People Before Profit blog

Freedom ride seeks road to rights

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:57:00 +0000

OAKLAND PARK, Fla. – “Across America we’ll be getting on buses to dramatize the need for a road to citizenship for millions of America’s immigrant workers,” declared John Wilhelm, president of the 265,000-member Hotel and Restaurant Employees union (HERE). Wilhelm described the “Freedom Ride for Justice” last month to a kick-off rally of hundreds of Haitian, Dominican, Mexican and Central American immigrant workers and their families and supporters at an overflow church rally in this working-class neighborhood.

Wilhem declared, “No human being is illegal. The people who do the work that runs the country have to have the right to become citizens and vote.” Stating, “We believe in family values,” Wilhelm called for the “right to reunify families that have been divided by our laws.”

Freedom ride buses will leave in October from eight cities across the country, from Seattle to Miami, stopping for events in cities and towns along the way. After lobbying activities in Washington, D.C., the freedom rides will culminate in a mass rally in New York City.

The rally here was a tri-lingual event, so triple cheers rang out as Terry O’Sullivan, head of LIUNA, the Laborers’ Union, was translated into Creole and Spanish, vowing, “As we ride through the cities and towns of this country, we will make it known to the president and Congress, we will not continue to accept the immigration laws of this country.”

Newly organized LIUNA members, dressed in bright red shirts, made up an especially enthusiastic section of the audience. LIUNA has set up a community center north of Ft. Lauderdale, and in a nine-month-old campaign has already organized 17 percent of the market share in the concrete industry, which is almost entirely immigrant workers.

Rev. James Lawson, a veteran of the 1961 Freedom Rides, traveled from Los Angeles for the rally. He said that the point of the Freedom Ride 2003 is “to open up this country to immigrants in the same way the 1960s Freedom Riders opened the U.S. to integration of public facilities” for African Americans and led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Rev. Lawson reminded the crowd that Moses said you should treat the stranger and alien like you treat yourself, and that “Jesus says the laborer deserves his wages.”

Rev. Lawson added, “In non-violent struggle, there is massive power for ordinary people.” In Spanish and Creole, the crowd responded to that recognition of their power with shouts of “Si, se puede!” and “Oui nou kapab!”

Eliseo Medina, international executive vice president of SEIU, the Service Employees union, looked ahead to the 2004 election; “We need two things: a Congress to pass the bill and a president to sign it. So we need ‘hechos,’ actions. Part of our Freedom Ride will be to remind people we have power to vote.” Medina urged those who are permanent legal resident to submit their citizenship applications in order to vote in the 2004 election.

Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO and head of its immigration committee, led a delegation of national leaders of various unions from the national labor federation’s Executive Council meeting in Hollywood, Fla.

In addition to leaders from unions representing needletrades, farmworkers, ironworkers and many others, the group also included representatives from Students Against Sweatshops and National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and more.

As the crowd cleared out of the church to make way for that evening’s service, Florida State Sen. Tony Hill remarked, “I think the preacher might be a bit envious of the energy here.”

The author can be reached at rwood@pww.org

The Elaine Chao flap: what does it mean?

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 05:04:00 +0000

Opinion

When George Bush’s Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao insulted labor leaders at their Executive Council meeting on Feb. 26, it was an intentional act that signaled an all-out offensive against workers by the administration.

Previously, Bush had courted some labor leaders – especially the Teamsters, who responded by recommending Republican candidates in the past elections. The Bush anti-labor strategy, then, was “divide and conquer.” Now, it is “attack and destroy!”

Here is what happened with Chao, as recently recounted by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

He had met with Chao prior to her appearance at the Executive Council meeting. Sweeney alerted Chao to the fact that union people are concerned about the administration’s efforts to push revisions in labor/management reporting. Chao cited a local teacher’s union in New York as an example of corruption. Sweeney told her, “Elaine, if that’s the direction you’re going, everybody supports putting bad apples in jail, but you have the national union, the American Federation of Teachers, that never has these kinds of allegations.”

During the question and answer session afterward, several union leaders expressed disappointment with the administration’s push for reporting regulations that would consume huge amounts of union resourses in impossibly complex bookkeeping requirements.

After Machinists’ Union President Tom Buffenbarger expressed his opinion, Chao pulled out a list of Machinists’ locals that had experienced charges of corruption. She viciously attacked the entire union, even though the cases she cited were instances in which the union itself had ferreted out the problems and called for punishment of the officers involved.

In recounting the story, Sweeney said, “As far as I know, the Machinists are a union with the highest of integrity ... I’m sure every organization has some bad apples, but I don’t know of any in the Machinists’ union.”

He went on, “I have served on the AFL-CIO Executive Council for 22 years. I have met and worked with every Secretary of Labor over those 22 years ... I have never met a more anti-worker, anti-union Secretary of Labor than Elaine Chao.”

Sweeney summarized, “They clearly are trying to go after us in every way they can.”

The silver lining to the angry cloud of administration hostility toward labor is that high levels of unity are being created. Teamster President Jim Hoffa, who has been criticized in the labor movement for having supported Bush on more than one issue, was really angry after Chao’s performance at the Executive Council.

The Chao affair was only one in a string of new indications of top Republicans’ animosity toward working people. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) fronted a National Right to Work Foundation fund-raising letter accusing “Big Labor Bosses” of using national security worries “to grab more power.” He suggested that unionists were unpatriotic and would compromise national security. After the contents of the letter began to be known, the outcry was so irresistible that even DeLay renounced it!

In George Bush’s home state, the Texas Legislature distinguishes itself by its attacks against labor. First-term State Rep. William “Bill” Zedler (R-Arlington) filed House Bill 1550, which the Texas AFL-CIO described as “union-bashing, Paycheck Deception legislation.” The bill would require labor unions to obtain annual written permission, using language prescribed by the state, from every member to use dues for “political purposes.” It would proscribe not only electoral activity, but also issue advocacy, get-out-the-vote activities, publication of political views, and mere attendance at social or political events.

Union officers who did not comply with Zedler’s edict would face a stiff fine and up to 180 days in jail!

Texas AFL-CIO President Joe D. Gunn said, “This proposal would impose an ultra-expensive burden on unions to obtain written proof of what we already know from national polling: that the vast majority of union members approve of the political activity of their unions. This bill would muzzle organized labor for partisan political purposes. To the many other corporations and organizations who enter the political arena, I say this: ‘Today it’s us. Tomorrow it’s you!’”

Another Texas bill would specifically cripple the organizing efforts of the state’s educators by making it illegal for school employers to take union dues directly out of paychecks. A complete list of anti-union legislation currently being proposed in the Texas legislature would be too long for any publication.

State and local governments, by and large, are following the lead of the Bush administration and the anti-labor organizations that provide its ideology. The gloves are off. The mask is off!

Jim Lane is a World correspondent and labor activist from North Texas. He can be reached at pww@pww.org

UFW: No war on Iraq honors Chavez legacy

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 04:55:00 +0000

Cesar Chavez’s legacy is all about peace and non-violent action. If there was ever a time for Cesar’s legacy to come alive it is now. Basic principle demands that the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO, joins national and global efforts in opposing the Bush administration’s plans to mount a “preemptive” war in Iraq.

President Bush has not offered convincing evidence to the American people that war is needed because Iraq poses a real threat to our country. Yet such a use of U.S. military force would require thousands of young men and women, many of them people of color, to fight overseas in the name of democracy. President Bush’s war in Iraq would do lasting harm to our democracy here at home.

Congressional staff and think-tank experts estimate this war would cost as much a $200 billion, requiring reductions in public spending on job creation, health care, welfare, the environment and other vital government programs. Little or no U.S. funds would be available to aid cash-strapped state governments such as California, Arizona, Texas and Washington state that could soon slash health and welfare programs for poor and minority residents, including farm workers. White House officials say reductions are needed to place the federal budget “on a war footing.”

Increased military spending plus budget cuts would cause more despair for millions of impoverished working families, including farm workers, who are among the poorest and most abused workers in America. The latest U.S. Department of Labor figures show 90 percent of California farm workers earn less than $10,000 a year and 90 percent have no health coverage.

With $1.4 billion in federal funding needed to save the Los Angeles County health care system from collapse, the Bush administration wants to spend $200 billion on the war in Iraq – and $2 billion on just one B-2 bomber.

Arturo Rodriguez is the president of the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO, and issued this statement on behalf of the union earlier this year. Chavez founded the UFW in 1962. His work on behalf of peace, workers’, immigrant and civil rights is honored in many states on his birthday, March 31. For more information go to www.ufw.org

AFL-CIO renews health care campaign

Thu, 20 Mar 2003 09:42:00 +0000

After a long silence, the AFL-CIO has weighed in on the campaign for comprehensive health care reform. In their resolution, “Renewing the Drive for Comprehensive Health Care Reform,” the February meeting of the AFL-CIO executive council said, “Now, even more than in the past, the AFL-CIO believes strongly that universal coverage is the best and ultimately only way to achieve the goal of extending affordable, high quality health care to all Americans.”

The AFL-CIO resolution made it clear that the federation is tired of the accusation that it is some kind of “special interest” with no interest in getting everyone in our country the health benefits enjoyed by union members and many other workers. Clearly, unions prefer to maintain their benefits. But that, as the recent strike against General Electric showed, is becoming more and more difficult as employers attempt to pass on increased costs. As a matter of fact, health care is fast becoming the top issue in collective bargaining.

The executive organization cited the groundswell of activity by various state labor councils seeking to find solutions to the crisis in health care. Wisconsin and California are two examples of state labor councils seeking state action to get health care for everyone in that state, but others are contemplating similar action. The issue is becoming, should labor expend its political strength and energy on state governments or should the focus be on Congress? The Exec. Council made it clear that many actions will be necessary to get health care to be a focus of the year 2004 elections.

With almost every state government facing skyrocketing budget deficits, it doesn’t make much sense trying to get governors to initiate a new health legislative program when they should be trying to maintain the current level of health and other social programs.

It is a time honored tradition in state legislatures to recognize that state government is not capable of protecting its people with universal health coverage’s and other social problems due to financial and other constraints. That is why they, in the past and now, should contemplate enacting legislation memorializing the national Congress to pass universal health coverage. Once enacted, legislative trips to Washington, D.C., backing up these actions, would make sense.

Since the failure to enact national health legislation in 1994, the Democratic Party, lead by the right of center Democratic Leadership Council, and the AFL-CIO agreed to keep health policy issues off their agendas.

This was a terrible mistake since health care was and remains high on the agenda of all people in the USA. This new direction of the AFL-CIO on health policy is part of the prescription for throwing out the Republicans from Congress and the White House and in health care a matter of right rather than a privilege.

But, the principled new development within the labor movement is, as the resolution says, making health care an item that all candidates seeking election in 2004 must address: “As much as anything else,” the resolutions says, “we need to turn the 2004 elections into a referendum on whether all Americans should finally be able to afford high-quality health care with their right to choose their own doctor.”

As part of that campaign, the council said it will schedule three regional meetings this spring and summer to “explore further the crisis in health care bargaining ... and to assist unions in health care bargaining and in broader public policy work.’” The AFL-CIO expects health insurance to be a critical issue as unions representing more than 600,000 workers head into contract talks this year.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Actors Guild warns against blacklisting

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 06:31:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES (AP) – The entertainment industry must not blacklist people who speak out against war with Iraq, the Screen Actors Guild said last week.

“Some have recently suggested that well-known individuals who express ‘unacceptable’ views should be punished by losing their right to work,” the union said in a statement posted Monday on its web site.

“Even a hint of the blacklist must never again be tolerated in this nation,” the statement added.

The reference was to the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s, when actors and writers suspected of harboring pro-Communist sentiments were barred from working.

“During this shameful period, our own industry prostrated itself before smear campaigns and witch hunters rather than standing on the principles articulated in the nation’s fundamental documents,” the statement said.

Martin Sheen recently said top executives at NBC had “let it be known they’re very uncomfortable” with his outspoken opposition to war with Iraq.

Sheen, who plays the president on the “The West Wing,” said the network fears his position will hurt the show. An NBC spokeswoman responded that network executives have expressed no such concerns.

In a lawsuit filed last month, actor Sean Penn accused producer Steve Bing of reneging on an agreement to pay him $10 million to star in a proposed movie called Why Men Shouldn’t Marry after Penn said he was against war with Iraq. Bing denied the allegation in a countersuit, saying Penn pulled out of the project.

There is no good news

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 05:12:00 +0000

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ unemployment report for February reminds one of the nightly radio broadcast by the London correspondent of CBS News in the early days of World War II. “There is no good news, tonight,” he would intone, as German armies roared from victory to victory on both the Western and Eastern fronts.

And so it is with the job market in February where more than 300,000 jobs disappeared and the official unemployment rate climbed to 5.8 percent, one tenth of a percent higher than in January. The BLS said another 4.8 million workers were forced to work part time because full-time jobs were unavailable, and 1.6 million jobless workers had given up the search for non-existent jobs and were no longer counted in the labor force.

Nor was there good news in any of the numbers:

* Manufacturing industries shed another 58,000 jobs, bringing the total number of workers employed in the nation’s factories to fewer than 11 million, the lowest level since February 1946.

* Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose sharply in February.

* Both Ford and General Motors plan major production cuts in the second quarter of 2003.

* The year-over-year comparison of job change in private payrolls has been negative for 20 straight months, the longest continuous decline since immediately after World War II.

* According to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, only 8 percent of small businesses said they are planning to expand in 2003. Just 19 percent said they had one or more jobs open, down from 31 percent in January 2001.

* More than one-fifth (22.1 percent) of jobless workers have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, a percentage not reached since 1992.

* Although more than 4.5 million workers collected $12 billion in benefits under the Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC) program, half of them were unable to find a job before exhausting ALL their unemployment benefits.

* President Bush refused to provide any money to extend the TEUC program in his 2004 budget. Unless Congress acts, the program will expire in May.

The jobless rates for the major worker groups in February were: adult men 5.3 percent, down 0.2 percent; adult women 5.0 percent, up 0.3 percent; teenagers 17.1 percent, up 0.3 percent; and for whites 5.0 percent, down 0.1 percent. Unemployment among African Americans rose by 0.3 percent and now stands at 10.5 percent while unemployment among Latinos declined by 0.1 percent to a still-high 7.7 percent.

Although that may have broken the string of bad news, other reports show that productivity grew by 4.8 percent in 2002, thus negating any need to hire new workers in order to increase production. It also helps explain why unemployment fluctuated in the 5.6 to 6.0 percent range throughout 2002 and will probably stay that way well into 2003.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, points to the loss of more than 300,000 jobs in February and the 0.1 percent increase in unemployment as indicators that the job situation may worsen in the coming months.

According to Baker the best way to understand the February decline in employment is to view the gain of 185,000 jobs reported for January as an anomaly. “The rate of job loss then averages some 90,000 over the last four months,” he says, “a pace of job loss that would typically be associated with a rise of 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points in the unemployment rate.”

Baker says the fact the unemployment rate has remained unchanged since October, while the labor force participation rate has fallen by 0.3 percentage points, “is likely to be reflected in higher unemployment rates in the spring.”

It is already being reflected in the way people see the economy. In February, 11 percent of people said jobs were plentiful, while 59 percent said they were not and 30 percent said they were hard to get

These are the bleakest assessments since December 1993 and a sharp decline since President Bush took office two years ago. Then, 49 percent of Americans viewed jobs as plentiful, while 38 percent said they were not plentiful and only 13 percent said they were hard to get.

The BLS will release its next unemployment report on April 4.

The author can be reached at fgab708@aol.com

State employees win union rights

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 04:59:00 +0000

ALBUQUERQUE – After 10 years of bitter struggle, New Mexico state employees finally won back their collective bargaining rights when Governor Bill Richardson signed into law these rights at a Round House Ceremony, March 7.

Present at the ceremony were not only prominent pro-labor legislative leaders, but also leaders of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Teachers’ unions and the Communication Workers. Gerald McEntee, president of AFSCME, thanked Richardson for his support and willingness to have New Mexico labor represented at the Governor’s table. “This is a great day not only for New Mexico labor but for all the citizens of this state,” McEntee said.

Some of the major features of this bill are: binding arbitration; a no-strike clause; no sunset provisions, meaning the law stays in effect until it is legislatively repealed; a 40 percent collective bargaining election turnout threshold for unit elections; and an opportunity for all state employees to be organized into a union.

As a direct consequence of the passage of this law, Council 18, AFSCME, is engaging in a major organizing drive, hoping to sign up at least 51 percent of the state employees by mid -summer.

Parallel to the enactment of this collective bargaining law will be a major education reform package enactment that will provide a 6 percent raise in wages for all classroom teachers in the state and a 3 percent raise in wages for all educational support personnel.

In addition, the state legislature passed a public campaign financing law for candidates for the Public Regulatory Commission. It is also expected to pass and enact an extension of unemployment insurance, that will make it possible for persons who have part time jobs, or have to leave work due family circumstances, to collect insurance.

Despite attempts for the last 10 years, bills for New Mexico Universal Health Care have not passed. Sponsors of these measures hope that in the next legislative session, by a united effort of both labor and community forces, this measure will also be enacted.

The author can be reached at shawemil@msn.com

WOMENS HISTORY MONTH: I helped organize the CIO

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 04:54:00 +0000

In the summer of 1937, the labor movement was exploding with the energy of a prairie fire. Millions of workers were flocking into the new CIO and millions more wanted in. I was not quite 19 but I answered the call to help organize the laundry workers of New York City. In two months, our staff of 30, half of us Communists, organized 20,000 workers. In a way, it was easy although there were hundreds of laundries, scattered around the five boroughs. All we organizers had to do was run as fast as we could from shop to shop (none of us had cars), answer the basic questions and write out the union cards as fast as our pens could move. Workers wanted a union and national law protected their right to join a union. Miserable wages, long hours, heavy work and racism had ground the laundry workers down. But now they had hope because the CIO was organizing.

I did not go back to school when the summer ended. The union work was too important and too exciting. But then the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union took over our United Laundry Workers Industrial Union and raised my pay from $10 a week as a volunteer organizer to $20 a week. I bought my first suit! One month later, I was laid off and went out to work in a laundry. New workers then had a two-week trial period in which the boss could fire you without cause. In three weeks, I worked on six different jobs. On some, I lasted only half a day. I thought I had it made on the last job, but on the evening of the last day of the two weeks the familiar call came, “Beatrice, you are wanted in the front office.” Out of a job again, I decided to go back to school. At Hunter College the tuition was free, a benefit labor had won years earlier.

One year later I graduated but the Depression was still on. For most Hunter College graduates, then all women, the only jobs were sales clerks at Macy’s. But my family was on welfare and I did not have the clothing for that kind of job. I was able to get a job at a laundry in Brooklyn, where progressives had won the elections in Local 328. In the Spring of 1939, I returned to my life as a laundry worker at 35 cents/hour. It paid the rent for my furnished room, food if I did not eat too much, and essential clothing.

The Brighton laundry was one of the largest, with 500 workers. As an industrial union, our local included the higher-paid drivers, outside workers, and the lower-paid inside workers. In the days before apartments had washers and driers, most working families sent their laundry out, preferably on the traditional Monday washday. The hardest jobs were in the “kitchen” where big, strong men worked at steaming vats, pulling out heavy nets full of wet clothing. Before they had a union, the kitchen workers worked 16 hours on Mondays and Tuesdays. They did not bother to go home in between the 16-hour shifts, just caught naps stretched out on the nets of clothing.

Women did most of the other work in the laundries, ten-hour days at the beginning of the week and eight hours the rest of the week. First the “shakers” shook out the wet clothing and stacked it for the “mangle girls.” Everything past the shaking table was hot, hot and hot. Some laundries had almost no ventilation. Normally, I do not sweat much so it was a weird sensation to have the sweat run down my legs into my shoes. It was not rare for women to faint. Wet cloths around the head and wrists helped. I tried working on the mangle where the feeder must keep the mangle covered at all times with clothes or linens properly stretched out to feed through without wrinkles. I tried, but a coworker said, “Beatrice has two speeds: Slow and stop.” So I became a “sleeve girl” in the shirt press department. I could do that quite well as I roasted between the hot sleeve forms and the steaming bosom press, back press, and collar and cuff press.

Finally, I reached the top of my trade as a skilled shirt folder. The shirt folder ironed the yoke and sleeve areas the presses did not reach. Then he/she folded the shirt and slipped it into an envelope. It was a strange thing to watch shirt folders at work. Arms, shoulders and back moved in rapid motions. That was natural because they were ironing, folding, inserting oh so fast. But their feet were also in constant motion, doing an unchoreographed dance. To the onlooker, there was no reason for this because no work was done with the feet. Strange thing! When I became a shirt folder, my feet began to dance on their own. There was no other way to maintain the intensely rapid motions of the arms and back without letting the feet dance. To touch up the shirts so quickly, the iron was kept intensely hot. I am afraid I scorched more than one shirt until I learned to move the iron fast enough. The piecework quota for the day was 300 shirts and I made my quota. But some did 500!

What difference did the union make? The job was still hot, hard, low paid and required long hours. Yes, the union brought in small pay increases and there was a limit put on the number of hours you could be forced to work. Those improvements were important, but small next to the gain in dignity and the right to be a human being. The foreman was no longer king, free to be abusive to the workers, especially women workers. He could no longer fire workers at will. Sexual harassment was not wiped out at once but the worst abuses were stopped. Most significant, openly abusive racist practices ended and multiracial unity grew among the laundry workers. As elsewhere in the CIO, African American and Latino workers, including women, rose to leadership in the union. They demanded and won respect from the companies.

Bea Lumpkin is a leader of the Coalition of Labor Union Women and can be reached at Bealumpkin@aol.com.

PDF version of 'WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH: I helped organize the CIO'

Snapshots from the picket line

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 04:04:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN – Nearly 5,000 workers are back on the job and negotiations have resumed at Yale University after a history-making five-day strike. It was the eighth in 35 years, and was remarkable in the unity amongst dishwashers, graduate student teachers, secretaries and lab technicians, represented by three Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) locals and Service Employees International Union (SEIU)/1199. They stood up against a corporate giant that trains the nation’s ruling elite.

“It rained. It snowed. It froze. And through it all, four unions at Yale, joined by the entire New Haven community, found new strength, new solidarity, new determination and new confidence that all of us will win the contracts, the respect and the future we deserve,” concluded the union newsletter. “We return to our worksites with the will and the power to succeed” in winning good contracts and union recognition.

This strike was different from previous ones. It’s early morning. Despite temperatures in the single digits and a bitter North wind, central New Haven has become a giant street theater. Striking graduate students beat pots and pans; clerical workers – mainly women of all ages – stomp to the beat around a picket line. Down the street, Local 35 custodians stand in groups and call to friends. One worker later noted the diversity of the strikers, adding, “but everyone had the same look of pride.”

Organizers move amongst the groups of workers, explaining today’s program and passing out the latest strike bulletin. In the bitter cold (or the rain, or the snow – always one or the other) one picket line moves off down the street and joins another. Soon, hundreds of workers have joined in a march. They spill into the street stopping traffic, but the cars are honking support, not impatience. Faculty and managers look out the windows and, sometimes, wave support.

At the end of the morning, all the thousands of strikers join together in a defiant rally, listening to words of support from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, or SEIU President Andy Stern, or Princeton Professor Cornel West.

Monday – the first day, the coldest day – the New Haven community showed its support. At five o’clock, over a thousand people joined the mile-long march to the Yale campus. Groups from each neighborhood, often in congregations with their pastors, marched behind Rev. Jesse Jackson.

As the community marched up Elm Street into downtown, they were joined by the cheering strikers. Coming around the corner, the thousands on strike and from the community filled College St. in the heart of Yale. Jackson addressed the crowd, which joined in chanting, “Wages in New Haven, Not War in Iraq.”

“Workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital can’t afford health insurance. We need a national health system,” said Jackson, adding, “Yale is too rich to pay its workers so poor.”

“Everywhere we look in New Haven, people are lending a helping hand,” said one organizer. Community support ranged from the grass roots through City Hall. Cars displaying the colorful “On Strike” signs were often immune from parking tickets. New Haven police worked with the unions, making it possible to have daily marches and rallies in the streets. Many of Yale’s own police, bogged down in separate contract negotiations with the university, were supportive of the striking workers. “Pinkertons,” hired by Yale to patrol their parking lots, were unable to intimidate the picketing workers.

The 150 dietary workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital played a special role in the strike. Members of District 1199, they have been the only unionized group in the hospital since they first organized in 1973. They are now in the forefront of the struggle to win recognition for the other 1,800 non-professional workers at the hospital. Every single one of the dietary workers was on strike, with the loudest, most spirited picket line.

“It’s been a lifetime struggle for us at the hospital, and we’re going to see it done,” said Ray Milici, a 43-year veteran. Co-worker Mamie Evans was inspired by the “new level of support” in the simultaneous job action by the four locals. “The unity – it’s been like a family,” she said. “We are fighting for something that’s right!”

The strike ended Friday, March 7, on a celebratory note with a giant march and block party in front of Yale’s administration building on Wall Street. (New Haven’s Wall St., not New York’s, though both are the seat of financial power.)

Later that weekend, union workers spoke at area churches, thanking the congregations for their support. At a strike support supper held by the New Haven People’s Center, workers, organizers and supporters talked about their experience on the picket lines and their determination to keep fighting. HERE Local 34 organizer Pat Carta summed up the optimism generated by the week’s activities. “We’ve already won. Yale just doesn’t realize it yet.”

The author can be reached at arthur.perlo@pobox.com

PDF version of 'Snapshots from the picket line'

Labor leader wins Los Angeles Council seat

Thu, 13 Mar 2003 10:05:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES – Former Speaker of the State Assembly Antonio Villaraigosa made history on March 4 when he won an East Los Angeles seat in the 14th council district of the nation’s second largest city.

Villaraigosa, a former organizer for the United Teachers of Los Angeles, ascended with 56 percent of the vote, taking the seat away from Councilman Nick Pacheco, and, for the first time in the city’s history, defeating an incumbent councilman in a primary election.

The election win was a critical comeback for Villaraigosa who had lost a bitter race for mayor of Los Angeles in 2001 to James Hahn. Hahn’s supporters used racist campaign ads and vicious personal attacks against Villaraigosa.

“We are going to organize families and work together to elevate the quality of life of this district,” said an emotional Antonio Villaraigosa to hundreds of labor union and community supporters who filled the Plaza del Sol hall in Boyle Heights, a working class, Mexican American and immigrant community. “This victory clearly says that we will not be forgotten. We are human beings and we deserve respect,” he continued as volunteers cheered, cried, and chanted, “Si se puede!”

“This is just the beginning,” said the jubilant Miguel Contreras, executive secretary treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, who chaired the election night celebration. Contreras had every reason to be joyful, because the Villaraigosa victory means that the labor movement will now have a powerful advocate in the City Council. Undoubtedly, Villaraigosa will be the same passionate fighter for labor’s cause that he was when he was Speaker of the State Assembly. That prospect brought out over 500 hundred unionists for door-to-door campaigning in the last four days of the election. They joined hundreds of community volunteers of all ages walking precincts along with college and high school students.

Wayne Johnson, president of the California Federation of Teachers, hailed Villaraigosa for his role in helping to win the most important teachers’ strike in the history of Los Angeles.

Villaraigosa put together a progressive coalition to win this race, undaunted by personal attacks from the Pacheco camp. “Even though they’re going to attack me for it, I’m still opposing the death penalty, still opposing three strikes, and still opposing those who want to declare war on our youth,” Villaraigosa said during the campaign.

With the Villaraigosa win behind them, the full force of labor will now focus on the May 20 race in which Martin Ludlow, former political director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, has made it into the runoff for a South Los Angeles City Council seat.

African American former police chief Bernard Parks was easily elected to fill the vacant 8th District seat in South Los Angeles. Last year Mayor Hahn enraged the African American community, which had overwhelmingly supported his bid for mayor, when he refused to extend Parks’ contract.

The author can be reached at evnalarcon@aol.com

Hotel workers fired for organizing

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 06:48:00 +0000

DETROIT – “We all signed union cards, the whole department. I thought if we stuck together, we could win. Surely they couldn’t get rid of the whole department? I was wrong,” testified Charles Hardin to the Southeast Michigan Workers’ Rights Board in Detroit on Feb. 26.

Hardin is one of five African-American employees of the engineering department at Detroit’s Atheneum Hotel “laid off” and replaced with non-union white workers after signing a membership card for Operating Engineers Local 547.

Hardin’s co-worker, Mercedes Boulding, told the board, “I signed a union card for better pay and to protect myself from getting fired for no reason.” He added that it is hard to find a job, and there are few openings. “It’s been rough on my family,” he said.

The five workers testified before a panel that included former Rep. David Bonior, Detroit City Council President Maryann Mahaffey, Metro Detroit AFL-CIO President Donald Boggs, Dr. JoAnn Watson of Detroit’s premier radio show, Wake Up Detroit, and members of Detroit’s religious community. Rep. John Conyers also sent his greetings and a letter of support on behalf of the fired workers. Boggs said that the Atheneum Hotel would be added to the AFL-CIO’s boycott list.

Dale Wilson, a two-year employee of the hotel, told the board that he took the job at the hotel because he needed health care benefits. “I believed that by organizing, I could better my pay and benefits,” he added.

Local 547 sent a letter to management late last October expressing the workers’ wish to be represented by that union. The five workers were let go on Oct. 27, 2002. The local immediately filed an unfair labor practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board. A hearing is scheduled for March 26.

Latheal Johnson, also fired for signing a union card, had worked at the hotel almost since opening back in 1993. “I know the hotel like no one else. I worked midnights and often ran the engineering department alone,” he told the board, “I enjoyed my job. However, after 10 years I realized with a union we’d do better.”

He said that he thought joining a union would provide protection form being fired for no reason. “I signed a card to change this.”

Union organizers also testified that they suspected this action by the hotel owners was a strategy to disrupt the organizing effort by Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 24 to unionize 50 other staff members in the hotel. They accused the owners of trying to send a message to other employees not to join or they too could be fired.

Another member of Local 547 told the World that other hotels around Detroit are organized in a similar manner. An unfavorable ruling by the NLRB might require recertification by those other bargaining units.

Donald Herron, also with two years’ experience at the Atheneum, spoke out, “I have a family. This is my life! All I did was sign a union card to better my life.” Of the hotel owners he said, “What they have done is criminal and I ask you to please assist us in getting back to work.”

The Southeast Michigan Workers’ Rights Board is a service of Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice. SEM Jobs with Justice asks supporters to write to Jim Papas and Ted Gatzaros at Atheneum Hotel Suite 1000, East Brush, Detroit, MI, 48226 to demand that these workers are reinstated and their union recognized.

The author can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net

5,000 workers on strike at Yale

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 05:12:00 +0000

New Haven, Conn. – Five thousand enthusiastic workers at Yale University including cooks, janitors, graduate student teachers, secretaries and lab technicians are making history with their one-week strike. The workers, from four unions, have filled city streets with picket lines and daily rallies.

On March 3, over 1,000 community supporters, led by Rev. Jesse Jackson, marched in the bitter cold to join the strikers for a giant street rally. “Wages in New Haven, Not War in Iraq” was the opening chant which Jackson led the crowd in shouting. “You deserve fair wages, a decent pension and the right to organize,” he said, adding, “Yale is too rich for the workers to be so poor.” Among other leaders who visited the strike were AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern and Professor Cornel West.

Full story next week.