Some important news from the labor movement!

 

Marin workers hold first strike since 2019: More than 100 medical technicians

at MarinHealth Medical Center struck for one day as they fight to protect their

 health benefits and win strong raises. Read more here.

Dolores Huerta statnds in solidarity when Sutter workers strike again in 

Sacramento: NUHW members at Sutter Health’s Sacramento psychiatric hospital 

held a three-day strike as they continue to fight for a first contract with fair wages 

and no healthcare takeaways. Read more here.

The National Council for Occupational Safety & Health is celebrating 20

 years of activism and leadership and everyone is invited. Read more here.

Labor leaders honor Key Bridge victims on Workers Memorial Day. An article in The Baltimore Sun under the date of April 28 has the photo above and says the following:

Father Ty Hullinger echoed the words of labor activist Mary Harris “Mother” Jones during a Sunday ceremony honoring the lives of workers killed on the job: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

The pastor of Transfiguration Catholic Community in Pigtown proceeded to offer a prayer for the six workers killed just over a month ago after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed below them. Joined by labor leaders and local officials at a solemn ceremony at Baltimore’s Middle Branch Park, Hullinger went on to call for the protection of all laborers facing unsafe working conditions.

Sunday was Workers Memorial Day, an annual day of remembrance for laborers killed or hurt on the job, started in 1989 by the AFL-CIO. Thousands of workers nationwide are estimated by the organization of labor unions to be injured or killed on the job each day, and the issue became front and center in Baltimore on March 26 after the six men, all employees of Brawner Builders, died while working an overnight shift filling potholes on the bridge that was struck by a cargo ship early that morning. Read more here.

Alabama AFL-CIO President Says Out-of-Touch Lawmakers Are the ‘Real Leeches.’ The AFL-CIO has provided the following copy on an op-ed piece written by Alabama AFL-CIO President Bren Riley in response to some southern governors recently publicly opposing the United Auto Workers' successful organizing campaign in Tennessee.

Top Cut:
Alabama AFL-CIO President Bren Riley gave a powerful response to recent aggressive attacks on the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) and the larger labor movement in the South made in the media by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Alabama Speaker of the House Nathaniel Ledbetter.

Why It Matters:
Last week, both state politicians called the UAW a “dangerous leech,” just days after Ivey released a joint statement with five other Southern governors claiming unions are special interest groups that threaten jobs and regional values. President Riley, a third-generation union member born and raised in the state, pushed back against these outright lies and pointed out that lawmakers on taxpayer-funded salaries that do nothing for their constituents were the real leeches on the South. He also wrote about his family’s connection to the labor movement, what union membership provides to both workers and our communities, and how union values of good wages, quality benefits and job security are Alabama values.

“Corporations and the politicians they bankroll want to keep workers divided and afraid of demanding the rights and freedoms we deserve. They’re working overtime right now to spread fear and lies so bosses can keep paying poverty wages while they rake in record profits,” Riley said in the op-ed. “But the Alabama AFL-CIO sees right through this charade, and I know the honest, hardworking people of Alabama can see through it, too. When workers stand together in unions to bargain for good wages, quality benefits and their fair share of corporate profits, we have the power not just to change our own lives, but the lives of our neighbors and communities, too.”

Read all about it here.

  

Some unions have joined incarcerated workers and local community partners in demanding justice. Let's all do it.

Certain unions took a huge step yesterday and I hope that more unions and the AFL-CIO will follow their lead and undertake similar initiatives in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

The AFL-CIO has announced that "(O)n Tuesday, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union-UFCW (RWDSU-UFCW) and the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), who are members of SEIU, joined incarcerated workers and local community partners to file a class-action lawsuit in response to the systemic exploitation and forced labor of Alabama’s incarcerated population. The suit, strongly supported by the AFL-CIO, outlines how the Alabama Department of Corrections denies Black Alabamians parole at twice the rate of their White counterparts in order to maintain a cheap labor force through wrongful detention. And though Black Alabamians are only a quarter of the state’s residents, they make up over 50% of the incarcerated population."

The AFL-CIO announcement went on to say that "Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and state Attorney General Steve Marshall are named as defendants in the lawsuit and are accused of acting as knowing architects of a “modern-day form of slavery” scheme that generates $450 million annually for the state, all on the backs of unpaid incarcerated workers. In a virtual press conference, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond said, 'Fighting to abolish forced labor is a priority for the AFL-CIO and the American labor movement. And we won’t rest until this corrupt, immoral scheme ends for good.'"

For generations the AFL-CIO and most of mainstream labor has supported the construction of more prisons, even when construction was not viable and exploited prisoners and their families and the communities the prisons were built in. We have tended to look at jails, prisons and other forms of incarceration only through the eyes of corrections and probation officers, construction workers who want the work building prisons and and jails, sometimes as part of our fight against privatization. We have not analyzed or come to grips with some other realities.

The incarcerated are mostly working-class people. Their numbers include many union members who were putting in a full day of work but still living from paycheck to paycheck and trying to get by in a system in which the odds are stacked against them. We have union members who are houseless, members who are veterans who face certain risks that others do not face and a lack of social supports to help them, Black members who are more likely than whites to be singled out for scrutiny and harassment by the police and others, many young members who come from cultures that are at odds with law enforcement, and many members who have been hurt on the job and who have been prescribed painkillers and have become addicted and who self-medicate. All of these union siblings can end up in jails or prisons quite easily.

The numbers of the incarcerated are growing, their plight and the exploitation they experience is getting worse, these are working-class people, there is a disproportionate effect here on communities of color, and mass incarceration and exploitation and racism work against building a strong labor movement.

Many unions have connections to service programs for our union siblings before they end up in jails or prisons or psych wards, and these program do great work, but I am not aware of any unions using our resources to defend or support our members while they are incarcerated or support their families. The question of the civil rights of the incarcerated does not touch our unions in positive ways. We took a big step a few years ago when a few building trades unions began helping some incarcerated union siblings be apprenticeship-ready when leaving prison. For that matter, when we are a part of CTEC and other programs in the schools we are building a school-to-union or school-to-democracy pipeline and not aiding and abetting the school-to-prison pipeline so many young people get stuck in. All of those programs are potentially part of a map for us.

If the announcement above is accurate, and if Labor doesn't drop the ball, a great step is being taken here, and one that we should build on and link to our good programs that help some of the incarcerated enter apprenticeships and that aid our members before they end up in the prison pipeline. We need one unified approach that helps everyone more forward.

Image taken from a report by Mansa Musa that appeared on The Real News

 Network on September 5, 2022.

(These are not the opinions of the Marion-Polk-Yamhill Central Labor Chapter or the Oregon AFL-CIO.)