Every election year many of the U.S. trade unions scramble – or stumble – into action to elect “labor’s friends”. More likely they are involved mostly to try to stop those bent on liquidation of the unions, always the greatest part of the motivation to mobilize voters. Identifying the sworn foes of the union movement is not that difficult today – these forces openly declare their hatred of unions. As best expressed by the pathologic opposition shown toward the unions by most of the Republican Party elected officialdom today.
So far as picking friends, and then hanging the trade union seal of approval on them, the labor movement repeats year after year every imaginable “lesser-evil” decision-making gymnastics. Decade after decade this bar for support has been lowered by the unions, paralleling the slow but steady capture of the labor officialdom by the Democratic Party apparatus. Merely recognizing the very existence of the unions, or at best making fuzzy promises are all that’s required for Democrats to win labor’s political support. Track records of candidates are rarely – or selectively – kept, and the failure or refusal to deliver on promises by a candidate is almost never grounds for excommunication on labor’s part.
Dangerous Man-made Fog
Outside observers of labor’s political action processes are frequently confused or mystified. But this should come as little surprise, since the bulk of the union activists – and certainly the membership – would likewise be unsure of what exactly is going on. As the unions are systematically assaulted by corporations and governments, frequently shrink as a result, and are blocked by corporate lawlessness from growing and rebuilding, the political and electoral union decision making and implementation becomes more and more clouded and obscured. In a labor movement predominantly “led” by administrators and not authentic labor leaders, the already warped political environment is destined for further distortion under these conditions.
Few Choices Allowed
An assessment of labor’s political action, its methodology, its outcomes, and its challenges must begin with the incredibly limited choices that are permitted in the first place. With virtually all political direction being supplied to the unions today via the Democratic Party and its operatives, all independent thinking or third parties are routinely banned from any consideration of labor’s support.
Even at the lowest electoral levels the Democratic Party machinery seeks out and squashes all political thinking outside the “box” of mainstream Democratic policy and practice. A glance at the documented roster of attacks meted-out to any challengers of the two-party setup is chronicled in detailed fashion at Ballot Access News. It is imperative to recognize that the failure of virtually any independent political alternatives to develop and take root in the labor movement is not just a freak accident, or the result of no base of support for them, it is the result of systematic interference and opposition to it by all levels of the Democratic Party. This lack of alternative political forces for labor has dramatically accelerated the decline of the labor movement.
Occasionally, unions still experiment with support for Republicans – as they are the only other party allowed in the corrupt two-party ”system” embraced by labor. But this phenomenon has been reduced in recent decades as the Republican Party has moved ever rightward. When left-of-center Democrats do emerge within the Democratic Party, the unions are advised by these outside guiding forces to be “realistic” and avoid any left taint. Few other choices exist in this barren political wasteland.
If left-leaning Democrats do manage to build some support among the unions they will still face an all-out assault by the Democratic Party apparatus. Only left elements are to be feared, and always opposed. Pro-business, right-leaning and outright reactionary Democrats are reflexively supported by their Party officialdom. Unelectable but politically “safe” candidates are often supported by this machinery with upstarts and progressives routinely confronted with Democratic Party operatives working to oppose and defund their campaigns. Only Democrats acceptable to the party machinery enjoy full support.
DNC Incorporated
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the leadership group governing and controlling much of the party apparatus, and it maintains an extensive focus on the trade unions. It is a multi-billion dollar corporate-type organism comprising many different sections. The overwhelming majority of DNC and wider Party funding originates with the corporate and wealthy donors. The unions do possess a coveted resource base of hundreds of millions dollars in political funds along with tens of thousands paid staff who can be press-ganged into supporting Democrats at all levels. The DNC resource universe also includes many thousands of functionaries from DNC-controlled consulting companies and non-profits, along with supplementary staff from elected lawmakers and lower level organizations.
This “DNC Incorporated” reality is little known or understood, although the union membership pays a steep price. These elements systematically influence and interfere in union affairs, play favorites in internal union elections, and sometimes profit handsomely from various consulting contracts with the unions. Staff are exchanged among the unions and the wider DNC operations, leading to diluted union loyalty at minimum. Meddling within the unions by the Democratic Party takes many forms and fringes on outright corruption at times. Jobs and perks for family, friends, and cronies, an endless stream of VIP trips and photo-ops, posh dinners and cocktail parties are all offered to a union “leadership” willing to play politics at the expense of their own members.
Air Force One
As recently as the Clinton Administration, it was a common – but true – cliché among the Washington, D.C., trade union leaders and functionaries that the “price” for union support from a Democratic President was nothing more than a luxury ride on Air Force One for the union leader. Continuing a long tradition going back to the days when travel was done by presidential train, union leaders by the score then gathered family and paid flunkeys to all hop-on and “enjoy the ride”. Photo-ops were of course abundant, where union photographers snapped streams of publicity stills to show the rank-and-file the importance and status of their union leaders riding on the “Presidential special”.
But during the Clinton Administration the overall political standing of labor was steadily reduced by the White House and the DNC apparatus, with this high-profile practice nearly abolished today. This symbolic demotion of labor by the Democrats leaves more room today on Air Force One for large donors and business leaders, reflecting the increasingly taken-for-granted status of the labor movement. Rather than labor leaders jet-setting on Air Force One with the President, current labor bigs are instead relegated to attending contrived meetings with White House staff. Or taking seats at luxurious dinners and receptions where at best they can quickly shake hands with the President and exchange a mere few words.
Gone are the days when labor leaders would participate in serious conferences at the White House with the President and his staff, sometimes from both parties, where serious situations were deliberated, and sometimes even significant demands were made of the President on all manner of trade union issues. The unions have today been reduced to mere props for the DNC operation, and to visually reinforce the subordinated status of labor for all onlookers. Some of today’s labor leaders live for the rare photo-op with a President or Cabinet member, to see it splashed on Facebook or in the occasional union publication. All presumably to prove the important standing of the leader.
O’Brien and His Polls
The recent flap over Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and his refusal to support a presidential endorsement of either Harris or Trump showcased another crisis for organized labor. A social media firestorm was unleashed by Teamsters and outsiders, all weighing-in with opinions on the merits and demerits of the O’Brien decision. But one of the primary points was lost in the momentary bedlam. Few know that union after union repeatedly poll their own membership to ascertain their political opinions. The goal being for the union “leaders” to safely support only those candidates and issues which a majority of their membership already supports. There is no political education associated with this process. There is no role here for authentic labor leadership. Most unions long ago abandoned internal trade union education, including political education, increasingly shrinking away from any discussion of difficult questions like political candidate choices and broad political positions.
This near-total abdication of the responsibility of union leaders to actually “lead” on the political front is one of the most disastrous crises now debilitating the labor movement. Real political debate and decision making are replaced with feelgood campaigns, inane pronouncements, mindless slogans, and polls commissioned by a leadership seeking “which way the wind is blowing” among their membership. O’Brien’s handling of this situation lacked any substantial discussion or facts, and his decision and methods both likely left all sides unhappy. This momentary heartburn for O’Brien of course masks the historically opportunistic basis for much of this union’s political strategy over the decades, a legacy that he is all-too eager to revisit.
Opportunism Replaces Education
This tail-the-members style of political action is all too common in the labor movement. It is on its face an absurd style of operation, given that the responsibility of the union leadership is to actually lead, and not merely trail behind the perceived opinions of the membership. In the case of the recent Teamster kerfuffle it also masks the political opportunism of much of that union’s leadership, who want only to endorse the winner of the presidential election in November. Hoping for favors of some kind from either Harris or Trump, whoever wins, this strategy has been revealed repeatedly as a monumental failure.
The 1980 endorsement by the Teamsters of anti-union bigot Ronald Reagan remains the pinnacle of rank opportunism on labor’s political front. Hoping only to curry favor with Reagan as a means to avoid a federal criminal investigation of the entire leadership of the union, the gifting of the union’s endorsement to Reagan ended in humiliation and debacle. Lesser versions of this political horse-trading by union “leaders” continue today. Ultimately, it is an embarrassment that any union would have to poll its own members to determine the thinking of the membership, and it likewise is dangerous to promote this herd mentality. Adherence to real trade union principles is not easy today as all outside forces act to draw the members into the employer way of thinking. Trade union leadership must confront and counteract this, and certainly must not encourage more of this failed political drift.
The unions have for many decades faced a dire need to once again engage the membership in real trade union education, grappling with controversial subjects a part of that. Labor history revealing to members the heroic foundation of their unions, their militant beginnings in many cases, recognition of the class struggle reality today, and a serious discussion of alternatives to both our political and economic systems are all in order. Recipients of labor’s votes, money, and logistical support must also be held to account, with the unions willing to walk away rather than endorse and fund barely worthwhile candidates. An end must be put to the frequent labor support issued to obviously unfit candidates, usually pro-business Democrats and those who seek labor’s support in return for nothing – or almost nothing. Ultimately, a sound regimen of support for an independent course of action is required so as to break free from the control of “DNC Incorporated”.
More and More Cash
Suffocating the entire political operation of the labor movement today is the question of financial contributions for the legions of mostly Democrats who chase after the unions as if they were ATM machines. These sums routinely now exceed more that one billion dollars in a national electoral cycle, and when the many hidden financial supports offered by the unions are taken in to account the amount is likely more than twice that much. Democrats today obtain the vast majority of these funds from the pockets of the rank-and-file membership – but with all decisions determining its distribution decided by union leaders based almost exclusively on their personal direction.
While political fundraising is certainly a necessary reality, the monies when collected are often secreted away by union leaderships who offer few if any reports to the membership about where the contributions and expenditures have been made. This scandalous situation must be ended, with all participants in union political fundraising provided with a full accounting of how much was raised, from which parts of the unions, and then followed with detailed and verified reports of just exactly which candidates were supported and what other spending was completed. These gigantic political funds are too easily converted to private slush funds in the sole control of union leaders. In such a situation the domination of the Democratic Party over the union officialdom allows for ample opportunities for union monies being applied to unproductive or even counterproductive purposes.
Sobering Reality Today
The once deep wells of progressive and sometimes leftwing political principles, practices, and beliefs among layers of the union leadership and membership have largely dried up, or been deliberately drained. This spreading political desert covering the unions is largely ignored until election time, when Democrats come out of the woodwork looking for money, volunteers, and huge numbers of votes from the embattled union garrisons. The unions frequently deliver all this dutifully, receiving at best an uneven and sporadic “return” for their immense efforts and expense. Vast opportunities exist to mobilize the membership with authentic campaigns of worthwhile political education, but are instead supplanted by hollow, low calorie political sloganeering and mindless cheerleading for Democrats regardless of their quality.
Political Action or Playing Politics?
Legendary founding UE leader James Matles — UE, The Union for Everyone | Members Run This Union — commented in the late 1960’s to a UE Convention delegate who had asked him “What’s wrong with labor’s political action?” Matles calmly observed that when the UE was founded, in its early years, the general labor movement leadership viewed political action as a negotiation with the politicians, with exact commitments being won as the price of the unions support. The political goal was to win tangible gains for union members broadly, as well as for the working class as a whole. He said, “When we conducted our political work back then you could see air between the bellies of the union leaders and the politicians.” But later, as the union movement grew, became wealthy, became infected with reactionary employer principles, and eventually was split by corporate and business union forces, Matles observed that “Today there’s no air anymore. You can’t see through. Their bellies are touching, and they are no longer engaging in political action, they are playing politics. That’s what they are doing today, they are playing politics.” A return to principled left trade union political action is in order, and only such a return can arrest the political decline that has delivered our labor movement to the brink of ruin.
Two years ago, workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, represented by five different unions, walked off the job on strike. The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh has been in negotiations for a contract with Post Gazette management for SEVEN years—since 2017—and have battled bad-faith bargaining, illegal and unilaterally imposed changes to working conditions, and loss of vacation time and insurance benefits. As of Oct. 18, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike has officially entered its third year, despite the National Labor Relations Board ruling that management has flagrantly broken federal labor law and committed multiple Unfair Labor Practice charges. We speak with a panel of striking workers about how they are faring after two long years on strike and what it will take to secure a victory and return to work.
Panelists include:
Rick Nowlin, news assistant, editorial writer, and PG archivist
Bob Batz Jr., veteran editor, writer, photographer, and Interim Editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress (PUP)
Steve Mellon, veteran photographer and writer, and regular PUP contributor
John Santa, copy editor, page designer, and sports writer for the PUP
Natalie Duleba, page designer, copy editor, web editor, and award-winning PUP contributor
Featured Music: Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song
Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Rick Nowlin:
My name is Rick Nowlin, my title with the Post News Assistant. I work in new archives. I’ve been an editorial writer and I was also the jazz writer for 20 years.
Steve Mellon:
I’m Steve Mellon. I’m a photographer and writer at the Post Gazette. I’ve been at the newspaper since 1997. I write for the Pup pretty extensively. As a matter of fact, I’m often torturing Bob. He’s the editor of The Pup and Karen Carlin. I’m often torturing them with stories at 11 o’clock and I take every opportunity, actually, I’ve sent Bob’s stories to two o’clock in the morning, three o’clock in the morning, and I always take every opportunity to profusely apologize for being a night owl.
Natalie Duleba:
I’m Natalie Duleba. I started working at the Post Gazette early 2020. I’m a page designer and copy editor and a web editor there. My participation at the Union progress has been sporadic, but one of my articles did win a Golden Quill Award, so not a lot, but when I do, it’s a good one.
Bob Batz Jr.:
Hi, Mel. I’m Bob Batz Jr. I’m a 30 year editor and writer and photographer at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and I got tapped to be the interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress, which is our electronic strike paper.
John Santa:
My name’s John Santa. I’m a copy editor and page designer at the Post Gazette. I’ve only been there about a year, but I’ve been at various publications for about 20 years in the business now, so yeah. Oh, at Pop, most importantly, which I tell people that’s probably going to end up being the thing I’m most proud of in my entire career. But at Pop, I’m a sports writer and like Steve, I am very prone to sending in sports stories from late games at two, three in the morning and probably frustrating Rick Davis, our sports editor to No End. So thank you, Mel. Happy to be here.
Mel Buer:
I’m so glad everyone’s here. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Working People. I’m your host Mel Buer. Working People is a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today, brought to you in partnership within these Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like You Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast network. If you love what we do and are looking for more worker and labor focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network and please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, friends and family members. Leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you have recommendations for working folks you’d like us to talk to, and please support the work we do with The Real News by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world.
So we’re coming up on a pretty mind-blowing anniversary in the news labor world. Two years ago in October, 2022, after the newspaper unilaterally cut off insurance benefits to production workers and newsroom workers filed ULPs for bad faith bargaining. The workers of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette walked off the job on strike. The newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh has been in negotiations for a contract with the Post Gazette management for seven years since 2017, and have battled bad faith, bargaining, illegal and unilaterally imposed changes to working conditions and loss of vacation time and insurance benefits. In October, 2022, newsroom workers voted to go on strike and strike. They did. Now, two years later, the workers of the Post Gazette are still on strike, and despite the NLRB upholding their unfair labor practice charges against the company, they still have a long way to go to total victory. Today we’ve brought some of the striking workers onto the show to talk about the last two years of the strike, the welcome updates from the NLRB and what’s next for the workers as their battle continues. Before we begin, a small editorial note for me, just as a disclaimer, I am also a dues paying member of the News Guild, CWA local 3 2 0 3 5, and the folks we have on today are my union siblings from the Pittsburgh Local. Now that that’s out of the way, welcome to the show friends. Thank you for
Natalie Duleba:
Having us. Hi, thanks for having us. Thanks
John Santa:
Now. Thank you. Happy to be here.
Mel Buer:
All right, so to start off our conversation, I think it might be prudent to give our listeners an update about the current state of things at this point in the strike. Bob, can you explain the recent NLRB decision from August and what that has meant for the strike and for negotiations?
Bob Batz Jr.:
Well, we won our case, Mel, you wouldn’t know it to look at us or talk to us, but we won our case. The NLRB board upheld the its administrative law judge decision from January, 2023. These dates are mind blowing to say them even though we’ve led them. So the board said, yeah, our judge was right. The company’s been breaking federal law in lots of different ways, and we want to expand the remedy. We want them to pay more for breaking the law. The problem is, and this is the crux of the problem with our strike, a crux of our strike, the NLRB has no enforcement power, and so the board said we won, and then we were all sitting there like I wanted to break out pots and pans and whiskey shots, and we couldn’t do that because we were still on strike and we were still on strike a month later, more or less. So what we’re waiting for and our siblings in the other CWA unions and in the Pressman’s Union, we are counting on relief from the federal courts through injunctive processes that we don’t fully see what’s going on because it’s this federal agency doing stuff on our behalf. And as we sit here coming up on our actual two year anniversary of US walking, we’re waiting for that relief to come from the courts.
Mel Buer:
John, if you want to just give me a little, what’s your impression here? This is a common sort of complaint that a lot of folks have about the NLRB is an agency really is that a lot of folks will see these sort of victories with their ULPs being upheld with various sort of small sea consequences being meted out to these corporations and these management teams that are breaking labor law and creating untenable working conditions for their workers. But oftentimes it really does amount to a slap on the wrist, or if the corporation is big enough, the fines don’t do anything. It’s a drop in the bucket for their daily profit, not to say they’re even the millions of dollars that they make year over year. So you have this NLRB victory and you’re still waiting for these sort of consequences to push the management back to the bargaining table to get them to, I don’t know, show shred of humanity for their working employees. How does that make you feel?
John Santa:
Yeah, it’s obviously incredibly frustrating. I mean, we face ownership or my bosses if you want to call them that publishers in the case of our paper that are unreasonable and even aside from being unreasonable, they’re oftentimes just completely unattached to reality of the situation that they’re dealing with here. And it’s obviously frustrating. You then think about how underfunded the NLRB is, and you see how difficult it is for these decisions to have any real teeth. I mean, I think the number, something like 30%, 27% of union election petitions are up there have been 27% more union election petitions over the past year. That’s just way too much for the NLRB to have to deal with in its current state. I mean, I would have to look at the numbers exactly, but I think it’s like $20 million that the NLRB is underfunded by. I mean, until there’s real change in that regard, it’s hard to believe that there’s ever going to be any meaningful kind of fix for us. So we’re hoping that we can get more support in every way, and especially from politicians and local leaders locally and nationally that could really affect change with the NLRB.
Steve Mellon:
Mel, if I can cut in here real quick.
Mel Buer:
Absolutely.
Steve Mellon:
Our case is a perfect example. We have ruling after ruling that states unequivocally that the Post Gazette has violated federal labor law. There’s no question about the rulings in this and about what the facts of the case are, and yet here we are two years out still on strike. This is the state of labor law in the United States right now. They have money, we don’t, and they have the power of appeals. They have these high price law firms, union busting law firms that can come in and just try to grind us down. I’m amazed that I sit in these morning meetings that we have, and I look around at the number of people like John and Natalie and Bob and Rick who are still with us, who are still fighting these fights. And that’s the one thing that gives me hope is that despite the odds that are against us here, the processes, the underfunding of the NLRB, despite those processes that we are still standing, we’re still here talking to you, we’re still a unified group, we’re still on strike.
It’s not easy after two years, we have to check in on each other on a regular basis. We have these discussions about how you’re doing not just financially, but two years without work, without that work identity, without those morning check-ins that you do around the coffee machine. These are, it’s tough. I never thought 40 plus years in this business that I would be on strike in the two minute warning of my career. I’m 65 years old that I would be doing this, but I can tell you that despite all that, I’m so proud to be look and see Natalie and John and Bob and Rick and all those other faces in the morning meetings and know that we’re still in this fight.
Mel Buer:
I think that’s a good sort of segue into my next question. Rick, you’ve been on strike for the last two years, and I really want to just ask how have folks fared in the last two years? How are you feeling now that you’re coming up on this official anniversary, two year anniversary of walking off the job? What’s the state of the strike fund? How are folks staying positive on the picket line? What’s your sense of that?
Rick Nowlin:
Well, I think with my situation, it is a little bit hairy because I got married about four years ago and my wife and I bought a house three years ago, and then the strike came even though I thought it was the right thing to do to take a stand, she was obviously quite concerned to say the least. So how are we going to make it, as I said, the process shake out and a big part of the issue that we’re working on is healthcare because I said healthcare being our healthcare being effectively canceled and replaced with another plan, which was way more expensive. One thing that has definitely been the case, in my case with the union picking up healthcare costs because a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and you can imagine how expensive that might be it one going to not just hospitals, but also specialists, but because of that, if there’s a time to be on strike is your time to get prostate cancer, this will be the time to do it. And my wife, we’re very thankful for, if anything, that’s the time it happened. As far as that’s concerned, our income has been cut, but also because unions have been picking up many of our expenses, our expensive has also been cut out. So we’re thankful for that. And on a side note, to keep me from going stir crazy, many of these people know that I’m also a musician and my number of gigs that I’ve had have gone up prescriptions over the last year and a half as well. So in one sense it’s been for me personally, dialysis get to spend a lot of time with my wife that we wouldn’t have otherwise. But we’ve been able to weather the storm quite well because she has some investments that she’s made over the years. And as I said from the beginning, my being on Striker, I’m almost as old as Steve. I’m 63 and my being on strike is being a sympathy with my colleagues here because I’ve always felt that given the situation, as he’s mentioned in labor law that was being violated, that it does affect me in one sense, but I’m here for them. I just suppose it’s the right thing to do for me to go out with them because if they’re being screwed eventually it means that all my gut screwed as well. So it’s one of the things that we’re all in this together. That’s how I look at it.
Mel Buer:
That’s a very good point to make. And I really hope that your cancer fight is successful and that you do get the rest that you need to be able to heal from that.
Rick Nowlin:
And I want to say it was caught early enough, so we haven’t had any, I really haven’t had any treatments. I do know I have another biopsy in December, but the thing about it’s, we caught it early enough so that I really haven’t needed anything. The only thing we’ve been doing is just monitoring it. But once again, if I was still active, who knows how much we would’ve paid all these specialists there. And that’s part of the reason why, as I said, being on strike is, at least for me at this point, turned out to be a blessing.
Mel Buer:
Funny how that works. Right. Natalie, I did want to ask you a question.
Natalie Duleba:
Sure.
Mel Buer:
I know, and this is one of the, I think this is the hard question, I suppose. I know that some workers have crossed the picket line and gone back to work. I had a memorable and frankly heated exchange on Twitter with one of those scab workers back in 2023, and still others have been hired on in scab positions in the intervening two years. How have you as a group, as a union handled these strike breakers? Has it hardened resolve among the strikers, people pissed off, I imagine So unfortunately in this US labor movement management will do this every time there is a strike and it is a reality of it, of walking off the job. So how have folks at the Guild taken that in and yeah, what’s your thoughts about that?
Natalie Duleba:
So I remember that Twitter exchange quite a lot because that was a former striker who had gone back to work across the picket line was, I dunno, for lack of a better word, trying to get clout for supporting the SAG and WGA strikers and talking about, oh, well I’ll look at all this stuff that they had learned and it was just so hypocritical, but that’s not an attitude that is outside of the norm, that kind of hypocrisy that you see from scabs. And I actually lived with a striker, they lived in my house and they took a job at the Post Gazette outside of the bargaining unit, which just in the general of taking a position at the Post Gazette out of literally everything that they could have taken a job for. They’re a very talented writer, young and willing to work hard, and they decided to take an editorial position at the paper during the strike.
And it was a super personal betrayal. And that’s what I really think about a lot of people who have continued to work or who went back to work or even took the job. And it’s like, obviously I’m familiar with the kind of tough job market it is out there for journalists. I’ve moved across the country, this is my third cross country move to Pittsburgh chasing a job, better pay, et cetera. But especially people who live here and have an established reputation in Pittsburgh, they can get jobs probably almost anywhere else that needs a person who can put together a fun couple of sentences and knows how to talk to people.
And it’s just kind of mind boggling. I’m lucky that I really haven’t had any out in the wild encounters with scabs besides my former roommate. That was really tough. They did move out. They told me they took a job with post the day that they moved out. So it was definitely a shock, but I didn’t have to live with them after that. And the times that I have has just been in professional settings and we’re professional, so if we’re working, we’re going to be polite. And I know that sometimes if we have the mental capacity for it, we have the emotional bandwidth for it. We do try to say like, Hey, why did you take this job? Because a lot of people who have taken, well, a good portion of the people have taken jobs we’re freelancers already for the Post Gazette are known within the writing and photography communities here.
And it really felt, it feels like they saw an opportunity to, it was very self-interested to just slide in when the strike is on. When up until that point, they hadn’t been able to be hired during a non-strike situation where great photojournalist like Steve Mellon or Pan Pancheck are on strike and it feels very just self-centered, which is really the core of it. And I know that there’s a lot of, this is hard to say fortunate, but I started working right before the pandemic started, so I only had a couple weeks in the office and I was the nighttime worker, so I didn’t actually know a lot of people. I don’t think I had met Steve Mellon in person until that first day on the picket line. He had just been a name on a screen for me for two years. But we have strikers whose working relationships, friendships of decades are now broken and that’s not something that can be forgotten.
And it’s also something that if it’s ever to be, I don’t even know if forgiveness is like an option for folks. I’m not going to talk for anyone else, but that’s forgiveness, that has to be earned by the people who’ve continued to work and it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of indication that they want to do that because of the way that they don’t engage with us in good faith. At the beginning of the strike, we made a lot of bids. We called people regularly to hear their stances and I think we all remember just how emotionally draining that was. And some of this is just protecting our own mental health and our own emotional wellbeing to not engage with Strike Bakers or people who scabs who never came out. And I think that’s fine. I agree with that because it is so hard to parse those really intense interpersonal issues and it is going to be a huge uphill battle uphill negotiation when we’re back in the newsroom because I think that unfortunately it’s going to be us who has to be the bigger person when we’re 100% like the wrong party. Here we’re the people who some of us begged scabs to come out, begged them to not go back in and especially who came back in knowing the resources that we had already offered them that they just kind of spat on. And that’s going to be a really hard thing to work alongside knowing that they’re literally that they put their paychecks over supporting us and supporting themselves.
Steve Mellon:
That’s very well put, Natalie, and I appreciate hearing that. I’ve been around for a minute and some of these relationships that I have with some of the scab workers, I mean those go back decades. I’ve watched some of these people’s kids grow up and so it’s like a deeply personal betrayal in some sense. And I don’t know what those relationships are going to look like going forward once the strike is over. I don’t know. That’s just territory that we will have to navigate. I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about that right now. It’s pretty easy for me. I bumped into one of the new scab hires a couple of weeks ago at an assignment and for somebody like that, I didn’t know who he was. He came up and introduced me and I just told him, look, dude, I’m not having a conversation with you right now.
That’s pretty easy for me to do. I don’t know this person and I, he’s a human being, so I care about him on that level, but I’m not going to waste any brain cells on it. But some of these other relationships striking, you have a binary choice. You can either stand with your workers or you can stand with your employer. In our case, an employer that has been violating labor law. So if I break the law, if I go down and steal a toothbrush from the target store, my ass is going to end up in the back of a cop car and I’m going to go to jail. But if you’ve got money and you own a company, you can violate labor law. Go live at your main mansion, fly your airplane around, flash your fancy watch to your good buddies in New York City and live your happy life. So this whole thing with scabs, I used to, when we first started, I was calling some people who had crossed the picket line just to keep the lines of communication. I thought this would last three or four weeks. I didn’t know it was going to last for two years.
One of the issues I had is that I would call and just say, Hey, how are you doing? I’m just checking in and seeing how you’re doing. We can really use you out here on the line. And those weren’t successful conversations. Quite often it would be a litany of complaints about the union and about how I was hurting them, how I was making their job so much harder. And to your point, Natalie, I couldn’t have those conversations anymore because I was talking to strikers who were really struggling. That initial shock of going out on strike, I mean it’s hard to describe, to put into words what kind of a jolt that is to your life. It affects not only your paycheck but your sense of identity. There’s so many unknowns, like Rick said, so many unknowns, things you have to work through. And we were dealing with all that and then I would call people who were very comfortable in there getting a paycheck, very little in their lives had changed. The only thing that really had changed is that they might have somebody saying, Hey, isn’t there a strike going on there? Did you cross the picket line? Maybe somebody would call them a scab and they would become deeply offended. I just quite honestly didn’t have patience for that, so I stopped making those phone calls.
Mel Buer:
I think that’s a good point there Steve and John, I’d love to get your thoughts on this as well. I going out on strike, I think a lot of folks, particularly younger folks ostensibly on the left, these activists and organizers who maybe don’t have the benefit of union experience will get very excited when strikes happen understandably, because this is a monumental collective sort of action that happens where workers come together and say, we’re doing the thing that is going to have the most impact and that’s withholding our labor in service of better working conditions in our workplace. It’s a very uniquely empowering experience, but it is also a very difficult decision to make and I think it’s important to draw attention to that. And I wonder what your thoughts are, John, about what it means to go out on strike and also to maintain withholding your labor for two years. Incredible.
John Santa:
Yeah. Sincerely, there is not an aspect of my life that hasn’t been affected by this strike. I’ve friendships, family, money, struggles. I think it was Steve said, you lose your identity from a career that you’re very passionate about. I mean, let’s face it, no one gets into journalism to get rich. You do it because you believe in it. You believe in making an impact on your community. It’s hard. There’s no doubt about it that it’s hard. In terms of my personal story with going out on strike, I come from the very stereotypical Pittsburgh background. Like my dad lost his job at the mill in at the Westinghouse mill in the eighties when it closed. I come from grandfathers on both sides that were union workers. I have a grandfather that was a laborer. I have a grandfather that worked in a union rail yard. He did maintenance on the locomotives for years. So it was never a question I was coming out. And then you look at people like Bob Bats and Steve and Rick and Nolan and Natalie and Ed Bz mean I could name everyone that we’re on strike with and you know that these people are all on the right side of history and you want to be with them. I want to forever have my name mentioned with I stood shoulder to shoulder with Steve Mellon. I mean, I can’t imagine it being any other way. So there’s that, and you look at the people that are scabs and I think a lot of the scabs that are most responsible for keeping this going, I mean obviously the reason that the strike is still ongoing is because the Bloc family is unwilling to end this strike. They can do this, they could have done this at any point. They won’t do it. They want to make a point here and we’re not going to let that happen. If you look at some of our scabs, our worst scab offenders if you will, it’s the sports department. It’s guys like Jerry Lac who are cornerstone parts of this newspaper. They walk into that Steeler locker room, which Jerry walks in there to a Steeler locker room that is unionized by the way, and talks to these guys and makes it seem to the public, as I’m wearing my Steeler hat, makes it seem to the public that it’s business as usual.
It’s not, and it’s just whenever at the end of the day you get down to it, whose side do you want to be on? Want to be on the side of the owners of this newspaper who have time and time again for seven years, as you referenced at the top of the podcast, broken federal labor law. That’s not the type of person I want to be with. I want to be with Bob Batz, the interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress. It’s an honor to stand with Bob Batz, an honor to stand with Natalie. And that’s what keeps me going because like I said, there’s no part of this that’s been easy. It’s been hard every day, every minute, every hour that we’ve been out on strike. And it’s that going back and forth between being, man, I’m fucking struggling and man, this is a fucking honor. I’m sorry for cursing. I don’t know if that’s allowed, but
Mel Buer:
Totally fine.
John Santa:
That’s just, that’s the truth of the matter, and that’s the way I feel.
Mel Buer:
That’s the power of solidarity. There’s nothing quite like it, frankly.
Rick Nowlin:
Yeah, and I want to take off on that too because as I’ve met, this is not my first strike. I was with Giant Eagle, which is the region’s largest grocery chain in 1991. As we went out for contract reasons, and I also do have some of the labor background, my mother was a teacher mostly in Wilkinsburg schools. That’s where she spent her career. And when we went out, we contemplated going out. I asked her for her advice, she gave me one piece. She said, don’t cross picket line, and that’s all I need to hear because frankly, I saw the proposals that the company was offering us back then, and my first reaction is they’re not going to accept this and they didn’t. So we went on for six weeks. One thing that helped us, I will say is that the customer’s boycotting. So yeah, this is not my first go around with stripes, but I do believe, and John mentioned to you is that we’re doing the right thing. Standing up for what I believe is justice. We’ve been doing it for two years is hard, but if when we go back to the newsroom, and I’ve said this in our Zoom meetings a number of times, we’re going to own it because we’ll be going to be tough. We’re going to be tried and tested once we go back in the newsroom. I can’t say how, of course, when is it going to happen, but we’re going to be the leaders in the newsroom when we go back because we’ve been through the ringer, we’ve been through the fire, we know what it’s like. We’ve been through the struggle. And the struggle is what makes us who we are.
Mel Buer:
Well said, well said. I think a lot about despite maybe because of these betrayals by these strike breakers, when you get back into the newsroom after victory, I think it’ll be maybe gratifying to know that this victory was one for them as well, despite their, I dunno how to put this nicely, inability to maintain their own piece of the picket line. They will still benefit, right? And I think that in itself is also a really good piece to kind of keep in the back of your mind as you’re out there on the picket line. It sucks that they’re not there, but you’re still fighting for them too and hopefully they appreciate that when they see the benefits that end up in their contract when you are finished negotiating this round,
Rick Nowlin:
And that’s the attack that many of us who have actually spoken with the strike breakers to Theca have gone back in, have been trying to come across. We’re not doing this simply for us. You’re going to benefit from us too.
Mel Buer:
Right? A hundred percent. Bob, I’d like to take a little bit of a sideways jump here. We’ve talked a little bit about the Pittsburgh Union progress, the strike paper that you’ve put together collectively since you’ve walked out in the last two years. I really personally would like to say that I think it’s one of the best strike papers in labor’s recent history. There is a long and storied history of American strike papers and what those do, it’s not just strike papers written by Newspapermen who’ve gone out. These are ways to communicate among striking workers, particularly for long haul strikes. And at some point, hopefully I’ll be able to do a couple part episode with working people about the history of strike papers because it is so cool and it’s like it hits the right nerd space in my brain about it. But I really want to, I’m going to start with you Bob, but I would also like to open this up to anyone else who has thoughts. What has it been like contributing to this paper the last two years? What are some of the things that you’ve learned in the course of publishing it? Has it changed the way you think about journalism? And I know that in terms of solidarity, there have been individuals in the community both in positions of power and just community members who have chosen to speak only to PUP and not speak to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. And so I want to get your thoughts about that. A lot of questions there, but pick and choose what you’d like.
Bob Batz Jr.:
All right, and I’ll be quick and I can turn it over to these guys. They’re all part of this too. I mean, we went on strike on October 18th and we had our first edition of Pup published on October 20th. We were the first strike paper of the digital age, whatever the hell that means. But we didn’t have to worry about printing it and sending it out, and we knew we were going to withhold our labor, but we didn’t want to withhold what we do because we still wanted to do what we do. It mattered to us. We wanted to write about things that mattered to us. We wanted to write about things that our community cared about, so that’s separate from the labor issue with our bad bosses. And so that’s what we did. And we never tried to be a replacement for the Post Gazette, the big daily metro.
We didn’t have the bodies for that even at the start. As Steve said, there’s a lot to unpack the first weeks and months of being on strike where you don’t know where your healthcare is going to come from and you don’t know there’s a lot of other work to be done, but we got off to a good strong start and we’ve never looked back. And I think I would say, and this Steve and I have deep talks about this all the time. We have from the beginning set out to do just journalism. That’s what we did when we got paid for it, and that’s what we do for free and it’s straight up the kind of stuff we do could run in any good journalistic publication, but we have found our sweet spot reaching out to communities that are overlooked or other people that are struggling.
We sort of have a new empathy certainly for labor issues, and our strike has coincided with a lot of other people going through these struggles as well. So we found sort of a new mission in reaching out to some of these other communities and individuals and neighborhoods and movements. And one of Steve’s stories is one of the things that I think we’re all proudest of is his ongoing coverage of East Palestinian, Ohio and after the trendy realm there. And that’s something that’s what we want to do. That’s the pure stuff that we do. We do all kinds of other stuff. Natalie had a great story about L-G-B-T-Q bar in a neighborhood that doesn’t get a lot of coverage. Sometime Johnny Santa goes out on Friday night to football games with other grandkids and great grandkids with mill workers. That’s what we do and those are things that are all important to us.
So I don’t know what to say. I’m happy for it to go out of business in a lot of ways because these people, Johnny San is going to work all Friday night and he’s going to work all day Saturday on college football and he doesn’t get paid. The Honor is mine to a work with him and with Steve and to do this work because that’s always mattered to me, but we want to get paid for doing this, so that’s the part that we have to finish up and get back to getting a paycheck is nice. A last word on being an unpaid journalist, though I keep saying this, it’s like journalism drugs. You’re not beholden to a boss, you’re not beholden to a company, you’re not beholden to a founder or a foundation. It’s just not something that you can do for two years when you’re not getting paid. So I hope we can keep doing what we do maybe with a little bit of strike flavor on it, but I would like to get paid for it as well and get benefits.
Mel Buer:
I will say before I pass it along, I worked as sort of part-time independent. I say I was in grad school at the time, but I was also working as an independent journalist and not getting paid for it because working as a freelancer is a godawful profession and I never want to do it again. And I commend to the people who sell their stories and their photos piecemeal and try to strong arm these publications into paying them a decent rate. I was not very good at it, but I will say that didn’t stop me from doing the work. There’s something unique about having some skills that maybe other folks in the community don’t have access to, and being able to tell a cogent story about a beautiful thing that’s happening to the humans around you and to have them trust you with that is extremely, it’s a privilege and I think about it a lot in the context of the strike paper and of strike papers in general.
It is a labor of love. No one’s getting paid for it, especially not in the digital era where you can pay five bucks to host a website for three months or what have you. And I think it’s an important thing to kind of point out is that you’re doing this voluntarily because you have the skills and you care about the community that you’re covering, and that translates as well to the work that you do at the Post Gazette when you’re getting paid for it. It’s the same thoughts, it’s just nice to have a paycheck and I will be the first to tell you that I really do appreciate being a union journalist and having a contract that guarantees a living wage. It’s very, very nice and I hope that you can get back to that soon. I will pass it along. I just wanted to offer my thoughts about it. Natalie, you were about to speak.
Natalie Duleba:
Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to toot my small little popcorn horn here because Steve and John and Bob have contributed infinitely more than I have, but Bob saying that it’s kind of like we get to decide what we cover and the stuff that I have done has been just things that I thought were cool. I did the Polar plunge into one of our rivers here on New Year’s Day, two years in a row. I’m hoping it’s not going to be three for the Pup, but that was something that I saw and I wanted to do, and I was like, Hey, is it okay? I’m not even sure if I told Bob beforehand that I was going to write about it. I was just like, Hey, I did this thing. Here’s photos and a story. And I talk to people and I’m sure that we all know that New Year’s Day is sometimes a slower Newsday.
Maybe there was some gratitude there to have something to run, or the story that I wrote about, it’s a they bar instead of a gay or a lesbian bar. I just thought it was a cool place and I told Bob I was working on a secret story, I would get it to him and he was like, cool, just turn it in. And knowing that we’re shaping it ourselves, I know that it’ll be an adjustment to have to listen to these managers and editors that haven’t advocated for us at all or in any meaningful way. I think that one of our strikers was in contact with a quote manager who doesn’t manage anybody, and that will have to go back to working with them and listening to their directives and that’ll be an adjustment, but we all know now what it can really feel like when it’s a truly collaborative, supportive environment that is journalists driven and story driven, not just, oh, we have to hit these bases. We have to talk about this because it’s important to Pittsburgh, which is, I guess it’s kind of that weird determination of the paper determining what’s important to Pittsburgh instead of Pittsburgh community determining what’s important to itself. And I think that we’ve done a really amazing job with that, with having it be community led and story led and journalist passion led instead of, I don’t know, being the record of paper. I mean the paper of record.
Steve Mellon:
That’s a good point, Natalie, and one of the things that’s been interesting to me to write for the strike paper is that it’s not only unburdening ourselves from the institution of the Post Gazette and all the being supported by a big newspaper has the advantages of you have resources and you have a built-in readership. It also comes with some weight, and that’s not always beneficial to your work as a journalist. I remember in 2020 during the George Floyd protest, the publishers, the editors of the paper made some really stupid decisions and you can Google that and figure that for yourself, but what that did is that it signaled to the community where the newspaper stood on these issues, and I was going out to cover some of these protests a number of times and people, I’ve covered these communities for years and people that I know were coming up to me and saying, Steve, we don’t want you here.
And I’d say, look where I’m coming from. You know how I write and how I cover these things. And I was told, it doesn’t matter. You’re working for the man. And those same people, those same people now are calling me. I think they recognize and appreciate that we have taken that have made a sacrifice to help not just ourselves, but for our colleagues and for the community that Pittsburgh will not benefit from a newspaper that treats its workers like shit and becomes a piece of garbage that’s not a benefit to the community and people, we tell people that they understand that and I think they appreciate that. The conversations I have with people are different now because I think they’re more trusting from the communities that I’m interested in covering. I like Bob says, I spent a lot of time in East Palestine and I was treated there the first several weeks I was up there to write to cover things.
I was treated as every other journalist. There were a certain number of journalists up there. I think once people, I didn’t talk about who I was or why I was up there. I was just Steve Mellon from the Pittsburgh Union Progress, and once people figure out that this was part of a strike effort, that we weren’t getting paid for it, that we were publishing the strike paper because we realized that there were stories that needed to be told that weren’t being told or that were being told from a corporate standpoint, they were being shaped by editors who sent maybe naive reporters who hadn’t spent enough time in the community to kind of figure out what was what, and that there was a realization that we were in this for the right purpose. I don’t want to sound self-righteous here, but I’m going to claim that mantle because you go on strike and you don’t like the paycheck and you do these stories, you work your ass off to cover these things, you put up a bunch of shit.
It’s because we believe in this and we have a lot of people who have taken the strike pledge. One thing I want to mention is that we’ve all stuck together and there’s a lot of solidarity in our group and people have spoke very ELO about that today, but we’ve also had a lot of support out in the community, and it’s the people that we’ve talked to that supported us that have come to us with stories. I never come up with a story idea anymore. We have so many story ideas coming into us that we don’t have time to fit around and think about what’s a good story. But we’ve had support too from, and everybody here, but maybe you, Mel, will recognize the name of Ali Batt and she is a member. She works for the United Steelworkers, but she has helped us raise money. They’re always out helping message us. This is a labor town, and we’ve been able to do this for two years because we’ve had each other to lean on, but we’ve also had members of this community that have stepped up to us when we’ve really needed it and backed us both financially and with just providing good vibes to us.
John Santa:
Yeah, I should say with the pop specifically, it’s sort of like a buzzword these days, but local journalism really gets thrown around a lot. Pop is living proof that local journalism really matters and how important it is not just tooting Steve Mellon’s horn because I’m in awe of him and he’s sitting in front of me. There’s no better coverage of East Palestine, not the New York Times, not the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It’s the best there is. I mean, Google it and look, it’s astounding. I mean, Natalie was being gracious, but her story about Harold’s Haunt, I mean, that’s vital to our community. That’s a safe space. That’s a fun place for people. These are important stories that we’re not going to get to read otherwise wise.
Being a member of the sports team at the put, we are very intentional every day about telling local stories. It’s not about what the Steelers are doing. The scab column this at the Post Gazette, Jason Mackey can go off and have fun covering the pirates and sealers, and we really know that that’s what he’s about. It’s about the experience for him, not about the experience for the readers. Bob Bats instills that in us every day, how critical that is. We follow that example. That’s really the feedback I hear most about the Pup is this is truly, you truly are focused on what’s happening locally, and I think that’s the greatest Laura we can get from this. I mean, we care about this community. We love this community. We are this community. We’re not taking advantage of it, and that’s what makes me really proud. Seriously, go look at Steve’s Z policy and coverage. It is astounding.
Mel Buer:
Rick, did you have any thoughts about the union progress and about being a part of this incredible strike paper?
Rick Nowlin:
Well, I have not written for at all. So because
Bob Batz Jr.:
Yeah, Rick, I wanted to talk to you about that. I’ll catch you after this podcast.
Mel Buer:
There you go. Get a chance to kind of join in and enjoy the progress. As a sort of final thought before we head into this last question about what our audience, my audience can do to help support the strike is I’m in awe of the work that you do every day, and I feel very proud to be a member of the same union that is keeping the strike going. And I just want to say that in terms of the strike paper, it really is an example of what happens when community members come together to collectively create something important and impactful for the community that you live in. And it says a lot about the future of journalism that this is the kind of space where folks can really feel like they’re actually connecting to the community. And hopefully you can bring that collaborative spirit back into the newsroom when you’re done with the strike and maybe cajole a couple more editors into taking stories that actually people actually give a shit about. And hopefully that will also mean that these community members who maybe have a soured relationship with the post cassette can maybe rebuild some trust with these individuals who did such a good job with Union Progress with Pup, when this is all said and done and over, that would be the hope, right? That’s the optimistic sort of space. Okay, so this is an open question, anyone who would like to talk about this, but what can my listeners do to help you as you head into the, oh my God, third year of your strike?
It could be financially, it could be locals or folks who live within driving distance of Pittsburgh. What are some things that folks can do to kind of keep you in mind and keep you going?
Natalie Duleba:
Well, I mean this is going to be, we do still have a Stryker fund. You can donate that if as a one-time donor or as recurring donor, that money in terms of giving money that will go one-to-one to support people. That fund helps people pay their bills. It’s not just it’s going to disappear into a PR machine or anything like that. That is money that goes into our pockets when we need it. And you can get all this at union progress.com/donate. You can also subscribe to the union progress. That’s always really great to have a lot of eyes and supporters for our work. It shows the Post Gazette that these are stories that the community wants and that people wanted to read and that they should want us back in the newsroom writing their stories. And also, if you sign the Strike Solidarity Pledge, you’ll get on the email list that anytime you have an action, you’ll get an email. All of this is kind of all going to be clustered into on the union progress.com website. There’s a whole section to donate, subscribe, sign the Strike Solidarity Pledge, which is putting your name committing to support us and not to talk to the Post Gazette. And that way you can get on our mailing list when we have rallies, if you are within driving distance or local or feel like flying into Pittsburgh. And it’s a cool town, and we’ll show you a good time if you come.
And when we have actions, we always are pretty active on our social medias, so engagement with that retweets, posting to your stories, things like that are helpful and can be done just from your phone. All of this I just said, you can all do just from your phone and just continue to support union labor in general. We’re not the only strike that is there’s probably another strike happening right now. We saw the power of the Shoreman Strike strike recently that if we could put the fear of God into the Post Gazette the way that they did to the nation, that’d be great. And even though we’ve been in for this long, we’re still so proud and in awe of every other newspaper newsroom who go out on strike. We’re happy that their strikes are so much shorter than ours, but it still takes, we know the bravery in the sacrifice it takes to walk out even for a single day. So yeah, that’s my little spiel here. Anybody else have anything?
Bob Batz Jr.:
Mel? One thing I’ll say is, and we appreciate labor journalism and more than we ever would’ve before, so we appreciate you. We are glad that you and Max and other people don’t just forget about us because there’s just something about that if you’re doing it and people don’t even know you’re on strike. But one of the things I see going forward is we need more journalism about what it means to go on strike, why you don’t cross a picket line. What is the NLRB and how does it work? How should it work? A lot of the problems that we’re dealing with are just, we know that the Post Gazette is hiring people while we’re out that don’t even know what that means. Or maybe they’re not even being told there’s a strike, but there’s a lot of just education that has to happen. And I think people like you and Max, we’re doing our part now, but we need to just continue to keep that word out there about how this stuff works and doesn’t work and how it should work.
And that might help people down the road. I don’t wish any of the scabs, well that I feel like I’m fighting right now, but it’s easier for me to look ahead to some of the young college kids that we’re working with, had interns and we have writers, and I want to have a post Gazette that works for all my colleagues and for myself working there. But what I really want is for it to be a place that a real journalist of the future could work and have, do really good work and work that really matters, and also not have to work three jobs and not have any healthcare. But I think that the kind of work that you do can help make strikes shorter and maybe not happening as often in the future. That would be my hope.
Mel Buer:
Well, that’s kind of part of the mission that I have here as a co-host working people, is to really kind of draw back the curtain on union organizing and the contemporary sort of US labor movement and what that means to be a part of a union and what that looks like from election to bargaining, to contract to strike to. So hopefully in the future there is more of that chance for us to have these conversations. And I leave the door open for you, the experts on a long haul strike to come back and talk about what it means to be on strike for as long as you have, and especially after victory. You’re going to come back on and we’re going to celebrate. It’s going to happen. And yeah. Any final thoughts before I close it out, or is this a great way to end it?
Thank you so much, all Thank you so much. So much. Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for sharing your experience and for talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly of what it means to be on strike. And as always, I want to thank you, my listeners for listening, and thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes we’ve got there for our patrons. And please go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so that you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. Once again, I’m Mel Buer and with much love and solidarity, I’ll see you next time.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 19, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Striking union members who work for the aerospace giant Boeing reached a tentative contract agreement Saturday after nearly 6 weeks on the picket line demanding better wages and benefits.
The International Association of Machinists (IAM) and Aerospace Workers District 751, which has been on strike since September 13, announced the breakthrough in a statement and Boeing also confirmed that a deal had been reached.
The tentative agreement—which will have to receive a majority from union members before finalized—includes a 35% wage increase over four years of the contract, a larger signing bonus of $7,000, guaranteed minimum payouts in a new annual bonus program, and increased contributions to worker 401(k) retirement plans.
“With the help of Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su, we have received a negotiated proposal and resolution to end the strike, and it warrants presenting to the members and is worthy of your consideration,” IAM’s negotiating committee said in a message to members on Saturday.
The union said it plans to hold a ratification vote as early as Wednesday and that a 50%+1 majority is all that’s needed to approve the deal.
“The fact the company has put forward an improved proposal is a testament to the resolve and dedication of the frontline workers who’ve been on strike—and to the strong support they have received from so many,” the machinists union said.
“Like many workers in America, IAM members at Boeing have sacrificed greatly for their employer, including during the pandemic when these workers were reporting to the factory as executives stayed at home,” they wrote. “These workers deserve to have all of those sacrifices recognized.”
Striking union members who work for the aerospace giant Boeing reached a tentative contract agreement Saturday after nearly 6 weeks on the picket line demanding better wages and benefits. The International Association of Machinists (IAM) and Aerospace Workers District 751, which has been on strike since September 13, announced the breakthrough in a statement and Boeing also confirmed that a…
Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s documentary Union is one of the best American films about the labor movement since 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath. Using cinéma vérité “you-are-there” film techniques, Union chronicles the fight to organize the JFK8 Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. Union, a Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award winner, focuses on fired Amazon worker Chris Smalls…
Eight hundred workers near Toronto have won the first Walmart warehouse union in Canada or the U.S. “Honestly I was pretty nervous at first because I didn’t want to lose my job,” said 29-year employee Rodolfo Pilozo, a member of “Team Red,” the organizing committee behind the September victory. The Walmart distribution center is in Mississauga, Ontario, an hour from the western New York…
As Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump campaigns for a second term in the White House, the former president has repeatedly promised to enact the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history. It’s a bold threat that legal experts say should be taken seriously, despite the significant technical and logistical challenges posed by deporting 11 million people from the U.S.
Even if only somewhat successful, Trump’s hard-line approach to immigration — with its laser focus on removing immigrants who live in the U.S. without permanent legal status — has the potential to uproot countless communities and families by conducting sweeping raids and placing people in detention centers.
Mass deportation would also, according to economists, labor groups, and immigration advocates, threaten the economy and disrupt the U.S. food supply chain, which is reliant on many forms of migrant labor.
The ramifications of a mass deportation operation would be “huge” given “immigrant participation in our labor force,” said Amy Liebman, chief program officer of workers, environment, and climate at the Migrant Clinicians Network, a nonprofit that advocates for health justice. Immigration is one of the reasons behind growth in the labor force, said Liebman. “And then you look at food, and farms.”
The possibility of deportation-related disruption comes at a time when the U.S. food system is already being battered by climate change. Extreme weather and climate disasters are disrupting supply chains, while longer-term warming trends are affecting agricultural productivity. Although inflation is currently cooling, higher food costs remain an issue for consumers across the country — and economists have found that even a forecast of extreme weather can cause grocery store prices to rise.
An H-2A visa immigrant farm laborer in Salinas, California, in 2020. Brent Stirton / Getty Images
A stunning half of those immigrants work in restaurants, where during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they labored in enclosed, often cramped environments at a time when poor ventilation could be deadly. Hundreds of thousands also work in farming and agriculture — where they might work in the field or sorting produce — as well as food production, in jobs like machine operation and butchery.
The agricultural sector is just one of several industries in recent years that has experienced a labor shortage, which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has classified a “crisis.” This ongoing shortage makes the Trump campaign’s proposal to force a mass exodus of people without legal status an inherently bad policy, said Liebman. “Part of me is like, ‘Oh, button your seatbelts, people, because who’s washing dishes in the restaurant, who’s freaking processing that chicken?’ Like, hello?”
The health and safety risks undocumented immigrants have undertaken to keep Americans fed — both in times of crises and during all other times — have been met with few legal and workplace protections. A bill to give undocumented essential workers a legal pathway to citizenship, introduced by Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, died in committee in 2023. Padilla told Grist he will continue working to “expand protections for these essential workers, including fighting for a legal pathway to citizenship.”
“Agricultural workers endure long hours of physically demanding work, showing up through extreme weather and even a global pandemic to keep our country fed,” he added. “They deserve to live with dignity.”
If this workforce were to be unceremoniously deported, without regard for their economic contributions to U.S. society or consideration of whether they actually pose a threat to their communities, it would be disastrous, according to Padilla.
“Donald Trump’s plans to carry out mass deportations as a part of Project 2025 are not only cruel but would also decimate our nation’s food supply and economy,” said Padilla, referring to the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for a Trump presidency. (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
Farmers, who in the U.S. rely on many forms of migrant labor (including undocumented workers and H-2A temporary visa holders), have said that a crackdown on undocumented immigrants would essentially bring business to a grinding halt. In response to federal and stateproposals to require employers to verify the legal status of their workers, the American Farm Bureau Federation has said, “Enforcement-only immigration reform would cripple agricultural production in America.” The Farm Bureau, an advocacy group for farmers, declined to comment on Trump’s mass deportation proposal, but a questionnaire the group gave to both presidential candidates states, “Farm work is challenging, often seasonal and transitory, and with fewer and fewer Americans growing up on the farm, it’s increasingly difficult to find American workers attracted to these kinds of jobs.”
Small farmers agree. A first-generation Mexican-American immigrant who works in Illinois as an urban farmer, David Toledo says that the consequences of mass deportation for the country’s food system would be hard to imagine, especially since he believes that “many Americans don’t want to take the jobs” that many undocumented workers currently fill for very low pay.
“We need people who want to work in fields and in farmlands. [Farmworkers] are waking up way before the sun because of rising temperatures, and living in horrible conditions,” said Toledo. He added that the U.S. should remember “that we are a welcoming community and society. We have to be, because we are going to see a lot more people shifting [here] from countries all over the world because of climate change.”
Mexican migrant workers on a Colorado farm in 2011 load boxes of organic cilantro onto a truck.
Getty Images North America
Stephen Miller, the advisor who shaped Trump’s hard-line immigration policy, has touted mass deportations as a labor market intervention that will boost wages for American-born workers. But analysts point out that previous programs aimed at restricting the flow of immigrant workers have failed to raise wages for native-born citizens. For example, when the U.S. in 1965 ended the Bracero Program, which allowed half a million Mexican-American seasonal workers to labor in the U.S., wages for domestic farmworkers did not increase, according to analysis from the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Additionally, a recent analysis found that a Bush- and Obama-era deportation program known as Secure Communities — which removed nearly half a million undocumented immigrants from the U.S. — resulted in both fewer jobs and lower wages from domestic workers. One reason is that when undocumented immigrants were deported, many middle managers who worked with them also lost their jobs.
Such a shock to the agricultural labor force could result in higher food prices, too. If farmers lose a large portion of their workforce due to mass deportation, they may not have enough people to harvest, grade, and sort crops before they spoil. That sort of reduction in the supply of food could drive up prices at the grocery store.
Many experts note that even attempting to deport millions of immigrants would disrupt the nation’s economy as a whole. “It will not benefit our economy to lose millions of workers,” said Debu Gandhi, senior director of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “There is no economic rationale for it.”
For instance, mass deportation would deprive governments of essential tax revenue. A report from the American Immigration Council found that a majority of undocumented immigrants — or three-fourths — participated in the workforce in 2022. This tracks with other analysts’ understandings of the undocumented workforce. “Undocumented immigrants, when they get to the United States of America, they have an intention to work, to make money and contribute not only to their families, but also to the federal, state, and local government,” said Marco Guzman, a senior policy analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. A recent report co-authored by Guzman found that undocumented immigrants paid a whopping $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022.
Moreover, advocacy groups worry about the impact mass deportation would have on families. “What does this look like on the ground?” said Liebman, who wondered who would be tasked with enforcing mass deportation, and whether it would require local law enforcement agencies to carry out raids in their own neighborhoods and communities. She noted that the bulk of migrant families across the country are “mixed status” — meaning that some members of a household have documentation while others don’t. “Are we going to go into people’s houses and rip families apart?”
Immigration is the purview of the federal government, and for decades, elected leaders across the political spectrum have failed to pass policies to fix America’s strained immigration system. “It has been very hard to find solutions on immigration reform,” said Gandhi. “And we do have bipartisan solutions on the table. But we just have not been able to get them through.”
Immigrants apprehended on farmland near the U.S.-Mexico border sit while detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents. Mario Tama / Getty Images
In the absence of other policy solutions — such as addressing the root causes of migration to the U.S. from other countries, including climate change — all-or-nothing imperatives to “close the border” have become popular among conservatives. In fact, a Scripps News/Ipsos poll released last month found that a majority of American voters surveyed support mass deporting immigrants without legal status.
“I can’t imagine any sort of mass deportation program that doesn’t result in racial profiling of both immigrants and those perceived to be immigrants,” said Chavez. Any form of racial profiling that came out of such an enforcement process would be in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which effectively prohibits a state from adopting policies that target any person in its jurisdiction based on race, color, or national origin. A mass deportation operation would lead to people being profiled across the country and treated in “a discriminatory fashion based on national origin,” said Chavez — triggering all sorts of lawsuits.
“My sense is that it would be impractical and then impossible to implement in a way that doesn’t inevitably violate the Constitution,” said Chavez.
But whether or not courts upheld mass deportation, the threat of raids would send a strong message to workers, according to Antonio De Loera-Brust, an organizer with United Farm Workers, a labor union for farmworkers that represents laborers regardless of their immigration status. He posited that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is purposefully designed to have a chilling effect on U.S. residents without legal status. “The point is not to remove millions, it’s to scare them,” said De Loera-Brust.
As support from Western governments continues to prop up Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, people of conscience continue to mobilize at the grassroots to pressure their political leaders to change course. On Friday, Sept. 27, students, NGO staff, and workers from over 200 unions across Spain waged a 24-hour general strike to demand the Spanish government cut ties with Israel and end all forms of military aid. The Real News reports from the streets of Madrid.
Producer, Videographer, Editor: María Artigas Assistant Producer: Sato Díaz Translation, Narrator: Pedro Rubio
Transcript
Protesters: Resistance! Resistance! Long live the Palestinian people’s fight!
Reporter: Tens of thousands of people across Spain took to the streets to protest the ongoing genocide in Palestine. The CGT and Solidaridad Obrera unions called a general strike, backed by hundreds of associations and organizations. The MATS union (Health Workers Assembly Movement) joined the protests with a gathering at the 12 de Octubre Hospital in Madrid, demanding an end to the genocide and the military, commercial, and diplomatic relations between the Spanish government and Israel.
Edurne Prado: From the union we have called for this rally because we are seeing a live genocide of the Palestinian people. Now also to the Lebanese people. And we, as health workers, cannot forget not only the thousands of families and children who have died, but also that we have colleagues there risking their lives day by day, without any resources and working out of pure vocation and saving people’s lives. And for us it is also important today to call names, to denounce the complicity of all European governments, of our own government, which claims to be progressive but then does not break commercial or diplomatic relations with the state of Israel. And for us today is also a day to denounce.
Reporter: Pickets, marches, and various protests were held throughout the morning. Around 150 towns and cities across the country organized actions in support of the general strike, with notable mobilizations in cities like Barcelona, Granada, Valencia, Zaragoza, and Seville.
In Madrid, hundreds of participants gathered at the doors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand action from the Spanish government.
Protesters: Boycott, boycott, boycott Israel! Military budgets for schools and hospitals! Break, break, break with Israel!
José Luis Carretero: We called for a general strike and a day of protest because we understand that, in the first place, public services must be defended. In the face of the fact that public money is being used to sustain wars, to sustain a situation of growing warlike confrontation in Europe and the Mediterranean as a whole. And we also raise it in defense of human rights, of children’s rights in Palestine, in Gaza, in Lebanon, especially in Palestine. We raise it because, at the end of the day, we workers have the right to state that our interests are not only limited to wage increases or working conditions, vacations, and leaves, but also in the defense of fundamental rights and what was traditionally known as workers’ internationalism. And in that sense we also defend the right of workers to express their solidarity with all subjugated peoples. We ask the Spanish government to do everything possible to stop this genocide. We understand the severance of relations with the state of Israel, the severance of diplomatic relations with the state of Israel and also the denunciation of the international trade treaty that it has with the European Union, with the state of Israel, we understand that it is absolutely necessary, and also to do everything possible to comply with international arrest warrants that are already on the table by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice against those responsible for this genocide.
Protesters: It is not a war, it is genocide! No more complicity! Israel murders, Europe sponsors!
Carmen Arnaiz: We are here mainly because Palestinian workers sent a call many months ago to all European workers asking us what we were going to do about the genocide that was taking place in their land. So, based on that call, from our organization we initially decided that the biggest response we could give as a union is to call a general strike. But obviously it had to be with other comrades, because otherwise it would not have made sense for us to call a strike. In the end, 218 organizations have adhered to the call. And what we intended with this day of general strike and struggle, because they are organizing rallies, marches, as well as picket lines and other things, is to denounce that the Spanish government is spending enormous amounts of money on arms, much more than on social services, much more than on education, health, aid for dependency, fair pensions, regularization of so many comrades who are in an irregular situation, migrants, and yet it is redirecting all that money to the arms business, to the sale of arms — and, on top of that, with a genocidal state that, according to all international legislation, we should have broken off all diplomatic relations of all kinds with it. The embassy is still open here, arms are still being sold, despite the fact that they say it is not true and they have recognized the state of Palestine. But it has been an act of posturing, because at the moment of truth they continue negotiating with Israel, they continue supporting all that barbarity that is there with our taxes. They are making us accomplices of a genocide. So, as civil society, as many people around the world outraged by this, we have organized ourselves to try to raise our voices and demand, of course, that the genocide ends and for all and that, in the meantime, as a means of pressure, immediately cut off all relations with any government that is committing genocide against a people.
Protesters: From the river to the sea, Palestine shall overcome!
Reporter: Universities also responded to the strike call. After the sit-ins in May, students and professors organized again for this day of action. Under the slogan “We will no longer study to the sound of bombs,” the Complutense Professors’ Network and the students from the Madrid sit-in took to the streets to condemn the genocide in Gaza. The day featured roundtable discussions, campus walkouts, rallies, and protests.
Rub: We have come out to argue against the responsibility of the Spanish government for continuing to send economic and military support to the genocidal state of Israel, and also to denounce the complicity of our university, which continues to maintain relations with Israeli universities. It continues to keep companies that finance Israel’s genocide on the social councils and university boards of directors. Following the internationalist wake that the encampments were having and also picking up the fighting spirit of the students who were already going out to fight directly against governments as in the case of Sri Lanka, we decided to have an encampment also in Madrid, which denounced the complicity of our universities and, again, Spanish imperialism and how our government participates in it. And I think it is important to reemphasize all the struggle against the repression that took place in our encampment, but above all in the United States and in France and in Germany, where the repression was terrible, people were arrested, they tried to charge them as terrorists. And I think it is very important that we recover that spirit of struggle in the student movement and in the Spanish workers’ movement.
Eva Aladro: The University cannot stand still in the face of a genocide of the size we are witnessing, which we are also seeing spreading to other countries and which continues with the same line of massacring civilian populations under the excuse of wanting to put an end to terrorism, as more terrorist acts are carried out by Israel. We professors started mobilizations together with the students, and our idea is to continue in the same line, because we believe that both the academics and the students, as well as the whole youth community in our country, which is mobilized, are the social conscience. And they are the ones who really have to make an effort in some way to awaken society, so that they refuse to accept a situation such as we are living, of hundreds of dead human beings, children, women, etc. every week. Unfortunately, the only way to stop the war is to make the war unprofitable. So there are three things to achieve this that are the key. The first is to disinvest in the companies, businesses, and universities that are contributing to a massacre like the one in Gaza. There is another option, which is also to block all the activities that have to do with and whose interest is based on that massacre. And another very important thing is to mobilize society and public sensibility not to accept products, etc. from communities or countries that are carrying out genocide. There is a very important legislative initiative that we, the professors of all the public universities of Madrid, are carrying out, which is a letter that we have sent to the high commissioners of both the European Parliament and the Committee on Research and Innovation, asking them to respect their own Euro-Mediterranean Cooperation Agreement, which states that no treaties or agreements or principles of cooperation can be established with countries that are violating democratic rights and democratic principles.
Therefore, the European Union has very specific legislation that must prevent any treaty of friendship and cooperation, with a country that is committing genocide. So we, the professors, have received a response letter in which they tell us that they are going to try to convene a meeting with Israel, but we want to force that, really, if the Euro-Mediterranean agreement itself is not complied with, we are going to take it to the European courts. And from there we will continue, because we believe that this is one of the initiatives that we believe must be developed, because it is at the legislative and court level where perhaps we will achieve the respect for international legality that we do not achieve at the political level or at the level of institutions.
Protesters: Gaza, hang on, Madrid rises up!
Reporter: Thousands attended the afternoon mass march through the heart of the capital, from Atocha Station to Callao Square. The organizing unions put the number of participants in the afternoon marches nationwide at more than 150,000 people. And more than 200 trade union and social organizations supported the strike call.
Deva Mar Escobedo: I came here today with my colleagues from trans in fight quite excited about the strike. I was following the picket lines and the marches in other cities. I think they can be the most powerful things of today and of this new political course, that we can do more pressure, get a real change of positions in the government and stop this genocide. Because I think it is very important as citizens that we come to all protests, all mobilizations that we can, because, after all, we are witnessing a genocide live. I believe we have a duty as individuals to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Oct. 8, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
As Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida, residents are bracing for their second catastrophic storm in less than two weeks. Since September 26, when Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 4, communities across the Southeast have been grappling with the aftermath of that storm’s destruction. Among those hardest hit — and most overlooked — are farmworkers in southern Georgia.
The Georgia Department of Agriculture estimates that the storm has caused billions of dollars in damage to the state’s agriculture industry, affecting more than 100 farmers. Absent from many of these headlines, however, is Helene’s impact on the predominantly Latinx farmworker community, many of whom are undocumented or migrant workers with temporary visas. Ever since Hurricane Helene tore across Georgia, destroying pecan farms, poultry houses, cotton fields, and more, thousands of farmworkers have nowhere to turn as they grapple with decimated homes and lost livelihoods.
“I’ve been seeing pretty much every struggle that farmworkers experience in their daily lives, but magnified times 100,” said Alma Salazar Young, the UFW Foundation’s Georgia state director. “Everybody in South Georgia is struggling, especially in those really hard hit areas, but farmworkers are still an afterthought. Nobody has thought about going the extra mile to take care of them.”
Georgia is one of the top states employing migrant farmworkers through the federal H-2A program, which offers temporary visas for agricultural work. Before Hurricane Helene, living conditions for farmworkers in Georgia were already notoriously poor. The H-2A program requires employers to provide housing for their migrant workers that complies with the standards for temporary labor camps set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These standards, a legal expert noted, are already the bare minimum and have not been updated in decades. Still, they are often not met by employers; federal investigations have cited Georgia farms for mold and water damage, dangerous exposed wiring, and more.
Undocumented workers, meanwhile, rent their homes, usually single-wide trailers. Desperate for affordable housing, these workers also tend to be pushed into substandard conditions, including mobile homes riddled with holes in the siding and drywall, roof and faucet leaks, lightbulbs dangling from wires, pest infestations and front doors lacking locks, secured only by a rope. And that was before the storm. When Hurricane Helene hit, these shoddy structures stood little chance against 90 mile per hour gusts.
The roughly 35,000 H-2A workers in Georgia, as well as an untold number of undocumented immigrants, are not eligible for disaster relief from FEMA.
“Conditions for the workers were already terrible to begin with, but now, many of them don’t realize that they’re homeless,” said Young, who has been traveling to the various farmworker communities in South Georgia that have been impacted by Hurricane Helene. She has seen trailers with their roofs blown off, littered with debris and the floors caving in, while families still attempt to seek shelter in whatever remains.
The roughly 35,000 H-2A workers in Georgia, as well as an untold number of undocumented immigrants, are not eligible for disaster relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), nor do they qualify for food stamps or unemployment assistance.
The financial burden is exacerbated by the fact that many farmworkers already lived in extreme poverty before the hurricane. Minimum wage for H-2A workers in the state is $14.68, while undocumented workers often earn less — usually 10 to 12 dollars an hour, according to Young. If workers are paid by the piece — a basket of blueberries or a busload of watermelons, for instance — that hourly rate can be even more meager. Now, with fields and farms destroyed, it’s unclear when, if at all, workers will be able to return to earning a living.
Many agents that companies hire to recruit H-2A workers charge those workers illegal fees which the workers often pay by taking out crushing loans. If they’re unable to work, these workers will be unable to pay back that debt, on top of struggling to support themselves and their families. Visas for H-2A workers are also tied to one specific employer; if that employer no longer has work for them, they must return to their home countries, primarily Mexico, or risk being in violation of the law.
In the absence of government aid, local churches and groups like the Red Cross or Salvation Army are the only sources of relief for many of Georgia’s farmworkers. But these resources don’t come without barriers.
“Even before the storm hit, we were getting information on the storm, on shelters, and I would have to translate it before I could text it to our farmworker leaders, because it was not being provided in Spanish,” said Young. Sometimes information would be posted to Facebook groups that most farmworkers might not be familiar with, “so even if they do find out, they don’t find out about any type of assistance until it’s gone.”
I’m just so disheartened by how little everybody in general cares about farmworkers, because during the pandemic, they risked their lives to bring food to everybody.
Additionally, police officers and National Guard members have often been present at aid distribution sites, which dissuades undocumented workers from accessing those resources. In May, aiming to crack down on undocumented immigrants, Georgia passed House Bill 1105, which requires local law enforcement agencies to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if an arrested individual cannot provide documentation. Even though the Red Cross and other groups don’t ask for a name or ID, Young said that farmworkers are still afraid to show up: “They’re not going to risk getting deported over trying to get some food.”
In addition to food and water, farmworkers’ most requested items right now are diapers and baby formula. “They’re just trying to make it day by day,” Young said. “They haven’t had a chance to think about the future, while they’re trying to just figure out what they’re going to eat today.”
Immigrants form the bedrock of the country’s food supply, making up an estimated 73 percent of agriculture workers in the United States. Young joined the UFW Foundation after working as the director of Valdosta State University’s College Assistance Migrant Program, during which she witnessed firsthand what farmworkers sacrificed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to put food on tables around the country.
“I’m just so disheartened by how little everybody in general cares about farmworkers, because during the pandemic, they risked their lives to bring food to everybody. Not just in several states, but all over the country,” Young said. “Now that they’re in need, we forgot about them.”
The global pharmaceutical industry relies on ingredients made in China’s far-western Xinjiang region using Uyghur forced labor despite efforts to eliminate this risk from supply chains, according to a new report.
The report by theCenter for Advanced Defense Studies, or C4ADS, says that even two U.S. government agencies — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Agency for International Development via its contractor Chemonics International — have not cut ties with Xinjiang-linked drug suppliers.
This is happening despite U.S. laws that require American companies to ensure there is no forced labor in their supply chains.
“Our findings indicate that international governments remain tied to the Uyghur region, especially in the pharmaceutical sector,” Mishel Kondi, author of the report, told Radio Free Asia.
The use of Uyghur forced labor is one of the repressive measures the Chinese Communist Party has taken in Xinjiang, where about 12 million Uyghurs live, and it is deeply entrenched in the region’s economy, the report says.
The Chinese companies mentioned in the report contribute to the oppression of the mostly Muslim ethnic group by benefiting from land that’s seized from Uyghurs and made available for corporate use, and from relying on forced labor by Uyghurs and Kazakhs laborers.
Also, Uyghurs detained in internment camps have been forced into drug testing and medical procedures, the report says.
Human guinea pigs
This is borne out by accounts from Uyghurs who have left China.
Qelbinur Sidik cries as she testifies at a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 23, 2023. (Associated Press)
Qelbinur Sidik, who was forced to teach Chinese in separate detention facilities for Uyghur men and women, and former camp detainee Mihrigul Tursun both told RFA about authorities forcing girls and women to take pills that caused them to stop menstruating and nursing mothers’ breast milk to dry up.
“Nearly 90% of women in this camp were aged 18 to 40 years old. All of these women’s menstruation ended after taking these pills and injections,” Sidik said. “Even the milk of the nursing mothers was depleted.”
Uyghur men had to take tablets or were given injections and later had blood drawn, Sidik added.
“I am confident that the Chinese government used the detained Uyghurs for experiments to test their medicines,” she said.
Tursun said the small white tablets she had to take gave hersevere stomach pains and chills, and made her feel weak and drowsy. They also made her period stop for six months.
“I was given medicines once a week. I don’t know what medicines they were,” she said. “They called your number from a book. When they called your number, you opened your mouth. They gave me small white tablets. They checked our mouths to make sure we swallowed them.”
Tursun said she then developed a bad stomach ache. “My whole body became weakened and drowsy, my head spun, and my legs shivered. It lasted 2-3 days.”
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
Acetaminophen granules, estrogen cream
Though Xinjiang is a minor player in the pharma production industry in China — the world’s largest active pharmaceutical ingredient producer and the second-largest drug market in the world — there are 43 licensed pharma companies in the region.
Among the 661 products they manufacture are acetaminophen granules, estrogen tablets and cream, and traditional Chinese and Uyghur medicine. Seventy-six pharma products exported from China are manufactured only in Xinjiang, exposing global supply chains to forced labor, the report says.
Eleven of the manufacturers are Chinese state-owned enterprises, 21 are owned by private individuals, nine are owned by companies with a known record of forced labor in other industries, and two are tied to Chinese defense contractors.
Acetaminophen gel capsules photographed in New York, Nov. 2, 2017. Acetaminophen granules are listed by C4ADS as a product manufactured in Xinjiang. (Patrick Sison/AP)
And foreign companies — including Citigroup and BlackRock — continue to hold shares in some of them, it says.
But implementation of the UFLPA remains weak, the report says.
“Supply chains and corporate structures are often opaque; enforcement agencies lack sufficient resources to track, monitor, and enforce regulations, and the diverse agencies responsible for implementing them are still in the process of translating how to most effectively do so,” it says.
Despite the UFLPA’s rebuttable presumption — which assumes goods made in Xinjiang are produced with forced labor and thus banned under the U.S. 1930 Tariff Act — only one pharma producer from Xinjiang — Chenguang Biotech Group Co., Ltd. — has been added to the Entity List, the report notes.
Chemonics International
As recently as 2019, USAID contractor Chemonics International, based in Washington, purchased products from the Xinjiang Tianneng Chemical Ltd. Co., the report says, citing data from the 2023 Global Health Supply Chain Program Procurement and Supply Management Project.
Tianneng Chemical is owned by a subsidiary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, or XPCC, a state-owned enterprise and paramilitary organization operating in Xinjiang that has been added to the Entity List for perpetrating human rights abuses.
“Through this procurement, Chemonics International appears to have unknowingly financially supported (through trade) a company owned by a subsidiary of a paramilitary entity and perpetrator of human rights abuses,” the report says.
In response to C4ADS’ information, Chemonics said it had not ordered any other products directly or indirectly from Tianneng Chemical and did not plan to do so.
A USAID spokesperson told RFA that the agency prioritizes preventing the use of U.S. government funds for contract awards to companies that may use forced labor, and its partners are required to comply with legal requirements prohibiting the use of forced labor under federal acquisition regulations.
Chemonics confirmed to USAID that it has not purchased any products from Tianneng Chemical outside of one transaction in 2019, prior to the date the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions, and said it has taken steps to avoid procurements from the manufacturer in the future, according to the spokesperson.
The report also says that the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, has registered at least two Xinjiang-linked pharmaceutical producers, authorizing them to import to the United States, though the companies should be on the UFLPA Entity List.
A FDA spokesperson said the agency would be in touch when it had information to share.
Liu Jingzhen, chairman of Sinopharm, attends a news conference on vaccines for the coronavirus disease in Beijing, China, Oct. 20, 2020. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)
The report said Japan’s Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Agency registered four Xinjiang-based entities involved in biotech and pharma that conflicted with efforts to address human rights abuses in the region.
Specifically, Japan issued guidelines in 2022 urging businesses established there to monitor for human rights in their supply chains. The following year, the country’s parliament passed a resolution expressing concern about the treatment of Uyghurs and other human rights abuses in China.
Mexico and Canada have forced labor legislation in place, while the European Union this year passed a forced labor ban that will take effect in 2027.
Case studies
The 44-page report issued on Oct. 8 includes four case studies of companies that C4ADS says should be excluded from supply chains because of their ties to human rights abuses that have been overlooked by enforcement.
Sinopharm National Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd., a partially state-owned company, participated in Chinese Communist Party-led “work teams” believed to be main components of poverty alleviation programs that subject rural Uyghurs to forced assimilation and forced labor, the report says.
Xinjiang Deyuan Bioengineering Co. Ltd., a top manufacturer of drugs derived from human plasma operating exclusively in Xinjiang, appears to have directly benefited from forced displacement and government subsidies, it says.
“Unfortunately, we were unable to find smoking-gun evidence that the blood collected by Xinjiang Deyuan Bioengineering comes from people detained in camps,” Kondi said.
“While the company claims that blood donations are voluntary, we could not confirm or refute this. However, given the human rights abuses in the region, this remains a serious red flag for businesses involved with these entities.”
Another company, Xinjiang Nuziline Bio-Pharmaceutical Co., which manufactures conjugated estrogen, also relies on Uyghur laborers, while Xinjiang Huashidan Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., a maker of Western and traditional Chinese and Uyghur herbal medicine, appears to have benefited from the displacement of the local population, the report says.
The report is based on production license data, corporate records, and trade data — all publicly available information — and local media reports.
Recommendations
C4ADS recommends that all U.S. federal agencies conduct assessments of their procurement practices’ compliance with anti-forced labor sanctions regimes.
The U.S. government, meanwhile, should increase resources for — and improve interagency cooperation — for better monitoring and enforcement of sanctions, the report says.
It further recommends that the U.S. government strengthen its existing trade agreements by improving multilateral coordination on monitoring Chinese imports and bilateral and multilateral monitoring by sharing intelligence with other countries that import pharmaceuticals from China.
“Governments should turn the ongoing conversations about combating Uyghur forced labor into actionable legal precedents,” Kondi said.
At midnight on October 1, over 45,000 port workers across the Eastern US began a strike that was to last for three days. This labor action was only the latest in a series of high-profile confrontations between workers and bosses in North America, but corporate media never seem to get better at reporting on such disputes.
In this particular case, the workers’ main demands were pay increases and assurances that automation will not replace them. But strikes in general have one straightforward aim: to demonstrate the power of workers, and thus the necessity of meeting their demands, by depriving the economy of their labor. The International Longshoremen’s Association gained an initial victory in securing a 62% wage increase over six years for its workers. Other issues, like automation, will continue to be negotiated, with a January 2025 deadline.
It seems, however, that the more a strike affects the economy, i.e., the more effective it is, the harder corporate media try to smear workers as selfish and destructive. To understand where media loyalties lie, one only needs to look at the experts they seek for quotes.
Big banking, big shipping, big banana
Washington Post (10/1/24): “The effects are expected to ripple through the country, costing at least hundreds of millions of dollars a day and getting worse each day the longshoremen remain off the job.”
When media report on high finance or business dealings, readers will rarely if ever find a quote from a union leader, much less a rank-and-file worker, in the news reports. However, when dockworkers initiate a labor action, it seems the first call a reporter makes is to a Manhattan office tower.
Stifel is an investment bank that manages $444 billion worth of assets. It’s perhaps best known for tricking five Wisconsin school districts into losing over $200 million in bum mortgage investments ahead of the 2008 financial crisis (Reuters, 12/8/16).
Lately, the phones at the bank’s offices have been overwhelmed with reporters seeking comment on the East Coast port strike. Analysts at Stifel have been quoted a total of four times in the Washington Post (10/1/24, 10/1/24) and New York Times (10/1/24, 10/1/24). The Post (9/28/24), presumably trying to prevent accusations of favoring finance over accounting, also sought comment from a chief economist at Ernst & Young.
If, when it comes to the economy, you prioritize banana availability above all other considerations, then corporate media has you covered. The Post (9/30/24) spoke to the Big-Ag lobbying and insurance group the American Farm Bureau Federation, who warned that 75% of the nation’s banana supply was at stake. Not to be outdone, the Times (10/1/24) tracked down their own source for the banana angle, Daniel Barabino, COO at the Bronx’s Top Banana, who warned a two-week strike would hit “all the banana importers.”
Later reporting by the Baltimore Banner (10/3/24) revealed that banana heavyweights Del Monte, Dole and Chiquita operate their own ships and are outside the trade group that represents management in bargaining, and thus their ships were still being unloaded. In other words, initial forecasts of banana scarcity were greatly overstated.
Naturally, logistics executives were well-represented in the news pages. The New York Times quoted the directors of two ports (9/24/24), as well as four members of management at different logistics firms (10/1/24, 10/1/24). The Washington Post quoted at least seven logistics executives in their coverage (9/18/24, 9/28/24, 9/30/24, 9/30/24), not to mention numerous importers and business owners.
Missing workers
The New York Times (10/1/24) ran an article on what the dockworkers strike might mean for wine importers—but no article on what the dockworkers strike might mean for dockworkers.
Union leaders were not totally silenced. Since September 24, four ILA leaders have been quoted by the New York Times (9/24/24, 9/26/24, 9/29/24, 10/1/24). For those keeping track, that is two fewer than the six wine importers the Times has quoted in coverage of the port strike (9/30/24, 10/1/24).
The number of rank-and-file dockworkers quoted by the Times is zero. To be fair, it seems that the union has instructed picketers to not talk to reporters, an understandable measure for message discipline.
However, in the lead-up to the strike, the Times found time to talk to Christmas tree, clothing and mango importers (9/24/24, 9/30/24). These people were understandably concerned for their livelihoods. However, by failing to interview even one dockworker or any of their families, the Times is showing their readers a picture where only the business owners are concerned for the economy, for their families, for the holiday season.
Will longshoremen have enough time to spend with their families or have enough money for gifts this Christmas? Readers of the Times have no idea.
Instead, Times coverage (10/3/24) has focused on Harold Daggett, the union’s president, and his “autocratic” style and “generous salary.” When the only union member profiled by the Times is depicted as rich, corrupt and incompetent, it encourages a dismissal of the union’s struggle as a whole.
Even once the strike ended, the Times (10/3/24) just couldn’t find a worker to quote. Instead, the piece extensively quoted the chief executive of the Anderson Economic Group, a corporate consulting firm, who was unhappy that the strike had been settled:
I cannot recall an episode that had so little effect on the economy, led to such a short strike and resulted in such a huge increase in earnings for workers who are already making over $100,000 a year…. We tend to shrug off the costs, but it does affect our ability to build things and export them.
During the UAW strike, Sarah Lazare noted that the Anderson Economic Group was used by media to decry labor’s threat to “the economy” without mentioning their auto-industry clients (American Prospect, 8/23/23). The firm was also cited on the danger posed by the UPS strike (FAIR.org, 9/26/23). It’s a group you would naturally turn to if your were looking for a quote decrying labor getting a larger slice of the economic pie.
Loud on wages, silent on profits
Corporate media coverage of longshoremen’s wages has emphasized that some union members make around $160,000 (Washington Post, 10/1/24). One story even reported that salaries for New York and New Jersey longshoremen range to “over $450,000” (Washington Post, 9/28/24).
Per the report that the Post seems to be referencing (they don’t bother to give a citation), the Port of New York and New Jersey elects to pay certain workers “special compensation packages,” which are not governed by the collective bargaining agreement. In other words, the Post is using some exceptional cases in the Port of New Jersey and New York, unconnected to the contract that’s up for negotiation, to suggest that some people are being paid nearly half a million dollars to load freight. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the 45,000 dockworkers whose salaries are governed by the collective bargaining agreement are maligned.
The starting wage rate for a dockworker is just $20 an hour. Given that the top wage (after six years of service) under the current contract is $39, a 40-hour-per-week salary would net a senior worker just over $80,000. To earn in the hundreds of thousands, overtime is clearly needed. However, the New York Times (10/1/24) reports merely that dockworkers “say they have to put in long workweeks to earn that much,” with no elaboration on whether or not that is true.
When nearly every story on the port strike mentions that dockworkers make up to $100,000 or $200,000, the object is clear: Media want readers to question if these “workers without a college degree” (New York Times, 10/1/24) really deserve a salary commensurate with the 10.5 million Americans in management occupations.
These ports are up and down the East Coast, including in high-cost-of-living metro areas like New York and Boston. Labor unions are one of the few paths to middle-class security available to most American workers. Yet it is standard practice for labor coverage in corporate media to suggest that workers fighting for their share is tantamount to greediness.
Soaring profits for shipping companies is an important business story (Economist, 6/27/24)—until it comes time for those companies to renegotiate labor contracts.
Shipping company profits, on the other hand, are rarely reported. When shippers’ high profits are mentioned, they’re often not presented as a fact, but as something that is “argued” by workers (e.g., Washington Post, 10/1/24).
However, outside of strike coverage, the shipping industry seems to be quite healthy. “Boom Times Are Back for Container Shipping,” according to a recent Economist headline (6/27/24). The windfall profits of the pandemic era, over $400 billion, are believed to be larger than the sum total of profits since containerization was implemented in 1957 (CNN, 9/26/24). Indeed, some of the pandemic-era inflation that has eroded dockworkers’ real wages may be due to the outsized pricing power of the oligopolistic shipping industry (Bloomberg, 1/18/22; The Hill, 2/2/22).
Why was there little mention of these profits in strike coverage? Readers are encouraged to view longshoremen as greedy and unreasonable, which is less sustainable when worker demands are juxtaposed with record profits. The easiest way to avoid that juxtaposition is to omit profits from the conversation. (In the same way, it’s easier to hate professional athletes for their multi-million dollar salaries when you ignore the billions they are making for the team owners.)
Frightening readers to management’s side
New York Times (10/1/24) warned of “cascading effects — such as layoffs — at American firms, including in the auto industry.”
The economic effects of the strike have been much-bandied. The cost to the US economy, depending on your source, could amount to $3.78 billion per week (Washington Post, 10/1/24), $4.5 billion to $7.5 billion per week (New York Times, 10/1/24) or a whopping $5 billion per day, according to the brain trust at J.P. Morgan (New York Times, 9/30/24).
While these numbers are supposed to frighten the reader into siding with management, what they are really doing is demonstrating the importance of labor being paid well and treated well. The fact that dockworkers’ labor is necessary to facilitate up to $5 billion in commerce every day is evidence that their labor is of the utmost importance, and an argument for their being compensated as such.
Besides serving up run-of-the-mill worker bashing, the Washington Post (9/29/24, 10/1/24, 10/1/24) has taken the strike as an opportunity to raise the specter of pandemic-era inflation and price hikes. The Post (9/28/24) quoted Ernst & Young chief economist Greg Daco: “A work stoppage could slow progress on bringing inflation under control.” Never mind the fact that inflation has already been tamed (Politico, 9/11/24).
Other outlets have a more staid forecast, with the New York Times (10/1/24) noting that “a rapid acceleration in inflation” is unlikely.
Framing a strike as potentially strangling the economy (with little mention of the hardship striking workers would no doubt face) serves to help the reader, whose economic situation is almost certainly closer to the workers, identify instead with the multibillion-dollar logistics companies.
It’s not that workers are seeking to destroy the economy. However, it is up to the workers to look out for their own interests as labor share continues to decrease, especially in the face of automation (Marketplace, 4/12/24). Most Americans are sympathetic to unions and union members, but when it comes to labor actions, media try demonization above all else.
False choice
This Washington Post article (10/2/24) closes with a warning to President Joe Biden against “an approach to industry highly deferential to labor unions.”
Corporate media attempted to use the economic chaos apparently on the horizon to paint a less-than-rosy picture for the incumbent Democrats. With the presidential election a month away, the strike has been posed as a tough choice for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris between supporting unions and averting economic destruction. The Washington Post (10/2/24) reported that
Biden told reporters Tuesday that he would not use a federal labor law to force the longshoremen back to work…. But whether—or for how long—the president will stick to this posture has become a source of speculation in Washington, as Democrats try to project economic stability ahead of the November election.
Elsewhere, the Post (9/30/24) noted that some economic forecasters “assume that, with the election just weeks away, Biden will intervene in the labor dispute to head off more serious economic costs.” The New York Times (10/1/24) took a similar tone:
The prospect of significant economic damage from a strike puts President Biden in a quandary five weeks before national elections. Before the strike, he said he was not going to use a federal labor law, the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, to force an end to a port shutdown…. But some labor experts said he might use that power if the strike started to weigh on the economy.
The Times failed to actually cite any of these labor experts who said President Biden might use the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, a controversial law that began the slow demise of organized labor since 1947. However, this framing supports the idea that a strike is effectively a hostage situation, with the workers putting a gun to the head of the economy, and the government must choose one of those two sides. Left out of the equation are the corporations, who have the power to end the strike immediately by sharing some of their inflated profits with their workers.
It should not be surprising that corporate media redirect readers’ anger towards workers. US news outlets have a habit of omitting wealth and income inequality from their coverage, and coverage of labor actions is no exception.
This post was originally published on CounterSpin.
On September 28, domestic workers in California secured a long-fought victory with the signing of SB 1350, a bill that grants the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) the authority to enforce health and safety regulations in private homes that employ domestic workers. Sponsored by California State Sen Maria Elena Durazo and supported by the California Domestic…
Dockworkers from Maine to Texas have walked out on the job at all East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, launching the first strike of its kind in almost 50 years. The International Longshoremen’s Association represents some 45,000 workers at 36 ports who are demanding higher wages and guarantees that jobs won’t be automated. “This is a time of labor mobilization in this country,” says Peter Goodman…
Workers at a sprawling Amazon warehouse outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, have taken their first formal step forward in their fight to organize the facility. For more than two and a half years, Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE) has been organizing to educate workers and build popular support for unionization at the 2 million square foot fulfillment center…
The president of the AFL-CIO sent a letter to House Republicans on Thursday asking them not to intervene in contract negotiations between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which could lead to the first East Coast port strike since 1977 if a deal is not struck by October 1. The letter came in response to another letter sent by Republican lawmakers to…
Two years ago, workers from several different Trader Joe’s grocery stores joined the wave of unionization efforts spreading across the country. Workers in Hadley, Massachusetts, made history in 2022 by not only becoming the first Trader Joe’s store to vote to unionize but also by opting to form an independent union, Trader Joe’s United (TJU). However, like with Starbucks, Amazon, Medieval Times, and other companies where workers have been exercising their right to organize in recent years, rampant union busting has been part of the Trader Joe’s story from the beginning. What’s worse, as Alex Press writes in Jacobin, rather than be compelled to follow the law and play by the rules, the supposedly progressive grocery chain has joined Elon Musk’s SpaceX in attacking the very constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. What is the current state of the union drive at Trader Joe’s? What issues are employees (“crew members”) still dealing with on the job, and what can supporters do to help? In this episode, Max speaks with Alec Plant, a worker organizer at the Lincoln and Grace Trader Joe’s in Chicago and a member of Trader Joe’s United.
Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right. Welcome everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like You Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast network. If you’re hungry for more worker and labor focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network and please support the work that we are doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, your friends and family members. Lead positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you got recommendations for folks you’d like us to talk to on the show or topics you’d like us to investigate and please support the work that we do at The Real News Network by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world.
My name is Maximillian Alvarez and we’ve got a great episode for y’all today. As you guys heard there at the top of the episode, we’re talking today with Alec Plant, a worker organizer at the Lincoln and Grace Trader Joe’s store in Chicago, and a member of Trader Joe’s United. It’s been a little while since we checked in with workers who have been fighting to unionize Trader Joe’s, but it’s really important that we do and that we keep checking in because workers struggles don’t just go away when their store votes to unionize and workers struggles at a company as big as Trader Joe’s. Don’t just go away when a few stores vote to unionize. In many respects, sadly, the opposite is true as we know. It was two years ago in 2022 when workers from several different Trader Joe’s grocery stores voted to unionize, starting with workers at a store in Hadley, Massachusetts where workers not only voted to unionize, but opted to form an independent union Trader Joe’s United.
Now other stores in Minneapolis and Louisville and Oakland also voted to unionize under the banner of Trader Joe’s United. While workers in Boulder, Colorado and workers at the Trader Joe’s New York City wine shop were working to unionize with the UFCW or the United and Commercial Workers. Now, the New York City Wine Shop store was abruptly closed. The same week workers were planning to go public with their union campaign in a suspected act of retaliation, which the company of course denies and workers in Boulder withdrew their election petition. One day after UFCW Local seven filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board saying that the company was illegally coercing and intimidating workers, which the company also denied. Now, like with Starbucks, like with Amazon Union busting or alleged union busting has been part of the Trader Joe’s unionizing story from the jump. In a HuffPost article from March of this year, Dave Jamison writes, quote, prosecutors at the National Labor Relations Board say, trader Joe’s illegally interrogated workers and threatened to take away their pay raises when they were trying to form a union.
Last year, the alleged threats came in the runup to a January, 2023 election at a Louisville Kentucky store where workers voted in favor of joining a new union. Trader Joe’s United. The company has challenged the election results by claiming the union illegally influenced the vote. But according to the complaint filed Monday, prosecutors say it was Trader Joe’s that committed unfair labor practices meant to sway workers against unionizing. And these types of rulings against Trader Joe’s for rampant union busting have become a near constant affair. As Alex Press writes in Jacobin in March of 2023, the NLRB ruled that Trader Joe’s had illegally asked another worker this time in Houston, Texas for raising concerns about working conditions. The board ordered the company to rehire the worker with back pay. In May, the board issued a complaint against Trader Joe’s for removing union literature for the employee break room at a unionized Minneapolis Minnesota location.
Two months later, trader Joe’s sued TJU for trademark infringement taking issue with the union’s logo, which is designed to evoke Trader Joe’s branding. Vera, a judge for the US District Court of the central District of California threw the case out earlier this month of the company’s claim that customers might accidentally purchase union merchandise from the Union website under the assumption that they were buying official Trader Joe’s merchandise. Vera judged it so ludicrous as to constitute an attempt to weaponize the legal system against Trader Joe’s United for the purpose of gaining advantage in an ongoing legal labor dispute. Vera, that Trader Joe’s litigation strategy came close to deserving sanction for its improper claims. Another judge dismissed a similar case brought by medieval times against Medieval times performers united the workers union at that company. But that’s not all. I mean. Now, rather than be compelled to follow the law and play by the rules like so many other companies are doing, now that the judiciary all the way up to the Supreme Court is just stacked with corporate serving Trump appointed judges, trader Joe’s is flipping over the table and challenging the nlrbs very existence. Trader Joe’s. Alex Press writes, the supposedly progressive grocery chain has joined Elon Musk’s SpaceX in attacking the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.
Let’s not forget that at the center of all of this always is working people bravely exercising their rights and trying to improve their lives and their jobs for themselves and their coworkers. And not only has Trader Joe’s been fighting that tooth and nail, but they are now fighting the very foundation upon which workers in this country across the board, not just at Trader Joe’s can exercise those rights. And so we need to continue to care about this and to show solidarity. We need to continue to follow up on this story and to lift up the voices of workers themselves, workers like Alec Plant, and that’s what we’re here to do today.
Alec Plant:
I am Alec. I am an employee, a crew member at Trader Joe’s on Lincoln and Grace in Chicago, Illinois. I’m a member of the organizing committee. I’ve been on the organizing committee for probably six or eight months now, and we’re in the process, we’re in the middle of, we had our union election and in the middle, we’re still in the middle of a campaign to make sure our store gets unionized. So that’s who I am and what I’m doing right now.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, Alec, again, thank you so much for joining us today on the show. Man, I really appreciate it. I know you got a lot going on with the Union Drive and also with your working life and all that stuff, so really appreciate you taking the time to sit down and chat with us and really excited to get an update on where things are with the Trader Joe’s United struggle because this is a crucial, pivotal struggle, not only in the sense of workers standing up for themselves, working together to improve their lives, but also the Trader Joe’s United struggle has really kind of taken an important place in the imagination of the labor movement today and the backlash from Trader Joe’s like in the courts and the ways that they’re trying to union bust like Starbucks and other companies like Amazon. I mean, these are stories that have really been at the forefront of the labor discussion over the past couple years. And of course, we’ve had a fellow Trader Joe’s workers on the show before. We’ve done some live shows with the great Sarah Beth Ryther out there in Minnesota. Shout out to Sarah Beth.
Alec Plant:
Love Sarah Beth.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh yeah, Sarah Beth’s a g man. So if you guys haven’t definitely listened to those live shows we did with Sarah Beth, we’ll link to them in the show notes. But yeah, as I said in the intro, it has been a minute since we’ve been able to really check in with you guys and see how things are going and what folks out there can do to continue to support y’all. And so I kind of wanted to start there and ask if we could just sort of take a quick step back and give folks a refresher here, because this has been a protracted struggle. I mean, the Trader Joe’s Union Drive is one of those crucial stories that emerged out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first story unionized in 2022 amidst as we were all reeling from CO. But so I wanted to ask if you could just sort of give our listeners a bit of refresher on the Union Drive itself, where it came from, what role Covid played in that, but also what the longstanding issues were that proceeded Covid that really came to a head in this union drive. And then we’ll talk a bit more about your own kind of personal path into working at Trader Joe’s and being involved in that campaign. But I guess for folks who haven’t checked in a while, yeah, give us a little refresher here.
Alec Plant:
So some of the longstanding concerns have been to do with healthcare. They’ve increased the number of hours we need for healthcare, and that’s been going on for a long time. It used to be you could work, I think two or three days and get healthcare, and now they’ve significantly increased the number of hours you need to work. There have been problems in different stores with management. At our store we call our sort of general manager, the captain, and in a lot of the stores that have unionized, there have been big issues with captains, treating people inappropriately. There have been complaints of sexual harassment at stores. There have been complaints of L-G-B-T-Q, people not being treated appropriately, especially for trans workers. They’ve been deadnamed and harassed at work.
So those have been two long-term issues. Obviously during Covid, there was a sense in the whole country that workers were essential, that we were part of the essential worker category. And we actually, we got a pay bump during Covid, which was we got, they called it Thank you pay. And then basically as soon as Covid started receding, they took that away. There were a lot of workers who weren’t satisfied with the sort of covid protection measures that they had put in place. It took ’em a long, long in most stores, or at least in the store I worked at. Eventually we got a little glass thing in front of the registers, but for a long time we didn’t even have that. So it was just sort of people breathing on us all day. So that made people upset. And I think a lot of that led to the first wave of union activity in 2022 at the Hadley store, which was the first store to unionize. They also had a lot of individual problems that weren’t quite as broad as the whole company, which stores tend to have. But there are big company wide problems like that that are, I dunno, good enough reason for any Trader Joe’s store to unionize, I think.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, man. I think one of the biggest and most infuriating grifts that emerged during the intense covid period, I mean, to be clear, COVID is still here, right? I mean, we’re in the midst of a wave now. I was just at the DNC covering that for the Real News, and that was a bonafide super spreader event. So we fucked up here. Now workers are going to continue to get sick and die, and employers are going to continue to not be held accountable or responsible for that. We’ve talked about that ad nauseum on the show, but I just wanted to underline that here for folks as we move forward. But yeah, one of the things that I learned in doing the work that I do, interviewing workers like yourself throughout the Covid Pandemic, doing a book of interviews with workers in year one of Covid was the thank You Pay Grift or other companies called it different things.
I think Amazon called it Hero pay, but they explicitly did not call it hazard pay because then you got to keep paying it as long as the hazard persists. If you call it something like hero pay or thank you pay, it’s this sort of thing that the bosses are giving us out of the kindness of their own hearts, but they can rip it away whenever the hell they want, which they did. But it’s just one of those things that I really feel like folks are forgetting about those first couple years of covid that was so egregious and awful that we just ended up accepting and we shouldn’t have. But I wanted to just ask about that a little more. Looking back, are there sort of things that you and your coworkers experienced during Covid or saw you saw the nature of the company you work for in Covid that you feel like folks out there are forgetting, but they shouldn’t? Are there parts of that experience that you really want our listeners out there to remember and really not forget?
Alec Plant:
Yeah, there are some things I think they had to tell us when someone in the store got covid. So we would just get messages through our scheduling app and it would be like 10 people a week would get covid. And that was at a time when we still didn’t know how bad it was. That was terrifying. It was very scary to just know that people were getting covid and the company knew it was happening, and it was, you knew these people, they were your friends, and it was just like, okay, come back to work. It was scary. It was just message after message after message, so you sort of got the sense of when is it going to be me and what’s going to happen? So that was horrible. I guess just life under a pandemic is that uncertainty, but we didn’t have that. We felt like it was happening to us.
It was inevitable and we had no choice but to keep going to work. And then also it was just hard because customers, it was hard to work with customers too, because customers were, you got to go to the grocery store, you don’t have a choice most of the time, but customers were going nuts. When I say nuts, I don’t mean to disparage anybody for being scared of covid, but all the fears that people had were our sort of burden to deal with. So we would have people who would yell at us if we weren’t wearing gloves or if our hands touch stuff, we work at a grocery store, sometimes stuff falls on the ground or I don’t know, just things happen at a grocery store and if anyone interpreted it as any violation, we would get yelled at, even though obviously we’re all doing our best to keep everything safe and clean. So it was an incredibly high stress time to be at work, and that just was just part of our experience and we just had to live through that. And it sucked. I dunno what else to say
Maximillian Alvarez:
About it. Yeah. Oh man. I mean, what else needs to be said? We saw a lot of ourselves in the past four years, and a lot of those things you can’t unsee. I mean, I think we saw the best and worst of humanity over the past four years, and that’s a complicated thing to sort of deal with. But I think there’s no going back. I mean, just the sort of harassment that frontline workers faced during Covid, the open admission by so many employers that they did not care that workers’ labor was essential, but their lives were not. And so many of our brothers, sisters and siblings lost their lives just trying to keep a roof over their heads and make a paycheck because they had no other option to say nothing of all the political bullshit that we saw, pardon my French, we don’t have to get into that now.
The point being just that we revealed a lot to ourselves in the past four years, and I just really wanted to impress upon people out there listening that when you go back into your grocery store, when you go in and talk to a service worker, or when you are going to a medical facility and talking to healthcare workers, or you’re on a plane talking to flight attendants, keep that in mind. Keep in mind what our fellow workers have had to endure over the past four years and the impression that our actions, our government’s actions, our media’s actions, think of the lingering impression that that shit leaves on you. And at the very least, be kind respond to that with kindness and solidarity and sincerity and just remember how much we’re all going through and how little we’re actually talking about it together as fellow workers.
That is essential, especially as we go further into the gullet of a horrifying 21st century where we encouraged at every step of the way to see one another as enemies and their powers that be are constantly trying to pit us against one another. So apologies for Soapboxing. It’s just something that obviously is very near and dear to my heart. And I wanted to pick up on that Alec and ask, when did you start working at Trader Joe’s? Let’s take a step back and kind of talk about that because curious to know what it’s been like as a worker there for yourself. Did you start at Trader Joe’s before Covid?
Alec Plant:
I started right in the middle.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Okay. Okay. So tell me about that. So walk me through the path that led you to being an employee of Trader Joe’s in the middle of Covid and then what that experience was like. Okay.
Alec Plant:
Yeah. So I was a bike messenger and I didn’t have any health insurance and I wasn’t getting enough hours, so I decided to get a new job. I had a friend who worked at Trader Joe’s, so I applied there. This was right in the middle of Covid. I got the job and when I first started working at Trader, I worked at a different store. I worked at the downtown location in Chicago, and it was a ghost town in the store. Nobody would come in. They were basically asking us every shift. They were like, alright, does anybody want to go home early? Because they were overstaffed and there was no work to do. We had a certain number of people that could be, we could only allow a certain number of people in the store at a time. So when it was busy, which was kind of rare, at that point, we would’ve a huge line out the door and we would have to have somebody who was basically a bouncer just being like, stop, you can’t come in. It was like a one in one out type deal.
So it was a strange, and then every day since I had just started, everyone was teaching me everything. Every single thing I learned about the job was always like, well, this is how we’re doing things right now. This is way different than how we normally do it, but this is how it is right now. So yeah, I guess, I mean, I just settled in and Trader Joe’s is an interesting place to work because people who work there are Trader Joe’s people. They’re all very incredibly exuberant all the time. So I had never worked in a place like that before. So that was kind of fun and interesting, and the coworkers at Trader Joe’s are generally really, really, really good. So that was a big plus. They’re nice people, and I dunno if you’ve been to Trader Joe’s, you probably know that.
So that was good. And then so Covid just sort of kept rolling. There’s a lot of high turnover rate at Trader Joe’s, so people are constantly sort of getting in and out, where was I going with that? And then we would get messages about people getting covid all the time, and you get that weird sense of like, huh, I hope everybody’s okay. I hope no one’s seriously getting damaged long-term because of this. But I mean, you just keep going to work. And that’s what we did during Covid for that whole period. We got Thank you pay, and then thank you Pay was interesting. It was like, oh, I guess they can pay us more money. And then that ended and that was gone. So that was basically how I got in. That was the vibe during the Covid era, it was a total state of exception. Everything is different. The store feels kind of like a ghost town. So it felt like that was, I feel like the vibe of Covid at large was like that.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And when, for you as a Trader Joe’s employee, did that start to end and what has the job been like since, I guess, what are you dealing with on a day-to-day, week to week basis there in Chicago?
Alec Plant:
Well, let’s see, I don’t know the exact date for when that started. It felt like the same time everybody else stopped wearing masks. We stopped wearing masks, and our Covid protocols sort of melted away. So on a day-to-Day basis, I think it’s alienating work, putting stuff on a shelf for hours and hours at a time. And I like talking to people, so I don’t mind. So that’s half the job, half the job is putting stuff on the shelf and breaking down boxes, and the other half of the job is standing at the register and saying, hello, how you doing? Oh, you’re really going to love these peas. Which is, I don’t mind. It’s nice to talk to people, but it’s also, it can be grueling to do that for a lot of hours a day. So our day is basically split up. It’s half basically usually about half and half just putting stuff on a shelf and then standing at a register, checking people out.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and that’s a big part of the job. I mean, like you said, there’s certainly a type of Trader Joe’s employee, and that’s one of the reasons so many people go to Trader Joe’s is they love the vibe. They’ve loved it for years and decades. You guys, one of the first interviews I ever did on this show was with Glen Chevlin. She works at Disneyland in Anaheim, and she talked about making the magic happen and all the workers there who make that magic that people from around the world tourists come to see every day of every year. I mean, there is a component of the work that you guys do that is that kind of emotional labor, the performative labor, the sort of social labor that people come to Trader Joe’s for. And as a former service worker, as a waiter there in Chicago, I used to work at Reza in Lincoln Park. The location’s not there anymore. But yeah, you’re putting on a performance for eight hours and then it’s like when you’re done, you get the come down a little bit. So I wanted to just sort of ask, what do you wish that customers and folks who come in to the stores every day new or just considered about what you and your coworkers, the work that you guys do, if you could just sort of give folks out there who frequent Trader Joe’s like a little, Hey, think about this next time you go in,
Alec Plant:
Boy, only sort of, there’s almost no customers that do anything wrong or have any problem or are rude to us in any way. The way a grocery store is set up, it’s like we all know the roles we’re supposed to be playing. Everybody acts nice and appropriate, acts nice and appropriate in that way. There’s a sense of that service workers hate customers and stuff. It’s like a very nineties attitude kind of where it’s like, ah, these stupid customers, most of us at Trader don’t feel that way because the customers are just normal people like us. It’s only in one in 500 people who are incredibly rude and there’s nothing I can tell them. There’s no advice I could give them because they’re the type of people who don’t care what I think and who don’t care about other people’s experiences. So it would be futile. But yeah, I don’t know. Most of the customers don’t bother us. We don’t have any problem with them generally. I don’t think so. I wouldn’t keep on doing your thing, guys.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Some people are just dicks the can be
Alec Plant:
Out. Yeah, I mean, those people got to worry about. Yeah, I think as far as the personality and the performance element of Trader Joe’s, I think a lot of the people who work at the store have a sense of, oh, this is sort of a job that anybody can do. We can’t ask for more because this is just a job. That’s sort of a job of Laughter resort because they don’t have a skill. They didn’t go to college to get a specific skill, or they’re like, we’re just putting stuff on the shelf. But a lot of them don’t realize that they do have personalities that people, and they do have special characteristics that make them particularly valuable for this job. And people don’t value that. And that’s difficult because it’s like you’re not just an irreplaceable person at this job, or you’re not a replaceable person at this job.
You actually do have a special trait that makes you special and worth being paid more than you’re getting and being valued more than just some cog. And it’s hard to get that across to some people that their personalities really are special in that way, but Trader Joe’s knows it because they go through a really elaborate hiring process. So yeah, that’s something, I don’t know, I kind of try to communicate to people is that you’re not just a replaceable drone here. You really are bringing something to the table, and they can’t just fire us all the drop of hat or whatever because we’re special people.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I mean, I think that’s beautiful, man. I mean, that’s the burning core at the heart of organized Labor’s message is that we are worth more than this. You are worth more. And I think that that’s one of the things that I constantly marvel at the most doing this show, because I’ve only had one union job in my life, and I was as a grad student at the University of Michigan, I worked service jobs, I worked in factories, worked in warehouses, worked as a pizza delivery guy. I never had any idea that I had other options besides quit and try to find a better job or just stay at my current job, take the crap and accept that, yeah, I was worth as little as my bosses were telling me I was. And so when I meet folks like you, and when I talk to folks like your coworkers around the country, I am just constantly in awe of those who are taking that step that I never could or never thought to when I was working these jobs, which is to say, no, we’re worth more than this. We can in fact band together to improve our lives and our jobs and our workplaces, and we’re going to do something about it that is heroic in my view. And the everyday heroism of workers standing up and fighting for better is just something a constant source of inspiration. And I wanted to ask a little more about that. The Union Drive itself. Can we talk about your store and where it fits in this struggle across the country starting in Hadley and then now expanding to multiple stores that have voted to unionize?
Alec Plant:
So yeah, Hadley organized in 2022, and there are I think four total stores that are unionized now. There’s one store that lost an election, so that’s been in three years. There been four stores that have organized, it’s difficult. The people who work at Trader Joe’s, there’s a tendency to be that they feel an extreme loyalty to Trader Joe’s. So a lot of times they don’t think so that can make the organizing process difficult. So at the Hadley store, one with 90%, it was like an incredible union victory. The elections since then have been a lot closer.
There was one election in, I think New York where they won by I think one vote and the other two were close as well. When the elections are very close, the company usually contests the election. So that means that the union has to go through a lengthy court process and we have to pay lawyers and we have to put people on the stand and it’s arduous. So that’s where we are right now. Trader Joe’s United is we’re working on getting more stores organized because we’ve got four now. As we try to negotiate a contract, we have to negotiate. It’s hard because we need more leverage before we’re able to effectively start negotiating because the company won’t negotiate in good faith. The stores that are unionized right now are trying to negotiate, and the company is just stonewalling. They’re not opening the books, they’re not making reasonable responses to any proposals that the union is making.
So right now, things are tough because we’re sort of in a limbo because we just need more stores to organize before we can really start effectively bargaining. So that’s sort of the macro picture. How things are going at my store is our union campaign started I think two years ago. It was very small, and then within the last eight months or so, we had a worker from our store who helped do everything organized, and we got more serious and more organized with our campaign. We made lists and we made sure to talk to everybody. We went public in April. We had our election a month and a half later. The election was crazy. There are like 140 people in the store, and there were 70 against the union, 74 with one more vote for the union that is being challenged in court. And the challenge is ridiculous.
Once that challenge vote is accepted, then we’ll be a certified union. So we basically won our election. It just has to get officially certified. But the process, because the company is challenging, it may be two years before we’re certified since we won our election, which is crazy. It’s so hard to keep the energy up during that time. We have to pay lawyers during that time. So it makes our life a lot more difficult. And I mean, it’s a wildly unfair, just in a moral sense, it’s a wildly unfair thing to do to people who’ve chosen to organize. So that’s where we’re at right now. We’re in court trying to get this ballot issue resolved. And also the company has some other objections to the election, which we think aren’t, they’re ridiculous. We think they’re just stalling to try and make our lives more difficult and try and beat the union sort of by attrition, just by wearing us down with time and resources.
Maximillian Alvarez:
That’s their go-to strategy. Man. Wait, folks out, delay demoralize, tie things up in the courts. If you guys listen to this show, this is the same script we hear everywhere. Again, whether it be Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, Amazon, Chipotle, I mean there’s all the same crap out of the same playbook. And I do want us to circle back to that at the end and sort of talk about the lessons that you guys have learned that other stores out there that are thinking of unionizing should take to heart and could use in their own struggle to unionize. But I guess before we get there, I wanted to talk about that response from Trader Joe’s at the national and local level, because this has been really nuts. I mean, trader Joe’s tried to get your Instagram taken down if we’re using the Trader Joe’s Insignia, right?
Yeah. They’re challenging. They’re among the businesses that are challenging the very premises of the National Labor Relations Act. Thus you’re right to organize. They’re putting at question. And then on top of that, we’ve heard stories from other folks around the country, right? About the local managers responses you mentioned, right? The long running issue of managerial harassment that folks have been dealing with. So I wanted to ask if you just talk a little more about that grueling slog and what you guys have been experiencing from Trader Joe’s, both at the corporate level and anything that you you’re going through on the local store level.
Alec Plant:
So I can talk about what happened during our campaign. So in previous Trader Joe’s organizing campaigns, there have been a lot of very obvious violations of the National Labor Relations Act, which we call unfair labor practices. So that’s things like when management will force workers to have one-on-one meetings, they’ll threaten. They’ll threaten people with their jobs, they will do transfer freezes, and that’s all illegal because you can’t, under the law, you’re not allowed to penalize anybody for wanting to be in a union. It’s a legal thing and it doesn’t have anything to do with management. It’s a decision we make among ourselves. So Trader Joe’s got, in those previous campaigns, they had a lot of LPs, unfair labor practices filed against them. When we did our campaign, there had been a change in the law, and this is a Biden thing, it’s called Cemex. It’s a supreme, I can’t remember if it’s a Supreme Court decision or a law, but the legal environment changed.
So now if there’s an unfair labor practice during the election and the union has already gathered enough cards to trigger an election, and when we say gather cards, that means people sign a card that says, yes, I would like to have a union. So if we’ve got the cards and then the company starts violating labor practices, the courts can say, we’re not going to have an election. We’re just going to say that this is a union. So since that decision, trader Joe’s has been a lot more careful about violating the National Labor Relations Act and doing unfair labor practices. So in our election, we did not have the same level of egregious ULP violations that they had at other stores. And this was different for us because we prepared really hard for all this sort of heavy handed management intervention in our union campaign, and we really didn’t get it.
All of our anti-Union stuff was spearheaded by coworkers at the store, which was a totally different ballgame, and which was really hard for us because we weren’t prepared for it. And it was shocking because I hadn’t considered it that the people who would be opposed to the union, it would be that vociferous about it, would be that angry about it and would spearhead a whole campaign about it. I sort of assumed it would be a type of thing where some people, I assume I knew people wouldn’t want to be unionized, but I thought it would be a type of thing where it was like, okay, we would just sort of respect each other’s opinions, but wasn’t how it turned out. So our effort, the sort of struggles we faced, or the opposition was, it wasn’t company led, which was new and surprising for us and very tricky, I got to say.
Very, very, very tricky. And those are our coworkers. So when management does all this heavy handed stuff, it’s easy to say, oh, these are the bad guys. This is management. This just proves they don’t care about us with your own coworkers, those are people that you still work with in a lot of cases. Those people you still like. And I still do a lot of those. This is why it’s tricky. I still like a lot of those people, a lot of them don’t want to have a union. I still like those people. And not only do I still ’em personally, we still want to win ’em over to our side because we still think a union’s a good idea.
So that was very tricky for us. So that was during the election, we had this worker led anti-Union campaign that was very hard. Then after the election, after election is over, the whole Cemex thing is over. So after the election, they can start violating u ps if they want to, and they can start doing unfair labor practice if they want to. They can still get fined or whatever, but we got to go through court and I mean, they don’t care that much if they get fined. So since then we’ve had hiring transfer, we’ve had transfer freezes, we’ve had firings of union supporters that have never been explicitly for supporting the union. There’s always a pretext, but it’s union supporters who are getting fired. So we do, and we’ve had this dislike absurd court cases. So now it feels like, okay, now that the election is over, now they’re free to clamp down a little bit.
And yeah, different stores have different relations. I don’t know. A lot of stores have the atmosphere gets turns very sour. And we had that happen at our store, which was very rough. And then that’s something that could be used against you and your campaign is things used to be fun and now things feel kind of sour, even though we don’t think we were the ones who are trying to make everything sour. So yeah, that’s sort of how things have been. That’s sort of the character of the campaign and then how things have been going on after that. Now everything, there’s a lot of legal stuff that we’re going through. So as an organizing committee, we have less control over that. So we’re trying to control act in the sphere we have control over, which is trying to make sure that just win more people over, try and improve the environment at the store use. This time we have to build relationships and counter a lot of the untrues that we’re told by people who have something against the union.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I want to kind of pick up on that because like you said earlier, you’re at a stage in this struggle where Trader Joe’s corporate is really trying to isolate the unionized stores. And this is again, something like we’ve seen in the Starbucks campaign. The more stores unionized, the more power they have to put pressure on the company and the less capable Starbucks is to say like, oh, there’s just a few outlier stores. No, there’s like 300 plus stores. There’s something happening here. So it’s kind of that principle, more stores that unionize more pressure that the corporate office feels to address this. So I wanted to ask for folks out there listening, especially folks out there who are working at Trader Joe’s, are there lessons that you are imparting to other employees around the country when you talk to them that say like, Hey, learn from what we went through or be prepared for this. I wanted to ask if there are other lessons there that you’d want to communicate to folks and also specifically about going the independent union route. I mean, trader Joe’s United is part of this independent union movement within the broader kind of labor upsurge that we’ve been seeing in recent years. So if you could say a little bit about where that has benefited or hampered you specifically, but also any other lessons that you’d want to impart to folks out there who were thinking of unionizing their store?
Alec Plant:
Well, yeah, so I was kind of concerned about having an independent union because we can’t collect dues yet, which means we can’t pay people to be a bureaucracy. And I was concerned about whether or not we’d be able to have, how do we even have lawyers if we don’t collect dues and questions like that. So far it’s been great. The lawyers we have are fantastic. I think that the people who are involved there are a lot more active and interested in doing the work. So it doesn’t feel like there’s some bureaucracy that you have to sort of appeal to. It feels like we’re doing it, so that’s great. It’s harder because it, it’s a harder case when you have to tell people it might be a few years before we can bargain. So that’s rough. I think it’s worth it to have the type of union we want to have, which is an active union, a union with people who are not to denigrate any other unions, but this is what we’re trying to do is have a really active one with highly democratic features. So that’s great. If you’re at another store and you’re thinking about organizing, I mean get in touch with TJU, the change in sort of strategy between, in a post MX world where it does feel like Trader Joe’s is more reluctant to of bring the hammer down from the side of management.
That’s what I would tell ’em is it makes your campaign tricky. You’re not going to be fighting the bosses, or at least not as openly, it won’t. Yeah, that’s what we’ve learned from our campaign.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, and I mean, another that you already mentioned is be prepared for some of the most virulent, anti-union opposition to potentially be coming from other rank and file members and just understanding that that is a reality and that it’s going to require one-on-ones talking to your coworkers, no shortcuts as the great late Jane Alvy once said.
Alec Plant:
Yeah, yeah.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, let me ask you this, because this has been so great, and I really appreciate you taking the time to lay this all out for us, and I promise I’ll let you go here in a second. But I did want to kind of ask a big picture question here. As someone who’s been in the middle of a thing that all of us have been talking about for the past couple years, which is this labor resurgence. I mean this new union wave, this new generation of organized labor energy, which I’ve had the privilege and honor of covering on this show on the Real News Network for breaking points, so on and so forth. So I’ve gotten to hear from folks like yourself when the Buffalo Starbucks unionize or when Hadley Trader Joe’s unionize, right? Or when Amazon Staten Island unionize. I mean, I’ve seen just as you have the kind of excitement that people have had around the country about this labor upsurge, the independent unions that are emerging, the unions like the Union of Southern Service workers that are really changing the paradigm for how to organize workers in the service industry.
There is a lot going on, and there have been a lot of strikes and a lot of new union filings with the NLRB. So I absolutely do not want to discount that. But I wanted to ask, there are also sober realities here. I mean, because people have been cheering on, they’re like, rah, rah, rah, the labor resurgence is happening. General strike is next. But then a lot of people forget. They forget that even if you voted to unionize at your store, that does not mean you have a first contract. That does not mean your coworkers are not going to get fired and harassed or even your store closed down. I mean, that doesn’t mean that we’ve won everything. And so I guess I just wanted to ask you, as someone who’s there on the front lines of this story, I guess how much of it is real or where do you think we are right now? Where do you think folks out there who are excited about, who want to see this labor upsurge succeed, but maybe aren’t paying attention to the realities of the struggles that you and other workers around the country are dealing with? Where would you say we are in that moment and what would you want folks out there supporters to know about what they can do to keep that momentum going if they really want to see it succeed and they want to see you and your store succeed?
Alec Plant:
Well, I mean, I’m more optimistic than I’ve ever been in my life. Been, yeah, because been following labor stuff for a long time. I’m more optimistic than I’ve ever been. It’s still an uphill battle in a lot of ways. There’s still a lack, a general sense of the sort of malaise and the sort of sense of disinterest. It hasn’t gone away. It’s still there, but there is a sense that we can break through it. So for the first time, it does feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, which is enormously appealing, but it also feels like we’re still just sort of striking embers.
So it’s still hard. So a lot of my thinking about it is just colored by my experience in my own store. So you can’t generalize it that much, but that’s fine. But the process of organizing can be incredibly difficult. And there are times when you’ll feel incredibly down when you’re on Twitter or just watching the news and seeing this labor stuff. It’s so easy. Just be like, yeah, yeah, everything’s going good. When you’re actually doing it, it can be devastating. So that’s still part of the process is there are times when it will still feel hopeless, but then there are times when you do truly feel inspired. And I do feel like we are making progress. I don’t think 15 or 10 years ago we would’ve won this election, and we did. And to me, that’s incredible. And that’s one of those things that allows me to stay optimistic about the movement, even when it gets really, really, really hard.
If people out there want to help, you can donate to TJU if you want to support the movement more support politicians who don’t hate unions, obviously it’s super hard to find the good politicians out there because I mean, darn for everybody. But supporting somebody who won’t destroy the National Labor Relations Act or appoint a judge who will destroy the National Labor Relations Act is huge. The legal environment is important for us. So it’s really important that we have people who support us in that way. And I mean, if you really want to support and you work at a place that needs to be unionized, start unionizing it because as the old saying goes, a victory anywhere is victory everywhere. And the more people that start doing it, the more it’ll be both sort of normalized culturally and the more leverage we’ll have together.
And I mean, maybe you can’t do any of that stuff. Maybe you live in a red state, you can’t vote for anybody good, and maybe you work in some field that’s impossible to organize or you’ve tried to organize it or you just have some job where that won’t work out if you can’t do any of that stuff, if you’re just cheering for us on social media, Hey, you know what? It’s not much, but it’s something and we appreciate it. It’s really like no gesture is too small because there are some, maybe just not in a position where you can really do anything that’s going to help that much. But even if that’s the case, we really do appreciate even the tiny gestures, at least I know I personally do. When people come through my line and they see my pin and they go, Hey, stay strong, man. Sometimes it’s that breath of air you need when you feel like you’re suffocating and it really does matter to us. So that stuff helps. It all helps.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. I want to thank our amazing guest, Alec Plant. Alec is a worker organizer at the Lincoln and Grace Trader Joe’s in Chicago, and a member of Trader Joe’s United. Be sure to keep up to date with Trader Joe’s United and their organizing efforts around the country, and we’ve included links to their website and their social media accounts in the show notes as well as to the articles that we’ve been referencing throughout this episode. And as always, I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next week for another episode of Working People. If you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon. Check out all the awesome bonus episodes that we put out there for our patrons over the years, and go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and become a supporter today. It really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever
This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on Sep. 23, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
Boeing has increased its offer to striking Machinists, hoping to end a work stoppage that entered its eleventh day today. According to the Seattle Times, the new proposal would raise wages 30 percent over four years, as opposed to 25 percent in the offer that workers rejected by 94.6 percent.
Mediated talks with Boeing broke off September 18, the union said, with nothing more scheduled. Then on Monday morning, the company announced a new offer in the press. Twelve hours later, the union responded that Boeing “has missed the mark with this proposal.”
In a scathing statement, the negotiating team noted that the company misled the press “by wrongfully stating that the union membership is required to vote on the their latest offer… They are trying to drive a wedge between members with this divisive strategy.”
According to news reports, the offer would restore the annual bonus and slightly increase the 401(k) match, but it does not restore the defined-benefit pension the company froze in 2016, dumping everyone into a 401(k). The signing bonus would be hiked from $3,000 per worker to $6,000.
Meanwhile, picket lines have settled into a routine at the massive assembly plants in Renton and Everett, Washington, the smaller Auburn fabrication plant and the Gresham, Oregon facility. The 32,000 striking Machinists are members of IAM Districts 751 in Washington and W24 in Oregon. The strike is costing the company $100 million a day, Bloomberg estimated.
Workers are taking side gigs and living on savings. Strikers will receive $250 a week from the union starting the third week on the strike, but will lose health coverage September 30 if they don’t pay for a COBRA extension.
Boeing’s 16,000 engineering staff, members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), are contractually required to continue work during the strike, but they do not have to do Machinists’ work unless directly ordered to, their union has advised. Members said there is little sign of that happening.
Some SPEEA members have been joining Machinists on the picket lines before and after work, and are posting workplace signs in support of the strike. When the company suggested it could furlough some engineers to save cash, SPEEA responded with a firm no, citing their contract.
CROCODILE TEARS
Boeing management had pleaded with union members to consider the company’s frail position and huge backlog of plane orders. But workers dismissed the company’s scaremongering, voting 96 percent to strike, and walked out at midnight September 12.
While Boeing wailed that the strike may cause mortal wounds to the company, the Machinists union has for decades been fighting against the company’s self-wounding practices: rampant outsourcing, undermining of quality inspections, moving work to non-union shops, and hollowing out what used to be a coveted family-sustaining job.
Company policies have resulted in the loss of experienced workers, production delays, mismatched and shoddy parts, and the disastrous quality lapses that led to an Alaska Airlines door plug blowout in January.
QUALITY INSPECTIONS CUT
It was the union that was originally responsible for pushing the separation of quality inspection from production pressures, said Steve Cabana, a quality assurance inspector for 13 years. “Having quality separate in the supervisory chain is the only way quality can have any teeth,” he said. “I can look at a process and stop it.”
This is not true at vendors the company buys parts from, Cabana said, where they have “the same management system for manufacturing and quality.”
“That’s how the company figured it could save money by outsourcing, because other people didn’t have the same rigorous standards,” Cabana said.
“It’s a fragile network of suppliers who honestly aren’t compensated all that well for the work that they do,” said Mylo Lang, an apprentice machinist at Auburn with six years at the company. “They’ve really been squeezing them, in fact, over the years.”
In Boeing’s own plants, the company has tried to slash inspections, too.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires in-person inspections by qualified workers, but in 2017 Boeing tried to speed up production by having mechanics sign off on their own work.
At the company’s assembly plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, which currently has no union, the lack of worker power and input meant the company tested out cuts to quality inspections there first, around 2017, then expanded into the Puget Sound plants, where union members rallied to stop the cuts, flooding meetings and making the question a shop floor issue.
‘IT’S NOT OK TO CUT QA’
“We still see yellow ‘It’s Not OK to Cut QA’ (Quality Assurance) stickers around the plant,” said one six-year Everett worker who recalled that in 2018 the company tried to cut 900 inspectors, out of 3,000, “with the intention of pushing that work onto the production mechanic using automated technology sensors.” At Everett they build 767, 777, and 787s.
Tests of function, inspections of shimming (slender shims make the plane’s airframe durable over a lifetime of stress), and tests of riveting were all on the chopping block. The union calculated that Boeing removed 3,200 inspections on each 737 Max, from a total of 11,000.
But the company didn’t listen, so the union went to the FAA with official complaints. In 2021, the FAA found that Boeing was violating federal regulations and defective systems and parts were getting through as a result.
The union wants more power to stop corner-cutting. District 751 President Jon Holden told Fortune in June: “We’re proposing that we have the right to negotiate provisions that go into the safety and quality of the planes.”
STOCK PRICE OVER EVERYTHING
Boeing’s troubles, workers say, started when the company merged in 1997 with McDonnell Douglas, a failing military contractor which also made some civilian aircraft.
“McDonnell Douglas went south, latched onto Boeing, and somehow got on the board,” said Edwin Haala, who worked at Boeing for 25 years. McDonnell Douglas management team—disciples of General Electric’s “Neutron Jack” Welch—ended up taking over.
As at GE, the price of corporate shares became the only test of success—and corporate leaders’ attention to stock price was sharpened by their own compensation in stock options.
Boeing slashed costs, outsourced work, and refused to invest the large chunks of money required to develop new aircraft. This led to the cheaper (and, it turned out, disastrous) reworking of the company’s workhorse 737 into the 737 MAX.
Awkward design workarounds on the already FAA-approved plane led to the 737 MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
“That’s what happens when you have people making decisions whose absolute bottom line and final and complete vision is profit,” said Lang.
While Boeing complains that it’s short of cash, and now is paying a premium to borrow money (its rating is just above junk), Voss pointed out that the company spent $38 billion on stock buybacks from 2014 to 2018, juicing the stock price and advantaging corporate leaders who receive compensation in stock.
Buybacks, which were largely regarded as stock manipulation until 1982, reward shareholders in a way that avoids taxes on their gains. “It’s not worker appreciation,” said Voss. “It’s not updating facilities. It’s just toeing the line for Wall Street.”
HIGH TURNOVER
The unions demands on pay, pensions, health care, and mandatory overtime would reduce turnover, workers say.
Hearings on the door-plug episode revealed dizzying turnover numbers. Machinists Business Agent Lloyd Catlin testified at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing August 6 that the company told him that in the Renton facility, “60 percent of the Boeing workforce, including management, had less than two years at the Boeing Company.”
Many don’t make it past the first year. “You talk to any Boeing worker about their first year, and everyone knows that it is the worst thing in the world,” said Lang.
The rejected contract would have at least allowed first-year workers to use their paltry vacation hours as they accumulate them, rather than waiting to the end of their first year. But aside from allowing one more floating holiday day, the tentative agreement didn’t address the stingy vacation policies. Lang, with six years in, gets two weeks.
“Boeing wants to talk about, like, keeping workers on and getting them trained, right? Like, let people be sick. Let people have a f*cking life,” he said.
OVERTIME WOES
Paltry leave is on top of massive mandatory overtime. Previous bargaining already limited mandatory overtime to 112 hours every three months. But that still left people exhausted and broken, said Voss.
Speaking before the strike, Voss said that in his shop six people had resigned in the previous week. He listed their reasons: “‘I don’t like it,’ ‘It’s not what I thought it was,’ ‘It’s not worth it,’ ‘I have a better job.’”
He said this level of turnover is not uncommon for his shop, which is particularly stressful: “We’re installing systems, electrical and plumbing and fuel and hydraulics, and the way it is laid out is very complex and confusing if you haven’t been there for a while. So people are kind of just thrown into this mess.”
When Lang started at Boeing he worked on the 737 MAX in Renton and had a lot of 70-hour weeks mandated. “Like, you either show up to this place for 70 hours in a week or you lose your job. And that is not the way that we should operate in a free society.
“I would rather that we don’t have mandatory overtime in the contract. Like, that doesn’t seem like something that we ought to be okay with having,” said Lang.
Voss said the low pay and forced overtime are decisive in driving workers away, “because of the absolute pressure that is put on people for such little return. We’re barely valued as human beings; we’re effectively just a number. People want a sense of respect, and part of that sense of respect comes with a living wage.”
The rejected tentative agreement would have banned two mandated weekends in a row. But Lang, in Auburn, said he worried that the company would just end up moving the mandated overtime into 10-hour days rather than weekend work.
And many workers said they were working excessive overtime that wasn’t mandatory—but it might as well have been, because the low base wages made premium hours impossible to pass up. “I will forever regret the amount of overtime I’ve had to do to provide for my family,” said Jeff Simons, a lead rework mechanic on his fifth strike. “That’s everybody in America. But this company needs to fix our problems.”
This article was updated to reflect the union’s response to the company’s offer.
Among the very few things to look forward to on Labor Day is Jack Rasmus’s annual report on the state of US labor. Rasmus, an accomplished political-economist, riffs on the famous Frederick Engels book with Labor Day 2024: The Condition of the American Working Class Today. It may come as a surprise to some, but academically-trained economists are among the most intellectually shallow and ideologically tainted practitioners of the social sciences. Some are so in awe of their own academic specialty that they paint all economic trends through specialist lenses. Still others are so tied to their political biases that they cannot resist slanting their conclusions to reinforce their loyalties to one of the two political parties that we are currently allowed.
Rasmus is the rare university-educated purveyor who knows where to look, looks critically, and clearly synthesizes the data to draw broad and useful conclusions for working people. For a philosophically-trained skeptic and self-styled Historical Materialist, I have grown to trust Rasmus’s digest of the meaning of arcane, jargon-filled, often-misleading government reports.
Of course, we have had earlier times when similar data were available. For over three decades, Labor Research Associates — a group of Communist and left researchers — published a comprehensive Labor Factbook every two years that addressed “labor trends,” the “social and labor conditions” of the period, “people’s health,” the “trade unions,” “civil liberties and rights,” “political affairs,” and “Canadian labor developments.” This comprehensive book armed working people who cared to advance the cause of workers with a cache of ammunition in the class war. We don’t have Labor Factbook, but we are lucky to have Jack Rasmus’s report.
What does his report tell us?
● Despite $10 trillion in stimulus since the pandemic, the US economy has only produced an anemic recovery: GDP of 1.9% (2022), 2.5% (2023), and 2.2% (2024, to date).
● And the US worker fared even worse: “…with regard to wages, the American worker has not benefited at all from the $10 billion-plus fiscal-monetary stimulus. Real Weekly Earnings are flat to contracting. And take-home pay’s even less.”
● The great US job creation machine that US politicians celebrate is not performing so well: “It is important to also note that the vast majority of the net new jobs created have been part-time, temp, gig and contractor jobs. In the past 12 months, full-time jobs in the labor force [have] fallen by 458,000, while part-time jobs have risen by 514,000.”
Typical of an election year, official reports grab headlines, exaggerating job gains, only to be corrected later: “The jobs reports over the past year are revealing as well. They continually reported monthly job gains of around 240,000. But the Labor Department just did its annual revisions and found that for the period March 2023 thru March 2024 it over-estimated no fewer than 818,000 jobs!” [The September 6 employment report downgraded June and July’s job growth by a further 86,000 jobs!]
“The Wall St. Journal further reported that up to a million workers have left the labor force due to disability from Covid and long Covid-related illnesses. Neither of those statistics [is] factored into the government’s unemployment rate figures.”
● For working-class citizens, debt has been a paradoxical life-saver, supplementing slack wage growth. But it continues to grow at a dangerous pace and with increasingly unsustainable interest rates: “The last quarter century of poor-wage increases has been offset to a degree by the availability of cheap credit with which to make consumer purchases in lieu of wage gains and decently paying jobs. Actually, that trend goes back even further to the early 1980s at least.”
“Household US debt is at a record level. Mortgage debt is about $13 trillion. Total household debt is more than $18 trillion, of which credit-card debt is now about $1 trillion, auto debt $1.5 trillion, student debt $1.7 trillion (or more if private loans are counted), medical debt about $.2 trillion, and the rest installment-type debt of various [kinds].
American households carry probably the highest load of any advanced economy, estimated at 54% of median family-household disposable income. And that’s rising.
Debt and interest payments have implications for workers’ actual disposable income and purchasing power. For one thing, interest is not considered in the CPI or PCE inflation indexes and thus their adjustment to real wages. As just one example: median family-mortgage costs since 2020 have risen 114%. However, again, that’s not included in the price indexes. Home prices have risen 47% and rents have followed. But workers pay a mortgage to the bank, not an amortized monthly payment to the house builder.
One should perhaps think of workers’ household debt as business claims on future wages not yet paid. Debt payments continue into the future for purchases made in the present, and thus subtract from future wages paid.”
Since Rasmus penned his report, the Census Bureau released its report on household incomes. While there was an uptick in 2023, median household income adjusted for inflation remains below the levels of 2018, explaining why poll respondents (and voters) are feeling insecure about the economy. In fact, household incomes have only increased around 15% over the last twenty-three years– hardly a reason for a victory lap by the last four administrations… or the capitalist system!
● Rasmus brings a necessary sobriety to the discussion of the state of the organized trade union movement in the US. While there are many exciting developments, the goal of building a formidable force to advance the interests of working people remains far off: “Since 2020 union membership has declined. There were 10.8% of the labor force in unions in 2020. There are 10.0% at end of 2023, which is about half of what it was in the early 1980s. Unions have not participated in the recovery since Covid, in other words, at least in terms of membership. Still only 6% or 7.4 million workers of the private-sector labor force is unionized, even when polls and surveys in the past four years show a rise from 48% to 70% today in the non-organized who want a union.”
“Recently the Teamsters union under new leadership made significant gains in restoring union contract language, especially in terms of limits on temp work and two-tier wage and benefit structures. The Auto workers made some gains as well. But most of the private-sector unionization has languished. And over the past year it has not changed much.
About half of all Union members today are in public-sector unions. It has been difficult for Capital and corporations to offshore jobs, displace workers with technology, destroy traditional defined-benefit pension plans, or otherwise weaken or get rid of workers’ unions. The same might be said for Transport workers, whose employment is also not easily offshored but is subject to displacement by technology nonetheless. But overall, union membership has clearly continued to stagnate over the past year, as it has since 2020.”
Rasmus’s candid conclusion: “The foregoing accumulation of data and statistics on wages, jobs, debt and unionization in America this Labor Day 2024 contradicts much of the hype, happy talk, and selective cherry picking of data by mainstream media and economists. That hype is picked up and peddled by politicians and pollsters alike.”
*****
And speaking of politicians…
A recent Jacobinpiece stands as a sterling example of torturing facts and logic to build the case that Democratic Party politicians got the “stop the genocide” message at the Party’s national convention. Waleed Shahid writes that “the Uncommitted movement didn’t win every immediate demand…” in his article Why the Uncommitted Movement Was a Success at the DNC. The Uncommitted Movement didn’t win any demand — immediate or otherwise — at the DNC!
It takes some skill and determination to recast a near totally effective effort to stifle the voice of pro-peace and pro-justice participants and protesters into “not just a fleeting victory — it is the beginning of a strategic shift in how the Democratic Party grapples with its own contradictions.” Sad to say, it takes a twisted perception to see “victory” and “a strategic shift” while convention-goers derisively and dismissively stroll past demonstrators reciting the names of civilians murdered by the Israeli military.
Shahid attempts the impossible in likening the 2024 Democratic Convention to the 1964 Convention, when brave civil rights activists shamed the Democratic Party before television cameras and journalists into negotiating with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (See this sharp comparative account in Black Agenda Report). There was neither shame nor negotiations in 2024.
Like Democratic operatives before him, Shahid scolds those expecting more from Democrats to– in the future– “out-organize” the Neanderthals controlling the party. In other words, force them to do the right thing!
When one finds a credible political party to support, it should not be one that must be coerced to support justice.
*****
It is a commonplace on the soft left to advocate a broad coalition or united front to address the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and North America. Building on the ineffectiveness of the long-ruling centrist parties, the French RN, Germany’s AfD, the US’s Trump, and a host of other populist movements have mounted significant electoral campaigns. The knee-jerk left reaction is to advocate a broad popular front of all the oppositional parties or movements, a tactic modeled crudely and inappropriately on the Communist International’s anti-fascist tactic.
Most recently, the French left conceded to an electoral “popular front” with the ruling president, Emmanuel Macron’s party and other parties in opposition to Marine Le Pen’s RN. To the surprise of many, the left won the most votes and should have — by tradition — organized a new government. But President Macron “betrayed” popular-front values and appointed a center-right career politician, hostile to the left, as prime minister. To add insult to injury, Macron consulted with Le Pen for approval of his appointment.
Consequently, despite commanding the largest vote, the popular front is in a less favorable position and the right is in a more favorable position than before the electoral “victory” (see, for example, David Broder’s Jacobinarticle for more).
This move by Macron should sober those who glibly call for a popular front as the answer to every alarm, every hyperbole regarding the populist right.
Because of this gross misapplication of the united-front tactic, I can enjoy an I-told-you-so-moment. I wrote in late June: “The interesting question would be whether Macron’s party would return the favor and support this effort in a second round against RN. I doubt they would. Bourgeois ‘solidarity’ only goes so far.” Where the left selflessly threw its support behind Macron’s party where it needed to win, Macron through his deal with Le Pen, threw the left under the bus!
On September 18, students walked out of a job fair at Cornell University, one of the elite universities that organized an unprecedented student movement in solidarity with Palestine and that also experienced a strike last month. Their motive was to bring attention to the presence of Boeing at the job fair as Boeing is one of the world’s largest aerospace manufacturers and defense contractors…
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Sep. 18, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
For the first time in decades—and in a break with other major unions and many of its own local bargaining units—the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Wednesday announced it would not endorse a candidate in the U.S. presidential election.
The union’s decision came two months after its general president, Sean O’Brien was widely criticized by labor proponents for speaking at the Republican National Convention, with advocates noting that GOP candidate Donald Trump had spent his presidential term from 2017-21 appointing anti-union federal judges and key agency leaders, undermining collective bargaining rights, and making it harder for workers to hold their employers accountable for unfair labor practices.
The Teamsters General Executive Board said its 1.3 million members had expressed no majority support for Vice President Kamala Harris and no universal support for Trump.
TEAMSTERS RELEASE PRESIDENTIAL ENDORSEMENT POLLING DATA
“For the past year, the Teamsters Union has pledged to conduct the most inclusive, democratic, and transparent Presidential endorsement process in the history of our 121-year-old organization—and today we are delivering on… pic.twitter.com/CnFNN9uosx
Prior to President Joe Biden’s announcement in July that he was stepping aside in the presidential race and endorsing Harris, the Teamsters’ rank-and-file members had backed Biden over Trump, 44.3% to 36.3%.
Harris met with the union’s leadership earlier this week, reminding officials that Trump had named anti-union members to the National Labor Relations Board, while the vice president had cast the Senate’s tie-breaking vote on the American Rescue Plan, which shored up the Teamsters pension fund with $35.6 billion. She also pointed to Trump’s comments in an interview with billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk that striking workers should be fired.
“Listen to the guy when he’s told you who he is,” she reportedly told union leaders.
O’Brien said Wednesday that the union “sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries—and to honor our members’ right to strike—but were unable to secure those pledges.”
The union objected to Harris “not preemptively saying the White House would play no role in settling the Teamsters’ dispute with [the United Postal Service],” according to The New York Times.
But a number of union locals and the Teamsters National Black Caucus endorsed Harris before the union’s announcement Wednesday, and the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council announced its support for the vice president shortly afterwards.
“The 250,000 who work across California are fundamental to the American economy, not only producing and transporting goods, but also providing essential services throughout the private and public sectors,” said Joint Council 42 president Chris Griswold. “They deserve an administration that will put working people first.”
Harris has won endorsements from the United Auto Workers, the Communications Workers of America, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, and other key unions.
“The vice president’s strong union record is why Teamsters locals across the country have already endorsed her—alongside the overwhelming majority of organized labor,” Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said Wednesday. “She will look out for the Teamsters rank-and-file no matter what—because they always have been and always will be the people she fights for.”
John Palmer, a vice president at large for the union and member of its executive board, acknowledged that Harris had sent that message in her meeting with the Teamsters this week, telling the Times that she said, “I want your endorsement, but if I don’t get it, I will treat you exactly as if I had gotten your endorsement.”
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More than three years ago, a small group of government scientists came forward with disturbing allegations.
During President Donald Trump’s administration, they said, their managers at the Environmental Protection Agency began pressuring them to make new chemicals they were vetting seem safer than they really were. They were encouraged to delete evidence of chemicals’ harms, including cancer, miscarriage and neurological problems, from their reports — and in some cases, they said, their managers deleted the information themselves.
After the scientists pushed back, they received negative performance reviews and three of them were removed from their positions in the EPA’s division of new chemicals and reassigned to jobs elsewhere in the agency.
On Wednesday, the EPA inspector general announced that it had found that some of the treatment experienced by three of those scientists — Martin Phillips, Sarah Gallagher and William Irwin — amounted to retaliation.
Three reports issued by the inspector general confirmed that the scientists’ negative performance reviews as well as a reassignment and the denial of an award that can be used for cash or time off were retaliatory. They also detailed personal attacks by supervisors, who called them “stupid,” “piranhas” and “pot-stirrers.”
The reports called on the EPA to take “appropriate corrective action” in response to the findings. In one case, the inspector general noted that supervisors who violate the Whistleblower Protection Act should be suspended for at least three days.
The reports focus only on the retaliation claims. The inspector general is expected to issue reports in the future about the whistleblowers’ scientific allegations.
In an email sent to the staff of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention after the reports were released, EPA Assistant Administrator Michal Freedhoff wrote that the office plans to hold a “refresher training on both scientific integrity and the Whistleblower Protection Act” for all managers in the office. Freedhoff also wrote that the office is “reviewing the reports to determine whether additional action may be necessary.”
In a statement to ProPublica, the EPA tied the problems laid out in the report to Trump. “The events covered by these reports began during the previous administration when the political leadership placed intense pressure on both career managers and scientists in EPA’s new chemicals program to more quickly review and approve new chemicals,” the agency wrote, going on to add that the “work environment has been transformed under Administrator Michael Regan’s leadership.”
Trump campaign spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A second Trump presidency could see more far-reaching interference with the agency’s scientific work. Project 2025, the radical conservative policy plan to overhaul the government, would make it much easier to fire scientists who raised concerns about industry influence.
“I’m worried about the future because there are groups out there pushing for changes to the civil service that would make it so I could be fired and replaced with a non-scientist,” said Phillips, a chemist. Publicly available versions of the inspector general’s reports redacted the names of all EPA employees, including the scientists, but Phillips, Gallagher and Irwin confirmed that the investigations focused on their complaints.
Phillips said the experience of having his work changed, facing hostility from his supervisors and agonizing about whether and how to alert authorities was traumatic. He began pushing back against the pressure from his bosses in 2019, trying to explain why his calculations were correct and refusing their requests to change his findings, he said.
In one case, someone had deleted a report he had written that noted that a chemical caused miscarriages and birth defects in rats and replaced it with another report that omitted this critical information. After Phillips asked that the original report be restored, he was removed from his position within the EPA’s division of new chemicals and assigned a job elsewhere in the agency.
“I was turned into a pariah,” Phillips told ProPublica about the almost yearlong period when he was sparring with his managers in the new chemical’s division. “I lost sleep. I dreaded going to work. I was worried every time I had to meet with my supervisor or other members of the team. It made me question whether I wanted to continue in my job.”
He and the other scientists said they felt vindicated by the inspector general’s findings.
“It’s gratifying and a relief,” said Irwin, who has worked at the EPA for 15 years.
Irwin, who has a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology and three board certifications in toxicology, was transferred from the new chemicals division into a division of the agency he calls “existing chemicals,” after refusing to change several reports, including one on a chemical that he suspected of causing reproductive, immune and neurological problems. Irwin said his supervisor later cited his refusal to sign off on that assessment as a reason to downgrade his rating in his annual performance review.
The division where Irwin and the other scientists worked plays a critical role within the EPA. Companies that develop new chemicals are required to get permission from the EPA to introduce them to the market. If the agency finds that they could pose an unreasonable risk to health or the environment, it must, by law, regulate them, which can involve limiting or forbidding their production or use.
Irwin feels he is particularly suited to the work on new chemicals. “I have a strong ability to look at a chemical and pick out what its toxicity would be based on the structure.” When he was transferred, he said, “I got put on something I didn’t want to do.”
After they were forced to leave their jobs assessing new chemicals, the scientists filed the first of what would be six complaints with the EPA inspector general in June 2021. Their allegations, which detailed industry pressure that continued under the administration of President Joe Biden and pointed fingers at career officials who still worked for the EPA, were the subject of a 10-part series I published in The Intercept. Three of those career scientists named in the complaints subsequently left the EPA. And the agency ordered changes to address the corruption the whistleblowers had alleged, including the creation of two internal science policy advisory councils aimed at shoring up scientific integrity.
“These whistleblowers have been beaten down, ostracized and punished, when all they were trying to do was to protect us,” said Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an organization that helped the scientists draft the complaints to the EPA inspector general.
The inspector general’s reports said supervisors defended their actions, claiming that the whistleblowers took an overly conservative approach in their assessments and that, in some cases, criticisms the supervisors had relayed from the companies that submitted the chemicals were valid. One supervisor said scientists “were expected to make compromises to complete the new chemicals assessments.”
The inspector general released two additional reports that did not substantiate allegations of retaliation made by two other scientists.
Bennett said she was particularly concerned about how the outcome of the upcoming presidential election could affect the whistleblowers. “If there is another Trump administration, I will be petrified for them,” she said.
If Trump fulfills even some of the promises made in Project 2025, job security for the whistleblowers — and all EPA scientists — will become much more tenuous. Project 2025 specifically calls for new chemicals to be approved quickly and proposes that all employees whose work touches on policy in federal agencies would become at-will workers, allowing them to be fired more easily.
Although Trump has attempted to distance himself from the effort, saying, “I don’t know what the hell it is,” reporting by ProPublica showed that 29 out of 36 speakers in Project 2025 training videos worked for him in some capacity.
All three scientists who were found to have been the victims of retaliation said they worry that the underlying problems they raised have not been adequately addressed and might worsen.
The scientists said they were still concerned about industry pressure on the EPA’s chemical approval process.
“It’s been four years since we first started raising concerns about what was happening, and we haven’t seen a resolution yet,” Gallagher said. “We haven’t gotten assurance that the concerns we’ve been raising will be fixed.”
Still, Gallagher said she thinks the inspector general’s investigation might begin to lessen the burdens she’s felt since she blew the whistle at the EPA. “I’m hoping that I’ll be able to feel valued in my job again,” she said.
While Maximillian Alvarez was inside the Labor Notes conference this past April, attending panels and sharing space with intelligent, hard working organizers, Mel Buer was wandering the conference grounds outside, meeting folks and talking about the joy of being a member of the working class as they sat in the grass and ate their lunches and talked with friends, old and new. There’s something to be said about the people you meet when you’re sharing cigarettes outside a conference center–one such person was today’s guest, adorned in UFCW buttons and sharing his poetry with Mel while they smoked together on a bench near the conference. On this week’s episode of Working People, Mel sat down with labor poet and union grocer George Fish, a wonderful man full of stories about his life and work, his experiences growing up and ultimately leaving the Catholic Church, his politics–honed through decades of life experience–and his relationship to his writing and poetry.
Studio Production: Mel Buer Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mel Buer:
Hey everybody, it’s your host, Mel Buer, and welcome back everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, dreams, jobs, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and The Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you.
Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. If you love what we do and are looking for more worker and labor-focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network, and please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, friends, and family members. Leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you have recommendations for working folks you’d like us to talk to. And please support the work we do at The Real News by going to therealnews.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world.
I first met George Fish at the Labor Notes Conference in April where we shared a cigarette break outside of the conference hotel and talked briefly about what it meant to us to be part of the labor movement. The energy of the conference was incredible, and the optimism surrounding such a gathering was truly infectious. Before he went back inside to attend the conference, George shared with me some of his poetry about working in a union grocery store. Fascinated by his work and his life experience I shared my contact information and thus began the journey of getting him onto the show. For this episode, we had an interesting conversation about his life, his work as a freelance writer, and his current work as a unionized grocer. At the end of the conversation, George was kind enough to read one of his poems. Welcome to the show, George.
George Fish:
I’m George Fish. I’m a published writer and poet. I also work as an essential worker in the produce department at Kroger here in Indianapolis, Indiana, also known as Indianoplace, the World’s largest county seed. And I’m active in my union, UFCW Local 700, the Indiana Mega Local. I’m in Essential Workers for Democracy. And I view myself as a Gramscian organic intellectual. I didn’t go into my job to organize the working class. I went into my job because I needed a paycheck, and I’m very glad I published two poems so far in Blue Collar Review, the Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature. I have a wonderful editor there, Al Markowitz. By the way, you can look it up, Blue Collar Review is out of Norfolk, Virginia, and it’s an honor to use my poetry to reach my fellow workers, and I’m also reaching my fellow workers on my jam right now because our contract comes up in a year. We got a very pro-company contract and a lot of people are dissatisfied, so I’m trying to organize people to talk about the contract, so in a year we can get a better one.
Mel Buer:
Great. Welcome to the show. I think a great way to just start off this short conversation is to talk a little bit more about your work at Kroger, and your work with the UFCW. When did you start organizing with the UFCW?
George Fish:
Actually, I never started organizing. I got a job there very late in life in 2015. I had applied at Kroger many times before and almost got hired in the late eighties, but didn’t need to hire basically because I was considered too “introvert” according to their personality tests we had to take, but they needed people in 2015, and I got hired, and once I was in the union… By the way, on my first day of orientation, I joined the union and have been an active member since, and being with…
And about a year, a year and a half ago, I got in contact with Essential Workers for Democracy. We were very dissatisfied with our 2022 contract, which a lot of us found great pro-company, and it passed on two votes, the first vote it got roundly rejected, but the union insisted on another vote, saying that only fewer than 10% of those eligible to vote have voted on it. The second time it went through, but 40% voted against it, so there’s a lot of good basis for opposing that contract among my fellow workers, justifiably, and I’ve talked to my fellow workers, they’re concerned about pay, about COLAs, about more time off, about paid sick days, other matters too.
So, I’ve been talking to my fellow workers, just low-key, and following the advice I heard from Labor Notes of 80% listen, 20% talk, which I don’t always do, but getting to know my fellow workers. And I think I’m well regarded there as a union activist who has good things to say, and I hope to encourage them because the contract still weighs weight, and Indiana and Indianapolis do not have a tradition of activism, but we need it. And part of what I feel why is important is letting my fellow workers know that they are the union, it’s not the union rep. By the way, we have a very, very good union rep, a black woman. She doesn’t take any guff from management.
And it’s not the officials, and it’s not the international union officials, it’s not the stewards, it is us, the rank and file. And I think that a lot of people have taken inspiration from what the Teamsters and what the UFCW were able to do because they had a rank-and-file voice. And that’s what I’m trying to do within the UFCW. And I’m proud to be a union member, and I’m very glad to be a union member because I have protections that I worked… I worked 14 years in non-union shops as a temp, and, of course, had no rights. And we always dreaded they’d say, “Management wants to talk to you,” then they dress you down, and dismiss you from your job. And if you were lucky, you got unemployment compensation. If you weren’t lucky, you didn’t. But I’ve got this job security, and I tell you what, unions are a working man or woman’s best friend.
Mel Buer:
I agree. Yeah. I didn’t have union representation until I started this job at The Real News. The difference between the work I was doing in non-union shops or teaching or working as a freelance journalist, it’s night and day, and I really appreciate the ability to be able to have a bit more say in how the workplace runs and to be respected for that. So, I definitely appreciate the union difference here, and I’m glad that you have also noticed that. We met outside of Labor Notes, sharing a cigarette, and you had showed me some of your poetry, and you have just described yourself as a Gramscian intellectual working-class poet. When did you start writing poetry? What inspired you to start writing?
George Fish:
Actually, I had for a long time wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately, I had an alcohol habit, so I was drunkenly talking about writing instead of really writing. Back in the fall of 1980, I was in my early thirties. I was in forced sobriety for lack of money, and I actually wrote a short story to get published, and I was so excited that I started pursuing it from then on. And then, in 1984, had my first article, In These Times, that was followed by an article Monthly Review. So I started writing for the National Left Brass. I worked on a staff of a small magazine here in Indianapolis.
I started poetry, Christmas Eve 2004, I was in an angry mood from my ex-Catholicism, and I wrote a bunch of very angry irreligious poems just as therapy, and then put them aside and looked at them two weeks later and saw that a couple of them really worked out. So then, I started pursuing poetry and published my first poem in 2007 in the Indianapolis area-based Tipton Poetry Journal. And I’ve had about 30 poems published nationally, mostly in small Indiana publications, but also in the website, New Politics, and also, Blue Collar Review.
So I combine both working and writing, and unfortunately, writing doesn’t pay anymore, so I have to keep my day job at Kroger, where I’m a produce stocker, and I’m an older worker. I’m now in my late seventies, and I can’t afford to retire because of a poor work record for 38 years, so I don’t get that much in social security. But I do get a small pension for the union, and thanks to the union, which even though I was still working, contacted me, says, “You eligible for this pension.” So I was really grateful for the union, making sure that I got my pension money before I was too old to receive it or dead, and so I’m glad for that. And my wages, unfortunately, make up 69% of my income, so I still have to work.
It’s a physical blue-collar job. I’m on my feet eight hours a day, heavy-lifting of 50-pound bags of onions and potatoes, 30-pound bags of onions, 40-pound boxes of bananas. But it gets tiring, and as long as I can hold up to it, I’ll do it because, unfortunately, there is so little social safety net, even for the elders, that should I be too old to work, I would have such a drastic drop in income that I would really be hurting. So, I combine all three and write whenever I can because writing is my lifeblood. It gives me a sense of wanting to live, and be a part of life, and contribute. And I’m glad to say a lot of people like my writing. They like my ironic sense of humor. You see, I have a sardonic sense of humor. That’s because I have a million one-liners. I keep them so tense like sardines. Yes, I make a pun out of anything. So, I came late in life, but I’m glad, and it’s good to be alive after a rough, rough time growing up.
Mel Buer:
Yeah. Do you explore any of these experiences working at the age that you’re working, or the experiences that you’ve had in just in the last 30 years of your life? Are these some of the themes that you explore in your poetry?
George Fish:
Not yet. My poetry can be very eclectic. I’ve written a lot of things. Basically, yes, they’re all explored indirectly. I had a hellish childhood, being raised Catholic in small towns, a lot of it that was in the Pope Pius, the 12th era, was before Vatican II, and I became an atheist at 18 when I entered college. By the way, I have a Bachelor’s in economics from IU Bloomington, Indiana University Bloomington. But I explore it indirectly because I write a lot of irreligious poetry that my good ex-Catholic friend, that John has said, is theologically correct. So it’s highly irrelevant, but yet it’s theologically correct because I get back at the Catholic Church by skewering on them with my poetry. But you’ve given suggestions on more topics I can write about.
My first poem in Blue Collar Review is based on a true story of an encounter with an obnoxious manager at Kroger, that inspired me to write a poem. And like I said, I was encouraged by Blue Collar Review editor, Al Markowitz, who is a very helpful editor and always takes the time to give you a personal letter of critique if he doesn’t accept something or he wants to change. He’s very good in that realm, and I’m glad to say that every writer really benefits from a good editor.
Mel Buer:
I agree. My editor is here at The Real News, and the editors that I’ve worked with over the last, oh, 10 years or so, are really the reason why I improve, frankly. I know that I’m going to give you time at the end of the episode to read a selection from one of your poems, but I really of want to drive home some of the other themes that maybe you work with, so we’ve already talked about traumatic upbringing within Catholicism. I am also a born and raised Catholic, and grew up in the Catholic Church, probably had quite a different experience than you did, but still walked away from my relationship with that faith at a younger age, in the last 10 years or so.
George Fish:
You’re a lot younger, I can tell by looking at you. You’re a lot younger. You’re a lot younger than me. I’m usually old enough to be your father, if not your grandfather.
Mel Buer:
Yeah, I’m 32. Yep. But I went to high school in the Catholic Church, so I graduated into… I was 18 or 19, and then I went to a Catholic Jesuit University for two years in Colorado, so it was just… I don’t know, natural progression into the various stages of education that is controlled by the Church, and then fell out of it quite quickly, and also had struggles with alcohol and found there was no room for both faith and my addiction at the time. And so, I don’t know, I felt left behind by God and I used to write poetry about the same stuff. You get angry when you grow up in a faith like that and you find that your life circumstances don’t quite match up with what is supposed to happen or what you think is supposed to happen.
And so, I can understand wanting to write back to that. And I think that poetry specifically has this unique characteristic where you can start and have those conversations with the pieces of your life that you are most affected by. And I was wondering, are there other moments in your writing career in the last 30 or so years where you found that writing has particularly helped with, whether it be the alcohol, or the questioning of your faith, or other moments in your 30 years?
George Fish:
Yes, important. When I started writing seriously on a regular basis, I was writing for a number of small magazines that had deadlines. It helped me overcome my horrible previous habit of procrastination because editors just didn’t mess around when you didn’t make deadlines, so it got me off… It helped me break through procrastination because I had to meet deadlines. I had to be good fast, and I think it helped me learn to be good fast because I was an active freelance writer-journalist who had to produce something every week or every month and had to do it, so I did it. You don’t want an editor scorned on your back.
I want to thank you for sharing. We have a very similar parallel experiences. I also want to say that because of my writing, my writer’s biography is in Who’s Who in America for both 2019, 2020, that I know of. So, everybody check that out at the library, and I’m very glad that writing has given me my Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame, so if I may be egotistical or individualistic on that regard, but every writer, when I think about writing, writing is a very egotistical business because when you’re a writer, you have the chutzpah to believe that what you have to say is so well written and so incisive and so interesting that total strangers will read you. Yeah.
Mel Buer:
Yeah. What are some of the things that you did write about, and you said you got published in In These Times and other publications locally and elsewhere, what was the focus of your journalism beat?
George Fish:
Lots of things. I would be assigned articles by my editors in the magazines. I wrote on things, I wrote for many left publications, Indiana themes. I wrote about how the Indianapolis Colts extorted the city to pay for an expensive stadium. That was the Colts Extortion Board. That article I wrote for Against the Current. I wrote a lot on Indiana issues because that was your Indiana publications. When Indiana signed a Religious Freedom Act that discriminated against gays, I wrote a poem about that, and that was published in New Politics. So, I’ve combined my political and other interests with my poetry and writing, and not just political interest, I also wrote a poem that was published, T.S. Eliot Was Wrong, which starts out with the famous epigraph from T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land, “April was the cruelest month,” and I write that, but T.S. Eliot was wrong, very wrong. Although his language is vivid, picturesque, I say, “April was not the cruelest month. January is because January is cold and freezing and flu season.”
I write on a lot of different themes, but a lot of irreligious themes and a lot of political themes. And I’m a great lover of blues music and punk rock, and also classic rock and roll, including 1950s rock and roll. And I have a special fondness for early ’62 to ’65 Beatles because I think the Beatles did some of the greatest teeny-bop ever been done in rock and roll, early Beatles song. I don’t want to be just a one-dimensional person. I’m more than just a one-dimensional political walk. I just want to be as fully engaged in life as I can, and I’ve been successful at it so that I’m not just a jack of all trades and a master of none. As my old academic advisor, IU Bloomington, he said, and I quote, “Knowledgeable and unusual variety of activities, and that’s wonderful.” Thank you. Yeah.
Mel Buer:
Yeah. Do you ascribe to a certain type of leftist politics? Is there a specific ideology or political tradition that you find you identify with?
George Fish:
Well, for a long time, I was part of the Trotskyist far left, but now I consider myself a social Democrat, a democratic socialist in the sense of Michael Harrington, the left wing of the feasible. I think what’s important now, and of course, as I get older, it becomes more important because I know that my days on this planet are numbered. I want to see results in the here and now for me and for my fellow workers. And one of the big issues that concerns me, of course, is the Republican threats to social security and Medicare, which had my age, 77, I rely on.
But, yes, I would consider myself right now an anti-authoritarian democratic socialist, social Democrat. I was very, very enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, and wrote an article in New Politics praising Bernie Sanders 2016 candidacy when he announced it in 2015 and started a discussion on that going on in New Politics. So, basically, I think revolution is a will of the wits, I don’t think it’s going to happen, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do things to make our lives better in the here and now, and that’s what my politics is about now.
Mel Buer:
I tend to agree, pragmatic politics at this current moment.
George Fish:
And that was one of the things always so exciting about the Labor Notes Conference this past April 19th to 21st, is that it’s obvious now to me that the left wing of the labor movement is now a mainstream part of the labor movement. It’s not a fringe. It’s when 4,700 union activists from all over the country gather in one spot, you know you’re not a fringe. You may be a minority voice, but you are an important voice in the labor movement itself now, which is so different from the old Meany-Kirkland AFL-CIO I remember.
Mel Buer:
I was going to ask, in the last couple of years, there is this resurgence of… Not just in the popularity of, or I would say positive thinking about labor organizing, but also the new organizing and a… Oh, I don’t know, it’s like the clouds broke and the sun came out for the first time in a long time. What is the most exciting thing based on your experience of unions in the past and what we’re seeing in the last couple of years? What is the most exciting thing about seeing this resurgence in labor activity?
George Fish:
I think in the emergence of the organization active in Essential Workers for Democracy, taking a cue from what was done in the Teamsters and the UAW and trying to democratize a very top-down union, the UFCW, which represents over a million people and a lot of in the groceries and food processing who really need good unionism. And I think that’s been an honor to be able to participate with EW for the Essential Workers for Democracy and the good people who are involved with it, who are seasoned union militants, mostly on the West Coast, especially in the UFCW mega local, Local 3000, which represents Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, but also strong base in California. And we are all over the country, even in the Midwest, which lacks in activist culture.
Mel Buer:
Yeah, I see a lot of what UFCW 3000 is doing here on the West Coast because I’m based in Los Angeles currently. And it’s really exciting to see that not just the UFCW, but other unions are taking on this inspiration of creating reform movements inside of unions. They care so much about the way the union operates and they want to see it improve. They want this to be a new generation of union activists who are participating democratically within the institution of the labor union. And I think that is a really exciting piece of the new era of union organizing, this more modern era of union organizing.
George Fish:
Oh, yes, in for a long haul, it took a long time for UAW, for democracy, to win, but it did with Shawn Fain, it took a long time for TDU, Teams for Democratic Union, to make a difference, but it did. And one man, one vote, which encourages the rank and file to participate, and as I said before, it’s… Give us a sense that we are the union, it’s not the officials, it’s not the union rep, it’s not the stewards, it’s we ourselves, the rank and file, and when we have a voice, we really feel empowered to make a difference in our unions I feel.
Mel Buer:
Absolutely. Well, we’re getting to the end of our conversation, but I did want to give you time to… I would say we probably have time for one poem, or one selection from one of your poems. Which one would you like to read, and go ahead when you’re ready?
George Fish:
I would read my very first one, which is a show one, it’s only one page based on a true story that happened to be at Kroger in 2021, during the time of COVID when we had to wear mask and my mask inadvertently came… Wasn’t on my face that I got chewed up by a manager, and then a non-union shop would’ve gotten fired for what I did, but had protection because there the union, and was in Blue Collar Review in the spring of 2022. It’s called, I’m so glad I’m working in the union workplace.
Mel Buer:
All right, go ahead.
George Fish:
This was especially given home to me during the height of COVID when upset because the heavy box on an ill-stacked pallet nearly fell on my foot. I was so upset I forgot to pull up my face mask. It was on my face, attached over my ears, but in my upset, I’d forgotten to pull it up. Was obnoxiously reprimanded it by obnoxious assistant manager, and I blew up angrily in his face, in a non-union workplace, I would’ve been fired, perhaps some, barely. Instead, rather than have to face that assistant manager the following day, I simply went to the store manager and requested a personal day off, which was granted because the ability to do so was part of the union contract. Going home, I immediately applied through the union for a month’s disability lead, which was also granted. In the meantime, the nasty assistant manager was forced to take a vacation, and when I came back to work a month later, not only had I calmed down, he had too. He wasn’t hassling me any longer as he had, and even more beneficially, I had a job to return to. That is what union protection is all about. Ensuring you don’t pay through the nose for an inadvertent mistake by getting fired for.
And that is the poem I read to great satisfaction and appreciation at the Great Labor Arts Exchange, at the Labor Notes Conference, and I’m very proud of that all.
Mel Buer:
You should be. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about your writing, to talk about your poetry, and it’s been a joy talking to you, and I’m really glad that we finally, after a couple of months, got a chance to sit down and really discuss what makes your writing and your life experience unique. So, thank you so much for coming on, George. I really appreciate it.
George Fish:
Great. Appreciate it. And please send me an email with the link to the video so I can share it with others.
Mel Buer:
Absolutely. And as always, I want to thank you all for listening, and thank you for caring.
We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes we’ve got going there for our patrons. And go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network, where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for The Real News newsletters so you never miss a story, and help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today.
Once again, I’m Mel Buer, and we’ll see you next time.
Hundreds of Amazon drivers at a delivery station in Queens, New York, marched on their bosses Monday to announce they are joining the Teamsters. They are demanding the logistics giant recognize their union and negotiate a contract. “To march today and walk in there with everyone behind us, all of us standing together as a union, it was so amazing,” said Latrice Shadae Johnson, who earns $20…
France was the birthplace of modern democracy, and it may well be the start of its end. After the surprise victory of the left New Popular Front in this year’s elections, President Macron has betrayed democracy in a deal with the right to make Michel Barnier Prime Minister. Axel Persson, General Secretary of France’s CGT Railroad Union, joins The Marc Steiner Show for a post-mortem of the election, its aftermath, and how the deterioration of French politics reflects global trends in the rise of the right and the erosion of democracy.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us. Once again, welcome to another episode of The Rise of the Right, and we go back to France, and we go back to a conversation with Axel Persson, who was a train driver in France, General Secretary of the CGT Railroad Union, in Trappes, and joins us once again. Axel, good to see you. Welcome.
Axel Persson:
Thank you, great to see you again. Thank you for having me.
Marc Steiner:
It’s always great to talk to you. I was really happy when I heard we were going to do this again. I promise, the next time we’ll do it, I’m going to fly into Paris to do it.
Axel Persson:
Yes, with pleasure.
Marc Steiner:
Let me just begin in a broad question here. What is the political dynamic in France at this moment that is allowing for the rise of the right, and to the leader of the country, Macron, to fall in line with them? What is going on, and what is that dynamic?
Axel Persson:
Well, the current dynamic is, unfortunately, one that is being observed in many industrial countries in Europe, and including in the United States, as has been manifested, for example, by the first presidency of Trump, or his attempt to gain another term for the upcoming elections, which is actually a reflection of the rise and strengthening of the far right in the political landscape, but also within the very deep fabrics of French society. This dynamic, of course, it didn’t start with the last elections. It has been a long-going process for the past 20, 30 years perhaps, in France. One could argue exactly when this dynamic really started.
The rise of the far right in France is the result of growing disgust amongst the general population, and particularly within the working class, of the disgust over the two main political blocs, the traditional left, the traditional right, that has been basically taking turns at managing the system and implementing policies that are hostile towards working people, and as far as the left is concerned, regular betrayals of the promises they have been making to their electorate, which has led to the rise of the far right, which is also a consequence of the weakening of the traditional labor movement, which has not disappeared by any means, but that has been weakened by these past experiences of left-wing governments in power that have betrayed its electorate.
This has led to the rise of the far right, and of course, that has been fueled by an ongoing orchestrated political campaign that has been funded by very powerful forces in French society, including some of the richest people, billionaires like Vincent Bolloré, who is one of the major CEOs of the country, who have been methodically funding, for example, media empires in France to promote a racist agenda, and have been using the media part they’ve been basically building for the past decade now to instill racist, xenophobical ideas in the general population in order to convince a large swath of the population that all the issues, and I mean really all the issues, whether it be housing, whether it be unemployment, whether it be even job precarity, insufficient wages, dysfunctional public services or even in some aspects, insecurity in some neighborhoods, all of it is pinned not on the capitalist system, but on immigration. Everything is linked to immigration and foreigners.
If your housing is bad, if your social housing is bad, it’s because an immigrant has taken it. If your wage is insufficient, it’s because there are illegal aliens, as I say, who are doing the job for less, or foreigners in other countries who are competing against you. If there’s insecurity, of course it’s because it’s immigrants. If you just feel bad in general, they’ve managed to all link it to immigration somehow. It’s basically just racism. Of course, this racism is not new in France. France is a historical colonial power, so it doesn’t start 20 years ago, but they have been able to strengthen themselves because also of the weakening of the historical labor movement, which has historically been very strong in France.
It’s still strong by many aspects, if you compare it to other countries, but the counter society, the French labor movement that has historically been able to build in the working-class neighborhoods, in the workplaces, has been weakened, and its capacity to produce a counter society, a counter discourse in order to maintain working-class political ideology alive against that has been weakened, and the far right has managed to take the offensive and drive a wedge into society. That’s the situation right now, and Emmanuel Macron is, of course, being heavily influenced by that, and is leaning more and more towards the right. That is just the general political situation in France.
Marc Steiner:
Let me put some of the things you said together here, and explore them in a little bit more depth. One of the things that I think is a dynamic across the globe is the weakening of working-class movements, and the element of racism that also takes place in countries. It seems to me, the way you described this, that this is a huge dynamic in Paris. This maybe is a completely ridiculous digression, but when I was young, Paris was always this place, France was place that exiles from Africa and Asia could come and feel freer, and be part of a different kind of society. But now, with this immigration from northern Africa and other places around the globe, former colonies, the racism has come bubbling up. Talk a bit about how you see that synergy between the disappointment about how the left has responded to this, and the depth of racism you find in France itself.
Axel Persson:
Well, the immigration, of course, is not new in France, as I said, especially given the fact that France is a historical colonial power. It has built its economical power, like for example, Great Britain did, it was built on a colonial empire. After the colonialism more or less ended, and more or less because neocolonialism, of course, succeeded it, much of the French workforce has been, especially the big industrial cities like Paris or Marseille, or the big major industrial areas in France have been relying heavily on what they call workforce originating from immigration, which is basically just immigrant workers, but that’s just a fancy French term for it. French capitalism has relied heavily on it to build its factories, to build the public transport system, to build the roads. They have always been part of French society, but they were organized at the time, when they arrived massively.
It was also the time where the French labor movement was massively organized within the CGT, my trade union, which it still is to some extent. Most importantly, well, not most importantly, but also as importantly I would say, the influence of the French Communist Party was massive at the times, because it was a mass party with millions of members at the peak of its strength, running and controlling municipalities, more than 10,000 cities in France. It was, at one point actually, the biggest single party in parliament, but not just an electoral force. What is really important to comprehend is that it built a counter society in the areas it controlled. Whether it be in the workplaces, where it controlled the unions, whether it be in the working class neighborhoods where the party controlled even your local soccer club, the collective of people who would help children to do their homework at work were run by communist militants.
If you had a problem in your social housing, there would be a communist cell that would help you take care of the problem, and you would even go to holidays, if you couldn’t afford them, through the means the Communist Party had implemented through the mayors, through the municipalities it controlled, or through the funds the union had secured at the workplace specifically for these aspects, which meant that there was this complete counter society with its own media, its own structures that could implement these ideas of solidarity and anti-racism, basically. It doesn’t mean that everything was perfect, because there were many contradictions in these areas, but it meant that there was this identity and very strong class consciousness that kept the far right not inexistent, but much more marginal than it was today, and quite marginal within the working class especially. It doesn’t mean that the entire working class, of course, were like pure idealists. That doesn’t exist, of course.
The far right, at least politically, was completely marginalized within the working class, and that is what has changed since then. It’s not immigration. Actually, there are less people coming in and immigrating in France nowadays than, for example, 60 or 70 years ago. There’s much less, actually. What has changed now, though, is that given the weakening though of this historical Communist Party, which is, in many aspects, its own fault, the far right has basically managed to drive a wedge into the working class without finding this counter organized society. Many of the areas where the far right makes its highest scores are the former strongholds of the Communist Party, especially in northern France. It’s not the only thing, but that’s one of the most significant manifestations of how these dynamics have changed.
This is basically what the working class is facing now. It’s the weakening of the class consciousness, that is basically the whole gist of it. It’s the weakening of the class consciousness and the organizations that kept it alive. It doesn’t mean it has disappeared. It means that the organizations implementing it in a concrete manner have been weakened severely and it has given the far right, basically, a boulevard which to develop itself.
Marc Steiner:
It’s a very complex situation, and we only have so much time. I think we’re going to have do a whole series here to really bear down into what’s going on. France, in many ways, to me is emblematic of the rise of the right, and the dangers that the entire planet is facing. As you just described, the communist movements, the Communist Party and the left of the Socialist Party in France were the bulwark in the underground that fought the Nazis, organizing workers and standing up to them. There would’ve been no resistance without the communists and the socialists in World War II, of any significance.
Axel Persson:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
I’m wondering, what’s your analysis about why it fell apart? As you’ve said before, the left movement in France is not living up to its potential with Mélenchon, the new leader of this united left. The Communist Party has dwindled, and the right has really risen around Le Pen and others. It just skyrocketed. Give us your analysis of why that’s happened. Let me stop here, and I’ll have a closing question, but let me just let you explore that for a moment.
Axel Persson:
This development started in the 80s, actually, quite specifically. The beginning of the decline was in the 80s. Of course, it was a quite-long process, but it started in the 80s, specifically with the Mitterrand governments, with François Mitterrand, who got elected in 1981 and who actually got elected for another term. He was president between 1981 and 1995.
Marc Steiner:
Who was a socialist.
Axel Persson:
Yeah, a socialist, a Social Democrat.
Marc Steiner:
Right, Social Democrat.
Axel Persson:
A Social Democrat, and the first three years of his mandate for his first period actually quite lived up to the promises they had made to the electorate. Starting in 1983, and this is important in the fact that the Communist Party was associated with the government, not only did it participate and give it support in parliament, but its ministers took part in the government, and then were associated with all the decisions, and defended them, even the unpopular ones. In 1983, there was what they called the tournant de la rigueur in French, which we could translate into the austerity update.
They’re saying basically, “What we have been doing has been way too generous towards the workers, and we are not in line with the demands of the financial institutions of the French corporate world, and the public finances of the state are being under attack, basically. We need to re-evaluate our policies in order to satisfy the demands of the European Union institutions, of the international financial institutions, and also and most importantly, the French corporations.” They basically made a U-turn, and all that they had done was basically dismantled, in many aspects by themselves. And then, when the right took turn and won the next elections, they continued it, but when they came back to power, it continued as well. That was the start of the decline of the French labor movement. It hasn’t disappeared, by any means, but that was when it declined.
Marc Steiner:
Let me ask you this piece in the time we have left here. What’s the political reality that has Macron uniting with the right-wing, the far right, to create a government, and probably having have new elections, and not with this massive left-wing presence in the parliament? Why did he unite right instead of left?
Axel Persson:
Well, because what’s interesting, though, that’s why I’m insisting that it’s not dead by any means. The last election, the snap elections that were organized because Macron had decided it, he was the one who dissolved parliament, we could say were won by the Popular Front, the new Popular Front that is a coalition of the working-class historical parties, but also an alliance with trade unions such as myself and many other associations like anti-Zionist Jewish organizations, feminist organizations, associations invested against the police violence, for example, it was a broad Popular Front that won the elections but did not secure an own majority of seats. It secured the most seats in parliament as a coalition, but not its own majority, which gave the possibility to Macron, of course, to see who can build the coalition to have a majority within parliament.
It was quite clear that, given the demands of the Popular Front, which was to abolish the pension reform he had implemented last year, which was to raise significantly the minimum wage, and which was to invest significant amounts in public services, that it was out of the question for Emmanuel Macron, and that he would by any means necessary, to paraphrase Malcolm X but was on our side, to prevent our coalition from even having the possibility of trying to build a coalition in parliament, even if meant compromise on the program. For him, it was unimaginable to even give a chance to that. In that aspect, he united, and he saw that despite the dynamics of the French election, [inaudible 00:14:59], despite the rise of the far right, you could see that there had been a massive reflex of voting against the far right to prevent it from seizing state power. People voted majority for the Popular Front, but some even voted for right-wing candidates against the far right.
The major dynamics, despite our disagreements, was that the majority of the electorate wanted to prevent the far right from getting power. What he chose to see now was to see in parliament, how can we build the coalition that is at least accepted by the far right? That is what happened. Because the Popular Front doesn’t have its own majority, basically, he called on his own troops that have stayed in parliament, even though a small minority now, to seek an alliance with the historical weakened, traditional right, and then sought the far right to see that in order to prevent the Popular Front from happening, and seizing power, can we at least all agree on not overthrowing a government together in order to prevent the Popular Front from even having the slightest chance of exerting state power and abolishing the reforms I’ve made? The far right, despite all their rhetoric of being anti-systems, basically struck a deal with Macron, and said, “We will not join your government, but we will not overthrow him with a no-confidence vote in parliament,” and that is what just happened.
As history has shown on what happened in the twenties, all proportions, of course, I don’t want to make a simple Godwin point, but history shows that once again, the centrist bloc, the right bloc, the traditional right bloc is faced by the threat of a renewed strength in the working class movement, they’re gaining [inaudible 00:16:29] again, allies with the far right, and even is basically paving the way for them to seize power at next elections. Now, he has basically struck a deal with the far right in order to maintain his capacity to control the parliament.
Marc Steiner:
In many ways, you paint this very Orwellian picture. You paint a very Orwellian picture, as in George Orwell, of what’s taking place. Finally, from your perspective as a union leader, as an organizer, as part of the left in France.
Axel Persson:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
How do you see what happens with the resistance and the ability of the left, the people’s movement, to actually take power in the face of this right-centrist, right-wing power? Where do you see it going from here?
Axel Persson:
Where I see going from here is that whatever happens, this government is… well, the government hasn’t been formed yet. He has just nominated a prime minister that is actually a traditional, known figure in France from the traditional right. The government hasn’t been composed yet, and the National Assembly hasn’t been called to session yet. That will be in October, so then, we will see. Whatever happens, this is going to be a very weak government, and it’s going to be a very unstable political situation. What things have shown also, these past weeks and past months, is that contrary to what the dominant media have been saying, which presented, basically, the ascension of the far right to state power in France as something that would inevitably happen, things have shown that when we intervene, have a coherent tactic and strategy, we can prevent them from happening by building the Popular Front, by organizing in the workplaces, because we campaigned actively all across the country, in the workplaces, in the working class neighborhoods all across the country.
We showed that, actually, we’re not just commentators of what’s happening, we actually influenced the course of history. What has been underestimated also is the fact that despite, yes, it’s undeniable, the far right is [inaudible 00:18:20], and it was, for now, the majority of French society clearly rejects the far right. It doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, the far right, but the majority still has these anti-fascist reflexes that still work.
Marc Steiner:
That’s a good thing.
Axel Persson:
We’re going to need to build on that. We’re going to need to build on that in order to transform this anti-fascist reflex into a political movement that is not only built on the rejection of this fascist program, but on the idea that we can have a better society, we can have a better future. We’re going to have to organize, so what we’re going to do very concretely is, on the 1st of October, we’re going to call for mass demonstrations to demand the annulment of the pension reform for all workers, the raising of the minimum wages, the investment in public services. It’s important, because we as trade unions are probably the only force in French society that is actually able to, at some point, unite the entire working class, including those that either vote for the far right or are influenced by their ideas.
The only situation I’ve seen in France the past years where we actually put in movement, the entire working class, despite the political differences, are on issues, for example, such as the pension issues. Then, when we go on strike and society is massively paralyzed, even workers who were influenced by the far right join our movements. These are actually the periods where the far right, in terms of media, are completely silent. They disappear because it’s not their terrain, it’s not their political terrain. They don’t talk in these periods because they feel very uncomfortable about it, because they cannot distance themselves from workers who are struggling. At the same time, they don’t want to appear towards the system as anything else that the guardian of their interests.
It puts them in a very uncomfortable position, and it’s a terrain into which we can advance, also, our political ideas, and our vision of society. Not only on the specific issues of wages, and for example, pensions, but also this idea that we need to fight together against the real enemy, and not the one they are designating, this poison they’re sowing into their ranks. That is why the strategy we’re going to try to build on is mass movements, because it’s in the mass movements that at least our political ideology can actually really gain a foothold in society, and it’s actually the only means. That is what we’re going to do now, but France is full of surprises. We’re going to see what’s going to happen this year, but everybody knows, actually, that this is going to be a very unstable, critical year in France for the coming year.
Marc Steiner:
Well, Axel Persson, first, let me thank you for always joining us, and for your really deep perspective on what’s happening in France. It’s important for the entire world, given that France is one of the largest militaries around, and it’s a usually a powerful country, and the battle against the right is significant.
Axel Persson:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
I’m going to stay in touch, write back and forth, and after the demonstration in October, let’s reconvene, and see where we are.
Axel Persson:
Yes, we’ll see what we start there.
Marc Steiner:
As they say in Cuba, [foreign language 00:21:06].
Axel Persson:
[foreign language 00:21:10].
Marc Steiner:
[foreign language 00:21:13]. Thank you so much, Axel, it’s always good to talk to you.
Axel Persson:
Thank you for having me and see you soon. Bye.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, let me thank Axel Persson for joining us today, and giving the perspective from France of the struggle for a just society that is powerful in pushing, and it’s always enlightening to talk with him. Thanks to Cameron Grandino for running the program, audio editor Alina Nehlich, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the fabulous Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible. Please, let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at MSS@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thanks Axel Persson for joining us today, and please stay with us as we cover the rise of the right here and across the globe, and talk to those who are fighting for a just world. For the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Sep. 13, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
“We’re fighting for every family,” said the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union that represents about 33,000 workers at commercial plane manufacturer Boeing, on Friday, after its members voted to reject a tentative contract offered by the company and go on strike. “We’re fighting for the future of Boeing.”
The work stoppage began just after midnight on Friday after 95% of workers represented by IAM District 751 voted to reject the proposed contract and 96% authorized the strike. The support of just two-thirds of the members was needed to initiate the walkout.
On Sunday, IAM District 751 President Jon Holden had expressed optimism about the tentative deal, which included a 25% raise for workers over the life of the four-year contract, a reduction in healthcare costs for employees, and an increase in Boeing’s contributions to members’ retirement plans.
But Holden said the union’s leadership would “protect and support” however members chose to proceed with the contract, whose terms fell short of the 40% raise they had originally demanded.
The last strike at Boeing lasted 57 days in 2008, and the contract that ended the strike has been extended twice since then—with the union making concessions that resulted in higher healthcare costs and an end to unionized workers’ traditional pension program.
“Workers are extremely eager to claw back lost ground on wages at a moment of crisis for Boeing,” said Lauren Kaori Gurley, labor reporter for The Washington Post.
The work stoppage comes as Boeing is working to increase airplane production amid questions about its safety standards and manufacturing capabilities following an incident in January in which a door panel blew out of a 737 Max jetliner when the plane was mid-flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration required Boeing to limit its production of 737 Max jets after the accident, until it could meet quality and safety benchmarks, but output at the company’s Renton, Washington factory “is far behind where Boeing wants,” The New York Times reported.
Joe Philbin, a mechanic at the Renton facility, told the Post that unionized workers have “a lot of leverage—why waste that?”
“This is about respect,” Holden told members Thursday night. “This is about addressing the past, and this is about fighting for our future… Boeing has to stop breaking the law, has to bargain in good faith, and we will be back at the table whenever we can get there to drive forward on the issues that our members say are important.”
At IAM District 751 Union Hall where inside thousands of Boeing employees have voted on a contract and possible strike. Outside: union members are putting together burn barrels in preparation to strike through the night. pic.twitter.com/ixsNyr08F2
In addition to federal investigations into Boeing’s manufacturing and safety standards after the January incident, the U.S. Department of Justice in May said the company had failed to meet conditions of a deal that shielded it from criminal prosecution over two deadly plane crashes in 2018 and 2019.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said Boeing’s ability to maintain workplaces that are safe for employees—and the public that relies on the comnpany’s planes—hinges on its treatment of workers.
“There are no safe planes without union machinists. If Boeing wants to restore its safety culture, its first order of business should be ensuring its workers are fairly compensated and protected from retaliation,” said Markey, expressing solidarity with the striking machinists.
Mahankali Parvati (left), Moturu Udayam (middle), and Chintala Koteshwaramma (right) perform an anti-war song during World War II with the group they led, Burrakatha Squad. Credit: Praja Natya Mandali Photography Archives
Mallu Swarajyam (1931–2022) was born with an appropriate name. From deep within the mass movement against British colonialism that was initiated by India’s peasants and workers, and then shaped by M.K. Gandhi into the movement for swaraj (self-rule), Bhimireddy Chokkamma drew her baby daughter into the freedom movement with a powerful name that signalled the fight for independence. Born into a house of reading, and able to get books through the radical people’s organisation Andhra Mahasabha, Mallu Swarajyam obtained a Telugu translation of Maxim Gorky’s Mother (1907). The book was one of many titles that were translated in the Soviet Union, part of that country’s great gift to the cause of literacy around the world and circulated by the communists in India. Gorky’s novel revolves around a mother, Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova, and her son, Pavel Vlasov. The mother works in a factory, the brutal father dies, and the son eventually becomes involved in revolutionary activities. The mother worries for her son but soon begins to read the socialist literature that he brings home and also immerses herself in revolutionary activities. This book had a marked impact on Mallu Swarajyam’s life, which she recounted in her 2019 memoir (as told to Katyayini and Vimala), Naa Maate. Tupaki Tuta (‘My Word Are Like Bullets’).
Having read this book at the age of ten, Mallu Swarajyam was inspired the next year to join the call by the Andhra Mahasabha to fight against bonded labour. She decided to break the barriers of caste and to distribute rice to bonded labourers in her town. ‘My own uncles were against my giving rice to bonded labourers’, she recounted. ‘But I was firm that they deserved their share. And my gesture set a precedent in the entire area where bonded labourers started to demand pay for their work’. Her mother supported these efforts, much like Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova supported Pavel Vlasov in Mother. These early experiences prepared Mallu Swarajyam for the rural uprising that would shake the Telugu-speaking region of India between 1946 and 1951 and is known as the Telangana movement.
Mallu Swarajyam, a communist revolutionary hero (left), with other women fighters of the armed struggle in the late 1940s. Credit: Sunil Janah
Mallu Swarajyam’s radicalisation took her into the emergent peasant movement and the attempt to build the communist party. She threw herself into the work of organising the peasantry in her district and soon across the entire region. When the uprising began, she was named as commander of a dalam (a fighting force), her speeches known as fired bullets. The landlords gathered to place a bounty on her head, offering a reward of Rs. 10,000 – a regal sum of money at the time. But she was undaunted, becoming one of the most beloved young leaders of the armed struggle.
Years later, Mallu Swarajyam recounted her experiences in the organisation of the peasants during the 1940s. Women and oppressed-caste Dalits would fill the village air at night with songs of the oppressed as they worked to de-husk rice. The songs were about god and their lives. ‘Under the moonlight’, Swarajyam recalled, the singing was so beautiful that even ‘people who were asleep enjoyed these songs’. These songs were derived from folk art traditions prevalent in Telugu society such as various forms of storytelling that use song and theatre to re-enact performances of Harikatha (the Hindu mythology of Lord Vishnu), Pakir patalu (a trove of Sufi songs), Bhagavatam (stories from the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata), as well as non-religious practices such as Burrakatha and Gollasuddulu, both of which tell stories of workers and peasants with two drums accompanying the singer. It was in these musical forms that the workers and peasants contested the worldview of the dominant castes. And it was in this part of the popular imagination that the Left intervened very early in the struggle for social transformation. When Mallu Swarajyam went to at least thirty villages to start the revolt, she said, ‘I started a revolutionary fire in the people with the song as our vehicle. What more did I need?’.
Left: Gummadi Vithala Rao, popularly known as Gaddar, one of the most influential Telugu-speaking revolutionary songwriters, performs for spectators, first by singing and dancing to a line in his songs and then pausing to explain its political and historical significance. Credit: KN Hari
Right: Telugu poet Srirangam Srinivas Rao, popularly known as Sri Sri, reads a poem from his anthology Maha Prasthanam (Forward March), yellow cover featured on the bottom right, to marchers joining the struggle to fight for another under the red flag (back right). Credit: Kurella Srinivas, 2009
At the heart of our most recent publication – The Telugu People’s Struggle for Land and Dreams (dossier no. 80, September 2024) – is the relationship of culture to peasant and working-class radicalism. In areas of high illiteracy and colonial education systems, it was impossible to transmit a new world view only through the written word or through cultural forms that were alien to the world of the people. Songs and theatre became the forms for political conversation in places such as India, China, and Vietnam. In Vietnam, the Communist Party formed propaganda teams (Doi Tuyen Truyen Vo Trang) that went amongst the people and through plays and songs mobilised the villages to participate in the liberation struggle. In China, the history of taking plays into rural areas goes back to the 1930s; during the Yan’an decade (1935–1945), the Communist cultural troupes began to perform ‘living newspaper’ concerts, a practice developed by the Soviets in the 1920s, in which the actors would improvise plays based on events in the news. Street theatre, songs, wall paintings, magic lantern shows: these became the textbooks of revolutionary activity. Our dossier attempts to highlight the world of songs as a part of the history of socialist culture.
The songs of these revolutionaries, built on peasant ballads and forms, crafted the elements of a new culture: in their words, they rejected the hierarchies of the countryside and in their rhythm, they allowed the peasantry to lift up their voices louder than they often did in the presence of the landlords. Both the content and the form of these songs encapsulated the boldness of a new world.
Praja Natya Mandali performs a street play. Credit: Praja Natya Mandali Photography Archives
The histories of these cultural actions and the transformations they engendered are often forgotten – the suppression of these histories plays a political role in our time. It was clear that the communist artists of the 1940s closely studied the earlier peasant songs and the history of rebellion embedded in them; they then took that history and developed it further, frequently using new, vibrant rhythms to recount the revolutionary history of the peasants and workers. Songs of the history of resistance build on the past to create their own, new histories. This is the dialectical spiral of culture, a lifting up of memories of past struggles to inspire new struggles, whose memory in turn stimulates newer struggles; each set of struggles pushing the cultural forms to the edge of their own possibility, building new confidence in the people whose sense of themselves has been diminished by old hierarchies and by old poverty.
Our dossier hopes to bring part of that history to light, which is indeed very much along the grain of the work of our art department (for more of this kind of archival and theoretical work, I recommend that you subscribe to the Tricontinental Art Bulletin, initiated in March and published on the last Sunday of each month).
This collage includes photographs of the street play Veera Telangana (Heroic Telangana) taken in the 2000s by Praja Natya Mandali and photographs of a troop (dalam) of the armed struggle marching in the late 1940s taken by Sunil Janah.
Khalida Jarrar (born 1963) is a Palestinian leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. A brave and kind person, Jarrar has been in the crosshairs of the Israeli military occupation forces for decades. She has been frequently arrested and held in administrative detention, often with no charge (the first time was in 1989 when she was arrested at an International Women’s Day march in Palestine). Since 2015, she has spent as much time in prison as she has outside of it, with increasingly longer terms behind bars. In prison, Jarrar became an important voice for women prisoners and organised political schools for her fellow inmates. In 2020, from Israel’s Damon prison, Khalida Jarrar smuggled out a letter which was delivered as a speech by her daughters at the Palestine Writes Literature Festival; it speaks about the importance of cultural work amongst the inmates:
Books constitute the foundation of life in prison. They preserve the psychological and moral balance of the freedom fighters who view their detentions as part of the overall resistance against the colonial occupation of Palestine. Books also play a role in each prisoner’s individual struggle of Will between them and the prisons’ authorities. In other words, the struggle becomes a challenge for Palestinian prisoners as the jailors seek to strip us from our humanity and keep us isolated from the outside world. The challenge for prisoners is to transform our detention into a state of a ‘cultural revolution’ through reading, education and literary discussions.
When I read Jarrar’s speech, I was struck by one sentence. She wrote: ‘Maxim Gorky’s novel Mother became a comfort to women prisoners who are deprived of their mothers’ love’. That Jarrar and other Palestinian woman prisoners would experience in 2020 the same sort of sentiments that Mallu Swarajyam experienced in the 1940s with the reading of Mother is extraordinary. It reminds us of the power of certain kinds of fiction to lift the spirits and inspire us to act in ways that we could otherwise not easily imagine.
On 11 July 2021, during one of Jarrar’s periods of confinement in Israel’s prisons, her daughter Suha died. The Israelis rejected Jarrar’s application to attend Suha’s funeral. Grief-stricken, Jarrar wrote a poem to mourn her child,
Suha, my precious.
They have stripped me from giving you a final kiss.
I send you a flower as a goodbye.
Your absence pains me, sears me.
The pain is excruciating.
I remain steadfast and strong,
Like the mountains of beloved Palestine.
Poems, songs, novels, plays: fiction that in the dialectical spiral inspires us to act and then to depict our actions, which in turn inspires others to act and then to write their stories.
Since October 2023, the Israelis have hardened their treatment of Palestinian prisoners, and brought in thousands of new Palestinian political prisoners into already overcrowded prisons. The conditions are now deadly. Khalida Jarrar’s most recent words from prison, published on 28 August, are heartbreaking. During a visit from lawyers of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Society Prisoners’ Club, she sent the following message:
I am dying every day. The cell resembles a closed small can. There is a toilet in the cell and a small window above, which was closed after one day. They left us no way to breathe. There is a narrow vent that I sat next to most of the time to breathe. I am really suffocating in my cell, waiting time to pass, hoping to find oxygen to breathe and stay alive. The high temperature increased the tragic condition of my isolation, as I feel myself existing in an oven. I can’t sleep due to the high temperature, and they intended to cut off the water in the cell, and when I asked to refill my bottle of water, they bring it after four hours at least. They let me out to the prison’s courtyard only once after eight days of isolation.
We stand in full solidarity with Khalida Jarrar. We will translate our latest dossier into Arabic and send it to her so that she can read the songs of the Telangana heroes and take inspiration from them.
“We’re fighting for every family,” said the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union that represents about 33,000 workers at commercial plane manufacturer Boeing, on Friday, after its members voted to reject a tentative contract offered by the company and go on strike. “We’re fighting for the future of Boeing.” The work stoppage began on Friday after 95%
With similar Israel divestment motions having been passed at City of Sydney and Canterbury/Bankstown Councils, many had expected the motion to pass in what is supposed to be one of the most progressive areas of Sydney. Wendy Bacon reports on what went wrong.
INVESTIGATION: By Wendy Bacon
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the West Bank is tearing apart local councils in Australia, on top of the angst reverberating around state and federal politics.
Inner West Labor Mayor Darcy Byrne has doubled down on his attack on pro-Palestinian activists at the council’s last election meeting before Australia’s local government elections on September 14.
‘Byrne’s attack echoes an astro-turfing campaign supported by rightwing and pro-Israel groups targeting the Greens in inner city electorates.’
READ MORE: Other articles by Wendy Bacon
With Labor narrowly controlling the council by one vote, the election loomed large over the meeting. It also coincided with a campaign backed by rightwing pro-Israeli groups to eliminate Greens from several inner Sydney councils.
In August, Labor councillors voted down a motion for an audit of whether any Inner West Council (IWC) investments or contracts benefit companies involved in the weapons industry or profit from human rights violations in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The motion that was defeated had also called for an insertion of a general “human rights” provision in council’s investment policy.
With similar motions having been passed at City of Sydney and Canterbury/Bankstown councils, many had expected the motion to pass in what is supposed to be one of the most progressive areas of Sydney.
It could have been a first step towards the Inner West Council joining the worldwide BDS (boycotts, disinvestments and economic sanctions) campaign to pressure Israel to meet its obligations under international law.
MWM sources attest that the ructions at Inner West Council are mirrored elsewhere in local government. This from Randwick in Sydney’s East:
Randwick Council: MWM source
Global to grassroots
Last week, Portland Council in Maine became the fifth United States city to join the campaign this year, while the City of Ixelles in Belgium announced that it had suspended its twinning agreement with the Regional Council of Megiddo in Israel.
When the Inner West motion failed, some Palestinian rights campaigners booed and shouted “shame” at Labor councillors as they sat silently in the chamber. The meeting, which had nearly reached its time limit of five hours, was then adjourned.
Byrne’s alternative motion was debated at last week’s meeting. It restates council’s existing policy and Federal Labor’s current stance that calls for a ceasefire and a two-state solution.
This alternative motion was passed by Labor councillors, with the Greens and two Independents voting against it. Both Independent Councillor Pauline Lockie and Greens Councillor Liz Atkins argued that they were opposing the motion because it did not do or change anything.
The Mayor spent most of his speaking time attacking those involved with protesting at the August meeting. He described their behaviour as “unacceptable, undemocratic and disrespectful”. There is no doubt that the behaviour at the meeting breached the rules of meeting behaviour at some times.
But then Byrne made a much more shocking and unexpected allegation. He said that the “worst element” of the behaviour was that “local Inner West citizens who happened to have a Jewish sounding name, when their names were read out by me because they’d registered . . . to speak, I think all of them were booed and hissed just because their names happened to sound Jewish.”
News Corp propaganda This claim is deeply disturbing. If true, such behaviour would definitely be anti-semitic and racist. But the question is: did such behaviour actually happen? Or does this allegation feed into Byrne’s misleading narrative that had fuelled false News Corporation reports that protesters stormed the meeting?
In fact, the protesters had been invited to the meeting by the Mayor.
This reporter was present throughout the meeting and did not observe anything similar to what the Mayor alleged had happened.
Later in the meeting, the Mayor repeated the allegation that the “booing and hissing of people” based “on the fact that they had a Jewish sounding name constituted anti-semitism”.
Retiring Independent Councillor Pauline Locker intervened: “Sorry, point of order, That isn’t actually what happened. . . . It wasn’t based on their Jewish name.”
But Bryne insisted, “That’s not a point of order — that is what happened. It is what the record shows occurred as does the media reportage.”
Other councillors also distanced themselves from Byrne’s allegation. Independent Councillor John Stamolis also said that although he could not judge how the Mayor or other Labor councillors felt on the evening, he could not agree with Byrne’s description or that it described what other councillors or members of the public experienced on the evening.
Greens Councillor Liz Atkins said that there were different perceptions of what happened on the night. Her perception was that the “booing and hissing” was in relation to support for the substance of the Greens motion for an audit of investments rather than an attack on people who spoke against it.
She also said that credit should be given to pro- Palestinian activists who themselves encouraged people to listen quietly.
Fake antisemitism claims Your reporter asked Rosanna Barbero, who also was present throughout the meeting, what she observed. Barbero was the recipient of this year’s Multicultural NSW Human Rights Medal, recognising her lasting and meaningful contribution to human rights in NSW.
She is also a member of the Inner West Multicultural Network that has helped council develop an anti-racism strategy.
“I did not witness any racist comments,” said Barbero.
Barbero confirmed that she was present throughout the meeting and said: “I did not witness any racist comments. The meeting was recorded so the evidence of that is easy to verify.”
So this reporter, in a story for City Hub, took her advice and went to the evidence in the webcast, which provides a public record of what occurred. The soundtrack is clear. A listener can pick up when comments are made by audience members but not necessarily the content of them.
Bryne has alleged speakers against the motion were booed when their “Jewish sounding’ names were announced. Our analysis shows none of the five were booed or abused in any way when their names were announced.
There was, in fact, silence.
Five speakers identified themselves as Jewish. Four spoke against the motion, and one in favour.
Two of the five were heard in complete silence, one with some small applause at the end.
One woman who spoke in favour of the motion and whose grandparents were in the Holocaust was applauded and cheered at the end of her speech.
One man was interrupted by several comments from the gallery when he said the motion was based on “propaganda and disinformation” and would lead to a lack of social cohesion. He related experiences of anti-semitism when he was at school in the Inner West 14 years ago.
At the conclusion of his speech, there were some boos.
One man who had not successfully registered was added to the speakers list by the Mayor. Some people in the public gallery objected to this decision. The Mayor adjourned the meeting for three minutes and the speaker was then heard in silence.
The speakers in favour of the motion, most of whom had Palestinian backgrounds and relatives who had suffered expulsion from their homelands, concentrated on the war crimes against Palestinians and the importance of BDS motions. There were no personal attacks on speakers against the motion.
In response to a Jewish speaker who had argued that the solution was peace initiatives, one Palestinian speaker said that he wanted “liberation”, not “peace”.
Weaponising accusations of anti-semitism to shut down debate Independent Inner West Councillor Pauline Lockie warned other councillors this week about the need to be careful about weaponising accusations of race and anti-semitism to shut down debates. Like Barbero, Lockie has played a leadership role in developing anti-racism strategies for the Inner West.
There are three serious concerns about Byrne’s allegations. The first concern is that they are not verified by the public record. This raises questions about the Mayor’s judgement and credibility.
The second is that making unsubstantiated allegations of antisemitism for the tactical purposes of winning a political argument demeans the seriousness and tragedy of anti-semitism.
Thirdly, there is a concern that spreading unsubstantiated allegations of anti-semitism could cause harm by spreading fear and anxiety in the Jewish community.
Controversial Christian minister The most provocative speaker on the evening was not one of those who identified themselves as Jewish. It was Reverend Mark Leach, who introduced himself as an Anglican minister from Balmain. When he said that no one could reasonably apply the word “genocide” to what was occurring in Gaza, several people called out his comments.
Given the ICJ finding that a plausible genocide is occurring in Gaza, this was not surprising.
Darcy Byrne then stopped the meeting and gave Reverend Leach a small amount of further time to speak. Later in his speech, Reverend Leach described the motion itself as “deeply racist” because it held Israel accountable above all other states.
Boos for Leach In fact, the motion would have added a general human rights provision to the investment policy which would have applied to any country. Reverend Leach was booed at the conclusion of his speech.
One speaker later said that she could not understand how this Christian minister would not accept that the word “genocide” could be used. This was not an anti-semitic or racist comment.
Throughout the debate, Byrne avoided the issue that the motion only called for an audit.
He also used his position of chair to directly question councillors. The following exchange occurred with Councillor Liz Atkins:
Mayor: Councilor Atkins, can I put to you a question? I have received advice that councillor officers are unaware of any investment from council that is complicit in the Israeli military operations in Gaza and the Palestinian territories. Are you aware of any?
Atkins: No. That’s why the motion asked for an audit of our investments and procurements.
Mayor: I’ll put one further question to you. The organisers of the protest outside the chamber and the subsequent overrunning of the council chamber asserted in their promotion of the event that the council was complicit in genocide. Is that your view?
Atkins: I don’t know. Until we do an audit, Mayor . . . Can I just take exception with the point of view that they “overran” the meeting? You invited them all in, and not one of them tried to get past a simple rope barrier.
Byrne says it’s immoral to support a one-party state During the debate, Byrne surprisingly described support for a one-state solution for Israel and Palestinians as “immoral”. He described support for “one state” as meaning you either supported the wiping out of the Palestinians or the Israelis.
In fact, there is a long history of citizens, scholars and other commentators who have argued that one secular state of equal citizens is the only viable solution.
Many, including the Australian government, do not agree. Nevertheless, the award-winning journalist and expert on the Middle East, Antony Loewenstein, argued that position in The Sydney Morning Herald in November 2023.
Mayor in tune with Better Council Inc campaign All of this debate is happening in the context of the hotly contested election campaign. The Mayor is understandably preoccupied with the impending poll. Rather than debating the issues, he finished the debate by launching an attack on the Greens, which sounded more like an election speech than a speech in reply in support of his motion.
Byrne said: “Some councillors are unwilling to condemn what was overt anti-Semitism”.
This is a heavy accusation. All councillors are strongly opposed to anti-semitism. The record does not show any overt anti-semitism.
Byrne went on: “But the more troubling thing is that there’s a large number of candidates running at this election who, if elected, will be making foreign affairs and this particular issue one of the central concerns of this council.
“This will result in a distraction with services going backwards and rates going up.”
In fact, the record shows that the Greens are just as focused on local issues as any other councillors. Even at last week’s meeting, Councillor Liz Atkins brought forward a motion about controversial moves to install a temporary cafe at Camperdown Park that would privatise public space and for which there had been no consultation.
Labor v Greens Byrne’s message pitting concern about broader issues against local concerns is in tune with the messaging of a recently formed group called Better Council Inc. that is targeting the Greens throughout the Inner West and in Randwick and Waverley.
Placards saying “Put the Greens last”, “Keep the Greens Garbage out of Council” featuring a number of Greens candidates have gone up across Sydney. Some claim that the Greens are fixated on Gaza and ignore local issues.
Better Inc.’s material is authorised by Sophie Calland. She is a recently graduated computer engineer who told the Daily Telegraph that “she was a Labor member and that Better Council involves people from across the political aisle — even some former Greens.”
She described the group as a “grassroots group of young professionals” who wanted local government officials to focus on local issues.
“We believe local councils should concentrate on essential community services like waste management, local infrastructure, and the environment. That’s what councils are there for — looking after the needs of their immediate communities.”
On Saturday, Randwick Greens Councillor Kym Chapple was at a pre-poll booth at which a Better Council Inc. campaigner was handing out material specifically recommending that voters put her last.
Chapple tweeted that the Better councilwoman didn’t actually know that she was a councillor or any of the local issues in which she had been involved.
“That does not look like a local grassroots campaign. It’s an attempt to intimidate people who support a free Palestine. Anyway, it feels gross to have someone say to put you last because they care about the environment and local issues when that’s literally what you have done for three years.”
She then tweeted a long list of her local campaign successes.
Never Again is Now astroturf campaign
In fact, the actual work of distributing the leaflets is being done by a group spearheaded by none other than Reverend Mark Leach, who spoke at the Inner West Council meeting. Leach is one of the coordinators of the pro-Israel right-wing Christian group Never Again is Now.
The group is organising rallies around Australia to campaign against anti-semitism.
Reverend Mark Leach works closely with his daughter Freya Leach, who stood for the Liberal Party for the seat of Balmain in the 2023 state election and is associated with the rightwing Menzies Institute. Mark Leach describes himself as “working to renew the mind and heart of our culture against the backdrop of the radical left, Jihadist Islam and rising authoritarianism.
Leach’s own Twitter account shows that he embraces a range of rightwing causes. He is anti-trans, supports anti-immigration campaigners in the UK and has posted a jolly video of himself with Warren Mundine at a pro-Israeli rally in Melbourne.
Mundine was a No campaign spokesperson for the rightwing group Advance Australia during the Voice referendum.
Leach supports the Christian Lobby and is very critical of Christians who are campaigning for peace.
Anti-semitism exists. The problem is that Reverend Leach’s version of anti-semitism is what international law and human rights bodies regard as protesting against genocidal war crimes.
For #NeverAgainisNow, these atrocities are excusable for a state that is pursuing its right of “self-defence”. And if you don’t agree with that, don’t be surprised if you find yourself branded as not just “anti-semitic” but also a bullying extremist.
As of one week before the local government election, the Never Again is Now was holding a Zoom meeting to organise 400 volunteers to get 50,000 leaflets into the hands of voters at next Saturday’s local election.
This may well be just a dress rehearsal for a much bigger effort at the Federal election, where Advance Australia has announced it is planning to target the Greens.
Wendy Baconis an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at UTS. She has worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is not a member of any political party but is a Greens supporter and long-term supporter of peaceful BDS strategies. Republished from Michael West Media with the author’s permission.
With similar Israel divestment motions having been passed at City of Sydney and Canterbury/Bankstown Councils, many had expected the motion to pass in what is supposed to be one of the most progressive areas of Sydney. Wendy Bacon reports on what went wrong.
INVESTIGATION: By Wendy Bacon
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the West Bank is tearing apart local councils in Australia, on top of the angst reverberating around state and federal politics.
Inner West Labor Mayor Darcy Byrne has doubled down on his attack on pro-Palestinian activists at the council’s last election meeting before Australia’s local government elections on September 14.
‘Byrne’s attack echoes an astro-turfing campaign supported by rightwing and pro-Israel groups targeting the Greens in inner city electorates.’
READ MORE: Other articles by Wendy Bacon
With Labor narrowly controlling the council by one vote, the election loomed large over the meeting. It also coincided with a campaign backed by rightwing pro-Israeli groups to eliminate Greens from several inner Sydney councils.
In August, Labor councillors voted down a motion for an audit of whether any Inner West Council (IWC) investments or contracts benefit companies involved in the weapons industry or profit from human rights violations in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The motion that was defeated had also called for an insertion of a general “human rights” provision in council’s investment policy.
With similar motions having been passed at City of Sydney and Canterbury/Bankstown councils, many had expected the motion to pass in what is supposed to be one of the most progressive areas of Sydney.
It could have been a first step towards the Inner West Council joining the worldwide BDS (boycotts, disinvestments and economic sanctions) campaign to pressure Israel to meet its obligations under international law.
MWM sources attest that the ructions at Inner West Council are mirrored elsewhere in local government. This from Randwick in Sydney’s East:
Randwick Council: MWM source
Global to grassroots
Last week, Portland Council in Maine became the fifth United States city to join the campaign this year, while the City of Ixelles in Belgium announced that it had suspended its twinning agreement with the Regional Council of Megiddo in Israel.
When the Inner West motion failed, some Palestinian rights campaigners booed and shouted “shame” at Labor councillors as they sat silently in the chamber. The meeting, which had nearly reached its time limit of five hours, was then adjourned.
Byrne’s alternative motion was debated at last week’s meeting. It restates council’s existing policy and Federal Labor’s current stance that calls for a ceasefire and a two-state solution.
This alternative motion was passed by Labor councillors, with the Greens and two Independents voting against it. Both Independent Councillor Pauline Lockie and Greens Councillor Liz Atkins argued that they were opposing the motion because it did not do or change anything.
The Mayor spent most of his speaking time attacking those involved with protesting at the August meeting. He described their behaviour as “unacceptable, undemocratic and disrespectful”. There is no doubt that the behaviour at the meeting breached the rules of meeting behaviour at some times.
But then Byrne made a much more shocking and unexpected allegation. He said that the “worst element” of the behaviour was that “local Inner West citizens who happened to have a Jewish sounding name, when their names were read out by me because they’d registered . . . to speak, I think all of them were booed and hissed just because their names happened to sound Jewish.”
News Corp propaganda This claim is deeply disturbing. If true, such behaviour would definitely be anti-semitic and racist. But the question is: did such behaviour actually happen? Or does this allegation feed into Byrne’s misleading narrative that had fuelled false News Corporation reports that protesters stormed the meeting?
In fact, the protesters had been invited to the meeting by the Mayor.
This reporter was present throughout the meeting and did not observe anything similar to what the Mayor alleged had happened.
Later in the meeting, the Mayor repeated the allegation that the “booing and hissing of people” based “on the fact that they had a Jewish sounding name constituted anti-semitism”.
Retiring Independent Councillor Pauline Locker intervened: “Sorry, point of order, That isn’t actually what happened. . . . It wasn’t based on their Jewish name.”
But Bryne insisted, “That’s not a point of order — that is what happened. It is what the record shows occurred as does the media reportage.”
Other councillors also distanced themselves from Byrne’s allegation. Independent Councillor John Stamolis also said that although he could not judge how the Mayor or other Labor councillors felt on the evening, he could not agree with Byrne’s description or that it described what other councillors or members of the public experienced on the evening.
Greens Councillor Liz Atkins said that there were different perceptions of what happened on the night. Her perception was that the “booing and hissing” was in relation to support for the substance of the Greens motion for an audit of investments rather than an attack on people who spoke against it.
She also said that credit should be given to pro- Palestinian activists who themselves encouraged people to listen quietly.
Fake antisemitism claims Your reporter asked Rosanna Barbero, who also was present throughout the meeting, what she observed. Barbero was the recipient of this year’s Multicultural NSW Human Rights Medal, recognising her lasting and meaningful contribution to human rights in NSW.
She is also a member of the Inner West Multicultural Network that has helped council develop an anti-racism strategy.
“I did not witness any racist comments,” said Barbero.
Barbero confirmed that she was present throughout the meeting and said: “I did not witness any racist comments. The meeting was recorded so the evidence of that is easy to verify.”
So this reporter, in a story for City Hub, took her advice and went to the evidence in the webcast, which provides a public record of what occurred. The soundtrack is clear. A listener can pick up when comments are made by audience members but not necessarily the content of them.
Bryne has alleged speakers against the motion were booed when their “Jewish sounding’ names were announced. Our analysis shows none of the five were booed or abused in any way when their names were announced.
There was, in fact, silence.
Five speakers identified themselves as Jewish. Four spoke against the motion, and one in favour.
Two of the five were heard in complete silence, one with some small applause at the end.
One woman who spoke in favour of the motion and whose grandparents were in the Holocaust was applauded and cheered at the end of her speech.
One man was interrupted by several comments from the gallery when he said the motion was based on “propaganda and disinformation” and would lead to a lack of social cohesion. He related experiences of anti-semitism when he was at school in the Inner West 14 years ago.
At the conclusion of his speech, there were some boos.
One man who had not successfully registered was added to the speakers list by the Mayor. Some people in the public gallery objected to this decision. The Mayor adjourned the meeting for three minutes and the speaker was then heard in silence.
The speakers in favour of the motion, most of whom had Palestinian backgrounds and relatives who had suffered expulsion from their homelands, concentrated on the war crimes against Palestinians and the importance of BDS motions. There were no personal attacks on speakers against the motion.
In response to a Jewish speaker who had argued that the solution was peace initiatives, one Palestinian speaker said that he wanted “liberation”, not “peace”.
Weaponising accusations of anti-semitism to shut down debate Independent Inner West Councillor Pauline Lockie warned other councillors this week about the need to be careful about weaponising accusations of race and anti-semitism to shut down debates. Like Barbero, Lockie has played a leadership role in developing anti-racism strategies for the Inner West.
There are three serious concerns about Byrne’s allegations. The first concern is that they are not verified by the public record. This raises questions about the Mayor’s judgement and credibility.
The second is that making unsubstantiated allegations of antisemitism for the tactical purposes of winning a political argument demeans the seriousness and tragedy of anti-semitism.
Thirdly, there is a concern that spreading unsubstantiated allegations of anti-semitism could cause harm by spreading fear and anxiety in the Jewish community.
Controversial Christian minister The most provocative speaker on the evening was not one of those who identified themselves as Jewish. It was Reverend Mark Leach, who introduced himself as an Anglican minister from Balmain. When he said that no one could reasonably apply the word “genocide” to what was occurring in Gaza, several people called out his comments.
Given the ICJ finding that a plausible genocide is occurring in Gaza, this was not surprising.
Darcy Byrne then stopped the meeting and gave Reverend Leach a small amount of further time to speak. Later in his speech, Reverend Leach described the motion itself as “deeply racist” because it held Israel accountable above all other states.
Boos for Leach In fact, the motion would have added a general human rights provision to the investment policy which would have applied to any country. Reverend Leach was booed at the conclusion of his speech.
One speaker later said that she could not understand how this Christian minister would not accept that the word “genocide” could be used. This was not an anti-semitic or racist comment.
Throughout the debate, Byrne avoided the issue that the motion only called for an audit.
He also used his position of chair to directly question councillors. The following exchange occurred with Councillor Liz Atkins:
Mayor: Councilor Atkins, can I put to you a question? I have received advice that councillor officers are unaware of any investment from council that is complicit in the Israeli military operations in Gaza and the Palestinian territories. Are you aware of any?
Atkins: No. That’s why the motion asked for an audit of our investments and procurements.
Mayor: I’ll put one further question to you. The organisers of the protest outside the chamber and the subsequent overrunning of the council chamber asserted in their promotion of the event that the council was complicit in genocide. Is that your view?
Atkins: I don’t know. Until we do an audit, Mayor . . . Can I just take exception with the point of view that they “overran” the meeting? You invited them all in, and not one of them tried to get past a simple rope barrier.
Byrne says it’s immoral to support a one-party state During the debate, Byrne surprisingly described support for a one-state solution for Israel and Palestinians as “immoral”. He described support for “one state” as meaning you either supported the wiping out of the Palestinians or the Israelis.
In fact, there is a long history of citizens, scholars and other commentators who have argued that one secular state of equal citizens is the only viable solution.
Many, including the Australian government, do not agree. Nevertheless, the award-winning journalist and expert on the Middle East, Antony Loewenstein, argued that position in The Sydney Morning Herald in November 2023.
Mayor in tune with Better Council Inc campaign All of this debate is happening in the context of the hotly contested election campaign. The Mayor is understandably preoccupied with the impending poll. Rather than debating the issues, he finished the debate by launching an attack on the Greens, which sounded more like an election speech than a speech in reply in support of his motion.
Byrne said: “Some councillors are unwilling to condemn what was overt anti-Semitism”.
This is a heavy accusation. All councillors are strongly opposed to anti-semitism. The record does not show any overt anti-semitism.
Byrne went on: “But the more troubling thing is that there’s a large number of candidates running at this election who, if elected, will be making foreign affairs and this particular issue one of the central concerns of this council.
“This will result in a distraction with services going backwards and rates going up.”
In fact, the record shows that the Greens are just as focused on local issues as any other councillors. Even at last week’s meeting, Councillor Liz Atkins brought forward a motion about controversial moves to install a temporary cafe at Camperdown Park that would privatise public space and for which there had been no consultation.
Labor v Greens Byrne’s message pitting concern about broader issues against local concerns is in tune with the messaging of a recently formed group called Better Council Inc. that is targeting the Greens throughout the Inner West and in Randwick and Waverley.
Placards saying “Put the Greens last”, “Keep the Greens Garbage out of Council” featuring a number of Greens candidates have gone up across Sydney. Some claim that the Greens are fixated on Gaza and ignore local issues.
Better Inc.’s material is authorised by Sophie Calland. She is a recently graduated computer engineer who told the Daily Telegraph that “she was a Labor member and that Better Council involves people from across the political aisle — even some former Greens.”
She described the group as a “grassroots group of young professionals” who wanted local government officials to focus on local issues.
“We believe local councils should concentrate on essential community services like waste management, local infrastructure, and the environment. That’s what councils are there for — looking after the needs of their immediate communities.”
On Saturday, Randwick Greens Councillor Kym Chapple was at a pre-poll booth at which a Better Council Inc. campaigner was handing out material specifically recommending that voters put her last.
Chapple tweeted that the Better councilwoman didn’t actually know that she was a councillor or any of the local issues in which she had been involved.
“That does not look like a local grassroots campaign. It’s an attempt to intimidate people who support a free Palestine. Anyway, it feels gross to have someone say to put you last because they care about the environment and local issues when that’s literally what you have done for three years.”
She then tweeted a long list of her local campaign successes.
Never Again is Now astroturf campaign
In fact, the actual work of distributing the leaflets is being done by a group spearheaded by none other than Reverend Mark Leach, who spoke at the Inner West Council meeting. Leach is one of the coordinators of the pro-Israel right-wing Christian group Never Again is Now.
The group is organising rallies around Australia to campaign against anti-semitism.
Reverend Mark Leach works closely with his daughter Freya Leach, who stood for the Liberal Party for the seat of Balmain in the 2023 state election and is associated with the rightwing Menzies Institute. Mark Leach describes himself as “working to renew the mind and heart of our culture against the backdrop of the radical left, Jihadist Islam and rising authoritarianism.
Leach’s own Twitter account shows that he embraces a range of rightwing causes. He is anti-trans, supports anti-immigration campaigners in the UK and has posted a jolly video of himself with Warren Mundine at a pro-Israeli rally in Melbourne.
Mundine was a No campaign spokesperson for the rightwing group Advance Australia during the Voice referendum.
Leach supports the Christian Lobby and is very critical of Christians who are campaigning for peace.
Anti-semitism exists. The problem is that Reverend Leach’s version of anti-semitism is what international law and human rights bodies regard as protesting against genocidal war crimes.
For #NeverAgainisNow, these atrocities are excusable for a state that is pursuing its right of “self-defence”. And if you don’t agree with that, don’t be surprised if you find yourself branded as not just “anti-semitic” but also a bullying extremist.
As of one week before the local government election, the Never Again is Now was holding a Zoom meeting to organise 400 volunteers to get 50,000 leaflets into the hands of voters at next Saturday’s local election.
This may well be just a dress rehearsal for a much bigger effort at the Federal election, where Advance Australia has announced it is planning to target the Greens.
Wendy Baconis an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at UTS. She has worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is not a member of any political party but is a Greens supporter and long-term supporter of peaceful BDS strategies. Republished from Michael West Media with the author’s permission.
Pregnant with her fifth child, Susan Horton had a lot of confidence in her parenting abilities. Then she ate a salad from Costco: an “everything” chopped salad kit with poppy seeds. When she went to the hospital to give birth the next day, she tested positive for opiates. Horton told doctors that it must have been the poppy seeds, but she couldn’t convince them it was true. She was reported to child welfare authorities, and a judge removed Horton’s newborn from her care.
“They had a singular piece of evidence,” Horton said, “and it was wrong.”
Hospitals across the country routinely drug test people coming in to give birth. But the tests many hospitals use are notoriously imprecise, with false positive rates of up to 50 percent for some drugs. People taking over-the-counter cold medicine or prescribed medications can test positive for methamphetamine or opiates.
This week on Reveal, our collaboration with The Marshall Project investigates why parents across the country are being reported to child protective services over inaccurate drug test results. Reporter Shoshana Walter digs into the cases of women who were separated from their babies after a pee-in-a-cup drug test triggered a cascade of events they couldn’t control.
