A-Infos (en) Australia, Ancomfed: Picket Line - How workers win power: Rank-and-file strategy (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

To change the world, and ultimately overthrow capitalism, we need 
workers' power. ---- Today, the capitalist class has almost all the 
power. It doesn't matter who we elect, or how often we take to the 
streets. Governments have no reason to listen to workers, and every 
reason to give in to the bosses and the landlords. They control the 
economy, so they call the shots.  ---- The ruling class can attack our 
wages and raise our rents. They can gut the public service, to avoid 
paying more tax or devaluing their bonds. And despite two years of 
massive protests, they can continue to back Israel as it carries out 
genocide in Gaza.

Capitalists can do these things because we don't have strength where it 
really counts: at work. Union membership is down to just 13%. Strikes 
(especially those with hard picket lines) are becoming increasingly rare.

But if workers get organised, we have the power to change all that. We 
can take on the bosses, the landlords, and the politicians. We can win 
higher pay, better public services, and cut ties with Israel-but only if 
we rebuild a fighting workers' movement.

To do this, we need to transform and rebuild the unions.

How did we get here?
Unions play a contradictory role under capitalism. On the one hand, 
workers have built unions to fight for their interests. At the same 
time, the union-form of organisation has tended to generate a 
bureaucracy with its own set of financial and political interests.

For union bureaucrats, the real goal is 'labour peace': they sell bosses 
the promise that, if granted certain concessions, union members will get 
back to work, and won't take industrial action. Making these kinds of 
deals protects the legal status of the union, maintains the 
bureaucracy's authority, and secures their salaries.

By selling labour peace at any cost, union leaders have pushed members 
to accept weak agreements and increasingly traded away the right to 
strike. Because of this, most forms of industrial action are now 
effectively illegal. Unsurprisingly, this has led to weaker bargaining 
power, bad EBAs, and a massive decline in union membership.

In response, the bureaucracy has doubled down. Most of their efforts go 
towards convincing the ruling class that they are 'responsible leaders'. 
They increasingly rely on union-mergers and their relationship with the 
Labor Party to keep the unions viable, and cling to their own cushy 
positions.

Why Rebuild the Unions?
Despite their inherent limitations, the established unions are still the 
largest organisations of class struggle in Australia. Most workers 
looking to build power in their workplace still look to them, and we 
need to organise alongside these workers.

If workers in Australia were building more radical alternatives, like 
shop committees and workers' councils, or if we could realistically 
expect our call for such organisations to be taken up, we would embrace 
these over the unions.

But real revolutionaries act in the world as it exists-not how we'd like 
it to be. And as long as the unions continue to function as a vehicle 
for struggle, they remain a potential source of workers' power. The 
reality is that if you want to change the world, and if you believe in 
revolution, you have to take part in the union movement.

What kind of unionism?
Simply joining a union isn't enough. To build real class power, we have 
to transform our unions into fighting organisations under member 
control. Workers need to see the unions as the best way to assert their 
interests, whether that be at work, or in any other part of life.

No political organisation or leadership ticket can transform the unions. 
This can only be done by taking de facto control of the union and 
building power from the bottom up. To do this, we need to build a 
rank-and-file movement which allows ordinary members to challenge the 
bureaucracy and lead the charge for industrial action.

In every union, we want to build rank-and-file groups. These groups 
shouldn't be 'socialist' or 'left-wing' caucuses. The membership of a 
rank-and-file group is open to all union members who want to fight in 
their interests as workers. Political differences can't be raised as a 
barrier. The one requirement is that members be willing to fight in 
solidarity with all other workers. Sexism, racism, and other forms of 
oppression cannot be tolerated.

In each workplace, group members need to fight for a vision of unionism 
based on the principle that we are the union. We need to make democratic 
meetings, the direct election of union positions, and taking industrial 
action the norm.

The rank-and-file movement is built by members on the job- not by 
professional organisers from the union office. Rank-and-file groups 
bring militant members together across workplaces in a coordinated 
struggle to democratise the union and push for strikes.

This isn't to say that rank-and-file groups should be hostile to union 
officials for the sake of it. When the officials support members, we can 
support them. But as soon as our interests diverge, rank-and-file groups 
need to be able to act without-and against-the union leadership.

Anarchists in the rank-and-file movement
The rank-and-file movement's role is to build the power of the unions, 
democratise them, and turn them into a fighting force. That means 
uniting as many workers as possible so that we can fight together in 
solidarity.

For organised anarchist communists, the task is different. We need to 
promote anarchist ideas and methods within the rank-and-file groups, and 
ultimately the unions as a whole. Within the rank-and-file groups, we 
foster class consciousness and push for a broader understanding of 
solidarity. We insist on the need for the political independence of the 
unions, and argue for strikes as our main weapon of struggle.

As the size and strength of the rank-and-file group grows, members 
establish effective control of the union from the base. This puts 
membership in a position to force a democratisation of the union's 
structures.

For such a transformation to be genuine, we need to cap the salaries of 
all paid officials, enforce strict term limits, and-above all-hold mass 
meetings that set union policy and direct the leadership.

From the rank-and-file movement to revolution
Class power is a muscle. It's the source of our strength, and carries 
with it the possibility to transform our lives and the world. Today, 
that muscle is weak, because the unions have been emptied of their 
fighting spirit and democratic structure. It's our job to enter the 
unions, and to fight with others willing to change that.

Without a rank-and-file workers' movement, there's no hope of rebuilding 
the unions, and definitely no hope of revolution. But when workers take 
the fight to the bosses, participate in democratic structures, and 
maintain their independence from all political parties, they build the 
vital muscle of class power.

It's through this experience-the exercise of our collective muscle as a 
class-that workers gain the confidence and structural power within the 
economy that we'll need for revolution.

In every industry, and every union, the task lies ahead of us. We either 
build the rank-and-file movement, or we lose.

https://ancomfed.org/2025/09/how-workers-win-power-rank-and-file-strategy/
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