CWA UNION RALLY for JOBS & JUSTICE

Historic March for Jobs and Justice

Set for Aug. 27 on National Mall

CWA will join in a major rally for jobs and justice Aug. 27 on the National Mall. Pictured, thousands of CWA members turned out on the Mall for last October's One Nation rally, where speakers included CWA President Larry Cohen.

A massive march for jobs and justice on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., will cap an action-filled August as CWA members and allies nationwide fight for workers at town hall meetings, rallies and festivals.

The Aug. 27 march, being called "From the Emancipator (Lincoln) to the Liberator (King)," takes place one day before the unveiling of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial on the National Mall.

In a resolution at the CWA convention last week, delegates endorsed the march and are urging members to take part. Fellow unions, civil rights groups, social justice networks, clergy and other progressive organizations are involved in the event, being coordinated by the National Action Network.

The weekend of the march also marks the 48th anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech on the Mall. "For those who may be quick to forget the legacy of Dr. King, let us remember that he died while fighting for workers' rights and the basic human dignity of all," Rev. Al Sharpton said.

In connection with the march, the AFL-CIO will host a national symposium one day earlier on "The American Dream: Jobs and Justice," honoring King and the vital connection between workers' and civil rights. It will begin at 9 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 26.

The National Mall events will begin with a noon rally Saturday, Aug. 27, at Constitution Avenue and 17th Street, with a march to the new MLK memorial at 1:30 p.m.

Click here (PDF) or go to NAN's main website, www.nationalactionnetwork.net, for more information, as well as NAN's Facebook and Twitter pages.

LABOR and DEMOCRATS

Maddening Time

This is a maddening time for anyone concerned about the lives of working-class Americans. The frustration and anger that suffused AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s declaration last week that labor would distance itself from the Democratic Party was both clear and widely noted.

Not so widely noted has been a shift in the organizing strategy of two of labor’s leading institutions — Trumka’s AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union — that reflects a belief that the American labor movement may be on the verge of extinction and must radically change its game.

It took a multitude of Democratic sins and failures to push Trumka to denounce, if not exactly renounce,the political party that has been labor’s home at least since the New Deal. In a speech at the National Press Club last Friday, Trumka said that Republicans were wielding a “wrecking ball” against the rights and interests of working Americans. But Democrats, he added, were “simply standing aside” as the Republicans moved in for the kill.

The primary source of labor’s frustration has been the consistent inability of the Democrats to strengthen the legislation that once allowed workers to join unions without fear of employer reprisals. American business has poked so many holes in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act that it now affords workers no protections at all.

Beginning with Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, every time the Democrats have held the White House and strong majorities in both houses of Congress, bills that strengthened workers’ rights to unionize have commanded substantial Democratic support — but never quite enough to win a Senate supermajority. And during that time, the unionized share of the private-sector workforce has dwindled from roughly 30 percent to less than 7 percent.

Many union activists viewed the 2009-10 battle for the most recent iteration of labor law reform — the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) — as labor’s last stand. EFCA could never attain the magic 60-vote threshhold required to cut off a filibuster, despite the presence, at one point, of 60 Democratic senators.

Given the rate at which private-sector unionization continues to fall (which in turn imperils support for public-sector unions), many of labor’s most thoughtful leaders now consider the Democrats’ inability to enact EFCA a death sentence for the American labor movement. “It’s over,” one of labor’s leading strategists told me this month. Indeed, since last November’s elections, half a dozen high-ranking labor leaders from a range of unions have told me they believe that private-sector unions may all but disappear within the next 10 years.

While some unions still wage more conventional organizing campaigns, the campaign that best captures the desperation of American labor today is that of the SEIU. Perhaps the best-funded and most strategically savvy of American unions, SEIU has embarked on a door-to-door canvass in the minority neighborhoods of 17 major American cities. The goal isn’t to enroll the people behind those doors in a conventional union but, rather, into a mass organization of the unemployed and the underpaid that can turn out votes in 2012 and act as an ongoing pressure group for job creation and worker rights during (presumably) Barack Obama’s second term.

“We realized we could organize one million more people into the union and it wouldn’t in itself really change anything,” SEIU President Mary Kay Henry told me earlier this year. “We needed to do something else — something more.” The SEIU’s program — like its semi-counterpart in the AFL-CIO’s Working America program, a door-to-door canvass in white working-class neighborhoods — will surely help Democratic candidates, despite the frustrations that nearly all labor leaders feel toward the party.

But, like Working America, it signals a strategic shift by American labor, whose ranks have been so reduced that it now must recruit people to a non-union, essentially non-dues-paying organization to amass the political clout that its own diminished ranks can no longer deliver. Since labor law now effectively precludes workplace representation, unions are turning to representing workers anywhere and in any capacity they can. It’s time, they’ve concluded, for the Hail Mary pass.

The unions’ support for the Democrats’ party committees has already diminished considerably, though, as Trumka made clear last week, they will continue to support individual pro-union Democrats. But the greater change in union strategy is the one that’s been forced upon them. They are going outside the workplace. They have no place else to turn.

meyersonh@washpost.com By Harold Meyerson, Published: May 24- 2011 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/labors-hail-mary-pass/2011/05/24/AFHWwiAH_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics Maddening Time

CWA UNION: BOTH STREETS and CONGRESS

COMMUNICATION WORKERS of AMERICA - C.W.A.
Phones, cells, PDA devices, TV, and Satellites

In her remarks, Secretary-Treasurer Annie Hill said CWA has a great deal to be proud of despite the union's many challenges. She especially praised CWA's aggressive and growing Legislative Political Action Team (LPAT) led campaigns to fight state and federal attacks on workers' rights and the economic security of working families. One important way the LPAT program is succeeding is by building new alliances and joining together for major collective action, such as last October's One Nation march in Washington, D.C., Hill said. More than 1,600 CWA delegates, retirees, family and friends attended the 73rd annual CWA Convention in Las Vegas this week. "Many natural allies and supporters exist within the human rights communities outside CWA and we have come a long, long way in the last few years to strengthen and add meaning to these relationships," she said. "It is not enough anymore to send dollars, attend conferences and to support their causes. We need them to support us also and understand and work to restore collective bargaining rights in our country. It is the first step to make our country a better place." In closing remarks to delegates, some of whom supported opposing candidates for various CWA offices, CWA President Larry Cohen said, "We saw what democracy looks like at this convention." "We march out of here as one union, stronger than ever," Cohen said. "When we work, when we organize, when we fight, CWA is there together. It's what we stand for: That we are one union." Cohen: 'We Need to Be in the Streets As Well As at the Ballot Box' Today's tough economy and political attacks demand a "broader, deeper" movement, organizing not just new union members but building alliances that will make it clear where America's true majority stands, CWA President Larry Cohen said Monday in his convention address. "We need to be in the streets as well as at the ballot box," Cohen told the 1,600-plus delegates, retirees, family and friends at the 73rd CWA convention. "We need the energy and intensity of Madison, Wisconsin, or Cairo, Egypt. We need to unite with non-labor groups who share our vision of restoring the American Dream for working families." As history proves, collective bargaining rights are essential to that dream, Cohen said. In both the United States and Canada, as bargaining coverage grew from the 1930s to the 1960s, "we negotiated real improvements in living standards — better health care, better pensions, higher wages and expanding organizing rights, and we expected that our children and grandchildren would have a better life," he said. But as bargaining rights declined, everything changed. Despite still-growing worker productivity, workers' wages have stagnated while "CEOs keep getting richer because they are writing the rules," Cohen said. "Bargaining rights are critical to any functioning democracy," he said. "And they are critical for a functioning economy." Drawing rousing cheers from delegates, Cohen unveiled a short new video showing CWA in action with its partners in recent battles. Click here to watch it. "This is movement building. This is what democracy looks like," Cohen said. Click here to read President Cohen's full speech, which is posted on CWA's website.