Rhode Island AFL-CIO | home

Martin Luther King, Jr. & Labor

On Monday, January 19, 2009, Americans will celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with special events and activities across the nation. The day provides teachers with an opportunity to teach students about King and the contribution he made to economic and social justice in the United States.

One of the lesser known stories about King is his relationship with workers and the labor movement.

In 1961, King addressed the Fourth AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention in Miami where he outlined the shared values and goals of organized labor and the civil rights movement. “The two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country are the labor movement and the Negro freedom movement,” he told his audience.

King went on to say, “This will be the day when we shall bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determined the context of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality -- that is the dream.”

The full speech is available at: http://nathanielturner.com/martinlutherking.htm.

In 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, the labor movement and the civil rights movement came together in a monumental struggle for human and public employee rights. On February 11, over 1,300 sanitation workers – nearly all were African American – went on strike demanding their basic rights to organize a union, to gain a living wage and to receive the respect and dignity due all working men and women. During the strike Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to support the workers but was tragically assassinated.

An exhibit at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University explores the drama of this historic strike where marchers wore signs simply stating, “I Am a Man.” The link to this site is: http://wprtest.reuther.wayne.edu/man/1Intro.htm.

For additional information on King and the connection between civil rights and labor right, go the American Labor Studies Center’s web site (www.labor-studies.org) and click on “Black Labor History.”

Labor Union Volunteers Help Raise Over $14,000 at The Salvation Army Kettles – Breaking Their Previous Record

The 11th Annual RI Labor Union Kettle Day took place on Saturday, December 6th, and with the help of dozens of union members and their families, raised a record amount of money for this campaign. Union members, including Teamsters, teachers, state and municipal workers, and supermarket employees, showed up to “stand” the Salvation Army Christmas kettles at about twenty locations around the state and helped raise over $14,000, breaking their previous Kettle Day record.

“Union members have a long and proud tradition of public service. We are pleased to serve the communities in which we live and work and are honored to assist the Salvation Army in this most compassionate campaign,” said Dave Demuth, a Teamsters’ Local 251 member and an organizer of the union kettle program from its start in 1998.

In past years, the union leaders and members collected record amounts of donations from the public while volunteering at the kettles. One Saturday a few years ago, the union program beat their old record of $11,000 when, aided by an unseasonably warm December day and the generosity of holiday shoppers, an astounding $14,000 was collected in a single day. This year, that number was topped thanks to dedicated volunteers and generous Rhode Islanders.

Organizer Maureen Martin, from the RI Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals said, “So many volunteers gave up time on their days off and delayed their holiday shopping to come to the aid of the Salvation Army. It is heartwarming to see that, even in these tough economic times, people are willing to donate their hard-earned cash to help the less fortunate. We are very proud of our members and the Rhode Islanders who donated and we look to continue this tradition in the future.”

R.I. labor guru George Nee cut his teeth on grape boycott and caught the union bug

He is a onetime college dropout, a former bodyguard, a shrewd political strategist and the face of Rhode Island’s labor movement.

George Nee, the AFL-CIO of Rhode Island’s secretary-treasurer, may be known these days as the silver-haired, back-slapping lobbyist who spends most afternoons patrolling State House hallways. But this union leader has four decades of experience marching and campaigning and sleeping on floors to expand labor’s influence.

He has been versed in the teachings of Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers of America. He has faced shotguns. And he has devoted his life to work, even as many people his age were reveling in the carefree lifestyles of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“The hippies never had the work ethic. You didn’t work for the farm workers if you were a hippie.We were very, very disciplined,” says Nee, a Boston native, reflecting on his early days in the labor movement.

Nee, 58, can’t put his finger on what drew him to the labor unions. His father worked in insurance. His mother was a homemaker.

He met a few farm workers from California at an event at Boston College, where he was a student. And before he knew it, a 21-year-old Nee was moving out of the dorm and into St. Leo’s parish in Dorchester, Mass., where a handful of uneducated farm workers who spoke little English helped coordinate Boston’s grape boycott of the late 1960s. He left college behind.

Nee, who refers to Chavez as “a visionary,” and his fellow organizers were constantly arranging house meetings, talking with clergy and picketing. They met every morning to outline their plans. At night they’d share their progress.

The farm workers sent him to Rhode Island in 1971 to coordinate a lettuce boycott, after the grape boycott succeeded. He slept on an office floor at first, and then in an abandoned building at Brown University. But he says he never went without a meal.

He started meeting the key players in the local labor movement. He led marches. And whenever Chavez would visit the area, Nee served as his driver and bodyguard.

“You were part of the farm workers. If they said put yourself in danger, you do it,” he said. “I’d do it now.”

In the mid-1970s, Nee joined Chavez and eight others on a 40-day pilgrimage across southern California to help organize farm workers. Nee recalls a standoff with growers armed with shotguns.

“They basically said if you try to get in we’re going to shoot you,” he said.

Nee’s rise in Rhode Island labor really began in 1976, when he decided to start an independent union of clerical workers, healthcare workers and jewelry workers. “People would say, ‘What do they have in common?’ I’d say, ‘They’re unorganized.’ ”

The union eventually grew to more than 1,500 workers before it merged with another union, which is known today as the Service Employees International Union, Local 1199.

Nee was hired by the AFL-CIO in 1983, which is when he started lobbying at the State House for organized labor. Twenty-five years later, he’s still there.

He doesn’t face shotguns these days but says he’s faced his fair share of challenges amid falling union membership and shifting political priorities. Nee, who eventually earned a college degree in 1990, says his work is much more political than it used to be.

“We run a much different political program than when I started,” he says. “I always think of the labor movement like the patriots in the American Revolution. We’re a minority of the work force … so in order to survive, you have to have the support of the majority.”

speoples@projo.com

Labor voices: current, timeless

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, June 8, 2008

American scene: Labor rally at the Rhode Island State House.

On a gorgeous spring afternoon, 2,000 people gathered on the brick and marble apron on the capitol’s north side.

It was Tuesday, June 3, 2008, but it just as easily could have been ages ago.

The crowd included state workers, local teachers and firefighters. The firefighters contributed the most striking touch of color: their red-plaid bagpiper and drum corps.

Those folks in blue were from the National Education Association Rhode Island. Their message: “The rich got tax cuts and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!” The event’s focus was on complaints that hard-won labor gains in pensions, health care and job security are under attack by Republican Governor Don Carcieri (the unions’ chief villain) and even the Democratic General Assembly. There were references to layoffs and furloughs and people Carcieri had stashed in high-paying jobs.

The extent of the threats isn’t clear. For example, although the governor has laid off 137 employees, he has, for now, dropped plans to ax another 426. Furloughs — unpaid days off that Carcieri hoped to put through in the fiscal year about to end — have not materialized. But, for the new fiscal year, labor is engaged in negotiations that may see it agreeing to some furloughs and some increase in health premiums, though apparently not as much in savings as the $60 million the governor has been seeking.

The rally was intended as a show of labor strength and resolve, as if to say, “We’ve had enough; don’t do any more to us.”

However contemporary the event was, there was also a timeless quality to it. The speakers were mostly longtime veterans of the labor movement, and many of the themes could have been voiced — have been voiced — over decades of union activism.

Here was George Nee, Rhode Island AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, thundering:

“We’re proud to be union members. And there are some people in this building, in the media and those nitwit talk shows, and they think we have too much power. We don’t have enough power!...

“We cannot allow politicians, the media, corporate executives — we can’t allow anybody to divide us. … There’s an old labor song, and that’s where we are right now, and it came from the mineworkers’ struggle… and it’s very, very simple: ‘Which Side Are You On?’

“We’re on the side of justice and fairness and truth and democracy itself, and if you’re on that side, you’re with us, and if you’re against us you’re on the other side, and we’re going to prevail.”

I remember exactly where I was when I first heard people sing, “Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?”

It was in Atlanta, which I was visiting while a college student. Civil-rights activists had appropriated the song. It was 1964, and the song already was more than 30 years old.

I told Nee there was something very retro about the rhetoric and the passion of the rally, that here were unions fighting to maintain advances you’d think had been solidified long ago.

He said, “We’re very conscious that the improvements, the gains, the progress that we’ve made are always tenuous. What we have achieved we have fought for, and you can’t get complacent.”

However militant the rally, Nee described as “meaningful” the contract discussions that labor is having with the Carcieri administration. Things are going in a “positive” direction, Nee told me. But even so, “That doesn’t mean that we’re very happy with his policies.” Hence, all the noise at the event.

Well, the noise and some signs, like the placard that said, “Hey Don: Furlough your friends & family.”

Speakers stood beneath a banner of Working Rhode Island, the labor movement’s political coalition. Nearby was a banner for Council 94, the largest state employee union.

In the pre-game chatter, so to speak, I had a chance to schmooze with Frank Montanaro, AFL-CIO president. He is the old lion of the union scene here, with a gift for skewering Carcieri and for drawing his ire.

I asked Montanaro, a prominent Democrat, how he thinks the governor is doing. “He’s doing lousy,” was the reply. “Because I just don’t think he knows what he’s doing up there. You can’t name one thing that he’s done or put together for the State of Rhode Island since he was elected.”

Montanaro added, “There’s no economic development going on.”

And he assailed the governor’s crackdown on illegal immigrants. “It’s horrible. Because I don’t think he cares about people. People are people. What do you have against a child who’s born from immigrants who are not documented. … You don’t give that child health care? What kind of person are you?”

(The Democratic Assembly went along with this health-care cutback.)

When the rally began, the emcee, Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, incorporated a similar note of alarm in her introductory comments:

“We don’t want to see children knocked off RIte Care. We don’t want to see services for the disabled taken away. We don’t want to see adults with low incomes have their insurance taken away from them. But we also don’t want to be in poverty. We don’t want our pensions taken away. We don’t want our health care taken away….

“We want for everybody what we have….

“We want fair taxation in the State of Rhode Island. We pay our taxes and so should the very wealthy in the State of Rhode Island pay their fair share.”

Now she ushered Montanaro up, and he sought to allay the fears of taxpayers who might think labor piggish: “It isn’t like we’re fighting for more health care. It isn’t like we’re fighting for [more] pension benefits. It isn’t like we’re fighting for big pay raises. What we’re trying to do is keep what we have.”

Now Larry Purtill, of the National Education Association, called for long-term economic solutions:

“We don’t grow the economy and prosper as a state by cutting health care for children, by trying to furlough and privatize state workers, cutting benefits for municipal workers, firefighters and police, people who take care of our most fragile, our elderly, our veterans and our disabled. And we certainly don’t grow the economy by taking away money from the middle class and giving it to the wealthy.”

He said he looks to the day when a millionaire walks down the street in attire that says the middle class and the poor got tax breaks and all he or she got was a lousy T-shirt.

Next up: Council 94 president Michael Downey:

“The only friends of this administration are people making over $100,000 while we’ve been sent home, laid off, furloughed.”

Downey can be affable enough, but he told the rally, “I know that everybody doesn’t like me. … I don’t like the governor and I don’t care if he likes me. What he’s done to the people I represent is wrong.”

Now here’s something that will drive conservatives or business interests crazy: the president of the Providence Teachers Union — part of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers — is a state legislator: Rep. Steven Smith.

In introducing him, Reback said the Providence teachers, who have been without a contract for a year, are being “tortured” by Mayor David Cicilline. In case anyone missed the point, she added, “tortured by David Cicilline” — the crowd booed — “who wants to be the governor.” More boos.

Smith declared, “Every time we talk about tax breaks for the wealthiest, we’re thrown back with, ‘Well, that’s class warfare.’ We didn’t declare war on the wealthy. The wealthy have declared war on us. ”

And still another speaker, Karen Malcolm, of the advocacy group Ocean State Action, asserted, “We don’t have to accept tax cuts that only benefit our most wealthy while making the load heavier for working people like you and me.

“We don’t have to be deceived by unfair attacks on union families, on immigrant families, on low-income single moms.”

Reversing the moves of recent years to benefit the rich by reducing capital gains taxes and phasing in a flat-tax income tax rate to benefit high earners hardly would solve Rhode Island’s budget deficit. But reversing the moves could provide money for social services.

Of course, proponents of the tax breaks say they’re designed to keep wealthy people here and stimulate job development. I don’t know that I buy this theory.

I certainly don’t buy everything that the labor rally speakers said. But I do give the organizers credit for attracting a crowd and for airing their views in the open.

If you disagree with their views, if you think these people are unfairly tarring Carcieri or legislators, if you think the state’s tax policies are smart, if you think it’s a good idea to cut social services, do yourself a favor:

Stage your own rally. Draw 2,000 people. Attract media coverage. Air your opinions in the free marketplace of ideas.

That’s the American way.

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com

September 27, 2007

State Children’s Health Insurance Program: Keeping America’s Children Healthy for Ten Years

This past week the United States Senate and House of Representatives set aside partisan differences and petty infighting to overwhelmingly pass an important piece of legislation: the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Unfortunately, President Bush has threatened to veto this important legislation and freeze funding at the current level over the next five years—causing more than 1 million children to lose health insurance coverage.

Originally enacted by Congress in 1997, SCHIP is designed to increase health insurance coverage for low-income children. Since being signed into law, SCHIP has reduced the number of American children without health insurance by one-third, even as the number of uninsured American’s has risen steadily over the past decade.

President Bush’s veto threat comes at a time when fewer and fewer employers are offering health insurance coverage to their employees. And those employees that are offered coverage cannot afford to buy it. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that health insurance premiums rose 6.1 percent in 2006—far outpacing the 3.7 percent rise in workers’ wages. If this trend continues, health care will be out of reach for millions of American families.

Today, SCHIP covers nearly 6 million American children—including over 12,000 in Rhode Island alone. The expanded program that Congress passed will allow an additional 12,000 Rhode Island children to become eligible for SCHIP and give millions more across America access to quality health care.

SCHIP is vital to improving the health of America’s children. Prevention is vital to improving children’s health. Instead of waiting to go to an emergency room when sick, children enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program have access doctor’s office visits, immunizations, prescriptions, dental care, and many other medical services.

Studies have shown that children enrolled in SCHIP see a notable improvement in both school performance and attendance. President Bush vowed to “leave no child behind,” for a child to reach his or her full potential in school, that child has to be healthy enough to attend school on a daily basis.

Every American child deserves a chance to grow up healthy with access to regular medical care. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program has had ten years of success in providing health care to America’s most vulnerable children. At a time when access to quality care is becoming more difficult and more expensive for millions of American families, Congress has expanded a program that has been proven to keep America’s children healthy. President Bush’s threatened veto is shortsighted, ill conceived, and harmful to millions of American families.

By Frank Montanaro, President, and George Nee, Secretary-Treasurer, of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO

09/02/2007

I hope everybody enjoys Labor Day

By: Jim Baron , Politics as Usual

I hope everybody is enjoying the Labor Day holiday.

Yes, everybody. Even you hypocrites who blather on idiotically about how it is the unions who somehow are destroying this state and even this country.

Why do I think those folks are going to be barbecuing burgers in their backyards today, and not volunteering to go into work for straight time to stay true to their professed ideology?

Let's see them put their paid holiday where their mouth is.

The truth is that despite the dishonest bleating that unions have too much power, organized labor is perhaps in a more perilous position today than ever, even more than back in the days when they had to fight for fair wages, reasonable workplace rules and even their very right to exist with their fists, paying their dues with blood, toil and dogged perseverance in the face of often violent opposition.

Now not only have the number of unionized jobs dwindled pathetically - shipped off-shore to someplace where permanently impoverished people do for pennies an hour the work that once fed and educated American families and created the middle class that made this country great - with no workplace safety or environmental rules and nobody but the bosses to enforce those rules even if they were in place.

But now organized labor is being portrayed as the enemy - the bogeyman responsible for all that is ailing Rhode Island and America.

Working men and women are for some reason being painted as the problem for wanting a wage and basic benefits that can support a decent standard of living and a secure retirement after giving a career of service to their employer.

The reality is that with globalism, corporate greed, out-of-whack wage disparities and the Wal-Martization of America all running rampant, workers in this country need unions now more than at any time in its history. So it is probably no coincidence that organized labor is under the heaviest attack in its history.

If unions can be finished off now, there will be nothing to stop corporations from ruling the world. Governments, run by politicians who depend on the backing of corporate paymasters, won't be any help. America and the rest of the world will be at the mercy of a corporate plutocracy.

I bet that some day, perhaps some day soon, unions are going to be bullied out of even using the word union - the way liberals have been cowed into not using the word liberal, calling themselves progressives instead. (Show me a politician who says, "I'm not a liberal, I'm a progressive" and I'll show you a gutless wonder who doesn't have the courage of his or her convictions and doesn't deserve to be elected to anything.)

It would be too bad if trade unionists, who stood up to the truncheons and guns of company goons back in the day, backed down now to what amounts to a public relations campaign by corporate dupes in government and the media and started calling themselves "workplace committees" or some other degrading title.

Part of the problem is, before out-sourcing and all that other globaloney (as the New York Times' William Safire calls it), unions were what got us our pay raises, gave us medical and retirement benefits and helped save

Uncle Pete's job. Now much of that is gone and a great percentage of unionized jobs today are in the public sector, which means taxpayers are in the position of being bosses. Every dime the public sector unions get come out of taxpayers' pockets.

Like corporate bosses, the public is too cheap to pay its workers what they are worth and what they deserve, they begrudge them a decent lifestyle in exchange for their time, labor, brains and sweat. Without unions, workers would have little power, so the unions become the bad guys.

Just look at the vilification of teachers' unions, who each year around this time have to fight, to go on strike or threaten to, just to keep from losing ground, to co-pay even more for benefits that were once standard than they are receiving in salary increases. The jealousy is sometimes so bad that even working class folks with union jobs talk about the need to bust teachers unions. It beggars the imagination.

America has to get back to its core values: Greed is NOT good; a fair day's pay for an honest day's work is.

And what is it exactly that public sector unions are accused of doing that so undermines our state and economy? Bargaining for the best wages, benefits and working conditions for their members? Well that is their reason of existence. If you don't like that, your gripe is on the other side of the bargaining table, with the management officers who negotiate on behalf of the public.

But the nasty unions also lean on politicians to get favorable laws passed.

Well blame James Madison and the other drafters of the Constitution for that. Union members are citizens, too, and if they want to use their numbers to petition their government for a redress of grievances, well I'm sorry, but that is called the American Way. It's how the system is supposed to work.

I don't hear anyone griping about how the unions leaned on politicians to get an eight-hour day, and a five-day week, an end to child labor and a bunch of other advancements to our standard of living.

Union members have the right to lean on elected officials and if you don't like the way those officials bend, then elect leaders with more backbone.

It is nonsense to despise unions simply because they want to improve conditions for members and their families.

Now go have a hamburger and enjoy your day off.

Contributors

Sweeney, Nee: Shouldn’t take hero to unionize

07:52 AM EDT on Thursday, June 7, 2007

JOHN SWEENEY & GEORGE NEE

WASHINGTON -- A RECENT ANALYSIS of IRS data found that the top 300,000 American earners make as much for their labors as all of the bottom 150 million of their fellow citizens combined.

The same day that study was released, electronics retailer Circuit City delivered the punch line by firing 3,400 of its highest-paid store employees on the grounds that they were making too much money. Circuit City fired workers making as little as $11.59 an hour. This is what has become of the American dream. We therefore must pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

America is at a tipping point, and working families are about to tumble over the edge. Despite productivity and profit growth, wages have not kept pace with rising family costs for everything from housing to education. Too many working people lack health insurance and retirement benefits. While the rich have gotten more so, the rest of America has been left far behind.

The Employee Free Choice Act, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a substantial margin and is now pending in the Senate, would help reduce the grip of this middle-class squeeze by restoring workers’ freedom to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions. That right has been seriously eroded.

A union card is the straightest ticket into the middle class. Union workers earn an average of 30 percent more than workers without a union. They are far more likely to have health insurance and retirement benefits. And unlike the former workers at Circuit City, they can’t be summarily fired for the sole crime of earning a decent living.

Today, however, it is next to impossible for workers to form unions. Under current law, corporations can and do force workers into a confrontational, delay-ridden process that helps them block workers from organizing.

Academic studies show that a quarter of private-sector employers fire at least one worker during a union-organizing campaign. Three-quarters of employers make workers endure one-on-one meetings in which they are urged by their direct bosses to oppose the union.

These kind of scare tactics infect the election process. By the time employees vote in a National Labor Relations Board-sponsored election, the environment has been so poisoned that free and fair choice isn’t an option. Such techniques are now more sophisticated and their use by a burgeoning industry of high-priced lawyers and consultants, is now business-as-usual whenever workers try to form a union. Although many of the tactics that employers use are illegal, the law is too weak to stop them.

The Employee Free Choice Act would level the playing field and restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain in three ways. It would strengthen penalties for companies that coerce or intimidate employees, establish mediation and binding arbitration when agreement on a first contract cannot be reached, and enable employees to form unions when a majority sign cards authorizing a union to represent them.

If workers choose to have a government-sponsored election, they can still do so. The legislation does not change that process. It simply gives workers, not employers, the power to decide how they will choose to form a union.

Majority sign-up has long been recognized and enforced by the National Labor Relations Board, federal courts, and Congress. It has been approved by the U. S. Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of employers take the low road, and fight their workers’ efforts with whatever resources are at their disposal.

The dysfunctional process and feeble deterrent of U.S. labor law is key to the decline in the percentage of men and women who have the benefit and protection of working with a union contract. Not surprisingly, the smaller percentage of workers in unions means falling living standards. It means a bigger gap between the way CEOs live, and the living standards for everyone else.

Circuit City CEO Philip Schoonover’s compensation package was $7.5 million in fiscal year 2006, according to proxy reports. Compare that to the median salary of workers in Rhode Island, which the latest statistics show as $34,810. Now compare that to the average household budget in Providence — $47,532 to support a family of four.

When you’ve done the math, pick up the phone and tell your elected representatives that it shouldn’t take a hero to form a union, or a superhuman effort to feed your family, pay the rent, see a doctor or look forward to a secure retirement.

In Rhode Island, we’re lucky to have representatives who understand what working families are going through. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and Representatives James Langevin and Patrick Kennedy support the Employee Free Choice Act. If only our president would commit to doing the same.

John Sweeney is president of the AFL-CIO. George Nee is secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO.