People Before Profit blog

Ohio unionists rev up to defeat Bush

Fri, 18 Jun 2004 05:16:00 +0000

CLEVELAND – In this city’s “labor walk,” 326 union members from 20 unions went door to door, talking to other union members in their homes June 12. It was a great success. They were warmly greeted and invited into hundreds of homes to talk about issues and candidates in the 2004 elections.

Laborer’s International President Terence O’Sullivan turned the pre-walk orientation meeting into a rally for “Bush out the door in 2004.” His rip-roaring speech demanded the election of John Kerry to get rid of what he called the worst president in the country’s history. O’Sullivan got a standing ovation from the union crowd when he demanded the troops be brought home from Iraq now

Records of the results of each home visit go into a central database. Follow-up contact will take place, including get-out-the-vote activity just before the election.

The walkers went out in teams of two. Many said they had never done anything like this and were very enthusiastic about the warm reception they got knocking on doors of other union members.

These visits will reverberate throughout union families, job sites, and communities, organizers said, greatly magnifying the impact of the campaign beyond the actual contacts being made.

The Cleveland walks will continue until the last week in June, with special emphasis on the weekends of June 19-20 and June 26-27.

On June 19 the campaign for contacting union families in their homes will expand to cover the entire state of Ohio. Events that day include a speech by Steelworkers President Leo Girard in Canton-Massilon.

The state has been divided up into zones with full-time AFL-CIO staff assigned to each zone. County AFL-CIO federations are working as mobilizing centers along with the staff assigned to each area. International presidents will be coming to the largest cities for rallies, speaking to the volunteers. The experience gained in the June walks will be studied, and necessary adjustments will be made. The walks will continue into August, September, and October.

The AFL-CIO’s membership mobilization for political action in the 2004 election campaign is revitalizing the Ohio labor movement and will have repercussions far beyond the ranks of labor. Allies and friends are coming forward to assist in these walks. The enthusiasm gained will assist in bringing together labor and the great number of allied and community groups involved in the campaign for “Bush out the door in 2004.”

The weekend walks are part of a massive Labor 2004 get-out-the-vote effort in which union volunteers will talk with 1 million union members in June, according to the AFL-CIO. With union households expected to account for one of every four votes in the November election, the federation has launched the largest and earliest-ever multistate mobilization of working Americans. Thousands of union members have signed up for more than 100 weekend precinct walks this month in 72 cities and 16 states.

The author can be reached at wallyk@ncweb.com.

Justice bus rolls through Houston

Fri, 18 Jun 2004 04:11:00 +0000

HOUSTON – The Harris County AFL-CIO Sixth Annual Justice Bus visited seven employers here on June 8. The purpose was to cite them for their good or bad treatment of workers and whether they allowed employees to form unions and bargain. About 50 activists and reporters participated in spite of stormy weather, flooding, and torrential rain. The Justice Bus presented “No Justice Here” awards to errant employers and “Justice Here” awards to employers who respect workers and their unions.

The first stop was the Harris County Civil Justice Center in downtown Houston where they visited a contractor company, Design Electric, and asked them to recognize the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on the basis of “card check.” One worker noted the irony of awarding a contract to construct a “justice center” to an outfit that refuses to treat workers justly. It has been alleged that Design Electric has not been paying the prevailing wage to workers and is currently under investigation by Harris County. Design Electric received a “No Justice Here” award.

Another stop was at Markman Brothers Investments, where another “No Justice Here” award was presented. Markman Brothers Investments has been cited by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) for “selling” homes to unsuspecting buyers through a “contract for deed” agreement. These agreements are written so that low-income buyers are unable to fulfill their contracts and eventually are forced out without achieving home ownership. These buyers are oftentimes Spanish-speaking immigrants unable to read contracts written in English. The houses are then sold to new victims in a never-ending cycle.

Two employers received “Justice Here” awards for their recognition of workers and their rights to form unions. These included Shell-Deer Park Chemical Plant and Shell Refinery, and Hilton Americas Hotel. These employers demonstrated the desire to work together with unions to solve problems, and respect workers’ choices, according to the Justice Bus organizers.

The bus was an excellent example of cross-union solidarity, with a number of unions and organizations participating, including IBEW, Sheet Metal Workers, ACORN, Carpenters Union, UNITE, Paper Allied-Industrial Chemical & Energy Workers, and Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Labor fightback sweeps NYC

Fri, 18 Jun 2004 02:28:00 +0000

NEW YORK – A four-day wave of labor fightback swept this city June 7-10, winning victories for thousands of health care workers and energizing other unions locked in battles with the city administration. Workers from American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) District Council 1707, Service Employees (SEIU) Local 1199, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the Uniformed Firefighters Association, and the police union poured into the streets by the tens of thousands in some of the largest public demonstrations seen in years.

The actions started June 7 with a midday rally by more than 12,000 workers represented by 1199. They were there on behalf of 25,000 home health aides who were staging a three-day strike against 12 agencies, demanding a pay raise from their current $7 dollars an hour to $10.

“The cost of living in this city is crazy,” said Vera Angeles. “Do you know what $280 a week before taxes buys you? Almost nothing – and that’s if you’re lucky enough to work full time. We don’t all, always. I can’t do it anymore, none of us can.”

The rent for the one-bedroom apartment Angeles shares with two roommates is $800, more than her entire after-tax monthly earnings.

The agencies that employ the aides receive $17 dollars per hour per aide from state Medicare funds. The union argued that those who actually do the work should be given a larger portion of that sum. They also vowed to work with the agencies to demand that the state raise, or at least not lower, the amount allotted per worker.

The effect of the strike was almost immediate. Dennis Rivera, head of the local, announced from the rally’s stage that a deal had been reached with Partners in Care, which employs 4,000 of the workers. Partners had agreed to the raise. By the end of the day, a total of four health care agencies agreed to the demands.

On the second day of the strike, 12,000 workers were told to return to work, victorious. The strike ended as scheduled on the third day. But 1199 officials and workers vowed to keep up pressure on the seven agencies that did not sign agreements, saying the 10,000 workers in those agencies would strike again if demands were not met. Keith Joseph, SEIU 1199 Vice President for Home Care, told the World another tentative agreement was reached June 15. It is essentially the same as the other agreements, and affects 1,200 workers at the All Metro Health Care Agency.

On June 8 the unions representing the city’s teachers, firefighters and police united in an unprecedented City Hall rally. The UFT said the protest was one of the largest municipal labor demonstrations in city history, with over 60,000 coming out.

Rally speakers, who included UFT President Randi Weingarten and the leaders of the other unions, politicians and celebrities, pointed out that the city had a $1.5-billion budget surplus this year. Despite this, all three groups have been working without a contract for more than a year – the teachers since May 31, 2003, the police since July 31, 2002, and the firefighters since May 31, 2002.

Steve Cassidy of the firefighters’ union pointed out the hypocrisy of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who sings the praises of the city’s firefighters when talking about the 9/11 tragedy, but refuses to budge when it comes to dollars and cents.

“We have been working more than two years without a contract. We have been working more than three years without a raise,” said Cassidy. “Acknowledge what we do. Pay us a living wage!”

The same week, members of AFSCME District Council 1707 Local 205, representing 7,000 child care workers, and the Council of Supervisors and Administrators held a planned three-day strike. Local 205 members work in 346 publicly funded day care centers and meet the same qualifications as public school teachers. However, they have not had a raise in four years and receive between $5,000 and $10,000 less than teachers in their starting pay. They are seeking the same pay raises that other city workers received in 2001.

Annabel Palma, a City Council member from the Bronx, told the World that, although many people in her district – one of the city’s poorest – would be inconvenienced by the strike, they are working people too and would support the strikers.

Commenting on the week’s labor actions, Weingarten told The New York Times, “The city has a big budget surplus, the national economy is improving, and that motivates people who feel left behind to be militant and more active.”

The author can be reached at dmargolis@cpusa.org.

Tucson sanitation workers: Dont privatize our city jobs!

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 03:35:00 +0000

TUCSON, Ariz. – Sanitation workers here are fighting back against the threat of privatization. A crowd of 100 rallied May 24 at City Hall to protest the proposal by Republican City Council member Fred Ronstadt to contract out the city’s garbage pickup, currently performed by public employees of the Environmental Services Department, members of AFSCME Local 449. If garbage pickup is privatized, union jobs would also be lost in the city’s auto shop and fleet services departments.

Sanitation workers and their supporters, who included members of the IUE-CWA, the Steelworkers Union, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the AFL-CIO, Jobs with Justice, AFSCME Local 3204, and every division of AFSCME Local 449, listened attentively to a round of speakers who relayed messages of support from community groups and other unions and exhorted them to keep up “the union fight.” This solidarity of the workers and the unions and the community “is where the strength is,” said one speaker.

The crowd entered City Hall en masse to wait their turn at the podium during Call to the Audience. First to speak was Linda Bohlke, field representative for AFSCME Council 97. Bohlke pointed out the City Council would never consider contracting out police and firefighting services because the council recognizes them for the essential service that they are. Garbage collection is just as essential and should also never be contracted out, Bohlke asserted.

Bohlke’s speech was met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation not only from the contingent from the rally, but also from audience members who were there on an unrelated issue.

Bohlke also pointed out that the city’s experience with privatization has not been a happy one. After contracting out recycling services to Waste Management, Inc., a company well known for its ignominious history of environmental misdeeds, she said, the city of Tucson brought recycling back in-house in 2002 at a savings of $8.5 million.

The city has told the union that they do not have the money to keep garbage collection in-house or to give workers raises, so the union is sponsoring a bake sale to raise money for the city’s garbage collection at the next rally on June 7 at the Tucson Convention Center.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

CAFTA disaster opposed

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 03:30:00 +0000

DALLAS – North Texans were among the many Americans worried when the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was signed May 28 by the foreign ministers of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick. Spokespersons for organized labor, faith-based organizations, and immigrants-rights groups came together against CAFTA at the Dallas Peace Center on June 2. They explained to reporters that CAFTA represented a bad deal for workers on both sides of the Rio Grande River. They also began an outline of how they would fight to stop Congress from approving the pact.

Dr. Ron Wilhelm, originator of the Interfaith Communities for Economic Justice, explained the genesis of his group at the press conference and earlier that morning on the “Workers’ Beat” program on KNON radio. They were formed after religious leaders from Dallas took a tour of El Salvador last summer. They came back fully convinced that the ordinary people of Central America wanted them to oppose any further international trade agreements that favor big corporations over the rights of people. Specifically, they brought back from Central America a moral mandate to oppose CAFTA.

Wilhelm was joined in solidarity at the Peace Center by the main officer of the Dallas AFL-CIO and leaders of United Voices for Immigrants. All of the speakers agreed that “CAFTA would be a disastah” for working people in the United States and in Central America.

Margarita Alvarez, a survivor of earlier civil war in her native Guatemala, predicted that CAFTA would cause massacres to resume in her homeland as people defended “what little they have” against greedy transnational corporations.

The group outlined plans to visit area congresspersons. They said they would set up a speakers’ bureau to provide orators and audiovisual materials to all interested groups. Dr. Joerg Rieger of Southern Methodist University said that he was taking a delegation of students that same day to Brazil. They will investigate first-hand the effects of international trade agreements.

The author can be reached at flittle7@yahoo.com.

Reinvest in America: Dump Bush in 2004

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 02:56:00 +0000

News Analysis

PITTSBURGH – Revivals uplift the heart and soberly prepare the head for Monday morning. Hundreds of coal miners, steelworkers, public employees, auto workers, teachers, neighborhood leaders and families filled the United Steelworkers of America union square June 6 for a strong dose of Rev. Jesse Jackson hope, an electric charge of union leader honesty, and a grassroots steely determination to rebuild this crumbling, bankrupt region, once the industrial heartland. The task, all agreed, is voter registration, education, unity and organization to wake up Nov. 3 to a Bush-free country.

Pittsburgh was the proper launching pad for the Rev. Jackson’s four-day caravan through Appalachia. In 2003, over 4,600 Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) families lost their homes and the city is broke. Besides Pennsylvania, the caravan also traveled through Ohio and West Virginia.

National labor leaders, who were on the bus with Jackson, know the jobs and health care crisis up close and personal. Calling for unity between industrial and public sector workers, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) President Gerald McEntee thundered against the Bush administration’s hypocrisy of rebuilding Iraq while the bridges, roads and schools in greater Pittsburgh collapse and the people struggle with sickening poverty. “It’s about boots on the ground,” said McEntee, fists jabbing the air. “We work together, we’ll send Bush back to Crawford.”

Bricklayers Union President John Flynn, Food and Commercial Workers Vice President Willie Baker and Coalition of Black Trade Unionists President and AFSCME Vice President Bill Lucy clarified the main campaign issues: health care, jobs and electing a government that supports our people, not corporations.

Mine workers, whose dangerous and sophisticated labor underground keeps the lights on in 60 percent of American households, do not elect union presidents who lie. When rank-and-file miners cheered, nodded and applauded in agreement with their union president, Cecil Roberts, a Vietnam veteran, for exposing Bush and his administration as “chicken hawks,” it must be true. All workers endorsed Roberts’ honest plea to start marching and keep marching until Election Day, Nov. 2, for health care, jobs and rebuilding America.

Jackson touched the minds and souls of workers when he rose to call for peace in Iraq and at home. Using the “weapons of mass deception,” said a somber Jackson, Bush took the U.S. into a “misguided war of choice.” Over 800 Americans have died, he reminded the audience, and countless Iraqis. “We have a moral obligation. Iraqis are God’s children too. We have a moral obligation to stop the killing. Homeland security begins at home.” Homeland security means subsidizing steel, investing in U.S.-based clean energy and aerospace, he said. “When you invest in America, you get security and workers.”

Workers and their families left the rally smiling, laughing and optimistic. Jean Tripp, an electronics worker for 23 years at General Motors Delphi division, was also getting on a bus. She retired and is on her way to Kenyon College for a union-sponsored training session to register and mobilize voters. “It’s tough out there and we know it,” she told the World. “But we have to come together and hear it as a group, as one. I decided to begin my retirement by going to a training to give everyone a voice in November, not just the corporations.”

The author can be reached at dwinebr696@aol.com.

Workers confront Visteon violence

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 02:31:00 +0000

BEDFORD, Ind. – To workers on the mass picket line at the Visteon auto parts plant here, it seems like the company, a Ford spin-off, has planned long and hard to systematically slash their wages and wipe out their jobs.

“Their goal is to get all of us out of that plant and get people starting at $7 an hour, topping at $10, and never, never go higher and no medical,” said Lori Staley, an assembler of fuel system components.

Part of the plan emerged the first night of the walkout, May 30, when Visteon’s managers sicced armed guards from Huffmaster Crisis Service, a Michigan union-busting firm, on the peaceful pickets. Earl Wilson, president of IUE/CWA Local 84907, calls them thugs. “They came with 9 mm pistols, tazers and blackjacks,” he told the World.

Lora Gilbert, who was hired “right out of high school” to build fuel pumps 10 years ago, said she had tire marks on her arm but escaped serious injury by jumping on the hood of a Huffmaster van when its driver gunned it through the picket line, sending 12 workers to the hospital. “They beat us with our picket signs,” Gilbert continued, “and pulled one girl’s hair. One threw hot coffee in my face.”

Larry Gulliatt, an inspector of components and gauges, held on protectively to the local’s out-sized American flag as he picked up the story: “The thugs wrenched the flag from one of the women and dislocated her shoulder. They threw the flag on the ground and stomped on it.” The guards slung their leather belts, and “nearly took one fellow’s ear off” with the buckle, according to Gulliatt. The day after the melee, state police escorted a caravan of six busloads of strikebreakers through the union’s line.

Last month, in the midst of contract negotiations, management announced the elimination of 600 of the plant’s 1,050 jobs. Plant shutdowns and layoffs have been rampant in the last decade in this rural South Central Indiana region. RCA and Kimball Electronics have left the area in recent years.

“We’ve seen so many other people take cuts with the promise of their plants staying,” said David Hackney, who was laid off from two other manufacturing jobs before coming to Visteon. “All you do with concessions is finance the company’s move,” he said.

The impending layoffs cast a pall over contract negotiations. “Everything in that contract was take, take, cut, cut,” said Lori Staley, 30, speaking of the company proposal that led to the strike. Workers would have seen their wages slashed 30 percent, and a permanent second tier introduced.

But for these workers – most who can name more relatives, from spouses to second cousins, in the plant than you can count on the fingers of both hands – the final straw was the company’s attack on the retiree medical plan.

“We were trying to protect our grandparents,” said Annie Sowders. “We said we’d give up our wages if they’d leave the retirees alone.” But Visteon negotiators insisted that the union workers agree to retiree “cost sharing” of medical premiums with no cap on what the pensioners could be required to pay.

Solidarity for the workers in this small town is strong. Nearly every passing vehicle honks and waves at the strikers, who keep up a 50-strong presence round the clock since a local judge refused the company’s request for an injunction limiting pickets. They beep lightly, hoping to avoid $80 tickets that have been issued by Bedford police for “laying on the horn.”

Union steelworkers, electrical workers and miners have joined the picket line, and hundreds of UAW workers at a GM plant took a collection and filled the main street in front of the plant in a solidarity march June 3.

One part of the company’s diabolical plan does not appear to be bearing fruit. Visteon made sure that the security personnel and strikebreakers brought in to this rural, predominantly white community are African American, no doubt to divert the workers’ attention from the real perpetrators of the job- and wage-cutting. “This is typical tactics,” said Bill Blackwell, chief shop steward on the night shift.

But the workers weren’t buying it. “Visteon wants to start a racial war,” said Lora Gilbert, saying the company deliberately brought in African Americans to break the strike. But, she pointed out, one of those beaten by the thugs was a Black union member. While most of the Hoffmaster guards are Black, “the one who tells them what to do is white. The night they hit me with the van, it was him I heard tell the driver ‘gun it.’”

Local 907 President Earl Wilson told the World, “We have members who are Black, Hispanic, and Indian, and we’re all together in this.”

The workers on the line express determination to stay in the battle “for the duration.” And Annie Sowders says matter-of-factly, “I’ve traded my Ford for a Dodge.”

The author can be reached at rwood@pww.org.

CPUSA maps work among Mexican Americans

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 03:41:00 +0000

TUCSON, Ariz. – Communist Party leaders and activists met here to discuss plans to bring out the broadest possible Mexican American and Latino vote to defeat the ultra right in the November elections and to strengthen the CPUSA’s work among this section of the population. The participants at the meeting, held in the Salt of the Earth Labor College on May 15-16, came chiefly from the Southwest and the West Coast.

Lorenzo Torrez, chair of the Party’s Mexican American Equality Commission, reviewed the Commission’s work in the recent period. He proposed the organizing of a left-center Latino coalition to mobilize the progressive sentiments of U.S. Latinos.

Rosalío Muñoz, CPUSA organizer in Southern California, reported on Latinos and the elections. He noted that the presidential race will be decided in key “battleground states.” A number of these, such as Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, are states where Mexican Americans are concentrated, he said.

Muñoz proposed that the CPUSA put out literature in both Spanish and English explaining what is at stake for Latinos in the upcoming elections.

José A. Cruz, editor of Nuestro Mundo, the Spanish-language section of the People’s Weekly World, discussed ways of improving the paper’s coverage of critical issues in the Mexican American and Latino communities.

On Saturday evening, meeting participants were joined by local activists from the Latino, labor, peace and justice movements to celebrate Torrez’ birthday and his decades of activities in progressive politics.

Black unionists sign up new voters

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 03:38:00 +0000

ATLANTA – Linda Fields is an organizer with 1199 Health Care workers in Philadelphia. She was one of the delegates at the Atlanta convention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists who went out to register new voters May 29 during the meeting’s Friday morning session. At the Town Hall meeting that evening, Fields moved the whole convention by speaking about her experience.

An elderly woman was nervous about people coming to her door, Fields said, so “I started out talking to her about flowers.” Eventually the woman expressed frustration at the lack of attention to the problems of her neighborhood. She questioned what good voting would do. Fields demanded that the convention answer that woman’s question. “CBTU is a powerful organization,” Fields said. “We can make sure that someone in government calls that lady and helps her.”

Fields told the World that when she registers someone to vote, she doesn’t see it as putting a new name on a voters list. “For me it is a commitment to that person, to fight side-by-side with them, to educate them and to bring them into the struggles.” Fields gave another example. Friday morning she also registered two ex-felons. “They were afraid. They didn’t know that they had the right to vote. One had been off probation and out of prison for four years and didn’t know his rights,” she said. She told them that registering to vote was not enough. “Now you have to help me reach other ex-offenders who don’t know their rights,” Fields told the new voters.

Kenneth Diggs is the national field director for Voices for Working Families and one of the people who put the CBTU voter registration trip together. In summing up the experience, Diggs told the World, “Getting on the bus there was some grumbling about how long we’d be gone. How much of the convention would we miss? But when it was time to go, I had a hard time getting them back on the bus. They wanted to stay and do more.” Diggs agrees with Fields that voter registration is not enough in itself. He believes it has to be tied to local struggles and issues. “Issues drive people more than anything else,” he said.

The author can be reached at scott@rednet.org.

SEIU opens doors to individual members

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 03:36:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)–The Service Employees Union will start in June to recruit individuals who want to join the union but who don’t have a contract. The “Fight for the Future” campaign will “take the fight for our families’ economic future to the next level,” said President Andrew Stern in a “blog” on SEIU’s website in May.

“To have a real chance to win, SEIU must open its doors, change its rules and find ways to formally and officially link up with millions of you who are not SEIU members,” he explained. SEIU, the AFL-CIO’s largest union, had 1,387,500 members in 2003, the latest year available, AFL-CIO figures show. It gained 75,000 over the prior year and has led the federation in increasing its numbers over the last five years. Only the Teachers union had similar increases.

Stern calls the new drive “open sourcing” the union movement. The AFL-CIO’s drive for similar individual memberships has yet to produce any hard data.

Under the plan, new SEIU individual members would get a membership card and “opportunities to participate with like-minded people” in mobilizations and activism around issues such as workers’ rights, civil rights and justice on the job.

“Since you wouldn’t get all the benefits of being a full member of SEIU – having an 800-pound gorilla fight for you on the job, health benefits, etc. – you would only pay a nominal annual member fee” of $10-$25, Stern said.

Stern did not say how much of a role such new members would have in deciding union activities, though he pledged they “would have a chance to have a real say in the shape and direction” of the broader movement for worker justice.

He also posed questions for fellow bloggers on how to grow the SEIU through new memberships without “cannibalizing all the great groups already out there,” which share the union’s goals in separate fields.

Mayor goes after pensions Houston pension guarantees gone

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 03:29:00 +0000

HOUSTON – This city’s mayor, Bill White, hastily called a municipal election early in his term so as to hold a referendum on Proposition 1. Its passage allows the city to opt out of a state law protecting city employees’ pensions. According to the Houston Chronicle, White said he “needed the flexibility to reduce city employee retirement benefits because of a $2.7 billion pension benefit shortfall.”

Only 8.5 percent of the voters went to the polls on May 15 and approved Proposition 1 by 72 percent to 28 percent. The opposition, led by Harris County AFL-CIO, Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association and the Houston Federation of Teachers, was unable to sufficiently mobilize working people to vote against it.

Meanwhile, a slick campaign featuring television and newspaper ads and mass mailings, combined with Chronicle editorials promoting the mayor’s support of this reactionary proposition, mobilized right-wing voter turnout. Wealthy, conservative Republican voters turned out heavily to support their class interests.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Wal-Mart gets one foot in the door

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 03:21:00 +0000

CHICAGO – Ignoring hundreds of protesters, the City Council voted May 26 to allow one Wal-Mart store to be built here. However, a proposal for a second store did not get approval at this time.

The vote was preceded by more than a year of debate as to whether Wal-Mart would be beneficial or detrimental to the impoverished North Austin area on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Earlier this year, it was disclosed that Wal-Mart had already quietly gotten authorization to build a second store, in the area of an abandoned steel mill on the South side.

Opponents of the Wal-Mart project included the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881, which represents supermarket workers in the area. An anti-Wal-Mart coalition was built, including in its ranks the Chicago Federation of Labor, ACORN, Jobs with Justice, Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues, and many other groups.

Wal-Mart claimed that the two stores would bring jobs into economically depressed inner city neighborhoods. But a study carried out by the Center for Urban Economic Development of the University of Illinois in Chicago reveals that the West Side project would actually cost the area about 65 jobs. This is because the competition by Wal-Mart will cause the closing or retrenchment of other retail trade establishments in the area. Wal-Mart works its sales personnel at a 51 percent higher productivity rate, so workers laid off in other stores can be replaced by a smaller number of Wal-Mart employees. This study and the testimony of many other experts, including Wal-Mart employees, clearly illustrated the down side of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart opponents saturated the City Council and the press with information about Wal-Mart’s anti-labor policies, which cost the public money because employees are compensated so badly that they have to rely on public health and social services to survive.

Wal-Mart’s strategy, made possible by its deep pockets, was to inundate the area with misinformation. Wal-Mart contributed money to community organizations and bought ads in local media. The University of Illinois study was completely ignored by the Chicago area media, which simply parroted the line, over and over, that Wal-Mart would bring jobs. Both liberal and conservative columnists in the city’s press got into the act, ferociously attacking the UFCW and other Wal-Mart opponents. Right-wing columnists accused the anti-Wal-Mart forces of being opposed to free enterprise, while liberal commentators accused Wal-Mart opponents of racism for denying unemployed African American youth the opportunity to work at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart refused to sign an agreement with community and labor groups that would have committed it to hiring neighborhood people, including ex-convicts. Yet some of the commentators told the public that Wal-Mart had agreed to do these things.

In the end, the vote was 32 to 15 to approve the West Side project. However, the South side project failed to get the 26 votes needed to pass, and will be sent back to the City Council Zoning Committee.

Several of the aldermen who voted in favor of one or both projects denounced Wal-Mart’s labor practices but explained that they did not want to thwart the wishes of the two City Council members in whose wards the stores will be built. Unstated was the fear that these aldermen would later sabotage some of the pet projects of those who voted “no.” The fact that Mayor Richard Daley, whose brother does legal work for Wal-Mart, was pushing hard for the project makes it surprising that so many voted against it.

Wal-Mart says it will keep trying to get the South side store approved, and the anti-Wal-Mart coalition says it will try to stop it, as well as continuing efforts to unionize the giant chain.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Laundry corp. treats workers like dirt

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 03:04:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS, Mo. – Nearly 100 UNITE and Jobs with Justice members, as well as, youth and community activists rallied outside of the Angelica Corp. shareholders meeting here, May 25. At issue are Angelica’s repeated labor law and health and safety violations.

Nationwide UNITE has filed over 30 unfair labor practice charges against Angelica, the largest chain of hospital laundries in the nation, for threatening plant closures, withholding information, spying on workers and suspension or termination of pro-union workers. OSHA has also fined Angelica for not providing adequate hazardous equipment training. In two separate plants OSHA fined the company over $50,000 because of health and safety violations.

After the rally, the People’s Weekly World interviewed Miguel Flores, a former Angelica employee from Texas. Flores was fired for supporting the union.

“The UNITE campaign started on a Friday,” he told the World. “The following Monday they suspended me. And by that Friday I was fired.

“When the campaign started the company was in a frenzy,” Flores continued. “They began holding captive audience meetings and speaking out against the union. Then they began promising better benefits. They said ‘We can resolve our problems together. We don’t need a union.’”

Flores spoke up at a “captive audience” meeting. Later that day management asked him to sign a letter stating that he had “thrown a laundry basket down a ramp.” Flores refused and was then suspended for three days and fired when he returned.

He said, “As much as they focus on money and production, they should be focused on the workers! Our insurance is too expensive. We work 10-12 hours one day, and then, 2-3 hours the next, so they don’t have to pay us overtime. Single mothers can’t get time off to take care of their children. Angelica is extremely abusive to its workers,” Flores added.

Last year Angelica made $275 million in sales and CEO Steven O’Hara’s salary was $450,000, not including perks, bonuses and stock options.

While O’Hara makes around $250 an hour, the average Angelica worker makes between $6.50 and $9 an hour. Angelica is only “focused on production,” said Flores. “That is all they care about. ‘More! Faster and faster! Quantity not quality!’ They don’t value the work we do. It’s not right. They yell at us a lot. We feel humiliated and used. We know that Angelica makes a lot of money off of us.”

Safety is also a major concern for Angelica workers. “We handle extremely dirty linens,” Flores said. “We handle diaper cloths, linen with blood clots and needles.” Flores said he had to quickly sort through numerous 200-pound bags “straight from the hospitals. Many bags still had blood, guts, body fluids, and different blood-borne diseases. We could get hepatitis or HIV,” he said.

This process is called “soil sort,” Flores said. “It used to take 10 to 12 people to handle all the bags of linen. Now Angelica expects five to six people to do the job of 12.”

UNITE’s Angelica strategy includes three key components. First, UNITE is organizing to turn all 29 Angelica facilities into union shops. Currently about two-thirds of Angelica’s employees are union. Second, UNITE is stepping up pressure in its union shops – “making them hot” – activating members, signing petitions, calling OSHA, filing grievances. “We want Angelica to feel the heat,” the union said in a statement.

Third, UNITE is talking to Angelica’s corporate customers, explaining to them how this campaign and the treatment of workers affects them.

“I want O’Hara to know that we want dignity and respect. We want more benefits, better salaries, and workable schedules. We want Angelica to recognize seniority and to value its workers,” said Flores. “I want Angelica to think about what would happen if all the workers went out on strike.”

The author can be reached at tonypec@pww.org. UNITE organizer Sebrina Palmieri translated for this story.

Coalition of Black Trade Unionists: Mobilize the vote

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 02:12:00 +0000

Bush lies ‘coming and going,’ CBTU leader charges

ATLANTA – Energy and solidarity lit up the 33rd Annual Convention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU). Meeting here over the Memorial Day weekend, CBTU set a clear course to mobilize for the November elections and to end the George Bush presidency.

A huge banner hung across the stage in the Hyatt Regency Convention Center’s main ballroom boldly proclaimed, “On the road to the ballot box: Building a coalition for victory. Vote!”

CBTU President Bill Lucy, in his keynote speech, called Bush’s economic policies the worst for working people since the Great Depression. He traced the history of Republican trickle-down economic policies, including the assault on social programs and labor during the Nixon, Reagan and Senior Bush years. Calling George W. Bush the “Commander in Thief,” Lucy said the younger Bush’s policies are the most disastrous of all. He cited current attacks on Social Security, overtime pay, health care and public education, and the Bush administration’s drive to help corporations outsource jobs to low-wage countries.

Reminding the crowd that Herbert Hoover’s solution to the Depression of the 1920s and ‘30s was to have unemployed workers sell apples on street corners, Lucy said, “Our people do not intend to live in poverty in the midst of unchallenged wealth.” He noted that it is always the working class that rebuilds society and the nation’s wealth after corporate greed has ruined things.

Lucy used strong words about Bush’s war in Iraq. He charged that the Bush administration lied “coming and going” to push us into this war. Further, he said, Bush has “dragged the good name of our country through the mud overseas,” with his “Wyatt Earp policies.” To thunderous applause, Lucy said people are tired of the hypocrisy of what he called a “color coded” foreign policy that attacks and discriminates against countries populated by people of color.

Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), also gave a fiery speech on the convention’s opening day. Roberts denounced the Bush administration’s economic policies as the “greatest shift of Roberts denounced the Bush administration’s economic policies as the “greatest shift of wealth from workers and the poor to the rich and the corporations in history that hasn’t resulted in a revolution.” Laughing, he said, “I’m not advocating that now, but I may not be far from it the way things are going.”

Roberts, too, deplored the war in Iraq, calling it an elective war by George Bush, “not one we had to fight.”

“But who are the 19- and 20-year-olds who are in harm’s way?” Roberts asked. “It is the poor, the Black and Hispanic, forced into the military by a bad economy and lack of opportunity.”

The five-day convention was packed with workshops, mini-conferences, cultural events and stirring speakers. As is CBTU’s usual practice, one whole day was set aside for a National CBTU Women’s Conference, followed by an evening “town hall meeting,” open to the public. The women’s conference featured a distinguished panel in an interactive exchange on mobilization, issues and strategies in the November 2004 elections.

One of the most interesting convention innovations came on Friday morning, in an activity organized with Voices for Working Families, an election committee concentrating on working with labor to get out the vote in African American, Latino, and Asian American communities and among women. Teaming up with Voices, over 90 CBTU delegates took a bus to a local African American neighborhood and registered 111 new voters in just a couple of hours. The experience electrified the convention with its success and the possibilities it demonstrated.

The convention made time on several days for workshops dealing with a range of critical issues including racism, health care, public education, Social Security and labor law, and several on the nuts and bolts of election work.

The convention also passed a series of progressive resolutions on a broad range of social, political and economic issues. These included full support for the Conyers single-payer, universal health care bill (HR 676), opposition to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, and a call for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq.

In a rousing speech near the end of the convention on Sunday morning, Rev. Jesse Jackson captured the militancy and determination of the delegates when he called on CBTU to help lead labor to victory.

To ringing cheers Jackson declared, “We must be a minority with a majority vision.” He pointed to the example of Martin Luther King as a leader with a majority vision that transformed the country and the world.

The authors can be reached at pww@pww.org.click here for Spanish text