The CFT was well-represented at each of the large anti-war marches in 2002-2003, including this one in San Francisco in January 2003.

CFT's Resolution Against the War
When the California Federation of Teachers passed its anti-war resolution at the September 2002 State Council meeting, it joined a few dozen union locals, central labor councils, and regional labor bodies around the country in opposing the Bush administration's plans for Iraq. The unanimous CFT vote was, as president Mary Bergan later said, unprecedented and dramatic: while the CFT has passed other anti-war resolutions over the decades, none have ever been adopted without a dissenting vote.The Community College Council had passed virtually the same resolution the night before. Indeed, it was CCC President Marty Hittelman who brought the resolution before the entire state CFT body. Since then, to date, CCC locals in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cabrillo, Cuesta, and San Mateo have voted for their own resolutions echoing the CFT and CCC motions.

Over Two Hundred Labor Organizations...and Counting
At the time of this writing (February 15, 2003, updated December 2003)* more than two hundred labor organizations, including eight national unions, representing over four million workers, have come out against war in Iraq. Most cite the lack of evidence that Iraq poses an immediate threat to the United States; that it is working people who will fight and die, both here and in Iraq; and the need to make the horrors of war a last resort. Many joined to found United States Labor Against the War (USLAW) in January, which organized the labor contingents in the big marches and demonstrations since then. (See the US Labor Against the War website.)

The last time such massive labor opposition to entry in a war emerged before the conflict began was over eighty years ago, when the country was considering intervening in World War I.

War Abroad, Class War at Home
What has brought about the rapid development of labor anti-war sentiment? Many of the union resolutions note that the same Bush administration so eager for war abroad has been waging a steady class war against unions and working people here on a multitude of fronts. From the invoking of the seldom-used Taft-Hartley Act against longshore workers to try to force a regressive settlement on their west coast contract negotiations, to turning down the extension of unemployment benefits to millions of workers laid off due to the economic recession, to the denial of collective bargaining rights to tens of thousands of federal workers in the new Homeland Security Administration because of vague "security reasons," the Bush administration has demonstrated its hostility to the needs of working people and its determination to undermine the ability of unions to represent them.

As the national president of the firefighters' union angrily observed during the congressional debate over whether Homeland Security workers should have the right to union representation, no one needed to ask the three hundred firefighters who died in the World Trade Center whether they carried a union card before they plunged into the building.

The Costs of War
Another theme sounded by the labor resolutions is the recklessness of Bush administration fiscal and environmental policies. Elsewhere in this issue of the Perspective CFT legislative director Judy Michaels writes that most of the analyses of the California budget deficit and where it came from overlook the $7.5 billion in state tax revenues lost each year since the vehicle license fee and upper income tax bracket were rescinded. As local, state and federal programs are being gutted to address the deficit--and few face worse proposals than the community colleges--hundreds of billions of public dollars have been squandered to federal tax cuts that almost entirely benefit the rich. And the current administration estimate for the war in Iraq is in excess of $200 billion

The Bush administration is determined to proceed with the greatest transfer of wealth since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The difference between the economics of then and now is that the New Deal transferred wealth from the pockets of the rich to the rest of the nation in the form of social programs such as Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and a livable minimum wage‹as well as, following World War II, the GI bill, allowing working class soldiers to go to college and achieve a middle class standard of living for themselves and their families. The war in Iraq may prove to be the undoing of the Bush administration not simply because of the growing peace movement, but because its costs are going to be visible and ruinous everywhere we turn.
by Fred Glass

*In late February, the AFL-CIO national executive council issued a statement moving closer to the anti-war forces. This marks a break with the federation's past, which, since its formation in 1955, has stuck mostly to a hawkish approach to foreign affairs.

Update: December, 2003

The CFT sent delegates to the conference of US Labor Against the War in October, 2003, which reaffirmed the principles of the organization in the context of continuing occupation of Iraq. One hundred union locals, councils and federations were represented in the meeting, held in Chicago. Among the concerns addressed were the effects of the war at home, in terms of reduced federal monies available for social programs, and the continuing threat to civil liberties that the Bush administration's war on terrorism fosters. Another focus was the eagerness of the U.S. occupation authority to destroy labor rights in Iraq. Workers have been attempting to organize unions since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But the response of the U.S. authorities has been to invoke Saddam's laws against unions (!).