People Before Profit blog

The bell tolls again for workers

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:27:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH — A hand-fabricated metal chime will ring out here on April 28, Workers Memorial Day, tolling for workers killed on the job starting with two miners who died April 17 in Barton, Md.

Mike Wilt, 37, married, awaiting the birth of another child, and Dale Jones, 52, a beloved baseball coach, were buried alive beneath a 150-foot wall of boulders and dirt that collapsed on them. The miners worked at Tri-Star Mining Inc.’s Job No. 3 strip mine, owned by George Beener. Wilt ran a bulldozer and Jones operated a backhoe.

Crushed to death

According to Bob Cornett, acting district manager for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the men died instantly. He based his observation on the extensive damage to the equipment. After removing thousands of tons of rock and debris, rescuers, including a team from MSHA and local firefighters, uncovered the bulldozer and backhoe, side by side, right side up. But, the tracks that propelled the backhoe had been blown sideways and the blade completely torn off the bulldozer.

MSHA records show that since April 2004, Tri-Star Inc. had been cited eight times for safety violations, including inadequate brakes on trucks, and fined $597. The most recent inspection began on March 5 and no citations have been issued.

In 2006, 51 miners at Tri-Star produced 653,000 tons of coal worth $26.12 million. Miners are paid $12 an hour and are nonunion.

Last year was a deadly year for the men and women who keep the lights on, starting with the Sago disaster and ending with 47 miners dead. Through mid-April, six died mining coal so far this year.

OSHA could save lives

Across the country, workers and their families will gather for Workers Memorial Day, honoring the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over 30 years ago. The AFL-CIO recently released its annual report on workplace safety, “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.” While numbers do not begin to describe the surviving families’ tragedies of parents going to work and not returning home, the numbers in the report are staggering. In 2005, 5,702 workers were killed on the job, 4.2 million were injured and 50,000 died due to occupational diseases.

The AFL-CIO credits the change in Congress with reducing the threat of hostile, anti-worker proposals, but the federation quickly points out, “With President Bush still in office, major advancements in protecting workers will be difficult. The Bush administration has the worst record on safety rules in OSHA’s entire history, issuing no new significant rules during its first term.”

This is especially important because of the breakthroughs in medical research and engineering for the prevention of deaths and disease, including cancer.

The labor federation is fighting for a new rule that would protect low-wage, especially immigrant workers, by requiring companies to provide safety equipment at no charge to workers. The AFL-CIO is in court to get workers the gloves, masks, shoes and other vitally necessary gear that protects their lives and health paid for by the companies.

Putting profits before worker safety

Early in the Bush administration, Republicans joined with business groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to repeal ergonomic standard. In the last five years, tens of thousands of workers have been injured by heavy lifting or repetitive motion because of the administration/corporate action.

Extending OSHA protections to an additional 8.5 million workers, including flight attendants and state and local workers, is another change the AFL-CIO is struggling to achieve.

Since 2001, Republicans have slashed OSHA’s budget, including enforcement, by 6 percent or $25.4 million — about 1 year’s profits at Tri-State’s relatively small strip mine operations in Western Maryland, near the well mined area of George’s Creek.

The impact of cutting the budget for inspectors translates to a total of 19 OSHA inspectors for the entire state of Alabama, which has 63,200 workplaces, for instance. It would take 19 inspectors, smaller than a high school football team, 137 years to inspect each workplace once. In 2005, 128 Alabama workers died on the job.

dwinebr696 @ aol.com

CT stands up for health care

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:05:00 +0000

“Stand Up for Health Care!” may be the largest rally in Connecticut history, May 5, as residents in the state struggle with a broken health care system that has reached crisis proportions.

Last week more than 350 union members representing workers in manufacturing and public and private service industries filled the State Capitol in support of universal health care. Cheers went up when the Government Administration and Elections Committee voted in favor of SB 1371 to establish the “Connecticut Saves Health Care” single-payer program for universal coverage.

Speaking in Spanish, school bus driver Evelyn Vega, a member of the Service Employees union, told of being forced to work while sick, having a mini-stroke while driving school children that day, and returning to work before full recovery in order to pay for medications and other bills.

“The Legislature needs to know that workers are making decisions between their health and their jobs,” she said. “The real value of fixing our broken health care system is truly priceless.”

Stories like Vega’s are being circulated to organize grassroots pressure for action before the Legislature’s June 6 adjournment.

Business opponents are running a vicious scare campaign, claiming the proposal is unacceptable because of the projected $18 billion cost.

But Majority Leader Chris Donovan told the crowd, “The cost of health care now is $22 billion. With single-payer we could save $4 billion and cover everybody with a good plan.”

In addition to unions, civic groups and clergy representing all denominations and communities are organizing busloads for the May 5 rally, set for 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Hartford’s Bushnell Park, outside the Capitol.

Citizens for Economic Opportunity, which organized Labor for Universal Healthcare, will receive a People’s Weekly World Newsmaker Award on Sunday, May 6 at 4 p.m., at 37 Howe Street in New Haven, at the “Healthcare Not Warfare” May Day celebration.

Also receiving Newsmaker Awards will be Connecticut Opposes the War, a statewide coalition of unions, faith-based groups, community organizations and local elected officials against the war in Iraq; and La Paloma Sabanera, an activist coffeehouse in Hartford. SEIU 32 BJ Justice for Janitors and workers organizing at New England Linen will receive solidarity recognition.

Guest speaker Tim Wheeler, national political correspondent for the People’s Weekly World, will offer a first-hand view of the struggle being waged in the new Congress to end the war and win health care and union rights. Contributions will be accepted for the paper’s fund drive. For more information on the “Healthcare Not Warfare” May Day celebration or the Stand Up for Health Care rally, call 203-624-8664.

joelle.fishman @ pobox.com

Big money vs. workers rights

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 07:57:00 +0000

The phenomenal rise of the multi-million-dollar union-busting industry in the U.S. has paralleled the decline in the manufacturing base, the rise of the right wing and the decline in union membership of the past 30-some years.

According to the workers rights advocacy group American Rights at Work, union-busters provide legal and consulting services, training, workshops and materials for supervisors and managers, and a variety of anti-union propaganda for distribution to employees attempting to organize. Additionally, consultants advise management on prolonging the bargaining process ad infinitum and occasionally advise employers attempting to break an established union.

Union-busting is big business

Over three-quarters of employers facing a unionization campaign hire these firms, according to Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University. And it’s one of the prime reasons the labor movement is pushing the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, to strengthen workers’ ability to organize against the anti-union onslaught.

Anti-union campaigns usually involve several consultants and can last from weeks to years, ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to millions in price according to John Logan of the London School of Economics. By some estimates, employers spend between $2,000 and $4,000 per employee on each campaign.

Highly paid and highly effective, almost all union-busting firms claim a success rate of over 90 percent.

Even at the Red Cross

Despite this, the players in this industry are remarkably unimaginative, employing largely the same tactics used by consultants since they first appeared in the post-World War II era.

Currently engaged in an acrimonious organizing campaign with the American Red Cross in Tucson, Ariz., Teamsters organizer Kathy Campbell states that one union activist was called in to supervisors’ offices a total of five times for a minimum of one hour at a time in the final week before one NLRB election.

Another activist was rumored to be a bartender working at the Red Cross only as a “union plant” who would vote “yes,” then leave the company. At least, that’s the story supervisors told to the activist’s coworkers, and to public supporters of the union, when they called supporters at home the night before the local newspaper ran a story detailing the activist’s experience of supervisor intimidation.

How they operate

According to Bronfenbrenner’s research, half of the companies experiencing a union drive threaten to close their plants and one-quarter fire at least one union supporter.

Additional strategies include manipulating the bargaining unit, “love offerings” such as unexpected raises and promotions, distributing voluminous amounts of anti-union publications, and delaying the election to gain more time to counter-organize.

The union-busting industry also includes, to a lesser extent, industrial psychologists, security firms and publication houses specializing in anti-union materials. While the industry still maintains its stronghold in the U.S., consultants are increasingly seeking to export their services, and are having some success in Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

Union-busting firms rarely speak directly to employees, preferring to interact primarily with supervisors and managers. Frontline supervisors are trained, coached and sometimes cajoled into doing the dirty work of the union-busters and upper management, and supervisors who are not willing will be fired or re-assigned.

Who’s the outsider?

Typical of union avoidance consultants, Labor Relations Services, Inc., states on its website that “management and employees are best served by working directly together without the intervention of an unwanted, potentially adversarial, outside party, such as a union.”

Aside from the union avoidance consultants’ obvious third-party status, the deeper truth here is one that is frequently missed. The “union” in labor union refers not only to a formal labor organization, but most especially to the “union” of workers on the shop floor.

A labor union at its essence is no outside party — it is an extension of the camaraderie and solidarity of rank-and-file workers recognizing their common interests as members of the working class.

Black union leaders continue to make history

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:32:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Three seasoned Black union leaders came together recently at the home of the Rev. Addie Wyatt on this city’s South Side. Katie Jordan, president of the Chicago chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), Elwood Flowers Sr., vice president of the Illinois AFL-CIO, and Wyatt herself, a retired vice president of the United Packinghouse Workers Union, began by exchanging warm greetings. Casually, the conversation turned toward the purpose of their coming together: to assess the role of unions in Black America and the leadership contributions of Black union leaders.

A transit worker’s story

Elwood Flowers started in 1956 as a transit worker here in Chicago. After doing four years in the Navy, he began to work for what was to become the Chicago Transit Authority from which he is now retired even though he is still in the leadership of the state AFL-CIO. A Mr. Dave Shepard introduced him to the union, and he got involved with going to the monthly union meetings.

Flowers said, “At that time on the job it was not easy to have African Americans driving trains and buses; they were more at the janitorial level. Unions are important because they prevent discrimination against the individual, relative to what you do and get paid for doing it, and solidify working conditions. The union negotiates the contract with the company and creates an atmosphere for advancement on a fair scale. The union is the reason for the 8-hour day.”

When Harold Washington ran for mayor in 1983, Flowers was president of Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 308. According to Flowers, his union was one of the first to endorse Washington, and they provided foot soldiers and finances. He says they fashioned themselves after Charles Hayes, the African American leader of the United Packinghouse Workers Union, who was also with Washington from the start and became congressman in the 1st District after Washington won the mayoralty.

‘A nice lady meatpacker’

When Wyatt began to tell her story the room became very quiet and all eyes were on her. “I joined the union at 17. I came from a very rich family — we just didn’t have any money. I was looking for something that nobody seemed to be offering, and that was economic improvement. I had to work and have a decent job in order to live a decent life. I had experiences that made me feel terrible. They told me they were not hiring, and what they meant was that they were not hiring my color.

“Various experiences, including racism when it came to hiring, made me so angry that I developed a desire to fight back. Though active in the church, and that made you feel good, the church had no way of affecting your economic conditions. Someone told me it’s OK to want to fight back, but you’ve got to fight so you can win. That meant joining in the organization of workers which could affect the economic conditions: the union.

“Unions had a bad reputation of being rough and tough men, and they would say what is a nice lady like you doing messing around with the union? Anyway, I got a job at Armour and Company, and I was told that we had a good wage and other benefits because of the union, so I wanted to find out what this thing called the union was about.”

United action made possible

Wyatt continued, “When I went, I saw something I had never seen before. In the church, on special occasions white people would come to our Black church and participate in activities; but that was only on special occasions. When I went to that thing called the union, I saw Black and white and young and old and men and women. It was a kind of togetherness that gave us the strength to fight and win.

“It was not easy. We had to overcome the problems we had on the racial issue and with men versus women, but together we saw we could have the resources to fight back; the possibility of our united action would help us to overcome. I believed in that even though I had a difficult time being a young Black woman in this movement. We had a lot of training to do for ourselves and each other to teach each other what the struggle was all about in taking on these big companies. We had to have confidence in us. We learned how not to fight each other but to fight for each other. It was not easy; we were abused and sometimes it brings tears to my eyes, but we made it through.”

Dr. King supported unions

“I worked under Charles Hayes with great pride and great joy,” Wyatt said. “It was because of his leadership, and it wasn’t easy for him, that I had the opportunities I had. I took the program coordinator’s job in the union that was held prior by Oscar Brown Jr. In that position, I was responsible for waiting for Dr. King to bring him to the auditorium where we were having a program before anybody really knew who Dr. King was.

“The whites sitting there were filled with racism, and our job was to break it down. Mr. Hayes came to me and said he had promised to raise funds for Dr. King, and he needed my help to do it. The majority of our membership was white and, in spite of that, my job was to get it done.

“The first time Dr. King came, they could not get anybody to wait to meet him because nobody else wanted to miss the conference, so they sent me because I was nobody. But by the time he got finished, you couldn’t get to Dr. King everybody was so overjoyed. That young man was powerful. I had to always coordinate the programs, and from then on if I would call him, he made it easy for me to deliver what ever we needed. Whenever I would call him, he would come. Oh yes, he supported the unions.

“I would not work on a job without a union because of what it means to your independence, your dignity, your confidence, and your strength. As an 83-year-old Black woman, where would I have been without the union? I can look back and say thank God for the union. We were fighting together for peace, equality and justice.”

Civil rights unionism, a tailor’s tale

Then Katie Jordan began to tell her story. She said, “Unions are the best thing that ever happened to us as Black people and women, besides God, and I think he opened that door for us. My story is a little different. I came to Chicago in 1960 with three little ones, and when I decided to go to look for work, it was because I wanted to make some Christmas money. I was a fitter/tailor and they had something sewing buttons on coats at the Lytton's department store. The side I worked on was not unionized. The other side, the tailor shop, was unionized, and they made more money and had better benefits even though we were all working at the same company.

“Being union or nonunion didn’t matter to me at that time. I really didn’t even know the difference, until I got my paycheck. I had learned to make sure my pay was right, to help other workers make sure their pay was right, and to speak up when I thought something was wrong. I was able later to move to become a fitter, and once the whole place became unionized, I became one of the shop stewards for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union. Becoming a fitter as a Black person was unheard of; one of the executives said it would be over his dead body that a Black person would become a fitter.

“I held every office in my local except treasurer, and I eventually became the president. I was one of the first women to be appointed to the joint board of directors for the union. Most of the participants were men; for many years I was the only or one of the few women to participate. I have been the president of CLUW for 14 years. There were a lot of things going on in that company that did not get straightened out until CLUW came along. They wanted to name all women assistant fitters, so that they could pay women less. We said, no, that’s not going to work.

“Once our shop got Black fitters, and we started talking about civil rights, then you started seeing Black salespeople on the floors. Before, there were no Black people selling clothes at Lytton's.”

Washington’s legacy

Jordan continued, “During the Harold Washington days, I knew him because he was my congressman. That was my first time signing up to be a voter registrar; I was going to get out there and register some people to vote. With the union, when Harold ran in the primary, my union did not endorse him, but the rank and file voted for him anyway. Then when Harold won the primary, the union got out there working for him. When he became mayor, he was a reachable person.

“Unions need to be involved in politics because a lot of legislation affects working people, so they have to be involved for their own benefit. So when you talk about people who are going to support working people, unions want people to run who are going to be true to themselves and believe that what they are doing is right, that this is right for working people. Unions aren’t looking for people who will support this or that just because of union money; unions are looking for people who support working people because they know it’s the right thing to do. The union has not just benefited people in the union; when the union talks, they are talking about working people.”

Aldermen, which side are you on?

Flowers said, “Unions have meant fighting for a livable wage which is a big thing going on right now with the aldermen here in Chicago. All of that is dealing with the needs of the individual who wants to raise a family and establish themselves in the community. You have to have some kind of quality of life.

“We even had an attempt two or three times to privatize the CTA. Privatizing means having people come in and do a job for $7 or $8 an hour when the job is paying now $17 or $18 dollars an hour. That means the union is out of it, there are no benefits, and nobody is saying how they will administer overtime. It’s going to take two jobs to keep your head above water. Why can Costco pay for medical expenses and livable wages but Wal-Mart won’t? Wal-Mart is one of the wealthiest companies in the world.”

Unions make us strong

“It’s the union that makes us strong,” Wyatt said. “Strong enough to do what? Strong enough to force those companies to give us decent wages and working conditions while we give them a decent day’s work. We are entitled to it; we are entitled to a decent way of life for ourselves and our families. That’s why we work, but they won’t give it to us unless we make them. And we can’t make them, unless we can fight. That’s the purpose of the union, so we can fight together and for our protection. The union makes you strong enough to fight the enemies who try to destroy us.”

Jordan said, “If a person is working, they deserve to get paid and they deserve to be treated right. The only reason we even work on a job is because we need it. It’s all about dignity on the job. You want dignity on the job. That’s also the purpose of the union. Anytime you talk about confirmed equality, you are only going to find it in a union contract. For anyone to try to turn Black people the other way when it comes to unions, they have their own agenda for doing that. That’s why we have to keep telling our story. One person can do nothing, but all of us together — that’s the union. The only way we can get justice is if we stick together in a union.”

Flowers agreed, “One of the reasons for unions is to keep the runaway abuses against labor in check; that was the reason unions came about in the beginning. The union is an association of the workers which speaks for them. When they come at me attacking unions with that broad brush, I say no. Unions are the best thing that happened to Black people that are in them.

“I used to tell the younger members coming in; they would ask me why should they pay union dues; why do they need a union? I would say, the wage, vacation time, and other benefits including a pension — all of that is a result of the fight of the union and that’s why you have it, not because of the kindness of the company, but because of what the union put in that contract.”

Wyatt said she learned about the company’s attitude toward workers early on. “I learned from negotiating my first contract, that the company cares nothing about the workers; they care more about the machines than they do the workers and the workers have to know that. Through the union, we fought for respect as workers, as women, and as Blacks,” she said.

Stories that must be told

I had to fight back tears as each of the three veterans spoke with a passion. It was quite moving. They are living history telling great stories of the interlocking forces that helped us push forward as a people. I hope I spoke for us all when I thanked them.

Dee Myles is a political activist in Chicago.

Privatization runs amok in NYC subway

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:26:00 +0000

NEW YORK CITY — Officials of the Transit Chapter of the Civil Service Technical Guild, the union representing the engineers, architects and scientists who work for the city’s transportation authority here, are decrying the anticipated May award of a construction-services contract to a private engineering firm.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority-NYC Transit contract calls for the private firm to do engineering work on the planned Second Avenue subway line, work that the union contends could be done more efficiently by in-house engineers.

It is estimated that some $384 million of the project’s anticipated $3.8 billion budget would be absorbed by this contract. This amounts to approximately $51 million for each year of the seven-year project. Union leaders report that their members could do the same work for only $8 million per year, resulting in a savings of more then $300 million over the life of the project.

In addition to the cost savings, union leaders say, by contracting out, the MTA is denying the in-house workforce the knowledge that it would gain through direct experience in the construction of the new subway line. This knowledge is valuable, since it is the in-house workforce that will eventually be tasked with the long-term maintenance of the system.

According to the union, contracting out will ultimately weaken the transit agency, demoralize the workforce and cheat the public, just to hand a profit to a private contractor, who will have no long term accountability to the MTA or the public after the end of the contract.

The MTA’s past history with outside contractors and vendors has been fraught with difficulties and scandal, and has been characterized by critics as privatization run amok. Contracts with Pullman Standard, Cubic Systems, and Telephonics Corp., and contracts for the renovation of the agency’s headquarters, have resulted either in embarrassing scandals or in legal disputes.

The recently completed headquarters renovation was particularly notorious: beset by enormous cost overruns, corruption scandals and charges of bill padding by organized-crime-connected elements.

The union has called on the MTA to reconsider its decision to contract this work out, and to sit down with the unionized engineering workforce to devise a plan that will be less costly and of greater long-term benefit to the public.

gbono @ cpusa.org

Pima County workers go union

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:22:00 +0000

TUCSON, Ariz. — In what may be the biggest union gain in Arizona history, Pima County employees voted a whopping 94 percent in favor of union representation.

The Service Employees union, SEIU Arizona, is now the authorized representative of over 4,500 county workers. Winners are, among others, mechanics, animal-control officers, maintenance workers and health care and social workers.

With last week’s precedent-setting vote, Pima County employees are the first county workers in Arizona to win union representation that will work to improve wages, benefits and working conditions. Discussions with county management on those issues are expected to begin in the next few weeks.

Arizona has some of the harshest anti-union laws in the country. State law forbids collective bargaining between workers’ representatives and government bodies like cities, counties or public schools. Unions, instead, demand that management meet with them to discuss mutual concerns. When these meetings become formalized, they are referred to as “Meet and Confer.”

Pima County Supervisors unanimously approved a Meet and Confer law in January, paving the way for workers in Arizona’s other counties to organize.

The union campaigned on four major areas: fair wages and benefits, more training, and resources to improve employee retention and improving the quality of services.

Health care coverage will loom large in upcoming talks. A driving force behind workers’ discontent has been the rising costs of health insurance that have eaten up any annual raises.

The overwhelming victory was especially gratifying for the hundreds of county employees who worked on the nearly two-year union organizing campaign.

“You join up to make a difference,” said Tony Phillips, a plant mechanic at Ina Road. “The more members you have, the more bargaining power, the more voice you have.”

pwwinaz @ webtv.net

Airport service workers demand fairness

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:20:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — As travelers streamed into the Southwest Airlines terminal at Oakland’s International Airport April 5 on one of the year’s busiest travel days, they were greeted by an unusual sight — a crowd of passenger service workers and their supporters outside the terminal, demanding union rights, decent wages and affordable health care.

The workers, who check passengers’ identification, help wheelchair travelers and handle luggage, are employed by Aviation Safeguards, a firm providing passenger services for at least 11 airports nationwide, including LAX, San Jose Mineta Airport and JFK. Southwest has contracted for Aviation Safeguards’ services at its Oakland terminal.

Workers charge the firm pays low wages, offers a bare-bones health plan only in exchange for a pay cut, gives no sick days and has no regular scheduling for employees.

“When we stood up to have a union,” passenger service worker Danilo Orcullo told the crowd, “our managers started harassing and intimidating us. We are going to win our struggle to have a union!”

Elaborating further, Orcullo said the workers’ most urgent demand is for “union wages and justice.” Workers must stand for eight hours, he said, and breaks are only 10 minutes. Workers have no break room, he added, and sometimes it takes so long to find the sign-in sheet that they lose the time altogether.

Workers and the union they seek to join, SEIU Local 1877, charge that the company’s policies, which have led to heavy turnover, actually compromise airport security.

The 125 workers at Oakland Airport have been seeking to organize for over a year, said union organizer Sylvia Ruiz. “At an airport, it’s essential to have workers who are well-trained, like their jobs and want to stay in them,” she added.

Aviation Safeguards workers in other locations are waging similar struggles. A demonstration was planned for San Jose on April 6.

Ruiz said the workers and union are also calling on Southwest, and on the Port of Oakland, which runs the airport, to press Aviation Safeguards to act responsibly.

If the Employee Free Choice Act, now before the Senate, were law, it would make a huge difference for the passenger service workers, Ruiz said.

The demonstration, held during the Christian Holy Week, also featured an interfaith service honoring the workers, conducted by clergy from the East Bay Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.

Pastor Ricky Jenkins, an organizer with the Interfaith Committee, said the airport workers are experiencing “typical consequences of corporate greed in the U.S. today.” Currently some of the country’s most important workers are not getting any part of the riches they help corporate America to take in, he added. Decent work, and the ability to form a union, are both a God-given and an American right, Jenkins said.

Aviation Safeguards’ permit to operate at the Port of Oakland expires in June. The workers are urging the port to use its status as landlord to ensure better jobs and labor peace as a condition of renewing the contract. The union is also urging calls to Aviation Safeguards CEO Bruce Galloway at (845) 454-3707.

mbechtel @ pww.org

Community backs Hayward teachers 100%

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:41:00 +0000

HAYWARD, Calif. — Solidarity filled the air April 6 as hundreds of parents, students and community supporters gathered in Birchfield Park to express their backing for striking Hayward teachers. Some 1,300 teachers represented by the Hayward Education Association struck April 5, outraged because after months of talks the administration is offering them only a small increase while giving substantial raises to administrators the teachers say are already highly paid.

About 20,000 K-12 students attend school in Hayward, a largely working-class community across the bay from San Francisco.

“My kids were up early this morning, getting ready to come to this rally,” Terrie Niu, mother of four children in the Hayward schools, told the crowd. “I asked them, can I have a break? They said, ‘absolutely not!’

“I support the teachers 100 percent,” said Niu, a stay-at-home mom, adding, “The only other people who spend all day with my kids are the teachers. It’s a shame the superintendent gets all that money, and he doesn’t even know my kids’ names.”

A highlight of the day was the participation of Dolores Huerta, legendary co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. “This is so awesome to see this unity standing here before me, to know that you are fighting for justice, not only for teachers, but also for the students,” Huerta said, before leading participants in chants of “Sí, se puede!”

“Next to farmworkers, who feed us, teachers are the most important workers,” Huerta said after the rally. “If we don’t have education, we can’t have democracy,” she added, calling teachers “the glue that keeps society together.”

Teachers union leaders from school districts for miles around came to express their support. Many announced pledges to the strike fund.

Nelly Obligacion of SEIU Local 1021, which represents food service and other school workers, told the crowd, “Building a culture of excellence means a fair contract for teachers and all classified employees.”

Stating proudly that she is “a product of the Hayward schools,” Mayra Canizales, a 2004 graduate now at the University of California-Berkeley, recalled, “It was teachers, not administrators, who taught me to read, helped me get to UC Berkeley.” Canizales said she wants to return to teach in the Hayward schools.

Several middle-school teachers in the crowd expressed outrage at the administration’s stance. “I’ve taught here for eight years, and I’m only getting what I was paid working in the computer industry 20 years ago,” said one. “Teachers do what they do because they want to teach more than anything else,” she added. “Not to be treated and paid as a professional is an insult.”

Hayward teachers average $65,000 a year, with newer teachers earning far less. They are demanding a 16 percent raise over two years, but the district is offering only a 3 percent one-time bonus for the current year, plus 7 percent in the next school year and an additional 1.6 percent to be funded by savings from the retirement of veteran teachers. At the same time, teachers, say, the district hiked top administrators’ pay nearly 17 percent this year.

The union says low pay has caused over 100 teachers to leave the system during this school year, and some 500 during the past three years.

Though it is not explicitly on the table, health care looms over the talks, as it does in virtually every labor struggle. Mercedes Faraj, HEA vice president and negotiating committee chair, said one reason teachers are so upset is that while about $5,000 is added to their salaries as compensation for paying their own health care, many families must pay far more. The Hayward system ranks lowest in compensation among eight comparable districts that handle health coverage in that way, Faraj said.

Though Hayward teachers are now the only California educators on strike, teachers in several other Bay Area districts have reached impasse in negotiations. In all, salaries and health coverage loom large.

The California Teachers Association points out that more money is now available for salary and health benefit increases as well as class size reductions, after CTA won an additional $2 billion in ongoing money for schools in the current state education budget, the biggest increase in public education funds in a decade.

mbechtel @ pww.org

Students sit in for sweatshop-free clothes

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:28:00 +0000

“We want to be proud of wearing our university apparel,” said Aria Everts, a University of Michigan student who was arrested April 3 after staging an eight-hour sit-in at the college president’s office. Everts was protesting against sweatshop-made gear sold on campus.

“We don’t feel right buying the apparel,” said Everts in a recent phone interview with the World.

Police arrested 12 students at U-M President Mary Sue Coleman’s office after they peacefully protested the Ann Arbor school’s lax labor standards for companies supplying university logo apparel, including sweatshirts and hats. Coleman told the students she does not give in to demands from students.

Everts, a junior and sociology major, is a leader with Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality (SOLE), which is heading up a Sweatfree Campaign and is affiliated with Students Against Sweatshops, a national student-led organization that advocates for safe, humane conditions for workers with labor protections and livable wages.

“U-M has a negative history of supporting workers in recent years under President Coleman,” said Everts.

The Sweatfree Campaign is a coalition of student organizations, campus unions and other labor and community groups that urge universities to adopt tougher policies against sweatshops exploiting workers, who make the schools’ logo clothing. Students say workers, mostly located in Central America, suffer abusive treatment, excessive work hours and dangerous conditions. SOLE, for the last eight years, has requested U-M take unfair labor conditions seriously. Sweatshop labor has been an issue for more than a decade on campus.

The coalition says the school failed to enforce its policy against contracting with sweatshops after a previous 51-hour student sit-in under former U-M President Lee Bollinger in 1991. Bollinger agreed to establish a code of conduct saying it would require vendors to disclose working conditions in factories and would contract only with those who meet basic humanitarian principles in dealing with workers. The sweatfree campaign contends those measures are not being met, and the current guidelines continue to allow sweatshop labor.

Students and allies want Coleman to accept a list of clothing suppliers that pay decent wages and allow workers to unionize. The main demand, students argue, is that the university adopts the Designated Suppliers Program, a monitoring system that requires all workers to be paid enough money to support themselves and their family with regular inspections by the Worker Rights Consortium, a nonprofit organization that developed the DSP. About 30 universities, including Columbia University and the University of California, have agreed to use only the designated suppliers.

Coleman plans to meet with SOLE members on April 20, after a year-end report is to be released by the university’s Advisory Committee on Labor Standards and Human Rights. The committee is expected to make its own recommendation.

“The main thing is that students here care about workers rights,” said Everts. “We would like the administration to take action now, and be a leading example for our community, other universities and the nation.”

plozano @ pww.org

The blessing of unity: Miners stand together at Foundation Coal

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:25:00 +0000

WAYNESBURG, Pa. — The banner on the stage declared, “One union, One contract, No exceptions.” Hand-lettered picket signs proclaiming, “We made the profits, where’s our share?” were held high by over 1,800 members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), their families and supporters from the steelworkers, teachers and construction workers unions as they jammed the fairgrounds grandstand here, uniting for justice in the coal fields.

The words of the opening prayer said it all: “What we have here, Lord, is a blessing of unity.”

Despite negotiations that stretched far into the night, 1,200 members of the Mine Workers union struck Foundation Coal Company’s Emerald and Cumberland mines in Greene County, Pa. (population 40,000), and its Wabash mine in Keensburg, Ill. (pop. 250), on April 4. By 10 a.m., workers filled the fairgrounds for a union solidarity rally.

“This is a step that we sincerely hoped we did not have to take and worked hard to avoid,” UMWA President Cecil Roberts said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Foundation subsidiaries which operate these mines left us no choice. Their attempts to divide our membership and pit miner against miner and local union against local union drove us to this point.”

At issue is Foundation Coal’s demand to split off the Wabash mine, as if it were a separate company, from the national union contract recently ratified by 81 percent of UMWA members. Miners at the Wabash mine gave up $30,000 worth of concessions during the previous contract. But now, Foundation Coal wants more wage, health care and pension cuts from the Wabash miners and their families. UMWA members “have done their part,” Roberts said.

“We’re not going to let ’em [Foundation Coal] do it,” quipped a young Pennsylvania miner. “Pennsylvania stands with the boys from Illinois!” Later he told the World, “I got a freezer full of deer meat and it’s trout season. I’m ready. My dad and granpap were union. We all work hard. Made this company a ton of money. We stick together. It’s the only way.”

As the solidarity rally was getting under way, Foundation announced it was closing the Wabash mine.

“That the company chose to make its announcement today is revealing,” said Roberts. “The brutal message in today’s press release from Foundation only serves to strengthen our resolve. We will continue to fight for every miner and family at all three mines. Closing Wabash does not change that fact.”

As miners huddled around fire barrels on the picket lines at the Emerald mine, armed company guards clad in black, military-style uniforms patrolled the gates. Mounted surveillance cameras monitored the roads. Roberts called the company’s tactics “brutal.”

Miners and their families are not alone. Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Bill George brought the rally to its feet as he declared, “This fight is our fight. Let these SOBs hear you! It is union time! They want a war? They got one. This is sacred ground. The legacy we built, the wages, health care, pensions, voice at work — that legacy is you.”

Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) Labor Council, delivered the support of its 200 affiliated local unions. He stood shoulder to shoulder with two Greene County commissioners, the county treasurer, a state representative and dozens of union leaders and members of the clergy.

During the strike, the UMWA will provide each striking miner with health care and a weekly check for $225.

Foundation Coal, based near Baltimore, Md., boasts revenues of $900 million a year. Together, miners at Cumberland, Emerald and Wabash mines produced over 15 million tons of coal worth more than $709 million for Foundation in 2005. Foundation closed the Wabash mine even though it says it has contracts with electrical power companies to supply coal from that mine through 2009. Among the top five coal operators in the country, Foundation owns significant holdings in the nation’s largest coal deposit, the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, which is nonunion. In 2006, Foundation sold 70 million tons of coal, 90 percent of which was used to generate electricity.

dwinebr696 @ aol.com

Texas teachers score gains

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:14:00 +0000

Texas House Democrats were backslapping and praising themselves for a job well done as public education gains were realized in the 80th Texas legislature this spring. They won pay raises, stopped the nation’s largest “merit-pay” scam in its tracks, and fatally wounded the “school voucher” scam in the Texas Legislature.

Teacher Hobie Hukill, a member of the Executive Board of the Dallas Alliance/AFT Local 2260, put it this way: “From the time that we won 15 of our 17 targeted legislative races last November, we put them on notice that they had better do the right thing.” The right wing, which dominates the legislature and all state offices, is down but not out as public schools in Texas continue to struggle for adequate funding.

Vouchers, merit-pay nixed

For years, anti-taxation groups and private school entrepreneurs have managed to undermine public education in the state by promoting private school vouchers and merit pay plans. Both tactics are fully supported and pet agendas of Gov. Rick Perry. Reportedly, the voucher lobby has made big contributions to both of his election campaigns. However, standing firmly for most Texans who do not want to see money drained away from their already overburdened schools, House Democrats managed to garner bipartisan support in defeating both strategies.

Pro-voucher activists in the state have exploited low-income children, as well as disabled and autistic students in an effort to siphon dollars away from public schools. They have proposed voucher bills in every legislative session since 1995. This year house lawmakers halted their efforts by voting 129 - 8 to ban funding for any voucher program.

Texas House members also voted to scrap a planned incentive pay plan for some teachers by applying its $583 million to an across the board pay raise for all school personnel. According to the American Federation of Teachers, Texas ranks 32nd in the nation for teacher pay. If the amendment passes the state senate, it is estimated that teachers could receive an average of $800 a year more. The amount still falls short of the national average.

Spending still flat

The gains in the statehouse this year have been largely due to last November’s elections, which swept some Tom Delay-like extremists out of office. Progressives got a better toehold in the Legislature.

While Democratic representatives may be giddy over pro-teacher budget wins, overall spending for education in the state remains flat. In an effort to protect future property tax cuts for 2010 and 2011, and preserve a “Rainy Day” fund, lawmakers decided not to increase funding.

Republicans were also successful in putting in place rules for this year’s budget that prevent an actual increase in overall spending. The new rule requires that any proposed spending be accompanied by a dollar-for-dollar decrease in another area of the budget. As a result, education related programs such as the Student Success Initiative, a program designed to help students achieve passing grades on mandated state tests, go under funded. The proposed budget also does not include enough money for increased student populations, higher utilities, and other operating expenses. It is expected that the Texas Senate will consider the House version of the budget beginning in early April. Groups representing teachers, parents and labor wait to see if the gains will hold.

Public Bible school?

As a reminder of just how far the far-right can go in this state, Republican Rep. Warren Chisum has introduced a new bill for consideration to the House Public Education Committee. The bill requires that all school districts in Texas offer history and literature classes on the Bible and that both the Old and New Testaments would be the “basic textbook.”

Concerned citizens and educators, confident with recent victories, continue the fight.

perry5 @ swbell.net

EDITORIAL: Lessons from Circuit City

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 07:27:00 +0000

Last week Circuit City announced layoffs of 3,400 “high paid” employees, saying it would replace them with lower-wage workers. It’s yet another example of the cruelty of a profit-driven, corporate-dominated system.

Circuit City says it had no choice, complaining of lower than expected fourth quarter profits.

Workers there make an average of $10-$11 an hour, with starting pay around $8.

Philip Schoonover, Circuit City CEO, made $8.52 million in 2006 — about equal to 300 of his highest paid workers.

The pay is one way a CEO is different from a worker. Another way is that, when it comes to explaining to you the difference between those computer hard drives, processing your exchange or refund, or loading that flat-panel TV into your car, the CEO is useless. While the workers of Circuit City labor hard — standing on their feet for hours, politely handling customer complaints, following arbitrary management rules, in short, making Circuit City run — the CEO is counting his cash, adding nothing material.

Were it not for Circuit City’s workers, the CEO would have nothing. The same is true in all workplaces in a capitalist society.

These 3,400 workers are not numbers, but human beings with families and lives thrown into chaos by the company’s greed.

What’s worse, analysts say the layoffs will have a “ripple effect” on other retailers.

How can Circuit City get away with such a crime? First, in our society it is not a crime to ruin people’s lives in this fashion. Second, these workers had no union. So one important lesson to be learned from this is the need for unions.

It’s a fact that goes back to the beginning of capitalism: workers have no power alone. They can’t beat the bosses, the corporations, single-handedly. The only way forward is through forming a union, through unity. If those 3,400 workers were part of a retail workers’ union, they would have had a contract, and would have been able to put up a fight against Circuit City.

Another lesson is that capitalism sucks.

Laundry strike: Everybody goes out

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 07:16:00 +0000

Communists helped bring industrial unionism to New York City’s laundries

A front-page photograph in the Oct. 26, 1936, edition of the Daily News captured the defiant, young face of Jessie Taft as she stood chained to the balcony of a New York City hotel. With her fists raised high, still encased in chains, Taft demanded that the hotel stop sending its linen to the Sutton Superior Laundry where workers were on strike against abusive conditions and substandard wages.

Taft’s highly visible act of civil disobedience that day was part of a much longer struggle to forge new ground by organizing a predominantly Black and female workforce. While Taft and other Communist organizers, including the indomitable Beatrice Shapiro, would succeed in bringing industrial unionism to the city’s 30,000 laundry workers, their egalitarian vision for the industry would flounder when the women and their comrades were systematically purged from the industry in the early 1940s.

Laundry goes from household work to industry

By 1910, the emergence of power laundries that employed dozens and even hundreds of workers in a single establishment had transformed laundry work from a domestic task into an industrial occupation. By 1930, more than a quarter of a million workers nationwide churned out sheets for hotels, linens for restaurants, and clothes for middle and some working-class families. Because of the industry’s consistently bad working conditions and low wages, laundries relied on workers who were excluded from virtually every other employment sector.

In New York, as in most of the rest of the nation, the laundry employers’ rabid anti-union tactics, divisions within the workforce, and the workers’ extreme poverty defeated their attempts to organize in the first three decades of the 20th century. In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, by 1939 almost all of New York City’s laundry workers belonged to the Congress of Industrial Organizations-affiliated Laundry Workers Joint Board.

While a multiplicity of factors contributed to the workers’ success, including the emergence of the CIO, federal and state labor legislation, and the support provided by progressive organizations such as the Women’s Trade Union League and the Negro Labor Committee, central to the workers’ success were the activities of a small but committed group of Communist workers and organizers who made unprecedented attempts to organize the industry along interracial and industrial lines.

Working-class upsurge

Responding to the devastation of the Depression, the growing militancy of the working class, and the inauguration of the Comintern’s “Third Period” policies in the early 1930s, Communist organizers across the United States established industrial unions in a number of industries, including the textile and food service industries.

Party members also reached out to African Americans who had traditionally been marginalized by or excluded outright from unions affiliated with the conservative American Federation of Labor. According to scholar Mark Naison, the Harlem party’s support for the Scottsboro Boys, nine victims of a racist frame-up in Alabama, and its willingness to help Black families fight eviction, police brutality, and discriminatory employment and relief practices constituted a “landmark in American race relations.”

One of the Communists’ important though largely overlooked contributions to Harlem’s Depression-era labor struggles involved the creation of the Trade Union Unity League-affiliated Laundry Workers Industrial Union.

At the center of this campaign was the spirited Young Communist Leaguer Jessie Taft. Raised in a militant left Jewish household, in 1931, Taft began working and organizing among Black and white laundry workers in Harlem and the Bronx. At the end of 1931, Taft and her comrades established the Laundry Workers Industrial Union, the first industrial union of laundry workers in New York City (and one of the first in the country). Located at 260 East 138th Street and Third Avenue, the new union was headed by Communist laundry worker Leon Blum.

Communists fight for unity

Recognizing that the AFL’s craft unionism had undermined the laundry workers’ previous organizational attempts, the Communist-led union united the highly paid “outside” laundry drivers, the majority of whom were white men, with the “inside” workers, the majority of whom were women and people of color. Building on the shop floor rebellion already present among the workers, the new union articulated workplace demands that addressed issues of racial discrimination and sexual harassment as well as bread-and-butter issues.

Emboldened by protections for labor organizing in President Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act, Taft and her comrades began calling strikes at some of the largest laundries in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, including the Active, Pretty and Superfine Laundries.

In June of 1933, in opposition to a proposed wage cut, the Communist-led union led a walkout of 1,200 Black and white laundry workers in Harlem and the Bronx. With the support of women’s groups and the Unemployed Councils, by the end of July the union had secured higher wages for the strikers, providing the laundry workers with one of their first collective victories in Manhattan.

As part of the Popular Front, in the spring of 1934, the Communist-led Laundry Workers Industrial Union merged with the AFL-affiliated Laundry Workers’ International Union. Jessie Taft was elected financial secretary of the reorganized union, which included both drivers and inside workers.

In 1936, a new campaign to organize the workers got underway, this time in Brooklyn. While Communists had taken the lead in upper Manhattan, Trinidadian-born Charlotte Adelmond was at the center of the organizational activities in Brooklyn. A Black nationalist and Garveyite, Adelmond was described by her peers as the only person who could lay an employer flat on his back without ever raising a finger.

Inspired by the grassroots activism and industrial organizing of workers like Adelmond and Taft, in 1936, laundry workers severed ties with the AFL and founded Local 204, a direct affiliate of the newly formed CIO.

‘Hey, CIO girl!’ >

Joined by her friend and comrade Beatrice Shapiro (today Beatrice Lumpkin), Jessie Taft (today Jessie Smith) was among 15 Communists hired by the CIO in 1936 to organize the city’s laundry workers. Shapiro, who was only 18 at the time, remembers that as word spread that the organizers were on their way to a plant, workers would run out and shout at her: “Hey, CIO girl! We want a union too!”

Shapiro also recalls that the African American laundry workers were “very militant and among the first to sign union cards.” Within two months, more than 10,000 laundry workers had joined CIO Local 204.

Local 204 immediately set out to secure a contract for the newly organized workers. The employers however refused to negotiate with a union comprised of Communists, insisting that the workers affiliate with a “responsible” union such as the ACWA, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. The ACWA readily agreed to take on the new jurisdiction, and even feminist reformer Rose Schneiderman of the Women’s Trade Union League lauded affiliation as the means to secure a stable union free of Communist control.

On Aug. 10, the ACWA’s general executive board granted the laundry workers a charter for United Laundry Workers Local 300, headquartered initially at the Negro Labor Committee’s Harlem Labor Center. Like its parent association, the new union would promote industry stability through arbitration and collective bargaining.

Anti-communist coup

While the official trade union record celebrates affiliation with the ACWA as the turning point in the laundry workers’ struggle, Jessie Taft and Beatrice Shapiro have an entirely different interpretation. Both Taft and Shapiro believe that affiliation was orchestrated by the employers’ associations who believed that they could secure business-friendly contracts from a union like the ACWA. Shapiro described affiliation as an “unfriendly acquisition” while Taft describes it as a “coup d’etat” forced on a group of workers with little understanding of union politics.

In the following months, under the guidance of the ACWA, Local 300 signed a series of industry-wide collective agreements in different branches of the industry. The workers won reduced hours, higher wages, paid vacation, sick leave and closed shops.

In 1938, Local 300 was divided into nine locals united under the Laundry Workers Joint Board (LWJB). By 1939, almost all of the city’s laundry workers belonged to the LWJB.

Despite their important grassroots work, in 1939, Taft, Shapiro and the rest of their comrades were laid off from the union.

The ACWA simultaneously put together a slate of handpicked workers for the upcoming LWJB general elections, workers they manipulated through financial rewards. In addition to being taken out of their “hard, hot laundry jobs,” the workers’ salaries were increased from $15 to $50 a week and they were given the use of a car. With their pay tripled, Shapiro explains that “the new staffers’ loyalty to the machine was assured.”

The ACWA further extended its control over the new and potentially radical union by appointing its own leaders as managers, using the union’s inexperience and (ostensible) potential for corruption as justification for this tight grip.

No going quietly

Women like Beatrice Shapiro, however, refused to go quietly. Blacklisted from the industry in Manhattan, Shapiro used her mother’s name Chernin to get a job in a Brooklyn laundry. She quickly joined Brooklyn’s Local 328, the only LWJB local still under Communist control. Local 328 was one of the most active and democratic locals in the board, regularly signing up new laundries, securing back pay for its workers, and engaging in social activities ranging from spaghetti parties to buying out performances of “Pins and Needles.”

Despite or perhaps because of Local 328’s success, ACWA leaders quickly set out to purge the local of its Communist presence. During the local’s 1939 executive board elections, someone from the ACWA tampered with the ballots causing Shapiro’s slate to lose. The fraud was so crude that Shapiro and her comrades had no difficulty getting the election thrown out. In July of 1939, new elections were held and Beatrice Shapiro and her slate were easily re-elected. The victory, however, was short-lived.

In March of 1941, the LWJB suspended Communist business agents Mike Coleman and George McGriff and filed charges against the officers of Local 328 with the ACWA’s general executive board. The local was put under joint board receivership. Although Shapiro and her group knew that the trial was just a formality, they refused to go down without a fight, choosing Shapiro to represent them before the board.

In what Shapiro describes as a “chilling preview of the McCarthy period,” the ACWA brought in witnesses to testify against the group and expelled Shapiro and all of her comrades.

Costs of red-baiting

The expulsion of the Communists had a profound impact on the LWJB. As in many other unions, the ouster of the leftists contributed to a decline in shop-floor militancy and democratic union culture.

The purging of the Communists was also followed by constricting opportunities for women and people of color. While Sidney Hillman, president of the ACWA, had made a calculated political decision to adopt the Cold War politics of red-baiting, the suppression of leaders who reflected the demographics of the workforce was a more insidious and institutional process.

Unlike the Communist-led Laundry Workers Industrial Union, the LWJB would not offer space for Black women activists; nor would it make contesting racial or sexual discrimination a priority. While the membership of the LWJB was 70 percent to 80 percent Black and Puerto Rican, it was not until the 1980s that the union had a Black manager.

By the 1970s, the Laundry Workers Joint Board had become a shell of its former self, boasting less than 8,000 members. The union medical center, which had served thousands of laundry workers and their families in the 1950s and 1960s, was all but abandoned. While the traditional explanation for the union’s decline points to competition from home washing machines and laundromats, in fact in the 1960s the laundry industry continued to grow. By 1960, there were over half a million workers employed in laundry and dry cleaning plants in the United States.

The decline of the LWJB has its roots in the events of the late 1930s. Shapiro insists that the two main tools that have been used to weaken labor are racism and anti-communism, both of which were in evidence from the outset in the LWJB. Moreover, like many other unions in postwar America, the LWJB would develop bureaucratic and routinized relationships with its workers, eschewing the community-based trade unionism of the Communist-led union.

Laundry workers today

Today, as in the 1930s, laundry workers across the nation are in dire need of organization. Laundry work continues to be racialized labor, performed largely by immigrant workers of color, some of whom are especially vulnerable because they are undocumented.

Workers are subjected to the same abuses that plagued the industry in the 1930s: low wages, long hours, sexual harassment in the workplace and poor environmental conditions that involve exposure to harsh chemicals and dirty or bloody articles with little or no protection. In 2004, wages in New York City laundries were so low that then state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began investigating laundries, forcing employers across the city to pay their employees back wages.

Despite the current conditions in the industry, recent events suggest that there are reasons to be hopeful. In 2006, some of the most important and interesting organizing took place among low-paid service workers, including laundry workers. As in the 1930s, laundry workers are again mobilizing, forming alliances with unions like Unite Here, which represents 45,000 laundry workers, and immigrant advocacy groups like Casa Mexico. In a post-industrial, globalized economy, there is every indication that service workers will be at the vanguard of the 21st-century labor movement.

Learning lessons

What lessons then can the movement learn from the pioneering service sector organizing of women such as Beatrice Shapiro Lumpkin and Jessie Taft Smith?

First, it is clear that successful unions will be those that build alliances not only with trade unionists but also with community organizations and broad social movements such as the immigrant rights’ movement that surged to visibility last year.

Secondly, as the Communist organizing of the 1930s illustrated, inside laundry workers and drivers must organize together to be effective. Today, however, drivers largely belong to the Teamsters while inside workers belong to Unite Here. Only through concerted action will these workers be able to challenge the power of the most abusive employers.

Most importantly, unions must nurture union democracy by empowering workers within their own union structures. Low-wage women and people of color must be given opportunities to lead their unions. As in the past, there is every indication that given the opportunity, these are the workers who will be the catalyst for a revitalized movement to build power for working people.

Jenny Carson is a professor of American history at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, and has recently completed a dissertation on laundry workers.

Nell Geiser recently graduated from Columbia University where she majored in comparative ethnic studies and wrote her senior thesis on the laundry workers union in New York.

Help needed

If you or a friend or relative worked or organized in the laundry industry in New York or elsewhere, we would love to hear from you.

Please contact us at: Jenny Carson, 416-506-1313 or jenny.carson @ utoronto.ca Nell Geiser, nell.geiser @ gmail.com