Southern workers converge to organize the South

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SWA schoolRaleigh, N.C. — Longshore workers from Charleston, S.C. Hospital workers from El Paso, Texas. Diesel engine parts manufacturing workers from Rocky Mount, N.C. State mental health workers from Petersburg, Va. Farm workers, union organizing committees and social movement activists from 10 states and over 30 workplaces.

They all came from across the U.S. South to attend the first session of the Southern Workers School. Organized by the Southern Workers Assembly, the school took place March 4-6 in Raleigh, N.C. Seven more school sessions will take place over the next six months to continue to develop an action plan and give workers the opportunity to engage in joint study.

This session of the school had several main objectives, including building a plan, with the worker leaders and rank-and-file activists gathered, to strategically organize workplaces across the region and begin the development of a committed core of activists. This core will study political economy and the organizing lessons of past union and Civil Rights campaigns in the region to inform a strategy where workers can best build unions and workers’ power.

The school was also held to help develop social movement conditions and bottom-up worker activism in order to attract support from international unions and other sources and be able to challenge those among the world’s largest corporations that invest in the region. Net income from U.S. and foreign investments in the South now equals $3.7 trillion, making it the world’s fourth-largest economy behind Japan.

‘For a broad fighting movement’


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Saladin Muhammad, co-chair of the SWA, addresses school participants on the opening day

“The Southern Workers School is not an event,” stated Saladin Muhammad, of Black Workers for Justice, in his opening remarks. Muhammad is a retired international representative of the United Electrical Workers. “It’s about building infrastructure for a broad, fighting social movement that exposes the capitalist system and to build workers’ power to transform the economy.” Along with Muhammad, Ed Bruno, retired southern director for the National Nurses Union, developed and presented the curriculum for the school.

A school document reads: “The U.S. South is a region where forced labor and a system of racist apartheid were legalized. It shaped a culture of social, economic and political divisions that has made the U.S. South a region of low-wage labor, low union density and political conservatism. Because of the role of the U.S. South in fueling the growth of U.S. and global capitalism, particularly as a region producing the majority of the world’s cotton for the European textile industry during the 18th and 19th centuries, there was an acceptance of the conditions of forced labor and racist oppression in the European countries and developing global economy profiting from the international slave trade and forced labor.

“Rank-and-file workers, especially in the South, need a new orientation and organizing forms that break with business unionism that demobilizes members, bargains concessionary contracts, and aligns with corporate-run political parties.”

The school also sought to connect to the broader social movements, including the Black Lives Matter movement and against racist police killings. In the week before the school, a 24-year-old Black man, Akiel Denkins, was killed by a Raleigh police officer, and several demonstrations took over the streets.

‘About more than getting paid right’


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Rolanda McMillian, McDonald’s worker from Richmond, VA and Raise Up for 15 member (photo credit: Wisconsin Bailout the People Movement)

“I lived through the 1960s,” stated Rolanda McMillan, a fast food worker from Richmond, Va., with Raise Up. “It’s about more than getting paid right. It’s about, am I gonna get killedtomorrow by a cop because of the color of my skin? Am I on a terrorist list because I am a Black woman?” McMillan also testified about being fired from McDonald’s for going on strike for $15 an hour and union rights, but later winning her job back after her co-workers, the community and Raise Up pressured the company.

Professor Patrick Mason from Florida State University led two major sessions about the political economy of the South. Mason’s presentation focused on the role of chattel slavery in shaping the economy here, including the continued repression that Black folks have faced in the region since abolition: the counterrevolution after Reconstruction, Black codes, sharecropping, Jim Crow, segregation, mass incarceration and overpolicing.

So-called “right-to-work” (for less) laws were enacted in the South to maintain segregation in the workplace and thus prevent the unity of workers organizing into unions and into a united working class that fights to bring about a society that addresses the human rights and needs of all. New York State alone has more union members than all 12 Southern states combined.

“Right-to-work,” anti-union codes and stripping of collective bargaining have now spread outside the South to states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Workers from Detroit and Wisconsin attended the school to show solidarity and connection with the workers’ movements there. A strong delegation of day laborers from New York, who belong to the Movimiento Independiente de Trabajadores (Independent Workers Movement), also attended.

The victorious Boston School Bus Drivers Union, United Steelworkers Local 8751, which recently defeated the global apartheid corporation Veolia/Transdev, led a session Sundaymorning. Their two-year campaign to reinstate four unfairly fired bus driver leaders, win a just contract, fight hundreds of stalled grievances, take back their local union under progressive leadership and beat back criminal charges provided rich experience and lessons to share with Southern workers and inform future campaigns.

Recently elected Local 8751 Treasurer Georgia Scott connected her experience as a young girl in Alabama, where she and others in the Civil Rights Movement were attacked in 1965 by police while marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, to her recent union efforts.

President Emeritus Donna Dewitt, of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, told the assembled workers: “The Southern Workers Assembly was responsible for drafting the resolution that was adopted at the national AFL-CIO convention in 2013 to organize the South.” Yet the national unions and the two labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, have not engaged in coordinated efforts in many years to organize labor in the South.

With few exceptions, unions organizing in the South tend to be trying to make up for the loss of union members elsewhere. They lack a long-term strategy, including allocating financial resources to organize Southern labor as a social movement. Dewitt continued, “This school was a critical step to move this plan forward.” At the end of the school, workers discussed a constitution for the Southern Workers Assembly and vowed to take it back to their locals for adoption and support.

The school is taking place within the mainstream media showcase of the general elections. At the workers school there was a fishbowl with presentations by Charles Brave, Vice President of International Longshoreman Association Local 1422, Sandra Wakefield, leader of Texas National Nurses Union and Angaza Laughinghouse, Vice President of UE local 150, NC Public Service Workers Union. After the presentation, workers assembled discussed and voted to support the resolution for “Building People’s Assemblies, Platform and Workers Power Before/During/After the Elections”. Unfortunately, most unions are rushing to endorse candidates and have left no real space and time for its members to discuss all the important issues at stake. This school was an opening of a process to develop a workers platform representing our own interests and to build local workers and people’s assemblies. Many school participants vowed to take the resolution back to their workplace, local, regional and national unions for further discussion. If you would like a copy of the resolution, emailinfo@southernworker.org.

The struggle to organize the South just took a momentous leap forward.

http://southernworker.org/

Great news...solidarity with my Southern comrades (not the least of which include blindpig and Dhalgren ;) ).

Great news...solidarity with my Southern comrades (not the least of which include blindpig and Dhalgren ;) ).

Not much action in these parts, the Upstate is the most reactionary part of this reactionary state. Down on the coast, Charleston, where the scab Boeing plant is located is where the action is now. That area has long be the local union stronghold, such as it is. A win there would give a glimmer of hope for action at the massive BMW plant here. A very tough nut that, the fallout of the '37 strike is still in play and perhaps only new blood can expunge that.

Great news...solidarity with my Southern comrades (not the least of which include blindpig and Dhalgren ;) ).

In Huntsville, AL "union" is a dirty word - except where it isn't. We have a couple of UAW plants down here and the Teamsters are pretty big, but organizing is done in the teeth of evangelical open-shopism. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat with, relatively, intelligent workers and tried to explain why collective action is best for all of us. They get so mired in "the individual in the market place" (not their expression) that they can't wrap their heads around not competing with every other worker, everywhere. Of course many "get it" and there are areas where organizing takes place, but it has to be done carefully; "socialism", down here, is almost as dirty a word as "Islam"...

In Huntsville, AL "union" is a dirty word - except where it isn't. We have a couple of UAW plants down here and the Teamsters are pretty big, but organizing is done in the teeth of evangelical open-shopism. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat with, relatively, intelligent workers and tried to explain why collective action is best for all of us. They get so mired in "the individual in the market place" (not their expression) that they can't wrap their heads around not competing with every other worker, everywhere. Of course many "get it" and there are areas where organizing takes place, but it has to be done carefully; "socialism", down here, is almost as dirty a word as "Islam"...

"I can deal with the boss man to man." If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that......

Recently had a guy doing some tree work at the house and we had a chat when he got done.

He asked "What do you think of Trump?" and it went down hill from there. Blacks were no good cause they wouldn't work for poverty wages. 'Mexicans' were no good cause the would work for poverty wages. When I genty suggested that the problem was that rich folks were hoovering up all the wealth he replied. "That's communism! I won't have nothing to do with that!"

Guess I need to work on my presentation.

Racism is the boss's primary asset, more so than force.

On Edit: And just now I learned that Jews invented communism to get a chunk of the pie from the Pharoahs, Romans & British royal house. And there was no telling this guy anything cause his opinion was every bit as good as mine. (probably lost that customer)

Jesus this sounds like liberal kibbutzing but it's life in Upstate SC.

Saturday, August 13 / 1pm
Monroe Park, Richmond, VA
*Free buses leaving NC and VA, see below for info and to sign up*

The Southern Workers Assembly is encouraging all of our members organizations and supporters to join the national Fight for $15 march in Richmond next weekend, August 13.

Join the SWA Contingent in the march! Please look for our yellow banner or call us at 919-539-2051

Please see the announcement below from Raise Up, along with bus information from cities near you!

Solidarity Forever,
SWA Coordinating Committee

Join the #FightFor15 march on the old Confederacy!
In just a few short weeks, we will be marching with the #FightFor15 in Richmond, VA – and we need you with us.

This is truly an historic moment. Four years ago, a few dozen fast-food workers went on strike in New York City for $15 an hour and union rights.

Today, the movement that those strikers set in motion is 64 million strong. Workers have won $15 an hour in New York state and California, in Seattle and for cities and companies across the country – and we’ve helped change the conversation on economic and racial justice.

The choice of Richmond, the one-time heart of the Confederacy, will allow us to draw links between the way workers are treated today and the racist history of the United States -- and connect the Fight for 15 with the growing Black Lives Matter and immigrant justice movements.

That is why we are proud to be part of the #FightFor15. We are winning change that matters.

I want you to join us at the Richmond rally. Rev. Dr. William J Barber II of the Moral Monday/Forward Together Movement will lead the march. Free buses are leaving from around the state to join this historic march (see below for full list). Will you sign up right now to be there?

❑ YES! I want to join the #FightFor15 rally in Richmond, VA onAugust 13!

This fight is not just about dollars and cents – though we will not stop until every person who works hard makes enough to live.

It’s about justice. About economic justice. Racial justice. Immigration justice.

It’s about building a society where parents make enough money to feed their kids and send them to school. Where people do not need to worry about where their next meal is coming from, how they’ll pay their health care bills, or being racially profiled or discriminated against.

It’s about people coming together and making change. And that’s why we need you with us in Richmond at our rally on August 13. Sign up now.Stand with us.

Thanks for joining the fight.

In solidarity, forward together,

Rolanda McMillian
McDonald's worker and Fight for 15 leader
Richmond, VA

Make a donation to support the Southern Workers School!
Get on the Bus to Join the March!
AUGUST 13 BUS INFO
North Carolina

Asheville / 6:30am / Asheville Mall, 3 S Tunnel Rd, Asheville, NC 28805

Burlington / 9:30am / Location TBA

Charlotte / 7:30am / Action NC office, 5500 Executive Center Dr, Charlotte, NC 28212

Chapel Hill / 9:30am / United Church of Chapel Hill, 1321 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NC 27514

Durham / 10:00am / Raise Up Office, 2220 N. Roxboro St, Durham NC 27701

Fayetteville / 9:00am / Cross Creek Mall, 419 Cross Creek Mall, Fayetteville, NC 28303

Greensboro / 9:00am / Interactive Resource Center (back lot), 407 E Washington St, Greensboro, NC 27401

Greenville / 10:00am / Philipi Church, 3760 Philippi Cir, Greenville, NC 27858

Raleigh / 10:00am / Sam's Club, 3001 Calvary Dr, Raleigh, NC 27604

Rocky Mount / 10:00am / Belk's, Golden East Crossing, 1100 N Wesleyan Blvd Suite 9101, Rocky Mount, NC 27804

Tarheel / 9:00am / UFCW Local 1208, 14400 Hwy 87 W. Tar Heel, NC 28392

Wilmington / 8:00am / Wilmington Central Church of Christ, 1134 N Kerr Avenue, Wilmington, NC 28405

Virginia

Blacksburg / 9:00am / 800 Drillfield Dr, Blacksburg VA 24061

Danville / 10:00am / 420 W Main St, Danville VA 24541

Fairfax/NOVA / 11:00am / 11181 Lee Hwy, Fairfax VA 22030

Fredericksburg / 12:00pm / 1301 College Ave, Fredericksburg VA 22401

Hampton Roads/Newport News / 11:00am / 1900 Cunningham Dr, Hampton VA 23666

Norfolk / 10am / Nauticus Museum, 1 Waterside Dr, Norfolk, VA 23510

Petersburg / 12:30pm / 1 Hayden Drive, Petersburg VA 23806

Roanoke / 10:00am / 806 Jamison Ave SE, Roanoke VA 24013

Virginia Beach / TBA


Copyright © 2016 Southern Workers Assembly, All rights reserved.
You either attended an event hosted by the Southern Workers Assembly or have signed one of our online petitions.

Our mailing address is:
Southern Workers Assembly
PO Box 934
Rocky Mount, NC 27802

Hard Times Are Fighting Times!
Building the Movement for Liberation, Revolution, & Socialism in the South

Saturday, September 24 / 9a - 5p
Holton Community Center / 401 N Driver St / Durham, NC

* REGISTER TODAY *

Join Workers World Party in Durham, North Carolina for a fightback conference on the resistance against racism and capitalism, and the struggle for socialism where we’ll discuss
Ending the police war on Black & Brown people & defending the Black Lives Matter movement
Stoping the raids & deportations & disarming ICE & the police
Smashing HB2, defending queer and trans people, fighting for LGBTQ liberation noW
Fighting imperialism, for a free Palestine, and building international solidarity
Abolishing capitalism and fighting for revolutionary socialism

The Black Lives Matter movement continues to heroically take it to the streets, occupying highways and police precincts across the country, demanding an end to police violence and mass incarceration. From Ferguson to Baltimore, we cannot allow the police and politicians to push back this movement as more rebellions are bound to break out as the racist police war on Black and Brown people continues.

The struggle to stop the raids and deportations of migrant workers and their families continues to grow. Many have been detained and deported by ICE at record numbers under the Democrats and the Obama administration.

The fightback is also intensifying against the attacks by racist billionaire Donald Trump and an emboldened right wing movement against immigrants and Muslims. Queer and trans people are fighting back in the face of a rising tide of reaction and a renewed assaults on their lives, including the murders around the country of trans people, and particularly trans women of color, in addition to a rash of backwards legislation.

The crisis of capitalism at a dead end, austerity, low wages, and cutbacks is devastating communities in the South, the U.S., and elsewhere around the world. Workers are building broad support for the fight for $15/hr campaign -- which must continue towards the end of supporting the self-organization of workers into unions and the defeat of Jim Crow right-to-work (for less) laws, on the road to build a world run by the working class, in our interests, not of those of the bankers and the bosses!

U.S. imperialism continues to bomb, sanction, and threaten oppressed peoples – particularly in Syria, Libya, and Iraq — as the capitalist establishment fans the flames of Islamophobia at home. Solidarity and unity, between working class and oppressed people in the U.S. and across the globe, is urgently needed.

As the most unpopular election in U.S. history plays out, and we are faced with a choice between neo-fascist demagogue Trump or the racist liberalism of warmongerer Hillary Clinton, many are looking beyond the two capitalist parties of Wall Street, war, and racism. The rise of the movement around Bernie Sanders activated millions of mostly young people around his progressive, albeit limited, program. In the wake of Sanders' endorsement of Hillary Clinton and full circle fold back into the Democratic Party, many of his supporters are asking -- what now? Many more have questions about socialism, that Sanders' campaign helped to popularize.

In the midst of all of this, Workers World Party is running two Black revolutionary socialists for president -- Monica Moorehead and Lamont Lilly. We're running not because we entertain any illusions about winning, but to help build the struggle in the streets around our 10 point revolutionary program. We don't fight for a softer, kinder form of capitalism -- we say: the whole damn system is guilty! We want to abolish capitalism, racist police terror and ICE, the attacks on LGBTQ people and women, U.S. imperialism. We want to fight for a revolutionary socialist future.

We need a revolution — a transformation of the economy, the political system, and all of society, where workers and communities control their future.

Racist police repression, raids and deportations, and the attacks on working class and oppressed people cannot be ended, once and for all, until the decaying capitalist system, which is becoming more and more desperately dependent on state repression, is ended. Capitalism must be replaced with a system that is based on meeting human needs, not exploitation to make profits: socialism.

These and other pressing struggles of the day -- along with the experiences, observations, and questions of those in attendance -- will be the basis of the conference. We hope you are able to join us.

Workers World Party - Durham [durham@workers.org]

Southern Workers Assembly Urges all Workers to Participate in Actions near you this Monday, May 1, International Workers Day!
May Day is a national day of protest for immigrant and labor rights, dating back to the mass 2006 demonstrations to defend immigrants against the Republican congress and over a century of labor mobilization for International Workers Day.

Many are uniting to demand:
No Ban, No Wall, No War!
No raids, deportations and check-points!
Black Lives Matter
Full Union Rights, No Right-to-Work (for less), and $15 per hour for all workers! Equal pay for equal work!

This year, the entire LA school district is shutting down, and Seattle teachers and other workers will be engaging in strike action…

Today, May Day will be even more urgent as the Trump administration accelerates its deportation machinery, and prepares assaults on union rights.

Here are 4 simple things that you can do in your workplace union chapter on Monday, May 1st.

A Day of Action Toolkit – Ten things you and your coworkers can do to celebrate May Day

1. Ask your co-workers to all wear red or yellow to work to show solidarity. Wear stickers celebrating labor and immigrant rights

2. Take photos of your chapter together and post on social media with the hashtag #MayDay – check out examples here.

3. Tell your Representative to Oppose Right-to-work (for less) law added into State Constitution. This week, the House Judiciary I Committee gave the thumbs up to the Protect NC Right to Work Constitutional Amendment (S 632/HB 819). The bill would open up the state constitution to enshrine harmful right-to-work laws, making it harder for working people in NC to fight back against bad employers by forming unions.

JOIN A RALLY NEAR YOU:
In this publication, actions organized by Southern Workers Assembly affiliates:
1. Raleigh and Durham, NC
2. Atlanta, GA
3. Tampa, FL
4. Roanoke, VA


MAY DAY 2017 ACTIONS
RALEIGH
1 de Mayo: ¡Huelga y Resistencia! Strike & Resist! – Raleigh

Reunión/Rally: 10am, Moore Square Park, 201 S. Blount St., Raleigh

Marcha/March: 12pm, a General Assembly, 16 W. Jones St.

Reunión/Rally: 1pm, Halifax Mall (behind NC General Assembly), Raleigh

Lunch: 1:30pm at NCAE building (700 S Salisbury St, Raleigh)

RSVP & Share on Facebook

DURHAM
Forum on Islamphobia: 2pm at Ar-Razzaq Mosque, 1009 W Chapel Hill St, Durham (lunch provided)

May Day: Strike! No Work, No School – Durham

Reunión/Rally: 5pm, 602 E Main St, Durham

Reunión/Rally: 6pm Durham County Jail, 510 S Dillard St, Durham

Reunión/Rally: : 7pm City Hall during Council meeting, 101 City Hall Plaza, Durham

RSVP & Share on Facebook

http://trianglemayday.org/



Mayday International Day of l @ s workers Mitin
Public · Hosted by GLAHR
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Monday, May 1 at 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT
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68 Mitchell St SW, Atlanta, GA 30303, United States
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May Day is International Workers ' Day (a), on this day we will be in the City of Atlanta by requiring city commissioners respect our communities and do the right thing passing resolutions and ordinances that protect our vulnerable communities.

Join the effort will be in 141 Pryor Street SW Atlanta, GA 30303 starting at 11am where we will have a rally (Rally), and there will be part of democracy Atlanta taking part of the board of commissioners began at 1:00 pm .

If you are a housewife, worker, worker, student: join Atlanta's time to protect us.

See you on May 1 #MayDayAtl # Mayo1Atl

If you want to get involved and help make art for this event contact at 770-457-5232 or send an email to gina@glahr.org

This event is in collaboration with Atlanta Jobs with Justice (Jobs Justly Atlanta) https://www.facebook.com/events/1905029996383638/

https://www.facebook.com/events/986291921502447

Google translated from Spanish



For Tampa log into facebook


Roanoke May Day (International Workers Day)
Public · Hosted by Roanoke Peoples' Power Network
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Monday, May 1 at 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM EDT
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Melrose Ave NW, Roanoke, Virginia 24017
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Join us for Roanoke's May Day (International Workers Day) event! May Day was founded in the U.S. as a day for workers to fight for workers' rights. Though it was federally replaced with "Labor Day" to vacationize and discourage collective struggle, it is acknowledged by most other countries worldwide. This year we will be collaborating with Raise Up for $15 (the southern branch of Fight for $15) and have a focus on solidarity with immigrants. The working class is international; our enemies are not workers in foreign countries or immigrants who come here to work, but the bosses who control the means of production and who exploit all of our labor. This is why we say, "No Borders In The Workers' Struggle"!

We'll have food, music, education about the history of direct action in labor struggles and victories here and abroad, trainings on workers' rights and police encounters, and a chance for workers to speak out about current exploitation they face on the job. This is the perfect time and place for poor and working peoples in Roanoke to connect with each other and build our power in the streets!

Please comment or e-mail us if you'd like to give a testimonial, or if you'd like to speak about your organization!






Last weekend's Southern Workers School in Atlanta made the News (Guardian), story below:


A workshop organised by the Workers School by Southern Workers Assembly, hosted by Project South in Atlanta, promoting unionization. Photograph: Manzoor Cheema/Facebook
"Can unions rebuild the labor movement in the U.S. South?"

By Mike Elk


Seated around a table in the dimly lit auditorium of Atlanta-based non-profit Project South last weekend, two dozen union activists of all ages and races were trying to solve a problem – one that has vexed the southern states for a generation.


Longshoremen from South Carolina, nurses from Florida, campus workers from Tennessee, public workers employees from North Carolina, and fast food workers had gathered to discuss one issue: how could these members of the Southern Workers Assembly help a fellow union attempt to unionize a company scattered at dozens of locations across the south? It’s a growing problem for unions, and one their opponents are determined to make sure doesn’t get any easier.


As the US economy – and particularly manufacturing – continues to expand in the south with the relocation of the auto industry, unions see big opportunities to recruit workers into the labor movement. However, they find themselves stymied by anti-union intimidation campaigns backed by big money that often include firing, intimidation and threats of plant closures if workers unionize.


With that in mind, the first question posed to the group was one that union organizers across the south find themselves asking: how would they identify workers interested in getting to join a union at a particular company, and make them comfortable enough to get involved in union organizing?


Many workers in the room suggest that they print union flyers and handbill the plant to gather contact information of sympathetic workers. However, some in the group worried that by targeting the company directly, they could scare potential supporters away. Then, a 20-year-old fast food worker named Sha Drummond raised his hand.


Drummond is new to the labor movement. A little more than a year ago, he was inspired to get involved in the Fight for $15 campaign to raise hourly wages for fast food workers after he saw some union organizers kicked out of a fast food restaurant where he worked in Richmond, Virginia. He has already helped organize several strikes and learned a tremendous amount about organizing through taking action.


“We typically throw an event or house party and invite everyone,” said Drummond. “We just don’t invite people who work there, but we invite everyone in the community so that people know they have a lot of support. They know that people have their back.”


Donald Quick, a longtime veteran of the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union UE Local 150, quickly suggested that perhaps they could use social media to identify workers to invite to the event. While Drummond and Quick are separated by many years, they have one thing in common: they are both part of unions that lack traditional collective bargaining rights, and they are willing to think outside of the box about how to organize in the south.


Inspired by the energy of the Fight for $15 movement and the growing labor movement, workers involved in the Southern Workers Assembly are attempting to a build the groundwork for a network to inspire a mass movement of an uprising by non-union workers across the south.


However, instead of focusing on winning one intensive campaign at a high-profile employer such as Boeing or Nissan, the assembly is instead focused on building a network of smaller minority unions that lack collective bargaining to create a groundswell of union support.


“Having a union doesn’t mean you have to have a majority of workers or a union contract,” said veteran union organizer Saladin Muhammad, co-founder of the Southern Workers Assembly. “A union exists whenever workers come together to form an organization to build power.”


At the outset of the American labor movement, before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, minority unions were quite common. Small groups of workers would often band together to put pressure on the boss. They would work the company’s internal handbooks and grievance procedures, rally community and political support to put pressure on employers, engage in shop floor disobedience and, if all else failed, go out on strike to stick it to the boss.


Eventually, these networks of minority unions built up over decades lead to the massive organizing gains they achieved in the 1930s.


“Rebuilding the labor movement in the south is going to require us to get back to the basics of what a union is,” said Muhammad. “A union is about workers building power through organization.”


However, after the mass organizing waves of the 1930s, unions largely struck to the traditional model of only representing workers in unions. This model of union organizing often relied on union representatives and labor lawyers to make sure union contracts are enforced.


Now, with the success of the strikes of Fight for $15 in building a mass movement, unions in the South are once again beginning to experiment with minority unions - where workers voluntarily join, and pay dues, to their local union rather than the union representing entire workforce at an employer.


In 2014, after losing a high-profile union election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, autoworkers there formed a minority union, Local 42. Following their lead, autoworkers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, decided to form UAW Local 112, despite lacking a majority of workers in the plant who wanted to be members of the union.


Even without collective bargaining rights, both unions have won changes in company policies through protests and legal action. More importantly, the unions have shown real power by getting activists their jobs back who they feel wrongfully fired.


Now the Southern Workers Assembly is hoping to link these new minority union efforts with other groups of non-union workers, as workers in the south face the uphill battle of rebuilding.


The United Campus Workers (UCW) in Tennessee, an affiliate of Communication Workers of America, is one of those minority unions that has built power despite lacking traditional union rights.


Originally formed in 1999 to fight for living wages for workers at the University of Tennessee, UCW has now grown into a full-fledged union despite lacking collective bargaining rights. The group has over 2,000 members who pay monthly dues, which allows the union to have a small staff. It also enabled the UCW to hold training courses for union activists, organize rallies and lobby days, and campaign for state legislators who share their agenda of improving conditions for workers in the University of Tennessee system.


Jessica Buttermore, an administration assistant at the University of Memphis, decided to join UCW after attending the union’s annual lobby day in Nashville five years ago. She said that at first when she got active, it was sometimes difficult to get people to voluntarily agree to pay monthly dues. However, after the union won a $3 across-the-board rise in minimum wage for campus workers two years ago, she says it has become a lot easier to get workers to feel ownership of their minority union.


“If they see someone take action then talking about it, it encourages people,” says Buttermore. “For people to see that the work we are doing does have an effect, really encourages people to be involved.”


For many involved in the Southern Workers School this weekend in Atlanta, rebuilding the labor movement is less about winning union elections and more about teaching workers about the power they have to affect change.


“We gotta bring forces together who are not unionized to engage them in the labor movement,” says Muhammad. “When people think that the starting point for being in the labor movement is a union opposed to a worker organization that’s when we lose power. To organize the South, we must make people realize how much power they already have.”


Mike Elk is a member of the Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild. He is the co-founder of Payday Report and was previously senior labor report at Politico.

URGENT, TAKE ACTION TODAY!

Defend Democracy At Work!
Stop the Power Grab by Right Wing Legislators!

Legislators Push Bill to Eliminate Union Payroll Deduction

Call-in Day of Action, Mon., June 19
Call in ALL WEEK LONG!

Rep. David Lewis, Chair House Rules Committee - 910-897-8100
Speaker of the House, Rep. Tim Moore - 704-739-1221
(Leave a message if they don't answer)

All North Carolina public workers' right to organize is under severe attack. A bill, SB 375, to eliminate voluntary union payroll dues deduction for all public sector organizations has passed the NC Senate, it is now scheduled to be in the House Rules committee on Tuesday, June 20.

Without payroll deduction to fund employee organization, workers are left without their best defense to address the quality of public services and working conditions-- the right to organize and speak-out. NC, like many states across country, has seen a steady erosion of funds for public education, health care, food and nutritional supplemental support and all public services. Workers organizing to address their working conditions, is the first line of defense for quality services and quality jobs.

The NC State Legislature has also been steadily working to take power away from local governments by preempting their ability to defend residents and workers. House Bill 2 was the most publicized effort when the state took away local governments' ability to pass protections for transgendered people, and use it to divide and attack all workers. They also eliminated ability of local governments to pass resolutions to raise wages for companies in their jurisdictions. Efforts have also been made to take away authority of the City of Charlotte for their airport, the City of Asheville of their water system, as just a few examples. Now they want to eliminate union payroll deduction and take power from local governments to hear from their own employees' organizations.

This is a further attack on workers' human rights!

Public sector workers in NC are already denied the right to collectively bargain, which the United Nations International Labor Organization ruled is a violation of workers' fundamental human rights. Organizations directly impacted by SB 375 include UE local 150-NC Public Service Workers Union, NC Association of Educators, International Association of Firefighters, Teamsters local 391, State Employees Association of NC and others.

NOTE: Senator Ralph Hise, who introduced this bill, is currently under investigation for illegally taking money from his campaign account and violating laws requiring full disclosure of campaign contributions.

Make the call to the NC House of Representatives today to tell them to oppose SB 375!


CALL TODAY!
Rep. David Lewis, Chair House Rules Committee
910-897-8100
David.Lewis@ncleg.net

Speaker of the House, Rep. Tim Moore
704-739-1221
Tim.Moore@ncleg.net

Call script:

Hello, my name is ______________________ . I am calling on Rep. Lewis and Rep. Moore to oppose Senate Bill 375 to eliminate union payroll deduction. The state has taken enough power away from workers and local governments. This is another attack on our democracy! Workers organizing is our best defense for quality public services. Vote no to SB 375!

(Leave a message if they don't answer)

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PO Box 934
Rocky Mount, NC 27802

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