Breaking Up With Work Is Hard To Do
It’s funny how quitting a job can sometimes feel like breaking up with a girlfriend. Even if the break-up occurred for good reasons, it tears you up to hear what she’s been up to, and makes you wish, if only for a moment, that you were still there.
Sunday’s New York Times profiles the upcoming contract fight for the city’s hotel employees union, where I worked for three years before resigning last November 3rd. That fight was brewing for at least as long as I worked for the union, so I’ve had a front row seat to this drama.
The term “Me Too” still makes my heart sing. More than just a promise to keep the employees working, as the Times frames it, a “Me Too” is actually where the company signs the contract before it is even written. Whatever the other companies agree to, we do too. Please don’t strike us. It’s key. A general hotel strike does no real damage if it hurts all the industry’s competitors equally. But if the hold-outs are shuttered while their competitors who made peace with the union do boffo business, that’ll nudge the bosses to settle a lot sooner. Besides, no matter how impressive a $30 million war chest may be (and the membership referendum that voted by a nine to one margin to tax themselves ten dollars a week for two years is one of the most impressive, and unsung, victories for working people last year), it won’t last long with all 27,000 members out on picket lines.
Next year’s nine city hotel strike will likely be a historically epic battle between trade unions and the multinational corporations. My guess is that it will be the first real test of the Change to Win federation. This will be where talk is translated into action. It’s going to be a tough fight. I’m sorry that I won’t be a more active participant. But you can’t go home again. But I will be there on picket lines, if and when they materialize, and I will be exhorting you, dear readers, to do the same.
This seems as good a time as any to announce that I have finally accepted a permanent position with a union (well, as permanent as any job in the labor movement can be). I started this blarg when I was unemployed. I’m still figuring out how much I should talk about work. So, all I’ll say now is that I’m organizing, somewhere in the teacher’s union. Fight the good fight, comrades.
Radio City Lock Out
For the benefit of readers who lack a Masters degree education in Labor Law, or a brain in their skulls, when workers return to their job site with no conditions or stipulations after a walk-out, and their boss responds, “No, I will not allow you to return to work,” that is not a strike. That’s called a lock-out, and it’s what management has done to the union musicians at the Radio City “Christmas Spectacular.”
Throughout contract negotiations with Local 802 of the Musicians union, Cablevision, the managers of the Radio City Christmas Show have made outrageous and provocative demands. Although the union and Cablevision are agreed on all financial matters in the contract negotiations, management will not let the union return until…well, it’s not really clear why they won’t sign the contract and let the musicians return.
“We have told the musicians in no uncertain terms that until there is an agreement and there is no possibility of them walking out on future performances, they remain on strike and cannot return to the Music Hall,” doth decreed the pinheads at Cablevision. Again, it’s a minor point, but I am a stickler for such things, it’s only a strike if the union decides not to work. If the union workers unconditionally offer to work, and the boss refuses to let them, it’s a lock out.
Call the Radio City box office at 212-307-1000 and tell them to bring live music back to the Christmas show. Sign the damn contract.
The Rats and the Big Rats
The Bush appointed National Labor Relations Board is poised to curtail the use of those giant inflatable rats that we’ve grown to love. A staple of labor demonstrations for the last decade, the rats are apparently a victim of their own success: increasingly viewed as a signal to the public not to patronize certain ratty, union-busting establishments.
That any branch of the government would ban an effective tactic of the labor movement should come as no surprise. The law’s just not on our side. The Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin amendments to the National Labor Relations Act expressly restricted labor’s solidarity power by banning so-called “secondary activity.”
“Primary activity,” for your edification, would be the employees of Company A striking and boycotting the products of Company A (for example: the UFW grape-pickers at Gallo striking and calling for a boycott of Gallo wines – that boycott is now over, by the way). “Secondary activity” would be the employees of Company A calling for a boycott of Company B for engaging in business with company A (for example, the UFW picketing wine stores that continued to carry struck Gallo wines – something that never happened, because of the law).
Try to imagine Teamsters deliverymen refusing to transport struck goods or UFCW grocery clerks refusing to sell struck goods or even UNITE HERE garment workers picketing Gap stores for selling sweatshop-made underwear, and you’ll see how the law denied the labor movement one of its most potent weapons. In fact, all of this talk about how the labor movement was at its peak membership when the AFL merged with the CIO in 1955 usually fails to mention that Taft-Hartley was passed by Congress in 1947, and Landrum-Griffin followed in 1959.
What about free speech, do I hear you cry? Well, yes, there is that pesky first amendment, and the courts have ruled that speech alone is exempt from labor regulations.
So, one can stand in front of a wine store and shout, “Do not shop in this store, because the rats are selling lousy wine made by scabs,” and that is fine. You can even hand out fliers saying the same.
Once you combine that free speech with any kind of activity (say, picket lines or picket signs), the courts have ruled that you are making an illegal “signal” to the general public to boycott the establishment, in violation of the amended National Labor Relations Act.
About ten years ago, the Laborers union begin accompanying their handbilling with large inflatable rats, as way of attracting attention to themselves and their message. The idea caught on like wildfire and other unions started doing the same. The message was certainly not a clear signal at first. I remember the first time I handbilled with a big rat, sometime in 1997 or 1998. More than a handful of passersby stopped and asked, “Is this about Giuliani?”
Now, people love the rat. As the sight of the big inflatable rats has become more familiar in New York City, people cheer when they see them, honk in support and jeer the bosses (whom, the rats are meant to evoke, in case the meaning was lost on you) and the judges and lawyers have taken note. “The rats think the big rats are a ‘signal,'” noted my UMass classmate, Jen Badgley, when we first heard about this in our labor law class this spring.
The rats admittedly are a signal to those of us with a little conscience and class consciousness (although, I’m not really sure how many people truly have the cause of labor in their hearts to allow for any kind of activity to be a meaningful “signal”). My favorite rat quote comes from the legendary president of the Transport Workers Union, Mike Quill, who responded to Taft-Hartley’s anti-Communist provisions by saying, “I’d rather be called a red by the rats than a rat by the reds.”
Another quote from Mike Quill is more appropriate at this time: “the judge can drop dead in his black robes.” That’s what he said to the press after being sentenced to prison for taking his union out on strike in violation of New York’s public sector Taylor Law.
Three weeks later, it was Quill who was dead, felled by a heart attack. Jail was not kind to the old man. Such is labor’s lot.
Meeks and CAFTA: Follow the Money
Gregory Meeks is catching well-deserved heat for his support of the Central American Free Trade Agreement – a NAFTA-style trade deal that narrowly passed in Congress last month. Defeating the bill was the top political objective of organized labor this summer, and Meeks was one of only 15 Democratic congressmen to join with Bush and the Republicans in supporting the bill.
Meeks has enjoyed dependable support from labor – over a quarter of all financial contributions to his 2004 re-election came from unions and his name has appeared on the Working Families ballot line for the last three election cycles – but now there are many in the labor movement demanding that he be cut off from any further support. The Working Families party, and many of the city’s labor unions, will be sending mailings to 75,000 union members who live in Meeks’ district, documenting the damage of CAFTA, while fishing for potential candidates to run against Meeks.
“This isn’t about retribution,” claims Brian McLaughlin, president of the one million-member Central Labor Council, but “voters in Queens didn’t elect Greg Meeks to send American jobs abroad.” New York State has lost over 61,000 jobs to overseas plant relocations since NAFTA, according the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and studies indicate that the state could lose another 50,000 after CAFTA.
This isn’t about protectionism, either. We now have ten years of NAFTA to study. Those good jobs that left the US did not translate to equivalent jobs in Mexico. Health care and pensions did not follow those jobs, and the pay was low – even by Mexican standards – and there is no reason to expect a different outcome from CAFTA.
No reasonable person opposes free trade as a concept. Our coffee beans, mangos and maple syrup have to come from somewhere, and people around the world deserve the opportunity to work, make money and support their families. But trade bills like NAFTA and CAFTA only raise the corporate bottom line, not human living standards.
Rep. Meeks recognized these flaws when he cast his “yes” vote on July 27. “Despite the fact that CAFTA is by no means a perfect agreement,” he said, “voting it down was not a valid option because it would not subsequently be replaced by a perfect agreement.” Well, no, but voting it down would have handed the Bush administration a strong rebuke and ensured that any future Central American trade deal incorporate more labor and environmental protections.
As much as Rep. Meeks would like to portray his vote on CAFTA as a profile in courage, the truth is that it was very calculated gamesmanship. In a face-to-face meeting with Brian McLaughlin before the vote, Meeks indicated that he was still on the fence but that he would not cast the deciding vote against labor. With a final vote of 217 to 215, he did just that. Why? Call me cynical, but I think the distinguished gentleman looked at his campaign treasury and saw that Big Business contributed over twice as much money as Big Labor.
Meeks’ biggest campaign contributors are banks and financial firms like Prudential and the Bond Market Association, thanks to his seat on the House Financial Services Committee. The Working Families party is calling on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to remove Meeks from his committee assignment, saying that he has “used [his] committee membership cards to access corporate America’s ATM at the expense of working families.”
It’s a tough line, but we’ll see how long it lasts. The WFP refuses to rule out endorsing Meeks again in 2006.
Greg Meeks is emblematic of the weakness of labor unions operating within the Democratic party, and the moral bankruptcy of the party itself. How can working people depend on a congressman like Greg Meeks to protect their jobs, homes, health and safety when he takes so many legal cash bribes from investment firms and banks that do not have the interests of working families at heart?
What working families need is a political party that is truly independent of corporate interests. The Working Families party was supposed to be a step in that direction, but it has been far too cautious about running independent campaigns and directly challenging bad Democrats. It’s time for the WFP to prove its mettle.