Raleigh, N.C., city workers’ victories help build union
By
Dante Strobino
Raleigh, N.C.
Published Dec 14, 2006 7:25 PM
Under pressure, Raleigh City Council members voted six to two on Dec. 5 to
authorize payroll deduction for the Raleigh City Workers Union-UE Local 150.
This vote reflects the power being gained by city workers, first exercised in
their mid-September strike.
City workers’ summit, Raleigh, N.C.
Photo: Andrew Dinkelaker
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Pushed even further by the workers’ power, the council also voted five to
three to waive the $1,000 administrative fee to process the union membership
forms.
The Raleigh City Workers Union now has both payroll deduction and
meet-and-confer status. It has also won a number of other significant gains
through unity and struggle. These include all overtime being paid at time and a
half—previously workers were only getting compensatory time and often
getting nothing; 15 percent to 20 percent pay increases for entry-level
positions citywide; reduced forced overtime; temporary workers made permanent
citywide; sick leave policy improvements; some of the worst management forced
out and unfair suspensions reversed.
In addition to sanitation department workers, other city workers in
Raleigh—from the parks and recreation department, public works and public
utilities—are beginning to join the union and attend Raleigh City Workers
Union meetings.
Beyond Raleigh, the momentum from these tremendous gains is being felt across
the entire state of North Carolina.
More than 60 workers from nine cities across North Carolina attended the Dec. 9
Statewide City Workers Summit. UE Local 150 has established City Worker
chapters in Durham, Charlotte, Chapel Hill and Rocky Mount. Recently UE began
reaching out to city workers in Wilson, Greenville, Goldsboro and Greensboro,
whose leadership attended the summit. At the summit workers spoke out and
received important training to build the union.
Durham city workers also staged a several hour work stoppage the morning of
Nov. 27 to bring attention to their issues.
The struggle in the South—and North Carolina in particular—is
intensifying as workers across the state continue to walk out of their jobs in
organized resistance.
From the Fayetteville Goodyear workers striking with the Steel Workers union,
from the Smithfield Hog Plant with mostly immigrant workers striking, to all
job actions carried out by city workers, the atmosphere is changing.
As Saladin Muhammad, organizer with UE Local 150 and chair of Black Workers for
Justice, explains in “Raleigh City Workers Exercise Power and Build Their
Union,” his recently released pamphlet: “The anti-union Taft
Hartley Act enacted in 1947 during the period of legal segregation established
a section (14 b.), allowing states to establish additional laws to complement
their racist state laws. The racist oppression of African Americans in the
South and the division of Black and white workers was and continues to be the
basis for dividing the Southern and larger U.S. working class and maintaining
the South as a region of cheap labor.”
Workers are organizing against the brutal anti-worker, anti-woman, racist laws,
and a movement has been developing to repeal N.C. General Statute 95-98, which
prohibits public-sector collective bargaining.
It is a challenge to the left as a whole to support the demands of Raleigh and
other city workers as they struggle for justice.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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