People Before Profit blog

Martin Luther King Jr. and the attack on public workers

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 15:20:00 +0000

This article was originally posted to Peoplesworld.org on January 17, 2011. We repost it here today on the anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

How ironic. As we celebrate the life and historic contributions of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., public workers are under fierce attack across the country. As the economic crisis worsens for working people there is a coordinated campaign by big business, the newly energized, tea party Republican right, and some Democrats to resolve the crisis on the backs of public workers.

Can you imagine the folks who just got hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax breaks getting indignant at the wages of sanitation workers? What the top One Percent of the rich will each get just in tax breaks alone would provide decent, livable wages for several sanitation workers for a whole year. Such bald faced hypocrisy is the currency of these attacks.

Sanitation workers pay is not a gift. The pay and benefits that many local governments are threatening to cut are earned with long hours of backbreaking, stinky work. Oh, the howls from the gated communities if the garbage isn't picked up.

Dr. King was murdered in Memphis, Tenn., as he mobilized support for striking sanitation workers. Forty-three years later these same workers are under attack again. In the past year, Memphis sanitation workers have had to face down threats of privatization and severe job cuts. While across the nation sanitation workers (and fire, police, hospital, rescue, library, school and many other public service workers) pay, pensions and other benefits are on the chopping block in the name of "shared sacrifice."

For those of us who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the memory of those poignant days in 1968 Memphis is especially intense in today's climate of attack on public workers.

Speaking to a rally of striking AFSCME union members, who were mostly African American, in his famous "I've been to the mountaintop" speech, just days before his assassination, Dr. King said, "Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation."

Can there be any doubt that if alive today, Dr. King would be leading the fight to defend all public workers and the fight for jobs. In Memphis, Dr. King brought together two mighty currents of the struggle for economic and social justice. Two deeply kindred currents: labor and civil rights; labor and communities of working people who face racism and discrimination.

And can there be any doubt where he would stand on the issues of the day? For instance so many states are now proposing right-to-work-for-less laws and other measures to deny basic union rights to public service workers. Dr. King famously said, "In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped."

King would never have allowed anyone to separate the interests of public workers from those who need the public services they provide. And he was keenly aware of the issue of how to finance needed social programs. Most of us vividly remember his statement that "the bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America", and, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

We are inspired and encouraged by Dr. King's example, his work and his words. His words are not meant to comfort us in our efforts, but rather to spur us into greater action. We celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by standing up and fighting for public workers and public services with "greater determination."

Photo: "I Am a Man" - Diorama of Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike - National Civil Rights Museum - Downtown Memphis - Tennessee. By Adam Jones, Ph.D. - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.

See also these articles on Peoplesworld.org:

Memphis 1968: We remember, Fred Gaboury, on April 3 2003.

One of the greatest stories of all times The Memphis sanitation workers strike remembered, "Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign." by Michael K. Honey. Marilyn Bechtel, on August 22, 2008.

Memphis sanitation workers inducted into Labor Hall of Fame, Mark Gruenberg, on May 3, 2011.

Steel job layoffs highlight need for new trade, infrastructure policies

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 15:51:00 +0000

Over the past year, U.S. Steel has announced hundreds of layoffs in its workforce across the country. In late March, a further 770 jobs were cut. As People's World contributor Bruce Bostick reports, many of those losing their jobs are in Lorain, Ohio, an area that has been hit hard before.

The massive layoffs of steelworkers in Lorain was horrible news. It will drive that entire community toward poverty and will harm surrounding communities. City and county tax bases will be undermined at the time services are most needed. It is a horrible blow to those hard-working families and it is also a blow to all the neighboring communities.

We've suffered layoffs before but it is never a time for joy, or conciliation, if others were also hit, here or elsewhere. The issue for steel areas is that these cutbacks are no "act of God." They take place only due to corporate bottom lines, not because our nation does not need steel.

The American Society of Civil Engineers - the people who oversee, build and maintain our nation's infrastructure - have graded our nation's basic infrastructure underpinning at only a D+. They gave our nation's water system an even lower grade. This used to be a nonpartisan issue - no longer! It has been made partisan by pro-corporate politicians, mainly Republicans, who've refused to fund infrastructure repair, pushing instead for privatizing government services.

In the U.S. Senate, S. 268, the Rebuild America Act, sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, is a moderate bill that would tax Wall Street transactions in order to fund rebuilding of our nation's crumbling infrastructure. It would put an estimated 13 million workers back to work, including every one of the laid-off Lorain steelworkers. That bill would retool America's old infrastructure, providing jobs and dignity for workers from the old industries. Further, it is an emergency that our nation needs to address. In today's political climate, this bill cannot even get a hearing in Congress.

The Kasich administration was elected on the promise of "Jobs for Ohio." However, as soon as elected, the GOP majority killed the proposal for a high-speed rail system from Cleveland to Cincinnati. It would've produced an estimated 3,000 jobs producing the system, as well as thousands more to service the rails, sell tickets and other related services, and would've helped surrounding communities. Some in Columbus have recently called for revisiting this much-needed idea.

Instead, for the past quarter century, we've had the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), upgrading China's trade status, and now the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Communities and entire regions of our nation have been economically decimated. According to the AFL-CIO, NAFTA cost us 683,000 jobs, the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement took another 75,000, and more than 3 million U.S. jobs were lost with a China deal with no action on currency manipulation.

TPP is expected to dwarf all these in terms of the damage it will do. Billionaires got much richer during this period. The rest of us have seen our nation's jewel, our manufacturing base, with millions of jobs, go to low-wage areas.

During this same period, retiree security has been wiped out, with real pensions being replaced by saving plans (401(k)s). A decade ago, Lorain steelworkers saw their pensions cut, stolen by corporate bankruptcy games. The pension attacks have been accompanied by legal changes to bankruptcy laws giving more power to financial institutions and disenfranchising others. Attacks have intensified on Social Security, as well, calling for cutting benefits and increasing retirement age.

While all this took place, the rigged system paid out obscene "golden parachutes" to retiring CEOs. The "safety net" that used to be there for working families has been horribly damaged.

When we look at our neighbors, now out of work, our communities in poverty, our youth growing up without hope and we hear the continuing calls that we "can't afford" jobs, pensions, Social Security, and health care, is it not time to ask how we can afford to continue on this same path?

Bruce Bostick, an elected member of the national executive board of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees, worked in Lorain for more than three decades where he chaired the grievance committee of United Steelworkers Local 1104.

This article originally appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It appears here with permission of the author.

Photo: Alliance for American Manufacturing/Save Our Steel Jobs

Thousands out on the picket lines at Chicago schools today

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 11:30:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Chicago 's teachers, augmented by sizeable contingents of parents, students and coworkers from all walks of life here, have shut down the city's school system today in a "Day of Action" that involves widespread protests all over the nation's "Second City."

Teachers picketed outside all of the public schools in Chicago's Hyde Park section this morning with demonstrators on 56^th Street shouting, "Who do we love? Teachers. Who do we fight for? The children."

Among the many participants in the citywide strikes and job actions against Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's budget cuts are workers and community members angry about Nabisco's decision to ship 700 good-paying union jobs out of its South Side Oreo cookie plant here to Mexico.

Nabisco workers marched four blocks from their plant to the nearby Parkington School this morning where they joined some 40 teachers and students picketing the school. They carried signs emblazoned with the initials for the Bakery workers union and the slogan "Shut down Chicago."

"We are so gratified by the backing we are getting from them and from the community," said Kindergarten to 8^th grade music teacher Sabrina Townshend as passing cars honked their support.

At the traffic intersection of Garfield and 55^th teachers and students who had come from picketing local schools, waved strike signs as the parade of passing cars and buses there also honked their support.

Union officials say there are picket lines at virtually every school in the city.

Also part of the "Day of Action" are demonstrations for higher wages for fast food workers and rallies at City Hall, the Cook County Jail and Chicago State University.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers is in Chicago to support the strike.

Chicago teachers voted earlier this month to walk off the job today and shut down the schools in their fight for a new contract. The union's 27,000 members have been working without a contract since June 30 of last year.

The Chicago school system is the nation's third largest with some 400,000 students.

Photo: CTU strike. | Chicago Teachers Union Facebook page

Minneapolis resumes march towards paid sick leave law, as Vermont enacts one

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:09:00 +0000

MINNEAPOLIS (PAI) - After a pause for a city-mandated study, Minneapolis has resumed its march towards enacting a paid sick and family leave law.

When the campaign succeeds, it will join dozens of cities nationwide along with five states - the latest was Vermont - to give workers paid sick and family leave, even as the Republican-run U.S. Congress refuses to consider it.

The Minneapolis Labor Review reported the city's Workplace Regulations Partnership Group, created last October, held 14 listening sessions on the proposal, pushed by Fightfor15 and the city's unions and Mayor Betsy Hodges.

The partnership group, even after hearing repeated business opposition not just to paid sick leave but to the entire local Working Families Agenda, voted for paid sick leave in late March, with only one "no" vote.

The found that "estimates suggest that between one-third to one-half of Minneapolis residents do not have access to paid sick time, with those residents more likely to be women, people of color, and concentrated among lower-wage earners, working less than full-time."

Its recommendations for the Minneapolis ordinance include:

All workers - full-time, part-time, and temporary- who work at least 80 hours in a year should be eligible to earn sick time;
For businesses with four or more employees, sick time would be paid;
Sick time would be unpaid at "micro-employers" with three or fewer workers;
Workers would earn one hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked;
Workers could earn 48 hours per year and hold up to 80 hours in a "bank;" and
The policy would not apply to workers whose jobs offer benefits that meet or exceed these standards. Many union contracts have more-generous paid leave benefits.

"We're excited and feel strongly about the recommendations we're putting forward," said Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, who served on the partnership group.

"It was a process that involved listening to hundreds of workers and employers and tough negotiations among stakeholders," she added.

Though union members generally receive paid sick time as part of their contracts with employers, Glaubitz Gabiou said the federation backed the group's recommendations because "In this time of the changing nature of work, it's particularly important we show all workers - including low-income workers - that the labor movement has your back.

"Hopefully, this will inspire more workers to think about forming unions in their own workplaces."

Meanwhile, in Vermont

Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) signed the Green Mountain State's paid sick leave law on March 9. It will aid some 60,000 workers. The campaign for paid sick leave took 10 years. For large employers, the law will take effect next year.

Vermont's law says employees who work at least 18 hours a week will accrue three days of paid sick leave starting in 2017, rising to five days in 2019. Employers with five or fewer employees will come under the law in 2018. Temps and teenaged workers can't take sick leave. Reactionary retailers forced the legislature to omit the teenagers, who were included in earlier versions of the measure.

A fact sheet distributed by paid leave backers said Vermont's law will aid workers, notably those in lower-paying jobs, who don't already receive the benefit, including restaurant and day care workers.

Shumlin called the new law "consistent with Vermonters' values" and a public health improvement. He pointed out that, nevertheless, "It's still tough to make ends meet at the lower end of the pay scale. If you also have to choose between being sick and losing your job, it's a double hardship."

With the new law, workers would not have to "make the tough choice between going to work or losing your job," the governor added. Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control reports food service workers must make that choice - and they go to work sick (12 percent of food workers said they had worked when they were sick with vomiting or diarrhea).

The American Federation of Teachers, which represents workers in Vermont hospitals and universities, pushed for the paid sick leave law. It was also part of the bargaining platform for the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, an AFT sector.

So did the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, which represents more progressive companies. As usual, the so-called National Retail Federation - represented by its Vermont affiliate - battled long and hard against paid sick leave.

President Barack Obama hailed the Vermont law and used Shumlin's signing to again urge the GOP-run Congress to pass a national paid sick leave law. "Until Congress acts, I urge other states to follow Vermont's lead. And I'll continue to do everything I can as president to support working families - because it's the right thing to do to give everyone a fair shot to get ahead," he said.

"This action means thousands of families will no longer have to choose between losing income and taking care of a sick child. It's a choice no one should have to make."

But while they won in Vermont and progressed in Minneapolis, advocates of paid sick leave suffered one possible setback: In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), in her State of the District 2016 address, endorsed the $15 minimum wage - but omitted paid sick leave. A paid sick leave measure has been pending before the City Council. Her omission puzzled workers and their supporters.

Steve Share of the Minneapolis Labor Review contributed material for this story.

Photo: Community organizations like NOC organized, mobilized, and strategized to pass earned sick and safe time across Minneapolis. Neighborhoods Organizing for Change.

Teachers lead wave of strikes and job actions in Chicago

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 12:59:00 +0000

CHICAGO - April 1 is likely to go down in the history books here as labor unions and community organizations representing people from all walks of life stage strikes and job actions from one end of the city to the other. The unprecedented "day of action" involves dozens of unions, community groups and their allies uniting to reject the assault on budgets that the Chicago Teachers Union and others have said leaves this city "broke on purpose."

The teachers got the ball rolling when their union's House of Delegates voted earlier this month to authorize an unfair labor practice strike to bring attention to the need to stabilize the school system and protect teachers and students in the face of attacks on the education budget by Illinois Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

The school district has, for more than a year, stalled contract negotiations with the CTU, and has threatened and mandated furlough days, cuts and layoffs. The solution, the teachers say, is not starving the schools out of existence but the development of new revenue sources. Those revenues should come, according to the union, from progressive tax reform that would result in the wealthy (the top five percent) paying their fare share in state taxes. That approach, the union says, would generate $6 billion in new funds.

The unprecedented part of the strike tomorrow is that numerous other community organizations and as many as ten other unions will be joining the teachers on the picket lines and staging their own parallel job actions. They all see themselves as victims of reckless budget cutting and see the need for forming a permanent coalition to represent Chicago's people in a battle against the banks and financial institutions.

Among the many groups joining the strike tomorrow are the fast-food workers organized by the Fight for $15. It will be the first time these workers strike at the same time as the teachers. This will be the 11^th strike in Chicago held by fast food workers since they began their strikes and job actions in 2012.

"It's about joining them because it shouldn't be teachers or public workers or low wage workers who are made to suffer from budget cuts. It shouldn't be the working people and the poor people who have to pay to fix the mess," said a McDonald's worker who plans to participate in striking at her store.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool has said the strike is "illegal."

"Chicago Public Schools is on the verge of collapse," countered the CTU in a statement. "Instead of threatening educators who are engaging in a historic day of protest to fight to save our schools, Mr. Claypool should join them in this courageous day of action.

""We are shutting down the schools for a day so we can keep them open in the days to come."

Teachers and parents are gathering outside the city's school buildings at 6:30 in the morning to begin picket lines, chanting and singing.

There will be a teach-in with faculty and students at Chicago State University Library (4^th floor) from 10 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.

Also at 10 a.m. workers will picket the Nabisco plant on the city's Southside protesting the destruction of 700 union jobs in the community.

At 2 p.m. there will be a march from 136 N. Western denouncing the school to prison pipeline.

From 2 p.m. until 3 p.m. the Community College Teachers Union (IFT Local 1600) and Chicago Student Union will conduct a teach-in at City Hall.

From 2 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. there will be a rally at The Quad, University of Illinois at Chicago, before heading to the Thompson Center rally.

At 3 p.m. the Alliance for Human Services will demonstrate at 401 S. Clinton to demand funding for human services.

All the unions, community organizations and others will converge at 4 p.m. at a mass rally at the Thompson Center, Clark and Randolph. From 4:40 - 6:30 p.m. It is expected that tens of thousands will then march through the Loop.

The April 1 actions are not the first time many of these groups have gotten together in Chicago and not the first time Chicagoans have united to do battle with the "1 percent." Last year many of them got involved in the elections and forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a runoff. In December they joined together to protest the mayor's role in covering up the killing by a Chicago police officer of Laquan McDonald. Some of those same groups came together again in the recent primary elections to oust the States Attorney who had helped engineer the cover-up.

Photo: CTU marching. Facebook. Photo credit Bob Simpson.

California poised to have highest state minimum wage

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 13:02:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. - The country's largest state is poised to become the state with the highest minimum wage, if the compromise proposal agreed March 26 between California Governor Jerry Brown, labor unions and legislative leaders becomes law.

Under its terms, California's $10/hour minimum - already the highest of any state - would rise gradually to $15 in 2022 for businesses with 26 or more workers, while those with fewer workers would have an additional year to comply. Starting in 2024, wages would be linked to inflation. During the lead-in period, the governor could delay a scheduled increase for a year if negative economic growth occurs or state budget deficits are projected. Once $15 is reached no further delays can occur. In-home health workers will have three paid sick days by 2022.

"I'm hoping what happens in California will not stay in California, but spread all across the country," Brown told a March 28 news conference where he was joined by union leaders and leaders of the Democratic-led state legislature. "It's a matter of economic justice. It makes sense."

The legislation is to be considered March 30 in the state assembly's Appropriations Committee. Final legislative action could come as early as this week.

Saying "Californians need a raise," Art Pulaski, head of the state's Labor Federation www.californialabor.org, called the measure "historic," and said it would help lift millions out of poverty. "With this bill, yet again, California is on the leading edge of providing all working people with the rights and dignity they deserve."

The Labor Federation called the measure "the culmination of years of work by thousands of workers across California," and noted that it couldn't have happened without unions fighting for all workers, not just their members.

The new measure is rooted in the Fight for $15 movement that started in New York City over three years ago. Fightfor15.org called California's decision "our biggest victory to date," and said some 6.5 million workers would get raises because of the campaign's work.

Senate Bill 3, first introduced in the California legislature last year by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, will be the vehicle for the new legislation. Calling the agreement "a monumental breakthrough in tackling poverty in the Golden State," Leno said it will "lift up poor Californians and give hardworking employees the resources they need to put food on the table for their families."

Two of the state's major labor unions - SEIU's California State Council seiuca.org and SEIU's United Health Care Workers West www.seiu-uhw - had already launched signature campaigns to place initiatives with even speedier increases on the November ballot. SEIU-UHW's measure qualified last week with over 400,000 signatures, while the State Council continued gathering signatures on its initiative.

SEIU-UHW called the compromise "a major step forward," and said that if it passes and is signed into law, the union's executive board would consider withdrawing its initiative. But union leaders cautioned that "it's a long way from a proposal to a final measure that becomes law," and expressed concern about the legislation's "pause button" provisions.

SEIU California President Laphonza Butler said the measure delivers "hope to millions of families struggling to get by on wages too low to live on and without basic benefits such as sick days." SEIU California will also wait until the legislation becomes law before deciding on the future of its effort.

SEIU-UHW noted that women make up more than half the state's minimum wage workers. The union said over 90 percent of workers affected by the increase are adults 20 years and older, with half over 30, and more than 30 percent have children.

According to official poverty statistics, nearly 23 percent of California children are living in poverty.

Business leaders complained that they were not included in the discussions, and warned that higher wages would result in higher prices and fewer jobs. The California Consumers against Higher Prices coalition, already formed by the California Retailers Association, the California Restaurant Association and others, called the new measure "overreaching," while others cited economic differences between more affluent coastal cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, and poorer inland areas.

Polls have found a substantial majority of likely California voters support increasing the minimum wage. But while both houses of the state legislature have Democratic majorities, a number of Democratic legislators, particularly in the Assembly, have strong business ties.

Nonetheless, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said it appears the compromise has significant support.

Unions and other supporters are gathering petition signatures http://raisewageca.org/join-the-fight-to-raise-californias-wage/.

The National Employment Law Project says 14 cities, counties and states approved some form of $15 minimum last year through local laws, executive orders and other means http://nelp.org/news-releases/14-cities-states-approved-15-minimum-wage-in-2015/.

Among them were the City and County of Los Angeles, and the cities of Emeryville peoplesworld.org/in-terms-of-minimum-wage-california-city-races-to-the-top and Mountain View. San Francisco will reach $15 by 2018. Emeryville, across the bay from San Francisco, is to exceed $15 by 2018, while other California cities are making smaller increases.

Seattle and other major cities have also passed increases, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is proposing $15/hour minimums for New York City and then for the state as a whole.

By contrast, the U.S. minimum remains $7.25/hour, and Republicans block any increase.

Raising the minimum is playing a big part in the national elections, with the Democratic Party including a $15 minimum in its platform. Bernie Sanders supports it, while Hillary Clinton backs a $12 minimum.

Photo: Blake Deppe/PW

Unions spared, for now, in split Supreme Court Friedrichs ruling

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 13:06:00 +0000

Today, the Supreme Court, by way of an equally divided ruling, ended the fiercest legal attack on the labor movement in decades.

In a tersely-worded decision, the Court announced that the ruling of the Ninth Circuit rejecting an effort to defund public sector unions was "affirmed" by "an equally divided court."

The result: Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association is as dead, for now, as Justice Antonin Scalia.

The anti-union forces pressed the case in the California courts expecting to lose there but later win at the Supreme Court. When arguments were heard in January, just before Scalia's death, it appeared their strategy was about to pay off. At the time, the outcome for unions looked dim as all indications from oral arguments and the questions from the bench pointed toward a victory for the plaintiffs.

Those hopes were dashed, however, with the passing of Justice Scalia which left the 5-4 conservative-leaning court split down the middle, 4-4.

The specifics of the case involved the obligation of non-members to compensate unions for services like bargaining and grievance-filing performed on their behalf. Unions, by law, are required to bargain on behalf of every worker in a union shop - including those who do not belong to the union as dues-paying members. These workers who do not pay dues then enjoy the same higher wages and benefits enjoyed by their co-workers who do pay.

To mitigate this "free rider" problem, contracts often require non-union members to pay a portion of the costs of bargaining for the benefits they receive. These are referred to as "agency fees" or "fair share service fees."

The anti-worker National Right-to-Work (RTW) Committee funded the dissenting California teachers who sued in the California courts. Those dissenters claimed that agency fees violated their free speech rights.

Had the RTW committee, Rebecca Friedrichs, and the other complainers won, every state and local worker would potentially be a free rider, depriving unions of millions of dollars they need to defend all workers. Lower federal courts sided with the teachers' association.

The RTW committee's ultimate aim is to destroy the nation's unions by defunding them, thus abolishing union opposition to their right-wing agenda, a point their lawyer, Michael Carvin, evaded when the justices questioned him in January. The RTW group had no comment.

"Labor unions victorious," the California Teachers Association headlined its breaking news story on the case. The state of California, defending its own law, had joined with CTA and other unions in opposing the RTW group and its Friedrichs case.

California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski agreed with these sentiments, but warned the battle isn't over yet.

"Today's Supreme Court decision...upholding lower court rulings that educators and other public servants have the right to a strong union in the workplace, is a momentous victory for working people," Pulaski said.

"The court rightly upheld 40 years of precedent, rejecting the attacks by deep-pocketed corporate special interests that were the driving force behind the Friedrichs case. While this is an important win for workers, we know the fight isn't over. Unions will continue the important work of organizing and mobilizing to beat back these attacks while aggressively pursuing real, lasting gains for workers that open up a path to the American dream for everyone."

Lily Eskelsen-García, the president of the National Education Association (which includes the California Teachers Association), said, "The Supreme Court today rejected a political ploy to silence public employees like teachers, school bus drivers, cafeteria workers, higher education faculty and other educators to work together to shape their profession."

"In Friedrichs, the court saw through the political attacks on the workplace rights of teachers, educators and other public employees. This decision recognizes that stripping public employees of their voices in the workplace is not what our country needs," she added.

The NEA called the case a "thinly veiled attempt to weaken collective bargaining and silence educators' voices."

If the decision had gone in favor of the plaintiffs - which in addition to Friedrichs and RTW included the anti-labor Center for Individual Rights - it could have set the stage for a nationwide expansion of right-to-work and stripped unions of not only their leverage in the workplace, but also a significant chunk of their funding.

Beyond the significance of this case for the particular parties involved in it, the ruling today also underlines the importance of the struggle now taking place around the filling of the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Scalia. If President Obama succeeds in filling the vacancy, a liberal judge would likely prevent further attacks on the right of unions to collect these fees.

If a future Republican president fills the vacancy, however, the labor movement could see a complete reversal of today's victory in a future re-match.

Photo: Scalia. | Josh Reynolds/AP

Chicago teachers plan April 1 strike for public education

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 10:15:00 +0000

Hoping to send a clear message to the Chicago Board of Education, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, the members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) are set to walk off the job in a one-day strike this Friday. Nearly 80 percent of the union's governing body voted in favor of the job action to protest unfair contract negotiations and the continued starvation of public education. Pickets at local schools are planned to commence at 6:30 am and culminate in a massive afternoon rally downtown.

CTU's members have been working without a contract since June 2015, and months of negotiations have so far failed to produce a workable agreement. This latest escalation of the teachers' fight came in response to an announcement by Chicago Public Schools (CPS) that it would be laying off more teachers and instituting further cuts to deal with a projected budget deficit of $480 million.

Meanwhile, Republican Governor Rauner has refused to sign a state budget, resulting in a freeze of public monies. Funding for public education, home health care for seniors and the disabled, child care, and other public services have all been slashed throughout the state as a result of the budget stalemate in Springfield. State universities and community colleges have received no state funding for nine months, forcing the early closing of Chicago State University (CSU) and threatening other universities around the state.

"Public Education is facing a crisis of epic proportions", said CTU president, Karen Lewis, as she listed a whole series of actions planned to restore funding for public schools, public universities, and vital public services in Illinois. CTU said the April 1st strike is a "response to the funding crisis" and the Board of Education's refusal to bargain in good faith.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has also been a central player in creating the crisis in public education. His hand-picked Board has closed over 50 schools, cut teachers' pay, and refused to go after the banks for hundreds of millions owed the city due to shady bond deals and "toxic swaps".

Emanuel's approval rating is at an all-time low, and he is under federal investigation for his role in withholding the video tape of the Chicago Police Department's 16-shot murder of Laquan McDonald. Although a Democrat, he has been accused of close association with GOP Governor Rauner who helped elect Emanuel in his first run for mayor.

The teachers of Chicago will not be alone on April 1st. In addition to their picket lines, a broad coalition will take part in other coordinated actions at many state universities. All will converge in a huge central rally at 4 pm. Over 30 organizations have pledged their support and will be joining with CTU members at the demonstration - including faculty and students from CSU, United Professionals of Illinois - AFT Local 4100, SEIU Healthcare Illinois, the NEIU Faculty Union, the Fight for $15 campaign, Black Youth Project 100, the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, and many more.

CTU has said that the April 1st Day of Action is just the beginning. Stay tuned.

Photo: 2015 teacher strike in Chicago. | Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

OSHA issues rule to curb silica dust exposure

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 14:08:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - After years of consideration, including one final attempt by an industry lobby - in a closed-door meeting - to derail it, the Obama administration today issued a final rule that it says would cut workers' exposure to harmful silica dust in half.

The rule, proposed by the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, was approved by the Office of Management and Budget on March 21 despite a last-minute industry attempt to derail it.

A month before OMB's decision, the Interlocking Concrete Paving Institute, a lobby whose website forthrightly proclaims its opposition to cutting workers' silica dust exposure - and one of many business lobbies that opposes the new rule - met behind closed doors with OMB, OSHA and other federal officials to complain about it. They got nowhere.

The silica rule is one of two big-ticket pro-worker rules the administration unveiled this week. The other would change the definition of when so-called "labor consultants" - otherwise known as union-busters -- must file reports on their spending with DOL.

DOL first recognized silica was a hazard to workers in a 1938 warning film. It's especially hazardous to construction, factory and shipyard workers. The new rule, DOL says, would prevent 700 deaths and exposure to silica dust of 1,600 workers per year.

As a result, unions have campaigned for years for the silica exposure rule. The current 45-year-old rule has outdated measurements of silica, while the new rule would let businesses expose workers to 50 micrograms of silica dust per cubic meter of air per worker each eight-hour day.

"Silica dust is a killer. It causes silicosis, a lung disease that literally suffocates workers to death," the Steelworkers said just before OSHA hearings on the rule two years ago. "It also causes lung cancer, respiratory and kidney diseases."

So the union reaction to OMB's release of the rule could be summed up in one word: Finally. That's because OMB has sat on the rule since the middle of 2013.

Not only that, but a new source of silica exposure has arisen in the U.S. economy since

DOL started working on the silica rule, according to the Center to Protect Workers' Rights, a labor-funded construction safety organization: hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, or fracking.

"Every year some two million workers are exposed deadly silica dust each year and, according to public health experts, more than 7,000 workers develop silicosis and 200 die each year as a result of this disabling lung disease," an AFL-CIO policy paper said in 2014.

"The current OSHA silica standard was adopted decades ago and fails to protect workers. It allows very high levels of exposure and has no requirements to train workers or monitor exposure levels. Simply enforcing the current rule, as some in the industry have called for, won't protect workers."

Photo: Atlantic Environmental Incorporated

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire: Hundreds gather in solidarity with workers

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 10:41:00 +0000

For over a hundred years, New Yorkers have assembled near Washington Square Park to commemorate the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of the most heinous actions in United States labor history.

On Wednesday, March 23, many workers and members of various unions including SEIU, RWDSU, AFSCME, and others gathered to mark the 105th anniversary of the tragic event that highlighted an egregious lack of legal safety protections for workers at the beginning of the 20th century. This year, the crowds also convened to celebrate the coming installment of a permanent art display at the historic site to forever bring attention to the fire that ended the lives of 146 women working under inhumane conditions.

Family members of the deceased were also present, and many in the crowd carried poles dressed in garb that would have been traditional for women in the early 1900s, inscribed with the individual names of the workers who died in the fire. Vincent Alvarez of the New York City Central Labor Council spoke of the continued need to stand with workers for safety in the workplace, as well as many public officials. Members of the UFT, New York City's teacher's union, talked about the importance of workplace safety standards to public education.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was a clothing-making sweatshop operating in Manhattan's downtown area that employed mainly Jewish and immigrant women for insufferably long hours and poverty wages. Most of these women were quite young, some no more than 17 years old. Many women brought their children into the factory's "kindergarten," where the young ones would snip thread. Working conditions in the factory were unsanitary and dangerous. Scraps of flammable material were heaped in wicker baskets and oil slicked the floors.

The factory's owners padlocked the doors to the stairwell out of fear of employee theft, and a pile of boxes crowded the exit from the cluttered workspace. When fire broke out in the eighth floor of the building near closing time on March 25, 1911, the women were unable to escape. The fire escapes did not reach to the ground, were rusty, and collapsed. The fire department ladders were only able to reach to the sixth floor, two floors below the level of the workers. Many jumped to their deaths, as safety nets were insufficient to protect them from the fall.

These unsafe conditions were not uncharacteristic of other sweatshops. In fact, due to the activities of radical organizer Clara Lemlich, the situation at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company was somewhat better than in other similar factories. Lemlich had led 400 of her coworkers in a strike two years earlier which ultimately culminated in a general strike where 20,000 walked off their jobs, demanding a 20 percent raise, a 52-hour work week, overtime pay, collective bargaining rights, and the legal enforcement of workplace health and safety standards. Despite these important mobilizations, the women at the Shirtwaist factory remained non-unionized. As immigrants, many of them lacked the legal protections that could have made unionizing a less risky enterprise.

Nonetheless, the disastrous consequences of unprotected workers caught in a firetrap, combined with the increase in union activity that followed, brought attention to widespread abuses. This resulted in the establishment of many labor protections on a national scale in the area of health and safety laws, fire code improvement, and the introduction of workers compensation laws.

We yet find ourselves in an era where far-right social elements are attacking and undermining union rights through a variety of means, including "right-to-work" laws, and where union busting activities remain prevalent on the part of the bosses. It is as important now as ever to bring attention to the exploitive conditions under which many have worked and continue to work, and the ways in which they are fighting back. The particular challenges which continue to face immigrant workers also cannot be erased. While a monument is being raised to the memory of immigrant workers who unnecessarily met their deaths due to the callous greed of their employers, 105 years later and one block away, immigrant workers at Bröd Kitchen continue to face discrimination, low wages, and union busting activity.

Unions remain the best form of protection that workers can have, which is what makes the efforts to undermine their strength particularly pernicious. As the strike leader Rosa Safran, who survived the Shirtwaist Factory Fire said, "If the union had won, we would have been safe. Two of our demands were for adequate fire escapes and for open doors from the factories to the street. But the bosses defeated us and so we didn't get the open doors or the better fire escapes. So our friends are dead."

Although many advances have been made through the organizing efforts of those who have gone before, the struggle continues. The #Fightfor15 and a Union movement is an essential one for countless low wage workers who are disproportionately women of color and immigrant workers. An immigrant worker employed in the nail salon industry in New York City spoke of the super-exploitation she and her co-workers experience, working 11-hour days for as little as $45.

People's World had a chance to speak at the rally with Rachel Forest, director of the Retail Action Project (RAP), which is a worker center initiative of RWDSU. Forest spoke of the ways in which the strength of labor has been eroded in recent decades and how maintaining the legacy of the labor movement is essential for helping young workers understand where their power comes from. "We think for our union, and for RAP as a worker center, that legacies like this are crucial [to] people feeling inspired and understanding what it means to stand up and organize and really demand that their lives as workers, not only in this country, but around the world, deserve and need respect - in order to honor the planet and future generations and [to] ensure that people can live in a world with real justice."

The art display soon to be installed at the site of one of labor history's most historic moments will engage those passing by with the history of the fire and the names of the workers who died in it. The text will be engraved on a mirrored panel running around the corner of the building. Those from afar will be able to observe steel panels rising up to the eighth floor where the fire started.

The program for the commemorative event on Mar. 23 included the raising of the fire ladder, which highlighted its inability to reach the workers, and a recitation of the names and ages of the young women who died. The history of people's struggles for justice and fairness, and the forces they encounter in this fight, must remain firmly in the mind of the public. These movements must find a mass base of support for a historically based struggle capable of establishing a more just and equitable world.

Photo: Victims of Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in coffins. | Series: Photographs from the Depression and World War II, 1870-2004/Collection: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Photographs, 1870-2004

New Labor Department rule to expose union busting industry

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 15:08:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Today, the Department of Labor released the final persuader rule, which closes a current loophole that allows corporations and management consultants to avoid reporting certain anti-union activities.

"This long-awaited rule will increase transparency about employers' activities when they hire outside third parties to do their union busting," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. "It takes great courage for working people to come together to form a union. Working men and women deserve to know who their employer is hiring and exactly how much they are spending to discourage workers from forming a union."

The new persuader rule will give working people more information on whether their employer is hiring third party consultants and lawyers to write anti-union speeches, prepare anti-union videos, and write anti-union fliers meant to dissuade employees from forming a union. These tactics are all too common in the multi-million-dollar union-busting industry.

Mike Lo Vuolo, a former American Airlines passenger agent, and his co-workers tried three times to form a union at American Airlines with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), under the company's previous management. In 2012, despite having filed for bankruptcy, American Airlines spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the law firm Sheppard Mullins. Mike recalls glossy fliers, video cassettes and DVDs used to discourage and scare employees during organizing drives.

"This rule is long overdue," said Mike Lo Vuolo. "Corporations and consultants should be required to report how much money they spend fighting workers."

While unions are required to file lengthy annual LM-2 financial disclosure reports that detail all receipts and expenditures, the LM-20 form that management consultants will be required to file is two pages, much of which simply requires checking boxes.

Joe Earleywine, an Organizing Director with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), oversaw an organizing campaign of registered nurses, technical employees and other nonprofessional employees at Harrison Health Partners in Washington State. The parent company, Catholic Health Initiatives, hired Sebris, Busto and James to do its union busting. The day after collecting a majority of union authorization cards and asking the company for voluntary recognition, employees were forced to watch union-busting videos, as the employer tried to scare workers about strikes, dues and initiation fees.

"Using union-busting law firms to intimidate workers is one more tool in the toolbox that the global elite uses to keep workers from exercising their rights to improve their working conditions by joining a union," added Joe Earleywine.

Photo: Richard Trumka. | Carolyn Kaster/AP

Nabisco worker fears her middle class life will slip away

Tue, 22 Mar 2016 16:32:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Barb Cimbalista has been working at the Nabisco plant at 73^rd and Kedzie for 32 years. Since Nabisco's parent company Mondelēz announced plans to lay off half of their workers last summer, her middle-class life is no longer a sure thing.

"I'm too young to retire, I can't get Medicare, I can't get Social Security. Nabisco is claiming that they're not going to close up all the way," she told the People's World last week. She is hopeful that, unlike many of her coworkers, her seniority will allow her to hold onto her job. Given her experience with Mondelēz, however, she has reason to be skeptical.

In 32 years Cimbalista has seen the Nabisco Company change hands several times, but when Kraft's snacks division changed its name to Mondelēz in 2012 and spun off from Kraft's grocery division, things changed for her and her co-workers. Cimbalista characterized her working life at the plant as having turned into a dictatorship. Write-ups and firings increased.

"This company has been very unstable," she explained. "From KKR to RJ Reynolds to Kraft. Mondelēz spun off from Kraft. After that if anything went wrong it was all your fault. Nothing was their responsibility."

Nothing, it seems, included the preservation of good middle-class jobs.

"Our core lines consist of Oreos and Honey Grahams, and they're taking those to Mexico," Cimbalista said. "So next Wednesday is the last day for 277 workers." The next round of layoffs is expected this summer. Workers with eight years or fewer seniority will see their livelihoods up-ended.

"They kept telling us 'We'll give you state of the art lines if you give us $46 million in concessions', from our wages and benefits. We said 'hell no'. That would have put us at about $10 an hour and I'm sure they wanted the insurance and the pensions too."

Cimbalista lamented: "We made money for this company and this is the thanks we get."

The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), Local 300, represents workers at Nabisco plants across the country. They have begun a campaign to stop Nabisco from shipping the production of Oreos and other beloved snack foods to Mexico.

The petition on the union website (www.fightforamericanjobs.org) reads, "As people of faith, conscience and social unity we call upon Mondelēz/Nabisco to reverse its decision to send production to Mexico and keep these middle class jobs in Chicago."

The petitioners pledge to take steps to "educate American consumers, engage in a national dialogue, and resist Mondelēz/Nabisco's future attempts... to destroy middle class jobs."

As we've seen this election season, they've already begun the national dialogue.

Republican candidate for president Donald Trump has frequently pointed to Nabisco as the beneficiary of "stupid" trade policies that only he knows how to fix. He fails to mention that he himself has taken advantage of those policies in numerous shady business dealings of his own.

Indeed, many point to Nabisco's flight to Mexico as more fallout from free trade deals like NAFTA that have cost millions of American jobs.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stopped off at the Nabisco plant on a last minute campaign tour of Illinois. She met with a small contingent of workers. Cimbalista was not one of them, but she told the People's World that Clinton's message was that "it's not right, but there's no laws to stop them."

Clinton has changed her position on free trade by renouncing her support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and calling for steep exit taxes for corporations who want to move their production to countries with lower labor costs.

"We're surprised she came to our tiny office. There's nothing that [Clinton] can get done in the short term, but we've been pushing at the local and state levels," Cimbalista said.

Last Wednesday, Cook County passed a resolution proposed by former mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia calling on Nabisco and its parent company Mondelēz International to "continue its relationship with the south side of Chicago." The resolution cited the $29 million in tax savings the state of Illinois has granted Nabisco in the past.

Next week, the city of Chicago will take up a similar resolution.

Cimbalista and her co-workers are determined. "We're not going away quietly. We're going to fight for every job we can."

Photo: BCTGM Local 300, Facebook.

Speaker at PW luncheon: "We won't turn our backs on workers"

Tue, 22 Mar 2016 15:27:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES -- What do hip hop and labor have in common? If you ask the Los Angeles-based hip hop artists the Inner City Dwellers, hip hop and labor have a similar message. Labor is the voice for the working class and community hip hop is the voice for the disenfranchised and working poor. According to Fuerza Mexica (Cesar Castrejon), one of the Inner City Dwellers said "We are artists who won't turn our backs on workers and we see labor as an organization that won't turn its back on the workers."

The People's World luncheon honoring workers in the struggle was held March 20 at the Clean Carwash Workers Center, home of the Carwasheros organizing campaign in South Central Los Angeles. The Inner City Dwellers opened the People's World luncheon in Los Angeles with a spirited bi-lingual rap about the plight of hard working families. Their message and performance is a "Love song to the working people," according to Andres Rivera, one of three members performing at the event. Rivera, Jorge Cutera along with Cesar Castrejon make up this community-based hip hop group. This hip hop performance set the tone for the entire afternoon.

Eric Gordon, union member with the National Writers Union (NWU), staff writer and editor with the People's World welcomed the audience, speakers and introduced Rossana Cambron, People's World staff writer/videographer and Southern California District leader.

Cambron greeted participants at the People's World fundraising event and introduced the program, starting with a cultural presentation. "This is not entertainment because art, music and poetry need to be an important part in raising awareness in our communities," said Cambron.

"We couldn't have gotten here without you," said Rusty Hicks, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. "Labor and community supporters worked hard to raise the wage in Los Angeles City, Los Angeles County, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Pasadena and hopefully West Los Angeles." Hicks went on to say that 2015 was the year for Raise the Wage. The new campaign for 2016 is Build Better L.A., a campaign to create more affordable housing. Union members are currently collecting signatures to get Build Better L.A.'s affordable housing and quality jobs on the November 2016 ballot in Los Angeles. (story continues after video)

Hicks presented his perspective on the upcoming national elections before welcoming keynote speaker MaryBe McMillan, Secretary Treasurer of the North Carolina AFL-CIO. Hicks told the audience that unfortunately the current presidential election is divisive and the discourse has fallen to a low level. His message was that it will take getting out more votes if we want to win.

MaryBe McMillan expressed the need to organize one-by-one especially in a right to work state such as North Carolina. In a thoughtful assessment of organizing in the south, McMillan said: "If you want a glimpse into the future of the United States, look to the South." She went on: "I preach the gospel: We must organize. We must organize in the South. Why the South? Because the South is a reflection of our nation's future. The South is not a backward state as some think. There is a clear reason why the South is for the most part a right to work state. Right to work must not mean right of surrender. That is why a Southern campaign needs to be put in place by labor."

The afternoon's highlight was the honoring of workers who are engaged in struggle. El Super workers, who are organizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW Local 770), called for a boycott of El Super markets in 2015. El Super market employees are paid low wages and are predominantly Latino workers. People's World recognized two workers who risked their livelihood to bring justice and respect for all El Super workers; Fermin Rodriguez and Guadalupe Amador were honored.

Walmart workers also stood up against a major corporation that makes billions in profit. Workers have been retaliated against, threatened and spied upon. This has made their struggle for increase wages, affordable health care and other workplace issues difficult. Walmart workers have won some victories but the struggle continues. People's World honorees included: Denise Barlage, Evelin Cruz and Venanzi Luna.

The Clean Carwash Campaign is a coalition supported by the United Steel Workers (USW), the AFL-CIO and more than 100 community, faith and labor organizations in Los Angeles. Many carwash workers are immigrants. People's World honored Fausto Hernandez and those workers who have dedicated their time to organizing.

The People's World event ended with another wonderful cultural presentation by Ismael Parra, a musician and union/community activist. The Inner City Dwellers will be releasing an all-Spanish hip hop CD in the fall.

COMING SOON: The People's World (www.peoplesworld.org) will host the 24th Annual Hershel Walker 'Peace & Justice' Awards Breakfast on Saturday, May 14th, at the Painters' District Council 58 union hall in St. Louis, MO. The program will start at 9:30 a.m.

For additional details, email your question to editors@peoplesworld.org.

Photo: MaryBe McMillan gave a thoughtful assessment of organizing in the south. PW

Wash. mill town workers march for Bernie

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 15:07:00 +0000

PORT TOWNSEND, Wash. - One week before Washington State's March 26 caucuses, "Labor for Bernie Sanders" marched through this union mill town chanting "Banks got bail outs, we got sold out" and "Hey, hey, ho, ho-- the oligarchy's got to go."

Leading the march with their banners were members of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), the Inland Boatmen's Union, and the United Steelworkers. Former Communications Workers president, Larry Cohen, national leader of "Labor for Bernie" came to join the march and rally.

Several hundred Bernie Sanders supporters on the North Olympic Peninsula joined the Port Townsend march one day before Bernie Sanders spoke at KeyArena in Seattle to an immense overflow crowd. Admission to his Seattle rally was free. His rival, Hillary Clinton, was scheduled to appear at expensive fundraising events in the Seattle area March 22.

ILWU rank and filer, Brian Skiffington, carried one end of the ILWU banner even though his right arm was bandaged and in a sling due to a nasty on-the-job accident at the Port of Tacoma. The banner proclaimed, "An Injury to One is an Injury to All." Said Skiffinton, "For me, Bernie is the only voice speaking out for working people."

Tammy French, a social studies teacher at Forks High School marched with her child on her shoulders. "Bernie's definitely the candidate I've been waiting for my entire life," she said as she marched with her husband, Woody, and their other child. "He has an inspiring message and he inspires us," Woody French added.

The crowd had gathered in Port Townsends's Uptown marked by lovely Victorian mansions where mill owners, ship owners, and merchants lived a century ago. The city, blooming with cherry trees and daffodils, was celebrating its Victorian past the same weekend. Women dressed in bonnets and hoop skirts, men in top hats and swallow tail suits strolled about. Some of them joined the Labor for Bernie parade. The march proceeded down the hill to Pope Marine Park on the waterfront and cheered speakers who urged victory for Sanders in the Washington State caucuses.

ILWU organizer, Jeff Engels, who lives in Port Townsend, told the crowd he worked 20 years as a seafarer and knows well the seaport's past when seamen were "shanghaied," forced to toil aboard merchant ships for meager wages so the wealthy could enjoy their life of ease in their "Uptown" mansions.

"It's time to win Washington State and the rest of the West for Bernie Sanders," he thundered as the crowd cheered.

He introduced Isabelle Leclair, a youth leader of the Skokomish Tribe, who was invited by President Obama to visit the White House last fall. "Bernie Sanders has been the only constant since day one," she said. "He is the only candidate who believes there is a future to believe in, a candidate who thinks I should not be in debt when I graduate" from college.

Dean McGrath, President of ILWU Local 23 in Tacoma, said Bernie Sanders "had the courage to stand up when they were bailing out the banks and say, 'No! We should be bailing out the people."

McGrath decried income inequality so insane that corporate CEOs pocket income "470 times" greater than the income earned by the workers who "create the wealth" for the corporations.

He asked for a show of hands of those with pensions to live on. Few in the crowd raised their hands. "That is horrible!" McGrath said. "That's what happens when people fall asleep." Yet half the delegates needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination "are out there. Now we're coming into the west. We can transform America. That's what this campaign is all about."

Larry Cohen said he met Bernie Sanders 25 years ago. His message then was the same as it is today, Cohen said. Wall Street, he continued, "is coming for us. We stand up! We fight back!" He crowd took up the chant. "We stand up! We fight back."

Cohen said he served for many years as a Democratic Party "super-delegate" when he was president of the CWA. The Democratic National Committee is "hollowed out," he charged, dominated by Wall Street financiers who ram through "rotten trade deals" like the Trans Pacific Partnership. "It is time for real change," he said. "No more super-PACs. No more super-delegates. We need to fight for that in Philadelphia. We've got a candidate this time, Bernie Sanders, who is saying, 'I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.' He is the best candidate for president we have had in our lifetime...

Cohen concluded, "What are we going to do in the next seven days? Knock on doors, call people. We are activists and we know how to stand up and fight back. When we get to that caucus we say: We're proud to be for Bernie Sanders. We're proud to be part of this revolution."

Photo: Tim Wheeler/PW

Calif. lawmaker introduces bill to let “Gig Economy” workers organize

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 12:49:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO (PAI) - In a move anticipated by the AFL-CIO a month before, an influential California state lawmaker has introduced legislation to give workers in the so-called "Gig Economy" - notably Uber and Lyft drivers - the right to organize.

The measure, by new state Assembly Appropriations Committee Chair Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, would let 10 or more gig economy "platform" workers legally negotiate as a group, communicate as a group with customers and call boycotts and issue critiques of platforms' business practices. The workers would not have to vote in a union to do so.

And Gonzalez' bill would let the gig platforms' workers "report publicly or to law enforcement any practices which an independent contractor" - the status of those gig workers now - "reasonably believes" are illegal, or hurt workers or clients.

Gonzalez' measure is important because California alone has hundreds of thousands of workers in the new "Gig economy" including at least 160,000 Uber and Lyft drivers. Other "gig" or "on-demand economy" workers in California include DoorDash and Postmates food delivery drivers, Handy house cleaners and Amazon "flex" workers who deliver packages.

The two unregulated ride services, whom customers summon by apps and other electronic devices, compete with - and undercut - regular taxis while underpaying drivers and refusing to pick up workplace expenses, such as phones. Other gig firms follow similar unregulated business models.

As a result, the drivers have filed class action suits against the firms, seeking to be declared employees and getting the right to organize and bargain for themselves. Gonzalez' bill, the California 1099 Self-Organizing Act, AB1727, would give it to them.

"California has led the way in innovating our economy through technology, and our laws must catch up to that innovation in order to do right by the workers in this state," Gonzalez said. "Obviously, our economy is changing. It's time our labor laws catch up with that reality," she told reporters. Her committee helps dole out funds for California state agencies.

"This bill ensures the millions of Californians who aren't treated as employees, including workers in the evolving gig economy, simply have the option to organize and collectively bargain for better pay and working conditions for themselves for the work that they perform," her prepared statement added.

Recent polls show the gig economy workers agree, by a 2-to-1 ratio, that their "platforms" - companies - exploit the lack of state and local regulation. The same ratio of workers agree they lack the safety net available to full-time workers, while 70 percent believe they should receive more benefits.

"While AB1727 doesn't mandate benefits or institute any new regulation on hosting platforms, it does empower working people facing a new economic landscape with the legal tools to help themselves as they see fit," a legal analysis from Gonzalez' office says.

In its winter meeting - coincidentally in San Diego - just before Gonzalez introduced her bill, the AFL-CIO Executive Council said gig economy workers should be legally "employees," with all worker rights and protections, including the right to organize, under federal labor law.

But it envisions organizing gig workers into unions, while Gonzalez' bill leaves that out. Instead, it gives workers the right to organize, in groups of 10 or more, with legal protection.

"Making the right policy choices begins with ensuring people who work for on-demand companies enjoy the rights and protections of employees," the council said. "Under current law, only workers who are defined as 'employees' are protected by the National Labor Relations Act and enjoy minimum wage, overtime, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation and family and medical leave.

"Unions have long been fighting back against employers who misclassify working people and create precarious, vulnerable work. This is what we do. The AFL-CIO is committed to ensuring new technology-and new forms of employer manipulation-do not erode the rights of working people. Rest assured that if employers get away with pretending their workers aren't employees, your job could be next."

Federation Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler said then the fed will work with allies, community groups and businesses "to enact policies that will prevent gig economy workers from falling through the cracks. If we act now, we can build a future of work that promises working people a better life."

Photo: Uber and Lyft drivers demonstrate for collective bargaining. | Clay Showalter/Labor Notes

Unionists cheer as railroad adminstration proposes two-person train crews

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 11:12:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - In a big win for rail workers, their unions, their members and - the agency emphasizes - rail safety, the Federal Railroad Administration is proposing to mandate two-person crews in all but a few instances on the nation's freight railroads.

If FRA's proposed rule makes it all the way through the convoluted federal rulemaking process, it would be a big win for rank-and-file rail workers and their unions, who have agitated and lobbied for two-person crews. They've also convinced several state legislatures about that.

Railroad Workers United, an organization of rank-and-file rail unionists - including members of Smart's Transportation Division and the Teamsters Rail Conference - applauded FRA's basic plan and then said RWU would try, in written testimony, to strengthen it.

"Our efforts-together with those of the unions of the rail operating crafts in the last few years-have brought this issue before the general public and the government", said RWU General Secretary Ron Kaminkow, a locomotive engineer. RWU has waged a four-year campaign to mandate two-person train crews.

"The proposed rule is a major step forward in the fight against the dangerous and reckless proposal by the nation's rail carriers to run trains with a lone employee. While the FRA proposed rule is far from perfect, providing loopholes and allowing for exemptions in too many instances, it is certainly a major stride in the right direction."

FRA justified its rule by both studies and the contrast between two recent dangerous railroad accidents. The train that had a one-person crew resulted in the fatal crash, explosion, destruction and 47 deaths in Lac-Megantic, Quebec in July 2013.

There was only the engineer on that train, and its brakes were insufficient to keep it from getting loose, careening downhill and crashing into downtown Lac-Megantic, where it exploded. FRA noted that with a two-person crew, even that accident could have been avoided - by having the crew members split the train onto two sidings and checking its brakes.

On Dec. 30, in Casselton, N.D., an eastbound 104-car oil train collided with a car from a westbound grain train "that had derailed less than two minutes earlier from an adjacent main track." While a fire broke out among 475,000 gallons of spilled oil from 18 derailed cars, and 1,500 people were evacuated, nobody was killed and there was little area damage.

Because there were three crew members on the 112-car grain train - an engineer, a conductor and a student engineer trainee - the impact was limited, the FRA said.

"Many members of the general public who viewed the news accounts of burning wreckage may not be aware that heroic actions of the grain train's crewmembers potentially prevented the environmental and property damages from being much worse, in addition to potentially shortening the evacuation period.

Casselton's assistant fire chief, FRA said, asked the freight train crew to aid emergency responders by "pulling a cut of tank cars away from burning derailed cars." In two separate operations, after getting OKs from rail supervisors, the engineer and the student engineer pulled 70 tank cars a quarter of a mile away "out of harm's way," the agency reported.

"These urgent moves would have been much more time-consuming and logistically difficult if the grain train was operated with only a one-person crew. There is a question of whether either emergency response would have been attempted with a one-person crew."

Meanwhile, the two crew members of the oil train "benefited from each other's presence" as they shared safety tasks - after more-veteran engineer warned the conductor "who did not know what he was supposed to do"-to get down and brace for a collision. Once they found they were uninjured, the conductor was the first to see the fire.

"This is a clear example of the benefit a second crewmember can provide. Without a second person, the engineer may not have realized that he was in immediate danger. Third, upon hearing this news, the engineer told the conductor to 'grab your cell phone and run.' This is another example of effective teamwork during an emergency situation.

"These two crewmembers worked as a team in an emergency situation to divide up tasks, warn the dispatcher and local emergency responders, and protect each other's safety," and they also got the local deputy sheriff to get area residents away, preventing deaths among them, FRA said.

The agency says quantitative studies also back two-person train crews, adding the studies show that "positive train control" - an automatic train-slowing and braking system many freight railroads have yet to install - "does not substitute for all the tasks performed by properly trained conductors." That's also been an union argument for two-person crews.

"Task overload can lead to a loss of situational awareness, and potentially to accidents," FRA laconically said. "Railroads achieved a continually improving safety record during a period in which the industry largely employed two-person train crews."

Arguing that extra crew members would cost them a lot of money, the nation's big railroads are lobbying FRA for the one-person crews. They got them in areas such as local railyards. But FRA discounted those cost claims. It said keeping a second crew member, or adding one where needed, would cost railroads $5 million-$27.7 million over a decade. Pre-venting five deaths "would exceed the break-even point at the high range" of costs, FRA said.

FRA said there can be cases where railroads can operate with just the engineer in the cab, but they're limited to "generally low risk operations that are not hauling large quantities of hazardous materials, traveling at high speeds, or putting passengers on passenger trains at risk" - such as for scenic, historic and excursion trains, helper service, track maintenance, or to move locomotives where they are needed, FRA said. Railroads could also seek other exceptions, case by case, to the two-person crew rule. But the roads would have to prove their need and that they implemented all FRA-required safety measures.

Photo: Train crew on the scene of Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia. | AP

Easter Rising 1916: Labor and the Irish independence struggle

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 13:49:00 +0000

This article was reposted with kind permission from UE News.

An unexpected commotion disrupted routine in a busy city center on an April morning one hundred years ago. Armed men commandeered the main post office in a major city in the world's most powerful empire. One of their leaders interrupted the musings and conversations of those going about their business by reading out a proclamation declaring an Irish Republic.

The Easter Rising of 1916 was underway.

Over the next several days, a handful of rebels battled British troops; the imperial might directed against Dublin smashed the city's core into smoking ruins; and the rebellion's visionary leaders faced firing squads, their bullet-ridden corpses dumped into lime pits.

Over the next five years, much of the Irish nation united at the ballot box around the agenda of revolutionary independence; rebels constructed the infrastructure of a separatist government; guerrilla bands plagued imperial police and army; negotiations established a new political entity, the Irish Free State, which would eventually morph into a republic-more or less as proclaimed in 1916.

Little of this could have been foreseen on Easter Monday, April 24.

If a majority of the Irish population in 1916 could have been considered as nationalists, they adhered to the vision laid out by a century of Irish political leaders: home rule. This meant an Irish parliament in Dublin governing a nation still linked to its bigger, prosperous, powerful neighbor, Britain. Home rule, finally approved by the British Parliament, seemed almost a reality, stalled by the Great War then raging on the continent.

In 1916, some 200,000 Irishmen fought abroad in hopes of improving their political standing and furthering their political objectives (some against, but most for, home rule): Almost 200 times more Irish men responded to the call of Queen and Country than took up arms for the Republic that Easter Monday.

Among the relative few who willingly risked their lives (and those of others) in the Easter Rising were men and women who regarded British imperial control over the island nation as the source of long festering ills, political, economic, social, and cultural.

One rebel leader with an impressive record as a political activist and union organizer in three countries regarded independence as an indispensable first step in realizing a worker-run society. Let's destroy the British Empire's subjugation of Ireland, he said. But let's also remove the power of the bosses who defraud, degrade, dismiss, and terrorize Irish working people. That the bosses might be Irish didn't deter James Connolly from the goal of an Irish workers' republic.

"Ireland without its people is nothing to me," wrote Connolly. "The man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for 'Ireland' and can pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and suffering, the shame and degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland, aye wrought by Irishmen upon Irish men and women without burning to end it, is in my opinion a fraud and a liar in his heart."

Connolly was born in 1868 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Like so many others of their generation, his parents left Ireland in hopes of improving their living conditions elsewhere. Like so many of his generation, Connolly grew up in a neighborhood of desperately poor, low-waged immigrant workers. Burning with the desire to eliminate thecauses of poverty, Connolly threw himself into the labor movement.

Living and working in Scotland, Connolly became an early member of the Independent Labour Party, forerunner to today's British Labour Party. And he was a union organizer. On what should have been his wedding day, he and his older brother led a strike in Dundee.

From Scotland, Connolly moved to his parents' native Ireland, becoming a founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party. Like so many other workers, Connolly immigrated to the United States, and quickly linked up with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)-an organization whose pioneering industrial unionism prepared the way for UE and other CIO unions. He organized dock workers in Philadelphia and machine workers in New Jersey.

Returning to Ireland, Connolly worked tirelessly as an organizer and leader of the independent Irish Transport and General Workers Union. He became a founder of the Irish Labour Party.

His work took him north to Belfast. In his American union organizing, Connolly worked to bring workers of different nationalities into the same union. In the North of Ireland he combated orange bigotry and green bigotry to unite Catholic and Protestant workers in the same trade union. For Connolly, solidarity could never be only a slogan.

In Dublin in 1913-with sickening success-the city's most powerful employer conspired with other bosses and the authorities to crush the labor movement, and the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in particular. When police brutality terrorized both picket lines and working-class neighborhoods, Connolly helped organize a workers' defense force. Strikers armed themselves in what became known as the Irish Citizen Army.

With World War I underway, Connolly and his union made their views clear. An enormous banner draped across the front of Liberty Hall, the headquarters building of the ITGWU, proclaimed-"We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland." Irish people should struggle for the emancipation of the Irish working class, not kill and be killed for the phony claims of competing empires, Connolly and his comrades said.

Connolly insisted that real independence for Ireland depended on the emancipation of the working class: "If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle [site of British administration], unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England will still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs."

The cataclysmic events on the continent strengthened Connolly's determination to strike for Irish independence, and thus liberate workers in Ireland and around the world by weakening the mighty British Empire. He created a firm alliance between his Irish Citizen Army and the volunteer military companies organized by the clandestine Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

An oath-bound secret society, the IRB had spent decades planning war against the British government to achieve Irish independence. The IRB was the invisible heart of Fenianism-a transnational movement uniting Irish people, mostly of the middle and lower classes, throughout the far-flung diaspora (and especially in the United States) and in Ireland itself in the effort for an independent republic.

(In the late 1800s, Fenians briefly aligned with the most significant contemporary Irish social movement-the campaign for tenants' rights and land reform. Michael Davitt, himself a former Fenian, developed pioneering tactics in non-violent, mass protests which would be studied by Mohandas Ghandi.)

In 1916, old Fenians, like-minded revolutionaries of a new generation, rebel women of the Cumann na mBan, and now Connolly and the union men of the Citizen Army, jointly resolved to strike the long-awaited blow.

They planned the details of the rising in secret. Along with overseeing weapon procurement and details of troop deployment, the leaders crafted the Proclamation of the Republic to be read at the moment of revolt. The influence of Connolly and radical labor can be seen in crucial passages of the Proclamation: "the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland"; equal rights to all citizens, including women; and a commitment to universal suffrage. (Connolly was a strong advocate of women's rights, writing: "The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.") Few countries-and not Britain-gave all adults the right to vote.

On the morning of Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, 1,250 or so rebels seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish republic. (A slightly larger number engaged in attacks on government barracks in a few other areas in the country.) Britain quickly rushed 16,000 troops to Dublin, assisted by about 1,000 armed police. Gunboats in the Liffey River began shelling the city, pulverizing its core.

After five days of fierce fighting, the rebels made unconditional surrender. Sixty-four had been killed in combat and an unknown number wounded. Two hundred and fifty-four civilians were killed, more than 2,000 wounded. Both British and rebel forces killed civilians for refusal to obey orders. In at least two documented instances, British troops shot civilians (fellow citizens of the United Kingdom) out of frustration and rage.

The authorities arrested 3,430 men and 79 women. Courts marital quickly followed, issuing dozens of death sentences. Sixteen rebels, including all seven signatories of the Proclamation, were taken out and shot between May 3 and 12. James Connolly had been seriously injured in the fighting: gangrene ate at his leg after a bullet shattered an ankle. British officers ordered the labor leader tied to a chair because he couldn't stand before the firing squad.

The imprisoned thousands turned their jails into schools for advanced studies in insurrection. They would emerge as the leadership of the next phase of the independence struggle.

The Irish public had a mixed reaction to the Dublin rising, ranging from surprise to annoyance to sympathy. Ireland had long been part of the United Kingdom, and many young men were serving in British uniforms in the World War-factors which initially limited popular support for the rebellion and its conspiratorial origins. But the severity of the British response (especially the shelling of Dublin and execution of the leaders), contrasted sharply with the heroism and vision of the rebels. The course of Irish politics became thoroughly transformed. (In the words of the poet William Butler Yeats, "a terrible beauty was born.")

At the first parliamentary election following the World War, on Dec. 14, 1918, voters gave a landslide victory to candidates pledged to Irish independence. Those candidates refused to take their seats in the British Parliament in London. Instead, they assembled in Dublin on Jan. 21, 1919, constituted themselves as an Irish parliament-the Dáil Éireann-and adopted a Declaration of Independence.

Scholars, politicians, commentators, and activists continue to debate the meaning and legacy of Easter 1916, and especially in this centennial year. The Republic of Ireland is sponsoring official commemorative events, as are political parties and groups in Ireland and throughout the vast diaspora. Controversy over how best to observe the centennial is inevitable because the three major political parties in the Republic have long distanced themselves from the explosive origins of the nation-state. (Northern Ireland's violence in the final three decades of the twentieth century, sometimes justified by the goal of an "Irish republic," caused revulsion in the Republic of Ireland.)

The legacies of the Easter Rebellion and the Irish Republic-like that of the American Revolution and American Republic-have been confounded and compromised by the relentless drive of a privileged few to expand their wealth and control of workers' lives. Struggles for freedom continue, as does the fight to realize Connolly's vision: a working class organized and mobilized to win freedom from hunger, neglect, disrespect and exploitation wreaked by the bosses' greed.

Photo: James Connolly (1868-1916) organized workers in Ireland, Britain and the U.S. and was a principal leaders of the Easter Rising. After the rebellion was defeated, Connolly and other leaders were executed by a British firing squad.

What’s the value of this man’s work?

Wed, 16 Mar 2016 14:03:00 +0000

This profile is reprinted with permission from the AFL-CIO's channel on Medium, entitled By Our Hands.

I mean, what's it worth?

His name is Kwaku Agyeman, and he has a job pushing wheelchairs for passengers who otherwise would have a hard time getting around Reagan National Airport, which serves metropolitan Washington, DC.

If you need a wheelchair, wouldn't you be glad to see this man? His job is to help you, which is great for you, not so much for him.

The problem is his employer, Eulen America, which has valued his job as almost worthless.

You see, Eulen America has exploited a loophole in America's minimum wage laws. It's a loophole you could push about a million wheelchairs through, and then follow them with an endless parade of airport skycab drivers and baggage handlers and then food service workers of all kinds. Agyeman and his colleagues earn far less than the laughably low minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. They get the other minimum wage, the tipped minimum, which is $2.17 an hour. Seriously.

With tipped workers, the employer only pays the rock-bottom minimum. The real work of deciding Agyeman's worth is done by you. You actually decide, with your money.

It's convenient for Eulen, because the company managers know exactly what his service is worth to Reagan National Airport. They earn millions from a contract to provide wheelchair attendants and other services to the busy transportation hub within sight of the monuments of the National Mall.

Yet somehow it's your job to randomly and yet specifically assess Agyeman's value by actually digging into your wallet and paying him. On your own. He's not allowed to tell you his pay comes from your tips. You're simply supposed to know. And to act on that knowledge.

"It's left to the generosity of the passenger," Agyeman said, who's 59 and hopes somehow, someday to help his 18-year-old daughter pay for college after she graduates from high school.

His plan isn't to wait and hope National's passengers suddenly start showering him with bills. He wants to negotiate with his employer, Eulen America. He wants to negotiate through a union of his coworkers, who all get something south of the federal minimum wage.

What does Agyeman think his service is worth? Judging from the value of contracts of companies like Eulen and from the wins of airport workers in places like New York City, it looks like $15 an hour is reasonable. That's what he and his coworkers want. That's what they're asking for as members of 32BJ, which is part of the Service Employees International Union. The "BJ" stands for Building Janitors. It's the biggest union of property services workers in the United States.

Agyeman hopes his job is valuable enough that someday he'd be able to quit his other job and eventually maybe even retire. He also hopes to buy a home. Something.

Today, though, he shrugs his shoulders and adjusts his tie. He's getting ready to push a traveler from the parking lot through to check-in, security and the gate. It's what he does. But what's it worth?

Long ATI lockout ends with Steelworkers win

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 16:59:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH (PAI) - Allegheny Technologies' long lockout of its Steelworkers nationwide ended March 14 with a big union win. Workers returned to their jobs under the new 4-year pact, which they ratified by a 5-to-1 ratio days before.

The firm, which has 12 plants in six states, settled 10 days after the National Labor Relations Board stated on Feb. 22 that Allegheny, also called ATI, did not bargain in good faith for a new contract, and thus its lockout was illegal. NLRB's 31-page brief had many charges.

ATI locked out its 2,200 workers last August 15, just before they were to vote, and presumably reject, its "last, best and final" offer full of concessionary demands.

Had ATI not settled and then been found guilty in an NLRB judicial hearing, ATI would have been on the hook for millions of dollars in back pay to the USW members.

The lockout lasted through the fall and winter. The workers, sometimes literally frozen out of their jobs, walked picket lines to garner community support. At least one line, in Bagdad, Pa., just before Christmas, continued in the midst of a snowstorm.

"The strength and solidarity of our union paid off with a fair contract that contains virtually none of the drastic concessions ATI sought to arbitrarily impose," said USW President Leo Gerard.

The union said the new contract "protects retirement benefits and maintains affordable, quality health care for active workers and retirees. It protects union jobs against outside contractors, maintains the grievance procedure and other important contract language, and introduces a new profit-sharing system that allows USW members a bigger share in ATI's future success."

"ATI launched a well-prepared, well-funded campaign of intimidation and manipulation, recruiting scabs and security guards for the lockout, before bargaining even started in the spring of 2015," the union added.

It also presented "a jaw-dropping list of...145 deep and permanent concessions that would have erased decades of progress, significantly increased health care costs for retirees and created an unacceptable and divisive two-tier benefit system."

Union Vice President Tom Conway said ATI's plan from the first day of the lockout "was to starve us out, to push the lockout into February when unemployment benefits would begin to run out and then force us to accept its insulting 'best, last and final' offer." It didn't work.

"This is a tremendous victory for a very brave group of workers. They should be proud of this agreement, and of the resolve they demonstrated throughout this 6-month ordeal. They showed us all the strength that we can have when we stand together in unflinching solidarity," Gerard said.

The Northwest Labor Press in Oregon, whose area includes an ATI plant Albany, Ore., added some contract details. They include: Establishing a 401(k) plan for new hires rather than putting them under the traditional pension system, no retiree health insurance for those new hires, but an extra 50 cents per hour in company 401(k) contributions to help them pay for later health care, 90 percent company payments of current workers' health insurance premiums, a $3,500-per-worker signing bonus spread out over four years, and a dollar-an-hour raise in base pay.

ATI also increased company-paid supplemental unemployment benefits for workers laid off when a plant is temporarily idled, the paper said.

The Northwest Labor Press contributed material for this story.

Photo: Locked-out steelworkers protest, even in a snowstorm, against Allegheny Technologies, in this case in Bagdad, Pa., last Dec. 15. The firm's 6-month lockout ended with a Steelworkers win and a new 4-year contract, as ATI settled before losing a big NLRB unfair labor practices strike case. Steelworkers photo via PAI Photo Service.

Labor backs two major actions aimed at restoring American democracy

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 15:31:00 +0000

SAN DIEGO -- The AFL-CIO's executive council has endorsed two coming actions, both in April, aimed at wresting control over the nation's elections from corporations and billionaires who labor says are literally buying our politicians. The nation's largest labor federation is joining over 200 other labor, human rights, civil rights and environmental organizations in two mass actions this spring that will demand restoration of democracy in America.

The first of these actions is the Democracy Spring, which begins April 2 in Philadelphia with a march commencing from the Liberty Bell and concluding at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on April 11. Thousands are expected to gather there "to reclaim the U.S. Capitol in a powerful, peaceful, and massive sit-in that no one can ignore," according to the website set up for the event organizers. With over 2,100 people already pledged to risk arrest, this campaign is "expected to be one of the largest civil disobedience actions in a generation."

DemocracySpring.org states that, "We will demand that Congress listen to the people and take immediate action to save our democracy. And we won't leave until they do - or until they send thousands of us to jail, along with the unmistakable message that our country needs a new Congress, one that that will end the legalized corruption of our democracy and ensure that every American has an equal voice in government."

The Democracy Awakening/Congress of Conscience will be a 3-day mobilization converging on Washington, D.C. April 16-18, consisting of "an array of actions, including demonstrations, teach-ins, direct action trainings, music, a "rally for democracy," and pressing for a "Congress of Conscience" through non-violent direct action and advocacy.

Democracy Awakening is a coalition of over 170 organizations including the labor, peace, environmental, student, racial justice, civil rights and money-in-politics-reform-movements. The coalition's website states, "We share a firm belief that we will not win on the full range of policy issues we all care about until we combat attacks on voting rights and the integrity of the vote by big money."

A statement released by the AFL-CIO Executive Council on Feb. 23 said:

"Our members must be engaged as voters, activists, volunteers and stakeholders. Our unique infrastructure, which is in place in 50 states, allows us to catalyze organizing, mobilizing and resourcing democracy work with and through our affiliates, constituency groups and national strategic partners. Therefore, we stand firm with the principles of the Spring Democracy uprisings:

Expansion and protection of voting rights at the federal and state level;
Preventing corporations and the wealthy few from buying elections;
Changing structural rules to ensure that every vote and every voice counts equally; and
Reshaping the political debate to demand full democracy at every level of government."

Daniel Duncan, President of the Northern Virginia AFL-CIO, said "protecting voting rights and getting big money out of our democracy is essential to winning any victories for working people. That goes for everything from having clean water to drink, the right to organize and racial justice."

Photo: Putting up posters. Democracy Spring. Facebook.