Author Archives: jillian

Putting America Back to Work

Labor_in_all_languagesIssued by the Emergency Labor Network (ELN)-February 8, 2012

The hype is on again in the press that recovery is around the corner. Last month’s jobs numbers are cited as the latest proof of recovery. The economic data puffery will no doubt prove intense in this election year, but a closer look at the facts should temper the false confidence.

After more than four years following the start of the recession in December 2007, and three years after President Obama assumed office, the crisis in jobs in the United States continues as the number one problem of the U.S. economy.

Based on the U.S. Department of Labor’s more accurate latest “U-6” unemployment rate, at the official end of the recession in June 2009 there were 25.4 million jobless; today, more than 30 months later, there still remain 23.4 million without work. That’s a total of only about 67,200 jobs created a month over two and a half years — a monthly number barely half of what is needed to even absorb new entrants into the labor force each month.

Most of the 2 million jobs created in the private sector since President Obama assumed office three years ago have been lower-paid service jobs, part-time jobs, and temporary forms of employment – nearly all of them providing lower wages and fewer benefits.  Higher-paying and benefit jobs in manufacturing and construction have, in contrast, continued to decline since the June 2009 recession low-point. There were 21.1 million manufacturing and construction jobs when the recession began in 2008. There are only 17.3 million manufacturing and construction jobs today.

Unlike all previous 11 recessions in the United States since 1945, the government sector has not created jobs to offset private sector job loss during the recession. Government instead has become a major contributor to job destruction.  Local governments have laid off 643,000 workers since June 2009, nearly a quarter million — 247,000 — of whom have been teachers. Public workers and teachers continue to be laid off at a rate of 20,000 or more a month. At that pace, by the end of his first term, President Obama may have presided over a loss of nearly a million public workers’ jobs.

Other indicators of the continuing sad state of the jobs markets in the United States after three years further corroborate the continuing crisis of jobs in this country.  For example, the duration of long-term unemployed — i.e., those out of work 27 or more weeks — has continued to rise steadily since June 2009, from 24% of all those unemployed to more than 40% today. Meanwhile, millions of workers have left the jobs market, having given up on the prospect of finding work.

Another indicator of the continuing severity of today’s jobs crisis, the “Employment to Population Ratio” that measures how well the economy is creating jobs in relation to the growth of population, shows the U.S. economy is growing fewer and fewer jobs as the U.S. population rises. At the start of the current recession, 63% of the U.S. population was employed; today only 58.5% of the U.S. population has jobs. And there are still 4.2 workers looking for every job offered today — i.e. well more than double the 1.8 to 1 ratio that existed before the recession began.

The jobs creation programs offered by the Obama administration and Congress over the past three years have proved dismally inadequate. In January 2009 the Obama administration promised to create six million jobs if its first stimulus program costing $787 billion were passed by Congress, 40% of which were tax cuts. In June 2009 there were approximately 25 million unemployed. By mid-summer 2010 there were still 25 million unemployed and job losses began to rise again that summer.

While the Democrats have thus far failed to provide any effective programs to restore the millions of jobs lost since the recession began, Republicans continue to propose the same old retread solutions that destroyed millions of jobs over the past decade. Republicans continue to propose more tax cuts for corporations and wealthy investors, more cuts to social programs, and a further expansion of military spending. These programs not only have failed to produce jobs, but actually have eliminated them by the millions over the past decade.

Moreover, whenever the Obama administration has proposed any kind of job creation program, the Republicans have been quick to denounce it and deadlock Congress so that nothing can get done.

If big banks and big business refuse to use their bailed out $4 trillion cumulative cash hoard of the past three years to create jobs, then the government must tax it or take it back from them and use it to create jobs itself.  The United States needs a 21st century version of the 1930s depression-era New Deal jobs programs, adapted from the past to present conditions.  What the U.S. economy specifically needs is the immediate creation of a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) program similar to that created in 1933. In just 90 days the CCC created the equivalent of what would be 1.2 million jobs in today’s economy. What the economy also needs now is a new 21st century Works Progress Administration (WPA) that during the period 1935 to 1940 created the equivalent of what would be 25 million jobs today.

The $4 trillion to fund these direct job creation programs are there. There’s no need to raise the deficit or debt. If the super-wealthy and their big corporations and banks won’t spend the trillion dollar bailouts they were provided by U.S. taxpayers to invest in America and create jobs, then the only alternative is for the government to reclaim those trillions and spend them on a public program to create jobs.

The Emergency Labor Network from its inception has urged organized labor to mobilize massive numbers of people to demand that the government implement a jobs program to put all of the unemployed back to work.

And consider what it would mean if the labor movement had its own independent political party, supported by tens of millions of allies among unorganized and low-income workers, the unemployed, communities of color, students and other youth, the women’s movement, immigrants, and other progressive sections of the population. Such a party would be projecting a program of jobs for all, bailing out the people and not the banks, redirecting astronomical military spending to meet human needs, and rebuilding a crumbling infrastructure that is critically in need of repair.

Isn’t it time for those of us in labor to engage in a serious discussion on the need to establish such a party?

— Issued by the Emergency Labor Network (ELN)
For more information write to emergencylabor@aol.com or P.O. Box 21004, Cleveland, OH 44121 or call 216-736-4715 or visit our website at http://www.laborfightback.org. Donations gratefully accepted. Please make checks payable to ELN and mail to above P.O. Box.

Mental Health Workers Fight for Justice

Sister Ida Boddie-Presente!

Ms. Ida

Sister Ida gives presentation to South African students and teachers at the BWFJ Workers Center

We first met Sister Ida in 1989 as a result of a call and outreach by the Black Workers for Justice (BWFJ) to workers in manufacturing plants scattered across Edgecombe, Nash, and other counties. With the help of members and allies, we leafleted many plants that season, calling for workers to come forward and organize their workplaces to fight discrimination, injustice, and unfair treatment. At the end of that day, a meeting was held, where more than 60 workers came out to speak about conditions in their plant. Sister Ida came to that meeting with another of her co-workers and spoke out for the first time about unfair treatment of primarily black and women workers at Rocky Mount Undergarment. Sister Ida worked at Undergarment for 26 years.

Sister Ida was already a leader in her plant by that time where hundreds of workers toiled each day and she had a history of being outspoken on their behalf. Together with BWFJ organizers, Sister Ida formed a small organizing committee that began the process of organizing, meeting with workers, making house visits every Saturday morning for weeks and months on end, conducting surveys, and leafleting. Before long, we had built the Undergarment Workers for Justice, an in-plant organization, that produced a monthly newsletter, filed grievances, led delegations to speak to the management about problems, filed charges at the labor board, and sold copies of Justice Speaks there each month, the BWFJ newspaper.

The Undergarment Workers for Justice became a member of the Worker’s Unity Council, a labor council formed to unite and coordinate the various in-plant committees and shop floor organizations built throughout the area.Strategies and tactics of the shop floor struggles were shared and discussed at the Council meetings and Sister Ida and other members of the UWFJ attended those monthly meetings.

The Black Workers for Justice Women’s Commission also spearheaded many years of work with Sister Ida and Rocky Mount Undergarment. We learned so much from her. She once educated us that when she first started working for Rocky Mount Undergarment, the plant had had a history of not allowing Black women to work there. She said only white women were employed and that Black women served as maids and housekeepers in the homes of white women workers in those days. The Civil Rights movement opened the door for Black women to work inside those plants.

But she was the leader and main spokesperson for all of the workers, black, white, male, and female at Undergarment. When the plant decided to lay-off a number of the white women after many had worked as much as 40 years in that plant, they came to Sister Ida and she stood with them outside of the plant and spoke to the media about how they were being treated.

In the Spring of 1991, the Undergarment Workers for Justice conducted a community sponsored and observed union election at the plant, where workers stopped outside the plant before going to work and cast their ballot on whether they wanted a union in the plant or not. More than 100 workers voted and kept in touch all that morning with Sister Ida inside the plant to learn the results as soon as possible. Over 90 percent voted in favor of forming a union. Sister Ida told us that when she shared with the workers the result of the vote, a feeling of joy shot across the plant floor, as if the women were finally free. This victory at Undergarment formed one of the first of several “non-majority unions without a contract” we organized in the Edgecombe/Nash area in that period. Management was informed of the union’s existence and a “Stewards Manual for Union’s Without a Contract” was developed for leaders and stewards on the shop floor.

In September of 1991, when 25 workers at Imperial Foods in Hamlet, North Carolina were killed in a plant fire, Sister Ida had workers in the plant take up a collection for the workers and victim’s families that she later presented to them herself. She spoke at the solidarity program organized by the Wilson Labor Council (another labor council organized through BWFJ’s work in eastern North Carolina) in support of the Imperial Foods workers. Back at work, Sister Ida also called the fire inspectors in to the Undergarment plant, where a number of safety violations were found, in order to protect the workers. That plant was among hundreds across North Carolina that had never been inspected.

Eventually, Undergarment thought they would break her spirit by firing her but that didn’t work. She went back to school, got her GED and a degree from Edgecombe Community College. Years later, when Rocky Mount Undergarment closed and moved its operations to Haiti for cheaper labor, many of the women workers who had been a part of the Undergarment movement and fight in the plant, also went back to school. Sister Ida told us that the fight at Rocky Mount Undergarment had given all the women dignity and self-respect and that she could see it when she caught up with various former workers from time to time over the years. She said they all grew from their struggle for fairness and justice.

In 1992, Sister Ida and members of the BWFJ traveled to Cuba, where we were among the first US workers to attend the Cuban Workers Federation Trade Union School. We attended classes, toured worksites, schools, hospitals, and communities. Sister Ida remarked that back in the day, Fidel Castro was portrayed as some sort of monster to the people here and that Cuba was a very bad place. In traveling there to see for herself what was going on, she said she could see a society and poor country that was taking care of its people with free healthcare, free education through university levels, unions run by the workers, women’s rights and community organizations, and so on. This trip made her more conscious and committed to fighting for a more just society in this country, one that cares more for its own people. That same year, back here at home, Sister Ida participated in the historic conference on environmental racism in New Orleans, LA.

Throughout those eventful years of organizing and fighting for justice and fairness for working people and their families, Sister Ida traveled throughout the Midwest, building support for unionization in the South. She worked with survivors of Hurricane Floyd in 1999 in the town of Princeville which was totally destroyed. She spoke at churches throughout Edgecombe and Nash Counties and so on calling for support for worker’s rights. When people asked her why she was doing all this and that her actions wouldn’t change anything, she said that “they changed me”! We recognized her historic and impactful contributions when she received the Black Workers for Justice Self-Determination Award.

These experiences and struggles, including many others unnamed here in Sister Ida’s long and fruitful life, reinforced her determination to stand for what is right and enriched her already kind and generous being and spirit.Her life of struggle led her to become a “free” woman — a woman of wisdom, foresight, and commitment to social, economic, and political justice.

N.C. Legislature attacks unions and worker’s organizations

198461With the passage of Senate Bill 727 today in the NC State Senate, we are seeing an escalation of the attacks on workers and our organizations. Activists have expressed a need for unity and bold action now more than ever to help fight back this vicious tide.

They are asking workers and their organizations to continue to pressure the House to vote against this bill and then focus attention on Gov. Perdue, demanding she veto it. A veto of this bill is viewed as a pro-worker veto!

Below is a statement of solidarity from UE local 150, NC Public Service Workers Union.

#####################################################

The Attack on NCAE and Education Workers is an Attack on All Workers!

As the NC GS 95 98 bans teachers and all public sector workers in North Carolina from collective bargaining that arrives at contractual agreements, the bill “targeting” NCAE to eliminate payroll deduction for voluntary dues, is clearly meant to destroy NCAE and is part of a strategy to destroy all public sector unions and associations that give public sector workers a collective force.

This is an attack on democracy, and the right of teachers and all public sector workers to voluntarily contribute resources to their organizations that aid them with information, training and other tools to collectively and individually advocate for themselves and for the millions of people who they provide education, public services and healthcare.

The same politicians making the major budget cuts impacting jobs and services are the same ones attacking worker rights.  This attack is part of a larger agenda to privatize public services, to use government to repress people’s democracy and to shift power and control over vital public resources to the banks and corporations – who are unwilling to pay their fair share of taxes – to be used to make more profits.

All public sector unions, associations, the rank-and-file and faith, community and student organizations must stand and act together against this attack on workers rights, public services and democracy.

The struggle against this attack must be more than the traditional lobbying at the state legislature. Our unions and associations must mobilize our rank-and-file members and their families to participate in people’s assemblies, rallies, forums, and other actions in the communities, work places and business districts within various political districts to show the breath and dept of our resistance and resolve not to allow the clock to be turned back on democracy.

The NC Public Service Workers Union-UE Local 150 commits to stand in solidarity with NCAE in fighting against this attack.

We call on NCAE and all public sector unions and associations to join with UE150 and others in the Labor Faith and Civil Rights Coalition in Defense of the Public Sector, to help build a united and powerful movement based on the labor movement principle that An Injury to One is An Injury to All.”

In Solidarity,

NC Public Service Workers Union-UE Local 150

Ajamu Baraka’s keynote address at 28th Annual MLK Banquet