May Day greetings from UE!
This year, we celebrate International Workers Day as the novel coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic has made clear the central importance of workers to our society. It is the labor of frontline workers — healthcare workers, grocery and food workers, sanitation workers and others — that is keeping people alive right now, not the wealth accumulated by capitalists.
Workers at some of the biggest corporations in the country will be striking on May 1 to demand that their employers provide basic protections to ensure their health and safety. They are calling on other working people to boycott Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, Walmart, FedEx, Target, and Shipt in order to support their strike action. Read more about this historic mass strike »
The Illinois Labor History Society and Chicago Federation of Labor will be holding an online May Day celebration at 3pm Central time. They will be joined virtually by Lana Payne, Secretary-Treasurer of UE’s Canadian allies Unifor, who will unveil a solidarity plaque for the monument in Chicago honoring the Haymarket Martyrs. Event participants will also remember the Haymarket Martyrs, recognize leaders of the modern labor movement, and recommit ourselves to the fight for all workers' rights!
UE’s officers have released a special May Day statement, “Working People Must Unite Across Borders,” which notes that “The global reach of this pandemic also underlines the absolute necessity of international solidarity and cooperation … [and] should serve as a wake-up call for all working people to unite across borders to demand that our governments serve the needs of the people and the planet, not corporations and the rich. It is time for us to make bold demands, and to be unafraid to withhold our labor to get what we need.” Read the full statement on ueunion.org »
Press Roundup: UE Locals Take Action to Address Pandemic
Photo courtesy UE Local 150
UE locals from coast to coast have been taking action to make sure workers’ voices are heard as decisions are being made which impact our health, our jobs, and our ability to provide for our families. The next issue of the UE NEWS will feature extensive coverage of local activities, but in the meantime we have put together a selection of press coverage that UE locals have received over the past month. (Not a UE member? You can still subscribe to the UE NEWS for as little as $5/year.)
UE Local 203, which represents co-op grocery workers at City Market in Burlington, Vermont, was featured in an article in the local alternative weekly Seven Days about grocery workers winning hazard pay. Local 203 secured a memorandum of understanding guaranteeing a $3/hour hazard pay differential, and numerous safety measures demanded by the local have been enacted by management. Local 203 Chief Steward Jake Green told Seven Days, “We hope that this agreement, which was reached very quickly due to an outpouring of community support, shows what unionized workers are capable of achieving, and serves as an example to other employers of how workers deserve to be compensated. Management made us fight for this victory, and we are proud of what we have achieved.”
UE Local 170 President Jamie Beaton published a guest column in the Beckley, West Virginia Register-Herald. “Ensuring safety and proper compensation for all those who work during this time is crucial,” wrote Beaton. “Making proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Hazard Pay available are just part of the approach needed. On Monday, April 6, the WV Public Workers Union, UE Local 170, sent a letter to Gov. Jim Justice with common sense demands for what working people need right now. ... Since we sent the letter, the state has made improvements regarding policy enforcement, safety standards, and distribution of PPE. We appreciate the measures taken so far by our state officials.” Local 170 represents state workers throughout West Virginia.
In Erie, PA, UE Local 506 has been working to ensure the safety of the more than 1,000 workers at the huge Wabtec locomotive facility, especially after the company disregarded a shutdown order from Pennsylvania’s governor in mid-March. “What I am most concerned about is the health and safety of the men and women who work in that plant,” Local 506 President Scott Slawson told the Erie Times-News. “If the coronavirus were to break out in there, that plant is a big facility. That plant is a community within itself.”
“We are trying to protect everyone, not just our members,” Slawson said. “This is going to become a bigger disaster if this thing continues to spread. Are you better off to shutter our plant for a couple of weeks, or are you better off to roll the dice?”
The Iowa City Press-Citizen covered a list of demands sent to the University of Iowa in mid-April by UE Local 896, which represents UI’s graduate workers. “The explosion of COVID-19 in the U.S. makes clear that access to health care is vital for the social and economic well-being of all, including graduate students and their families,” the local states. Local 896 has demanded that the university expand graduate workers’ health care plans to cover their families, and also provide health care options to undergraduate students who lack access to affordable healthcare.
In North Carolina, UE Local 150, which represents public-sector workers throughout the state, has been pushing cities, the state Department of Health and Human Services, and University of North Carolina campuses to provide adequate protection for essential frontline workers. Local 150 members also joined other healthcare workers in standing up to right-wing anti-lockdown protesters on Tuesday. “They’re putting me and my family at risk,” said Local 150 Vice President Sekia Royall, who works in nutrition services at O’Berry Hospital in Goldsboro. “My daughter and I both have pre-existing conditions, and if someone gets the virus at our facility, it will spread like wildfire. For some of our patients it could be fatal.”
The Local 150 chapters Raleigh City Workers Union, Charlotte City Workers Union, and Workers Union @ UNC have also received press coverage. “We should not have to risk our lives because people, rich people, want their trash collected,” said Dominic Harris, president of the UE Local 150 Charlotte chapter. “We have to get a paycheck to work, we have to get a paycheck to live.”
Looking for resources to help your local fight for safety and fair pay? UE’s COVID-19 Information for Workers page is available at ueunion.org/covid19
UE, DSA Launch New Organizing Initiative to Help Workers Fight for Safety and Fair Pay
As workers are increasingly responding to the life-and-death circumstances being imposed on them by standing up, fighting back and walking out, UE has created a set of online resources to help nonunion workers take action to win safe workplaces. We have also partnered with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to launch the “Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee,” a new initiative to take the organizing model of the Bernie Sanders campaign and apply it to workplace organizing, using a large number of volunteers to reach more workers than a traditional staff-driven model is able to.
Labor reporter Steven Greenhouse reported in In These Times this week that “Since launching in early March, EWOC’s organizers have helped several hundred workers fight for improved safety at warehouses, fast-food restaurants, hospitals, bottling plants, supermarkets and child-care centers across America.” UE International Representative Mark Meinster, who heads up UE’s organizing work, was also interviewed about the project in Jacobin magazine in mid-April.
Interested in helping with the EWOC project? Fill out this form.
International Solidarity During the Pandemic
FIOM, UE’s allies in Italy — one of the countries hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic — asked UE to provide a video overview of the situation facing workers in the U.S. for a special online conference about the pandemic. Local 208 President and Northeast Region Secretary-Treasurer Kelly Robtoy recorded this video, in which she noted that one of the problems workers face in the U.S. is “a lack of trusted, shared sources of information.” However, Robtoy said, “Workers trust each other, and this is an important moment for union leaders to be the best resources for our members.”
UE General President Carl Rosen also recorded a May Day greeting for UE’s Japanese allies Zenroren, in which he reiterated that “We know that strong relationships with our allies will be key to finding our way through this crisis, and the economic downturn that will follow.”
UE Officers Call on Labor Movement To Organize Worker Fightback in the Face of the COVID-19 Crisis
UE’s three national officers wrote an open letter in In These Times on April 10, in which they stated that “Unions have a choice right now: Hunker down and try to ride out the COVID-19 storm or put our shoulders to the task of assisting workers in their fight to either improve conditions on the job or shut their workplaces down.”
General President Carl Rosen also joined a long list of other labor leaders in a responding to a USA Today op-ed written by the presidents of AFT, CWA, SEIU and the Teamsters, who suggest that the labor movement should partner with “well-managed companies” who can “lead the recovery by pulling together and finding new ways to protect, pay and retain employees.” Instead, Rosen and others write, “Capitalism is failing the stress test of COVID-19—and we won’t change this by appealing to the morality of corporate leaders … we cannot wait for corporations to do the right thing, we need to force them to.”
UE and Unifor call for urgent action for workers and the planet
As working people and representatives of trade unions, we join environmental activists in marking the 50th anniversary of Earth Day with alarm and concern for the future of our planet. The time to fight for immediate and bold climate action is now, but the needed economic transition will not take place without strong guarantees for worker rights and good jobs for all. Read more »
Sanders Campaign Brought Working People to the Center of American Politics
Reacting to Senator Bernie Sanders’ announcement that he is suspending his 2020 presidential campaign, UE General President Carl Rosen said that “In his two presidential campaigns, Bernie Sanders highlighted the way corporations and billionaires have corrupted our democracy and showed that by standing together, working people can successfully fight back. He has fundamentally changed American politics, making pro-worker policies like Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, and strengthening workers’ ability to join unions central to political debate.” Read more »
The Relief Workers Need Now
“In order to bring the COVID-19 public health crisis under control, we must shut down all workplaces except those truly critical to sustaining life; give workers in those critical jobs everything they need to do their work safely and compensate them for the immense risk they are taking; and provide robust economic support for everyone else to allow and incentivize them to stay home.” Read UE officers’ statement on coronavirus relief »
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