More Union Busting by Wisconsin Apparatchiks

More union busting from Wisconsin, the land of Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and Tommy Thompson. Wisconsin’s new law reducing collective bargaining rights for state employees in labor unions:

...also requires that unions go through yearly recertification votes to keep their official status rather than retain that status indefinitely after an initial vote creating the union, as had been done in the past. Unions can still exist without that official status, but government employers, such as schools and the state, don't have to recognize them or bargain with them over anything.

To win the recertification election, unions must get 51% of the vote of all the members of their bargaining unit, not just the ones who take the time to cast ballots—a much higher bar than state elected officials have to clear to win their offices.

Walker isn't a visionary as much as an apparatchik, "a man not of grand plans, but of a hundred carefully executed details"¹. Walker and his cohort didn't completely strip state employees of their (federally guaranteed) right to form labor unions; they just changed the details. The devil is in the details, in the definitions of majorities, schedules, mechanisms and scope.

Now the unions have to be recertified by the employees every year. The standard for recertification, which was previously a majority of those who vote, was changed to be a majority of those eligible to vote. If the election does recertify the union, the state can challenge the details in court.

Once the union certification "expires" after a year, then the state has no obligation to formally bargain with the union, and the state stops automatic dues deductions. That's union busting by any standard.

This comes after the State took away the Union's right to collective bargaining over issues like workplace safety standards, working conditions, vacations and health care benefits. The only topic state unions were left to "negotiate" on were pay increases, which by fiat cannot exceed the inflation rate.

The largest state unions have not filed notice of their intention to recertify by the deadline, explaining that the staged recertification, artifical definitions of the majority, and reduced scope of negotiating make the outcome a foregone conclusion.

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A Countdown of Sorts

Wisconsin General Strike Posters

In Wisconsin a General Strike has been called for by two labor organizations, the South Central Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or Wobblies).



From SCFL.org:

The South Central Federation of Labor is an umbrella organization for 97 labor unions representing 45,000 workers in Dane, Dodge, Sauk, Columbia, Jefferson and Iowa counties in the state of Wisconsin.

Just as workers join together to form unions because there is strength in numbers and collective action, unions join together in Central Labor Councils, like SCFL, for the same reasons. There are 600 Central Labor Councils throughout the United States. In essence, the purpose of any Central Labor Council is solidarity between unions in a given geographic area.

From Business Insider:

The South Central Federation of Labor, an umbrella organization representing more than 45,000 workers in Wisconsin, voted last night to endorse a Wisconsin general strike if the state legislature passes Gov. Scott Walker's budget, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.

Delegates of the 97-union federation voted unanimously in favor of the strike, and called for the group to start educating members on the "organization and function of a Wisconsin general strike."

From Labor Union Report, a story about the IWW:

... the [Industrial Workers of the World] Wobblies have been around since 1905 and, although the IWW has declined significantly since its 100,000-member peak in 1923, it has been getting some recent notice trying to unionize Starbucks and Jimmie John’s.

The IWW has historically supported the concept of the general strike — all workers uniting to shut down commerce. In 1919, the IWW and other Leftists were successful in a general strike in Seattle. Since then, while there have been industry-wide strikes in the U.S., there have not been general strikes in the United States.

[Wisconsin Governor] Walker still won’t budge from his position. It will take something bigger from the unions and the working-class as a whole: a general strike, which will show Walker that millions are willing to fight his agenda.

The Wobblies are an interesting group with their own vernacular (see, for instance, Jerusalem Slim). Locally, they go back to the 1909 McKees Rocks strike. (In fact, this 1909 Pittsburgh newspaper clipping describes the plant owner in terms that could be used for today's Governor Walker.) From Wikipedia:

The IWW was founded in Chicago in 1905 at a convention of socialists, anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all over the United States who disagreed with the policies of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

In particular, the IWW was organized because of the belief that the AFL was structured by narrow craft principles which divided groups of workers, while the Wobblies believed that all workers should organize as a class

.

The IWW motto was "an injury to one is an injury to all", which broadened the 19th century Knights of Labor's creed, "an injury to one is the concern of all." When founded, IWW was the only American union (besides the Knights of Labor) to welcome all workers including women, immigrants, and African Americans into the same organization.

The IWW has produced a Wisconsin general strike pamphlet and these posters:

This might become more interesting.

Unionized Public Employees Seen At Fiery Blaze

A Saturday night fire at an apartment building in Brooklyn, New York, killed one resident and left the other residents of the 65 apartments without shelter.



From the New York Times:

Roughly 200 firefighters struggled in the dark for seven hours — from dinnertime Saturday to early Sunday — to control the blaze at a red-brick apartment building in a heavily immigrant neighborhood made up mostly of blocks of one- and two-family homes. The firefighters battled temperatures plunging into the 20s and fierce gusts of wind reaching 40 miles per hour that whipped the flames and turned the upper floors into an inferno.

Green circles are added in order to help you identify these unionized public employees (who seem to almost blend into the environment).


More than 20 firefighters and four residents suffered minor injuries, fire officials said. None was life-threatening. The injured were treated at the scene by paramedic crews and also at local Kings County Hospital. They were all treated by unionized public employees. Concidence? ITN.



Multiple Unionized Public Employees Spotted At Fiery Blaze



The deceased victim was Mary Feagin, 62, who was a guidance counselor at a school in Brownsville (herself a unionized public employee).

Although the exact role these unionized public employees played in the evening's disaster is yet to be confirmed, their eagerness to rush to the scene, control the fire, and have their pictures taken begs for further inquiry.

Fortunately, the current mood of the American spirit will bring commentary and analysis from politicians, presidential hopefuls, and other informed experts, although at this time we are surprisingly unable to identify any member of those groups that has ever run into a burning building.

Conflict Kitchen Considering Wisconsin Menu?

Pittsburgh's Conflict Kitchen, a takeout lunch shop located at Baum Boulevard and Highland Avenue in East Liberty, specializes in raising public consciousness by cooking and selling the lunch food of a culture or society that the United States is in conflict with.

"Our root concept is that we should understand the people and culture that our government is fighting with", said spokeswoman Dorothy Arnold, "and one of the best ways to really get a taste of a culture is to eat their sort of food, prepared in their own way".

The first iteration of Conflict Kitchen was Kubideh Kitchen, an Iranian take-out restaurant that served kubideh in freshly baked barbari bread with onion, mint, and basil.


The second iteration of Conflict Kitchen was Bolani Pazi, an Afghan take-out restaurant that serves a savory homemade afghan turnover filled with either pumpkin, spinach, lentils, or potatoes and leeks.

The Conflict Kitchen has received national media attention for making a political statement while running a profitable business. Coverage has included ABC News, Fast Company, NPR, PBS, and Salon.


Greg Packer, a software engineer enjoying lunch at the stand said, "At these prices nobody's getting rich here, but it seems like they're keeping the electric and water bills paid for on their own, and I like that".

After introducing Iranian and Afghani food traditions to Pittsburgh, Dorothy Arnold said she began considering what conflict to focus on next. "I came to realize, why are we only focusing on international conflicts? Why can't we take a turn at an internal American conflict?" And the concept for the next update of Conflict Kitchen was born.

"We've decided to focus on a war we're waging within America", Arnold said, "where union workers in the state of Wisconsin are having their rights taken away, their livelihoods diminished, and the economic status changed to something like indentured servitude".

The next iteration of Conflict Kitchen will focus on the indigenous foods of Wisconsin, which Arnold identified as "Milk and cheese, a choice of a fish broil platter or a bratwurst platter, and for desert either Kringles or pasty's".

Greg Packer, the software engineer eating his lunch, said "I'd love to have food like that to eat, real comfort food. Knowing that they like fish and brats and special pastries makes those people in Wisconsin seem a lot more human than what I see in the protests on the news. Makes me wonder why we're declaring war on them all of a sudden".

CONFLICT KITCHEN is currently open on Saturday and Sundays from 10am to 2pm. They will be open 7 days a week starting on April 4th. website: conflictkitchen.org

Artist conception of Conflict Kitchen with Wisconsin Theme

Labor Strikes in Foshan, China and Chennai, India

Remarkable news in the NYT (via Nullspace): Power Grows for Striking Chinese:

Honda Motors said Tuesday that workers at a parts plant had walked off the job just days after the company settled a separate strike by agreeing to substantial pay raises for 1,900 workers at its transmission factory.

The new walkout, at an exhaust-system factory in the city of Foshan, will force Honda to halt work Wednesday at one of its four auto assembly plants in China, the company said.

The assembly plants had just reopened after closing for almost two weeks because of the earlier strike at the transmission factory, which is also in Foshan.

And in Bloomberg/Business Week we see, "Honda Plants in China to Stay Shut Tomorrow as Strikes Spread":

The car-assembly plants in Guangzhou, Guangdong province will be closed for a second day after employees at a parts supplier stopped work demanding higher pay, said a Honda spokeswoman. Another supplier in Guangdong halted production today because of a strike, said Gao Xia, a Honda spokeswoman in Beijing.

While the Chinese Communists (and remember, that is who's in charge) will not permit any challenge to their own authority, it's nice to see that they're willing to permit labor strikes which challenge companies from outside the Great Firewall.

In the Wall Street Journal we read that Hyundai Motor Co's factory in Chennai, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, agreed to consider reinstating 35 of the 67 employees it fired last December in order to settle a strike that closed the factory for three days.

Also in Chennai, employees at Nokia's plant are striking after the company suspended an employee for refusing to work a different shift on short notice. After he was suspended, more workers joined to protest against the suspension and they were also suspended, he told the newspaper. The union claimed that about 2,000 staff were on strike, and production of nearly 100,000 mobile handsets was disrupted following the strike

What is going on here?
What is going on there, that isn't happening here?

A strike is terrible - it can take a family a long time to recoup wages lost during a strike - and so it's hard to see reports of any strike and say, "that's a good thing". But the strike, although terrible, gives the workers an essential tool and permits them to say "we will shut down rather than accept this". I would sooner live and work in a place where workers can strike rather than a place where workers cannot strike.

This is good news - not in a schadenfreude sort of way - but good news in the sense that these people are standing up for themselves and demanding a fair wage and good conditions.

It's good news that they're organizing to the degree that they can force the Capital and Capital's Managers to pay attention to them, and it's good news that they're willing to take risks and bear costs to stand in solidarity. There are things, apparently, that Chinese and Indian factory workers will object to.

This is good news because organized labor and the right to strike are fundamental to the establishment and success of a middle class, and because organized labor in China and India will improve the lot of billions of people. Labor strikes, the capability of withholding your labor, are a fundamental human right.

This is also good news because the "China Price", long the bane of US manufacturing, may begin to reflect more realistic costs. The American worker is the most productive in the world, and I believe we can compete with anybody given a fair market. This may move us closer to that.

We've lost the notion of the labor strike in America. We lost it in 1981, we lost it as Capital moved manufacturing jobs overseas, and we lost it when we deluded ourselves into thinking strikes were something we'd moved beyond. The middle class and the American dream suffer from the loss of the labor strike. Maybe it's time for the pendulum to swing back.

When was the last major American strike that closed a major factory? Capital doesn't have any problem closing a factory when it's beneficial to them. (We note that National Nurses United has scheduled a one-day strike on Thursday June 10 in Minnesota.)

Is it possible that Communist China and India can be doing better on labor/human rights than America?

(hat tip: Nullspace.)

Homestead Labyrinth

This is very cool; the Homestead Labyrinth has been dedicated. I am not a Kumbaya singing, hot-tub-sitting Labyrinth Lover, (IAN-KS-HTS-LL) but this is really excellent.

Answer me this, please

Homestead, PA is the site of: please pick one answer

• The Waterfront shopping mall
• a water park that blocks the bike trail from Pittsburgh to DC
• The Homestead Strike that left 10 men dead

The Homestead Strike

The Homestead Strike was a labor lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. It is one of the most serious labor disputes in U.S. history. The dispute occurred in the Pittsburgh-area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (the AA) and the Carnegie Steel Company.

After protracted negotiations, Carnegie locked the Union out of the mill with the intent of breaking the union. The Union surrounded the mill and vowed that it would not be staffed by non-union labor. Carnegie planned to take control of the mill by placing 300 Pinkerton agents, armed with rifles, into the property from the river under cover of darkness.

Workers kept the Pinkertons off the property. Gunfire was exchanged by both sides. The Pinkertons were trapped on their barges when their tugboats left under fire. The Union tried to set the barges on fire with the Pinkertons on board.



In the end, the steel mill won. Carnegie and Frick used the Homestead strike to break the AA. In 1891 there were 24000 members. The Homestead strike took place in 1892. In 1895 it was down to 8000. Steel mills were not significantly unionized again until the United Steelworkers (headquarters: Pittsburgh) organized in 1942.

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Homestead : a big part of Pittsburgh history

The Homestead Works were part of the backbone of Pittsburgh's steel industry from the 1890s through the 1980's. Generations of Pittsburghers earned their livings from the steel mills, now long ago shuttered, torn down, and the materials hauled away for scrap.

Gentrification and Ignorance

As attempts have been made to develop the brownfields and factory sites, a huge shopping center has taken over the land once used for the Homestead Works. Target, Home Depot, and a movie theater draw people into this upscale shopping center, isolated from the real town of Homestead as if by a moat. I'd wager that very few visitors can tell the story of the Homestead Strike.

Artist Lorraine Vullo created the Homestead Labyrinth as a memorial to the history that occured there. (Read the Artist's Statement (pdf) here.

If this doesn't garner attention during Netroots Nation 2009, something's wrong.

This is the sort of memorial that's low profile, non-intrusive, low maintenance, quiet and respectful. My compliments to the artist and to the people who helped make it happen.

A photo from Mark Rauterkus:

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It is NOT true that bicyclists riding from Pgh to DC will need to guide their bikes through the labyrinth.