Southern Worker's Action

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blindpig
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Southern Worker's Action

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 03, 2017 2:13 pm

More here:

http://www.thebellforum.net/Bell2/www.t ... l?t=147999

***********************

Summer 2017 Newsletter
Southern Workers
Assembly
“Building a Movement to Organize Labor in the South”
www. SouthernWorker.org
252-314-2363
info@southernworker.org
MISSISSIPPI auto workers on road to
historic union vote
In a historic action on July 10,
workers at the Canton, Miss., Nissan
automobile manufacturing plant filed
a petition with the National Labor
Relations Board for a union recognition
election with the United Auto
Workers union.
The plant is one of the largest
automobile plants in the U.S. South,
with 6,400 workers. Eligible voters in
the election are Nissan production
technicians and maintenance workers
totaling around 3,800. The overwhelming
majority of workers at the
Canton facility are African American.
Most auto workers in the
South are not represented by unions. A few facilities
for companies like Freightliner, Ford, General Motors,
Chrysler and other smaller parts plants in the region
are organized. But automakers — including Honda,
Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota and
Volkswagen — are building factories in this region
because of generous state and local incentives, rightto-work
(for less!) laws and state governments eager to
publicly oppose unions.
Business interests want the plants free of union
organizing that builds worker solidarity and counteracts
the brutal racism and continued inequalities left
from the history of enslavement and Jim Crow segregation
of African Americans in the South.
If the union wins the election, the Mississippi
plant will be the first “foreign transplant” facility to be
‘Workers Rights = Civil Rights’ March on Mississippi by community and labor coalition,
Canton, Miss., March 4, 2017.
fully unionized. At the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga,
Tenn., the UAW only represents skilled trades
workers, a small minority of the total workforce. VW is
still refusing to recognize them as a bargaining unit.
With the exception of two Honda plants in rural
Ohio, every U.S. auto transplant factory is in the South. A
union victory at Nissan will boost organizing efforts at all of
these plants

ALSO IN THIS EDITION:
Southern Workers School p. 2
Georgia Health Care struggle p.3
TN workers fight privatization p.5
NC City workers die in heat p. 6
Farmworkers attacked p.7

*****************************

Southern Workers School converges in Atlanta
to “build cadre” to organize the South
By Mike Elk
Seated around a table in the dimly lit auditorium
of Atlanta-based nonprofit 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 joining 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 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 build the
groundwork for a network to inspire a mass movement 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
continued on page 8

***********************

HEALTH CARE IN CRISIS
Emergency: Dead on Arrival in Georgia

By Rita Valenti, National Nurses Union
ATLANTA - Georgia Blue Cross and Blue Shield announced
it would no longer cover ‘non-emergency’ visits
to emergency rooms in the State. Anthem’s BC/BS will
determine whether or not ER visits are a reimbursable
emergency. Policyholders will undoubtedly hesitate to
seek care for fear of bankrupting costs. The result will be
more preventable deaths and unnecessary suffering for
Georgians.
If the Blues can get away with this policy in Georgia,
it will surely be instituted elsewhere. In a State where
79 counties have no OB/GYN; 66 no general surgeon; 63
no pediatrician; 53 counties with no hospital and cascading
rural hospitals closures, Georgia healthcare is already
dead on arrival. A visit to the emergency room outside of
major metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Columbus, Augusta,
Athens, Rome and Savannah may be moot – there
are none. The 2015 Georgia Rural Hospital Stabilization
Committee reported that, “Georgia has virtually no rural
hospitals in counties capable of supporting an emergency
room without subsidies.”
Georgia’s Insurance Commissioner, Ralph Hudgens
predictably approved this policy. Georgia’s State
Insurance Department is notorious for being an arm of
the corporate insurance companies since the State allows
for industries that the Commissioner regulates to make
campaign contributions. Hudgens is not only the recipient
of the industry’s vast campaign contributions, perks
and gifts but also their mouthpiece. Using an anecdote
comparing someone with breast cancer to a person trying
to buy car insurance after having a wreck, Hudgens said:
“Well, I just had a wreck, it was my fault and I want the
insurance company to pay to repair my car. And that’s the
exact same thing on pre-existing {health} insurance.” He
makes crystal clear that healthcare under capitalism is a
commodity just like an automobile; a ‘product’ to bought
not a necessity to be distributed. There is no façade of
democracy here in Georgia.
All this is occurring within the context of ‘repeal
and replace’ the Affordable Care Act. The ACA, a twoedge
sword that on the one hand, curbed some of the
most toxic practices of the insurance industry like exclusions
for pre-existing conditions, moderated premium
costs for some, ended caps on coverage and allowed for
young people to stay on parents’ insurance until age 26,
but on the other hand, primarily was constructed to stabilize
the private insurance market through huge government
subsidies to corporate health insurers. ACA’s most
significant benefit, Medicaid expansion is the central
target of the ‘repeal’ machinations on Capitol Hill. But
the snowball rolling down this fetid Hill is not just about
ending the expansion but withdrawing nearly all federal
funds and oversight of any Medicaid program. Georgia
and nine other Southern State governments refused to
expand Medicaid. Working and poor people in the South
have no choice but while acting to defend and call for
Medicaid expansion must necessarily go on the offensive
for Improved Medicare for All, a step in the direction
toward a national public health service based on peoples’
needs not the insurance marketplace.

**************************

Mississippi Auto workers (continued from 1)
Winning at Nissan will also put the UAW in a stronger
bargaining position with GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler at the
national level. These companies typically use competitive
pressure from the transplants as a club to force concessions
from UAW members who work at the Detroit Three.
While the Mississippi workers are hoping the union
will help them fight the expansion of the lower-paid temporary
workforce in the Nissan plant, the recent contracts
for UAW-represented autoworkers in other regions have
allowed the bosses to hire more temporary workers, who are
paid less and have fewer benefits.
It is imperative for every autoworker, inside and
outside the U.S., to be in solidarity with the Mississippi Nissan
workers. But this solidarity must be free of the chauvinistic,
anti-Japanese, “buy American” rhetoric that the UAW
has employed in the past.
Workers’ Rights = Civil Rights
Organizing at the Mississippi plant has been going
on for over 12 years. On March 4, there was a mass, community-worker
“March on Mississippi: Workers’ Rights =
Civil Rights.” Several hundred people gathered in Canton to
draw public attention to this struggle, including actor Danny
Glover, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Clarence Thomas,
former officer of Bay Area dockworkers’ International
Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, spark of the
1934 West Coast General Strike.
The marchers demanded that Nissan respect employees’
right to vote for a union without fear of retaliation.
In an interview with Workers World, Ernest Whitfield,
a 13-year employee and press operator in the Canton
plant, was clear: “We state that workers rights are civil
rights. Right now our state and federal rights to have a fair
vote is being threatened and suppressed.”
Whitfield added, “The tactics that they are using
is nothing short of what they were doing in the 1950’s and
1960’s as voter suppression and intimidation against Black
people. That is why we link workers rights with civil rights.
This is an 80 to 85 percent African-American plant.”
By Tuesday, July 11, company intimidation of the
workers had already started. “This week there has been a
difference in the plant,” said Whitfield. “Some of management’s
reaction has been a Mr. Nice Guy role: come out
on the line, asking if there is enough air, because usually it
is pretty hot. They are catering to workers in an abnormal
way.” Then on Wednesday, the plant manager, Steve Marsh,
published an anti-union video.
The workers didn’t let those tactics go unnoticed.
On Wednesday, July 12, a group of workers drove down to
New Orleans to drop off a box of union cards at the local
National Labor Relations Board, requesting they monitor
and help with a free and fair election. On Thursday, July
13, two workers, Travis Parks and Eric Hearn, walked into
the boss’s office at the Canton plant and delivered a letter to
demand that they recognize and bargain with the UAW.
By Friday night, at shift change, workers were
passing out union fliers to their co-workers at the turnstiles.
Later on that night, supervisors brought out fliers listing socalled
facts about the UAW to scare workers.
According to Whitfield: “It was typical playbook
stuff from other anti-union campaigns. Our manager spoke
directly about the election, saying that the temps were left
out, stating that they will not be able to vote, but that is not
the case.”
Temp, two-tier, all workers in organizing drive
The union has been organizing workers in the temp
agencies, and close to a majority in some have filled out
union cards.
Out of the roughly 6,400 workers in the plant, over
2,600 are temps who work for contractor companies. The
company hires workers through the temp agencies to keep
the workers divided, in an attempt to weaken them and
make it more difficult to organize.
Temporary agencies inside the Canton Nissan
plant include Kelly Services, Minact Yates (with about 640
workers in plant) and Yates Services. There are also subcontractors
under Kelly Services, including Onin and Excelsior
Services.
According to Whitfield, “Contractors do the same
work that we do. We work side-by-side with them in all job
categories.” But there is a tiered system of pay and benefits.
Even for workers that are employed directly with
Nissan there is a two tiered system, including a lower tier
called “Pathway.” This is for former temps now hired by
Nissan who are not offered the same health insurance, pay
and other benefits as other Nissan employees. For instance,
Nissan workers are offered a Healthcare Reimbursement
Account (HRA) with a $1,500 annual deductible, while
Pathway workers are only offered a Healthcare Saving Account
(HSA) with a $2,600 annual deductible.
‘Bring the weight of the community onto this plant’
“Our goal is to union the election and bring the
union into the plant, regardless of tactics management is
doing,” emphasized Whitfield. “We need to bring the weight
of the community onto this plant. We are inviting social justice
and civil rights and other community activists to let this
management team know they need to back off these tactics.
United we can win!”
The election is set to take place August 3 and 4 in Canton.
Martha Grevatt, trustee of UAW Local 869 and 30-year UAW
Fiat Chrysler worker, contributed to this article.
Page 4

*********************

United Campus Workers Fights Massive
Plan to Outsource TN Public Workers!

By Diana Moyer, President UCW-CWA Local 3685
United Campus Workers, UCW-CWA Local 3865
in Tennessee, has for nearly two years been involved
in a fight to keep Governor Haslam from outsourcing
state facilities services workers in every state building,
park, and campus to the multi-national company JLL.
UCW countered this brazen attack on public workers
by mobilizing our members and allies in the #TNisNOTforSale
campaign. Our campaign publicizes how
the proposed outsourcing scheme has bypassed the
democratic process and hidden the negotiations from
the public. Despite the majority of the TN General
Assembly being opposed to outsourcing, the Governor
has pushed through state approval of the contract and
provided misinformation about job protections and
taxpayer savings.
The UCW campaign has succeeded in dramatically
slowing the outsourcing process and pushing back the
implementation timeline. By stalling the process, we
were able to build public and legislator opposition to
the outsourcing. We also got them to give individual
college campuses the right to decide to either “optin”
or “opt-out” of participating in the outsourcing
contract. Our campaign has kicked into high gear to
convince campus leaders that outsourcing would lead
to lack of accountability, a drop in service quality, and
a betrayal of loyal state employees.
The #TNisNOTforSale campaign has used multiple
tactics to achieve our goal of stopping outsourcing:
1. We made some noise! We have had multiple rallies,
and demonstrations to raise visibility. On March 9,
hundreds of members and allies from across the state
came together in Nashville to meet with legislators,
have a rally, and fill the lobby of the building where
closed outsourcing meetings were taking place.
2. We built a broad, bipartisan coalition in the general
assembly through call-ins, emails, and a powerful
and effective lobbying operation led by our Legislative
Committee. We were able to get a majority of the
members of both the House and the Senate to sign a
letter calling for a halt to outsourcing.
United Campus Workers Fights Massive
Plan to Outsource TN Public Workers!
3. We spoke out to decision makers. Workers and student
allies spoke in front of the Board of Trustees and
we coordinated diverse constituencies to meet with
campus Chancellors and Presidents.
4. We talked to and got the support of thousands of
Tennesseans. To date we’ve collected nearly 8,000 petition
signatures, have 7,000+ followers on Facebook,
and generated hundreds of calls and emails to legislators,
the Comptroller, and the Governor.
This fight has demonstrated to people the power of
union solidarity! We’ve grown our union’s membership,
which in turn has increased our ability to achieve
victories for working people. We are going to keep
growing and fighting to stand in defense of our jobs,
public services, and transparent government!
Page 5

***********************

Justice for Willie and Anthony!
UE150 Builds Statewide
Campaign in North Carolina in
wake of 2 City workers’ deaths
In mid-July two laborers in Solid Waste
department in the City of Charlotte, yardwaste
division passed away - Willie Watters
and Anthony Milledge. Union member,
Charles Sifford in Water Department passed
out twice on the job July 3 and was rushed to
the hospital.
This was during the hottest part of the year.

This was during the hottest part of the year. While the
City is denying that the excessive heat they worked in
had a direct impact on their deaths, the UE150 union
leaders believe the City did NOT take proper
precautions to prevent heat-related sickness and death.
Workers and the union are in mourning, and we send
our deepest condolensces to the families.
In the past, the City used to call workers off
their work routes if the heat index was too
high. Now management claims the City is growing
too big and the workers must be out in this heat! This
is an outrage.
The Union is launching a statewide campaign
for Health and Safety --- they plan to distribute leaflets
to workers in cities across the state and host informational
pickets and press conferences in several areas.
The City Must Immediately Implement a Heat Index
Policy that accounts for temperature and humidity.
For instance, in Durham (where the union is strong)
and other Cities have a Heat Mitigation Plan -- depending
on the heat index (temperature AND humidity)
workers should take breaks every hour. In Category
2, with heat stress index over 90 degrees, workers
must take 15 minute breaks every hour. Category 3,
heat index over 102 (temperature can be as low as 82
deg. with 100% humidity) workers should take 30 minute
breaks every hour, and so on.
Page 6

*****************************

Dem. NC Governor Signs Anti-Farmworker
Union Bill, Opening Door to More Attacks

RALEIGH, NC
On July 13, North
Carolina Governor
Roy Cooper, a Democrat,
signed the state’s
Farm Act, which
prohibitsfarmworkers’
unions from collecting
union dues directly
from workers’ paychecks.
The Farm
Labor Organizing
Committee and other
labor and community
allies rallied July 18 at
the State Capitol in
Raleigh, N.C. Their immediate goal was to deliver a
letter of protest to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper who
had days before signed Farm Bill SB 615, attacking the
right of farmworkers to organize.
At the rally the groups announced they were
filing a lawsuit to challenge SB 615 for violations of the
right to freedom of assembly and the constitutional
rights of farmworkers, especially for being singled out
for elimination of union payroll deduction.
“This type of abandonment of immigrant workers
is nothing new from the Democratic or Republican
parties. We’ve been excluded from every labor law
reform since the racist exclusion of farmworkers from
the National Labor Relations Act in 1935,” said FLOC
President Baldemar Velasquez. “We plan to challenge
this bill in the courts, as a violation of farmworkers’
rights to freedom of assembly and speech and to continue
our fight for better wages for immigrant families
in the state.” (PayDay Report, July 13)
Earlier in the legislative session, a bill passed
in the State Senate, SB 375, would have eliminated
payroll deduction for all unions in public and private
sectors in North Carolina.
But when anti-union SB 375 went to the N.C.
House, push-back from unions made it impossible
for sponsors to secure the necessary votes for passage.
Dem. NC Governor Signs Anti-Farmworker
Union Bill, Opening Door to More Attacks
Concerted opposition came from the N.C. Association
of Educators, N.C. AFL-CIO, UE Local 150, the N.C.
Public Service Workers Union.
So Rep. David Lewis, who chairs the House
Rules committee and is a farm-owner in Dunn, N.C.,
pivoted to attack farmworkers by slipping anti-union
language into SB 615. Besides nixing union payroll deductions,
the Farm Bill SB 615 also eliminates the right
of workers to collectively bargain directly with farmers.
SB 615 is a vicious attack on the progress made
by FLOC in recent months, particularly with its important
victories for kale and sweet potato pickers, all
Latinx migrant workers. FLOC is also in the midst of a
powerful international campaign to organize RJ Reynolds,
whose primary U.S. source for tobacco is North
Carolina fields.
The attack on farmworkers through SB 615
comes after a major wage theft settlement this January
between FLOC and State Sen. Brent Jackson (R-Sampson),
the powerful co-chairman of the N.C. Senate
Appropriations Committee, who is president of the
Jackson Farming Company.
Community and labor allies gather at FLOC rally and press conference at the N.C. Governor’s Office on July 18.
Page 7

***********************************

Southern Workers School (continued)
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 led 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 were 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 the 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 who they feel were wrongfully fired
their jobs back.
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

Page 8

********************************

What is the Southern Workers Assembly?
The Southern Workers Assembly (SWA) is a network of local unions, worker organizations, and organizing
committees, committed to building rank-and-file democratic social movement unionism (unionism with a social
justice agenda, defined by and accountable to the rank-and-file) as a foundation for organizing, uniting and
transforming labor power throughout the South.
SWA Core Principles: Rank-and-file democracy; national and international labor solidarity; organizing the
unorganized; fighting all forms of discrimination; building a Southern labor congress; and building labor’s power
for independent political action.
SWA Core Demands: Repeal Taft-Hartley and Right-to-Work laws, and collective bargaining rights for all
workers.
Join the Southern Workers Assembly today!
Your membership allows you to participate in Southern Workers Assembly activities on behalf of workers.
Initiation Fee (one time): $50 Individual Membership: $50 annually
Organizational Membership: $1 per member annually ($100 minimum and $500 maximum)
Contact us at 252-314-2363 or info@southernworker.org for the affiliation materials.
www.southernworker.org
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
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Re: Southern Worker's Action

Post by blindpig » Sat Aug 11, 2018 11:01 am

Southern Workers School Opens 2018 Session in Durham, Sept. 14-16


On September 14-16, 2018, the Southern Workers Assembly (SWA) will hold the third annual Southern Workers School in Durham, NC. This school will include a series 9 workshops of education, training and development of organizing tools to help prepare SWA worker-representatives to embark on a plan to build the organized rank-and-file infrastructure in workplaces and industries across the US South.

The 2018 School is being hosted by our friends at the Durham Workers Assembly. The closing session will be October 19-21.

In 2016 & 2017, more than 120 rank and file workers from many different states and sectors participated in 2 in person sessions of the SWA School and 6 continuing online sessions between the two meetings. We hope to increase participation in this upcoming session.

Several dozen rank and file leaders of unions and workers organizations from all across North Carolina and the entire region are planning to participate in this historic gathering - but we need your help to make it a success!


DONATE TODAY TO SUPPORT THE 2018 SOUTHERN WORKERS SCHOOL!


For more information about the 2018 Workers School, email us at info@southernworker.org
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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