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.

#MinneapolisMN #News #UniversityOfMinnesota #AFSCMELocal3800 #2003Strike

Minneapolis, MN – “After striking for 15 days, we came away with a stronger, fighting union and we won some real gains for clerical workers at the University of Minnesota,” said Phyllis Walker, President of AFSCME Local 3800, the clerical workers union at the U of M. Clerical workers at the University of Minnesota went on strike from Oct. 21 to Nov. 4, 2003 against huge health care cuts, a proposed wage freeze and to win key job security provisions. This was the first strike at the University of Minnesota in 60 years.

The University administration hadn't truly negotiated during five months of talks before the strike. The administration was demanding that the union agree to massive cuts, without giving anything the union wanted. The union negotiating committee had no choice but to recommend that clerical workers vote to strike.

The university administration didn't take the union's strike vote seriously. When 63% of the members voted to strike, the administration still didn't negotiate, thinking they would call the union's bluff. Then the union surprised them by going out on strike. The week before the strike, university Vice President Carol Carrier sent a series of intimidating and dishonest emails to clerical workers, trying to smear the union and convince people not to strike. Each day during the strike, University President Robert Bruininks and Vice President Carol Carrier continued this dirty campaign by lying to the press, saying that the strike wasn't affecting 'business as usual' at the University.

But each day the strike stayed strong, slowing down or stopping many University functions and departments, as well as gaining increasing community support. Despite the rhetoric of 'business as usual,' by the second week the social crisis caused by the strike was spiraling out of the administration's control.

AFSCME Local 3800 represents 1,700 clerical workers – 93% of them women – at University of Minnesota campuses in the Twin Cities, Morris and Crookston. Clericals the University of Minnesota-Duluth, who are in Local 3801, were also on strike.

Clerical Workers Stand Up

In this year's contract negotiations, the administration decided to take advantage of the current economic crisis to attack the lowest-paid workers at the U of M. They attacked salaries, proposing a wage freeze. They attacked annual seniority increases (step increases), which are the basis of the union contract. They proposed to double and triple health care costs. And they offered nothing in return that the union was asking for – even if the items had no cost.

Some people warned union members that this was a bad time to strike. They said the economy is bad, the other large unions on campus didn't vote to strike and that the University had its budget cut by the new Republican Governor Pawlenty. People came up with all kinds of reasons why low-paid workers shouldn't stand up when they were under attack.

But Local 3800 members didn't buy it. As AFSCME 3800 activist Neo Rowan put it, “It's never a 'good time' to go on strike – but it was necessary. There was no other option. The union gives us a collective voice instead of everyone independently complaining and feeling isolated.”

The union refused to accept the administration's argument that it had no money for clerical workers, pointing out that even though the university's budget was cut by the state, it still has literally billions of dollars in the bank, and a tiny fraction of that money could pay for step increases and health care cost increases for clerical workers. In one important union meeting, AFSCME 3800 Vice President Marie Milsten Fiedler pointed out, “There is a distribution crisis, not a budget crisis, at the U of M.” This became one of the union's main slogans during the strike; it resonated broadly and put the administration on the defensive.

The union made a flyer listing over 60 top university administrators who make more money than Minnesota's governor. They showed that administrative positions that pay over $100,000 have ballooned in the past 10 years. The union mocked President Bruininks call for low-paid workers to 'share the pain,' when he makes $360,000 per year and gets to live in a mansion for free. The union drove home the fact that there is money at the University that could be spent on the lowest-paid workers – but instead is spent on lavish salaries for top administrators.

When the union began organizing for a strike, it became clear that clerical workers were ready to fight back. Hundreds of low-paid clerical workers made great personal sacrifices against great odds – giving up over two weeks of pay – to stand up against disrespect from one of the largest employers in the state. Union picket captain Kelly Zimmerscheid said, “We have to be proactive when negotiations don't get what we want. It was worth the sacrifice. I wouldn't have done it any other way. When injustice happens to the lowest-paid area of the workforce, if we can't stand up for ourselves, then who can?”

Clerical workers who went on strike were transformed by the experience. According to another picket captain, Jared Cruz, “Being out with my co-workers on the picket line was a life-changing experience. We all got to know each other, we broke down our isolation and realized that together we have power to make change. None of us will be the same after this.”

When clerical workers went on strike, it sparked a broader social movement at the University. The union consciously organized to help build that broader movement for workers' rights and social justice.

Support Committee Played a Key Role

To organize support among other unions, as well as among professors, students and the community outside of the University, the union formed the Labor & Community Support Committee before the strike started.

The Support Committee was very successful in organizing broad support for the striking workers. Members of the committee organized hundreds of professors to move their classes off-campus in support of the strike, so they and their students wouldn't have to cross the picket lines. Over 4,000 students attended classes off-campus during the strike.

Students from the Support Committee organized several important protests before and during the strike. In the second week of the strike, over 70 students organized a sit-in at President Bruininks's office in Morrill Hall. It was the first sit-in at Morrill Hall since the anti-apartheid student movement in the early 1980's.

Students sat in for three days, demanding that Bruininks return to negotiations and settle a fair contract with the clerical workers. Hundreds more students and supporters rallied outside Morrill Hall, making a ton of noise to support the students sitting-in and to stop business as usual.

The administration was so rattled by the noisy protests that they threatened to get a noise injunction against the union, so that all the union picket lines would have to be silent. But it was the student protests making noise, not the union, so the administration couldn't do anything about it! This type of support from outside of the union was key in breaking down President Bruininks.

He threatened to arrest the students on the third day of their sit-in if they stayed in Morrill Hall past 6:00 p.m. Then, a few hours before that time, President Bruininks backed down. Instead of arresting the student protesters, he suddenly agreed to return to the negotiating table with the union and said there were proposals he was willing to negotiate.

Andrew Hamilton, one of the student protest organizers, explained his view on Bruininks's sudden move back to negotiations in the midst of the student sit-in: “I definitely think the student actions were successful, but the students who were involved in the sit-in know we were able to have an impact on the University administration only because clerical workers had been out on the picket lines strong for one and a half weeks already. We thought of what we were doing as the concentration of clerical workers' power inside the Administration building, where clerical workers on strike were forbidden from being due to state law. It was not a free-floating student action that moved the University. In the full perspective, that was one visible point where things came to a head, but it was by no means the most important thing that happened. The union won the strike, and some student supporters were able to do some important work along the way.”

Concrete Gains

When the union and the administration returned to the table that weekend, they reached a tentative agreement after two all-night negotiating sessions. The agreement still was not what the union wanted, but the administration was forced to give in to the union on its top priority proposal for job security – salary protection for laid off workers when they get rehired. They were also forced to let the clerical workers keep the Rule of 75, an important job security provision and layoff benefit for long-term employees – and a provision that the administration had already taken away from all other University workers. The union kept annual step increases in the contract. The union also won a contribution to a pre-tax health care account and won about $250,000 more in money for wages than in the administration's previous offers, including a 4% salary increases for the long-term employees who normally don't get increases.

“We didn't get everything we need to have a livable wage and affordable health care, but we got enough to end the strike and go back to work. We won one battle in an ongoing fight. Next round of contract negotiations, they will know they can't run over clerical workers in AFSCME Local 3800,” said Local 3800 President Phyllis Walker. “Through the strike, we built a coalition of workers, students and professors that will continue the fight after the strike. And most importantly, we transformed the union by going on strike. Now we have hundreds of members who know that they are the union and that by standing together and fighting, we can accomplish great things.”

#Minnesota #MN #News #UniversityOfMinnesota #AFSCMELocal3800 #2003Strike

Minneapolis, MN – At the beginning of October, clerical workers at the University of Minnesota said no to a wage freeze and skyrocketing health care costs, and voted to go on strike. The clerical workers’ union, AFSCME Local 3800, is leading a fightback to stop the university administrators from balancing the budget on the backs of the lowest paid workers and students.

Workers can start a strike in late October, after a mandatory ‘cooling off period.’ This will be the first strike in at least a generation at the University of Minnesota.

The U of M got less funding from the state this year, as a result of Governor Pawlenty’s overall attack on social services and public education for poor and working people. While Pawlenty’s cuts were real, Local 3800 President Phyllis Walker points out, “The U always finds money for the things it thinks are important. The U is still bringing in billions of dollars. It’s time to make the people who make the U work day in and day out a priority.”

Walker also says that, during the legislative session, “The union organized a series of protests at the state capitol to demand taxes on the rich to bring in more funding for public education. But unlike in previous years, the U administration didn’t lift a finger to get more money. Now they want to make the lowest-paid workers shoulder all the cuts.”

Local 3800 has 1800 members. 93% of them are women; many are single mothers and many already have second jobs. University President Robert Bruininks has cynically asked the lowest-paid workers at the university to “share the pain,” by hitting them with a wage freeze and hiking their health care costs by thousands of dollars.

The union negotiating committee said from the beginning that it was not willing to negotiate concessions for the members. Negotiating committee member Carol Bruner said, “After three months of ongoing attempts to negotiate a fair contract, the U repeatedly rejected our attempts at justice. The administration wants clericals to take cuts in health care and pay. They gave us no choice but to prepare to strike.”

While preparing the union members to strike, the union leadership is also waging a campaign to isolate and embarrass the U administration for their anti-worker position. The union has formed a Labor-Community Strike Support Committee that organizes support among students, professors and non-union employees at the university. The workers have also received support from labor, community and religious leaders, as well as state politicians. The depth of support was demonstrated at a rally of 500 people on Sept. 30. On the same day over 100 professors signed a full-page ad in the college newspaper supporting the workers.

The union has also done a series of protests and press hits every time the administrators make a move. This protest campaign started in early September and has kept the administration on the defensive.

On Sept. 10, a week after crying poverty at the negotiating table, President Bruininks announced that the university had just finished a record-breaking fundraising effort, which brought in over $1.6 billion in new money. Clerical workers crashed the fundraising announcement party with picket signs and a rival press conference. Local 3800 President Phyllis Walker said, “It takes audacity for President Bruininks to publicly brag about how much money the U is taking in while at the exact same time, his management negotiating committee is crying poverty and demanding that the lowest-paid workers at the U shoulder the greatest burden of budget cuts. We can plainly see that there is plenty of money at the U. The hypocrisy couldn’t be clearer.”

Clerical workers marched into Morrill Hall, the administration building, on Sept. 25 and held a press conference questioning Bruininks’s new effort to raise funds to build a new $150 million football stadium – at the same time that clerical workers are being told there is no money. Then workers marched into Vice President Carol Carrier’s office and confronted her about the cuts. Bruininks’ annual state of the university address on Oct. 2 was protested by workers and students together.

The union plans to pressure the university from the inside by going on strike, while hitting them from the outside with broad community support and a constant media campaign. They are using all means at their disposal to force the university to negotiate a fair contract.

As they move toward a strike, the workers are gaining confidence and support. As workers prepare to walk off the job and on to the picket lines, they are confident they can win. Union President Phyllis Walker said, “Nobody was sure if our members would stand up and fight. But when the negotiating committee stood up for what’s right, our members were right there with us. When 1800 women stand up at the U and walk off the job, we are going to make history. With our solidarity and the support we’re getting, we will defeat their cuts.”

#Minnesota #MN #News #AFSCMELocal3800 #2003Strike