it turns out that the total cost of tuition in all public institutions for undergraduate and graduate work comes out to $23 billion a year. A pittance. So we're for free public education, both graduate and undergraduate. And not only that. Our proposal is not only free education, but we should be paying for folks to go to school.

"We are for workers' rights. We are for bringing the First Amendment into the workplace. Most people don't realize that the right to assemble and the right to free speech doesn't exist when you cross the portal of any workplace. We want the right to organize, we want the right to be able to address our fellow workers, and we want the right to be able to organize workers in a simple fashion and see that their democratic rights are expressed without fear.

"Let's talk about health care. I've never found anyone against universal health care. The Labor Party, after much deliberation, says and is able to document word for word that we can enact a single-payer national health insurance plan covering every single resident of this nation from birth to death - covering medical care, hospitals, nursing homes, prescription drugs, eye care - whatever medical care is needed can be provided. So when people ask 'What are we for?' That's what we're for. Medical care for every resident of the nation."