People Before Profit blog

Community supports Hotel Workers Rising

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 08:24:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Over 50 union representatives, ministers, community leaders and local elected officials met here Aug. 9 to begin organizing local support for Unite Here and its Hotel Workers Rising campaign.

Half the recent increase in U.S. service jobs is in hotel maintenance in hotels owned by large national and international companies. Many hotel workers are immigrants, without a voice except through the union, the community leaders were told.

Most Unite Here union contracts expire in 2006. The union plans to negotiate new contracts and also wants to organize workers in nonunion hotels. Union labor gets paid at least twice what nonunion hotel workers receive.

Hotel workers described to the audience the physical drudgery and speedup they endure. Christine Troughton, a cook at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in downtown Sacramento, told of lifting heavy pots and 50-pound sacks of onions or potatoes. She needs surgery and therapy for her shoulders, but can’t afford it, so she takes Tylenol or Motrin to keep going. “I have to get my paycheck to pay my bills, so I keep working through the pain,” she said.

Eva Tuaggi has worked for 16 years as a hotel maid, earning $8.50 an hour. With a sick husband, she pays $156 every two weeks for health insurance. In an 8-hour shift she is required to clean 16 messy rooms, including making luxury beds with heavy mattresses, thick covers and several pillows. “Many people clock out at the end of the day and then go back to finish their rooms on their own time,” she told the audience.

The hotel workers’ struggle requires them to confront international companies on a national level, said Vivian Rothstein, deputy director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. “All of us need an economic and social justice movement,” she told the meeting. Through the process of confronting poverty, clergy and communities can strengthen their own organizations, while helping to rebuild the labor movement, she said.

“The Hotel Workers Rising campaign is fundamentally about raising the working poor out of poverty,” said Sherry Chiesa, Unite Here international vice president. “What the auto workers union did in the private sector in the last century is what we have to do for the service sector now,” she said.

Town, migrant workers celebrate diversity

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 08:11:00 +0000

RANTOUL, Ill. — Over a hundred people enjoyed culture and community at the 2nd Annual Rantoul Harvest Festival in this central Illinois town, Aug. 6 — a celebration of the town’s diverse population and its migrant farm worker community. The event, held at Wabash Park, was organized by the Illinois Migrant Council and the Illinois Department of Human Rights.

Among the crowd was Jorge Luis Molina Jr., a 21-year-old college student from Alamo, Texas, who works as a seasonal farm worker for a few months out of the year in Rantoul.

Molina is a third-generation migrant farm worker. He works alongside his father, who has been a seasonal worker for the last 25 years. Molina’s grandfather worked in the same program for 50 years.

Molina and his father wake up every day at 6 a.m. and drive with their co-workers for an hour to a farm, where they work for nearly 12 hours picking pumpkins, with a 30-minute lunch and two breaks. He said he makes $8 an hour.

“Its important for us to be recognized,” Molina told the World. Contrary to stereotypes, he pointed out, “most people here are well educated.” People need to know, he added, “that pumpkins are not going to pick themselves.”

Juliana Gonzalez-Crussi, director of housing for the Illinois Migrant Council, told the World that the festival started out last summer in order to “recognize the contribution of the agricultural workers and to embrace the diverse cosmopolitan nature of the environment.” One of the themes, she said, is “removing barriers, providing information and access to social services so the people could benefit from them.”

Gonzalez-Crussi said three seed companies, mostly dealing in corn, melons and pumpkins, employ many of the workers. Most of the workers are Latino and from Texas. A migrant farm worker family of four makes about $8,000 a year, she said.

Rantoul’s mayor, Neal Williams, addressed the crowd, saying, “It’s very important to have a multicultural event like this for all of the residents in Rantoul.” Later he told the World, “We’re a community. How do you make it grow if you’re not a part of it?”

Mike Loschen, the town’s community development director, who helped organize the event, said, “Any multicultural event is good, particularly with the Latino population. It’s good to expose people to other things and it’s good for the farm worker community to come out to a social event.”

Wendy Hundley, a Nicaraguan mother of two, runs a local cleaning business, “Mr. & Mrs. Klean,” with her husband. Summing up the festival, Hundley pointed out, “It’s really for everybody, Latino workers especially. We’re a minority and we have to stick together, and when you get to know the workers you feel right at home.”

Utility workers fired up over service cuts

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 06:20:00 +0000

DEARBORN, Mich. — Hundreds of utility workers rallied at their union hall in Dearborn, Mich., Aug. 2 and 3, to protest plans by Michigan utility DTE/Michcon to close more call centers and customer service offices. Two informational rallies, held at the Utility Workers Union of America Local 223 AFL-CIO union hall, each drew over 250 workers.

DTE has already closed 17 customer service offices in Michigan. If the slated closings go through, only three offices will be left in the state.

Sam Weinstein, assistant to UWUA National President Donald Wightman, pointed out that the vast majority of the people who use customer service offices are single mothers, senior citizens, low-income families, Black Americans and Latino Americans, who are most vulnerable to cuts in services.

The UWUA has formed a coalition of unions and community organizations, called DTE Customers First, to launch a petition drive to the Michigan Public Service Commission to stop DTE from closing any more offices. The commission recently fined DTE $105,000 for failure to restore electricity to 350 customers during the bitter cold winter months. (It gets as low as 20 below zero with the wind chill here.) This is a small fine compared to DTE’s after-tax profits of $572 million in 2005.

Customers are feeling the impact of the closings that have already taken place.

After DTE closed its Ann Arbor customer service center, one woman needed to establish service from DTE. She didn’t have proper credit card and checking account information, so she was sent to a Detroit center. After taking a bus from Ann Arbor (a 70-mile round trip) and waiting in line, she was told she didn’t have proper photo ID and had to return a second time to become a customer.

Traditionally, DTE field collectors have had the authority to collect a late bill at a customer’s home. Now they are instructed to cut the service even if the customer offers to pay the bill in full. To have service restored costs about $1,000.

Jim Harrison, Local 223 president, and June Heath, Local 223 recording secretary, who is African American, called it a two-pronged assault: one, hurting the customers, and two, eliminating several hundred good union jobs. They said DTE is warming up for hard-nosed negotiations in 2007. Local 223 will be in the front line of Detroit’s Labor Day parade as one of the unions under attack.

Stop Kroger the ogre

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 06:08:00 +0000

“Stop Kroger the ogre” was the chant of nearly 2,000 Teamster members and their supporters, led by International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James Hoffa, at a rally at the Kroger warehouse in Livonia, Mich., Aug. 6.

Kroger, the nation’s largest grocer, had a net profit of nearly $1 billion in 2005. The company plans to shut down its Michigan warehouse and lay off 250 workers, with another 250 slated for layoff in 2008. It will move the operation to another location in Ohio that pays $4 an hour less with few benefits.

The union has formed a coalition with several community groups to boycott Kroger.

At the rally, many workers turned in their Kroger discount cards, and Larry Brennan, IBT Local 337 president, cut them in half.

Unite Here International Vice President Joe Doherty pledged support of his union and the Change to Win federation, and Donald Boggs, retired president of the 350,000-member Metropolitan AFL-CIO, pledged his federation’s support.

Bob Ficano, Wayne County executive, was one of several state and local elected officials who offered their backing.

Ficano contrasted Kroger with companies that have recently moved to the Detroit area, creating 3,000 new jobs. “This area has the most highly skilled, most productive workers in the country,” said Ficano, challenging the corporate national media who are constantly trashing the Detroit area because of the better wages of auto and other unionized workers and because Detroit is an 80 percent African American city.

The rally started with the singing of the national anthem by Karen Vanessa-Ford Martin, whose husband is a Kroger worker.

— Jim Gallo

Photo of the month

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 05:09:00 +0000

Nick Kaleba of Press Associates Inc. submitted several photos depicting a Chicago rally against a pending National Labor Relations Board ruling that could make nurses “supervisors” and leave them ineligible for union protection. The picture above, from July 22, is not only nice photography. It also speaks politically in a positive manner. There are Black and brown and white together. An African American woman is speaking out. Men and women are paying attention. With the sign, the photo’s message is clear.

AFL-CIO, day laborers in watershed pact

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 05:03:00 +0000

Going to work, getting paid, coming home in one piece and walking your neighborhood with dignity is the goal of a new “watershed” partnership between the AFL-CIO and a network of 140 immigrant worker centers in 80 cities and towns. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, announced the collaboration in Chicago, Aug. 9.

Sweeney told reporters, “Day laborers in the United States often face the harshest forms of workplace problems and this exploitation hurts us all, because when standards are dragged for some workers, they are dragged down for all workers.”

He continued, “The work being done by worker centers, and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in particular, is some of the most important work in the labor movement today and it’s time to bring our organizations closer together.

“Through this watershed partnership, we will strengthen our ability to promote and enforce workplace rights for all workers — union and nonunion, immigrant and non-immigrant alike.”

Alvarado said, “The growing worker center movement shows that the fight for change at work has never been as vibrant, varied and urgent. Yet the end goal remains the same: to insure that the rights and freedoms of workers aren’t reserved for a few, but extended to the many — regardless of where you were born, the color of your skin, your gender and migratory status. This partnership will advance that goal.”

Alvarado is no stranger to life in the shadowy world of undocumented workers. Born in El Salvador, he came to the U.S. 16 years ago, working in factories, construction and gardening in California. He knows firsthand about working all day only to get a short paycheck or no paycheck, and about police chasing workers from helicopters and cars, jailing them and imposing stiff fines. He became a legal permanent resident in 1997.

In 1998, Alvarado led a group of immigrant workers who filed suit against a Los Angeles County ordinance aimed at day laborers, banning solicitation in the streets. They won in 2000.

In addition to coordinating worker centers, which provide legal, educational, loan and health care assistance, Alvarado goes to Home Depot parking lots and other areas where immigrant day laborers gather to get work. He recently conducted a meeting of 120 workers on a busy street corner in Agoura Hills, Calif. They took a vote, deciding to set a rate of $15 an hour for their labor.

Battling racist stereotypes, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network encourages immigrant workers to be good neighbors and respectful of the community near their gathering spots. The network connects workers to centers, many religious-based, for services, including language and immigration assistance.

Worker centers and immigrant workers were the core of the massive demonstrations for immigrant rights that swept the country this spring.

The AFL-CIO’s executive council approved the collaboration at its August meeting in Chicago. The partnership will enable formal ties between central labor councils and state federations and worker centers. It will provide an organized framework for joint work on issues like workplace rights, immigration reform, health and safety and other job-related concerns.

The landmark alliance between the NDLOC and the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, protects and advances all workers, Sweeney said. “By combining our resources in communities and states, we hope to translate the substantial gains achieved by worker centers into the lasting improvement of working conditions,” he said.

“Worker centers will benefit from the labor movement’s extensive involvement and experience in policy and legislative initiatives on the local, state and national levels. This partnership will also benefit AFL-CIO unions and local labor bodies by establishing channels to formally connect with local worker centers in order to expose abuses and improve workplace standards.”

The 700,000-member Laborers’ International Union of North America embraced partnership with NDLON at a separate press conference, Aug. 10. Although the Laborers left the AFL-CIO to join the Change to Win labor federation, they maintain a close relationship with local AFL-CIO councils and cooperate in the struggle for immigrant rights.

“We see unionizing in construction as a vehicle of growth,” Laborers President Terence O’Sullivan told reporters. “We are looking to organize and give immigrant workers power.” The union plans an organizing drive for day laborers early next year.

“We stand side to side with NDLON,” Laborers spokesman Richard Greer told the World. “For several years we have been working together on local issues in residential construction, especially in Los Angeles. Local actions are key to organizing, although that is over the horizon.”

The corporate right wing was quick to attack. They trotted out Reagan-appointed former National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jerry Hunter, who provided numerous interviews to the mainstream West Coast press. Hunter sought to stir up division between current Laborers’ Union members and potential members who are undocumented workers. “Members could start asking themselves, ‘Whose interests are you [the union] serving?’” he suggested.

“That’s ridiculous,” AFL-CIO spokeswoman Esmeralda Aguilar told the World. “The biggest challenge to organizing, she said, is “the impermanent relationship workers have with the employer. Employers incite and prey on division to increase profits.”

Summer books and web sites

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:22:00 +0000

For your summer reading and surfing pleasure:

“An Unreasonable Woman” by Diane Wilson (published by Chelsea Green). A true autobiographical story that is as engaging as a good novel. Written by a fourth-generation commercial fisherwoman in Texas who gradually got drawn into leading a fight against a multinational polluter and regulators who turned a blind eye. The writing style is stunningly original, full of humor and irony, authentic dialogue, and rich images and similes.

“Patrols” by Walter Dean Myers (HarperCollins). A most unusual children’s book about war. Focuses on a U.S. soldier in Vietnam and his fears and feelings about the opposing army. Compelling graphics.

“Crossing Bok Chitto” by Tim Tingle (Cinco Puntos). A beautifully illustrated children’s story about Choctaws in Mississippi who helped nearby slaves escape to freedom.

“Saving Troy” by William B. Patrick (Hudson Whitman). The author spent a year with firefighters in Troy, N.Y., and provides an insider, non-sugarcoated account of the psychological as well as physical stresses they face. A rare up-close-and-personal window into a blue-collar occupation.

“Hokum” edited by Paul Beatty (Bloomsbury). While this substantial collection is billed as an “anthology of African American humor,” many of the items have intensely serious overtones. Includes poetry, jokes, short stories, rap lyrics and much more by dozens of the best known Black writers and public figures throughout American history.

“Re-Inventing the People” by Shelton Stromquist (University of Illinois). An academic study that argues that the failure of much of modern liberalism to embrace class issues has its roots in the same blind spot in the Progressive movement more than a hundred years ago.

“Letters from Young Activists” edited by Berger, Boudin, and Farrow (Nation Books). Thoughts from an impressively diverse group of nearly 50 young activists about issues they face in their work and within the progressive movement.

“A Right to Housing” edited by Rachel Bratt, Michael Stone and Chester Hartman (Temple University). A comprehensive examination of the housing crisis in America, why past responses have failed, and what should be done.

“Inside Toyland” by Christine L. Williams (University of California). A Texas sociologist worked for about six weeks each at two different toy stores, getting an inside view of class, race and gender issues in the large-scale retail industry.

“Strikes, Picketing, and Inside Campaigns: A Legal Guide for Unions” by Robert M. Schwartz (Work Rights Press). A practical and readable step-by-step guide to the legal aspects of setting up, conducting, and concluding a strike.

“Turning Life Into Fiction” by Robin Hemley (Graywolf). A guide for the many aspiring fiction writers who aren’t sure where to get authentic material. Talks about how to keep a journal, write down one’s dreams, build on stories told by elders, and other techniques. Includes exercises.

www.walmartworkersrights.org — Has a short, clever, and funny video drawing attention to the decision by singer Garth Brooks to front for Wal-Mart. Features a take-off on his old hit, “Friends in Low Places,” that is transformed into “Friends with Low Wages.” Take a look, and then e-mail your friends with the link.

www.dminkler.com — Poster artist Doug Minkler makes available some of his images for free download.

www.ironweedfilms.com — A new effort to promote progressive, independent films and encourage people to organize house parties to watch them.

— World Wide Work is published by the American Labor Education Center

Anti-capitalist classic

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:15:00 +0000

Movie Review

The Devil Wears Prada

Directed by David Frankel

PG-13, 119 min., 2006

As I left the theater, I thought, I hated this movie. Yet it was one of the best movies I have seen recently. I hated the movie because it dredged up a lot of feelings about my life experiences. It was one of the best illustrations of the brutality and inhumanity of the capitalist system I have ever seen.

Meryl Streep does a magnificent job of portraying Miranda Priestly, a self-absorbed, arrogant, abusive boss of a fashion magazine. Anne Hathaway does an equally magnificent job of portraying her new hire, Andrea “Andy” Sachs, a bright graduate of Northwestern University who aspires to be a journalist covering labor union activities.

Miranda, who has attained the pinnacle of her organization, is horribly abusive to all the employees, but this is magnified in the case of Andy. She arrives for her job interview with an onion bagel on her breath and working-class clothes. Andy is subjected to horrible humiliation and intimidation by Miranda, which works in the short term. She is told, “A million girls would kill for this job.”

Andy is sucked into this sick system, changes the way she dresses and assesses her competence based on what her abusive master tells her. As she jumps over the head of her abusive supervisor, she keeps repeating, “I had no choice.” Miranda tells her that she did have a choice, and points out, “They all want to live the way we do,” and that’s where the movie gets interesting.

The abuse, intimidation, humiliation and harassment that Andy is subjected to struck a note with me. The inherent abusive nature of capitalist organizations was projected onto the screen for everyone to see. I remembered that I have endured similar situations over and over throughout my career. Many people that I have known believe that this is the only way to run organizations. They subscribe to autocratic rule by a single individual who maintain their power base by keeping their subordinates in a state of fear.

Ironically, the autocratic Miranda is threatened by the owner, who plans to replace her with a younger woman who he believes will bring higher profits. Interestingly, Miranda trumps him by putting together a list of key personnel who signed a letter that they will resign if Miranda leaves. She saves herself by provoking an act of solidarity from the workers.

Other reviews have described the movie as a comedy. My experience felt like a gut-wrenching indictment of the capitalist system. Lingering in my mind was, “Surely we can do better than this.”

The stroke of a corporate pen

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:08:00 +0000

Has the stroke of a corporate media pen attempted to define “working class” away in your city? Once again, it has in mine.

A June 23 article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press illustrates the point made by Communist economist Victor Perlo: the capitalists attempt to divide the working class by confusing “class” with “income.”

In the article, “Our Middle Class Hangs Tough,” which profiles a union pipefitter, “class” and “income” are used interchangeably:

“A new study ranked the Twin Cities first out of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas for its share of middle-income families, and No. 21 for the high proportion of middle-class neighborhoods here.”

“With 26 percent of families in the Twin Cities earning middle-class incomes, the metro area ranks No. 1,” the article says.

Perlo, who headed the Communist Party USA’s economics commission and launched the PWW’s People Before Profits column, once wrote: “[An] important weapon of capitalists in their attempt to split the working class is to define ‘working class’ away, so to speak.”

Marxism teaches us to look for the economic and class interests behind institutions and events in our society. V.I. Lenin, who applied Marxism to the struggles of Russia’s working class, wrote, “The fundamental feature that distinguishes classes is the place they occupy in social production, and, consequently, the relation in which they stand to the means of production.”

Classes, he said, are “large groups of people who differ from each other by the place they occupy in a … system of social production, by their relation … to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the social wealth that they obtain and their method of acquiring their share of it. Classes are groups of people, one of which may appropriate the labor of another, owing to the different places they occupy in the definite system of social economy.”

Perlo commented that, “in Establishment writing, workers are divided into two categories, ‘underclass’ and ‘middle class.’ The former are those tens of millions working for poverty level wages or less, and those who are unemployed for long periods of time, including the youths who never had a job. The basic fact, however, is that they are a major, important section of the working class, along with those who are better paid.

“‘Middle-class’ workers,” he continued, “are portrayed as those whose historic status as wage workers has been so improved that they can plausibly be considered to have advanced out of the working class proper and into the ‘middle class.’” He pointed out, “The term ‘middle class’ as used by the capitalists actually refers to people in a supposed ‘middle income group.’”

Perlo always emphasized that workers make gains only through their collective struggles, and regardless of how much workers earn, or whether they have a job or not, they still have to sell their labor power, and their labor still produces the “social wealth,” as Lenin called it, much of which is appropriated by the boss as profits.

This Marxist-Leninist analysis teaches us that what distinguishes classes is not differences in income, habits or mentality, but their relation to society’s means of production.

It teaches us to oppose ideas that serve the capitalist class against the working class, and to fight for ideas that help organize the broad people’s movement, led by the working class, to overcome the power of the capitalists and build socialist society.

We should not let the stroke of a corporate media pen, in your city and mine, foment division among the working class. It serves the interests of monopoly capital and provides ideological support to the Bush agenda.

Michael Wood is a working-class activist in Minneapolis, Minn.

Union split: sliced bread vs. the box

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:04:00 +0000

For the past year there has been a widening split within the ranks of American organized labor, and this split risks hardening as the new Change to Win (CTW) coalition increasingly takes on the complexion of a rival labor federation.

Thus far, the argument has focused on union organizing efforts and how unions should be structured. Yet, in many ways the split is without purpose because the AFL-CIO is already on the same page as the CTW coalition regarding these issues. This should surprise no one, since CTW leaders were powerful members of the AFL-CIO’s Executive Council for the past decade, where they profoundly influenced federation policy.

In many regards the split is simply the result of frustration at an inability to reverse union decline. The tragedy is that the real issue remains out of focus on both sides (I’ll make no friends here). That issue is the significance of economic policy and politics in union strategy. It is an issue that does not warrant a split, but it does warrant prime time and could even provide the frame for a galvanizing debate that jump-starts the entire union movement and changes national politics. This crucial debate can be framed as “sliced bread” versus “the box.”

The sliced-bread strategic approach comes out of the Service Employees International Union, a major force within the CTW. Late last year, SEIU launched a “greatest idea since sliced bread” competition that asked ordinary Americans what they thought were the most critically needed policy initiatives. The goal was to launch an unprecedented national conversation about how to strengthen the economy and improve life for working men and women.

The sliced-bread competition was jazzy and attention grabbing, reflecting the imaginative and innovative characteristics that distinguish SEIU. But sliced bread was much more than a one-time competition. It also was a statement about where unions should be headed. From the sliced-bread perspective, unions must find those economic initiatives that people want, are important, and are doable. The challenge is to work within the existing system, and find a new place for unions.

Such a view leads to talk of “partnering with our employers” and of unions taking over and organizing outsourcing. It posits that when it comes to globalization, there is no going back and unions must adapt innovatively to the new environment — the core parameters of the economic system are given, and unions have to live and work within those parameters. Only later, after unions have rebuilt themselves, can these parameters be re-visited and changed.

This framework contrasts with the box, a concept that has gradually emerged at the AFL-CIO and whose political implications are still being digested. The box depicts workers as boxed in on all sides by the new economic order. Imagine a square whose sides are labeled globalization (west), less-than-full employment (north), privatization and small government (east), and labor market flexibility (south). Private sector workers are pressured by globalization, which allows corporations to put them in international competition with oppressed low-wage workers. Public sector workers are pressured by privatization, which places them in competition with private sector workers.

Both groups are pressed from north and south by less-than-full employment and labor market flexibility. Less-than-full employment is where the Federal Reserve enters, since it puts a floor to unemployment in the name of price stability. Labor market flexibility strips workers of employment protections and unemployment insurance, degrades the minimum wage and makes union organizing nearly impossible.

A box perspective leads to radically different conclusions than the sliced-bread view. The current system has unions running just to stay in place. As quickly as they organize new workers, companies ship existing union jobs offshore. Manufacturing was first to feel this, but in the future many parts of the service sector also will. From a box perspective, the problem is systemic and the challenge is to change the system — not to adapt to it.

Right now, corporations have workers boxed in. The challenge is to reverse the situation and put CEOs and corporations in the box, as did the institutional innovations of the New Deal. That task is easier said than done. Not only must the economics of corporate globalization be discredited, but new affirmative arguments for an alternative must also be put forward. Unions also must provide a compelling alternative to free-market rhetoric and ideology, a task that has barely begun.

The CTW sliced bread and AFL-CIO box perspectives imply radically different road maps. The former grudgingly accepts today’s economic structure. Consequently, the policies that determine the structure of the economy and the economic ideas that drive these policies are not the key issue. Instead, organizing is, and the belief is that organizing can be successful regardless of structure. Moreover, since ideas and policy are not on the critical path, unions can even reduce engagement with Washington and party politics.

In stark contrast, the AFL-CIO box demands immediate system change, and that in turn requires new economic arguments that can change policy and politics. Organizing cannot succeed without this change because it is the structure of economic arrangements that is tearing the heart out of unions. Changing the economic policies that shape the economic structure is therefore squarely on the critical path. At the political level, it forces a profound intellectual break with the current Democratic Party elite because Rubinomics (the economics of the Clinton administration) is the box. This political strategy is dramatically different from reduced political engagement.

Where next? First, as of the moment the split looks to be festering. This is a tragedy. A head-to-head debate on these issues is needed, not a split within organized labor. Second, for the AFL-CIO the challenge is to break with the Democratic Party elite without splitting the party, as that could hand victory to Republicans whose version of the box is even more extreme. In effect, the AFL-CIO is dealing with an economic box within a political box.

Thomas Palley, a widely published economist, served as the AFL-CIO’s assistant director of public policy. This article is reprinted from The Guild Reporter (www.newsguild.org) a publication of The Newspaper Guild/CWA.

Exposing the myths: Why Wal-Mart can pay a living wage

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 07:34:00 +0000

Chicago made national news the last week in July when it became the largest city in the country to set minimum wage and benefit standards for retail workers. The City Council voted 35-14 in favor of an ordinance requiring “big box” stores like Wal-Mart and Target to start wages at $9.25 an hour in 2007 and increase the minimum to $10 an hour by 2010, with cost of living increases thereafter. An additional $3 an hour must be devoted to workers’ health care. This affects only the giant stores with 90,000 square feet or at least $1 billion in sales. The fight for a living wage, up to and beyond the historic vote, continues with big business, Wal-Mart and the mayor working furiously to overturn it. Many lies and myths have been perpetrated about the wage law. Principal sponsors Alderman Freddrenna Lyle, from the 6th Ward, responded to many of these myths in her speech from the floor of the City Council, as did Alderman Joe Moore from the 49th Ward. The following are abridgments of their speeches.

Myth No. 1: The ordinance is racist, because it got introduced just when Wal-Mart was coming into the city.

I wondered when and who would first play the race card and the winner is the Wal-Mart supporters. Wal-Mart avoided the cities for years, as a purposeful strategy, preferring instead to locate in rural and suburban America. They saturated those areas until there was no more room for growth. In order to keep their stock prices up, they have to continue to grow.

In 2005 they announced plans to open 600 new stores. Well, they can’t go to the moon yet, so they have to enter the urban markets. Their growth policies require that they now move into urban America where most Blacks live. They picked the time and place for this battle, not us.

I think it’s racist that they only trotted out African American ministers to castigate, threaten and berate the African American elected officials. Aren’t there white aldermen that are voting for the ordinance?

I say it is both racist and ridiculous to argue that Black people in Chicago should work for less than their counterparts in Santa Fe, N.M., and San Francisco [where living wage laws have been passed].

Myth No. 2: Any African American alderman who supports the ordinance is a stooge or puppet of the unions.

It is incredibly offensive to assume that African American alderman are unable to comprehend lofty issues such as social and economic justice, independent of some white folks telling them what to think.

Maybe those of us who are voting for the ordinance are stooges of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King died in Memphis, Tenn., fighting for a living wage for the sanitation workers. In his last speech he said, “The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants who happen to be sanitation workers.”

He went on to say to the preachers, it’s all right to talk about long white robes over yonder, in all of its symbolism, but ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It’s all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day.

Myth No. 3: The unions have threatened aldermen and that’s why we are going along with this “horrible, horrible” ordinance.

Not one single, solitary person from organized labor called, e-mailed or otherwise communicated any threats to me at anytime. In fact, any persons, entities, individuals who have threatened me were Black businesspersons and Black ministers. Now besides something being inherently wrong with that picture, it was ironic to see those very same people standing on television and hear them on radio vowing to protect us from the threats of others.

After I got mad, I thought of what Marcus Garvey said, “Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences,” and to my opponents, I want them to know, that I am not afraid.

On behalf of the people that brought you the weekend, organized labor, I want to say yes the labor unions have issues. Yes, the face of labor in this city is mostly white male. But so is the face of commerce. There are practices in labor and trade unions that are discriminatory and serve as barriers to employment for people of color. And we are going to work on those practices and identify those racist people in those unions. But in every other area of life, in polities, in journalism, the church, and in educational institutions, there are problems. Every single one of those institutions has problems and the unions are no different.

But for organized labor, there would be no pension plans, and health benefits and the seniors in my community would no longer be able to afford to live in their homes in middle class lifestyles, because they retired from jobs that gave them union benefits. Union activism and practices allowed many, many people of color to move out of poverty into the middle class. No single institution has had that empowering impact on the African American community, except for organized labor.

I won’t kick labor to the curb in exchange for some neo-liberalist philosophy that says government exists only for the protection of property and profits. Because I am clear, that in this country, power emanates ground up from the people, not down, from the ultra-rich.

Myth No. 4: All of the businesses will close down and no new businesses will come into the wastelands that are the inner city.

There is more than $1 billion in income sitting on the south and west sides of Chicago, waiting for someone to come in and claim it. Target’s already here getting the money. Are they going to give up that money? Not hardly. Are their competitors going to stand by and just watch them roll wheelbarrows full of money to the bank? Not hardly.

Business has cried wolf at every single social advance. Going back to England in 1789 was the beginning of an anti-business debate. It was about ending slavery. One who argued against the abolition of slavery said, “If abolition became law, all sensible merchants would go to France.” So they’ve been talking about something bad happening whenever there has been a movement to empower people.

Society pays a high price for those cheap prices. Two years ago, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said “It’s Kool-Aid and cyanide. The Kool-Aid is the cheap prices. The cyanide is the cheap wages.”

People will do anything when they are hungry enough. People will eat dog food if they are hungry enough, but I am not going to vote that we put it on the daily recommended diet for poor people.

The world’s biggest company, Wal-Mart, is making $11 billion in profits, yet sees no shame that 46 percent of their employees’ children are on Medicaid. CEOs make $8-9 million in salary yet see no irony that they provide only 77 cents an hour per employee on health insurance.

I don’t think I can afford to or should be asked to subsidize the Walton family. They’ve got it, I don’t. They can afford to pay their employees a living wage. They can afford to provide health insurance to their employees. With $11 billion, they can do better but they won’t. And not one single opponent of the ordinance has come up to me and been able to answer why. Why won’t they? They won’t because they are the 500-pound gorilla and they don’t have to.

They would rather spend millions of dollars underwriting campaigns to divide communities rather than agree to increase their wage or benefit package. And divide the community, it has. Some of those businesspersons on the other side have been friends of mine longer than they have done business with Wal-Mart, and I applaud their success. Black elected officials generally are the strongest advocates for Black businesspeople. We would never do anything that hurt Black businesses and are proud of those businesses. But I must speak for those who are less fortunate who have to take those jobs because there’s nothing else around.

This wedge that has been driven through the heart of my community is temporary; our destinies are entwined, and the continued fight for racial, social and economic justice will soon reunite us against our common foes.

I am a strong supporter of this ordinance because I do not believe that as a nation, we should continue encouraging a system with a class of ultra-rich and dirt poor, because traditionally Black folks always end up dirt poor.

--Freddrenna Lyle

Our job is not to safeguard corporate profit

In the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. This landmark legislation outlawed child labor, mandated a 40-hour workweek and established our nation’s first minimum wage, set at 40 cents an hour. In urging passage of this legislation, FDR declared, “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level. I mean wages of a decent living.”

Those words ring just as true now as they did 68 years ago.

FDR faced a firestorm of protest.

Following the lead of their industry forefathers, the industry titans of today — the large big box retail giants, their hired spokespeople and their cheerleaders on the newspaper editorial boards — regurgitate the same tired old arguments that were levied against the first minimum wage nearly three and a half generations ago.

They were wrong then. They are wrong now.

Tragically, our federal government has not increased the minimum wage in nearly 10 years. Some states, like Illinois, have stepped in to fill the void and raised their minimum wage above the federal level. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, total employment in the states with a higher minimum wage increased by 6.2 percent, 50 percent greater than the combined job growth of 4.1 percent for states where the federal minimum wage prevailed. Retail employment grew by 6.1 percent in the states with higher minimum wages versus 1.9 percent in other states.

Why is that? The answer is simple. When working men and women get a raise they spend that money on goods and services.

I welcome these stores to our communities. Our people need the retail amenities they offer. They need the jobs. But contribute to our neighborhoods, don’t pillage them.

What about all those thousands of people lining up for jobs at Wal-Mart in Evergreen Park and on the West Side. Doesn’t that mean people want those jobs and are willing to work for $7 or $7.25 an hour? Of course, people are desperate for work. That people are desperate for a job, any job, only underscores the need for this ordinance.

Seventy years ago, thousands of people would stand in line at factories, packing houses and coal mines to work 60 hours a week in life-threatening conditions for pennies an hour. Did that mean we should not have mandated a 40-hour workweek and a minimum wage? Did that mean we should not have required worker safety measures and outlawed child labor? Of course not. President Roosevelt understood a basic economic fact: Corporations are in business to maximize their profits and they will pay workers whatever the market will bear. He also understood that government is in place to serve the common good, and at times government must step in to control the excesses of the market place to protect the public welfare.

And that is what we are called upon to do here. Our job in this Council is not to safeguard the billion dollar profits of the world’s largest corporations. Our job is to safeguard the interests of our constituents, the working men and women of this great city, who are desperately trying to make ends meet.

--Joe Moore

UE workers fight health care takeaways

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 06:57:00 +0000

TAUNTON, Mass. — When Esterline Haskon Aerospace Corp. here tried to force members of United Electrical Workers Local 204 to pay huge, up-front health care deductibles, increased co-pays, and higher premiums during contract negotiations, the workers fought back. They held regular negotiating report sessions on all three shifts that lasted for more than an hour, they wore stickers and posted signs throughout the shop against management’s proposal.

On Aug. 3 more than 100 workers and their supporters from the Greater Southeastern Massachusetts Labor Council, Massachusetts Jobs with Justice and other UE locals from Vermont and Salem, Mass., rallied in front of the shop. They learned from UE District 2 President Peter Knowlton that the company had changed its position and had put a new proposal on the table. Local 204 President John Fernandes emphasized, “When we stick together we win.”

They were joined by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) who denounced the fact that workers in the U.S. are “producing more and more but getting less in benefits and wages.”

Frank pointed out that the battles waged by the labor movement help people who aren’t covered by union contracts. He challenged the corporations to join with unions and lawmakers in Congress who are fighting for a single-payer health system that will benefit every worker in this country, instead of joining with the present administration to put the brunt of the health care crisis on the back of workers with health savings accounts.

Frank also called for a pullout from Iraq, stating that the money saved would help fund this type of health plan as well as finance other needed programs.

Union pact opens doors for city students

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 05:07:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA — “Congratulations young people, you’re about to become union members!” said School Reform Commission chair James Nevels. The school administrator heralded a groundbreaking agreement between the school district here and unions that make up the Philadelphia Building Trades Council.

The agreement offers some 425 apprenticeships to public high school graduates over the next four years.

School, union and public officials greeted the agreement, which was a long time in the making.

Pat Gillespie, head of the Building Trades Council, told the World that a leader of the city’s teachers union had broached the idea over a decade ago. In the past, he said, the construction unions felt that they were “in competition with academia” for successful students. He said labor’s perception was that the school district didn’t view the skilled trades as a viable career option.

The new agreement, Gillespie said, shows a recognition by school district leaders of the need to change that “mindset.” Gillespie pointed out that the high schoolers becoming apprentices under the agreement could account for 50 percent to 100 percent of all the apprentice jobs created in the city over the next four years. This will significantly increase the racial diversity of the urban construction workforce, he said.

“The racial composition of the workforce should reflect the community,” Gillespie said. Philadelphia is over half Black, Latino and Asian and 85 percent of the 12,000 public school students are non-white. Accusations of racism in the trades council have tinged its history. This agreement, observers say, makes a breakthrough on this issue.

Janet Ryder of the AFL-CIO, a former teacher and leader of the Philadelphia teachers union, said that she and others had been looking forward to this agreement for years. She told the World that the school district would have to do its part to insure the deal’s implementation, and that the “huge inequities” of race and gender long facing graduates of the city’s public schools would be overcome. For example, she said, “If you’ve been brainwashed to believe that girls can’t do as well as boys at certain trades, then why would you consider going into them?”

Larry Aniloff, the school district’s executive director of career and technology education, told the World that this agreement was something he had been thinking about for a long time. He said the school district was committed to insuring that it worked. The district will work with city departments and outside agencies, he said, to publicize this opportunity, recruit interested students and to insure that students who enter the program are successful.

Apprentices are in demand in the Philadelphia construction market. Between schools, housing and other construction projects, billions of dollars in spending are planned. The Philadelphia Housing Authority has plans to erect or rehab $1.2 billion in housing in the coming years. The school district has nearly $2 billion in new construction and renovation planned. The Pennsylvania Convention Center is looking at a $750 million project. The University of Pennsylvania is beginning a major building program.

A union construction worker can make $60,000-plus a year. Housing Authority Executive Director Carl Greene told the press that with union jobs, “We are able to help whole families solve the whole problem of crime and poverty. We help people to break the cycle of poverty. They get to participate in the economic growth of the city.”

After completing an apprenticeship and passing an exam, a student becomes a union member and can earn $20 to $40 an hour, Gillespie said. But success in the program requires hard work, he said. “It doesn’t promise people anything but the opportunity. There’s a lot of personal discipline involved. Cold winters, wet days, you have to go out there and produce.”

Eventually, Gillespie said, the trades council would like to work with the school district to open a high school, further solidifying the partnership.

Almond workers voices travel far

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 05:05:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — The story of hundreds of workers seeking a union at a California almond processing plant is increasingly being heard around the state and around the world.

Faced with their employer’s union-busting efforts, the workers are seeking a neutrality agreement and a card-check system to determine their wishes concerning the union.

On July 28, workers from Blue Diamond Growers’ almond plant in Sacramento joined supporters from unions including longshore, port and transit workers at the Port of Oakland headquarters of international shipping giant American President Lines. APL, the largest ocean carrier of Blue Diamond almonds, ships thousands of tons a year.

A similar group gathered at APL’s Los Angeles offices. Each called on APL to urge Blue Diamond to respect its workers’ right to organize.

In Tokyo, members of the All Japan Dock Workers’ and Seamen’s unions held a coordinated solidarity action.

The date held special significance, for the workers seek to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s Local 17, and July 28 marked the 105th anniversary of the birth of legendary ILWU founder Harry Bridges.

As Oakland workers waited for their representatives to return from APL’s office, they spoke about their working conditions. Alma Orozco, a sorter for 30 years, said some of the mostly older women workers must do their jobs bent over a narrow belt in very cramped quarters. When areas of the plant are fumigated, she said, ventilation is inadequate and workers are sickened by the smell. Some departments are hot, she said, and some lines are unsafe. Dust and noise are common.

Orozco said it “took years” for the sorters and packers, many of whom have decades of service, to reach the present $11 an hour pay scale. “The cost of living ran over us,” she said.

Since the struggle to organize began, she said, “I feel uncomfortable going into the plant anymore. I feel stressed out because they may fire us at any time.”

“They think workers should accept crumbs and be satisfied,” added 32-year worker Michael Olivera.

The workers have been trying to join the union for two years. During that time they have suffered management-led “captive audience” meetings, harassment and threats to close or move the plant. Four union supporters were fired, with two rehired on order of a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge. Blue Diamond has been found guilty of over 20 federal labor law violations.

In recent weeks the workers have fanned out across California’s Central Valley, ILWU International Organizer Agustin Ramirez said in a telephone interview.

At the offices of the Merced Union High School District Board, on which a Blue Diamond board member serves, almond workers were joined by some 25 members of the California School Employees Association, all wearing their union shirts.

Similar actions have taken place in Modesto, Chico, Colusa and elsewhere, and more are planned in coming weeks.

The international side of the campaign involves the International Transport Workers’ Federation, International Dock Workers’ Council and the International Union of Food Workers. In November and again in April and May, they helped spread the message to Blue Diamond distributors in India, South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

Last spring, for example, the All Japan Seamen’s Union wrote to Blue Diamond’s Tokyo office that “the publicity surrounding the contentious labor situation [in Sacramento] is not helpful to Blue Diamond’s image here in Japan or around the world.”

This summer, union delegations to South Korea and Japan have helped spread the message. Ramirez said he and 36-year Blue Diamond worker Gene Esparza found solidarity with their struggle, too, when they participated in an AFL-CIO delegation to Seoul in solidarity with South Korean union federations opposing the impending Korea-U.S. Trade Agreement. While there, he said, they spoke with key brokers and clients, and told the Korean unions of their struggle.

For information on upcoming California actions, contact Agustin Ramirez at (916) 606-4681.

Stop playing games with minimum wage

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 04:59:00 +0000

Labor, community groups vow to press forward for a real minimum wage hike

A Republican bill that hid a huge, wolfish tax break for the wealthy inside the sheep’s clothing of an increase in the minimum wage crashed and burned in the Senate on Aug. 3.

The failed measure, which would have handed the rich a $753 billion break in estate taxes in exchange for a modest boost in the federal minimum wage, had been sharply criticized by labor and community groups.

Maude Hurd, national president of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the GOP bill tried “to put a moral face on giveaways that would bankrupt the American dream.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, “The Senate told the Republican leadership in no uncertain terms to stop playing games with the minimum wage.”

“The estate tax bill is a poison pill that stands in the way of minimum wage workers getting a long overdue pay raise,” Sweeney continued.

The AFL-CIO and ACORN immediately mobilized their vast rank-and-file networks to push for a “clean” minimum wage bill in Congress that would boost the federal minimum from the current $5.15 an hour to $7.25, with no strings attached.

They said another tax cut for Paris Hilton or Wal-Mart’s heirs is not what is required.

The vote on the Senate bill was 56-42, four short of the 60 needed for passage under Senate rules. Four Democrats voted for the Republican scheme, and three Republicans broke ranks and voted against it. Two Democrats did not vote on the measure.

According to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, millions of working families would have paid dearly for the estate tax cut. The $753 billion budget hole would have forced reductions in Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, veterans programs and unemployment insurance.

On the other hand, a mere 8,200 beneficiaries of the proposed estate tax cut would have received an average of $1.3 million each.

While raising the minimum wage may be a political football inside the Washington Beltway, at the state level it is taking the form of a critical battle. Already 24 states and the District of Columbia — with D.C., Pennsylvania, Arkansas and North Carolina having just added their names to the list — have raised the minimum wage, after massive union-based, grassroots mobilizations.

As the November midterm elections approach, voters in Ohio, Missouri, Colorado, Arizona and Montana will decide whether or not to increase their minimum wage.

Hundreds of labor and community activists delivered 530,300 signatures of registered Ohio voters to the secretary of state, Aug. 7, for a measure which would amend the state constitution to raise the minimum wage to $6.85 with a cost of living escalator. State law required 322,000 signatures.

“We really worked because this is life or death for thousands of hard working families in Ohio,” said Don Coulter, a coordinator for the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR/USW). Coulter worked over 28 years at the Timken steel mill in Canton, Ohio. When the mill closed, he was forced to retire.

“ACORN did a job,” Coulter said. “They got 270,000 signatures across the state. We worked at shopping centers and county fairs and inside some of the plants. We worked together, in coalition, and we got a half a million — half a million — signatures.

“Getting minimum wage on the ballot helps families immediately, but it also helps this year’s political campaigns,” he added. “It is part of a national effort to get workers to the polls in an off-year election.”

In Missouri, unions formed the core of the grassroots coalition that garnered 210,000 signatures on petitions to put raising the minimum wage on the November ballot. On Aug. 8, the secretary of state found 135,917 of the signatures to be valid, about 42,000 more than the required minimum. If approved by the voters, the minimum wage in Missouri will rise to $6.50 an hour with a cost of living increase each year.

“This is an issue of human dignity and common sense,” said Bob Soutier, secretary-treasurer of the Greater St. Louis AFL-CIO. An estimated 150,000 Missouri workers would get a raise if the law passes.

Volunteers in the Missouri campaign did more than petition. In late June, over 600 workers jammed St. Louis streets, protesting their Republican Sen. Jim Talent’s continuing opposition to raising the federal minimum wage. Talent was in town with President Bush for a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser. “It would take 97 weeks at minimum wage to equal 1 plate at your dinner tonight, Mr. Talent. A disgrace!” read a hand-painted sign a woman worker wore around her neck.

In Colorado, although the petitions are not yet certified, it appears that increasing the minimum will be on the ballot. Activists with Coloradans for a Fair Minimum Wage collected 120,000 signatures, almost double the number required. As in Ohio, the Colorado ballot initiative takes the form of a constitutional amendment.

The Colorado AFL-CIO is the hub of the coalition. “Workers in Colorado deserve an increase in the minimum wage, and I think it’s a great issue for candidates of either party to run on,” said coalition spokesman Brandon Hall.

The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce aggressively opposes any effort to increase the minimum wage.

N.J. nurses hold the line

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 09:38:00 +0000

News Analysis

ENGLEWOOD, N.J. — The struggle by 660 striking nurses at Englewood Hospital faces a double uphill fight. The strikers, members of Health Professional and Allied Employees (HPAE-AFT), is dealing with a notoriously anti-labor employer on the one hand and the looming danger that the National Labor Relations Board may soon rule that nurses are supervisors within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act, thus rendering their collective bargaining rights illegal and moot. Despite this, not one nurse has crossed the picket line.

As in past years, the union negotiating issues are very basic. Ann Twomey, HPAE president, spelled these issues out at a mass picket line rally July 17. The two most critically important issues are worker pensions and adequate nurse staffing to give patients safe and proper care. The rally was also addressed by Charles Wowkanech, president of the New Jersey AFL-CIO, who pledged the full support of the federation’s 1 million members.

Twomey told the rally that the management had refused to negotiate in good faith or even to submit the strike issues to binding arbitration. “Englewood Hospital had a choice: keep nurses at the bedside or put them on the street,” she said. “Englewood Hospital chose to put its workers on the street on June 29th.”

Patient care seems to be much on the minds of Englewood residents as lawn signs supporting the striking nurses are on the front lawns of houses in the area. The HPAE aims to negotiate 11 contracts in New Jersey. The contract at Bergen Medical Center was settled after a strike in early June.

Rather than negotiate, the employer sent the strikers a letter aimed at weakening worker resolve and splitting the strikers. The strikers responded by sending the letters en masse back to the bosses.

The HPAE, along with the N.J. AFL-CIO and the Bergen County and Essex County AFL-CIO Councils, was instrumental in holding a rally July 13 in Newark to demand that the NLRB listen to oral arguments before it decided on the “Kentucky River” cases that address the “supervisor” issue.

Despite labor rallies across the country and pleas by concerned people in the collective bargaining field the NLRB, on July 19 rejected these pleas that it hear oral arguments. If the Bush-controlled NLRB rules to declare categories of workers as supervisors, as many as 8 million workers in a variety of job skills could lose their right to join and form a union.

The Taft-Hartley Act, which makes the pending NLRB action possible, was passed in 1947 by a Republican-controlled Congress. The law’s aim is to legislate and litigate unions into a state of helplessness. It replaced the Wagner Act, a pro-labor law that was passed in 1936 as part of the New Deal.

The pending NLRB union-busting decision could not have happened under the Wagner Act. For a long time labor’s slogan was “Repeal Taft-Hartley, restore the Wagner Act.” Its time has come.

Indianapolis organizing news

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 06:28:00 +0000

AFSCME librarians vow to shelve budget cuts, SEIU janitors fight to clean up poverty wages

Demanding the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library Board recognize its workers’ collective bargaining rights, 60 American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 62 members and supporters carried signs and chanted outside the board’s monthly meeting at the Fountain Square library branch. The demonstrators expressed their unity by wearing bright green AFSCME shirts both inside and outside the meeting.

Organizer Michelle Martin told the World that 65 percent of the 300 library workers have signed cards petitioning the board for recognition. Workers here are facing budget cuts of $537,000, including reducing the usual 2 percent raises by half. The libraries’ budget for books and materials will be cut by 6 percent and plans to build two more branches are being shelved.

AFSCME members proposed their own budget cuts including $1.2 million by trimming the costs of hiring temporary workers and consulting and legal services.

Library employee Pam Wright, a member of the organizing committee, said that the board has outsourced some of the departments such as printing services and cleaning staff. In addition, Wright added, employees at the Irvington Branch will lose their jobs through a plan to make that branch completely automated with self-checkout machines.

Crammed inside the small meeting room, the chairman of the library board, Louis Mahern, threatened to cite fire code violations and evict the standing attendees if things got too rowdy. But when board member Jesse B. Lynch stated that he was in favor of union recognition and evoked the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., supporters responded with roaring applause. Organizers vowed an even stronger presence at the next library board meeting in August.

Just one day earlier, SEIU workers and their supporters braved 100-degree weather to demonstrate to Commercial Cleaning Services that they’re done with poverty wages and on-the-job intimidation. They demanded union representation.

Jobs with Justice, Unite Here and other union and community supporters, including members of the Indiana district of the Communist Party, joined the line to show solidarity with the embattled janitors. CCS employs predominantly Latino workers to clean corporate offices in the exclusive office parks of north Indianapolis and Carmel, but workers at CCS are paid poverty wages and face arbitrary firings and intimidation.

jason.lewis.jones@hotmail.com

Hotel workers hit the bricks for fair contracts

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 05:50:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — Hotel workers on both sides of San Francisco Bay took to the streets last week in their struggles for fair union contracts.

Over 1,400 members and supporters of Unite Here Local 2 marched through the posh area around Union Square here July 27, bearing signs urging a continuing boycott of 13 Class A hotels that have refused to sign a contract since 2004.

The union says key issues are affordable health care, workload protections, wages meeting the cost of living, retirement with dignity and the right to organize.

Hotel cook Ernest Bonner and food server Usha Bedessi, both members of Local 2’s bargaining committee, said workload is a big concern. “We need more staff, but the hotels want to run things on a shoestring,” Bonner said.

Noting that some of his finely honed culinary skills are no longer valued as hotels simplify food preparation, Bonner said, “What I consider an art is being trampled on. Maybe the customers don’t realize it, but things are going down.”

But, he emphasized, “We workers, and the quality of our work, are what makes a hotel successful.”

Calling an employer proposal of lower wages for new hires “totally unfair,” Bedessi added, “We need our union contract to protect our jobs, our health care, a better retirement, and to have a reasonable workload and rights on the job.”

San Francisco Labor Council head Tim Paulson said Local 2 is leading a struggle for all workers in the city to have dignity on the job and the right to organize. “When this many people show up,” he added, “there’s hope for the working people of San Francisco.”

As marchers wound through the streets, they halted before several boycotted hotels, with an exceptionally long and spirited pause in front of the Grand Hyatt.

Local 2 President Mike Casey told the crowd at a final rally that employers’ proposals for two-tier health coverage and refusal to discuss card-check neutrality are designed to split younger workers from older workers, and union workers from nonunion workers.

“We will not be distracted from our demands for health care, pensions, a safe workload, health and safety, and the right to organize,” he vowed.

Across the bay, dozens of workers from Unite Here Local 2850 paid an early morning wake-up visit July 28 to the Doubletree Hotel on the Berkeley Marina. The union is protesting the new owners’ demand to put about 100 workers, including many with years of service, on probation for 90 days, and make them again file the I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification forms required by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Though Berkeley’s just-passed worker retention ordinance is “a big victory,” Local 2850 organizer Sonia Bustamante said, the buyer’s continued insistence on probation and new I-9s “is really threatening their jobs.”

The ordinance requires large employers on the Marina to keep workers for 90 days after buying a facility.

Negotiations, on hold for now, are slated to resume in October when the new owners take over.

“We want a fair contract, immigrant rights, job security and a fair workload,” said longtime housekeeping worker Carmelita Cotten as she took a break from chants that reverberated around the sprawling hotel. Like her San Francisco counterparts, Cotten called the present workload situation “terrible.”

“We are expected to clean 16 rooms a day,” she said. “Each bed uses three sheets, a comforter, a blanket and seven pillows, and the mattresses are very thick.”

She said the vacuum the workers use is “very heavy,” and hurts workers’ hands, arms and shoulders, while many workers have had to take medical leave and apply for workers’ compensation because of back injuries.

“Right now,” Cotten said, “management is ignoring us.”

But if the workers’ resounding wake-up calls are any indication, that won’t last for long.

Workers signing union cards at Yale-New Haven Hospital

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 05:48:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — “Nobody can take away your courage,” said Carmen Boudier, president of New England 1199 SEIU, to a large audience of workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital who came to sign up for the union last week. “My brothers and sisters, we are with you,” she said. “You can do it. Stand up and fight. The community is with you!”

For years hospital workers here have sought a union to achieve better working conditions and improve their standard of living. But hospital management bitterly opposed any efforts by the workers to organize.

Two months ago, management signed a “conduct agreement” with Local 1199 of the Service Employees Union, which they had been fighting tooth and nail. The agreement, which was part of a groundbreaking “community benefits agreement” between the hospital, the city, the union and Community Organized for Responsible Development (CORD), paved the way for collecting union authorization cards from the workers.

The agreement allows union organizers to have access to the hospital to speak to employees without the threat of arrest by hospital police. No longer can bosses have one-on-one meetings with employees. No longer can they tell workers to take their union buttons off.

Community groups have joined forces with the union to help sign up 1,800 workers, the number the union says is needed to file an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board in Hartford, the state capital. A neutral party would monitor the vote.

At the organizing meeting, Ray Milici, who has worked at the hospital for over 40 years, said, “In 1973 dietary workers at this hospital won a first-time ever union election. Since that time we have been the only unit in this hospital that is represented by the union.”

“We have been alone for too long,” he said. “We need to be bigger and much stronger.”

Laura Smith, president of Local 34 at Yale University, said: “Right now at Yale, hospital workers are treated differently than workers on the university side. We are going to change things at the hospital starting right now.

“One standard for all workers,” she said.

Minnie DeCosta, a hospital employee, explained why she wants a union. “Right now the health insurance is taking a big bite out of my paycheck,” she said, adding that she had to rely on HUSKY, the state-funded health insurance plan for her children.

Sammy Reyes, a diagnostic radiology associate, said, “The hospital moved me around to different locations to keep me from trying to organize my co-workers. But having a union means we will have a voice on our jobs.”

The organizing drive, which is now in its eighth year, was given a boost by the movement spearheaded by CORD, which formed in 2004 primarily to insure that local communities would benefit from development projects in the city.

Around that time the hospital, which is located in the Hill neighborhood, announced plans to build a $530 million state-of-the-art cancer center. CORD members canvassed over 800 residents in the area about their concerns, gathered their suggestions and held a convention to adopt proposals. In attendance were local and state politicians, clergy, unions and community and environmental groups.

Over the next year and a half, CORD-sponsored hearings and rallies put additional heat on the hospital, which ultimately signed a development agreement with the city reflecting many of the community’s proposals.

The agreement includes provisions for the hospital to provide $1.2 million for housing and economic development in the surrounding area; to contribute $100,000 a year to a youth program; to set up a citizens’ advisory committee on the hospital’s free care and debt collections practices; and to fund two outreach positions at the city’s Health Department, one for asthma and one for uninsured children.

The hospital has agreed to hire 100 residents yearly for five years and will help provide advance training for workers in surrounding neighborhoods. The agreement also addresses community environmental, traffic and parking concerns.

Meanwhile, the union organizing drive continues, spurred on by the partial victory.

Chicago to Wal-Mart: Pay a living wage

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 05:35:00 +0000

CHICAGO — A packed gallery erupted into jubilation as the City Council passed an ordinance July 26 making Chicago the largest city to set minimum wage and benefit standards for retail giants like Wal-Mart. The measure passed 35-14, despite furious opposition by Wal-Mart, a unified corporate community and Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Wal-Mart and Target threatened to freeze their business plans if the measure passed. They shamelessly bought off aldermen, religious leaders and the media. They tried to pit Chicago against the suburbs and especially to split the African American and poorest communities.

The victory resulted from a massive two-year campaign by a multiracial, grassroots coalition uniting the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL), Jobs with Justice, ACORN, many grassroots community organizations and religious leaders.

Supporters picketed, rallied, and swamped aldermen with thousands of phone calls and petitions. A boisterous rally of 500 people filled the council lobby before the vote with chants of “Hey, Daley, you know! Seven bucks is far too low!”

CFL President Dennis Gannon remarked, “Today’s vote sends a message that our elected officials and community members alike are not interested in the creation of low-paying jobs that fail to provide a living wage or adequate health care benefits for working families. The choice between no job and a low-paying job is a choice between bad and worse.”

Big business nationally is pressing Daley to veto the ordinance. The big-box retailers vowed to get it overruled in court. But Alderman Joe Moore, a principal sponsor, told the World supporters anticipated a court challenge but were confident the measure would stand. Meanwhile his office has been inundated by calls from others across the country seeking to emulate the victory.

The ordinance mandates a starting wage of $9.25 in 2007 in retailers with stores of 90,000 square feet or greater with at least $1 billion in annual sales. By 2010, that wage will increase to $10 an hour with automatic cost of living increases thereafter. Three dollars an hour must be devoted to health care. The ordinance covers 34 currently operating stores. For three hours the audience listened with rapt attention as aldermen blasted the greed of Wal-Mart and other giant corporations. They cheered wildly when a point was scored and hooted when an alderman tried to justify a “no” vote. It was an unprecedented debate in the council.

In introducing the ordinance Moore invoked President Franklin Roosevelt, who declared in signing the Fair Labor Standards Act 68 years ago, “No business that depends on paying less than a living wage has the right to exist.”

Moore said, “The same old tired arguments are being waged against a minimum wage — that it would cost jobs, drive business away and destroy the economy. They were wrong then and they are wrong now.”

“Wal-Mart made $11.2 billion in profits last year, second only to Exxon,” he said. “Our job is not to safeguard the profits of the world’s largest corporations. It is to protect the well-being of our constituents.”

Opposing aldermen warned big retailers would abandon the city, tax revenues would be lost, their constituents were desperate for jobs at low wages, supporters were racists and the ordinance was unconstitutional.

To claim their constituents opposed the measure, they could only cite postcards and “robo-calls” paid for by Wal-Mart. In fact the ordinance was very popular, including among African Americans and Latinos, where polls showed 90 percent supporting the living wage law.

At one point Ald. Bernard Stone suggested Moore was really Robin Hood and “wants to steal from the rich and give to the poor.” The audience erupted.

Later Ald. Billy Ocasio remarked, “People are arguing for businesses that have the largest profits take from the people who have the least. I would happily become one of Robin Hood’s merry men.” The audience stood and cheered again.

“For Wal-Mart to grow they have to enter the urban market. They picked the time and place for this battle,” said African American Ald. Freddrenna Lyle, also a principal sponsor, alluding to Wal-Mart’s bluff to abandon the city if the ordinance passed.

“Is our opposition racist? It’s racist that they trotted out African American ministers to castigate, threaten and berate the African American elected officials,” she said. A majority of African American aldermen supported the ordinance.

Opponents had also charged organized labor with racism because it would deny jobs to the African American community. Lyle acknowledged influences of racism in the building trades. Yes, she said, “every institution has problems. But the face of commerce is white.”

To the charge that the aldermen were stooges of the unions, Lyle declared, “Maybe those of us who are voting for the ordinance are stooges of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who died in Memphis fighting for a living wage for sanitation workers.

“Without organized labor, there would be no pension plans and health benefits. No other single institution has had that empowering impact on the African American community,” she said to cheers.

Reflecting on the victory, James Thindwa, director of Chicago Jobs with Justice, told the World, “Wal-Mart opposed this measure not because they can’t afford it. They are afraid this will be repeated across the country. The Wal-Mart model predicated on low wages will collapse. We have drawn a red line around our values — beginning with dignity for workers.”