Chicago, IL—Sarah Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, spoke on a panel with labor negotiator and author Joe Burns. They discussed how to fight the big corporate firms in the transportation sector in talk titled “Using the Railway Labor Act to Our Advantage.” They highlighted how different labor laws for the transportation sector benefit their ability to lead the flight attendant union in struggle with big corporate owners.

Joe Burns explained, “Railway workers formed one of the most militant unions in our history, shutting down the whole country with strikes in 1877, 1886, 1895 and 1922. Following each national strike, the U.S. Congress passed labor laws to regulate union activity and stop its effectiveness.”

It was from this that the Railroad Labor Act was passed in 1926 and amended in 1934, covering airline workers in 1936. This set of laws allows the government to interfere with transportation unions, favoring owners at every turn.

“From the 1930s, railways and airlines held strikes frequently, until 1970. In recent years it became worse and worse, with new legislation, the big companies can now drag out negotiations and force unions to delay strikes. By the 1990s the number of strikes took a nosedive,” said Burns.

Sarah Nelson spoke to the big room of labor activists, “We have been aggressively asserting our right to strike, but how did we push forward bargaining under the existing laws?”

She answered, “We started CHAOS or Create Havoc Around Our System.”

Nelson continued, “Our strategy is to launch intermittent strikes with the element of surprise, so bosses and the media do not know when or where an action will happen. In this scenario management cannot use replacement workers, and some strikes only last for 20 minutes at an airline.”

With one Alaska Airline strike, bookings dropped 20%. Sometimes the union would wait six to nine months to strike, but airfares still dropped because of the uncertainty of flight attendants striking a single flight. The bosses also trained everyone in the management offices on how to be flight attendants. They even put them on flights. It did not matter when ticket sales dropped.

Nelson explained further, “Then the flight attendants union voted to strike at United Airlines when they tried to take our pensions away. These strikes captured the imagination of the public and the media.”

“Now, we don’t worry about being released by the government to strike. We pummel the carriers and management the whole time. We have a right to strike and the right to secondary solidarity boycotts,” said Nelson, explaining how their strategy is different than most unions.

Burns followed up, “The Taft-Hartley Act made solidarity strikes illegal, but under the railways labor act, it states that solidarity strikes, and intermittent strikes are protected. By taking a strike vote, you pull members into the contract fight, and send a message that they are behind the bargaining team. With a strike vote, you also get the attention of the national corporations or top management.”

“My first book is called Reviving the Strike. It talks about the courts and Congress taking away our right to strike. Judges came in and filed sweeping injunctions. In Alabama, they outlawed all picketing during one strike. Judges use their injunction power to cripple unions,” said Burns.

Burns finished, “My second book is called Strike Back, about union organizing lessons of the past. Over 15 years, millions went out on illegal strikes. The slogan was, ‘There is no such thing as an illegal strike, just an unsuccessful strike.’”

#ChicagoIL #AirlineIndustry #LaborNotes

Mark Dimonstein, the newly-elected president of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), gave a rousing speech in defense of postal workers and public sector unions.

“We're living in a moment when six members of the Walmart family have the accumulated wealth of 40% of this country,” he said, detailing how the super-rich avoid paying taxes and, after successfully beating down private sector unions, have now “unleashed their fury on public sector unions.” Dimonstein added, “When they don't pay who does? We do. And when they still don't have the money they take it out of the public sector.”

Asked to say something about the victory of his reform slate in the APWU, Dimonstein explained, “We simply told our members the truth as we understood it, we went to the rank and file around this country, we never offered a path of guaranteed or easy victories, the only thing we guaranteed is if we were elected we would wage an unrelenting fight alongside the membership to save the public postal service, the fight to rebuild our union contracts, the fight to save our union, and we promised to enter the battlefield without white flags or surrendering, that was our promise. We asked the members to support us if they want a union the is willing to fight back.”

Conference attendee Charles Jordan, of Teamsters Local 804 in New York City, was recently on the front lines of a battle with UPS in his local. Teamsters of Local 804 were fighting the unjust firing of their union steward, who has 24 years working for UPS. In response to management walking him off the job, 250 drivers held an emergency protest outside their facility. UPS started replacing some of the 250 and said they were going to fire all of them. A campaign to save their jobs resulted in a victory where all 250 are back at work now.

Jordan stated, “The support for Local 804 was great. It was understood that the 804 fight was not only to primarily get our drivers reinstated, but also to protect the act of solidarity shown that fateful day when the drivers remembered, 'an injury to one, is an injury to all,' and they stood up for their brother unjustly fired.”

Fight Back! hosted a party Saturday evening that featured class struggle unionists, including the president of an AFSCME local in Minnesota; a labor leader from El Salvador, where the people just elected a pro-worker government; a leader of the Chicago Teachers Union, a worker from Teamsters 804 who was one of the 250 UPS workers that recently went on strike, and many more.

One of the teachers in attendance at the Fight Back! party asked the crowd, “Where has unions following the rules gotten us? The game is rigged. Unions are going to have to start breaking the rules and looking at civil disobedience.”

Blake Branum, a rank-and-file Teamster from Local 344 in Milwaukee, said, “I was astounded not only by how much knowledge I had taken in but by the diverse amount of people who are proud and unwilling to compromise what they believe in their heart.”

Cherrene Horazuk, president of AFSCME 3800, told the party attendees, “We know that working people win when we stand up and fight back, when we fight the boss for a better workplace, when we use the most powerful tools in our toolbox – the strike and solidarity – and when we organize as a class to make this a better place for all working people.”

#ChicagoIL #LaborNotes

Chicago, IL – On May 6 over 100 people attended a panel at the Labor Notes conference called Solidarity Forever: The Labor Movement, Political Repression and the Fight for Civil Liberties. The panel focused on the repression against Carlos Montes and the Anti-War 23 and explained why it’s important for the labor movement to take a stand against political repression.

The panel was facilitated by Richard Berg, a long-time rank and file Teamster and labor movement leader in Chicago.

Carl Rosen of the United Electrical (UE) union spoke about his union’s history of being attacked viciously during the political repression in the 1940s and 50s, and their commitment to standing up for civil liberties because of that history. UE is one of only two of eleven left-led unions that survived the McCarthy era, when the union’s leaders faced subpoenas to “Un-American Activities” – hearings, jailings, firings, blacklisting, union decertification and all manner of repression. Because of this history, Rosen said that the UE now passes a resolution at all of their national meetings, rededicating themselves to the struggle to defend civil liberties.

Hatem Abudayyeh spoke about the FBI raid on his home on Sept. 24, 2010 and the subpoenaing of 23 people to a grand jury witch hunt due to their international solidarity work, particularly support for Palestinian self-determination. None of the Anti-War 23 have cooperated with the grand jury, at risk of being jailed for contempt for their refusal to participate in the grand jury.

Long-time labor activist Paul Krehbiel from Los Angeles spoke about the repression against Carlos Montes, who is being targeted because of his decades of activism. Montes faces trial May 15 on four bogus felony charges, after his home was raided and ransacked by Los Angeles Sheriffs and the FBI last May. Krehbiel has attended most of Montes’ pre-trial hearings and protests, so he detailed many of the outrages so far. Krehbiel also spoke of Montes’ long history of union organizing and participation in labor struggles, in addition to his more well-known activism in the Chicano movement and anti-war movement.

Cherrene Horazuk of AFSCME 3800 spoke about why labor activists must defend their right to travel to other countries to be able to hear firsthand about the impacts of U.S. foreign policy and corporate-sponsored repression against trade unionists and others. She also talked about the historic role labor has played in defending and winning struggles for freedom of speech and association and how labor must take a stand when these rights are under attack.

Tom Burke of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR) ended the panel by emphasizing the urgency to support Carlos Montes as his trial approaches on May 15. CSFR is asking people to call Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley at 213-974-3512 with the message, “Drop the charges against Carlos Montes,” and also to sign the online petition that sends your message to Cooley and several others.

Labor Notes is a biennial conference for rank-and-file union activists to form analysis and make plans for building stronger working class fight backs and to fight to transform unions that are corrupt or don’t organize workers to fight back. This year’s Labor Notes conference took place May 4-6 in Chicago and was attended by over 1500 people, with dozens of workshops and panels.

#ChicagoIL #LaborNotes #CarlosMontes #classStruggleUnionism #CommitteeToStopFBIRepression

Phyllis Walker, president of AFSCME Local 3800, delivered the following speech in Detroit Sept. 12 to hundreds of labor activists attending a conference organized by the publication Labor Notes. AFSCME Local 3800 represents nearly 1800 University of Minnesota clerical workers, 93% of whom are women. As we go to press, Local 3800 has announced its intent to strike against a concessionary contract proposal.

Sisters and brothers,

Greetings and solidarity from AFSCME Local 3800, a union of 1800 clerical workers at the University of Minnesota.

Tonight the topic is fighting back in hard times. As is clear from the presentations tonight, if we have leaders with a willingness to fight, flexible tactics, root our strategy in the membership and support the struggles of other unions, we can fight back and win. If, like all too many in the labor movement, we sit back and moan about the state of the world, we can expect concessions, bad contracts and more and more people losing confidence in what unions can do for the working people of this country.

I am happy to report, hard times in our local got us to dig deep within ourselves, to organize our membership and to take the first strike vote in our local’s history.

Our local, which is 93% women, was organized in 1990. Over the years, our local has fought many battles with the employer and won many victories. Several years ago, AFSCME Local 3800 started a two-year long livable wage campaign. We packed hundreds of members into regents meetings and public hearings. In the end, we forced the regents of the University to adopt a policy setting the minimum wage at $12 per hour.

Now the University of Minnesota is the only educational institution in the country with a starting salary of $12.00. And our union made that happen.

I am happy to report our [negotiating] committee is strong and united against concessions. Our staff negotiator is one of the original organizers of our local and shares our vision. We entered negotiations determined to not only fight concessions but also win gains in contract language. We are facing a university employer who is attempting to drive up our health care costs, take away our annual step increases and freeze our wages. The employer is mounting this attack under the guise of the so-called budget crisis. But our message is clear – there is no budget crisis, there is a distribution crisis. The employer has millions to spend on buildings and administrator salaries, but tells frontline workers they must “share the pain”. In response to this attack, we are mounting a vigorous fightback.

In Local 3800, our contract expired on June 30. Management was demanding concessions, so we began telling our members we need to strike.

After we made the decision to fight, we had the best week of negotiations ever. After a long discussion at the beginning of the week, our committee unanimously concluded that we would not accept the employer’s offer, and we came to that decision days before they even handed it to us. Other local unions represented by AFSCME at the university agreed to the concessions, and their membership will vote to ‘accept’ or to ‘reject and strike’ in the next few weeks.

But we were the only union local who left negotiations with smiles on our faces! Even though we picked a tough fight, we knew that we made the right decision. I am proud to say that even with all the Teamsters and other AFSCME bargaining units on campus, it is my local, the clerical workers, the women on this campus, who are leading the fight for justice against this huge employer.

Now we are sending teams of member-organizers into the workplace to convince the membership to reject management’s final offer and to strike for the first time in our local’s history.

In carrying out our fight, we draw on some good examples of unions in the Twin Cities and around the country who have been fighting back in these tough times.

Nationally, the Yale workers are an inspiration to us all with creative tactics and militant strikes.

Locally, SEIU Local 113 led a series of one-day strikes this spring against several Twin City hospitals. They made impressive gains despite high unemployment, despite the threats of the employer, and despite the fact that their membership had never been asked to fight like that before.

Local 17 of HERE in the Twin Cities linked the struggle for immigrant rights with the struggle of hotel workers organizing and a contract campaign. They impacted the debate on immigrants’ rights and working conditions on a national level and mobilized thousands of workers and supporters.

We joined with the Welfare Rights Committees in Minnesota and progressive unions like UFCW Local 789 to demand “tax the rich” to save social programs and funding for education.

However, the majority of unions adopted the ‘Take Back Minnesota’ campaign. Despite its rhetoric, ‘Take Back Minnesota’ means building an infrastructure to elect Democrats; it means subordinating the interests of workers to the fate of Democratic party officials who want, more than anything else, to get re-elected.

In the end, the Democratic leadership in the Senate predictably gave in to almost the full package of cuts to university financing, welfare benefits and health care spending. This is an example of what we see over and over again – unions putting party loyalty ahead of their own interests and independence. If the entire union movement had embraced the ‘Tax the Rich’ campaign, fought the cuts and held the Democrats accountable, the result would have been far different.

Right in our own AFSCME council, we have an example of fighting back in hard times – because what can be harder than taking 18,000 state workers out on strike in the emotionally charged atmosphere surrounding September 11, 2001?

In 2001, our 18,000 sisters and brothers in AFSCME Council 6 knew they would have a tough fight, but they did not know quite how tough it would be. After strike notice had been given, the attacks of September 11 hit. Many expected the union to fold, but instead they stayed strong. Many commentators suggested it was unpatriotic to strike after September 11. The union aggressively countered that idea and brought union firefighters from New York to speak at strike rallies. Our local’s members enthusiastically supported the strike, setting up picket lines at offices near the University.

For Local 3800, the hard times we face have made our decisions easier. We must fight back. The alternative is only a freefall to the bottom. As I have found in my own local, the harder we fight back, the stronger our union is. More and more members are getting involved; our union is far more relevant to the lives of our members when we are standing and fighting. A willingness to fight and a willingness to be creative in how we respond to the attacks against us is the formula for a stronger labor movement. And by supporting our sisters and brothers in their struggles, we all become much stronger. Local 3800 of AFSCME joins with all of you here tonight at Labor Notes and thousands of others around the country in building the stronger unions that working people everywhere need.

#Minnesota #MN #News #LaborNotes #AFSCMELocal3800 #clericalStrike2003

Over the past months, two conflicts have been heating up involving one of the most important unions in the U.S. – the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). It is important to understand the issues at stake. These are our thoughts on what the key issues are and what approach we think workers should take toward these conflicts.

One conflict is internal to SEIU, in which SEIU’s 150,000-member United Health Workers-West has spearheaded a rank-and-file movement within SEIU against the increasingly business-unionist direction of the national union; the second is fighting for more internal democracy in the union. They say they will bring proposals to SEIU’s national convention this summer for ‘one person, one vote’ for offices in the international union, including the presidency.

The other conflict is between SEIU and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), with the flashpoint being a deal SEIU reached with the management of the Catholic Healthcare Partners hospital system in Ohio.

SEIU and CNA/NNOC have had conflicts in other states too, such as Nevada. In Ohio, SEIU had reached a deal with the management of the Catholic Healthcare Partners hospital for nurses to have a quick election under unusual rules where the employer petitions for the union that it wants to be voted in (in this case SEIU), without requiring any workers to actually sign cards saying they want that union. In the face of this agreement between SEIU and hospital management, CNA/NNOC actively encouraged the nurses there to vote against SEIU, which caused SEIU to back out of the elections. Now both unions are actively and publicly denouncing each other in the sharpest terms while actively working to undermine each other.

This conflict came to a head on Saturday, April 12 at the Labor Notes conference in Dearborn, Michigan, a gathering where over 1000 progressive, rank-and-file union activists from hundreds of unions around the country met at a conference to 'put the movement back in the labor movement.'

In an incident on Saturday night of the conference, during the dinner banquet, hundreds of SEIU staff and members came in buses and crashed the conference to protest the presence of CNA president Rose Anne DeMoro – though she had actually canceled her appearance there and just sent a message to the conference via video.

The SEIU protesters came in to intimidate and disrupt the most important conference for progressive rank-and-file labor fighters in the country. They engaged in pushing and shoving anyone in their way, forcing their way into the hotel where the conference took place and then trying to muscle their way in to disrupt the packed dinner reception. At least one union sister was dealt with a head injury.

SEIU’s action at Labor Notes was beyond the pale. The escalation to attempted mass intimidation and physical confrontation against hundreds of rank-and-file progressive union activists must be condemned.

These points put forward our basic orientation on the struggle within SEIU and the conflict between SEIU and CNA/NNOC. We encourage comments and dialogue on how honest fighters in the labor movement can make sense of these conflicts and push the unions forward to fight for workers’ interests.

1. We support the reform movement in SEIU. We support their call for ‘one person one vote’ on contracts, bargaining committees, local officers and international officers, including the president.

2. SEIU has been moving more and more toward business unionism. For example, in their deals with the nursing homes, in which they signed no-strike pledges, allowed the owners to choose which homes would be unionized and pledged that the union wouldn’t criticize the treatment of workers. Andy Stern says that class struggle unionism is a thing of the past – we don't agree.

3. Regarding Ohio: We don’t support what CNA did in their ‘vote no’ campaign at the Catholic Healthcare Partners hospitals. On the other hand, what SEIU did there – using an employer petition to the Labor Board for an election without the involvement of workers, and in which the employer identifies their preferred union – is a terrible direction for the labor movement.

4. SEIU and CNA have gone to war with each other. This is destructive and we don’t support the actions by either side that weaken the labor movement.

5. A mob of staff and workers forced their way into the Labor Notes conference in order to disrupt the speech by Rose Anne DeMoro, head of the CNA. Their pushing and shoving resulted in at least one person having to be taken to the hospital after falling and hitting her head. Also, an SEIU member was seen lying on the sidewalk with blood from a head wound. DeMoro had already canceled her speech in order to avoid provoking SEIU; SEIU knew she had canceled and they carried out this physical assault on the conference anyway. Labor Notes is the largest gathering of progressives in the labor movemen, and everyone knows it. What SEIU did at the conference has to be condemned.

6. Workers need to organize and fight against the attacks from the capitalists. Unions that help do that are doing the right thing. Unions that don’t fight against the attacks on workers need to be challenged by their members and changed. Leaders that won’t change should be replaced. Class conscious workers don’t want their unions to fight each other in these scorched-earth turf battles.

#UnitedStates #SEIU #Statement #LaborNotes #CaliforniaNursesAssociationNationalNursesOrganizingCommitteeCNANNOC

Hear the Fight Back! interview with Joe Iosbaker, member of the SEIU Local 73 executive board, who was present during the assault.

#DetroitMI #SEIULocal73 #CaliforniaNursesAssociation #LaborNotes