The latest news from Workers Unite Film Festival about labor film and the struggle of working people. We work with labor media movers and shakers to develop labor content that engages with the battles that every day people face.
The Workers Unite Film Festival is backing "Can't Take it No More" a film about Walmart Worker Organizing. Find out how you can make sure that this labor film makes it to the big screens and helps the world learn about how Walmart treats its employees
Read MoreMay 18th, 2014
It has been an incredible run so far! nine nights of amazing films and amazing people interacting on issues of workers' lives, their dignity at work, fair pay, equality on the job and their right to organize and keep their labor union representation. We have screened over 50 films, both long and short, on almost every major topic related to issues affecting working people.
PLEASE JOIN US FROM 2PM to 5PM TODAY AT JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH TO STOP KILLER COKE! FILMS< MUSIC< SPEAKERS AND THE NY LABOR CHORUS!
Last night the Workers Unite Film Festival was hosted by the NY Taxi Workers Alliance at their spectacular new home in Queens. We were honored to be able to bring several films to screen in this wonderful new home for workers, which will house a full health care and benefit fund in the near future.
Attentive crowd watches Tangled Thread
We screened the films to commemorate the one year anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory buildings in Bangladesh, where over 1300 workers were needlessly murdered by the greed and thoughtlessness of both local contractors and international clothing brands. Thanks to the filmmakers who attended and brought their powerful new films: Sara Ziff, who's trailer for her film in production, "Tangled Thread," explores how all workers, no matter how far away, or how seemingly distant their daily lives, are actually completely connected by how the 1% exploits them for profit. This short film packed a huge punch for telling the story of Bangladeshi garment union organizers and their members as they try to recover from the Rana tragedy.
Great screening at NYTWA to learn more about Raising for Rana
Richard York, part of the Rainbow collective with Hannan Majid, out of the UK, have now completed five films on the misery and struggle of these exploited garment workers in Bangladesh. Richard brought their new film direct from the UK, "Tears in the Fabric," which also went into depth on the huge loss the murder of these 1300 young people has had on the local community-literally a full generation of young people were killed in the factory collapse. we see their children, their Mothers and Fathers, searching through a mountain of rubble, for any shreds that might connect them to their lost loved ones. The enormity of their loss is quite painful to watch. And as we are told, most of our own American garment companies have not paid hardly a penny into the relief fund, nor signed on to the international accords that might help prevent such a tragedy in the future.
Richard York, Javaid Tariq (NYTWA), Sara Ziff
Please go to www.raisingforrana.org to donate what you can to help these families.
We are one week out from the 3rd Annual Workers Unite Film Festival and all the fine tuning took a short break today as we went out to join thousands of workers in NYC and millions of workers around the world, celebrate the original workers day of solidarity.
Read MoreApril Fools Day, 2014
We are getting ready for our best Workers Unite Film Festival yet! 10 days in May of films, poetry, music and speakers on issues and stories concerning workers, their unions and their lives. Our preliminary schedule will be posted by Friday and you will be able to see how hard we are trying to inject some working class cultural themes into the general mess that is our current mass culture.
On the same day, the NY Times, (which has been disgusting of late in its whining about the website and other procedural details of the Affordable Care Act during the largest increase in Americans covered by health insurance at any one time since Medicare), wondered if Karl Marx weren’t right about the glaring inequalities of capitalism left to its own devices, the 24 hour news cycle was otherwise filled with the sick and putrid image of one Sheldon Adelson, casino owning magnate, worth over $40 billion, putting around on an electronic scooter, while Christie, Bush, Kasich, Walker and even lesser GOP hopefuls scurried alongside for a chance to blow air kisses at his rat’s nest of fake hair and kiss his withered and decaying ass.
One can dwell on the sad spectacle of “family values” acolytes hopping and skipping to the tune of this sleazy seller of unluck for a buck, but when one reads their NY Times, one sees that these GOP types already know where we are headed and just want to suck onto the .0001%er’s back long enough for one final glorious ride around the fish tank before it all goes boom. Who can blame them? For these right wing thugs, who delight in cutting back on food stamps for hungry children, restricting democracy by curtailing voting rights and hours, eliminating the American Dream, if you happen to be from a different (read brown colored skin) ethnic group of immigrants than their own Moms and Dads, for this bunch of soulless liars and con men, Sheldon Adelson, with all his massive wealth built on fooling all of the people all of the time, this is a perfect fit.
These are all the same folks who scream bloody murder when there is a suggestion of a hike in the minimum wage, much less hike to a $15 minimum wage. “How dare they?” they scream. “Don’t they know you have to have skills to earn more?” Of course referring to the lying skills most of them learned as lawyers and have used so effectively during their otherwise pedestrian political careers. As a wonderful article in Portside details today, raising the minimum wage is not just about the fight for better pay, though that is important too. They are critically about changing the current gross imbalance of power that Marx saw would happen as unfettered “free market capitalism” had more of the restrictions removed from it’s unsavory operations (as has so efficiently been done by both Democratic and Republican beneficiaries of corporate money). Raising the minimum wage to an actually livable $15 an hour would make the vast majority of that workforce – women, many of whom are single working Moms, finally part of the civil society that we project as equal every day. It is currently so far from that it is frightening.
“We ought to think about why - especially during Women's History Month - those most experienced with living on a minimum wage are the women taking your order across a fast-food counter, changing your hotel linens or caring for your children. Women's history tells us something else about this issue: The long struggle for wage justice has always included women fighting, especially through unions, to change the balance of power.
To be sure, an increase is a welcome step in the fight for fairer compensation. But the recent state-level increases in the minimum wage still do not restore it to the level it reached in the late 1960s. Because its value has not kept pace with inflation while the cost of everything from groceries to housing to medical care has increased, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has eroded. And unlike 50 years ago, today's minimum wage workers are no longer teenagers. Their average age is 35; more than a third are over 40 and only 12 percent are below age 20.
Most importantly, the new laws and adjustments barely address the return of the very inequities that originally gave rise to the idea of a minimum wage a century ago. So yes, Americans now are sorely in need of a raise in the minimum wage. But that alone is not going to address the core problems of economic insecurity, inequality and economic and political disfranchisement that mark our era.
Its proponents always recognized that a wage reflected a power relationship and a measure of social worth. Lacking bargaining power, women perpetually found themselves working but poor. Today women comprise over 55 percent of minimum-wage workers; 71 percent of restaurant servers are women, tipped workers who fall outside minimum wage coverage.”
https://portside.org/2014-03-31/womens-fight-better-pay-about-more-just-money
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/03/30/was-marx-right
That's why the "Fight For $15" campaign among fast food workers is not just about raising the minimum wage. It's about changing the social relationships and balance of power embodied in the wage. Through opening this struggle, low-wage workers compel us to rethink again who is a "breadwinner."
As the National Consumers' League understood a century ago, workers still need a union. Unions, through collective power - collective power that has legal and ideological legitimacy - compel a more balanced sharing of the profits. Workers' organizations, at their most ambitious, also give people the space and the tools to articulate a just economic vision and build political power to get us there.
That is why the theme for our Workers Unite Film Festival this year is Income Inequality and one of our major evenings is devoted to the concept Equal Pay for Equal Work. Each of our evenings is devoted to another view of how current unfettered capitalism has made the lives of regular working folks a daily hell. And what to do about that hell.
We plan to screen some film history gems, including Salt of the Earth, on its 60th anniversary, new films, Tears In the Fabric, about Bangladeshi garment workers fighting for their rights and lives after the collapse of their factories in Rana, Made in Dagenham, about women in England fighting for equal pay against long odds. People Stand Up! about Haitian workers organizing to fight inequality in Haiti, Under The Bus, about school bus drivers fighting for their rights in NYC, Dreamworks China 2, about Chinese workers wondering how to survive building Iphones for 14 hours a day and the amazing Truth Through A Lens, about fighting to save your community from greedy developers, while also having to deal with agressive police. It is all the same battle. We are all in this together.
We hope you will join us for at least one night of the festival and take away that there are folks, just like you, who are fed up with all the lies, the inequality, and the gross imbalance of our societies worldwide after more than a decade of the return of the Gilded Age mentality. It is time for it to stop. It is time for you and your family and friends to turn off Dancing With the Stars, Housewives of NY, and learn about why you are getting the shaft. Time to fight back.
See you in May.
February 5th, 2014
We are pleased to shake of the dust from several months of pre-planning, to go into high gear as we organize and get ready for our Third Annual Workers Unite Film Festival. It is also great news to hear that the UAW is going back into auto plants in Tennessee, a VW plant, to hold a union vote. Many on the left have pointed out that this is not a big deal because VW, which is completely unionized in Germany, refused to stand in the way of the union drive. There is also a fear on the left that UAW President Bob King, already battered by past losses, might work with VW on "workers councils" in the plant, not traditional collective bargaining. While all these issues may have vailidity, make no mistake, a union vote that gives the UAW a foothold in the anti-union South: that's a huge win for the labor movement in its current state. This will then give impetus to further union drives in the region and generally put the fear that workers can fight back, into the anti-worker minds of conservative Southern polticians. That's a good thing.
This was despite repeated attempts by local businesses and politicians, who were pulling their hair out over a large employer that was not viciously anti-union or anti-worker. But as David Kiley pointed out in an article last year on this union drive, re-branding the UAW won't be easy, especially in the South, after decades of economic collapse, and decades of anti-union right to work legislation. There will be a vote from February 12-24th, which could really help turn around the downward slide of the UAW's drive to organize in the South. Let's hope it does.
See:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kiley/can-the-uaw-transcend-its_b_1376203.html
See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/04/gop-united-auto-workers_n_3868876.html
While it is a sad commentary on where we have drifted down to in this country as far as labor organzing in heavy industry, it is still a sign of hope for a union movement that as VP Biden just said in a speech the other day, "is under a direct and concerted attack by the business community." Duh! While the union movement has known this for over 30 years at least, it is now only waking up to the need to find new effective survival strategies. This is also due to the recent successful attacks on public sector unions, a sector of the labor movement that organized labor once thought was untouchable.
But the Koch brothers and their billionaire allies have figured out that there are plenty of modern day scabs willing to take their millions in dirty support money, to carry out the most disgusting anti-worker, anti-union legislation imaginable. So the AFL-CIO had recognized the work of many new labor groups, such as the NY Taxi Workers Alliance, the first newly inducted union since the Farmworkers Union over 45 years ago! The AFL-CIO has also recognized the growing power and influence of workers centers and non-union worker alliances, such as OUR WALMART, the groups fighting for a livable minimum wage and food chain workers around the country, from farm fields to restaurant kitchens.
Of course the moderate success of these new non-union groups has brought the wrath and attention of anti-union forces down on these new groups. There is now a high level of chatter on the right and from conservative house members about expanding the Taft Hartley obstacles to organizing further out, over any group seen to be pushing a pro-worker agenda. So funny to see these "freedom from big government" types so eager to create more government regulation over their supposed enemies - workers and their families. Sad.
Please return to our home page over the next weeks as we add all the wonderful new plans for the festival this May 9th through the 19th. We have partnered with NYC's School of Visual Arts Social Documentary Film MFA Program, to honor and highlight the work of the next generation of socially conscious filmmakers. They have some impressive stories to tell about worker's lives.
We also ask that you tell any of your creative friends, or colleagues at work, on the job, we are looking for films of every length about the daily struggles and success of workers on their jobs. We are very open to amateur efforts for our Films From The Front Lines, evening, when we screen the work of professionals and amateur filmmakers, side by side, on the big screen at Cinema Village in NYC. There are prizes too for the best efforts.
Feel free to write us or call us at any time with suggestions, films, ideas, comments. We are always looking to impro
ve our festival and our festival is here to serve the needs, hopes and desires of workers.
In Solidarity
Andrew
GOP in Tennessee: It's Not About Free Market Capitalism at All. It's about beating workers into submission.
This article is a great summation of exactly why any worker that votes for a Republican in this country must have not been paying attention to the facts.
http://prospect.org/article/just-how-much-do-republicans-hate-unions
Paul Waldman details clearly what has been obvious to so many of us on the pro-labor left for so long. The Republican hate of unions is not about "free market capitalism" or even "freedom for corporations to operate as they please." In Tennessee we have the spectacle of these supposedly "pro-business" "free market" types, including the Governor and the Senator, not to mention the full political establishment of Chattanooga, where the new VW plant resides, actually threatening a major global corporation for not standing in the way of union organizing. In the minds of these anti-worker politicians, corporations should have the freedom to do as they please, in order to make as much money as possible, then donate a chunk of that money to the GOP for each election cycle. What they may not do, or at least here in the Tennessee case, should not attempt, is a decision which has brought them enormous success and market domination all over the globe, that involves a close working relationship with unions and workers on worker/management councils within each plant.
The Governor ans Senator have each made threatening comments that "tax breaks" for the plant will be pulled if VW has the gall to allow a union to organize workers in the American South.
Read the full article. This is exactly why there is little room to negotiate with these anti-worker, anti-family types who often profess one thing, "freedom, freedom, freedom," yet really mean to return the workers in this country back to some 1800s vision of subservient workers who accept their fate as fodder for the corporate behemoths that will grind them up and crush them should they merely ask for a living wage and dignity on the job.
It is time for that type of hooliganism to stop. Write the Governor and Senator from Tennessee and tell them to re-read our federal laws on labor relations before shooting off their mouths at a huge international corporation that believes workers actually deserve a say on how they spend their jobsite hours everyday.
November 27th, 2013
As we gear up for another fantastic season of Workers Unite Film Festival, I just thought it was appropriate to not only wish all workers and their families a peaceful and restful day with their families, but to talk for a moment at America's descent into mad capitalist overkill.
I apologize for my absence from this blog, there have been many issues I wanted to comment on, but I was forced by a nasty bout with pneumonia to lay really low for the past six weeks. I have seen the thrill of the new Affordable Care Act turn into a messy public relations nightmare for the President and the Democratic Party. I think that as workers come to see the value of the new health care plans and sing up in larger numbers, the ACA will come to benefit the Democrats and the President. But right now we must endure the mindless shrieking of the right-wing yahoos who never wanted working people and poor people to have health care at all. Anybody who still claims that our previous system of health care was "the best in the world," is simply a liar and not in their right mind, so it is pointless to argue or listen to them. Workers Unite Film Festival has always agreed with Senator Bernie Sanders (one of our heroes!) that the single payer option, or Medicare for All, would have been a much cleaner, simpler and easier to roll out plan. Of course, with the state of polarization in our Congress and the level of misinformation about a single payer plan, the President made a deal with the devil and no surprise, the private insurance companies are not making the details of the new plans quite as attractive as the administration might have hoped for. We hope things settle down and we hope to see millions of folks who never had access to health care, gain that access in the next few months.
Being forced to lie around recuperating does lead to to much idle television viewing. While this is mostly negative, it was partially instructive as to the whole insane mania of retailers opening earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving Eve, in fact K-Mart will apparently be open 48 hours plus between 5 AM on Thanksgiving Day and then all the way through "Black Friday." Of course there might very well be retail workers, who are paid ridiculously lousy wages, who are willing to sign on for the extra shifts in order to earn extra holiday pay and we have no quarrel with that concept. It stinks, but we understand wanting to earn extra money for the holidays. But it is clear that the lengthening of these holiday hours and the massive number of retailers now involved in this ridiculous capitalist ritual (thanks to the propaganda of corporate mass media,now almost everybody knows what Black Friday means, a day that is meaningful only to corporate owners of major chain stores; how many workers really know the meaning of May Day?) means that thousands of workers will be forced, at risk of losing their jobs, to work on a day that was supposed to be a day of rest for all to spend in a relaxed environment with their families. If you don't think this is true, look no farther than a story in the Huffington Post today about a manager of a Pizza Hut, a ten year veteran, who was fired for not forcing all his employees to work all through the holiday:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/27/pizza-hut-fired-thanksgiving_n_4350121.html
This young man worked without a problem for over ten years in this Indiana Pizza Hut. This year, whether due to the influence of striking fast food workers, or OUR Walmart strikers, he found his courage to speak up and told his superiors that he felt it was unfair to force people to work on a family holiday. He was promptly fired.
So even in the case of a manager, a manager with a good employment record, owners are unwilling to even discuss any arguments to their absolute rule over workers lives, even poorly paid workers and even on major national family holidays. Of course this is why unions and workers uniting is so important.
This how low we have now sunk in this country and we need to think long and hard about what kind of future we wish to have as workers and fellow human beings. If all the holidays are about is such rampant consumerism that people are happy to beat each other's brains out over a 6AM doorbuster electronics deal, than we have seriously gone of our track as evolving human beings. This is not only about dignity for workers and fair and honest dealings for all employees, this goes to the core of how we want to see ourselves five, ten twenty years down the road.
The current movements by the Food Chain Alliance with fast food workers to get a higher minimum wage and groups fighting back at Walmart and Target are important not only for the dignity and fight for fair wages at these establishments, but are heroic efforts by workers to talk about the race to the bottom being forced on all of us by greedy and thoughtless 1%ers here at home. These same struggles for fair wages and workplace dignity also ripple out across the world, to the collapsed and fire-ravaged factories in Bangladesh and to all workers oppressed by the endless quest for more profits by corporate behemoths at the expense of decent lives for the 99% of the rest of us.
So please, before your rush out on the Friday after Thanksgiving, think about what choices you have for that day. Think about whether you will participate in the increasing distortion of our lives by those who see us only us dollar bills waiting to flow into their bank accounts. You do have a choice. You can join Walmart or Target workers who are bravely fighting back against a corporation whose family executive board controls more wealth in this country than the bottom 42% of the whole US population. The US Federal Appeals Court just ruled that Walmart's efforts to fire workers who speak up for their rights on the job is illegal and Unamerican. We are not talking about a radical group saying this. We all know this shift towards abusing workers on holidays, abusing workers at all, is wrong. 60% of the American public thinks the whole concept of "Balck Friday" stinks.
I hope you do too. I hope you join a demonstration this Friday - they are all over the country, check them out online at www.ourwalmart.org. At the very least, stay home after the big family meal, if you are lucky enough to share it together. Stay home and share some quiet family times with the different generations and friends that come together to celebrate this day as family time, loving time - a time completely separate from the dog eat dog mentality that the corporate 1% keeps trying to shove down all of our throats, as if this the only choice we have left. I assure you, it is not. The battle for our humanity is far from over.
Have a safe and peaceful Thanksgiving! More on our amazing plans for Workers Unite Film Festival 2014 next week.
September 2, 2013
After a long hiatus, recovering from our May festival and working on plans for an even bigger and better schedule of events for May, 2014, we are proud to salute all working men and women, all over the world, who bust their butts to make our global economies run. These workers, many organized, many fighting to organize and many still not organized, get up each day and get to jobs that are often poorly paid, where workers are treated without dignity or respect. In the recent worst case scenarios, such as in Bangladesh, workers never got to return home at all! They died due to the thoughtless greed and negligence of their exploiting employers. And still these same employers plead ignorance.
Labor Day is about celebrating all our working brothers and sisters and reminding ourselves that the fight is never over for fair wages, safe working conditions and dignity on the job. It is up to each and every one of us to pay attention to what is happening in our city, towns, states, country and to speak out for the rights of all workers fighting to be heard.
In NYC today, there will be no Labor Day Parade and many local labor folks are upset about this. This year unions are heavily involved in a particularly contentious Democratic primary for Mayor and Comptroller, that will really dictate the direction of NYC post billionaire Bloomberg. This election takes place on September 10th, so please get out and vote! WUFF feels that it was a wise decision this year to replace the one large parade with smaller events dictated by this primary schedule. There are plenty of opportunities for large demonstrations and the NYC Central Labor Council has done a great job in organizing many fine street actions. Even more importantly, the NYCCLC was recently a co-host, with the AFL-CIO in an amazing event held in the training classrooms of UNITE in Manhattan. This full day training was the first in hopefully many more sessions in teaching union organizers, key staff and associated worker center groups how to put all the tools of social media to their advantage: Facebook, Twitter, mass email programs, social media petitions, online organizing tools. This event appeared to me to be very well attended and a tremendous success. I found the sessions filled with important and timely information and the classes were arranged to allow a nice part of the day for networking and discussion between attendees.
It is just such thoughtful and successful events, though off the public radar, that will help build the future worker/labor movements. Our activists and members must be comfortable and educated in all the new technology and online tools which our corporate foes have millions of dollars to exploit.
It is only through the use and careful strategy of online and offline actions (demonstrations and public actions) that we, as worker/labor activists have a good chance to reach thousands of workers who know there is something wrong with their daily struggles, but are just not sure where to turn or how to start fighting back.
So my huge hats off to all thos responsible at the NYCCLC and the AFL-CIO training team for making such events happen.
Steven Greenhouse, the union/labor correspondent for the NY Times and author of the excellent book, The Big Squeeze, (about how workers in the US are literally being pushed out of the middle class and into poverty by greedy corporations), suggested two excellent articles for anybody who cares about the status of labor and workers organizing this Labor Day.
One is an editorial on the NY Times editorial page from August 29th, 2013, by Teresa Tritch, on the Editor's Blog. Her article points out how the whole economy would benefit from a successful fast-food worker's strike campaign: higher wages for lower wage workers translates into more dollars spent on survival by these millions of low wage workers. As Ms. Tritch points out, " Corporations benefit from the status quo. Workers don't. That's why they want a new bargain."
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/fast-food-workers-on-strike/?_r=0
The second article, by Jared Bernstein, zeroes in on many of the same ideas, but points out that during another banner quarter for corporate profits, wages for the vast majority of workers remained not only stagnant, but at the lowest level of increase since 1955! He goes on to say that, "something's broken when the media and economic pundits seem to devote a lot more energy to explaining why companies can't pay living wages than considering what to do about it."
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/the-audacity-of-the-fight-for-higher-wages/
To Bernstein, during a period of many large corporations posting historic profits, paying a more livable minimum wage to those who receive it - 88% of whom are adults! not high school students, just makes common sense.
We at Workers Unite Film Festival completely agree with these thoughts and give our strongest salute this Labor Day to those brave workers, not in unions yet, who can be fired for their actions, yet willing to work off their hard to find jobs to make their points. This is where a revitalized labor movement can develop, from masses of working folks who get that it takes solid action and commitment to fight for fair pay and dignity at work. Fast food workers are showing this, OUR Walmart workers are showing this, thousands of workers across the country are involved and fighting for their rights at this very moment. Thousands more, already organized are fighting hard to keep what they have fought so long to win, dignity and decent wages on the job.
We salute all of you! We pland to keep finding and telling your stories throughout this coming year, through our next major festival in May of 2014 and making alliances with other new media and worker film festivals all around the world who want to keep telling this story of struggle and success against the corporate exploitation that aims to beat workers down every day. History is on our side.
Happy Labor Day!!
June 16th, 2013
I will post a longer entry in the next week to wrap up all the exciting events at this year's Workers Unite Film Festival. It was an amazing ten days with over 46 new films screened from all over the country and all over the world about the lives and struggles of working people.
But today is a day to talk about Dads. Mine passed away far too young, but even in the short time he was here, he taught my brothers and I the power of having work you really loved. Of course he told us too about the work you had to do to help pay the rent, feed your family, meet all those monthly bills, but he hoped we might find something in our lives where we could work hard, yet see that work as part of a larger movement for something better. He was never specific about what that was, could have been writing for science magazines and talking about nuclear physics, as he did, or digging ditches, or producing crazy musicals, as his father did. He was just hopeful that as we grew into men, we might find a passion to follow into our future.
I am happy to say that though I've done my share of pay the rent jobs and make ends meet jobs, my passion has always been to fight for and tell the stories of working folks. I am thrilled I get to see so much dedication, passion and really hard work in the dozens and dozens of films we screen every season in order to find the best selection for the festival. I am honored to play even a small part in turning back the tide of the corporate mainstream media machine as it tries so hard everyday to crush any human spirit out of the culture with its endless parade of junky TV shows on Housewives of .... and films filled with violence and little else.
The films we screen at the Workers Unite Film Festival have a dedication to telling important stories and their creators are artists and writers who never expect to get rich or famous from their work. They just want to let all of you know, to let the world know, that working people count, that working people have guts and that we are all never, ever gonna give up the fight for our worker/labor rights. Not here in the USA, not in China, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, France, Italy - nowhere.
So if the one-percenters think they have us beat - they have another thing coming. Take a look at the films we screened this year, even just the prize-winners - you'll see that the power of the human spirit to fight for what is fair and just and right is unstoppable, brave beyond imagination and resourceful as all heck.
So Happy Fathers Day Dad, wherever you are - I hope you know that I did find something to work on that I not only love, but know is so true and so right, that it makes me want to work on it as many hours of the day as possible.
I wish the same for each and every one of you and rememebr that if your job is not what you'd really like to be doing? We can always use your help organizing workers just about anywhere in this fine and beautiful country.
Happy Fathers Day to all!
May 12th, 2013
We are into the third exciting day of the 2nd Annual Workers Unite Film Festival. We are proud to have a wonderful article written about one of the main films we are screening today, The Machinists, about the very brave women and men (the recently murdered labor organizer, Aminul Islam being among them) in Bangladesh who are fighting to form a union in the highly exploitive garment industries there.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-flynn/the-true-price-of-a-pair-_b_3247571.html
Julie Flynn Badal has done an excellent job in telling the story of exactly what "the true price of a pair of jeans" really is in human terms. Please go read this story and please come see this amazing film today at 7PM at the Cinema Village. We placed this film on Mothers Day particularly because so many of the workers involved in this movement are young women with young children. They are forced to work fifteen hour days, paid about 23 cents! an hour and must place their children with their own parents for safe-keeping. This means weeks can go by without Mothers even seeing their children, just in order to keep these oppressive sewing jobs. And as we now know, it isn't even the exploitation in these garment factories that is the worst part. These women and men risk their lives to go to work. There have been at least six major fires over the past two years, including the major fire at the Tazreen factory, killing over 300 workers. As horrible as this is, it pales in comparison to the recent collapse of the illegally built factory tower in Dakar, Bangladesh, has now murdered over 1000 innocent workers. Read Julie's article.
We are also honored to be showing an eye-opening new film from Italy, called the Women Workers War. This brilliant film shows what happens when one group of strong women sitdown in their own factory, stopping work for over a year. They send their story and message out over both social and regular media over the course of that year. They reach business owners and in particular, a women who decides to totally change her relationships in her own factory thanks to the enlightened message from the women on the sitdown strike. This is an incredible film about human relations and the power to change.
Earlier in the day we are screening several shorter films about The National Domestic Workers Alliance, based out of NYC, together with several films about domestic workers all over the world. Mujeres Pa'lante follows these often overlooked workers in Spain, where many of the domestic workers come from South America. Later this evening we see the epic Money and Honey, about Filipino women who travel to Taiwan to care for that country's aging population. The Director, Jasmine Lee, will be there to speak on the topic.
We are also lucky to have a short film on one of the fast growing local worker movements, Vamos Unidos, Judith: Portrait of a Street Vendor. This film shows the multiple battles these recent immigrant women must face. Harassed by the city and the INS, while trying to do their self- created jobs, they must often carry their very young babies on their backs as they push their loaded carts. This film is a testament to the strength and determination of women workers and all workers involved in this movement, to fight for their rights against enormous odds. Director Zahida Pirani will be at the screening with Vamos Unidos members to answer questions.
So for this Mothers Day, treat your Mom, treat yourself and the family to brunch, and a stroll, then come on over to the Cinema Village in the later afternoon for some powerful and entertaining films about Moms around the world who want exactly what your Mom wanted for you, and my Mom wanted for me: a safer life, a better life, a life filled with not only the material things you might need, but the freedom and ability to choose your own path, without exploitation and without oppression.
I want to thank my Mom, Elly Tilson, a lifetime trade union movement member and former Director of the 1199/SEIU Health and Pension Fund, for bringing my brothers and I up with those freedoms and with an education in what it means to be part of a a proud working class family. We were taught from day one the honor and dignity of working people and hopefully we are able to pass that message on to our own children and to as many of yours as we can, through these wonderful films.
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO ALL!
Please read this great article about the national labor movement - under Working America and other new groups, realizing that it's time to reach workers where they actually exist and organize them into thinking like workers first - then hopefully into organized workers fighting for their rights and then - hopefully into unions:
http://prospect.org/article/labors-plan-b
Thanks to Abby Rapoport of The American Prospect
May 9th, 2013
After many months of planning, meetings, screenings, email, facebooking and hundreds of other tasks necessary to make an event like this work, we are finally here! Tomorrow May 10th is the opening night of the Second Annual Workers Unite Film Festival - NYC Celebrates Global Labor Solidarity.
We are screening at Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street off University Place and just South of Union Square, from May 10th through May 16th. Screenings are from approximately 4PM each day, right through until 9PM to 10PM for the last films of the day. We continue the festival on Friday May 17th at the Brecht Forum, on the West Side Highway and Bank Street. The Festival continues for an extra day on May 20th, into the next week at the historic 1199 Martin Luther King Auditorium, on 43rd Street between Eighth to Ninth Avenues. This show is sponsored by 1199/SEIU United HealthCare Workers East and runs from 5:30PM to 8:30PM that evening. This event is free to friends and members of the 1199 family.
We have nearly fifty films screening in the coming week about workers and their daily lives, their unions - both good and sometimes not so good, and the efforts of many workers outside traditionally covered organizing groups, like farmworkers, like domestic workers, like taxi drivers, like part-time retail workers - like millions of very low wage workers around the world, who have decided enough is enough and they will fight back for their dignity and human rights.
One of our main point os this festival is that workplace rights are not some academic idea, not something "extra" that is nice for a workers lucky enough to get them. Rather we strongly feel and want to demonstrate through these films that workplace dignity and rights are civil rights here at home and human rights here and around the world. The time is long past for workers to be able to go to work with their heads held high and to be able to proudly say, "This work is hard, this work is dirty at times, this work is not a walk in the park, but I'm proud to have this job and I'm proud that my union has fought to protect my rights and dignity on the job so I can come in to work knowing that I am not a salve, or at the mercy of my boss, that I am a full human being, who deserves respect and dignity, no matter how dangerous or difficult my job may be.
If there was ever a week or two in this world when this should be glaringly apparent, it is these last several weeks when over 800!!! innocent workers were murdered at their sewing machines for the simple and non-existent crime of coming to work - a workplace where the average pay is some twenty-three cents an hour!
This was not an accident, nor was it unexpected. There had been numerous warnings from several inspectors, from union activists, from random people on the street who saw major cracks developing in these buildings. And this collapse came after several years of hundreds of deaths in these squalid sweatshops due to flash fires, where workers were locked in to burn to death, because factory owners feared they might not return to work after the fire was put out.
It is not only the callous disregard for human life and dignity shown by these factory owners, but the very same greed and inhumanity shown by major American retailers, including Tommy Hilfiger, who was exposed by Brian Williams on NBS Nightly News, with his excellent reporting n the story. Hilfiger, who at first tried to run and deny his garments were made in these factories, was forced to recant once hundreds of photos surfaced showing his brand name label merchandise covering the floors of the recently collapsed and burnt factories. He has since made efforts to address the gross negligence on the part of his contractors, but he is one among some 700!!! clothing companies that use these totally exploited workers to fatten their huge profit margins on selling clothes to our families.
So our Workers Unite Film Festival has an amazing film during the week, called The Machinists, screening on Mothers Day, May 12th@7PM. I hope you can make it because this film tells the equally sad, but uplifting story of all the Bengladeshi Moms who must work over 15 hours a day to make a living in these factories, never get to see their young children - who stay with grandparents - and are subject to a death sentence for simply going to work. As the film portrays - even when these workers organize in the face of terrible odds, they are subject to beatings and ultimately, disappearance and death. This is exactly what happened to Aminul Islam, one of the bravest organizers in Bangladesh. Read more about it here: http://www.laborrights.org/search/node/islam
We are happy to screen the film, sad that over 100 years!! after our own triangle Shirtwaist Fire here in NYC, that we are fighting these exact same battles to give workers the ability to come to work and then return home to their families safe and healthy. It is way past time for this to be the reality of working life.
Please check out the rest of the site, the schedule, the film descriptions and choose a bunch of films to come and see. You can buy tickets right from the site - at TIX.com - look for the yellow ribbon logo. You are also welcome to come to the theater or The Brecht Forum and buy your tickets the day of the show.
We intend to keep fighting, this week and every week to build a bigger and better worker's cultural outreach program, through this festival, through several more regional festival in the planning stages, through our partnerships with The Global Labor Film Festival this May and thru our online presence.
If you can donate online to help out this effort - great, but please come and see some powerful and insightful films on this topic this week.
In Solidaritry
Andrew
April 30th, 2013
The NYC based Workers Unite Film Festival is proud to join now with 18 other festivals around the world for a months of films clebrating workers and their stories. The Workers Unite Film Festival will celebrate this global event on May 16th here in NYC at The Cinema Village theater on 12th Street and University Place, just
South of Labor's historic gathering place, Union Square. As Chris Garlock, Director of The DC Labor Film Fest in Washington, DC and founder and Director of the GLobal Labor Film Festival has just written:
April 23rd, 2013
We have an amazing line-up of 26 programs at three venues for the Second Annual Workers Unite Film Festival.
Films from HBO pros - Joe and Harry Gantz - American Winter - with a stellar panel of commentators, to brand new films from first time Directors, such as Mujeres Pa'alante (Women Moving Forward) about domestic workers in Spain fighting for workplace rights.
We have films about incredibly brave women and mothers in Bangladesh, many survivors of current day "Triangle Shirtwaist Factory" fires in the sweathsops in Bangladesh, risking their lives to form labor unions. Films came in from China, about the young workers from the world's largest workforce, in the age of Apple and Foxconn and their universal hopes and dreams - In Dreamworks China.
And we are lucky to receive a beautiful new film, just premiered at the Museum of Modern Arts Documentary Fortnight in February of this year, Your Day Is My Night, by the film artist and social documentarian - Lynne Sachs. Her film brings us right into the lives of our neighbors in Chinatown, who share bedrooms in shifts out of economic necessity. We pass these wonderful people everyday - rushing through their neighborhood, but never really see them or the lives they lead. Lynne takes us there.
We have films from the incredible Tami Gold, on how teachers fighting for their rights in Oaxaca, Mexico really did start a revolution, won a major victory, then had to fight back again as the government tried to crush their victory and imprison their leaders- Land, Rain and Fire and Frozen Happiness.
Their are music videos about paying back the Fat Cats (I Wanna Be A Pirate) and short narrative films about workers taking their due from nasty owners(Let It Be War). We've tried to cover the range from educational to entertaining fun, with even a neat cartoon fairy tale about taxing the rich thrown in for good measure. (Tax The Rich: An Animated Fairytale).
So many films, so little time and you can see one program, one full day of entertaining and eye-opening films, or buy the full week pass for only $60! Full Day passes are $12, senior and students $9 and single program passes are $8, seniors and students $7.
Please check out our schedule, read about the films and click this link, here, or on our www.workersunitefilmfestival.org site and look for the TIX logo to buy your tickets.
April 10, 2013
After many months of searching out great new worker/labor films and going through the archives of historical labor films, we here at The Second Annual Workers Unite Film Festival have come up with an eight day long program plus an extra evening at one of the biggest unions in NYC, SEIU1199.
Our eight day schedule, which you can find on our website under "2013 Schedule" tab, covers many of the themes that effect working people today as the stuggle to make ends meet, or to find a new job, during this very difficult economy. We have films on being fifty and out of work, films about immigrants seeking to find a decent job in their new home - anxious to make a contribution to their new communities. Our films are as close as our own backyard, here in NYC (Cafe Wars and Judith:Portrait of a Street Vendor) to as far away as the men who tear apart de-commissioned oil tankers with their hands and simple tools in the deserts of Pakistan (Iron Slaves).
We have films about the African American men who fought for dignity on the job and in their union as steelworkers - one of the most dangerous jobs in America, to mothers in Bangladesh who must put their children with their own parents due to 15 hour days in the sewing factories of high fashion sweatshops. These are the same women who survived a recent "Triangle Shirtwaist" style fire in Bangladesh, where over 111 young women perished because the exit doors to the factory were padlocked shut. One hundred years plus after the deaths at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in NYC and we are still fighting the exact same battles.
Please look through the whole schedule. Find some programs that look intereseting, then go online - by next week - and buy tickets!! We have kept ticket prices as low as possible so as many of you as possible can attend at least one program, or one full day of amazing films. Tickets are $7.50 for one show (online sales may incur a service charge) $11.50 for a full day of films!! And $59.00 for a full 8 days of educational and emotional programming about the lives and struggles of workers and their unions all over the globe.
This year we are particularly honored to join with twenty other worker/labor film festivals around the world - known as The Global Labor Film and Video Festival on May 16th. On that day we will screen films on labor issues in China, Pakistan, Mexico, Slovakia, from all over the U.S. and a film about the merchant marines whose work took them from one end of the earth to the other. And that's just one day of the festival!
We plan to have either the directors or speakers at most of these events, many of them currently engaged in the worker struggles for labor rights and dignity in the workplace. We want to put these films into context so that we all come out of the theater with both a better understanding of our places in the global fight for labor rights and the motivation to get out their and participate in whatever actions are possible to make these rights a reality.
So please take a few minutes to check out the huge list of films and pick out at least a few to come view. If you can afford it, we'd love to have you visit our homepage and make a small donation to help keep building the festival for this year and coming seasons.
Finally - on April 17th at the Gap on 34th Street
April 17 • 12:00 pm
Gap store, 60 West 34th St (near Herald Square), New York, NY
Liana Foxvog (liana@ilrf.org, 413-320-7276)
Since 2006, more than 600 garment workers have died in preventable fires while sewing clothing for companies like Gap, H&M, and Walmart. Two years after 29 workers died in a fire at a Gap supplier in Bangladesh, Gap is still refusing to pay for reforms and join with other companies in a binding fire safety agreement that includes worker representation. Until there is real change, any day there could be another factory fire with workers locked inside.
JOIN A BANGLADESHI FACTORY FIRE SURVIVOR AND LOCAL ACTIVISTS TO CALL ON THE GAP TO PAY 10 CENTS MORE PER GARMENT TO SAVE WORKERS’ LIVES!
At the protest, meet:
SUMI ABEDIN is a Bangladeshi garment worker who survived the November 24, 2012, fire that killed 112 workers at Tazreen Fashions, a factory that supplied Walmart, Disney, Sears, Dickies, and produced US Marines logo apparel for Delta Apparel / Soffe. Sumi was working on the 4th floor of the factory at the time of the fire and survived after jumping from the burning building.
KALPONA AKTER is the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), one of Bangladesh’s most prominent labor rights advocacy organizations, and is herself a former child garment worker. BCWS is regarded by the international labor rights movement and by multinational apparel companies as among the most effective grassroots labor organizations in the country. Levi Strauss & Co. calls BCWS “a globally respected labor rights organization, which has played a vital role in documenting and working to remedy labor violations in the apparel industry in Bangladesh.” Kalpona is an internationally-recognized labor rights advocate and has traveled widely to speak about the deplorable conditions that Bangladesh garment workers face every day. She was interviewed extensively by local and international media following the deadly fire at Tazreen Fashions in November 2012.
This action is sponsored by Corporate Action Network, International Labor Rights Forum, Retail Action Project, SumOfUs, SweatFree Communities, and United Students Against Sweatshops.
More info: http://laborrights.org/gappetition
Spread the word on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/360229954083676/
For more than a decade, Gap, Walmart and other major brands have produced clothes in Bangladesh factories that they know are fire traps. As a result, since 2006, over 600 apparel workers, mostly young women, have died in what could have been preventable factory fires. Now, two major apparel makers—PVH/Tommy Hilfiger and the large German retailer, Tchibo—have signed a legally-binding fire safety agreement that calls for independent fire inspections of all of the Bangladesh factories they use and requires them to pay for the necessary measures to make these factories safe, and to give their workers a say in how to accomplish this. Gap and Walmart have refused to join that agreement and Walmart continues to obstruct efforts to achieve fire safety in the factories it uses in Bangladesh as reported in The New York Times on December 5, 2012 (“Documents Indicate Walmart Blocked Safety Push in Bangladesh”). It’s time for Gap and Walmart to address their history of deadly negligence and take responsibility for workers’ safety before one more avoidable tragedy occurs.
April 4th, 2013
Fast food workers across NYC, organized by Fast Food Forward and supported by many pro-labor groups in the city, including Unite NY, MoveOn and Align NY. But it was the courage of low wage workers, recently at Walmart, now at fast food outlets including McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King, who walked off their jobs today demanding a decent starting wage in the $15 range.
As NPR reported towards the end of last year, strikes, once a mainstay of labor's arsenal, were on the rise for the first time since labor came under corporate/government attack in the 1980s.
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/08/166748366/sign-of-the-times-labor-strikes-may-make-comeback
As corporate profits have risen through the roof, in tandem with outsized CEO pay packages, workers who fuel those gains with their great productivity, have lagged far behind these gains with stagnating and declining paychecks. It is hard to imagine that any logical person thinks it is possible - even for a working student - to make ends meet on $7.25 an hour. Throughout the day random folks interviewed on the street were usually quite supportive, saying that $15 an hour was not too much to pay for standing behind grease laden french fries and burgers for an eight hour plus shift. Those that bought the corporate line that a decent minimum wage would somehow harm these multi billion dollar in profit corporations, felt that though an increase was a good idea, $15 an hour was too rich for such unskilled work.
Nobody asked the follow-up question about how "skilled" those jobs of top management are who rake in the big bucks. Anybody seen Undercover Boss? On that charming show the CEO apparently doesn't know his kitchen workers slave in hot dangerous conditions for minimum wage - a wage so bad that cooks with ten years of experience must take second and third jobs to make ends meet at home. And for this level of brilliance they receive literally millions of dollars from the exploitation of these frontline workers. Then to top it all off - this "brilliant" CEO is made to look thoughtful by dropping $10K to 20K on each of those recently abused employees. No mention is made of the thousands of others not so lucky to be on camera who must still work for the original crap minimum wage. And if they even whisper union? They're out the door in a minute.
Who is kidding who? If the top dogs, just like everywhere else, weren't pigs feeding at the trough, then all the workers down the line, from cooks, to cleaners, to servers could get that $15 and hour wage, serve with dignity, low turnover and everybody would be relatively happy.
But this is America 2013, if somebody at the top isn't crushing somebody at the bottom, then apparently they're being soft on their employees and are open to punishment from Wall Street. Time to Re-Occupy brothers and sisters and teach those manipulators a lesson.
So the fast food workers showed them today and all of us: organize or die. You can force employers to do things if you stand united and stand together and fight back against this ridiculously unequal system,
Hooray for the Fast Food Workers! Hooray for Our Walmart and three cheers for all those organizers and workers out there across the country every day, in tough times, showing us all that it can get done.
Come see some incredible films next month - May 10th through 17th @ Cinema Village and The Brecht Forum.
You'll see that workers around the world are fighting back, organizing and not taking the crap of the corporate ruling class.
March 28th, 2013
The news of the last week has been somewhat of a letdown, but the seeds of rebirth are out there, brothers and sisters. Walmart, the nation's largest retail services employer, notorious for underpaying it's workers, denying them adequate healthcare coverage and shuttering profitable locations in the face of successful union organizing (as they did last year in Canada), has decided to seek protection from OUR Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart) and their friends at the United Food and Commercial Workers International union (UFCW). Despite public relations efforts on the part of Walmart to deny any effect or impact from a two year grass roots organizing campaign by OUR Walmart (workers from within Walmart disgusted by the company's anti-employee working environment), apparently this organizing campaign has irritated Walmart executives enough that they decided to file a suit at the 9th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida to stop OUR Walmart and the UFCW union from aiding or abetting any more store related actions of OUR Walmart to disturb the sales environment at individual stores in Florida. You might remember that this grass-roots action to bring public attention to the state of working conditions at their favorite bargain store reached a crescendo last Thanksgiving, on "Black Friday," when some estimates placed over 100,000 Walmart workers outside stores around the country that day to demonstrate their anger at their Walmart bosses.
See the rest of the story here:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/25/walmart-sues-protesters-florida-stores_n_2950992.html
While this is a small percentage of the million plus employees of Walmart throughout the country, it was clearly enough of a start to get Walmart's attention. Walmart is in a difficult spot, having to cater to the low end of the retail spectrum at a time when their own policies of paying minimum wages, with little or no benefits, have paved the way for an economy where these working folks don't even have the discretionary funds to shop at Walmart. Costco, which covers a similar market, is unionized, pays benefits and maintains a workforce with a fraction of the turnover and unhappiness on the job as Walmart. It is easy to see that despite OUR Walmart being a relatively small organizing drive, they have already brought this message of inequality to the public. Walmart's decision to bring a legal case against the UFCW , which has never actually announced any real organizing drive, shows how rankled these corporate types can get when even a small group of workers start effectively organizing for better working conditions. Imagine what would happen if a coalition of national service unions actually pooled their resources to publicly organize over one million Walmart retail workers? That would be a really exciting and momentous event in our recent labor history. I think that type of effort alone could shift the worker/corporate landscape during the next election cycle by reaching millions of voters on their home turf and talking about daily issues of what it means to be able to survive with dignity in this increasingly unequal society.
This leads me to the issue of the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB, set up as part of the Wagner Act and then the National Labor Relations Act during the height of the Great Depression, finally created an impartial federal hearing board where both workers and employers might get a fair hearing on issues related to organizing unions and ever part of workplace existence. Though always imperfect, sometimes weighted to the employers, under Republican administrations, sometimes claimed to tilt towards workers under Democratic administrations (though the corporate types always forget to mention how after the Taft-Hartley revision to the NLRA in 1947, they had all the "legal" tools they needed to throttle union drives under the law), the NLRB had until recently survived intact since the 1930s as a balancing force in the battle for worker's rights.
Until now. Since the start of President Obama's first term in office there has been a concerted plan on the part of right-wing business allied forces to not only block any appointments of labor/worker friendly judges to the NLRB, but the Republicans in Congress have filibustered every single Obama appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The end result of that effort was a lopsided three to zero vote by the all Republican appointed court to overturn President Obama's recess appointments of three NLRB judges to fill the NLRB to a working majority over the last three years. Those appointments have allowed the board to settle hundreds of cases that had been stalled for years due to a lack of the necessary three judge quorum required by the NLRA in order for the NLRB to operate. A recent article, again thanks to The Huffington Post, points out in detail how the failure to reform the filibuster rule in the US Senate has directly affected the lives of thousands of workers. In this case, the US Court of Appeals, by throwing the NLRB's decisions into question, has once again delayed and extended the retirement pay and health benefits settlements for hundreds of coal miners in West Virginia. These miners were the victims of the corporate sleight of hand at the Cannelton coal mines in West Virginia. When these mines were purchased by Massey Energy - an anti-union mining conglomerate famous for running the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia where 29 miners died in a collapse due to lack of adequate safety precautions - hundreds of UMWA members were fired and not invited back to their jobs when Massey reopened the Cannelton Mine.
The end effect of filibustering Democratic nominated federal judges and attacking the last bastion of federally run workplace rights adjudication (the NLRB) is the destruction of any real path to workplace rights and dignity.
All unions and all workers should be out there screaming about this travesty now. The one thing I would say to the right-wing corporate types that think they are gaining the upper hand: be careful what you wish for. Remember 1934, before the National Labor Relations Act and the NLRB. Workers will only take being stomped upon for so long and then they will fight back with every tool in their kit, including strikes, sit-ins, work stoppages. Workers across many industries outside the NLRB are organizing every single day as we speak. If short-sighted legislators and CEOs think they can legislate and filibuster worker's rights for the long haul - they've got a big surprise coming down the road.
Read the full article here and write to your elected officials! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/nlrb-senate_n_2934910.html
March 8th, 2013
The first day of the right-wing GOP plan to destabilize our government by continually creating hostage situations over the federal budget and our economic recovery.
Despite everything you've read, this is part of a long term plan by the group that can't really win democratic elections fair and square, the only reason they control the House is by rigging state election districts in easily corruptible state legislatures. That 1% corporate money goes a long, long way in Madison and other Midwest capitols.
We are likely to muddle our way out of this mess once the cuts begin to hurt and regular folks wake up to the mess and call their robotic. mid-controlled Congress people to complain. Hopefully. But this would not happen if unions were some 40% of the workforce instead of 7%. As we've pointed out previously, the low union member rate and the ability of a hard-core right-wing corporate party to create fake societal convulsions to try and hijack the democratic process to get their way are not disconnected. These are two sides to the same plan to destroy the ability of working folks to organize for fair wages and a dignified work existence. The flip side is the effort to scuttle government services, through any means necessary, including this form of economic terrorism, in order that more and more of these previously public, and often unionized services, are handed over to "private enterprise," meaning the 1%ers who pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the election process.
The one and only way to fight this is for workers to organize. Trying to answer emails from MoveOn, or any of the many other well-meaning left-wing groups, in their calls to protest this despicable behavior by both parties, is like spitting in the wind folks. When workers organize into union groups, or even like union groups - they gain power and leverage. They can tilt the playing field towards their needs and their causes. Without a growing and healthy labor movement we end up where we are right now, on the cusp of no labor protections and at the mercy of corporate serfdom.
Make no mistake, as we will show during The Second Annual Workers Unite! Film Festival, in NYC from May 10th through May 18th, there are many victories happening for workers below the radar of the corporate mass media machine. The one in particular I want to highlight tonight are the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA). Bhairavi Desai, Javid Tariq, Beresford Simmons, Bill Lindauer, Victor Salazar, Ryan Richardson, Melanie Lindauer and an amazing Organizing Committee have brought dignity, workplace rights and imminently a first-time healthcare plan for taxi drivers and their families. This is all done by a group of workers completely outside the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, contract employees. Besides this type of workforce being the wave of the future, as employers try their best to shed any responsibility for their workers, organizing independent workers who do not share a factory or office space is incredibly hard. But these dedicated organizers succeeded. And while they followed many of the basic rules of organizing, the one that stands out so boldly to me is a typical interaction that I was privileged to witness - totally by accident - during a brief visit to their NYC headquarters on 28th Street.
As organizers and activists we can talk for days about strategy, getting workers to think like a working class and a thousand other threads, which are all important in the process. But what many unions forget, especially as they grow in size, is that the original mission was to improve the lives of the workers they wanted to organize. That means they had to deal with them as individuals, banding together to get a better deal, but as individuals, with their own issues and problems that needed to get dealt with in order that their lives might actually get better.
In the midst of a schedule that was hectic beyond belief, during a meeting dealing with the fine points of part of the huge healthcare plan to come, a young driver walked into the NYTWA office looking confused and a bit frightened. Bhairavi Desai, who has a dedicated and hardworking staff to help such walk-in drivers - with issues from speeding tickets, to license issues, to immigration and health issues - looked up from the healthcare meeting and saw his level of upset. She asked a few brief questions, then quickly realized that the young driver was being railroaded into something by the owner of his cab that was way beyond anything he should reasonably be expected to shoulder. She promised she would do nothing to jeopardize his livelihood, but made clear he was being set-up in an unfair and possibly financially damaging situation. Basically, she took the time out to really give a shit about what happened to this young man. No theory, no strategy, no platitudes. She quickly and efficiently got to the root of the issue, got a plan into place to help the young driver meet the issue head-on, but with educated support behind him and had him settled down and relaxed by the time he was ready to leave the office. You build a true union one member at a time, not from decisions made between employers and union presidents high-up, but from intervening in the hard daily interactions of workers getting abused by their employers. Not rocket science, but so few really do this job well.
This was not easy work and it wasn't phoned in, and it happens in that office every single day. That is why this workers group is now an Alliance, a union, over 16,000 members and achieving negotiating results that older established unions would envy. In fact, the NYTWA is the first nationally chartered union by the AFL-CIO since the United Farm Workers in 1965. There will hopefully be many more of these, though the AFL-CIO has been far less supportive of this new and growing union than they should be at this tough moment in labor history. But that is a topic for another blog post at another time.
We salute the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and all workers groups fighting to organize workers into alliances, unions, worker centers. They are doing the hard but necessary work of building back our decimated labor movement and without them, the sequester nation will happen over and over again.
This excellent graphic from the AFL-CIO shows the comparisons between what automatic sequester cuts chosen by the House are, as opposed to what might have made a smarter, long-term cut to wasteful corporate giveaways.
Take a look, then write your congress person to suggest there is a better way out of our debt crisis than balancing it on the backs of the poor and unemployed.
http://act.aflcio.org/content_item/shocking-comparisons
February 10th, 2013
Adam Davidson, in a particularly annoying article in the February 2nd edition of the NY Times titled, “Workers of the World, Sit Tight,” detailed why labor union membership had declined to its lowest levels since the passage by the Wagner Act in the 1930s. According to Davidson, while there have been some minor successes in “some of the least likely industries,” he reasoned that the recent anti-union attacks by Michigan, the birthplace of the UAW, Wisconsin, Indiana and other formerly union-friendly states, could mean that “a world without unions is not hard to imagine,” though such a situation could (my italics) make our inequality problems much worse.”
It sure seems funny to me, that a newspaper that has recently tangled with it’s own union, The NY Newspaper Guild, over cutbacks and job security, as well as pension and health care responsibilities, (BTW the NY Times lost: http://www.newsguild.org/node/2730) should just randomly print an opinion piece so one-sided, so condescending towards workers, with so little information about the thousands of fights for worker justice and labor unity going on around the world as we speak.
Mr. Davidson pretends that somehow this low point for the unions and workers is just some natural progression of global forces of an economy that sources goods and employees from wherever they are cheapest. He even quotes Gary Chaison, “a labor-relations specialist from Clark University,” who he quotes as saying, “There’s no way of really dealing with the global impact. There’ s really very little you can do.” Davidson goes on to mention that a post-union world, without collective bargaining would bring the vulnerability of individual bargaining. This trip back to every worker alone, at the mercy of a kindly manager, or a nasty one, would surely lead to greater income inequality and in the end, former union organizers, such as the workers profiled at the start of this article, would likely end up thinking only for their own advantage, back in the dog-eat-dog world of Gilded Age Capitalism, but now merged with the corporate world’s ability to manipulate and bend government regulations around the globe to their profit-driven will.
We are one small group in NYC, running a worker/labor film festival out of NYC, interacting with hundreds of labor activists, both locally, nationally and globally. While some of the attacks on workers and labor Mr. Davidson details are undeniable, all the workers and their labor groups that I come in contact with are committed to fighting even harder, smarter and longer to make sure that the “dystopian future of inevitable worker misery,” which Davidson envisions, rightly so, is the left’s view of a union-free future, will never happen.
One of the major reasons for the Workers Unite Film Festival and over 25 labor film festivals around the world, is to help counter exactly this type of defeatist and distorted view of the whole worker/labor union problem.
As even Bloomberg.com, the business website explained, http://www.bloomberg.com:news:2013-01-23:the-real-reason-for-the-decline-of-american-unions.html), in an article by Kris Warner on declining union numbers in the US, it was not some magical drift towards anti-unionism by workers at all that cut union membership. In fact, when any polling of workers was done, time and time again it showed they would vote for union representation by wide margins –IF THEY WERE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO DO SO.
Bloomberg, when comparing the Canadian unionized workforce to that in the US found that union membership was similar in both countries until the late 1960s. Soon after, business sponsored and government supported attacks against the ability of workers to organize and their collusion to prevent the legal rights of workers to use their labor rights, contributed greatly to the low union membership rate in the US. It’s not a mystery friends, we’ve been under an all out assault from business owners for over 40 years. As Kris Warner points out, there is no “right-to-work” concept in Canada at all. There are federal laws to protect all workers rights and every single province has to follow those laws.
We must ask ourselves. Why do allow this system of federal laws, The National Labor Relations Act, to be one of the only federal laws that a state can simply decide not to follow. We must organize to enforce this federal law across all fifty states. Acceptance of this is ridiculous and has allowed mostly Southern states, until recently, to draw large-scale manufacturing, particularly automakers, out of unionized states and into unprotected “right-to-work” states.
So Mr. Davidson, it is not that there is nothing that workers can do to stem this anti-union tide, but the laws are rigged heavily against us. Even so, I work with and see, every day of the week, successful organizing drives aimed at educating and organizing low-wage workers, most of whom are already not covered by the existing federal labor laws. That’s right! They are fighting from scratch, such as the recently victorious NY Taxi Workers Alliance, recently chartered as the first new national union by the AFL-CIO since the UFW in 1965. The Domestic Workers in NYC are organizing, the Restaurant Workers, there is a huge new push to organize all retail employees, called The Retail Action Project. Across the country: OUR Walmart, continues to do battle with the nation’s largest and most anti-worker employer. Community groups are forming alliances with labor groups to fight for their common issues.
Building service employees fight for their fair share from wealthy real estate tycoons, hospital workers from SEIU fight to play a role in the reorganization of the whole health care delivery system. And this is just here in the US. I receive stories and films from workers from China, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Afghanistan, Turkey, Israel, the UK, France, Columbia, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, virtually every corner of the globe where workers are exploited by the global corporate conspiracy.
In every single one of these countries workers and organizers, who now thanks to the Net and social media are in closer collaboration and discussions than ever before, are fighting every single day to organize and fight for worker’s rights. Those rights, like right here at home, as you yourself have pointed out, are human rights. They are the right to have a fair shake and decent pay for a hard day’s work and not to be chewed up and spit out by the overarching greed of the business owning class.
These workers, just like you and me, from every place on this earth do not see the battle as over, not remotely. They are realistic and know this battle will be long and hard. But they know that the alternative is surrendering to a future where it really is every individual at the mercy of those who have the money and power to exploit them. I do not see that happening, not in the near term or the long term. I think that your article and articles like this, which periodically surface to pat their corporate masters on the back, are condescending and clueless as to the reality as it exists on factory floors and workplace centers around the country and around the globe.
I invite you to come to the festival this May, see the stories of workers fighting back, organizing and then tell me really if you think all there is for workers to do is to sit tight and accept a future where all their efforts have been for naught.
WORKERS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL RIGHTS. WE WILL FIGHT FOR THEM FOREVER.
Locally: Fight back against the firing of 22 union activists at Cablevision. These workers have the right to organize and NYC should force the Dolan's, who control Cablevision, to bargain in good faith.
Read about it here and support their fight! http://www.thecablevision99.org/cwa-condemns-cablevision-optimum-for-illegally-firing-23-workers/
January 26, 2013
In the midst of one of the coldest weather periods in recent years, the lopsided U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (lopsided because President Obama has not been able to get any Democratic judges onto the court, so three Republican holdovers, very anti-worker and anti-labor are the only judges on the court) turned a very cold shoulder towards the President's January 4th, 2012 recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.
These three NLRB seats had been left vacant due to an ongoing blockade by Senate Republicans to frustrate the legally mandated work of this important labor/management board. Their goal, as it has always been was to destroy any ability of an independent federal body, a body tasked with the job of insuring the rights of workers in the workplace, to actually function and do that job.
Last year, during the Congressional recess, President Obama had enough and appointed three distinguished new members to the NLRB. Since these three members were nominated by a Democratic president, a president who was strongly supported by labor, it was likely these appointments would be favorable to the worker's views. Republicans were so unhappy about this that they sued and now, almost a year later, they have issued a ruling that flies in the face of a long history of presidents using recess appointments to get their own friendly supporters onto federal positions that influence many facets on national policy.
The ruling of the federal court is as unfounded and shocking as the Bush vs. Gore ruling by the Supreme Court back in 2000 and smacks of a complete political intervention by jurists who supposedly espouse "judicial restraint." Such restraint is only apparently necessary when it is the lives and well-being of regular working folks at stake against the overwhelming power and $ fueled influence of mega-corporations (see the judicial victory favoring Walmart against over one million women workers in their class action unequal pay and opportunity lawsuit against their employer a few years back).
This is why it was so important to break that filibuster rule, but clearly the Dems cut a deal with Mitch McConnell and that is not going to happen. So we get stuck with a lopsided Republican controlled Federal Court, where they make the law up as they go.
Read the full text of President Trumka's pointed remarks here: http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Trumka-Calls-Court-Ruling-on-NLRB-Appointments-Radical-and-Unprecedented
January 14, 2013
In the midst of the recent setback to labor organizing in Michigan, it's great to know that the real struggle keeps moving forward. The UFCW just announced that more than 60 retail workers at notoriously anti-union H & M stores, here in NYC, have just signed union contracts with their employers - for the first time.
In a city where many thousands of students, new workers just out of school, older workers down-sized into part-time retail jobs and formerly full-time retail workers, cut back to part-time jobs - this is fantastic news. The Retail Action Project - RAP - a worker center backed by the RWDSU - The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union, has been aggressively organizing these workers at Abercrombie & Fitch and other upscale NYC retailers. While the common sense of the past was that these workers were so temporary, so part-time and so likely to leave right in the middle of a union drive - the newer outreach by labor has paid off - realizing that these jobs are no longer the result of choice, but rather the necessary step for those downized or otherwise blocked from a full-time job.
The only road to stability for these workers - all workers in fact - is to unionize and fight for fair wages and benefits from these mega-retailers. These multi-national mega-stores suck many millions out of our city and country in cash, while aiming to pay their employees the lowest wages possible and make their lives chaotic by unfair part-time scheduling. Workers who once saw little or no value in joining a union have woken up to the new reality: no -union= crappy pay, no benefits, no sick days and no say at all in your workplace environment.
Bravo to RAP and the UFCW for breaking open these non-union workplaces and showing that a unionized workforce makes for stabler, happier employees. And an extra loud shut-out to OUR Walmart - backed by the UFCW for their courageous efforts to give voice to the frustrations and demands of Walmart employees nationally.
On the bad news front - once again our NYC Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, after showing some courageous leadership on gun control, reminds us that he really is just another wealthy business guy looking to bust more unions. NYC school bus drivers, who have responsibly transported tens thousands of students for over 30 years with a union contract protected by EPP (Employment Protection Provision) are due to go out on strike tomorrow. This is happening after NYC sent out bids for the new contracts - for the first time in 30 years - to private companies excluding this provision. While NYC claims this exclusion of the EPP would save the city money - the reason the EPP exists is to insure that the most senior and experienced drivers drive the most difficult routes - such as transporting special needs children. The removal of EPP would actually put thousands of the city's most vulnerable children at risk to the whims of bottom-line profit ahead of safety style bus companies. Not a good idea.
See the full artical here http://nysaflcio.org/Safety1st/ and please add your name to the petition demanding that the Mayor and the Board of Ed return to the bargaining table with these drivers.
The battle never ends, brothers and sisters. Stay vigilant!
January 2nd 2013,
On the day after a Democratic cave-in agreement to avert the fiscal cliff, it is important to read about a hero of labor - Jerry Tucker, who passed away earlier this year. Brother Tucker believed that organizing the workers, from the rank and file on up, was one of the keys to a successful organizing drive. He was also one of the early theorists of the "corporate campaign," where outside pressure is applied to owners of a company trying to avoid a union drive. Jerry also was one of the first and one of the best at understanding that real organizing involves the whole working class community - not just the members of a specific union trying to organize.
At the Workers Unite Film Festival, we strongly believe that tens of thousands of workers, who are not currently unionized, need to be spoken to - educated, illuminated on critical issues, pulled into groups of commonality, then organized. Many new worker center groups are doing just that successfully today and we stand ready to help them either broadcast their messages, or - if need be - offer films and video from the past that demonstrate to newly approached workers how their plight is not new - how many thousands have faced the same tough fights before them, and how important and worthwhile making that fight part of their daily lives can be.
Jerry also spoke clearly of the need for labor leaders to develop and communicate a clearly different vision to their current and future members - a vision of a socially just society, with income equality, national health care and the goals of secure and good jobs for all who want to work.
Thanks to The New Republic and Alec MacGillis for this thoughtful and powerful piece. Not only is it a tribute to a truly great leader of workers, but it remains a key vision for any possible path for labor's growth into the future.
Read the whole story here: http://www.tnr.com/blog/alec-macgillis/111488/the-man-who-tried-save-organized-labor#
The Workers Unite Film Festival is a ten day long celebration in NYC of films from around the world about worker's lives and their struggles for dignity and labor rights. The festival is held the second week in May each year at the historic Cinema Village, just South of Union Square in Manhattan. New locations are added each season.
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The 11th Workers Unite Film Festival WAs made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and administered by LMCC.
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