Our 2013 Workers Unite Film Festival Schedule is Online!

April 10, 2013

After many months of searching out great new worker/labor films and going through the archives of historical labor films, we here at The Second Annual Workers Unite Film Festival have come up with an eight day long program plus an extra evening at one of the biggest unions in NYC, SEIU1199.

Our eight day schedule, which you can find on our website under "2013 Schedule" tab, covers many of the themes that effect working people today as the stuggle to make ends meet, or to find a new job, during this very difficult economy. We have films on being fifty and out of work, films about immigrants seeking to find a decent job in their new home - anxious to make a contribution to their new communities. Our films are as close as our own backyard, here in NYC (Cafe Wars and Judith:Portrait of a Street Vendor) to as far away as the men who tear apart de-commissioned oil tankers with their hands and simple tools in the deserts of Pakistan (Iron Slaves).

We have films about the African American men who fought for dignity on the job and in their union as steelworkers - one of the most dangerous jobs in America, to mothers in Bangladesh who must put their children with their own parents due to 15 hour days in the sewing factories of high fashion sweatshops. These are the same women who survived a recent "Triangle Shirtwaist" style fire in Bangladesh, where over 111 young women perished because the exit doors to the factory were padlocked shut. One hundred years plus after the deaths at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in NYC and we are still fighting the exact same battles.

Please look through the whole schedule. Find some programs that look intereseting, then go online - by next week - and buy tickets!! We have kept ticket prices as low as possible so as many of you as possible can attend at least one program, or one full day of amazing films. Tickets are $7.50 for one show (online sales may incur a service charge) $11.50 for a full day of films!! And $59.00 for a full 8 days of educational and emotional programming about the lives and struggles of workers and their unions all over the globe.

This year we are particularly honored to join with twenty other worker/labor film festivals around the world - known as The Global Labor Film and Video Festival on May 16th. On that day we will screen films on labor issues in China, Pakistan, Mexico, Slovakia, from all over the U.S. and a film about the merchant marines whose work took them from one end of the earth to the other. And that's just one day of the festival!

We plan to have either the directors or speakers at most of these events, many of them currently engaged in the worker struggles for labor rights and dignity in the workplace. We want to put these films into context so that we all come out of the theater with both a better understanding of our places in the global fight for labor rights and the motivation to get out their and participate in whatever actions are possible to make these rights a reality.

So please take a few minutes to check out the huge list of films and pick out at least a few to come view. If you can afford it, we'd love to have you visit our homepage and make a small donation to help keep building the festival for this year and coming seasons.

Finally - on April 17th at the Gap on 34th Street

Apr. 17: Protest at Gap in NYC -- End Sweatshop Death Traps Now!

April 17 • 12:00 pm

Gap store, 60 West 34th St (near Herald Square), New York, NY

Liana Foxvog (liana@ilrf.org, 413-320-7276)

Since 2006, more than 600 garment workers have died in preventable fires while sewing clothing for companies like Gap, H&M, and Walmart. Two years after 29 workers died in a fire at a Gap supplier in Bangladesh, Gap is still refusing to pay for reforms and join with other companies in a binding fire safety agreement that includes worker representation. Until there is real change, any day there could be another factory fire with workers locked inside.

JOIN A BANGLADESHI FACTORY FIRE SURVIVOR AND LOCAL ACTIVISTS TO CALL ON THE GAP TO PAY 10 CENTS MORE PER GARMENT TO SAVE WORKERS’ LIVES!

At the protest, meet:

SUMI ABEDIN is a Bangladeshi garment worker who survived the November 24, 2012, fire that killed 112 workers at Tazreen Fashions, a factory that supplied Walmart, Disney, Sears, Dickies, and produced US Marines logo apparel for Delta Apparel / Soffe. Sumi was working on the 4th floor of the factory at the time of the fire and survived after jumping from the burning building.

KALPONA AKTER is the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), one of Bangladesh’s most prominent labor rights advocacy organizations, and is herself a former child garment worker. BCWS is regarded by the international labor rights movement and by multinational apparel companies as among the most effective grassroots labor organizations in the country. Levi Strauss & Co. calls BCWS “a globally respected labor rights organization, which has played a vital role in documenting and working to remedy labor violations in the apparel industry in Bangladesh.” Kalpona is an internationally-recognized labor rights advocate and has traveled widely to speak about the deplorable conditions that Bangladesh garment workers face every day. She was interviewed extensively by local and international media following the deadly fire at Tazreen Fashions in November 2012.

This action is sponsored by Corporate Action Network, International Labor Rights Forum, Retail Action Project, SumOfUs, SweatFree Communities, and United Students Against Sweatshops.
More info: http://laborrights.org/gappetition

Spread the word on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/360229954083676/

For more than a decade, Gap, Walmart and other major brands have produced clothes in Bangladesh factories that they know are fire traps. As a result, since 2006, over 600 apparel workers, mostly young women, have died in what could have been preventable factory fires. Now, two major apparel makers—PVH/Tommy Hilfiger and the large German retailer, Tchibo—have signed a legally-binding fire safety agreement that calls for independent fire inspections of all of the Bangladesh factories they use and requires them to pay for the necessary measures to make these factories safe, and to give their workers a say in how to accomplish this. Gap and Walmart have refused to join that agreement and Walmart continues to obstruct efforts to achieve fire safety in the factories it uses in Bangladesh as reported in The New York Times on December 5, 2012 (“Documents Indicate Walmart Blocked Safety Push in Bangladesh”). It’s time for Gap and Walmart to address their history of deadly negligence and take responsibility for workers’ safety before one more avoidable tragedy occurs.

The Fast Food Workers Show Us the Way

April 4th, 2013

Fast food workers across NYC, organized by Fast Food Forward and supported by many pro-labor groups in the city, including Unite NY, MoveOn and Align NY. But it was the courage of low wage workers, recently at Walmart, now at fast food outlets including McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King, who walked off their jobs today demanding a decent starting wage in the $15 range.

As NPR reported towards the end of last year, strikes, once a mainstay of labor's arsenal, were on the rise for the first time since labor came under corporate/government attack in the 1980s.

http://www.npr.org/2012/12/08/166748366/sign-of-the-times-labor-strikes-may-make-comeback

As corporate profits have risen through the roof, in tandem with outsized CEO pay packages, workers who fuel those gains with their great productivity, have lagged far behind these gains with stagnating and declining paychecks. It is hard to imagine that any logical person thinks it is possible - even for a working student - to make ends meet on $7.25 an hour. Throughout the day random folks interviewed on the street were usually quite supportive, saying that $15 an hour was not too much to pay for standing behind grease laden french fries and burgers for an eight hour plus shift. Those that bought the corporate line that a decent minimum wage would somehow harm these multi billion dollar in profit corporations, felt that though an increase was a good idea, $15 an hour was too rich for such unskilled work.

Nobody asked the follow-up question about how "skilled" those jobs of top management are who rake in the big bucks. Anybody seen Undercover Boss? On that charming show the CEO apparently doesn't know his kitchen workers slave in hot dangerous conditions for minimum wage - a wage so bad that cooks with ten years of experience must take second and third jobs to make ends meet at home. And for this level of brilliance they receive literally millions of dollars from the exploitation of these frontline workers. Then to top it all off - this "brilliant" CEO is made to look thoughtful by dropping $10K to 20K on each of those recently abused employees. No mention is made of the thousands of others not so lucky to be on camera who must still work for the original crap minimum wage. And if they even whisper union? They're out the door in a minute.

Who is kidding who? If the top dogs, just like everywhere else, weren't pigs feeding at the trough, then all the workers down the line, from cooks, to cleaners, to servers could get that $15 and hour wage, serve with dignity, low turnover and everybody would be relatively happy.

But this is America 2013, if somebody at the top isn't crushing somebody at the bottom, then apparently they're being soft on their employees and are open to punishment from Wall Street. Time to Re-Occupy brothers and sisters and teach those manipulators a lesson.

So the fast food workers showed them today and all of us: organize or die. You can force employers to do things if you stand united and stand together and fight back against this ridiculously unequal system,

Hooray for the Fast Food Workers! Hooray for Our Walmart and three cheers for all those organizers and workers out there across the country every day, in tough times, showing us all that it can get done.

Come see some incredible films next month - May 10th through 17th @ Cinema Village and The Brecht Forum.

You'll see that workers around the world are fighting back, organizing and not taking the crap of the corporate ruling class.

While Walmart Sues Workers, The NLRB is Hijacked

March 28th, 2013

The news of the last week has been somewhat of a letdown, but the seeds of rebirth are out there, brothers and sisters. Walmart, the nation's largest retail services employer, notorious for underpaying it's workers, denying them adequate healthcare coverage and shuttering profitable locations in the face of successful union organizing (as they did last year in Canada), has decided to seek protection from OUR Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart) and their friends at the United Food and Commercial Workers International union (UFCW). Despite public relations efforts on the part of Walmart to deny any effect or impact from a two year grass roots organizing campaign by OUR Walmart (workers from within Walmart disgusted by the company's anti-employee working environment), apparently this organizing campaign has irritated Walmart executives enough that they decided to file a suit at the 9th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida to stop OUR Walmart and the UFCW union from aiding or abetting any more store related actions of OUR Walmart to disturb the sales environment at individual stores in Florida. You might remember that this grass-roots action to bring public attention to the state of working conditions at their favorite bargain store reached a crescendo last Thanksgiving, on "Black Friday," when some estimates placed over 100,000 Walmart workers outside stores around the country that day to demonstrate their anger at their Walmart bosses.

See the rest of the story here:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/25/walmart-sues-protesters-florida-stores_n_2950992.html

While this is a small percentage of the million plus employees of Walmart throughout the country, it was clearly enough of a start to get Walmart's attention. Walmart is in a difficult spot, having to cater to the low end of the retail spectrum at a time when their own policies of paying minimum wages, with little or no benefits, have paved the way for an economy where these working folks don't even have the discretionary funds to shop at Walmart. Costco, which covers a similar market, is unionized, pays benefits and maintains a workforce with a fraction of the turnover and unhappiness on the job as Walmart. It is easy to see that despite OUR Walmart being a relatively small organizing drive, they have already brought this message of inequality to the public. Walmart's decision to bring a legal case against the UFCW , which has never actually announced any real organizing drive, shows how rankled these corporate types can get when even a small group of workers start effectively organizing for better working conditions. Imagine what would happen if a coalition of national service unions actually pooled their resources to publicly organize over one million Walmart retail workers? That would be a really exciting and momentous event in our recent labor history. I think that type of effort alone could shift the worker/corporate landscape during the next election cycle by reaching millions of voters on their home turf and talking about daily issues of what it means to be able to survive with dignity in this increasingly unequal society.

This leads me to the issue of the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB, set up as part of the Wagner Act and then the National Labor Relations Act during the height of the Great Depression, finally created an impartial federal hearing board where both workers and employers might get a fair hearing on issues related to organizing unions and ever part of workplace existence. Though always imperfect, sometimes weighted to the employers, under Republican administrations, sometimes claimed to tilt towards workers under Democratic administrations (though the corporate types always forget to mention how after the Taft-Hartley revision to the NLRA in 1947, they had all the "legal" tools they needed to throttle union drives under the law), the NLRB had until recently survived intact since the 1930s as a balancing force in the battle for worker's rights.

Until now. Since the start of President Obama's first term in office there has been a concerted plan on the part of right-wing business allied forces to not only block any appointments of labor/worker friendly judges to the NLRB, but the Republicans in Congress have filibustered every single Obama appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The end result of that effort was a lopsided three to zero vote by the all Republican appointed court to overturn President Obama's recess appointments of three NLRB judges to fill the NLRB to a working majority over the last three years. Those appointments have allowed the board to settle hundreds of cases that had been stalled for years due to a lack of the necessary three judge quorum required by the NLRA in order for the NLRB to operate. A recent article, again thanks to The Huffington Post, points out in detail how the failure to reform the filibuster rule in the US Senate has directly affected the lives of thousands of workers. In this case, the US Court of Appeals, by throwing the NLRB's decisions into question, has once again delayed and extended the retirement pay and health benefits settlements for hundreds of coal miners in West Virginia. These miners were the victims of the corporate sleight of hand at the Cannelton coal mines in West Virginia. When these mines were purchased by Massey Energy - an anti-union mining conglomerate famous for running the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia where 29 miners died in a collapse due to lack of adequate safety precautions - hundreds of UMWA members were fired and not invited back to their jobs when Massey reopened the Cannelton Mine.

The end effect of filibustering Democratic nominated federal judges and attacking the last bastion of federally run workplace rights adjudication (the NLRB) is the destruction of any real path to workplace rights and dignity.

All unions and all workers should be out there screaming about this travesty now. The one thing I would say to the right-wing corporate types that think they are gaining the upper hand: be careful what you wish for. Remember 1934, before the National Labor Relations Act and the NLRB. Workers will only take being stomped upon for so long and then they will fight back with every tool in their kit, including strikes, sit-ins, work stoppages. Workers across many industries outside the NLRB are organizing every single day as we speak. If short-sighted legislators and CEOs think they can legislate and filibuster worker's rights for the long haul - they've got a big surprise coming down the road.

Read the full article here and write to your elected officials! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/nlrb-senate_n_2934910.html

Sequester Nation: Workers and Their Unions

March 8th, 2013

The first day of the right-wing GOP plan to destabilize our government by continually creating hostage situations over the federal budget and our economic recovery.

Despite everything you've read, this is part of a long term plan by the group that can't really win democratic elections fair and square, the only reason they control the House is by rigging state election districts in easily corruptible state legislatures. That 1% corporate money goes a long, long way in Madison and other Midwest capitols.

We are likely to muddle our way out of this mess once the cuts begin to hurt and regular folks wake up to the mess and call their robotic. mid-controlled Congress people to complain. Hopefully. But this would not happen if unions were some 40% of the workforce instead of 7%. As we've pointed out previously, the low union member rate and the ability of a hard-core right-wing corporate party to create fake societal convulsions to try and hijack the democratic process to get their way are not disconnected. These are two sides to the same plan to destroy the ability of working folks to organize for fair wages and a dignified work existence. The flip side is the effort to scuttle government services, through any means necessary, including this form of economic terrorism, in order that more and more of these previously public, and often unionized services, are handed over to "private enterprise," meaning the 1%ers who pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the election process.

The one and only way to fight this is for workers to organize. Trying to answer emails from MoveOn, or any of the many other well-meaning left-wing groups, in their calls to protest this despicable behavior by both parties, is like spitting in the wind folks. When workers organize into union groups, or even like union groups - they gain power and leverage. They can tilt the playing field towards their needs and their causes. Without a growing and healthy labor movement we end up where we are right now, on the cusp of no labor protections and at the mercy of corporate serfdom. 

Make no mistake, as we will show during The Second Annual Workers Unite! Film Festival, in NYC from May 10th through May 18th, there are many victories happening for workers below the radar of the corporate mass media machine. The one in particular I want to highlight tonight are the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA). Bhairavi Desai, Javid Tariq, Beresford Simmons, Bill Lindauer, Victor Salazar, Ryan Richardson, Melanie Lindauer and an amazing Organizing Committee have brought dignity, workplace rights and imminently a first-time healthcare plan for taxi drivers and their families. This is all done by a group of workers completely outside the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, contract employees. Besides this type of workforce being the wave of the future, as employers try their best to shed any responsibility for their workers, organizing independent workers who do not share a factory or office space is incredibly hard. But these dedicated organizers succeeded. And while they followed many of the basic rules of organizing, the one that stands out so boldly to me is a typical interaction that I was privileged to witness - totally by accident - during a brief visit to their NYC headquarters on 28th Street.

As organizers and activists we can talk for days about strategy, getting workers to think like a working class and a thousand other threads, which are all important in the process. But what many unions forget, especially as they grow in size, is that the original mission was to improve the lives of the workers they wanted to organize. That means they had to deal with them as individuals, banding together to get a better deal, but as individuals, with their own issues and problems that needed to get dealt with in order that their lives might actually get better.

In the midst of a schedule that was hectic beyond belief, during a meeting dealing with the fine points of part of the huge healthcare plan to come, a young driver walked into the NYTWA office looking confused and a bit frightened. Bhairavi Desai, who has a dedicated and hardworking staff to help such walk-in drivers - with issues from speeding tickets, to license issues, to immigration and health issues - looked up from the healthcare meeting and saw his level of upset. She asked a few brief questions, then quickly realized that the young driver was being railroaded into something by the owner of his cab that was way beyond anything he should reasonably be expected to shoulder. She promised she would do nothing to jeopardize his livelihood, but made clear he was being set-up in an unfair and possibly financially damaging situation. Basically, she took the time out to really give a shit about what happened to this young man. No theory, no strategy, no platitudes. She quickly and efficiently got to the root of the issue, got a plan into place to help the young driver meet the issue head-on, but with educated support behind him and had him settled down and relaxed by the time he was ready to leave the office. You build a true union one member at a time, not from decisions made between employers and union presidents high-up, but from intervening in the hard daily interactions of workers getting abused by their employers. Not rocket science, but so few really do this job well.

This was not easy work and it wasn't phoned in, and it happens in that office every single day. That is why this workers group is now an Alliance, a union, over 16,000 members and achieving negotiating results that older established unions would envy. In fact, the NYTWA is the first nationally chartered union by the AFL-CIO since the United Farm Workers in 1965. There will hopefully be many more of these, though the AFL-CIO has been far less supportive of this new and growing union than they should be at this tough moment in labor history. But that is a topic for another blog post at another time.

We salute the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and all workers groups fighting to organize workers into alliances, unions, worker centers. They are doing the hard but necessary work of building back our decimated labor movement and without them, the sequester nation will happen over and over again.

Update on 2013-03-09 19:49 by Andrew Tilson

This excellent graphic from the AFL-CIO shows the comparisons between what automatic sequester cuts chosen by the House are, as opposed to what might have made a smarter, long-term cut to wasteful corporate giveaways.

Take a look, then write your congress person to suggest there is a better way out of our debt crisis than balancing it on the backs of the poor and unemployed.

http://act.aflcio.org/content_item/shocking-comparisons

 

Tell NY Times Writers: Workers and Their Unions Fight On!

February 10th, 2013

Adam Davidson, in a particularly annoying article in the February 2^nd edition of the NY Times titled, “Workers of the World, Sit Tight,” detailed why labor union membership had declined to its lowest levels since the passage by the Wagner Act in the 1930s.  According to Davidson, while there have been some minor successes in “some of the least likely industries,” he reasoned that the recent anti-union attacks by Michigan, the birthplace of the UAW, Wisconsin, Indiana and other formerly union-friendly states, could mean that “a world without unions is not hard to imagine,” though such a situation could  (my italics) make our inequality problems much worse.”

 It sure seems funny to me, that a newspaper that has recently tangled with it’s own union, The NY Newspaper Guild, over cutbacks and job security, as well as pension and health care responsibilities, (BTW the NY Times lost: http://www.newsguild.org/node/2730) should just randomly print an opinion piece so one-sided, so condescending towards workers, with so little information about the thousands of fights for worker justice and labor unity going on around the world as we speak.

 Mr. Davidson pretends that somehow this low point for the unions and workers is just some natural progression of global forces of an economy that sources goods and employees from wherever they are cheapest. He even quotes Gary Chaison, “a labor-relations specialist from Clark University,” who he quotes as saying, “There’s no way of really dealing with the global impact. There’ s really very little you can do.” Davidson goes on to mention that a post-union world, without collective bargaining would bring the vulnerability of individual bargaining. This trip back to every worker alone, at the mercy of a kindly manager, or a nasty one, would surely lead to greater income inequality and in the end, former union organizers, such as the workers profiled at the start of this article, would likely end up thinking only for their own advantage, back in the dog-eat-dog world of Gilded Age Capitalism, but now merged with the corporate world’s ability to manipulate and bend government regulations around the globe to their profit-driven will.

We are one small group in NYC, running a worker/labor film festival out of NYC, interacting with hundreds of labor activists, both locally, nationally and globally. While some of the attacks on workers and labor Mr. Davidson details are undeniable, all the workers and their labor groups that I come in contact with are committed to fighting even harder, smarter and longer to make sure that the “dystopian future of inevitable worker misery,” which Davidson envisions, rightly so, is the left’s view of a union-free future, will never happen.

One of the major reasons for the Workers Unite Film Festival and over 25 labor film festivals around the world, is to help counter exactly this type of defeatist and distorted view of the whole worker/labor union problem.

 As even Bloomberg.com, the business website explained, http://www.bloomberg.com:news:2013-01-23:the-real-reason-for-the-decline-of-american-unions.html), in an article by Kris Warner on declining union numbers in the US, it was not some magical drift towards anti-unionism by workers at all that cut union membership. In fact, when any polling of workers was done, time and time again it showed they would vote for union representation by wide margins –IF THEY WERE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO DO SO.

 Bloomberg, when comparing the Canadian unionized workforce to that in the US found that union membership was similar in both countries until the late 1960s. Soon after, business sponsored and government supported attacks against the ability of workers to organize and their collusion to prevent the legal rights of workers to use their labor rights, contributed greatly to the low union membership rate in the US. It’s not a mystery friends, we’ve been under an all out assault from business owners for over 40 years. As Kris Warner points out, there is no “right-to-work” concept in Canada at all. There are federal laws to protect all workers rights and every single province has to follow those laws.

We must ask ourselves. Why do allow this system of federal laws, The National Labor Relations Act, to be one of the only federal laws that a state can simply decide not to follow. We must organize to enforce this federal law across all fifty states. Acceptance of this is ridiculous and has allowed mostly Southern states, until recently, to draw large-scale manufacturing, particularly automakers, out of unionized states and into unprotected “right-to-work” states.

So Mr. Davidson, it is not that there is nothing that workers can do to stem this anti-union tide, but the laws are rigged heavily against us. Even so, I work with and see, every day of the week, successful organizing drives aimed at educating and organizing low-wage workers, most of whom are already not covered by the existing federal labor laws. That’s right! They are fighting from scratch, such as the recently victorious NY Taxi Workers Alliance, recently chartered as the first new national union by the AFL-CIO since the UFW in 1965. The Domestic Workers in NYC are organizing, the Restaurant Workers, there is a huge new push to organize all retail employees, called The Retail Action Project. Across the country: OUR Walmart, continues to do battle with the nation’s largest and most anti-worker employer. Community groups are forming alliances with labor groups to fight for their common issues.

Building service employees fight for their fair share from wealthy real estate tycoons, hospital workers from SEIU fight to play a role in the reorganization of the whole health care delivery system. And this is just here in the US. I receive stories and films from workers from China, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Afghanistan, Turkey, Israel, the UK, France, Columbia, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, virtually every corner of the globe where workers are exploited by the global corporate conspiracy.

 In every single one of these countries workers and organizers, who now thanks to the Net and social media are in closer collaboration and discussions than ever before, are fighting every single day to organize and fight for worker’s rights. Those rights, like right here at home, as you yourself have pointed out, are human rights. They are the right to have a fair shake and decent pay for a hard day’s work and not to be chewed up and spit out by the overarching greed of the business owning class.

These workers, just like you and me, from every place on this earth do not see the battle as over, not remotely. They are realistic and know this battle will be long and hard. But they know that the alternative is surrendering to a future where it really is every individual at the mercy of those who have the money and power to exploit them. I do not see that happening, not in the near term or the long term. I think that your article and articles like this, which periodically surface to pat their corporate masters on the back, are condescending and clueless as to the reality as it exists on factory floors and workplace centers around the country and around the globe.

I invite you to come to the festival this May, see the stories of workers fighting back, organizing and then tell me really if you think all there is for workers to do is to sit tight and accept a future where all their efforts have been for naught.

WORKERS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL RIGHTS. WE WILL FIGHT FOR THEM FOREVER.

Locally: Fight back against the firing of 22 union activists at Cablevision. These workers have the right to organize and NYC should force the Dolan's, who control Cablevision, to bargain in good faith.

Read about it here and support their fight! http://www.thecablevision99.org/cwa-condemns-cablevision-optimum-for-illegally-firing-23-workers/

"Shocking!" says Trumka.

January 26, 2013

In the midst of one of the coldest weather periods in recent years, the lopsided U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit  (lopsided because President Obama has not been able to get any Democratic judges onto the court, so three Republican holdovers, very anti-worker and anti-labor are the only judges on the court) turned a very cold shoulder towards the President's January 4th, 2012 recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

These three NLRB seats had been left vacant due to an ongoing blockade by Senate Republicans to frustrate the legally mandated work of this important labor/management board. Their goal, as it has always been was to destroy any ability of an independent federal body, a body tasked with the job of insuring the rights of workers in the workplace, to actually function and do that job.

Last year, during the Congressional recess, President Obama had enough and appointed three distinguished new members to the NLRB. Since these three members were nominated by a Democratic president, a president who was strongly supported by labor, it was likely these appointments would be favorable to the worker's views. Republicans were so unhappy about this that they sued and now, almost a year later, they have issued a ruling that flies in the face of a long history of presidents using recess appointments to get their own friendly supporters onto federal positions that influence many facets on national policy.

The ruling of the federal court is as unfounded and shocking as the Bush vs. Gore ruling by the Supreme Court back in 2000 and smacks of a complete political intervention by jurists who supposedly espouse "judicial restraint." Such restraint is only apparently necessary when it is the lives and well-being of regular working folks at stake against the overwhelming power and $ fueled influence of mega-corporations (see the judicial victory favoring Walmart against over one million women workers in their class action unequal pay and opportunity lawsuit against their employer a few years back).

This is why it was so important to break that filibuster rule, but clearly the Dems cut a deal with Mitch McConnell and that is not going to happen. So we get stuck with a lopsided Republican controlled Federal Court, where they make the law up as they go.

Read the full text of President Trumka's pointed remarks here: http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Trumka-Calls-Court-Ruling-on-NLRB-Appointments-Radical-and-Unprecedented

Good News, Bad News

January 14, 2013

In the midst of the recent setback to labor organizing in Michigan, it's great to know that the real struggle keeps moving forward. The UFCW just announced that more than 60 retail workers at notoriously anti-union H & M stores, here in NYC, have just signed union contracts with their employers - for the first time.

In a city where many thousands of students, new workers just out of school, older workers down-sized into part-time retail jobs and formerly full-time retail workers, cut back to part-time jobs - this is fantastic news. The Retail Action Project - RAP - a worker center backed by the RWDSU - The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union, has been aggressively organizing these workers at Abercrombie & Fitch and other upscale NYC retailers. While the common sense of the past was that these workers were so temporary, so part-time and so likely to leave right in the middle of a union drive - the newer outreach by labor has paid off - realizing that these jobs are no longer the result of choice, but rather the necessary step for those downized or otherwise blocked from a full-time job.

The only road to stability for these workers - all workers in fact - is to unionize and fight for fair wages and benefits from these mega-retailers. These multi-national mega-stores suck many millions out of our city and country in cash, while aiming to pay their employees the lowest wages possible and make their lives chaotic by unfair part-time scheduling. Workers who once saw little or no value in joining a union have woken up to the new reality: no -union= crappy pay, no benefits, no sick days and no say at all in your workplace environment.

Bravo to RAP and the UFCW for breaking open these non-union workplaces and showing that a unionized workforce makes for stabler, happier employees. And an extra loud shut-out to OUR Walmart - backed by the UFCW for their courageous efforts to give voice to the frustrations and demands of Walmart employees nationally.

On the bad news front - once again our NYC Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, after showing some courageous leadership on gun control, reminds us that he really is just another wealthy business guy looking to bust more unions. NYC school bus drivers, who have responsibly transported tens thousands of students for over 30 years with a union contract protected by EPP (Employment Protection Provision) are due to go out on strike tomorrow. This is happening after NYC sent out bids for the new contracts - for the first time in 30 years - to private companies excluding this provision. While NYC claims this exclusion of the EPP would save the city money - the reason the EPP exists is to insure that the most senior and experienced drivers drive the most difficult routes - such as transporting special needs children. The removal of EPP would actually put thousands of the city's most vulnerable children at risk to the whims of bottom-line profit ahead of safety style bus companies. Not a good idea.

See the full artical here http://nysaflcio.org/Safety1st/ and please add your name to the petition demanding that the Mayor and the Board of Ed return to the bargaining table with these drivers.

The battle never ends, brothers and sisters. Stay vigilant!

Brilliant, Important Article on Jerry Tucker - A Hero of Labor

January 2nd 2013,

On the day after a  Democratic cave-in agreement to avert the fiscal cliff, it is important to read about a hero of labor - Jerry Tucker, who passed away earlier this year. Brother Tucker believed that organizing the workers, from the rank and file on up, was one of the keys to a successful organizing drive. He was also one of the early theorists of the "corporate campaign," where outside pressure is applied to owners of a company trying to avoid a union drive. Jerry also was one of the first and one of the best at understanding that real organizing involves the whole working class community - not just the members of a specific union trying to organize.

At the Workers Unite Film Festival, we strongly believe that tens of thousands of workers, who are not currently unionized, need to be spoken to - educated, illuminated on critical issues, pulled into groups of commonality, then organized. Many new worker center groups are doing just that successfully today and we stand ready to help them either broadcast their messages, or - if need be - offer films and video from the past that demonstrate to newly approached workers how their plight is not new - how many thousands have faced the same tough fights before them, and how important and worthwhile making that fight part of their daily lives can be.

Jerry also spoke clearly of the need for labor leaders to develop and communicate a clearly different vision to their current and future members - a vision of a socially just society, with income equality, national health care and the goals of secure and good jobs for all who want to work.

Thanks to The New Republic and Alec MacGillis for this thoughtful and powerful piece. Not only is it a tribute to a truly great leader of workers, but it remains a key vision for any possible path for labor's growth into the future.

Read the whole story here: http://www.tnr.com/blog/alec-macgillis/111488/the-man-who-tried-save-organized-labor#

EVEN WINNING AN ELECTION DOES NOT GUARANTEE VICTORY

December 21st, 2012

The latest talk out of Washington DC is that President Obama, after winning his hard fought election with the help of many thousands of worker's boots on the ground and many millions of dollars of labor unions political action money - has now opened up discussions about cutting the COLA - the cost of living adjustments, which directly affect how much the checks in those Social Security envelopes will be as inflation kicks in once a recovery gets going. It is also clear that the promise of no tax cuts to those making over $250,000 a year was never written in stone. Meanwhile Boehner and his rat pack seem to still not be clear on who won the election - trotting out another "Plan B" with tax cuts getting extended once again for millionaires, a plan so weak that they couldn't muster the votes to even fake pass their own bill - so went home for the holidays leaving the nation hanging.

Why the President has already offered to raise this tax cut limit to $400,000 from $250,000 is beyond me. There are very few workers I know - actually none- who come close to making that kind of dough. That's the pay of owners and managers - not workers. We'll have to keep fighting brothers and sisters, keep writing those emails to the White House and Congress and tell them in no uncertain terms that this fiscal cliff was nonsense from the start and that the rich have done so enormously well on the backs of the poor and working folks for so long that no is the time to settle up the books. NO CUTS TO MEDICARE OR SOCIAL SECURITY, STICK TO AND END FOR TAX CUTS TO THOSE OVER $250,000.

Read a great blog post on the topic from Damon Silvers of the AFL-CIO:http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Boehner-s-Plan-for-Fiscal-Showdown-Cut-Social-Security-COLA-to-Pay-for-More-Tax-Cuts-for-the-Rich

GOP’s True Agenda After President Obama’s Re-election: The War On Workers Will Continue

December 10^th, 2012

In the waning days of their current legislative session, without holding the legally required waiting period for public comment and participation, Republican legislators in Michigan chose to ram through another salvo against workers in the ongoing right-wing assault on the middle class. Still smarting at the recent thumping of right-wingers nationally and the trouncing of their favorite son Mitt, these radical ideologues decided that a state where many spilled blood to win labor rights in the nation’s auto plants, would now join the confederation of anti-worker states. 

Make no mistake about it, in a state where the Governor, Rick Snyder, had recently said the union-busting tactics displayed by Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Jon Kasich in Ohio (where those efforts were sent packing) and Mitch Daniels in Indiana, were not a “high-priority,” was perfectly happy to sign the legislation, illegally voted through this past week by a GOP dominated legislature that had lost half its seats in the new legislature and so feared their anti-worker agenda might not pass muster in 2013.

 It is exactly this type of skullduggery, anti-democratic, winning at the cost of open and transparent government that the party of the right now finds itself allied with every day. From funding and creating “get out the vote drives” that were actually designed to confuse voters about where and when voting was to take place, to lying about court ordered sanctions against the disgusting Jim Crow practice of requiring photo IDs from life-long residents of states where early 20^th century birth records were poorly kept for people of color, today’s GOP is all about rigging the system to frustrate the will of the 99%. Just as in the battle over the “fiscal cliff,” their goal is to maintain the gross income inequality that has mushroomed since the election of Ronald Reagan. Reagan started the ball rolling by crushing the strike of the air traffic controllers. That was the green light to corporate America to go on the offensive – and they sure as heck did.

As many commentators pointed out during this election season and now during the battle over the phony “fiscal cliff,” income inequality, after a thirty-year war against organized labor, has reached eye-popping extremes. According to a recent article from the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities, the 400 top earning American families now control as much national wealth as the bottom 150 million taxpayers. The top 5% of all taxpayers control over 60% of the wealth of the nation versus only 7% control by the bottom 80%. There is no way we can ever avoid a permanent fiscal cliff if this inequality is allowed to continue.

 As Frederick Allen, writing in the October 2^nd, 2012 issue of Forbes Magazine (not exactly a left-wing journal) suggested, the income inequality created over the last thirty years is not only unpleasant and unethical, bad it is bad for the long-term fiscal health of the United States. In effect, the same “gilded-age” conditions that existed prior to the Great Depression were mirrored in the easy-credit, financial casino mentality of the most recent economic collapse. Each time the conditions that greatly inflated the magnitude of the financial collapses were directly brought on by a gross exaggeration in income inequality. Check out the full article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/10/02/how-income

The ongoing war by Michigan and other states is especially fascinating, because the Wagner Act, the foundation of our whole National Labor Relations Act – “Labor’s Bill of Rights,” and our whole national system of collective bargaining, was never meant to be the only federally passed law that individual states had a right to choose not to follow if they chose. The Wagner Act was meant to rectify the “robber baron” style of exploitative capitalism of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, when workers were seen as so many exploitable and expendable pieces of the production line. The Wagner Act reversed these deeply rooted anti-worker patterns of big business, but not for long. 

Though Labor played its part during the heyday of WWII and kept labor peace while churning out the goods needed for the war effort, by the end of the war, as hundreds of thousands of workers returned home from fighting overseas, and the huge amounts of government spending to drive the war effort started to slow down, business owners who had seen sales and profits rocket up during the war now had angry workers on their hands – workers who had agreed to no strike clauses during the war and reigned in wage demands and now wanted to  share in the soaring prosperity that the business owners enjoyed during the postwar boom. 

Many work stoppages and strikes occurred, being the prime tool of workers to defend their rights to a fair wage.  Just like today, the corporate media went into overdrive to slander these demands for fair wages and benefits as the work of communists, socialists and anarchists. The postwar reaction to a decade of FDR’s policies aimed at leveling the playing field for workers and his public attacks on the big business class, lent force to the election of a conservative right-wing Congress – Richard Nixon among them - just as happened in the Tea Party election of 2010. This right-wing Congress, in 1947, “revised” the Wagner Act, under the name of the two sponsors of the legislation. The Taft-Hartley Act essentially gutted the most progressive measures of the Wagner Act and added a whole sub-section of impediments to labor organizing which have frustrated union organizers to this day. See more here: http://hnn.us/articles/1036.html 

It is important to understand here that this “revision” was the first and only time in our U.S. history that states were able to “opt-out” of federal law simply by the vote of their state legislatures. We had fought the Civil War on the basis that all states in the union must follow one set of rules or the union could not stand – but for worker’s rights? This apparently did not hold true. I am simplifying here to a degree, but sadly, not by much. Labor did fight hard against Taft-Hartley Act at the time, calling it “the slave-labor act,” but the tide was against them. This anti-labor law has been at the root of labor’s decline for the last several decades. It has provided the tolls to employers and their government cronies to restrict and curtail the rights of workers to organize into legal labor unions. 

It is amazing to note that even in the last election, when two states voted to legalize the personal use of marijuana, in direct violation of federal anti-drug laws, even under what is considered a progressive national administration, it has only been a matter of a few weeks before clear rumblings have been heard from the White House and federal authorities that such violations of federal law will not be allowed to proceed. Already plans are in motion to bring these two forward thinking states into line with the wasteful and outdated drug laws. But try and screw workers? That's A-OK. 

The question then is, what will organized labor and workers do to fight back? Organized labor and worker’s groups of all types must quickly figure out an active counter-attack to these most recent assaults against American workers. Though the AFL-CIO and major union supporters likely spent over $200 million this past election cycle to guarantee a pro-labor victory, the time for celebration has obviously been very short-lived.  All workers, unions, new worker alliances – such as the new National Taxi Alliance out of NYC, must target these recent attacks our of Michigan and use them as the focus for a major counter-attack against the Taft-Harley Act’s anti-worker provisions – especially the ability for any state to opt out of the right of workers to organize free of any obstacles. Workers Rights Must be Civil Rights! 

We have just contributed to one of the great progressive victories of the last half-century and now is not the time to stand back and be shy. We must be bold, we must have a clear message and we must be unrelenting in our attacks. Why should Michigan get away with such attacks? There are big convention centers in Detroit and many national companies have their headquarters in the state. We must target those who economically seek to destroy us and declare economic war on them in return. This is the only message they will listen to and one of the strongest weapons in our arsenal. At the same time, all workers and organized labor must work together to re-educate the public about the terrible consequences of such attacks against working people and these rights for which tens of thousands have spilled their blood, fought tooth and nail to secure a safe and equitable future for their children and grandchildren.

Americans have just demonstrated that when they are presented with the truth, in a clear and coherent manner, they will make the right choice. We are just now in a period when many types of progressive media, including such efforts as our own Workers Unite Film Festival (and over a dozen wonderful labor film festivals across the country), worker/labor web-based news outlets, twitter-feeds, facebook pages, etc. can actually reach and communicate an alternate version of the what the corporate mainstream media wants to offer – which is most often to confuse and obfuscate the actual truth. We have a real chance here my fellow progressives, labor activists, union organizers – let’s get out there and fight this thing like our parents and grandparents fought the great battles of the last 100 years. No defeat, no surrender. Our future as a labor movement, our future as a country with a viable middle-class, who has the chance for a life with decent wages and dignity is what is at stake.

Support "Our Walmart" workers striking this Thursday and Friday

November 21st, 2012

This Friday is now known as "Black Friday," the universally accepted term for when retailers cross over into the more profitable part of their selling year. This is all well and good and for many small retailers, we are happy to support them and wish them a healthy and fulfilling holiday selling season.

However - the increasingly desperate focus of the corporate owned media and their mountains of advertising dollars on getting all Americans to somehow get so frenzied over such teaser retail bonanzas as a $120 flat screen color TV, or a $50 Iphone that they are willing to trample each other to get their cheap deals first - well that part needs to come to a respectful end.

The sad and sour spectacle of economically stretched families pushing and shoving to save a few bucks in the holiday dash to replace kindness and giving with consumerism and shopping is bad enough. But now the retail giants, such as Walmart, Target and many others, have pushed the opening bell for these gladiator tinged shenanigans earlier and earlier out of "Black Friday" and now plan to roll out the come-ons as early as Thanksgiving Eve. That means family members who previously might have been able to have dinner with loved ones, then get to their job for even a ridiculous midnight Thursday opening bell - now are forced to sacrifice even those precious few hours of family togetherness so that these mega-retailers might generate an even greater feeding frenzy and a few more dollars of revenue per store.

As bad as this insult to the meaning of Thanksgiving might be, this disgust with the corporate trashing of the holiday is but one grievance in a long list of disrespectful and anti-worker, anti-human work rules imposed on these low-wage workers. And what do they get for following such rules? $7.50 an hour, if they are lucky, no health care plan, no pension, a constant stream of irregular hours and erratic schedules designed to keep them off-balance and part-time employees and a steady stream of disrespect and condescension if the worker is brave enough to ask why they are being treated like so much disposable garbage.

The conditions have reached such a low point that thousands of brave and thoughtful Walmart workers, in particular, organized in worker center groups - like "Our Walmart," are not even trying to form a union - knowing of how many roadblocks have been put in their way be tainted labor laws that have been twisted by the courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court's anti-class action decision last year against many thousands of women managers across the country who had brought a class action lawsuit against Walmart for gender discrimination. Yet these workers have already pulled of over thirty successful walk-outs from Walmart stores across the country. Walmart is so clueless as to even the basic meaning of the National Labor Relations law, that they have filed a complaint against the United Food and Chemical Workers Union - the UFCW, claiming that the union, though not organizing these workers, has somehow magically convinced all these folks to walk out in order to "frustrate Walmart's ability to carry on their regular business." Hah. Just as during the recent election, there is not a bit of understanding on the part of these greedy bosses that workers actually have the capacity to know when they are getting screwed and though it might take them a bit of time, they eventually will figure out a way to fight back - and a double bravo! for that!

This Thursday and Friday "Our Walmart" and several other worker center groups helping Walmart employees to educate and organize themselves into empowered workers, have called for a national day of boycotts, walk-outs and demonstrations to highlight not only the thoughtless and heartless push for opening stores on a major family holiday, but to also highlight the terribly lopsided working conditions at these stores and the huge income inequality between the pay of the average Walmart worker and the billions of dollars made by members of the Walton Family and their top brass each year.

Please support these workers, join a demonstration, picket with them in front of the store, but most of all - don't shop in any of those stores that don't respect that families have a right to peacefully enjoy a national holiday without being coerced into choosing between their sole source of income and seeing their children and parents sit down for the rare family meal all across the country.

UPDATE: Read OUR Walmart's actions "From The Front Lines" By Nation's Josh Eidelson:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/171430/black-friday-begins-early-walmart-workers-already-striking-least-seven-states-updated-83?utm_source=Sidney%27s+Picks+11-23-12&utm_campaign=Sidney%27s+Picks&utm_medium=email#

Check out this article from the Retail Action Project:

http://retailactionproject.org/2012/11/black-friday-thank-a-retail-worker-support-walmart-workers-on-strike/

And go to Sign.org to send a message of support for these workers and their right to organize to Walmart's Chairperson: http://signon.org/sign/rob%2Dwalton%2Drespect%2Dyour?source=mo&id=58098-18059543-99KUqyx

Workers Around the U.S. and the World Won Tonight

November 7th, 2012

I'll write more on the results of the election in the coming days, but the results of this hotly contested race could have been disastrous for workers and labor unions in this country and in the developing world. Though we cannot stop organizing and fighting for our labor rights - not by a long shot - we can breathe a sigh of relief this morning that workers and labor unions, among millions of other folks, fought so hard to keep a labor friendly President in office. This was an election where one side demonized workers and their unions, building alliances with the likes of union-busting governors such as Scott Walker and John Kasich - while the other side reiterated daily the critical importance of a middle-class built of hard-working folks from the core industries of the United States.

One campaign was about inclusion, one was about exclusion. One side wanted as many folks to vote as possible, one side tried to limit access to the polls to millions of Americans, many of whom suffered terribly to gain that right to vote.

This was a historic election - just looking at the rainbow mosaic of the President's cheering crowds, shows that this country is changing, evolving.  This time the majority of voters did see that when we have each other's backs, when we fight for the common good, we build a better country - a country with a future of fairness and dignity for many more millions of folks than was ever thought possible.

Congratulations to the amazing efforts of America's labor unions, who pulled out the stops, knocking on millions of voters doors across the country and served as the muscle for the Democrat Party's massive get out the vote drive. When unions pull together with a purpose, even up against the hundreds of millions of dollars of secret corporate and PAC money, they could beat the 1%ers hands down!

You did good brothers and sisters, you did really good.

It's Election Day - Get Out and Vote!

November 6th, 2012

Election Day is finally here! After endless months of negative attack ads, truth stretching and many unintentionally humorous moments, the real election moment is finally here. We are a strong advocate for worker and labor rights. Though we cannot tell you who we think should be President - we can ask you to simply look at the issues, especially the issues of what has happened to American workers over the last disastrous period for our economy. Even though we are certainly digging out of the mess created by the casino gambling mentality of stock manipulators and big banks, we are nowhere near a full jobs recovery. This part of the recovery is critical, not only for the long term stability and overall health of our economy, but also for the survival and dignity of working families - of all types and formulations - as the bedrock upon which our communities, neighborhoods and ultimately our whole society can thrive and grow into a sustainable and equitable future.

All we ask you to do is to look at the ways in which each candidate for President and their down-ticket colleagues running at the Senatorial and Congressional level, discuss the role of the middle class, workers and the dignity of labor in this country - now and into the future. One side has actively engaged in the wholesale outsourcing of jobs from every industry to lower wage competitors overseas, the other seeks to create increased opportunity for job development here at home. One side believes in  the rights of workers to collectively bargain and to maintain fair wages and benefits which allow their families and themselves to live in dignity. The other side would like to see a return of a virtual serf style nation where masses of workers are so browbeaten they claw at each other's throats for minimum wage jobs.

This is not rocket science folks. Read the papers, listen to some news, go online. But please, please, please! Whatever you do tomorrow - no matter how hectic it gets, no matter how bad the storm's effects - and we were co-sufferers in that tragic event - our hearts go out to all those who suffered and are still suffering from the storm and the pathetic way private enterprise is allowed to respond to such a disaster - but please go out and vote! Bring your friends, bring your neighbors, bring friends of neighbors and neighbors of friends. Don't let those forces who would like to see the number of voters shrink get their way - because they can't win an election fair and square based on the merits and the real beauty of our democratic system.

GET OUT AND VOTE! Vote for the rights of working men and women, children of working families, to live lives with dignity and not fear about their future. Let them know that postive and healthy change for the better is possible and that it can happen in their lifetimes. Let all of us know that simply by thinking clearly and voting our conscience - that we can actually beat back the awful tide of corrupt corporate dollars that have washed over this election cycle.

No matter who wins, we will have our work cut out for us. Organizing and fighting for worker/labor rights does not depend on one or the other Presidential candidate or political party. It depends on all of us fighting for our human rights to organize and unite as workers - at any level of employment, on any job site - anywhere in this country and anywhere in this world. We are responsible for our futures.

Now get out there and VOTE!

First International Conference of Labor Film Festivals a Major Success

October 20th, 2012

I was honored to attend the exciting and informative first international conference of labor and working peoples film festivals from around the world. This event was expertly organized by Chris and Julia, the organizers of the DC Labor Film Festival for the last 12 years.

I was thrilled to meet folks from London, Turkey, San Francisco and surrounding cities, the Los Angeles area (San Pedro), Washington DC, Philadelphia, Rochester, NY and indirectly, Toronto, Haifa, Australia, New Zealand, Madrid and several more global participants who will help grow this group in the future.

This is a watershed moment for labor and worker culture around the world. Thousands of activists are filming stories or worker's struggles to survive, at the same time the corporate media does its best to ignore and smother those same key stories. This is one of the reasons why public information about unions and worker's efforts to organize is often so misguided. 

The establishment of such a worldwide network, both to find and develop films about workers around the world, but even more importantly - to provide a platform and showcase for all films relating to workers lives is a vital achievement. The creation of these showcases give all activists and organizers an opportunity to get their messages out in a fresh and compelling way.  This development and screening of more media based on the lives and struggles of real workers, (workers who know that organized into unions makes them stronger and better able to gain leverage against the huge monetary resources of their employers), is critical for progressive media and messages to be able to cut through the intentional anti-worker media noise created by the the huge corporate owners of almost all the airwaves. This is important in order that the old, outdated images and stereotypes of labor unions are wiped away from popular culture and replaced by the true and uplifting stories that all these labor film festival directors plan to program during the coming years.

If Labor Dies, What's Next?

October 19th, 2012

This election is about many important issues, but one of the most important is the future of American workers and their co-workers around the global village. It is very clear that we must take our future into our own hands, organize, fight for our rights, educate ourselves and the public and get our message across in as many ways as we can. This helps to counteract the daily anti-worker, anti-union message of the corporatacracy.

This article, from the American Prospect, needs to be read and understood by anybody fighting this battle. Just a few paragraphs from this great article are below:

"I. A Union-Free America

Here’s what happens if the dinosaur dies.

When unions vanish, ordinary Americans lose their right to bargain collectively for their pay and benefits. Even those who have never bargained collectively will feel the loss. Some years ago, when unions were big enough that their effect on the larger economy could be measured, Princeton economist Henry Farber concluded that the wages of nonunion workers in industries that were 25 percent unionized were 7.5 percent higher than they’d be if their industry were union-free. When unionized companies were common, firms that were nonunion had to mimic the wages and benefits of their unionized counterparts for fear that their employees would leave or, worse, organize. That was certainly the practice at General Electric and other largely nonunion giants.

Nonetheless, union workers generally maintained a 20 percent wage advantage over nonunion workers. The key to the wage advantage is the percentage of union membership in a given industry or market. In cities where nearly all the class-A hotels are unionized, as they are in New York and San Francisco, housekeepers make more than $20 an hour. In cities where roughly half of such hotels are unionized, such as Los Angeles, their hourly wage is about $15. In cities where all the hotels are nonunion, such as Phoenix, housekeepers make little more than the minimum wage, if that.

From 1947 through 1973, when union density in America was at its peak, real wages for nonmanagerial employees rose by 75 percent. From 1979 through 2006, as union density collapsed, real wages for nonmanagerial employees rose by only 4 percent. Unable to get a raise, American households maintained their standard of living during those years by women entering the workforce and by going into debt.

 Density is just one element of unions’ ability to raise wages, however. The other is strikes. We look back now at the three decades of broadly shared prosperity that followed World War II as a time of union-management concord, when executives made their peace with unions and unions didn’t rock the boat. In fact, more strikes occurred from the late 1940s through the early 1970s than before or since. When union contracts expired, workers and managers fought pitched battles over the terms of the next contract. The largest strike in American history came in 1959, amid the sleepy Eisenhower years, when 500,000 steelworkers stayed off the job for 116 days. It was through such expedients that workers compelled management to let them share in their company’s proceeds. But as density declined, unions’ ability to win strikes declined with it. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, unions were striking less to win raises than to resist management proposals to freeze wages and cut benefits. The weaker unions grew, the fewer their strikes. In the early 1950s, there were roughly 350 strikes in the United States every year. Over the past decade, there have been roughly 10 to 20 per year.

As unions shrank, inequality grew. From 1947 through 1972, productivity in the United States rose by 102 percent, and median household income rose by an identical 102 percent. In recent decades, as economists Robert Gordon and Ian Dew-Becker have shown, all productivity gains have accrued to the wealthiest 10 percent. In 1955, near the apogee of union strength, the wealthiest 10 percent received 33 percent of the nation’s personal income. In 2007, they received 50 percent.

Profits have been growing at wages’ expense. Michael Cembalest, J.P. Morgan’s chief investment officer, has calculated that reductions in wages and benefits were responsible for about 75 percent of the increase in corporate profits between 2000 and 2007.

Today, wages and benefits make up the lowest share of America’s gross domestic product since World War II. Wages have fallen from 53 percent of GDP in 1970 to 44 percent today. Profits have been growing at wages’ expense. Michael Cembalest, J.P. Morgan’s chief investment officer, has calculated that reductions in wages and benefits were responsible for about 75 percent of the increase in corporate profits between 2000 and 2007.

What’s causing this decline in workers’ ability to claim more of the nation’s wealth? It’s not that they’re less productive. According to a Wall Street Journal survey of the S&P 500, the nation’s largest publicly traded companies, revenues per worker, which were $378,000 in 2007, grew to $420,000 in 2010. Businesses now produce more with fewer employees, but even those workers who’ve kept their jobs haven’t seen their wages rise."

There is a reason this is such a slow recovery and neither side is clearly telling the American public why this is so. Without decent union jobs, wages drift lower and lower and it is almost impossible for enough purchasing power to develop to bring this economy back to life. The GOP knows this, but it works just fine for them. The Democrats want to have it both ways - so they never really clearly connect the dots.

Read the whole article here: http://prospect.org/article/if-labor-dies-whats-next

We Salute the Courageous Walmart Workers & the UFCW

October 10th, 2012

In the spirit of so many workers and so many groups organizing together to take economic power back into their own hands, workers at a Walmart stores at 28 Walmarts in 12 different cities walked out of work on Tuesday. These workers, aided by The United Food and Chemical Workers'  Making Change at Walmart workers outreach and organizing group, threatened further and wider walk-outs on "Black Friday," retailer' critical shopping day after Thanksgiving.

OUR Walmart, another UFCW backed worker organization, closely affiliated with the Making Change at Walmart group, vowed to target as many Walmarts across the country as possible with "non-violent actions, flash mobs, raising public awareness of illegal working conditions and any other legal means to force Walmart to come to the table and bargain over a fair wage and fair treatment for hundreds of thousands of Walmart workers nation-wide.

This is a historic event, because no retail Walmart workers had ever gone on strike before. After the anti-worker Supreme Court threw out the largest class action discrimination case in history - brought against Walmart by women workers nationally - these spreading strikes demonstrate that the winner take all mentality of the 1% society can only last so long. Workers will only accept mistreatment, no benefits, low pay and exploitative working conditions for so long before they organize and fight back.

These efforts follow in the successful footsteps of the NY Taxi Workers Alliance, who started in much the same place and are now the newest chartered AFL-CIO union in the country. They recently won a huge victory and fare increase, including a health care plan, from taxi fleet owners in NYC that was historic in its own right. The Domestic Workers United, We Make The Road NY (Organizing car wash employees),The Restaurant Opportunity Center (ROC) - organizing and helping restaurant workers gain dignity at their jobs, all these groups and many more signal a resurgence in workers understanding:Labor Rights Are Civil Rights!

To Read more go to the Huffington Post and we thank them for their excellent coverage of these Walmart strikes.

Great New Film on PBS on the War Against Workers

October 8, 2012

Check out a great new film now screening on PBS - called As Goes Janesville. This powerful new documentary, played currently on Independent Lens (also available on DVD) goes deeply into the recent battle for labor rights in Wisconsin. The film really follows both sides, workers laid off from good middle-class jobs at the recently closed GM Janesville plant and several smaller local factories - as well as owners of those same factories. The film also follows the activities of Janesville's City Manager and Board as they try to figure out a future without GM and make honest efforts to replace that tax base, but also some sad and ridiculous gambles in the name of "free enterprise."

This documentary is heartbreaking as we watch scenes of a mother of two teenage daughters, being forced to travel five hours away to find work at a an auto plant in another state. On the flip side, it made my skin crawl to watch the all white executive board of a local manufacturing company, a company that had laid off many workers during the downturn and was now looking to rehire, but hoping these former employees had left the state to find work. Why? Simple. New hires as opposed to rehires could be had for much lower wages, no pesky past pay scale to contend with. And this board was thrilled and chuckling over this prospect. Not a single second of understanding on the part of these Midwestern, likely Christian folks, that their actions so deeply and negatively affected their follow Janesville neighbors. 

The film goes on to document the ups and downs of one Democratic State Legislator, elected as a centrist, but then stunned to see just how radical and uncompriomising the newly elected Governor Walker and Tea Party Republicans are when it comes to destroying collective bargaining rights in once progressive/labor Wisconsin.

The anger and hatred pouring out of these medium sized business owners and local bureaucrats for labor unions and really workers in general is a sad commentary on a small portion of our society that sees everybody else around them as simply tools to help them create ever greater wealth - not much different than the current national campaign by the GOP.  And while the same business owner who was positively gleeful over the prospect of hiring all new low-wage workers for her plant fawns over a Scott Walker visit to a local right-wing booster group called Rock 5.0, she epitomizes the bizarre nature of this current system when it is reported towards the end of the film that she personally donated over $510,000!! to Scott Walker's record breaking, costly recall fight.

At the same time, Janesville city officials, during a period of terrible economic downturns, with a GM plant closing for good and many local families facing really desperate times, turns to the entrepreneurial dreams of an unproven high tech company as their salvation. The film follows with devastating effect the battle of the city manager to push through a $9 million loan to this medical equipment start-up company - with no income, no real product and still in need of over $15 million more to make a future pay-off to the city even remotely a reality. The kicker is that the future 120 jobs possible created down the road? Both sides agree that almost none of them will come from the local population! And this is called "free market" vision? All the while the needs of the local unemployed are basically shoved aside with the explanation that their survival is not a community problem.

This film directs our attention in a very precise way to the complex nature of the fight labor unions and workers now face in a society still awash in popular folklore about the holiness of business success. This remains true even after the complete destruction and collapse of America's financial and housing sectors due to unrestrained gambling on the part of so many "brilliant businessmen."  

And why is this still true? Look at the media. Look at who has the money to finance most media. Everyday we are bombarded by how the massive financial meltdown was just a small glitch in the machine. No real corrections have been made, Chase Bank, Bank of America, among others, have recently continued to lose BILLIONS in highly speculative financial instruments. Nobody has even been indicted at the managerial level of these gamblers who almost brought down the economy. And as the recent article in the New Yorker detailed, these financial titans of banking and Wall Street are not the least remorseful - they rather feel that President Obama has not treated them with "the respect" the actually deserve. Stunning.

But lost in these big stories are the smaller stories portrayed in the film. The mother of two forced to move away to find work, the single mother, a veteran of Afghanistan, laid off in Janesville, sweating out a diagnosis over a breast lump, with health insurance from her job and unemployment benefits both run out. All the working folks in this film, including these women quietly persevere, but the stresses they face and the obvious toll it takes on them and their families serves as a huge reminder of the ridiculous waste of this winner take all economy and the mentality that says that's just AOK.

Workers who gave years of their lives to make a business thrive deserve better than this and labor unions need to watch this film carefully to understand how difficult the battle will be to reassert the right of workers to organize into unions.

We Are All Part Of the 47%

September 20th, 2012

What can one possibly say about this latest gaffe from McRomney? He is a country-club republican to his core and this really is what they think of a large segment of America. As Jon Stewart put it so well last night - when they succeed - it is solely by their own magical brilliance, but when they fail - it's the government's fault (oh, but by the way - can that government send in millions of $ to save our sorry asses!).

However, when the average working person succeeds - it's because of some bloated federal program we don't need, or some other "tax handout" that the "job creators" had taken out of their hard-earned riches. It never is seen as the part of the American dream we are all raised with, where somebody less fortunate, through a good public education and really hard work, plus perhaps some support from federal programs put in place with exactly the mission of helping to raise those on the bottom towards the top - you know - create a viable middle class that pays taxes and PAYS DOWN THE 1%'s GROSSLY  CREATED BUDGET DEFICIT - these country club types never see this as a good story. And God Forbid these folks don't make their way one, two three, then let's kick them to the curb, cut their food stamps, let them and their kids live in their cars - if they're lucky.

That's what the Romey types are talking about when they discuss the "47%" behind closed doors at $50,000. per plate!!! dinners. As workers - it shouldn't be too hard to see which side are you on.

Ryan for VP Makes clear what the GOP thinks about our future

August 13th, 2012

Slipping into a steady downward drift against President Obama, the McRomeny pulled out all the stops and selected the male version of Sarah Palin to restart his campaign. Once again the GOP has chosen to cater to the most rabid, extreme wing of their party - the teabags - with the selection of Paul Ryan. Much will be written about how Mr. Ryan is a "regular guy" from working class roots and "very serious." As opposed  I guess - to the rest of the former Republican Prez field who were anything but serious - including the McRomney.

So Ryan will inject a note of down and dirty policy discussions - except his "policy" papers - are nothing of the kind. They are simply a regurgitation of the same drivel the Koch brothers, casino  owner Sheldon Adelson and every other wealthy 1% type has dreamed about for at least two decades. Cut the federal government to shreds, dump necessary tax burdens mostly on the poor saps who don't have rich lawyers to legally get them out of paying taxes and the icing on the cake is even greater tax cuts for those already doing phenomenally well at the top.

Not rocket science, because you do the bidding of Mr. Wealthy, he rewards you with more donations, more trips, more access to the wealthy life you aspired to - but never got a chance to have. This way - you drape yourself in some lofty rhetoric about "saving our future," or "taking America back." Only problem is - who are they saving America from? Who are they taking it back for? Easy - the wealthy patrons who foot the bill get to live like the potentates of old, while formerly honorable working class folks, including firemen, policemen and soldiers serving our country overseas- they get to work for minimum wage - like in Pennsylvania just last month. That's if they don't get "downsized" out of their job - so Mr. Richy Rich can buy himself another Bentley, or house in the Hamptons - God forbid Mr. Rich might actually have to shoulder a proportionate share fo the burden for all the services he needs to build his business, drive to his Hamptons palace and keep his fleet of luxury cars running at top speed(all of those toys, by the way, a deduction!! on his tax return!!! You and me pay for him to have those toys!)

So - Don't be fooled by the GOP rhetoric, nor the sloppy, uneducated reporting of the corporate media. They want the public to think this type of drivel is legitimate - when there is nothing but smoke, mirrors and a deep shaft inside for regular working folks like me and you.

Time For a Wake-Up Call

June 12, 2012

After so many words have been written about Wisconsin, why we had to fight, why "we" lost and what this means for the future of public sector unions and labor organizing in general - it seems almost ridiculous to add to that pile; but we must.

It is really important to fully read the following article from Andy Kroll, on Alternet - who has a fuller grasp of the actual dynamics of how the energy we saw in Madison last February ended in a solid defeat for the Democrats, in the recall election. Let's remember - it was once again a fairly lackluster Democratic machine candidate - Tom Barret - who did beat a much more progressive Labor candidate - Kathleen Falk - in the earlier primary election. Would Kathleen, or anybody for that matter, have made a difference? Hard to say in hindsight - but certainly - re-running a race with the same machine candidate from just two years earlier totally changed the focus of the original movement - and this is something we see every single day in the difficult alliance between big labor and the Democratic Party.

Workers rights and dignity on the job should not be just a one party issue, but when you narrow the focus down to a red versus blue debate and pick candidates with a well worn history of inter-party battles - it is hard not to expect the well-oiled money machine the current GOP has become to find a relatively easy target to exploit through their carpet-bombing of the electoral TV air waves.

Read the article:https://www.freespeech.org/text/how-wisconsin-uprising-went-wrong

I think all of labor, activists, progressives, organized and fighting to get organized - we all need to really think hard about how we repeat the same mistakes over and over again. We had a hugely motivated group of folks, signed ove a million recall supporters, but then, as Andy Kroll suggests, we played the whole game on the other team's turf by their obscenely rigged rules. This is the definition of stupid. 

We need to change how we think about organizing, unions, who belongs, how they belong. We need to keep it simple - we need to acknowledge that folks will pay union dues if they see a real reason - this has been proven by the NY Taxi Workers Alliance. It is not easy - it takes lots of sweat and many hours - but there is no longer a shortcut. We must go back to having organizers get out to workplaces and shop floors and collect the dues - let them do it electronically but let them be there in person! Let them look into the eyes of their union brothers and sisters and tell them why dues are the lifeblood of a union.

And I've said it before - but will do so again at this moment when union-busting thug governors think they have the upper hand. LABOR RIGHTS MUST BE CIVIL RIGHTS! Plain and simple. Let every single group of workers, no matter how large or small, no matter where they work, who they work for, what they do - they can organize if they vote to do so - even if a majority don't want it now - the minority can still be organized for purposes of collective bargaining. Civil Rights Laws have guts and ignoring them costs the company plenty that makes the mistake.

This is not an easy path, nor a short path, but we must attempt this new path in order of having any chance at all of long term survival and relevance.

Those are the lessons of Wisconsin - LABOR RIGHTS ARE CIVIL RIGHTS and paying dues must be by choice, collected by an organizer who really gets to know the workers and because the worker feels engaged.  If we had these things as gospel, we might really turn worker's future lives around and not have to make alliances with a political party who's top guy is just too darn busy to support our fight. We'd be our own strength; our own boss.