Launch Southern campaign for union rights

Left to right, BWFJ leader Angaza Laughinghouse, Clarence Thomas, UE 150 member Larsene Taylor, Larry Holmes, Saladin Muhammad and Monica Moorehead.

A significant pro-labor, anti-racist event occurred here in Raleigh on April 2. It was the 22nd annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Support for Labor Banquet hosted by the Black Workers for Justice (BWFJ).

About 200 union, community, student and political activists and supporters from the local area, as well as from other parts of the South and the U.S., filled a hall at the North Carolina Association of Edu cators building. Among the invited delegations were the Raleigh FIST (Fight Imper ialism, Stand Together) youth group, Inter national Action Center and Workers World Party.

Ashaki Binta

BWFJ, founded in 1981, played a national role in helping to build the Oct. 17 Million Worker March rally in Wash ington, D.C., last year. It mobilized workers from the South to heed the call to build an independent workers’ movement free from the shackles of the pro-big business Democratic and Republican parties.

Decorating the walls inside the banquet hall were a wide range of political signs: “Fight for a living wage.” “Stop the war on Palestine.” “Stop privatization.” “Resist war, racism and repression. End discrimination.” “We need living wages and collective bargaining now!” “Demand peace, justice and reparations.” “Honor Dr. King with working class political actions.” “Jobs, not jails; educate, not incarcerate.” And “Stop the execution, save Mumia.”

Musical numbers were performed by the Fruit of Labor singers—the cultural component of BWFJ—along with Wash ing ton, D.C., vocalists Pam Parker and Lucy Murphy.

Saladin Muhammad, BWFJ’s national chairperson, introduced the keynote speaker: Clarence Thomas, co-chair of the Million Worker March and a leader of Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in San Francisco.

Thomas recalled that a similar call for a Million Worker March was made in 1941 by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Por ters, led by A. Philip Randolph and C.L. Dellums. These two Black union leaders wanted to bring 100,000 Black workers to Washington, D.C., to demand an end to racist discrimination in hiring practices. The plans for the march forced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign an executive order prohibiting discrimination in the hiring of people of color in the federal government and by federal contractors.

Thomas praised the first president of the ILWU, Australian-born Harry Bridges, who practiced what he preached when it came to building anti-racist class solidarity. Bridges, whom Thomas refer red to as a Marxist, made a conscious effort to bring unorganized Black workers into the ILWU back in 1934. At that time, the majority-white trade unions still maintained an openly racist policy of shutting their doors to Black and other oppressed workers. This meant that Black workers, through no fault of their own, were forced to cross picket lines during strikes to put food on the table.

Thomas ended his talk with a resounding, urgent call to revive May Day, or International Workers’ Day, which grew out of the struggle in this country for the eight-hour day.

A group of Latino workers associated with the Farm Labor Organizing Com mittee received one of the self-determination awards at the banquet. FLOC won a hard-fought historic union contract for 8,000 immigrant farm workers last year, the first of its kind in North Carolina, with the growers.

Larry Holmes, co-director of the Inter national Action Center, gave a solidarity message in which he praised the BWJF and ILWU Local 10 in their ongoing efforts to build the MWM movement.

He, along with other members of the New York committee of the MWM, accep ted a self-determination award on behalf of Brenda Stokely, AFSCME District Council 1707 president and MWM leader, who was unable to attend the banquet.

Ashaki Binta, the BWFJ’s director of organization, focused her remarks on a very important campaign that BWFJ, along with the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, UE Local 150, initiated last August. It is called the International Worker Justice Campaign for Collective Bargaining Rights.

Battling horrendous conditions

Why is an initiative like the IWJC so desperately needed in North Carolina?

North Carolina is a former Confederate state. It is home to the arch-bigot and reactionary Jesse Helms who, while no longer in the U.S. Senate, still has close ties to multi-billion-dollar agribusiness interests, especially the tobacco industry.

North Carolina is one of 22 states that passed a so-called “right to work” law—enacted there in March 1947. It states, in essence, that an employee “cannot be requir ed to join or pay dues or fees to a union.”

This law gives the green light to the profit-driven bosses and their repressive state apparatus, including the Ku Klux Klan, to use all kinds of illegal scare tactics—from carrying out physical terror against union organizers or those who are sympathetic to unions to promoting the vilest anti-communist propaganda—to keep workers from wanting to join unions.

Based on Department of Commerce statistics from the year 2000, the second most profitable industry in North Caro lina—after finance, insurance and real estate—is the government. Govern ment workers are considered public-sector workers. Most public-sector workers in the South are not
unionized.

Out of all 50 states, North Carolina is ranked last in the percentage of workers in unions—less than 5 percent of all workers in the state are organized. North Caro lina also ranks 50th in state and local governmental workers having the right to collective bargaining.

Government workers who have no union contract are left at the mercy of the bosses. They can be fired without due process, suffer intense discrimination, get starvation wages, no benefits and much more.

This assault on collective bargaining is directly tied to the high poverty rate in North Carolina. An estimated 20 percent of the nearly 2 million children in this state live in poverty. In some counties, the child poverty rate is over 40 percent. (common-sense.org)

Organize the South!

Binta said the banquet was “the expression of our ongoing unity in the fight to ‘Organize the South’; to build the new trade union movement in the South; to support the building of UE Local 150, UE Local 160, the Carolina Auto, Aerospace and Metal Workers Union (CAAMWU), and the non-majority union movement.

“It is our expression of unity to build a women workers’ consciousness and leadership movement; to build African-American and Latino unity; to build the movements for environmental, health care, economic, social, and political justice; to build the fight for Black political power and working class independence. ...

“We must understand our work and cam paign in direct relation to opposition to this unjust war being waged in Iraq, Central Asia and the Middle East. The mas sive increases in military spending ... and the massive cuts in taxes for the corporations and the rich are forcing these huge deficits and directly resulting in the crises at the state budget levels across this country. ...

“The United States and the State of North Carolina must be held accountable! We will file charges this year with the International Labor Organization against the United States and the State of North Carolina for their violations of the Core Labor Standards and Conventions on the Right to Collective Bargaining.”

She ended her talk with an appeal to “collect 50,000 signatures on petitions by Dec. 1 calling for the right to collective bargaining.” She also asked that IWJC committees be organized in cities and towns across the state.

The AFL-CIO, especially the Service Employees and the Food and Commercial Workers, are targeting North Carolina and other “right to work” states with long overdue union drives.

The BWFJ and UE 150 are appealing to these national unions to join forces with them in mobilizing a mass, grassroots union organizing drive throughout the state, from the bottom up.

On April 3 BWFJ hosted a strategy meeting to discuss concrete ideas of how to spread the word about the IWJC to broader sectors of the progressive movement here and worldwide.

Reports were given by Black workers from Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia and elsewhere about the uphill battle they face to get their grievances challenging racism and sexism on the job heard when there is no union backing them up.

Black Workers for Justice are on the front lines in a state and region where the legacy of slavery is alive and well. It is in the interests of progressive forces everywhere to assist them and their union allies to support IWJC, which is also an appeal to globalize the struggle against the super-exploitation of all workers. The IWJC is another glorious example of why solidarity is not an act of charity but an act of necessity that will lead to broader class unity against capitalism.

For more information, contact International Worker Justice Campaign, c/o PO Box 3857, Chapel Hill, NC 27515; phone (919) 593-7558; email [email protected].