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January 21, 2012

Published at Common Dreams.

For the first time in 40 years, the U.S. Armed Forces will be deployed to intervene in a labor dispute, facilitating a scab operation against union dockworkers at the Port of Longview in Washington.

In the long dispute between International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) Local 21 and EGT Development, the international conglomerate is now poised to make its first grain shipment from its new $200 million export terminal, violating its contract with the publicly-owned port and the union’s jurisdiction on the waterfront.

But it may take an army to cross the picket line.

The ILWU has fought militantly against EGT’s employment of non-ILWU labor at its new facility in Longview where both leaders and rank-and-file activists have engaged in civil disobedience, blockading grain shipments by rail and facing off with police. On January 3rd ILWU President Robert McEllrath sent a letter to dockworkers explaining that EGT would likely receive its first vessel to be loaded for grain export at the terminal this month.

“We have been told that this vessel will be escorted by armed United States Coast Guard, including the use of small vessels and helicopters, from the mouth of the Columbia River to the EGT facility,” McEllrath wrote.

He added that the facility itself will be guarded by a massive presence of law enforcement, dispatched from multiple jurisdictions in the area.

Last week the San Francisco Labor Council adopted a resolution condemning the use of the military to escort the ship.

“This is the first known use of the U.S. military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years – not since the Great 1970 Postal Strike when President Nixon called out the Army and National Guard in an (unsuccessful) attempt to break the strike,” according to the resolution.

“The use of the Armed Forces against labor unions is something you expect to see in a police state.”

The specter of Coast Guard vessels and helicopters escorting a scab grain ship to help break the union comes on the heels of President Obama’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act, a law that codifies a new level of militarization in domestic law enforcement.  

But while the timing may be coincidental, the decision to militarily intervene in this particular labor struggle is not. The ILWU, a union with a radical reputation, has fought aggressively against EGT’s union-busting enterprise and the stakes are high for both sides.

“EGT is attempting to break the master grain agreement and become the first grain export terminal in the Pacific Northwest to operate without ILWU,” McEllrath explained back in September.

EGT is owned by three corporations – Bunge North America, Itochu Corporation, and STX Pan Ocean. Bunge, a grain cartel player and dominating partner in EGT, insisted in negotiations that ILWU submit to two 12-hour straight-time shifts per day. Bunge also refused to allow any longshoremen work in the master console of the facility. The workers bargained with Bunge for almost 14 months before negotiations broke down early last year.

In May EGT began violating its lease agreement with the port by contracting with a third party using labor from International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 701. ILWU’s hard-won agreement with the port that guarantees all work be done by its members has been in place for nearly 80 years. The IUOE has been roundly condemned by the labor movement throughout the Pacific Northwest for providing scab labor at the terminal.  

Longshore workers escalated the fight over the summer as informational pickets gave way to more confrontational direct actions. In July workers forced a train delivering grain to the terminal to turn back as several hundred workers blocked the tracks. When the ILWU blockaded trains again in September the workers’ action was met with riot police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas. In response, some ILWU members and allies reportedly cut brake cables and dumped grain from train cars. Several ports in the region were shut down by the union for two days in early September.

But EGT has won court injunctions against ILWU, effectively restricting pickets and condemning what it calls “violent protest.” Over the past several months 220 members and supporters have been arrested for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, including McEllrath and the president of Local 21. The union has also been slapped with over $300,000 in fines for blocking trains and trespassing on EGT property.

Police brutality and surveillance used to intimidate the workers have led to protests by members of the ILWU Ladies Auxiliary. In September two Local 21 officials were arrested when they tried to defend a 57-year old woman who was arrested and injured by cops during a nonviolent civil disobedience action to block a train carrying wheat to the new facility. Both union officials were tackled, held down by police and pepper-sprayed in the eyes.

Yet, in addition to finding itself up against police violence and a pack of Fortune 500 companies, the ILWU has had to contend with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which has taken management’s side in the dispute. The NLRB has called for an end to what it describes as “violent and aggressive” picketing by ILWU members.

For McEllrath, the NLRB’s stance is not surprising. Since the 1949 Taft-Hartley Act, the central role of the NLRB has often been “to protect commerce at the expense of workers,” he argued in a statement to workers.

The impact of the struggle in Longview could be far-reaching.

A victory for EGT might unravel and break the ILWU entirely. A dangerous precedent would be set as other grain elevators will be emboldened to spurn longshore jurisdiction up and down the West Coast. Indeed, the end result in Longview will seriously affect the union’s bargaining strength in 2014 when ILWU is set to negotiate its master agreement with the Pacific Maritime Association.

And in the context of nationwide attacks on labor unions and collective bargaining rights, the outcome in this battle could have sweeping consequences for organized labor and workers beyond the ports.

But even with the stakes so high for labor, the national leadership of the AFL-CIO has been virtually mum on the conflict. Both the ILWU and IUOE are affiliated with the AFL-CIO whose president, Richard Trumka, has described the struggle as merely a “jurisdictional dispute.”

It’s unclear why Trumka has not been compelled to draw the line as one of his federation’s members is raiding the jurisdiction of another AFL-CIO union. But if he is willing to allow EGT to potentially break the ILWU in order to avoid condemning IUOE and risk creating a rift between that union and the AFL-CIO, it may boil down to money.

As a relatively conservative union closely aligned with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters which left the AFL-CIO in 2001, the Operating Engineers have intimated their intent to follow the Carpenters’ lead and pull out of the AFL-CIO as well. In 2006 the IUOE quit the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, a move that indicated differences with the federation.

It’s possible that Trumka is reluctant to call out the IUOE for its behavior in Longview because losing the Operating Engineers’ roughly $3 million in yearly membership dues to the AFL-CIO is a bigger financial loss compared to the ILWU’s less-than $300,000 annual payment.

Whatever the case may be, what hangs in the balance at the Port of Longview is the survival of a union whose strength is defined by both its militant history and its powerful hold at a critical juncture of global commerce. Even in its recent history, the ILWU has stood out in the labor movement for its use of industrial action in solidarity with social justice movements around the world. The ILWU has shut down ports on the West Coast to protest South African Apartheid, the World Trade Organization, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in support of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.  

Now longshore workers are asking for solidarity with their own struggle. On January 2nd the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Central Labor Council passed a resolution to “call out to the friends of labor and the ‘99 percent’ everywhere to come to the aid of ILWU Local 21.”

Much was made of the tensions that flared between ILWU officials and Occupy during the West Coast Port Shutdown called by the Occupy movement in December. While many ILWU rank-and-file members and port truck drivers joined Occupy activists in the port action, critics accused Occupy protesters of calling a strike without ILWU approval. Of course, there are some Occupy activists who do not understand organized labor and who have failed to work cooperatively with unions and their members. There are also some in the labor movement who failed to see the December 12th action for what it was – a community picket, not a strike.  

Still, the Occupy movement has pledged its full support for workers in the fight against EGT. Occupy Oakland is organizing a caravan of activists to join protesters in Longview pending the arrival of the scab grain ship, and Occupy protesters from Portland and Seattle are also mobilizing for action at the terminal.

The Occupy call has gone out nationwide, urging tens of thousands to converge on Longview while others are encouraged to organize solidarity actions in their cities targeting EGT and its shareholder locations. On Monday Occupy Oakland and other supporters will march to protest military intervention against longshore workers.

Solidarity from the Occupy movement may be decisive in this labor battle.

The workers are fighting to defend fair standards and working conditions for the 99 percent at the docks. They are confronting a profit-hungry syndicate of the one percent. EGT has complained about the $1 million in extra labor costs for ILWU work while its biggest shareholder, Bunge, made $2.5 billion in profit in the U.S. alone in 2010.   

Dockworkers will need the support of Occupy and other allies, especially as their union faces the wrath of the courts and the overall strictures of labor law. As McEllrath wrote to ILWU members, “Locals need to be aware of the narrow path that we must cut through [with] a federal labor law (the Taft-Hartley Act) that criminalizes worker solidarity, outlaws labor’s most effective tools, and protects commerce while severely restricting unions.”

In the coming days, EGT will attempt to ship grain with the help of the U.S. Coast Guard, an entity whose roots go back to 1790 when then-Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton established a fleet to collect import tariffs and crack down on piracy.

The Coast Guard may be an appropriate force to intervene at the ports from the perspective of the ruling class, which has always considered the power of organized labor as a kind of piracy.   

For the workers in Longview, fighting for the very heart and soul of the modern labor movement, only solidarity can fortify their picket line against the marauding one percent.    

December 15, 2011

Published at Counterpunch, Common Dreams and Socialist Worker.

After a year of revolutions, strikes, and protest occupations, a new era of struggle has shifted the political landscape. Workers and the poor have taken to the streets, occupying public squares and striking across the globe – from Egypt to Greece to cities across the U.S.

[SubDisp Exclusive]

On Saturday the Maryland and DC AFL-CIO Biennial Convention voted on a resolution in support of Occupy encampments in Washington, DC and Baltimore, pledging to donate $3,000 to each occupation and declaring that the local labor movement considers Occupy Wall Street a picket line not to be crossed by affiliate unions.

Two days later, Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), did just that. Walking passed a noisy picket formed by dozens of Occupy DC protesters and postal workers, Rolando entered the National Press Club building where Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe delivered an austerity rationalization speech on cuts to the U.S. Postal Service.

Donahoe is committed to “restructuring” the U.S. Postal Service – that is, he is leading the way in privatization efforts using the pretext of a manufactured budget crisis that has left the Postal Service on the verge of bankruptcy. A 2006 congressional mandate requires the Postal Service to pre-fund its retiree health benefits 75 years in advance over the next decade. As postal unions point out, no other business or public agency shoulders such an onerous burden. The Postal Service dishes out $5.5 billion a year to meet this requirement, essentially paying into retiree benefits of people who haven’t even been born yet.

The financial problems precipitated by the Bush-era mandate point to a closely followed shock doctrine script for austerity and privatization of the 236-year-old public mail service.

As such, disaster capitalists like Donahoe are pushing to layoff more than 120,000 workers, shut down up to 4,000 post offices and cut Saturday delivery. This constitutes the single largest attack in the war on public sector workers. The Postal Service supports 9 million jobs nationwide and is the largest employer of African American men and veterans. At a time of record unemployment, which is disproportionately impacting Black communities, Donahoe is on a crusade to eliminate over 200,000 jobs over the next ten years.

The Postmaster General is looking to renegotiate union contracts in an effort to implement crippling austerity measures that would break the unions and move to privatize the public Postal Service. In the meantime, the Postal Service is a self-funded agency financed by the sale of its products and services. It collects no revenue from taxes and over the last four years the agency took in $600 million in profit. 

In response to these attacks, protesters from Occupy DC, postal workers and other supporters paid Donahoe a visit at his speech on Monday. While activists chanted outside against cuts and calling for Donahoe’s resignation, several protesters managed to get inside the ticketed event. Shortly after the Postmaster General began speaking, Occupy activists started a mic check – the signature amplification protest tactic of the new movement – and disrupted Donahoe.

Declaring, “We are the 99 percent,” protesters called for saving the U.S. Postal Service and stopping the cuts and attacks on workers. As they were escorted out, they chanted “Hey hey, ho ho – Donahoe has got to go.”

Meanwhile, NALC president Rolando sat at a banquet table in the company of other bigwigs, and remained silent. He later proposed ways the union could help save the Postal Service money, including an undisclosed plan to find “a new approach to health benefits.” At the same time, the union is in them middle of contract negotiations with the Postal Service, which were extended through December 7 just before the previous contract was set to expire on Sunday.

Days before the National Press Club event, Kenneth Lerch, president of NALC Branch 3825, teamed up with Occupy DC activists to plan an action in response to Donahoe’s austerity attacks. However, when word of the action reached union officials at the national level, including Rolando, union leaders made every effort to squash the protest, calling around to locals to discourage them from working with Occupy DC and urging Lerch to withhold his local’s support for the action.

“I think it’s quite regrettable that he [Rolando] would cross the picket line with all these American citizens chanting to save the Postal Service, and he couldn’t even stop and say a few words of encouragement to those walking the picket,” said Lerch.

The union’s reason for responding in this way is unclear. One would think the union would gladly support a protest in which Occupy activists were rallying in defense of its members. But union leaders like Rolando are unfortunately not unique within the labor movement. All too often, union officials are more comfortable with collaborating with management rather than mobilizing for militant actions that bring out rank-and-file members whose involvement is seen as a threat to the top-down control of union leaders. 

Rolando is the type of union leader who is leery of the Occupy movement and its involvement in labor struggles. The prospect of the 99 percent movement inspiring and empowering rank-and-file members to take bold action encroaches on the power of union president’s like Rolando to micromanage contract fights and other campaigns.

The position of NALC at the national level toward Occupy DC protesters who want to defend the jobs of postal workers stands in sharp contrast to other unions, like those at the Maryland and DC AFL-CIO convention last weekend, which are eager to work with and support the Occupy movement.  

A delegation of Occupy DC and Occupy Baltimore activists attended the convention to speak to union delegates about the movement. They thanked labor for all of its material support, including donations of food, tents, tarps and other resources. Occupy DC activists stressed the importance of solidarity between labor and the Occupy movement, asking delegates how they could support various labor struggles in the area. At the same time, they spoke of the need to get more union members involved in the movement.

“We love the food, the tents – but more than anything else, we need numbers,” said Caty McClure, an Occupy DC organizer who was joined on stage with others who recently formed a labor committee at Occupy DC .

The resolution passed by labor delegates advising all union members to treat the Occupy movement as a picket line marks a crucial step in deepening the relationship between unions and the 99 percent movement. With the escalation of police violence against Occupy protests in cities across the country, the support of rank-and-file union members will be instrumental for activists speaking out against economic inequality and the boundless greed of the one percent.

“Protest movements, like strike lines and organizing campaigns do not have curfews and are not 9 to 5 activities,” the resolution reads. “And in doing so, we recognize and will work to protect the right for occupiers to protest 24 hours a day, on-site, with proper protection, including food, medical supplies, water and tents.”

The resolution further states that the AFL-CIO will support any “unionized or non-unionized worker who refuses to break up, raid or confiscate the belongings of protesters” and urges “unions representing public workers and public safety workers to not participate in such activity as to deny the rights of occupiers.”

As police violence against Occupy Wall Street encampments has forced activists in many cities to turn to a new phase of struggle, some protesters are pushing the focus of the movement toward Washington, DC, where the movement’s camp at McPherson Square has faced comparatively mild police hostility. 

Encampments from Manhattan to Portland have been forcibly – and violently – evicted in the past two weeks. Disturbing images from a video of UC Davis campus police officers using pepper-spray on peaceful student protesters have sent more shockwaves around the country, further enraging the 99 percent. Working class and poor people are coming to understand the role of the police in relation to social movements. Each week they see the forces of the state reacting more viciously against ordinary people who dare to protest against the glaring economic injustices that pervade our society.

The stepped-up repression shows how threatened the one percent is by this movement. The super-rich who are hoarding the wealth and destroying social services are ideologically bankrupt and thus have nothing left to rely on except sheer force.

Mobilizing rank-and-file workers to join the Occupy movement is crucial for bringing the social power of the working class into the fight against Wall Street and Corporate America, and defending occupations against police violence. With a focus on the rank-and-file, the Occupy movement can lessen the danger of being co-opted by unions like SEIU that might aim to insert their Democratic electoral agenda into a movement whose strength is largely derived from its independence from both political parties.

While SEIU president Mary Kay Henry can throw an early endorsement behind Obama one day and get protested in an act of civil disobedience on the Brooklyn Bridge with Occupy Wall Street protesters the next, the Occupy movement cannot afford to be steered in that direction. Any expectation that protesters will roll up their sleeping bags and start knocking on doors for Obama must be vigorously argued against within the movement.

This week, about a hundred Occupy protesters arrived in D.C. after marching from Wall Street and picking up other demonstrators along the way. “Occupy the Highway” may signal shift in momentum from Wall Street, the movement’s birthplace, to K Street, the playground for corporate lobbyists in the heart of the nation’s capital.

The union movement can play a decisive role in bringing more of the 99 percent out onto the streets in order to defend and advance the Occupy movement. Above all, that will require the involvement of rank-and-file workers because, as demonstrated this week with the action against the Postmaster General, more than a few union leaders are either unprepared or unwilling to fight.

Published at Common Dreams.

“The next few months will be crucial for avoiding a dramatic downturn in employment and a further significant aggravation of social unrest.”

That’s the first sentence in a report released this week by the International Labor Organization studying the effects of the economic crisis and its impact on global labor markets. On the one hand, it sounds like common sense: as working and poor people see their livelihoods wracked by joblessness and social cuts while the rich enjoy lavish wealth, low taxes and increased profits, popular anger begins to boil over.

But sometimes it takes an agency of the United Nations to spell out logic that is more elusive for the ruling one percent – that class of CEOs and policymakers which persists on cutting costs and expanding profits while sitting on mountains of capital.

As a share of GDP, corporate profits in the U.S. are at their highest levels since 1950. Last week the Congressional Budget Office reported that between 1979 and 2007 the income for the top one percent rose 275 percent while income for the bottom 20 percent rose only 18 percent. And that data, which predates the record unemployment, home foreclosures and rising poverty brought on by the Great Recession, dramatically understates where economic inequality stands today. At the same time, a report this week revealed that 30 of some of the largest corporations in the country paid no income taxes between 2008 and 2010.

The extreme class disparities in the U.S. are rooted in the outright theft of the poor by the rich, an exploitative relationship written into the DNA of capitalism. But the situation has left many to wonder if the U.S. is on the path to becoming a “third-world” nation.

Under the dictates of international financial institutions, decades of debt and austerity imposed on poor countries in the Global South produced widespread social unrest in the form of civil wars and other conflicts throughout Latin American, Africa and Asia. Today, policies that were so economically unjust that they needed to be forcibly implemented by autocratic regimes are being introduced in the North.

The financial crisis of 2008 has led to a merciless reign of austerity that is being forced on workers and the poor in Europe and North America. Decades of stagnant wages and falling living standards have been compounded by the costs of a crisis that the one percent dumped onto the 99 percent, who are now fighting back like never before.

Lit from the dried tinder of class anger piled up in the world’s financial capital, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread like a prairie fire, engulfing hundreds of cities and towns across the U.S. and beyond. In Manhattan, Boston, Chicago, Oakland, Atlanta and elsewhere, authorities have only fanned the flames in their attempts to crack down on the movement.

But weeks of evictions, mass arrests and police brutality meted out against protesters came to a head in Oakland last week where plumes of tear gas, stun grenades and other projectiles produced chaos and left one Iraq War veteran, Scott Olsen, in critical condition. The ensuing outrage in turn sparked calls for a general strike, organized on short notice and supported by local unions throughout the Bay Area. On Wednesday thousands marched on the Port of Oakland, effectively shutting down the fifth busiest port in the country. A banner that hung outside City Hall read “Occupy Everything. Death to Capitalism.”

Scenes like these seem less remarkable nowadays in cities like Athens, where general strikes and riots against harsh austerity have shaken the Greek government close to the point of total collapse. A debt crisis in Greece that can also be traced back to Wall Street has plunged the Eurozone into a financial maelstrom. The attendant onslaught of painful austerity measures in Europe has led to a surge of class struggle – or what the ILO more academically refers to as “social unrest.”

Youth unemployment has been one of the major factors behind class anger and its expression in the streets. In Spain, a stunning 48 percent of young people are jobless. This summer Spain became a focal point of struggle with the movement of the “Indignados” who occupied public squares in Madrid and other cities.

In turbulent Greece, where youth unemployment officially stands at 43 percent, general strikes, marches and riots have been an ongoing reality in a country where punishing austerity is being pushed by the European Central Bank in order to rescue the economy from bankruptcy. Greece’s sovereign debt crisis has for weeks left Europe teetering on the precipice of a full-blown financial meltdown.

The latest bailout deal, which includes more cuts and promises to exacerbate unemployment, is being pushed hard by Germany, France and the U.S. as President Obama and European leaders met this week for the G20 summit. Meanwhile, the turmoil in Greece has Prime Minister Papandreou’s government hanging on by a thread.  

Youth unemployment and racism against marginalized groups were also the fuel behind huge riots that rocked London and other parts of the U.K. this summer.

In the U.S., unemployment and low wages is compounded by soaring student debt, which averaged $25,250 for recent graduates in 2010. Young people in the U.S. have been moved to fight back in various ways over the past year, joining the labor movement’s fight against union-busting legislation in Wisconsin last winter, organizing flash mob actions targeting tax-dodging corporations, and now occupying parks and squares all over the country.

But workers and the poor of all ages have been drawn into the Occupy struggle. The new movement against corporate greed and economic inequality has been strengthened by the involvement of organized labor, which has successfully thwarted police evictions of Occupy encampments in New York and San Francisco as unions called on rank-and-file members to defend the occupations. This fact alone is eloquent testimony for why the Occupy movement needs labor at its side.

Likewise, the Occupy movement has reinvigorated the labor movement. Not only has its rhetoric about the 99 percent entered the lexicon of labor leaders, but Occupy activists have bolstered labor struggles as well, including the fight among locked out art handlers in New York and thousands of Verizon workers still fighting for a fair contract.

There are fears among some Occupy activists about the danger of being co-opted by labor and its dead-end electoral allegiance to the Democratic Party. But so far, labor leaders appear to recognize that unions need the Occupy movement as much as the Occupy movement needs labor. That alliance would be shattered if labor officials were to push an electoral agenda within the movement because most occupiers have come to reject – or at least be extremely suspicious of – both of the ruling political parties in this country.

Now, with the general strike in Oakland this week, workplace action has been added to the arsenal of the 99 percent in this new struggle. And, as the Occupy movement plans for colder weather, there are serious discussions happening about possibly taking over vacant buildings and foreclosed homes.   

This week, as Bank of America backed off from plans to charge a hugely unpopular $5 debit card fee, there were signs that the ruling one percent is beginning to understand some of the reasoning behind the ILO’s observations about social unrest.

There is a profound sentiment beginning to pulse through the veins of working-class consciousness. It’s a sense that not only have we paid enough for a crisis produced by the rich and their spokespersons in Washington, but it’s time for us to take back what has been stolen from us.

After decades of unbridled class warfare against the 99 percent, soaring profits and relative calm in the streets, workers and the poor are saying something to the one percent: you can’t have it all.

October 14, 2011

Published at Common Dreams and Socialist Worker.                  (Update: 32BJ Contract Settlement)

If Wall Street has become the symbolic nerve center for greed and inequality, its political traffic merges onto K Street, Washington DC’s Broadway for deep-pocketed corporate lobbyists.

Photo by Chris Garlock, Union City

But like Wall Street, K Street is now also home to activists who are fed up with a system that rewards the wealthy while delivering nothing but cuts to the rest of us. Part of the general Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread around the country, “Occupy DC” activists are camped out in MacPherson Square where they are working to replicate the kind of occupation that has rocked the streets of New York’s financial district for the last month.

This week, K Street was also part of a march route for building cleaners fighting for a fair contract. The workers – who are preparing for a possible strike in the coming days – marched shoulder to shoulder with Occupy DC protesters.

With their contract that was set to expire on October 15 at 12:01 a.m. – a deadline that has now been extended to October 17 – members of SEIU 32BJ have voted to strike if a settlement is not reached. The union and other labor groups assembled at a park near MacPherson Square on Wednesday where they were joined by Occupy DC and other occupying protesters in the city.

Chanting “Sí se puede” and “No contract, no peace,” close to 500 workers and their Occupy protest supporters marched in the rain through downtown donned in SEIU’s signature purple shirts and hats. Activists from MacPherson Square wore union-tagged parkas as they marched with a banner that read “Occupy DC.”

The nearly 12,000 office cleaners who have been in contract negotiations since early September are fighting for fair raises, reasonable workload standards, and more full-time jobs with benefits. A large majority of the predominately Latino workforce is forced to work part-time, bringing home poverty wages and almost no benefits. Some workers make as little as $9 an hour. Many are expected to do the same amount of work in four hours with half the number of staff than they had only a few years ago.

Meanwhile, DC’s commercial real estate sector is thriving, with one of the strongest markets in the nation. Cleaning companies in the Washington Service Contractors Association have been pushing back against workers who are demanding a contract that reflects the rising cost of living in the area. The companies claim that current wages and other terms agreed to in the 2007 contract were reasonable before the onset of the Great Recession from which they say the industry is still recovering.

But for 32BJ and its members, such claims are belied by the fact that building owners are enjoying their most profitable year since the economic crisis hit. According to the Washington Post, the chief executive of Boston Properties, one of the largest building owners in D.C., told analysts on a conference call in August that while the outlook for the economy in general “certainly doesn’t look promising…what is relatively good are the commercial office buildings in major cities.” One commercial real estate expert estimates that only 8 percent of operating costs for large building owners in D.C. goes toward cleaning services.

In other words, the large commercial building owners are not so different from the corporate titans and hedge fund managers on Wall Street sitting on $2 trillion while teachers are being laid off and the poor are being kicked off of public assistance. Occupy protesters and the workers of 32BJ are demanding their fair share from the wealthy minority at the top.

And the janitors’ fight extends far beyond Washington D.C. The struggle in the nation’s capital is part of a larger 32BJ contract battle that involves some 60,000 building cleaners from Connecticut to Virginia. As one of SEIU’s mega-locals, 32BJ affiliated with the national union as a result of the latter’s “Justice for Janitors” campaign in the 1990s.

At Wednesday’s protest, 32NJ Capitol Area Director Jaime Contreras affirmed that the workers are ready to strike if need be. He pointed to the rising cost of rent and transportation that workers face in the area and vowed to fight until a fair contract is won.

Speaking to the larger injustices that the janitors’ struggle symbolizes, Contreras reminded workers and the Occupy protesters at their side that CEO pay went up 21 percent in 2010.

“Something is wrong in America when one percent of the people own 33 percent of the wealth,” he said. “We’re not afraid of the bosses. We will fight to the end until we win a fair contract.”

Others to address the workers included Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA de Maryland, an immigrant rights community organization, and Joslyn Williams, president of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO. City Councilmember Jim Graham spoke as well. He and the rest of the City Council have signed a pledge in support of the janitors.

The convergence of labor and the Occupy protesters at the action highlighted the fact that both groups are engaged in the same struggle. In broad terms, they are all fighting against economic inequality and a system that puts the priorities of profit above the needs of people.

And with the workers and activists linking arms, organized labor and Occupy protesters in the nation’s capital have an opportunity to put more muscle into the movement against corporate greed. Whether or not this solidarity can be sustained with the combination of labor and other left forces remains to be seen.

The wave of protest occupations against corporate greed that began on Wall Street has taken the country by storm. In cities across the U.S. masses of people are calling out Wall Street barons and the politicians in both parties who do their bidding. While the media and other establishment figures have at times been easily puzzled by the protesters’ purpose, the reason for this organized expression of rage couldn’t be more obvious.

People are coming together because workers and the poor – or “the 99 percent,” as protesters call themselves – are suffering the effects of an economic crisis created by the same parasitic class at the top that continues to enjoy the spoils of its class war against the rest of society. The accumulated anger produced by decades of class warfare against workers and the poor has found expression in this struggle – a struggle born in an age of bank bailouts, tax cuts for the rich, home foreclosures, union-busting, record unemployment, and merciless cuts to social spending.

That this movement has swept the country was not inevitable, but nor is it surprising. The support of the labor movement has undoubtedly helped attract wider layers of society into the struggle, including union members, the unemployed and the underemployed,

In New York, local unions like Transport Workers Union Local 100 and SEIU 1199 threw their weight behind the protests. Along with the sympathy generated by unprovoked police violence against Occupy protesters, high-profile endorsements at the national level from the AFL-CIO and others propelled the Occupy Wall Street movement onto the stage of national politics.

In Washington, DC, protesters have also received endorsements from a number of local unions. On Wednesday, the Occupy protesters marched to the National Labor Relations Board, calling for fairer labor laws, before joining Communication Workers of America (CWA) at a Verizon Wireless store – CWA members at Verizon are still stuck in contract negotiations with Verizon following their historic two-week strike on the east coast involving 45,000 workers back in August. The final stop for Occupy protesters on the labor march was the janitors’ protest. There, activists expressed solidarity with the workers and invited the workers to join them in their occupation.

This was an important step in the local Occupy movement. Following the tense scene in Manhattan this week that concluded with a victory against the threatened eviction of protesters in Zuccotti Park, a new jolt of energy and determination is fueling the movement in the lead-up to this weekend’s global day of action. In D.C. the day of action will include a massive march and rally for jobs and justice led by Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network, commemorating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King at the site of the new national memorial built in his honor. The march promises to bring together labor, civil rights activists, and the Occupy Wall Street movement.   

Efforts to put the thrust of organized labor behind the Occupy struggle in D.C. in the longterm, however, are complicated by the fact that there are still two separate occupations in the city. One was planned months before the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged and began a few days after protesters in MacPherson Square – who are more directly tied to the Occupy Wall Street movement – started their occupation.

The hundreds who have been camping out in Freedom Plaza in what is called the “Stop the Machine” occupation present a longer list of issues and demands than Occupy DC protesters have raised, including anti-war and environmental justice demands. Both Stop the Machine in Freedom Plaza and Occupy DC in MacPherson Square have been mutually supportive of each other, but there are also signs of tension. Efforts on both ends to merge the two occupations have been met with resistance, especially in MacPherson Square.

This division has been a source of frustration for some who argue that it will be difficult for D.C. labor and other groups to unify with a struggle that is itself divided.

As Clara Castillo, a rank-and-file member of 32BJ said on Wednesday, “We are stronger united – that’s why we are here.”

That’s as true for the Occupy movement as it is for the janitors. The looming prospect of a walkout among janitors will be an important test for the local movement as the level of strike solidarity among protesters will help determine if broader forces can be brought into the struggle.

That solidarity would also underscore the need for unity among the protesters and the instrumental role that the organized working-class can play in the larger fight against the injustices trafficked by Wall Street and K Street.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Related Plug :  OCCUPY THE HOOD!
This is a must-watch performance by Lupe Fiasco, performing with a Palestinian flag and an Occupy Wall Street t-shirt at the 2011 BET Hip-Hop Awards. It is another sign of the times and the radicalization taking place as class struggle heats up in the form of the Occupy movement – and to a level not seen in decades…

Radicalizing the mainstream in the era of #OWS …

October 4, 2011

Published at Common Dreams.

Should the “class warrior” title be worn as a badge of honor?

Wall Street and the super-rich certainly seem to think so – judging by their behavior over the past three decades.

Since the late 1970s, Corporate America has been on the warpath against working families and the poor, overseeing an explosion of wealth for the rich while real wages for workers have remained stagnant and traditional employer-provided benefits have been eroded. During that time, unionization rates plunged as employers launched ruthless campaigns against organized labor, hitting private sector workforces especially hard. The corporate offensive reached new heights in 2008 with the onset of the Wall Street-generated financial crisis that was followed by an unprecedented transfer of wealth from workers to the rich by way of massive bank bailouts which nationalized private sector debt and set the stage for sweeping cuts to social spending.

None of this could honestly be characterized as anything but naked class warfare. As billionaire investor Warren Buffett once conceded, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Buffett reiterated this blunt observation again last week during an interview with CNN.

Since announcing his jobs bill to a joint session of Congress last month, President Obama has been accused of engaging in class warfare, but not on the side of the rich. After all, for the wealthy and their ideological water carriers on the right, there is no such thing as class warfare against the poor – that’s just business as usual. Instead, the right has pilloried the president as a “class warrior” against the rich. It is a curious charge considering Obama’s record of facilitating the ongoing class war against workers and the poor.

Still, while he stumps for the “American Jobs Act,” calling for modest tax increases on the rich along with tax breaks for businesses that dwarf proposed investments in infrastructure, Obama is proudly wearing his “class warrior” colors, which tend to be more fashionable during election season.

“If asking a millionaire to pay the same tax rate as a plumber makes me a class warrior – a warrior for the working class – I will accept that,” Obama said to a crowd in Denver last month. “I will wear that charge as a badge of honor.”

But this is the same Obama who has abandoned labor law reforms favored by unions. It’s the same Obama who extended the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich and who put cuts to Medicare and Social Security on the table. It’s the same Obama who froze wages for federal employees, putting his stamp of approval on the wider assault against public sector workers. It’s the same Obama who agreed to over $2.1 trillion in spending cuts as part of the debt-ceiling deal. And it’s also the same Obama who has pushed corporate school reforms that have fueled a national war on teachers and their unions. 

So, if the president’s sudden passion for fighting on the side of workers and the poor seems like election-time posturing, that’s because it is. And ordinary people across the country are increasingly coming to understand this fact. After so many years of corporate-led assaults on wages and living standards, the victims of Wall Street’s class warfare are fighting back on their own terms.

The organized furor among thousands of workers, students and others who protested against the union-busting offensive in Wisconsin earlier this year was not an isolated incident. Over the past two months alone, a resurgent working-class struggle has been gaining steam, with tremors rippling across the country.

While unions have continued mobilizing get-out-the-vote drives to defeat anti-union legislation in states like Wisconsin and Ohio, an uptick of workplace actions and other protests has been shaking up class politics in a way Obama’s stump speeches never could.

A few short and mostly successful strikes hit the healthcare industry in the spring while hundreds of activists with US Uncut were staging flash-mob actions at banks and gas stations, protesting corporate tax-dodging and the social spending cuts that they enable. Over 60,000 grocery workers protested and prepared for a strike over the summer before reaching an agreement with three large California grocery chains last month. Then in August the largest labor strike in several years gripped the east coast and captured headlines when 45,000 Verizon landline workers walked off the job and exposed the corporate greed of the nation’s largest wireless carrier. 

And Hyatt hotel workers in four cities went on a weeklong strike last month against increased workloads and outsourcing by the highly profitable hotel chain. Meanwhile, hospital workers at Kaiser Permanent in southern California went on strike for two days against concessions, including cuts to healthcare and other benefits. The roughly 4,000 members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers were joined by 23,000 members of the California Nurses Association and 2,000 members of the Operating Engineers who struck in solidarity.

On the other side of the country, 80 employees of a notoriously anti-union restaurant in New York City went on strike and, while their struggle is ongoing, they have already forced the restaurant to rehire 38 workers who were fired for union organizing. A few miles further east, unionized faculty members at Long Island University went on strike over concessions demanded by the university in the form of wage and benefit cuts.

But perhaps the most striking of strikes in September was one that occurred among 1,900 teachers in Tacoma, Washington who walked the picket line for ten days in defiance of a court-ordered injunction. The teachers voted overwhelmingly to disobey a judge’s order for them to return to work and, on September 22, they declared victory after reaching a tentative agreement with the school district that put a halt to proposed pay cuts and attacks on seniority rights.

In the same state, there’s the ongoing struggle of members of International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) Local 21 in Longview. There, militant tactics are being used by workers as they battle against EGT Development, a multinational terminal operator that is using scab labor at a new grain export terminal in violation of its contract with ILWU. Rank-and-file longshore workers and union leaders escalated pressure on the company this summer, using direct action to block trains delivering grain.

After successfully blockading several trains, riot police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets were deployed against the workers to clear the tracks. ILWU members responded by cutting break cables on trains and dumping grain from cars. Early last month, the union shut down ports in Vancouver, Longview and Tacoma. Workers have continued their struggle despite court injunctions and the National Labor Relations Board calling for an end to what it has described as “violent and aggressive” picketing.

A day before Tacoma teachers won their strike, Local 21 officials and others were arrested for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience in an attempt to block another train. Reports of police pepper spraying protestors in the eyes at pointblank range as they held them down have led to a civil rights suit filed against police. The longshore workers’ campaign has so far involved roughly 135 arrests in a struggle that calls to mind the labor battles of the 1930s. 

Finally, there’s the growing occupation movement that began on Wall Street and has since spread to various cities around the country. Hundreds have been arrested in New York City as activists have attempted to occupy the financial district, protesting against the top “1 percent” and the unbridled greed that they represent. The Occupy Wall Street encampment at the renamed Liberty Plaza has faced brutal police violence, including the pepper spraying of peaceful protesters on September 24 and, this weekend, the arrests of 700 demonstrators who marched on the Brooklyn Bridge before they were suddenly encircled and trapped by police for hours in the cold rain.

The Occupy Wall Street movement – under the umbrella of “Occupy Together” – has spread far beyond Manhattan and gained national and international attention. Now the labor movement is putting its weight behind this new wave of protest. The significant endorsement from Transport Workers Union Local 100 was followed by endorsements from the United Steelworkers of America, National Nurses United and the 360,000-strong SEIU 1199. On Wednesday a massive labor rally and march from City Hall to the Wall Street encampment promises to add more firepower to this inspiring new movement.

Taking on a life of its own, the anti-Wall Street struggle is drawing new class warriors into the movement as it taps into widespread anger toward the rich that has been simmering below the surface for years. It remains to be seen how large and widespread the Occupy Wall Street struggle becomes, but in the context of a rise in labor struggle, it is unlikely that the growing tide of protest can be easily turned back.

Last week postal workers nationwide rallied against what could be the largest attack on the public sector yet, with the threat of 120,000 layoffs and the closing of 3,500 post offices justified by a crisis that was manufactured by Congress. 

In the meantime, the prospect of another major teacher strike is looming in Chicago where the Chicago Teachers Union is trying to fend off attacks by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. Formerly Obama’s chief of staff, Emmanuel’s replacement at the White House was JPMorgan Chase executive William Daley, who Obama appointed in January. Incidentally, JPMorgan recently announced it was donating an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation, perhaps to bolster the crackdown on working-class rage which has kept cops busy in that city over the last two weeks. While he tries to brandish his working-class warrior credentials, Obama’s ties to the forces that have led the charge on the other side of the class war are undeniable.

All around the country, workers, students, the unemployed, and the poor are standing up and fighting back with protests, pickets and strikes.

The working-class warrior badge of honor belongs to them, not the president.

September 21, 2011

UPDATE: Let it never be forgotten that on September 21, 2011 at 11:08 pm the state of Georgia murdered an innocent Black man in cold blood. This heinous crime must signal the final throes of the United States’ machinery of death. No one’s faith in this unjust system can be left unchallenged after this atrocity, committed so shamelessly by the racist murderers who run the criminal justice system in this country. Tonight the world watched a 21st century lynching in Georgia, where strange fruit still hangs from the poplar trees. The struggle continues!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           TROY DAVIS, PRESENTE!

Published at Common Dreams.

In just a few hours, if the state of Georgia has its way, Troy Davis will be dead.

Despite glaring doubt, extraordinary evidence of his innocence, and the support of millions worldwide calling for a halt to the execution, the state of Georgia is prepared to take the life of an innocent man at 7 p.m. in what can only be described as state-sponsored murder.

Troy, a 42 year-old Black man from Savannah, Georgia, has been on death row since his 1991 conviction for the killing of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail. But his crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Racism and classism runs through nearly every aspect of Troy’s case. His crime was being the wrong color, from the wrong social class, and having the wrong amount of resources to afford adequate legal counsel.

Twenty years later, the state of Georgia is poised to commit the ultimate crime – it is preparing the gurney and the poison chemicals and making way for what can only be called a modern-day lynching.  

The prospect of this heinous crime has sparked international outrage. Over a million people have signed petitions in support of Troy. Figures like Pope Benedict XVI, former President Jimmy Carter, Republican death penalty supporter Bob Barr, former FBI director William Sessions, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have all called for the execution to be stopped. Thousands have protested around the world, with over 3,000 marching in Atlanta, Georgia last week alone. Today thousands more are protesting in cities worldwide, with international supporters demonstrating in front of U.S. embassies in Europe and beyond.

So why is the state of Georgia ready to kill a man who so many believe to be innocent?

Troy himself offered this explanation: “Georgia feels it’s better to kill me than admit I’m innocent.” Indeed, considering that a person like Troy has come so close to death in spite of the evidence of his innocence, the state’s admission that it has had the wrong guy all along would be a massive blow to the image and integrity of the death penalty system in this country.

Troy’s conviction was based solely on eye-witness testimony that has been invalidated by the recantations of seven of the nine witnesses who testified against him in 1991. Police intimidation was used to coerce testimony against Troy. There is no physical evidence linking Troy to the crime. No murder weapon was ever found. What’s more, one woman has since come forward saying that she heard Sylvester “Redd” Coles, who was also at the scene of the crime, brag later on that he shot MacPhail. Coles is one of the witnesses who identified Troy as the shooter at the 1991 trial and Coles is one of only two witnesses who have not recanted their original testimony.

This is the fourth time Troy has faced an execution. Three previous executions were stayed after activist pressure and legal appeals forced Georgia to forgo administering the death penalty on Troy. This time, however, Troy has exhausted all of his appeals. On Tuesday his potentially last chance was lost when the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Troy clemency.

But the world is not yet ready to give up on Troy. Last-ditch efforts include calls on the board to reverse its decision, pleas to District Attorney Larry Chisolm and Judge Penny Freesemann to withdraw the death warrant, and even unprecedented appeals to the medical staff handling the execution to refuse to participate and go on strike. And of course, the protests continue through the eleventh hour.

At a last-minute protest on Tuesday in Washington, DC, which drew a multiracial crowd of nearly 100 people, local activist and writer Dave Zirin channeled the anger felt by protesters in D.C. and around the world.

“There’s a time to mourn and there’s a time to be furious,” he said. “I’m not ready to mourn. I’m too furious right now.” Zirin and others pointed to the racism and anti-poor injustice that not only runs through Troy’s case, but through the entire death penalty and criminal justice system.

As another organizer from Amnesty International said to the crowd, “The only thing unique about Troy’s case is the number of people who are standing up for him right now.”

A few days earlier, activists and supporters converged at the same spot in D.C., marking the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis with a 200-strong protest organized by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Amnesty International. Protesters clogged the streets in the Columbia Heights neighborhood before marching to a nearby church for a rally.

Everyone hoped they would not have to return for another demonstration, and on Tuesday there was still a sense of disbelief among protesters that the parole board had denied Troy clemency. “What was the parole board even discussing? It’s beyond me,” said one demonstrator who works with deaf prisoners in the district.

Georgia’s decision to carry on with this legal lynching is indeed unconscionable in the 21st century. It can only be called pure barbarism. And it lays bare the true nature of the criminal justice system in the U.S. It is not a system that seeks real justice. Rather, it is an instrument of bigotry and repression. The fact of the matter is that if Troy wasn’t Black, if he wasn’t poor, he wouldn’t be facing Georgia’s machinery of death today.

Troy himself knows that this case is bigger than him and he has spoken out against the cruel injustices that so many others like him have faced. This is not just a criminal justice issue. It is an issue of race and class. It is a human rights issue. And it is a working-class issue.

Troy has vowed to fight until his last moments against this outrageous injustice. Everyone who believes in social justice and basic fairness in our society must do the same. Call the parole board and tell them to reverse their decision. Call the DA and the judge and tell them to withdraw the death warrant. And call on the staff at Georgia Diagnostics & Classifications Prison in Jackson, Georgia and urge them to refuse to participate in this crime.

Today we are all Troy Davis. This fight for Troy and everything this case represents will not end tonight. No matter the outcome today, we must all fight this execution and this system of death – as Troy has – until we draw our last breath.

__________________________________________________________ 

Published at Common Dreams and Counterpunch.

It’s not everyday that the president of the United States talks about the last fight that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. waged at the end of his life – a piece of history that is generally excluded from the tributes to the nation’s most revered civil rights leader. 

Under fire from members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other Black leaders for not doing enough to help Black communities bearing the brunt of the Great Recession, the first African American president responded to critics last week by reflecting on the forgotten legacy of King, who spoke out against U.S. imperialism and fought for economic justice in the last years of his life.

Speaking on the Tom Joyner radio show last Tuesday, President Obama pointed to the new memorial on the National Mall recently built in King’s honor and remembered his fight for jobs and justice.

“It’s always important to remember that when King gave the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, that was a march for jobs and justice, not just justice,” Obama said. “And the last part of his life, when he went down to Memphis, that was all about sanitation workers saying, ‘I am a man,’ and then looking for economic justice and dealing with poverty.”

The whitewashed image of King as a civil rights leader has been a narrative fashioned and co-opted, woven into the fabric of this country’s national mythology. It omits a part of King’s dream that made the civil rights icon a controversial figure toward the end of his life. While he fought against racism and Jim Crow segregation, King also condemned the United States’ militaristic foreign policy and called for a more just economic system, arguing for a radical redistribution of wealth. His last stand was a fight in Memphis alongside 1,300 striking sanitation workers – future members of AFSCME Local 1733.

“It’s not enough for us to just remember the sanitized version of what King stood for,” Obama said last week.

But there was a touch of irony in President Obama’s otherwise commendable telling of King’s true legacy.

It was only a few months ago that tens of thousands of union members, activists and other supporters wondered if Obama would follow King’s lead – and follow through on a campaign promise – and join them on the picket line as they waged a militant two-week occupation of the state capitol in Wisconsin in protest against Governor Scott Walker’s union-busting assault on workers.

Back in November 2007 during his campaign, candidate Obama told a crowd of supporters in South Carolina that “Workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.”

“If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself,” he said. “I’ll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.”

Yet when the time came, Obama did no such thing.

Still, the president credits martyrs like King for where he is today and argues that as a nation we need to follow through on the commitments to social justice that King lived and died for.    

For the millions of African Americans who are suffering the most from the unemployment crisis and who hoped for more from the first Black president, Obama’s homage to King’s struggle for economic equality is not enough.

While overall unemployment officially stands at 9.1 percent, the unemployment rate for African Americans is 16.2 percent. And for Black youth between the ages of 16 and 24, unemployment is at 31 percent. But not only has Obama ignored calls for a targeted jobs program to address Black unemployment, the president has so far refused to fight for a national jobs program to address joblessness in general. And – aside from some vague promises about increased infrastructure spending – few expect that the president’s highly anticipated jobs speech this week will deliver on either of these badly needed initiatives

So how is the Obama administration following through on King’s commitment to economic justice, as illustrated in King’s last struggle that the president himself highlighted?

When Dr. King arrived in Memphis in 1968, Black sanitation workers in the city had endured years of plantation-like conditions on the job. They made poverty wages and faced the racism of abusive white supervisors. After the deaths of two workers in February of 1968, the outraged all-Black sanitation workforce went on strike, demanding union recognition, better wages and respect.

Their slogan, “I Am a Man,” was carried on placards as workers marched through the city, and it spoke to the inextricable link between racial and economic justice.

King understood this long before he got to Memphis. In 1957 he told a crowd of activists that “the forces that are anti-Negro are by and large anti-labor.” He said real integration would require “complete political, economic and social equality…a whole series of measures that go beyond the specific issue of segregation.”

In 1966, King began his efforts to launch what he called the Poor People’s Campaign, which he saw as the next phase of struggle. While he was unsuccessful in building such a movement, it led him to the sanitation workers in Memphis.

By March of 1968 the workers had become demoralized by a long strike that saw activists suffering police brutality and other forms of repression. King spoke to a gathering of 25,000 strikers and supporters and put the strike in the context of a new stage in the struggle:

With Selma and the voting rights bill, one era of our struggle came to a close, and a new era came into being. Now, our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and cup of coffee?

King sought to escalate the sanitation workers’ fight by organizing a general strike and march in the city. The work stoppage was unsuccessful and the march turned bloody. A few days later, King was assassinated, sparking riots in at least 125 cities around the country. King’s fight and his murder galvanized support for the workers in Memphis. Within two weeks of his assassination, the workers won union recognition.

Notwithstanding the praise he has received from the president, it is hard to imagine that if King were alive today he would be impressed with Obama’s commitment to economic justice for workers and Black workers in particular.

Not after Obama oversaw the transfer of more than a trillion dollars in public funds to Wall Street banks. Not after he dropped the Employee Free Choice Act and left private sector workers out in the cold after so many of them knocked on doors to get him in the White House. Not after he implemented the Race to the Top program – which has fueled an all-out war on teachers – and other neoliberal education “reforms” that threaten to re-segregate schools in this country. Not after his signature health care “reform” that handed more power over to the insurance companies and included cuts to Medicare. Not after he extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich last December. Not after he turned his back on public sector unions, giving states the green light to attack public workers when he froze federal employees’ pay. Not after his deficit-cutting-commission-proposed changes to Social Security that would slash the safety net program, which the elderly rely on. And not after he agreed to over $2.1 trillion in spending cuts over the next ten years as part of the debt ceiling deal, adding onto previous rounds of social spending cuts that have become “the new normal” in these times of austerity.

This week, on Labor Day, Obama tried win back the hearts of workers and organized labor in particular.

“If you want to know who helped lay these cornerstones of an American middle class, you just have to look for the union label,” the president said to a union crowd in Detroit on Monday. “America cannot have a strong, growing economy without a strong, growing middle class and without a strong labor movement.”

But if there is a lesson to be learned based on the last two and a half years, it’s that workers and their families need a labor movement that reaches communities of color and connects itself with other issues of social justice affecting poor and working-class communities nationwide. And we need a labor movement that moves and mobilizes independent of the president, no matter how flattering or sympathetic his scripted Labor Day rhetoric might be.

This is something that even candidate Obama recognized when asked in a primary debate before the 2008 election which candidate he thought King would support.

“I don’t think Dr. King would endorse any of us,” he said. “I think what he would call upon the American people to do is to hold us accountable. I believe change does not happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up. Dr. King understood that.”

Indeed, while the corporate bottom line reigns supreme in Washington, the bottom line is that if labor and other social movements aren’t forcing the hand of President Obama, the tea party and Wall Street will.

First published at The Nation. Also published at Common Dreams.

The nation’s longest and largest strike in the age of austerity ended this weekend. But the labor standoff continues as 45,000 Verizon landline technicians and customer service employees on the east coast will return to work on Tuesday without a new contract.

The Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), representing thousands of workers striking the nation’s largest wireless carrier, announced an end to the biggest walkout in recent labor history and the resumption of contract negotiations. However, at the present time, this is not a victory for the workers by any means.

After two dynamic, energetic weeks of walking picket lines and receiving no paychecks, Verizon workers are returning to work under the previous contract while revived negotiations with an obstinate standard-bearer of corporate greed make the prospect of a prolonged contract battle almost certain. Union leaders say they decided to end the strike after the company agreed to bargain seriously on contentious issues that Verizon had refused to budge on until now.

Larry Cohen, president of CWA, said the unions and the company had reached a deal “to restructure bargaining in a way that represents progress for everyone.” But the details of that agreement remain vague.

Meanwhile, Verizon says that the major issues remain on the table, including changes to health benefits, job security and outsourcing. A company spokesperson told the New York Times on Saturday, “The company hasn’t conceded any of its proposals.”

So workers will return to their jobs on Tuesday without having won anything concrete from the company. If anything, in addition to two week’s pay, workers have lost considerable leverage as union leaders freed the telecom giant from the pressure of a massive work stoppage that was causing major service delays and damaging the company’s image.

The latest deal has left many rank-and-file workers upset and worried that the likelihood of beating back concessions demanded by the company are now severely diminished.

“This agreement is a missed opportunity,” said a CWA Local 1106 member in New York. “We’re going back to work with only a structure for negotiations. We’re going back with nothing.” She added that the company is likely to impose 12-hour workdays so union workers could correct the errors committed by scab technicians during the strike.

It is difficult to imagine favorable negotiations will occur following the bitter fighting of the last two weeks that saw the company launching an ugly propaganda campaign, running newspaper and radio ads that depicted the workers as greedy and accused them of sabotaging equipment. Verizon also won injunctions against pickets in four states and at least two dozen workers were reportedly injured by scab trucks.

On the other side of the picket line, workers used traditional pickets at workplaces, in addition to mobile pickets that followed scab trucks to jobsites. Strikers also relied heavily on picketing outside of Verizon Wireless retail stores in an attempt to turn away customers and hit Verizon’s largest source of profit.

But from the beginning, union leaders said that the strike was in response to Verizon’s intractable position in negotiations in which the company was insisting on a list of up to 100 concessionary proposals and not taking the unions seriously. Leaders like Cohen said the walkout would end as soon as Verizon agreed to resume bargaining in good faith. Many workers were critical of this stance, arguing that it would be strategically unwise to return to work without a new contract.

At a time of harsh austerity, high unemployment and a recession that never ended for most people, workers on the picket line at Verizon pointed to the company’s flagrant greed and union-busting. While it made $10 billion in profits last year and paid its top five executives $258 million over the last four years, Verizon hasn’t paid a dime in federal income taxes in two years. In fact, it received a $1.3 billion federal tax rebate for 2010.

Despite its success, the company has cried poverty and is seeking big concessions from workers, including massive cuts to health benefits, pensions, job security protections and sick days. Striking workers had the advantage of wide public support—including solidarity pickets far beyond the east coast—as they highlighted these facts about Verizon’s hypocrisy and anti-worker attacks. Having ended the strike prematurely, however, many workers feel union leaders have squandered that crucial advantage.

Cohen admitted on Saturday that the agreement is not a victory but rather a sign of progress in the workers’ struggle with management. For many workers though, this strike was about winning, not extracting unclear promises about fair bargaining.

Although some history has been made with the first major strike in this era of economic turmoil, an extraordinary opportunity to turn the tide in the national war on workers may have just been dropped.

Published at Counterpunch.
Modified version published at SocialistWorker.org and cross-posted at ZNet.

The first mass labor strike in the age of austerity has hit the United States.  

When the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, 45,000 Verizon landline workers from Massachusetts to Virginia struck the nation’s largest wireless carrier, beginning the biggest worker strike in several years.

Since contract negotiations began on June 22, Verizon has been demanding up to 100 concessions from thousands of technicians and customer support employees in its wire lines division. The workers – who are represented by Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) – voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike in the event that a settlement was not reached by Saturday night when the previous contract expired.

Workers geared up for the possible strike a week before with a 20,000-strong rally in Manhattan outside of Verizon’s corporate headquarters. As soon as the midnight deadline passed on Saturday night, the picket lines were set into motion and workers were mobilized to stop the company from rolling back decades of collective bargaining gains.

The givebacks that Verizon is trying to squeeze out of the striking workers are staggering when one considers that the company raked in $10 billion in profits in 2010. In its most recent quarter alone, Verizon took in $3.2 billion in profits and its top five executives were paid a total of $258 million over the last four years in salaries and bonuses. The telecommunications giant is also a notorious corporate tax-dodger that hasn’t paid a dime in federal income taxes for the last two years, yet it received a $1.3 billion federal tax rebate this year.

Still, the company wants more – and it’s going after its workforce to get it. Its long list of proposals amounts to $1 billion a year in concessions, which is equivalent to about $20,000 for every worker, according to CWA. 

Among the concessions Verizon is demanding, cuts to benefits and job security protections will have the most damaging impact on working conditions and living standards. Verizon is seeking to weaken job security provisions, pass 25 percent of health care costs onto workers, and freeze pensions for current employees while eliminating them for future workers.

Additional cutbacks would get rid of accident disability benefits, slash sickness disability benefits, reduce the number of paid holidays, and decrease the maximum for annual paid sick days to five; workers with less than two years of seniority would get no paid sick leave at all. And while real unemployment nationally rose to over 16 percent in June, Verizon also wants a freer hand to outsource jobs to low-wage contractors and move work overseas. 

In a statement released on the first day of the strike, CWA said the strike would continue “until Verizon stops its Wisconsin-style tactics and starts bargaining seriously.”

“Even at the 11th hour, as contracts were set to expire, Verizon continued to seek to strip away 50 years of collective bargaining gains for middle class workers and their families,” the statement said.

IBEW President Edwin D. Hill echoed CWA’s outrage. “We cannot stand by while one of the richest, most successful corporations in the world joins the race to decimate the middle class of this country,” he said.

At the southern end of the stoppage, Verizon workers in Washington, DC formed a picket as early as Sunday afternoon at a downtown Verizon store. The following day, a sea of red shirts blanketed the area outside of Verizon’s Chesapeake Complex in Silver Spring, Maryland as strikers and supporters in CWA t-shirts gathered for a rally that drew up to 500 people.

Carrying signs that read “Verizon, can you hear us now?,” workers at one point blocked a scab truck attempting to enter the complex parking lot.

Les Evans, president of CWA Local 2108, said the company gave the union no choice but to strike. “They’re making billions but are rolling back half a century of advances. This is about busting the union,” he said.  

In the morning on day three of the walk-out, a few picketers assembled at a Verizon hub in Northeast D.C., equipped with signs, water, coffee and donuts donated by supporters. The mostly African-American workers – members of CWA Local 2336 – have been scheduled for picket duty in rotating four-hour shifts.

Jonathan Leonard, a 23-year Verizon systems technician and vice president of Local 2336, said they had about 90 percent of workers participating in the pickets.

“This all started in Wisconsin. This is corporate greed and I think this country is waking up after Wisconsin,” said Leonard, pointing to attacks on collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin that have emboldened union-busting among employers in the private sector. “There’s no way this company can say, while it makes billions in profit, it needs to attack our benefits.”

Members of CWA and IBEW have historically been successful at using work stoppages in the telecom industry to resist concessions. Defending high-quality health care has been a key strength of the unionized workforce since the 1980s, with strikes in 1983, 1986, 1989, 1998 and 2004 ending in victory for workers who were able to beat back attempts by management to impose premium sharing and other concessions.

But over the past decade, Verizon has steadily weakened its union workforce with a persistent campaign of anti-union tactics. Since 2003 the company has managed to shrink its union workforce on the east coast from 75,000 to 45,000 through its use of buyouts, job cuts and moving work to non-union subsidiaries. In the same period, Verizon has grown its non-union workforce to 135,000.   

These and other factors – such as increased automation – may make the company less vulnerable to strikes and pose a challenge for Verizon workers on the picket line today. 

When the strike began on Sunday, Verizon said in a statement that “Tens of thousands of Verizon managers and other personnel have been trained to step in and perform emergency work assignments,” ensuring there would be “limited disruption in service” for the duration of the strike.

But at the facility in D.C., Robin, who has worked at Verizon for 37 years, said the scabs that the company is bringing in can’t perform the jobs that they do. “This is on-the-job training. I was trained for years to do this work,” she said.

Keith Morris, another technician who’s been with the company for 18 years, said the scabs Verizon is using in the DC-area are mostly out-of-state contractors and management personnel who have not done customer service work in years. In other locations up north, managers who are unable to fix or install anything have reportedly admitted that they have been dispatched to simply drive trucks around until they run out of gas.

As Morris spoke about the cuts to health care that the company is demanding, three scab service vehicles moved toward to exit of the lot. He and the six coworkers at his side moved in toward the center of the driveway, heckling the contractors in the trucks for crossing the picket line. They temporarily delayed the vehicles from leaving the hub. 

Verizon claims that the givebacks they are demanding from workers are necessary because of years of decline in its copper landline business, which has suffered as customers have turned more to mobile phones and cable providers that bundle together landline and TV services in their packages.

Both unions have aptly pointed to the absurdity of Verizon – the largest wireless phone company in the country – maintaining it is losing business due to the increase in the use of cell phones over landlines. The company’s reported profits belie the claims of suffering business that it is trying to use to justify attacks on workers’ living standards.  

Verizon has also been relying on talking-points that assert technicians make over $100,000 a year. In reality, workers say such pay levels are a rarity that exists only for employees who put in massive amounts of overtime, which is not readily available to all workers. While the chairman of the company’s board made $55,000 a day last year, workers point out, many employees of the company don’t even make that much in a year.

On bargaining issues, picketers like Morris say health care is the most serious concern for workers. Almost two years after the Obama administration’s signature health care “reform” that was supposed to increase coverage and affordability, the high-quality health care that should be a right enjoyed by all is one of the main benefits under attack at Verizon. This is no accident, however, as labor journalist and historian Steve Early observed in a recent article.

The health care reform excise tax on higher cost plans has become a lever for companies to force through large reductions in medical coverage for employees. Even though the tax isn’t scheduled to take effect until 2018, Early points out, “Nevertheless, as the current benefit imbroglio at Verizon illustrates, this is the poison pill in [the health care reform law] that’s already making union bargaining more difficult, even at hugely profitable firms.”

In fact, it was only last month that Verizon told its workers that the company needed to start accounting for the costs of the tax now, requiring it to “modify plan designs to avoid the impact of the tax.” Hence Verizon’s aggressive push to cut health benefits.          

But for the strike itself, the action at Verizon is significant not just for its size but in terms of the context in which it is taking place. The last major strike in the telecom industry occurred in 2004 with a four-day strike at SBC Communications involving 102,000 workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The last major strike larger than the one at Verizon involved 74,000 General Motors workers who walked out for two days in 2007.

Those strikes were brief and also preceded the global economic crisis that since 2008 has backed workers further into a corner following decades of decline in real wages, unionization and living standards. Today’s strike at Verizon comes at a time of economic turmoil and unprecedented attacks on workers’ rights nationwide.

At the bargaining table, the impasse has continued early this week as Verizon negotiators were repeatedly cancelling bargaining sessions with the union, according to CWA. The union also says that several workers have been injured by scab trucks at some locations. Meanwhile, Verizon has accused strikers of sabotaging some of its systems.

In Northeast D.C., Leonard said Local 2336 would be running mobile pickets starting next week, using personal vehicles to follow scab trucks to job sites. Locals in Manhattan and Massachusetts have said that mobile pickets are already being deployed.

Due to relative advantages that Verizon has gained through outsourcing and other changes over the years, CWA leaders have made it clear that conventional strike tactics will not be effective in this strike. As such, the unions are targeting Verizon wireless stores to turn away customers, hitting the company’s biggest source for profits.

But some rank-and-file workers are critical of union leaders who say they are willing to end the strike when Verizon removes its take-it-or-leave-it proposal from the table. While CWA is in a weak bargaining position in many respects and IBEW locals don’t even have strike funds, some workers say returning to work without a contract would make fighting off concessions that much more difficult.

For Leonard, this struggle is bigger than Verizon. “We need to take a stand because if they can do it to us, they can do it to workers at other companies across the country,” he said.

Indeed, while the austerity agenda in Washington has established “the new normal” as defined by social cuts, attacks on public sector jobs and services, and low taxes for the wealthy, the same upside-down dynamics are mirrored in the private sector, where executive salaries are skyrocketing to obscene heights at companies like Verizon even as they demand severe cuts at the bottom.

This is why – following the debt ceiling charade and amid panic on Wall Street – the fight being waged by Verizon workers is so instructive. In the climate of budget cuts and union-busting, the impact of the strike could transmit far beyond Verizon’s networks.

And if the workers win, their victory would signal a shift in the battle lines in the war on workers.