Posts from Tom Conway

Workers at Blue Bird Corp. in Fort Valley, Ga., launched a union drive to secure better wages, work-life balance and a voice on the job.

The company resisted them. History defied them. Geography worked against them.

But they stood together, believed in themselves and achieved an historic victory that’s reverberating throughout the South.

About 1,400 workers at the electric bus manufacturer voted overwhelmingly this month to join the United Steelworkers (USW), reflecting the rise of collective power in a part of the country where bosses and right-wing politicians long contrived to foil it.

“It’s just time for a change,” explained Rinardo Cooper, a member of USW Local 572 and a paper machine operator at Graphic Packaging in Macon, Ga.

Cooper, who assisted the workers at Blue Bird with their union drive, expects more Southerners to follow suit even if they face their own uphill battles.

Given the South’s pro-corporate environment, it’s no surprise that Georgia has one of the nation’s lowest union membership rates, 4.4 percent. North Carolina’s rate is even lower, 2.8 percent. And South Carolina’s is 1.7 percent.

Many corporations actually choose to locate in the South because the low union density enables them to pay poor wages, skimp on safety and perpetuate the system of oppression.

In a 2019 study, “The Double Standard at Work,” the AFL-CIO found that even European-based companies with good records in their home countries take advantage of workers they employ in America’s South.

They’ve “interfered with freedom of association, launched aggressive campaigns against employees’ organizing attempts and failed to bargain in good faith when workers choose union representation,” noted the report, citing, among other abuses, Volkswagen’s union-busting efforts at a Tennessee plant.

“They keep stuffing their pockets and paying pennies on the dollar,” Cooper said of companies cashing in at workers’ expense.

Chad Newcome confided little to his wife over the years about the failing pension fund that threatened their dreams, wanting to spare her the anxiety that haunted him day and night.

But two years ago, after congressional Democrats passed legislation saving dozens of multiemployer pension plans at risk of collapse, Newcome opened up about their brush with financial calamity and how he finally felt free to breathe.

Sadly, Republicans are imperiling the couple’s future all over again with their cruel gambit to cut spending on the backs of working people.

GOP House members last week rammed through a bill that would raise the nation’s borrowing limit and prevent America from defaulting on its debts—but only in exchange for draconian cuts that would cost 200,000 vulnerable children access to Head Start programs, end Meals on Wheels for a million struggling seniors and inexplicably ax housing support in the face of growing homelessness.

The bill would slash billions from schools serving low-income students. And it would claw back money from the 2021 American Rescue Plan, including funds allocated to save 130 or so multiemployer pension plans hurtling toward collapse because of Wall Street recklessness, corporate bankruptcies and industry consolidation, among other factors.

Multiemployer funds, including the one covering Newcome, combine contributions from two or more employers in manufacturing, trucking and other industries. Workers like Newcome, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 14614-1 and an electrician at Tri-County Electric in Morgantown, W.Va., paid into the funds for decades and planned their golden years around them.

These union workers played no role in the plans’ financial troubles. Yet they were the ones who stood to suffer if the funds went under, and it was their advocacy—through rallies, marches, phone calls, emails and post cards—that moved congressional Democrats to save the funds without the support of a single Republican in either the House or Senate.

“This is what we’ve been fighting for. We got the votes we needed,” a joyful Newcome told family members at the time, recalling he felt “like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders.”

But harming working people is sport to pro-corporate Republicans, whose debt ceiling bill puts Newcome’s pension—and those of hundreds of thousands of other Americans—back on the chopping block.

He was known to be aggressive and argumentative, the kind of patron who made others at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh branch uneasy.

But one day last year, the man walked into the building in a much darker mood, harassed a librarian and threatened to kill her.

Fortunately, library workers had joined the United Steelworkers (USW) in 2019 and built safeguards into their first contract to address dangers exactly like this.

The librarian received a temporary transfer to another building. And the library system banned the patron, ensuring he wouldn’t turn up again either to look for the person he threatened or target somebody else.

April 28 is Workers Memorial Day in America and the Day of Mourning in Canada, a time to remember those killed, injured or sickened at work. It’s also a day when union workers rededicate themselves to the fight for safer working conditions and renew their pledge to look out for one another, along with others in the workplace, leveraging all of the power that collective action provides.

“We are open to the public, which means everybody is welcome to come in, and we do our best to serve everybody,” explained David King, a steward for USW Local 9562 and a librarian in the music, film and audio department at the system’s main location in Oakland.

“We’re proud of that. We’re sincerely proud that we’re one of the few truly public spaces still left. But that does come with some of these dangers,” he added, noting that library workers face patrons who create disruptions, brawl, carry in weapons, damage property, overdose in restrooms and even stalk them.

Because library management failed to adequately address these risks, union members stood in solidarity together and negotiated a contract that not only provides temporary transfers for endangered workers but includes notification procedures to alert workers at various branches when a patron is banned.

“That is a huge change from before we negotiated the contract,” King pointed out, noting that workers previously “had no recourse” if they were harassed. “They just had to put up with it. They just had to stay in the same location."

Dominick Sapien’s patient threw up during cardiac arrest several months ago, and he instinctively grabbed a suction tool to clear the man’s airway.

The device failed to turn on, so Sapien picked up another. When it also failed, he reached for a third. When that one broke apart, a quick-thinking Sapien flipped the patient on his side and, with a fellow paramedic performing CPR, manually scooped the vomit out of the man’s mouth to keep him from choking.

The need for functioning equipment and safer working conditions prompted Sapien and his colleagues at Frontier Ambulance to join the United Steelworkers (USW) in February, making them the first workers in decades to form a union in Wyoming.

They aren’t the only ones breaking barriers. Determined to secure good wages and a seat at the table, a growing number of workers are banding together and fighting back in industries and states that long attempted to silence them.

About 1,000 firefighters, paramedics, fire marshals, emergency dispatchers and mechanics in Fairfax County, Virginia, overwhelmingly voted to unionize last fall, advancing working people’s fight in a state that’s tried to divide workers and deter union membership for decades. Now, the county must bargain with public workers for the first time in about 40 years.

Workers at TCGplayer, an online trading card marketplace, last month formed the first union at an eBay-owned company in the United States, helping to pave the way for others in the notoriously anti-labor tech industry.

And undergraduate student workers at the University of Oregon just filed for a union election to combat low pay and other exploitation. They’re part of a wave of unionizing campaigns involving faculty and staff as well as undergraduate and graduate student workers at universities across the country.

“It’s a chance to change things for the better, and I think everybody really believed in that dream,” Sapien said of his own successful union drive in Wyoming, a so-called right-to-work state with relatively few union members right now.

States with right-to-work laws permit workers to receive all of the benefits of union representation without paying even a small fee for services. These laws, pushed by corporations and right-wing politicians, undermine worker solidarity and starve unions of the resources they need to bargain good contracts, pursue grievances and otherwise fight for members.

Gregory Washington joined the Marines at 18 and fought in the Gulf War, only to return—traumatized, unemployed, adrift—to an America that seemed as unfamiliar and daunting to him as the places he encountered overseas.

It took Washington years to find a family-sustaining job, secure his disability benefits and reacclimate to civilian life.

Now, he’s a leader in his local union and determined to help forge a smoother path for others who served. He and fellow members of the United Steelworkers (USW) are advocating for state laws requiring employers to post official notices of the health, social and other services available to support veterans as they build new lives on the homefront.

New York enacted its version of the workplace poster law, written with USW members’ input, Jan. 1. Union members continue working to advance similar legislation in Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas and other states.

“At the end of the day, we want to readjust. We want to work. We want to take care of our families,” observed Washington, vice president of USW Local 13-1, which represents hundreds of workers at the Pemex oil refinery and other workplaces in southeastern Texas.

“Sometimes, nobody even talks to veterans. They get out, and that’s it,” said Washington, recalling the difficulty he had battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while finding a way forward on his own.

Washington, who took part in the February 1991 battle that dislodged Iraqi forces from Kuwait International Airport, discovered that the hyper-vigilance, lightning-quick responsiveness and other traits that kept him alive in the Marines sometimes disconcerted people at home. He struggled to sustain friendships with non-veterans, who appreciated his service but couldn’t relate to his experiences.

And as he wrestled with how to translate his military skills into civilian employment, Washington fell into low-paying security jobs that barely enabled him to support his growing family.

Many veterans experience similar hardships. As many as 46 percent of recent veterans with combat experience struggle to readjust after discharge, and those like Washington with PTSD “are among the most likely to say their transition to civilian life was difficult,” according to Pew Research Center.

Among the handful of neurologically impaired patients in Judy Danella’s care one day last week were three so ill that they struggled just to swallow.

She fed each of them in turn, delivering spoonful after spoonful of pureed food, patiently nourishing them toward better health even as she herself was stretched thinner by the minute in a facility that’s chronically shorthanded.

Danella and her union co-workers at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., wrestle every day with the understaffing crisis straining America’s health care system to the breaking point.

Health care employers across the country long refused to hire adequate numbers of nurses, certified nursing assistants, dietary workers and other essential staff, preferring to push skeleton crews to the bone and put profits over patients.

But now, the same health care workers who battled COVID-19 are fighting for the safe staffing levels needed to protect their communities on a daily basis and prevent the already-fragile care system from collapsing in the next pandemic.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois just introduced legislation in Congress to establish mandatory minimum staffing levels for nurses at hospitals nationwide. But in the meantime, citing the ever-greater urgency, union workers continue advocating for similar measures on a state-by-state basis.

Danella and fellow members of the United Steelworkers (USW), for example, will rally with workers from other unions at the New Jersey statehouse May 11 to demand passage of bills establishing minimum staffing levels for registered nurses in hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and state psychiatric facilities.

“You want to give the patient the best care you can,” explained Danella, a registered nurse and president of USW Local 4-200, which represents about 1,650 registered nurses at the Robert Wood Johnson facility, a Level 1 trauma center.

The legislation, already introduced in the state Senate and General Assembly, would require one registered nurse for every four patients in an emergency department, one for every two patients in intensive care, and one for every five patients in a medical/surgical unit, among other provisions.

The United Steelworkers (USW) mounted tireless battles for fair trade and other lifelines that helped to keep McLouth Steel open during the 1980s, enabling Jay McMurran and thousands of other Michigan workers to raise families and build pensions amid one of the nation’s worst economic crises.

Recognizing that other workers need the same kind of strength behind them, McMurran resolved to fight back when Republicans rammed union-gutting “right to work” (RTW) legislation through the state legislature in 2012.

He and other union supporters and their allies worked relentlessly for years to oust the corporate toadies and elect pro-worker lawmakers instead. Their long struggle culminated in victory Tuesday when new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate voted to repeal the deceptively named RTW laws, restoring workers’ full power to bargain fair contracts and safe working conditions.

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vowed to sign the legislation, which represents the latest in a string of victories for workers mobilizing to build strength across the country.

No one in America is ever forced to join a union, and no union wants workers to join against their will. Yet a union has a legal obligation to serve all workers in its bargaining unit.

Many states allow unions to charge non-members a small fee to help cover the costs of representation. But in some states, RTW laws pushed by corporations and anti-worker groups enable non-members to receive union services for free.

These laws intentionally divide workers, erode the solidarity that’s the foundation of union strength and starve unions of the resources needed for effective bargaining, training and other essential purposes—all to the boss’s benefit.

“‘Right to work’ is simply a union-busting scam that the Republicans dress up as ‘choice,’” observed McMurran, a longtime USW member who worked at McLouth Steel for 27 years.

“It weakens the local union,” he said. “It weakens every worker’s position when you get into collective bargaining, when you get into grievance hearings, when you get into arbitrations. The boss knows your weaknesses, and he exploits them.”

Hundreds of Boston school bus drivers stood to lose their jobs when COVID-19 closed the city’s schools in 2020.

But instead of giving up on drivers, André François and other leaders of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 8751 collaborated with with Marty Walsh, then the mayor of Boston, to not only avoid layoffs but also empower the workers to serve on the front lines of the health crisis.

Union members loaded their buses with the food usually served in school cafeterias and delivered meals to students and the elderly, helping some of the city’s most vulnerable residents through the darkest days of the pandemic.

That creative and powerful advocacy for ordinary people also defined Walsh’s tenure as U.S. secretary of labor and fueled his fight to build an economy that works for all, observed François, the Local 8751 president.

“He was fair to labor,” François said of Walsh, who just resigned his position in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet to head the National Hockey League Players’ Association. “He was understanding. You could call and talk to him about your issues. He listened.”

Walsh, who credits a union laborer’s job with lifting his immigrant father into the middle class, dedicated his life to extending similar opportunities to others.

As the first labor secretary in decades to carry a union card, he adopted the hands-on approach that François witnessed in Boston and returned the department to the worker-centered mission it lost during the previous administration.

In the process, he also helped Biden turn a pandemic-battered economy into a new era of shared prosperity.

Just a few months after joining the Biden administration, for example, Walsh helped push Congress into passing a historic infrastructure package that’s supporting millions of good union jobs. He even joined USW members at a rally in Burns Harbor, Ind., to promote the legislation.

“We have an opportunity right now to buy American and build America like never before,” Walsh, the former leader of the Boston Building and Construction Trades Council, told the gathering.

Brad Greve said he and other expedition leaders repeatedly told the group of Boy Scouts to watch out for a section of stream where the water picked up speed and swept over rapids into the lake below.

But two of the boys forgot the warnings and let their canoe drift perilously close to the drop-off anyway. Realizing their mistake in the nick of time, they paddled furiously against the stiffening current and made it to the streambank rattled but safe.

That near-accident a few years ago, Greve said, underscores the vulnerability of young teens. And it fuels Greve’s anger at Republicans who want to gut child-labor laws and fill dangerous jobs with still-maturing high-schoolers, even at the risk of working them to death.

Greve vehemently opposes a proposal moving through Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature that would allow 14-year-olds to work in industrial freezers, meatpacking plants and industrial laundry operations. The legislation also would put 15-year-olds to work on certain kinds of assembly lines and allow them to hoist up to 50 pounds.

In some cases, it even would permit young teens to work mining and construction jobs and let them use power-driven meat slicers and food choppers.

Just three years ago, a 16-year-old in Tennessee fell 11 stories to his death while working construction on a hotel roof. Another 16-year-old lost an arm that same year while cleaning a meat grinder at a Tennessee supermarket,

But these preventable tragedies mean nothing to Iowa legislators bent on helping greedy employers pad their bottom lines at kids’ expense.

“They make impulsive decisions and do things without thinking, just because they’re young. They don’t know what they don’t know,” said Greve, a Davenport, Iowa, resident and member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), explaining how the legislation puts youths in harm’s way.

The legislation also would allow employers to force kids into significantly longer work days—until 9 p.m. during the school year and 11 p.m. during the summer.

These additional hours at work would rob kids of time needed for studying and for the extracurricular activities that help mold them into productive, responsible adults.

Mark Glyptis and dozens of other union leaders went into contract negotiations with Cleveland-Cliffs last year determined not only to win wage and benefit enhancements for their co-workers but to protect thousands of family-sustaining steel mill jobs for years to come.

The United Steelworkers (USW) negotiating team ultimately delivered a historic contract requiring the company to invest $4 billion in 13 union-represented facilities, including about $100 million at the Weirton, W.Va., mill where Glyptis and his colleagues rely on ever-more-sophisticated equipment to make precision tin plate.

Unions fight for financial commitments like these to safeguard workers’ sweat equity—the time and labor they invest in their workplaces for decades at a stretch. Capital upgrades keep employers accountable and plants viable, preserving family-sustaining jobs while also laying the groundwork for future growth.

“Steel mills are being built across the world, and we’re definitely competing on a worldwide basis,” observed Glyptis, president of USW Local 2911, noting the overseas facilities feature the “most modern technology.”

“We’re the best steelworkers in the world. We can compete. But we have to keep up with capital investments,” continued Glyptis, who helped to represent about 12,000 USW members from six states in the talks with Cleveland-Cliffs last year.

Glyptis and other Local 2911 members fought for new equipment that they need to produce “perfectly flat and flawless” tin plate for food containers.

Based on members’ input, other local unions—supplying the military, highway contractors, aerospace and numerous other industries—went into negotiations with their own requirements for upgrades.

Members overwhelmingly ratified a new, four-year contract last fall. The vote reflected their satisfaction with the $4 billion in investments—to be allocated among the 13 worksites—as much as it did the 20 percent raises and benefit enhancements the agreement provides.

“You can have the best health care in the country or in the world, but if you can’t compete because of technological deficiencies, you’re going to be an also-ran,” Glyptis pointed out. “Maintaining a competitive facility is just as important.”

“It all goes into a decision about whether this is a fair contract. It would be difficult to have a contract passed if it didn’t have a commitment to capital investments attached,” he said, adding that the company continues hiring many younger workers who see the upgrades as crucial to raising families and putting down roots.

Unions also negotiate capital investments to protect workers from companies that might otherwise abandon plants on a whim or run them to failure while wringing out every last penny in profit.