The following is a speech delivered by Phyllis Walker, the President of AFSCME Local 3800, at a Dec. 10 forum organized by Freedom Road Socialist Organization. The program focused on the lessons of the clerical workers’ strike at the University of Minnesota, and featured talks by strike leaders. Many in the audience had participated in strike. The speeches were followed by a wide-ranging discussion on the strike, the state of the labor movement and the need for socialism.

Sisters and brothers, greetings and solidarity from AFSCME Local 3800.

We are here today to talk about an important battle. Hundreds of clerical workers stood up against the University of Minnesota administration and struck for fifteen days this fall. This was the first strike at the University in 60 years.

This strike was important because we mobilized the membership and showed that fighting was not only possible, but that it was the only way that we can better the situation of clerical workers at the University of Minnesota. Individuals acting alone don’t change things, only groups of people acting together do.

Management at the University of Minnesota has never seriously believed that clerical workers can and would strike. They have never been willing to give us standard protections that are in many union contracts. This fall, they did not expect us to actually strike, and once we struck – to stay out as long as we did. They were wrong and now our union is much stronger.

This was not an isolated strike. Rather, the strike arose within the context of an organized offensive against public employees. The proportion of the working class represented by unions has been falling the last several decades – now the portion of private sector workers in unions is the lowest in over a century. The public sector has a higher percentage of unions organized and corporate America wants to end that.

In Minnesota, there has been an organized attack against public employees. Legislation was proposed that would strip public employees of bargaining rights and impose wage freezes and benefit cuts. While that legislation was defeated, public employees are still facing demands that they give up their step increases, pay greatly increased health care costs and take wage freezes.

For the most part, the labor movement has gone along with these attacks and has not waged a public fight-back. Legislatively, the labor movement chose to tail behind the Democratic Party under the slogan of ‘Take Back Minnesota.’ This is not the kind of spirited fight against cutbacks that one would expect.

This strike was also part of another offensive against workers. As healthcare costs escalate, the bosses want to shift these costs onto workers. Workers are paying hundred of dollars a month in premiums for inadequate coverage.

For the most part, with a few exceptions, the labor movement is eating these increased costs. One notable exception is the thousands of grocery workers that are fighting back and remain on strike in California. GE workers also waged a fight over increased health care costs, with a one-day strike earlier this year.

Those workers who are standing up and fighting against this attempt to shift the costs of health care onto the working class are correct and I am proud to say our local is among those who chose to fight.

While the immediate task we have is to resist concessions on health care, longer term we must fight to get rid of the rotten health care system in this country. We need socialized health care.

The strike arose within the context of an increasingly corporatized University of Minnesota. While the U of M has always been run by the rich, in recent years it has taken a shift to the right. The Board of Regents is increasingly conservative, anti-worker and anti-student. For the first time in 70 years, there is no AFL-CIO rep on the Board of Regents; it is dominated by health care executives. The administration keeps raising tuition, has eliminated open enrollment and has made the U increasingly inaccessible to the sons and daughters of working people.

Going on strike teaches you many things. It teaches you the strength of working people, the power of solidarity and necessity of working together. There are many lessons of this strike and I would like to share of few of them with you.

The first lesson is that we can and must fight back, even in hard times, especially in hard times. The vast majority of public employee unions in the state have chosen to lie low against the attacks on our step-increases and benefits. Lying low is no strategy because it will only embolden our enemies to come after us next time. The University of Minnesota now knows, if it comes after us, we will fight back.

We need a fighting labor movement in this country. A labor movement that is willing to take on management, by any means necessary. The alternative is what we have now, the decline of the labor movement under the leadership of trade union bureaucrats in bed with the boss, attempting to lie low and ‘cooperate’ rather than fight.

The second lesson is that we need strong, rank-and-file leadership to win a struggle. Our local leadership recognized what we were up against months before the strike and painstakingly organized to get a strike vote. We put out a strong message to our membership that it was OK to stand up and fight. We countered management’s slogan that we need to ‘share the pain,’ with information showing that administrators were greedy pigs feeding at the trough. We actively worked to get a strike vote and to reject management’s demands for concessions.

Finally, we relied on and mobilized the membership. AFSCME Local 3800 believes that our strength is in the membership. When we set out on our contract campaign we decided to give our membership a blow-by-blow account of negotiations. Most unions negotiate behind closed doors. We engaged in actions and activities to involve the membership. When it came time to strike the members knew it was their strike. When we settled the contract, it was not a decision of few negotiators behind closed doors; it was a meeting of hundreds of strikers jamming a church and deciding what should be done.

When the members make the decisions, then they support the process and are willing to fight for a just outcome. And workers standing up and fighting together is what makes a union strong.

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