UAW: Build Your Union

How to build YOUR union for YOUR future

Solidarity Magazine

We say it often enough: This is YOUR union. Underneath these simple words is the heart and soul of what the labor movement is about. A union isn’t the leaders solving problems for members. Nothing happens unless the membership is part of the union.
It sounds simple enough, yet too many slip into the opposite of the meaning. For example, how many of us have described their union as an insurance plan or a lawyer on retainer to help if we get in trouble? A union is none of those things. Lawyers and insurance agents are hired guns — a job’s a job to them. Unions are movements. The power we have as workers stems from the power of the members and the resources we all bring to the fight.
So what does it take to make this YOUR union? It takes stepping up to the plate and getting involved. “Off-the-clock activism is just as important as on-the-clock activism to build power in supporting our families, jobs and communities,” says Lonnie Everett from Local 686 in Lockport, New York. “I feel it’s my responsibility to have a stake in the change I want to see.”

Simple steps to building YOUR union

Find out what’s going on
Unions are constantly active. It might seem like its only around bargaining time, but keeping the contract strong yearlong involves updating membership on management’s activities, listening to issues on the plant floor, keeping public support for workers alive and strong in the communities and fighting for candidates and legislations that protect us all.
To find out what is going on, always start with your local leadership.
They are the best resource for the latest information and if they don’t have an answer, they will find it for you. Most UAW leaders (officers and workplace representatives such as stewards) are volunteers or paid “loss time” only under narrow circumstances. The next best place is the union meetings. This is where the true democracy of our union takes place. The UAW Constitution requires meetings at least once every three months, but most hold monthly meetings. This is where membership approves many decisions and expenditures of the local union. Another great place to learn the latest is social media, especially Facebook. Here you can connect with your co-workers as well as other union members from across the country. The UAW International has a page, as do many regions and local unions. And don’t forget the tried-and-true way of talking one-on-one with your co-workers. Whether it’s someone you’ve known for years or a new person you just met at lunch, building a union happens every time we have conversations about work issues and work together to solve them.
Get involved
There are so many ways to participate in your union that go beyond attending meetings and voting. Besides bargaining and servicing the contract, much of the work that takes place in a union is through the structure of standing committees. The Constitution outlines the committees, and each one addresses an issue important to membership: political action (CAP), civil rights, women’s issues
community services, veterans, education, to name just a few. These committees make strategic plans for the year and are always looking for volunteers. “The Human and Civil Rights Committee at
our local is built around the idea of inclusion. We celebrate many cultures during the year from Black History Month to Oktoberfest.
It’s a way to build connections with everyone and learn from one another. For me, I find that our
union bonds get strengthened as we celebrate one another,” said Garrett Waters of Local 249, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Show your pride
Though our numbers are under attack, union members still account for 1 out of 10 workers. Imagine if 1 out of 10 people you ran into at the grocery store wore their union colors? One of the reasons people call unions “dinosaurs” is that they don’t see us. Wearing your union colors (whether a shirt, jacket or pin) reminds our community that we are a part of them, just as they are a part of us.
In recent years, many locals have also started “Red Shirt Wednesdays.” The day has several origins — the Communications Workers of America (CWA) started wearing red shirts on Thursdays in 1989 to remember Gerry Horgan, CWA’s chief steward for Westchester County, who died as he worked a picket line when he was hit by a car driven by a line- crosser who was the daughter of a second-line manager. In more recent years, the practice was broadened to support workers in Wisconsin who were under attack by their governor. Now it’s a day when we can all unify to send a message that
we stand together, in solidarity, to defend worker rights. “We wear our red shirts on Wednesday to honor those who have sacrificed so much so we can have our rights today.
But the day also shows everyone that we are united and in this fight together. When you see a sea of red shirts, you know that you are part of something larger than yourself,” said Local 163 President, Ralph Morris, which represents workers at Detroit Diesel in Michigan.

Get trained
Grievance handling, bargaining, organizing, even talking about politics — all of it can be done well with good training. Fortunately, there are many resources available to UAW members to learn how these important dynamics work. Many locals offer training through their education committees, and regional offices also offer classes during the week and on weekends. Programs
at Black Lake, the UAW’s education center in Onaway, Michigan, will give you deep dives into many subjects. The UAW website (uaw.org) has  many union resources that are good primers on basic subjects, as well.
And if you are really ambitious, local colleges and universities offer labor education courses. Start by asking your local leadership about opportunities in your area.

Elections matter
Besides bargaining, the other time where we should all stand at attention is during elections. It’s just a simple modern day fact: Politicians make decisions that can change our working lives. From safety to unemployment insurance, electing candidates who don’t support workers can mean that gains we make at the bargaining table are wiped out in one law.
There is so much we can do as UAW members to fight back, but it takes all of us. For starters, look at voter registration. Your co-workers, your family, your neighbors — we all should register to vote. Many locals run voter registration drives early in an election year and they often need volunteers to help canvass the worksite. Next, you can contribute to the UAW’s V-CAP program which is a voluntary program from which we make contributions to candidates we support. As money plays a bigger role in each election, members are stepping up their V-CAP contributions. Learn about your candidates and the important issues at stake in an election. The UAW endorses many candidates after reviewing their record on our issues. And finally, vote! If your state allows early or absentee voting and you qualify, get your vote in early so you can volunteer to get others to the polls on Election Day.
Get going!
Building our union is sometimes as simple as two members talking about an injustice. The simple act of listening to co-workers and learning each other’s ideas is a big first step to finding common ground. But we can’t stop there — we are also about finding solutions. And by standing together, we are stronger and can change history.
So what are you waiting for? We have a lot of work to do, so l.

Why Our Government Never Listens

Why Our Government Isn't Listening: How Greed Is at the Root of US Suffering

Thursday, 11 February 2016 00:00 By Eliza A. Webb, Truthout | News Analysis

(Photo: US Currency via Shutterstock; Edited: LW / TO)

In the United States, children go hungry.
Human beings endure poverty so deep "many people don't believe [it] exists here." US residents pay far more for health care than the people of any other wealthy country, yet their bodies are sicker and more broken. The public school system is unfairly funded and racist. Workers go abused and underpaid. The government throws more people behind bars than any other nation in the world. More than one in four Black and Brown Americans are living in poverty, further undermined by institutional racism and murderous police forces. Hispanic and Latina women are making 54 cents on the dollar compared to white men. More people are buried here because of gun violence than in any other industrialized country.
The American people are suffering.
Yet this is not a poor country. While kids' stomachs rumble and Native families struggle to survive, the top 0.1 percent of Americans are sitting on as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined.
The workers of this country see scraps from the tables they set and serve.

Oppression is a highly profitable business.

So why is it that the government of such a fabulously wealthy country does not provide for its people, in fairness or equality? Why are the individuals who make the laws and rule the land allowing this oppression and abuse to persist? Why do they not voice the needs of the people, as is their sole responsibility? 
Follow. The. Money.
Long have the powerful few profited from the poor majority's struggle, and the United States in 2016 is no different.
Through complex and convoluted public policy, the politicians in Congress and the executives of large corporations are capitalizing, as humans have for millennia, on an inequitable system to make off with millions.
Oppression is a highly profitable business.
As Johns Hopkins associate professor of political science Steven Teles says, the structure of this system makes "it difficult for us to understand just what the [US] government is doing, and among the practices it most frequently hides from view is the growing tendency of public policy to redistribute resources upward to the wealthy and the organized at the expense of the poorer and less organized."
By perpetuating a government that has not served, represented or answered to its people throughout the majority of its entire existence, these two elite groups are profiting handsomely.
As scholars Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page have found, "Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."
This political system - the organization that dictates the rules that control people's lives - is, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren says, "rigged."
There is a reason corporate profits are at an 85-year high, while workers' pay is at a 65-year low.
There is a reason Congress is a millionaires' club.
US legislators and corporate executives are tied together in a reciprocal, remunerative relationship.
A handful of individuals and their corporations openly spend millions in political campaign contributions (and millions more anonymously in dark money), as well as $2.6 billion every year to lobby Congress (more than the Senate and House budget combined).
Corporate executives profit from this investment in corporate welfare (subsidies, grants, incentives, tax breaks and tax loopholes), the preservation of the destructive status quo, and beneficial (or the lack of detrimental) legislation that their lobbyists actually help to write.

Corporations are concerned with their bottom line, not people, and so are the bills for which they lobby.

Politicians equally benefit in information and legislative support (like policy writing); campaign donations (through loopholes in the law, politicians actually personally profit "from the hundreds of millions of dollars in political contributions that have poured into the system"); company stocks; and the "revolving-door" phenomenon (in which former government officials receive "handsome compensation" to work as corporate lobbyists).
As the Harvard University Center for Ethics reports, "Institutional corruption is, sadly, alive and well in Congress."
This lucrative symbiosis between Congress and corporations is starkly evident in the new 2016 spending bill that gives $400 billion in tax favors to big business.
As Philip Mattera, research director of Goods Jobs First and director of the Corporate Research Project, told Truthout, "It's not surprising ... There are always these kinds of Christmas tree tax bills that politicians like to award their allies in the business world."
Corporations have an inordinate amount of control over what legislation gets passed, and since, as one survey shows, big business is only concerned with protecting "the company against changes in government policy," and improving their "ability to compete by seeking favorable changes in government policy," the laws that CEOs want are often terrible for the rest of the country.
Corporations are concerned with their bottom line, not people, and so are the bills for which they lobby. This stranglehold on Congress sheds light on the reason behind the American people's suffering: Someone is making money off it.
Walmart is the largest employer in the United States, with 2.2 million individuals on its payroll, yet the company only pays a (brand-new) minimum wage of $10 per hour. If you work 40 hours every week of the year (12 months of nonstop full-time work) that wage adds up to a paltry $20,800, a salary below the poverty line for a family of three. You cannot earn a living off this.
In 2014 alone, Walmart gave $2,366,629 in political campaign contributions, and spent $7 million on lobbying. Twenty-seven members of Congress hold investments in the company, and 84 out of 103 (81 percent) of Walmart lobbyists have previously held government jobs.
The company is also freely evading $19 billion in taxes, and receiving $23 million a year (or $1 billion throughout its 42-year history) in government tax breaks, free land, infrastructure assistance, low-cost financing and outright grants - a figure Good Jobs First notes might "very well be the tip of the iceberg."
Walmart pays its workers abysmally, abuses its employees and hurts small businesses - but it has close ties with Congress, and that makes all the difference.
Private Prison Corporations
Since 1989, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the two largest for-profit prison companies in the United States, have given nearly $10 million in political donations and spent almost $25 million on lobbying. In 2013-14, 78 percent of GEO Group lobbyists and 63 percent of CCA lobbyists previously held government jobs.
These private prison companies are for-profit in the cruelest sense of the phrase: They lobby for harsher sentencing on nonviolent crimes through three-strikes laws, mandatory sentencing and truth-in-sentencing laws (the abolishment or reduction of parole), and push for new anti-immigrant laws to put more immigrants behind bars.
The effects of this lobbying, donating and revolving are clear.
GEO Group and CCA receive millions in government subsidies each year, adding up to a gigantic bill for taxpayers.Congress now has a quota for how many human beings must be locked in a tiny room per day: at least 34,000 immigrants, a number that continues to grow each year, eventhough the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has leveled off. If the beds are not filled, the government still must pay the corporation, to the further detriment of the taxpayer.
In Arizona, 30 of the 36 state legislators who co-sponsored an (unsuccessful) immigration law to put even more people in detention received campaign donations from private prison corporations like GEO Group and CCA.
When Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio was speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, GEO Group got a $110 million government contract to build another private prison; GEO has donated almost $40,000 to Rubio's campaigns throughout his political career, the highest amount in career money the company has ever donated to any US senator.
Such "parasitic relationships" have allowed the private prison industry to pull in $2 billion in yearly profits.
Big Pharma
In 2014, pharmaceutical giant Amgen Inc. gave $1.83 million in political campaign contributions, and, in 2013, spent $9.12 million on lobbying. Twelve members of Congress hold company shares, and 78 out of 93 Amgen lobbyists have previously held government jobs.
In 2013, Amgen received a $500 million financial gift from Congress when a handful of legislative aides slipped a provision into the final fiscal bill, allowing Amgen to evade Medicare cost-cutting controls for two more years. The change was supported by Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), all of whom have political and financial ties to Amgen, receiving $68,000, $59,000 and $73,000, from 2007 to 2013, respectively.
Another pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, spent $10,140,000 on lobbying in 2013, and gave $2,217,066 in political campaign contributions in 2014, while 40 members of Congress hold shares in the company, and 48 out of 84 Pfizer lobbyists in 2013-14 previously held government jobs.
This company has been allowed to evade $69 billion in taxes.
Americans are paying more for their prescription drugs than any other wealthy country on earth (helping to keep us sicker and dying younger than people of other wealthy nations) to the further profit of large pharmaceutical corporations.
Why?
Because, unlike any other rich country's body of legislators, Congress - while receiving campaign contributions from, being lobbied by and investing in Big Pharma - does not regulate predatory pricing practices.
Wall Street
In 2014, through PACs and individuals, JPMorgan Chase gave $1.4 million in campaign donations to lawmakers, TPG Capital gave $1.3 million, Wells Fargo gave $2.6 million ($6 million on lobbying), Citigroup spent $2.5 million ($5 million on lobbying), Bank of America gave almost $3 million ($2.7 million on lobbying), Goldman Sachs gave $4.7 million ($3.4 million on lobbying) etc.
Wells Fargo is the fourth-most popular stock in Congress, and JPMorgan Chase is the ninth.
Congress has yet to pass true Wall Street reform.
General Electric, the company that paid zero taxes in 2010 and helped crash the economy in 2007, is the most popular stockholding in Congress, with $967,038 being the minimum Democratic investment and $1,392,475, the minimum Republican investment in 2014, the last year data is available. GE spent nearly $4 million in political campaign contributions during the 2014 election cycle, and over $15 million in political lobbying.
The company has $110 billion stashed offshore, and is taxed at an effective rate of 4 percent - 31 points lower than what it actually owes the IRS.
Wall Street CEOs are collecting millions while threatening to crash our economy yet again (JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are all on the Financial Stability Board's 2015 "too-big-to-fail" list). Meanwhile, Americans are still suffering from the last crash - and Congress, while receiving campaign donations from and investing in Wall Street, is doing nothing to curb their growth.
How the United States Could Be
Taken altogether, these billions of dollars, lost on tax breaks and subsidies for wealthy corporations, could be used to fund the impoverished schools serving the United States' impoverished children, job programs to employ the jobless youth, universal health care for the country's sick and dying people, reformation of a racist criminal legal system, higher education for broke young people, nutrition programs for hungry children - the possibilities of using these resources to create a thriving, blooming society and nation are limitless.
Only a corrupt Congress and the lucrative, symbiotic relationship between Democrats, Republicans and rich, corporate individuals stand in the way.
So the next time you hear a politician say change is too hard, or that the real world doesn't include transforming this oligarchy into a democracy, take a closer look at who is padding his or her pockets. If the person benefiting from the status quo is trying to convince you it should stay the same, doubt to high heaven and beyond what he or she is telling you.
After all, a shark won't smile and shake your hand before biting you in the back.
But a politician will.

Eliza A. Webb

Eliza A. Webb is a published writer on politics in The Hill, Salon and The Michigan Journal of International Affairs.

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Strong Unions

We Need a Strong Trade Union in Every Workplace

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Feb
2016

Thursday 11^th

posted by Morning Star in Features

Unions are the most effective force for social equality – which is why we should be proud of their link to the Labour Party, writes JEREMY CORBYN

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BEFORE being elected to Parliament I worked as a trade union official, with garment workers who were owed back pay by unscrupulous employers.
Later I worked with public-sector workers fighting to protect their jobs and services and low-paid women fighting for equal pay.
And I know how much harder it is now today for the trade union movement — with the most restrictive anti-union laws in Europe, which are about to get even more restrictive.
As leader I am proud of the link between trade unions and the Labour Party — it is not just a historic link, it’s what makes Labour succeed.
We win when we’re in touch with the needs and the concerns of millions of working people and their families — the people trade unions represent.
Too often in the past Labour has been cowed into acting like it is ashamed of our relationship with trade unions.
Well, I’m proud of it. Proud to be a party funded in large part by the cleanest money in politics — democratically voted on by thousands of ordinary workers.
Proud of being connected to the largest democratic organisations in this country, with over six million members, and proud that the Fire Brigades Union has recently voted to reaffiliate to Labour.
Labour has a mountain to climb to win in 2020 and tough elections this May. To succeed we have to become a social movement again — campaigning together in every community for our shared goals.
Labour membership has doubled since the general election defeat, and many of these new members are trade unionists. Nearly 400,000-strong, Labour can reach parts of our country and our communities that no other party can.
Trade unions don’t just organise in the workplace, we organise in our communities too. The labour movement is a social movement.
At the last election the 34 per cent of the electorate who didn’t vote at all should have been Labour voters, but we didn’t reach them and didn’t inspire them.
The more we sit in our Westminster bunker, the weaker we are. The more we involve our members and supporters and affiliates, the stronger we will be. So to win Labour must draw on its greatest strength: its people.
More public-sector workers are now having to claim working tax credits and housing benefit just to make ends meet. What sort of example is government setting when so many in its own workforce are paid so little they need to claim benefits?
But the Tory government’s solution was not to abandon the public-sector pay cap but to cut tax credits.
Strong Labour opposition and campaigning by trade unions and others stopped those cuts which would have seen three million families lose over £1,000 this April. But we have recently learned that 800,000 families will still see a cut in April.
But the best guarantee of decent pay is a strong trade union in every workplace — and some of the worst examples of low pay and job insecurity are to be found in the private sector, where trade union membership is just 14 per cent.
British company profitability is at record levels. But without unions, any increase in returns only gets shared in the boardrooms and between shareholders.
This is a global issue, with capital trying to force down wages and employment rights across the globe. That is why Labour is making the case for a real social Europe as part of the referendum campaign, and our MEPs are opposing any dilution of employment rights in TTIP negotiations.
Trade unions are the most effective force for equality in the workplace. The evidence is clear both in Britain and across the developed world — greater pay equality correlates with higher trade union membership.
It is for precisely that reason that the Tories are attacking trade unionists, trade unions and the Labour-trade union link.
They are attacking trade unions in workplaces by cutting facility time and check-off; they’re attacking trade unions by making the most restrictive trade union laws in Europe even more restrictive; and they’re attacking the collective will of trade unions to fund political activity.
Labour MPs and peers are opposing the Trade Union Bill in Parliament, because we know it is a cynical attempt to weaken opposition to the Tories’ austerity agenda: cut, run down and privatise.
We have made it clear: a Labour government in 2020 will strengthen employment and trade union rights.
When Labour leader John Smith addressed the TUC in 1993 he set out a Charter for Employment Rights to “give all working people basic rights that will come into force from the first day of their employment. We will give the same legal rights to every worker, part-time or full-time, temporary or permanent.
“We will give every working man and woman the right to protection against unfair dismissal, and access to health and safety protection. And every worker will have the right to join a trade union and have the right to union recognition.”
That vision is being brought back into the heart of Labour. Our shadow minister for trade unions and civil society Ian Lavery MP, a former NUM president, is starting work on a new commission into workplace rights for 2020.
We will want your input and engagement in that process, launching later this year.
In the here and now, Labour will campaign for a public inquiry to ensure that the scourge of blacklisting is never repeated, and to ensure all the government papers are published relating to the miners’ strike, including Orgreave, and to the Shrewsbury 24 pickets.
When 120 years ago a former trade unionist first entered Parliament to fight injustice, Keir Hardie didn’t just fight for workers, he fought for universal suffrage, a universal pension, free education for children, decent homes for all, against powerful monopolies and for peace.
We must oppose privatisation, build council housing, and never let ourselves be divided: workers against the unemployed; British workers against migrant workers; young versus old.
Our strength is unity. The Labour Party took off over a century ago when the existence of trade unions was under threat. Unions are too much of a force for a good, a force for equality, to allow the Tories to put that at risk.
We will only have a strong trade unions if we get a Labour government in 2020. If we work together, we can achieve that and many campaigning victories along the way.

• Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour Party.

99% Win Against the 1% in Sweden & Norway

How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’

by

George Lakey

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.A march in Ådalen, Sweden, in 1931.
Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”
Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Kurt Wallender and Jo Nesbro will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own histories.
Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.
In both countries, the troops were called out to defend the 1 percent; people died. Award-winning Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg told the Swedish story vividly in Ådalen 31, which depicts the strikers killed in 1931 and the sparking of a nationwide general strike. (You can read more about this case in an entry by Max Rennebohm in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)
The Norwegians had a harder time organizing a cohesive people’s movement because Norway’s small population—about three million—was spread out over a territory the size of Britain. People were divided by mountains and fjords, and they spoke regional dialects in isolated valleys. In the nineteenth century, Norway was ruled by Denmark and then by Sweden; in the context of Europe Norwegians were the “country rubes,” of little consequence. Not until 1905 did Norway finally become independent.
When workers formed unions in the early 1900s, they generally turned to Marxism, organizing for revolution as well as immediate gains. They were overjoyed by the overthrow of the czar in Russia, and the Norwegian Labor Party joined the Communist International organized by Lenin. Labor didn’t stay long, however. One way in which most Norwegians parted ways with Leninist strategy was on the role of violence: Norwegians wanted to win their revolution through collective nonviolent struggle, along with establishing co-ops and using the electoral arena.
In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it. The workers’ response verged toward a national general strike. The employers, backed by the state, beat back that strike, but workers erupted again in the ironworkers’ strike of 1923–24.
The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million!
The Labor Party, in the meantime, opened its membership to anyone, whether or not in a unionized workplace. Middle-class Marxists and some reformers joined the party. Many rural farm workers joined the Labor Party, as well as some small landholders. Labor leadership understood that in a protracted struggle, constant outreach and organizing was needed to a nonviolent campaign. In the midst of the growing polarization, Norway’s workers launched another wave of strikes and boycotts in 1928.
The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers fought back with massive demonstrations.
Many people then found that their mortgages were in jeopardy. (Sound familiar?) The Depression continued, and farmers were unable to keep up payment on their debts. As turbulence hit the rural sector, crowds gathered nonviolently to prevent the eviction of families from their farms. The Agrarian Party, which included larger farmers and had previously been allied with the Conservative Party, began to distance itself from the 1 percent; some could see that the ability of the few to rule the many was in doubt.
By 1935, Norway was on the brink. The Conservative-led government was losing legitimacy daily; the 1 percent became increasingly desperate as militancy grew among workers and farmers. A complete overthrow might be just a couple years away, radical workers thought. However, the misery of the poor became more urgent daily, and the Labor Party felt increasing pressure from its members to alleviate their suffering, which it could do only if it took charge of the government in a compromise agreement with the other side.
This it did. In a compromise that allowed owners to retain the right to own and manage their firms, Labor in 1935 took the reins of government in coalition with the Agrarian Party. They expanded the economy and started public works projects to head toward a policy of full employment that became the keystone of Norwegian economic policy. Labor’s success and the continued militancy of workers enabled steady inroads against the privileges of the 1 percent, to the point that majority ownership of all large firms was taken by the public interest. (There is an entry on this case as well at the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)
The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game, including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production, extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?)
Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid.
Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them, the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common good.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

George Lakey is Visiting Professor at Swarthmore

Unions Fight Return to 19th Century Abuses

Labor Unions today

Today, Unions continue serve the same purpose for which they were originally founded. CEO and executive compensation is skyrocketing, while the middle class suffers from layoffs, unemployment and stagnant wages. Average CEO total compensation at S&P 500 companies, according to the AFL-CIO 2010 Pay Watch, is over $11 million.

Current Union agendas include increasing wages, raising the standard of living for the working class, ensuring safe working conditions, and increasing benefits for both workers and their families.

Workers need fair treatment today as much as ever

Unions are important because most corporations focus on creating profits at the expense of employees.

The nature of work in America is changing. Employers are trying to shed responsibility for providing health insurance, good pension coverage, reasonable work hours and job safety protections. Instead, companies are making workers' jobs and incomes less secure through downsizing, part-timing, contracting out, and sending jobs off-shore.

More than ever, working people need the collective voice and bargaining power Unions provide to keep employers from making the workplace look as it did in the early nineteenth century.
Without collective representation, the threat of sweatshop conditions, unlivable wages and 70-hour work weeks may become a part of working America's future as well as its past.

Today and in the future, labor Unions will continue to play an important role our country's work force and the quality of life for working families. If you are not a Union member, you can learn about the benefits of fighting for the middle class in America.

America's working families need the representation, collective power, pride in work and fair treatment they in the workplace that they deserve.

Straight Talk from a Fellow Worker

Working people have a lot of concerns in this economy. They want decent pay. They want benefits. And of course they want job security. I tell them all the reasons why they need union representation.

- Joseph Crane CWA 7901

Anti-Labor "Cadillac tax" Repealed in Senate

Senate Votes to Repeal Anti-Union 'Cadillac tax"'

By Peter Sullivan - 12/03/15 03:44 PM EST

The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to repeal the “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans, a rare area of bipartisan agreement around the healthcare law.

But the Senate did show support for repealing the tax. Both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) voted for the amendment. Seven Democrats, including Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the No. 3 Democrat, and three Republicans voted against it. 

There are currently ongoing talks to include a repeal or delay of the Cadillac tax in a separate package of tax breaks, known as tax extenders, that is expected to move before the end of the year.

The major question is the White House, which has defended the tax as a check on health cost growth and a source of funding for ObamaCare. Repealing the tax would take roughly $90 billion away from the law over 10 years. It is unclear what compromise, if any, the White House might agree to.

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), sponsor of the repeal bill, noted its broad support on Thursday ahead of the amendment vote.

“There is no opposition to this legislation,” he said. “The unions support this amendment, the Chamber [of Commerce] supports this amendment, seniors support this amendment.”

Opponents of the tax warn that employers will increase the deductibles and other out of pocket expenses that employees have to pay in a bid to avoid hitting the tax. The 40 percent tax hits plans with costs that exceed $10,200 for individuals or $27,500 for families.  

Defenders of the tax, like the White House, argue that it gives employers an incentive to support payment reforms and efficiencies to bring down the cost of healthcare, and that to a certain extent increased cost-sharing from employees, giving them an incentive to seek out more efficient, lower-cost care.  

JOE HILL ex NOV 2015

Remembering the Life and Music of Labor Agitator Joe Hill, Who Was Executed 100 Years Ago Today

BY David Cochran

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He was killed by firing squad in the state of Utah on November 19, 1915.  

Joe Hill saw his music as a weapon in the class war, composing songs to be sung on soapboxes, picket lines or in jail. And 100 years ago today, the forces of capital and the state of Utah executed him.
Chicago musician and scholar Bucky Halker is honoring the centennial with a CD of new interpretations of Hill’s music, “Anywhere But Utah—The Songs of Joe Hill,” taking his title from Hill’s dying wish that his remains be transported out of state because he didn’t want “to be found dead in Utah.” The album includes such familiar Hill classics as "The Preacher and the Slave," "There is Power in a Union" and "Rebel Girl" as well as some surprising obscurities, like the wistfully romantic "Come and Take a Joy-Ride in My Aeroplane."
Born Joel Hagglund in Sweden, Hill immigrated to the United States in 1902, changing his name to Joseph Hillstrom, which would eventually be shortened to Joe Hill. Working his way across the country, Hill became politicized, eventually joining the Industrial Workers of the World. Popularly known as the Wobblies, the IWW sought to organize those workers more mainstream unions avoided—the unskilled, migrants, immigrants, minorities—in an effort to combine the entire working class into One Big Union.
As a Wobbly, Hill was active in free speech fights in Fresno and San Diego, a strike of railroad construction workers in British Columbia and even fought in the Mexican Revolution.
In 1914, Hill was arrested in Salt Lake City and charged with killing a storekeeper, allegedly in a botched robbery. Despite the flimsy nature of the evidence, Hill was convicted and sentenced to death, with the prosecutor urging conviction as much on the basis of Hill’s IWW membership as any putative evidence of his involvement in the crime. An international amnesty movement pressed for a new trial, but the Utah governor refused and Hill was executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915. In a final message to IWW General Secretary Bill Haywood, Hill urged, “Don’t waste any time in mourning—organize.”
Since his death, Hill has been immortalized in a wide variety of cultural expression, including poetry by Kenneth Patchen, fiction by Wallace Stegner, and a song by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson, popularized by Paul Robeson, promising “where workingmen are out on strike, Joe Hill is at their side.”
I talked to Halker about Hill’s music, politics and legacy. Halker is the author of the seminal work on Gilded Age labor music, For Democracy, Workers, and God: Labor Song-Poems and Labor Protest, 1865-95, and has previously released a tribute album to Woody Guthrie.
For one who was not a native English speaker, Joe Hill had a keen understanding of American slang, humor, and various folk and popular song forms. How did he become such a master of the American vernacular? How does he compare with other folksingers closely associated with insurgent movements, such as Woody Guthrie?
Hill is part of a long tradition of “organic” intellectuals in the USA. He was also just plain smart, which you can tell from reading his lyrics and other writing. He was self-educated, with an appetite for ideas. And remember that the labor movement was filled with men and women of this sort, dating to the early 19th century. Unions, of course, often had their own libraries, so workers could check out literature related to everything from poetry to economics. Also, cheap pamphlets on the issues of the day, including Marxism, were extremely common in the years after the Civil War and well into the 20th century. If you look at the people who wrote labor music and poetry, they typically share this kind of background.
Hill and Guthrie also share a tremendous skill in the realm of vernacular speech. He mastered all this hobo and Wobbly slang of the era and the latest music-hall, vaudeville lyrics of the day. Also, Hill’s work is filled with humor, irony and sarcasm—hardly easy skills to gain in your second language. No doubt he picked all this up from hobos, labor activists, and Wobblies, but I also believe his ear for music helped him in this effort.
Hill had some musical training and a passion for music that is obvious in his lyrical approach. You can tell from his lyrics that he paid close attention to the musical hall and Tin Pan Alley writers of the day. Most of them were also immigrants or children of immigrants and were very skilled at slang, lyrical twists and clever use of idioms. Indeed, Hill’s lyrics and choice of tunes have much more in common with music hall composers than the folk or county models that Guthrie and others made use of in the years of the great labor uprising of the 1930s and which became the template for labor songsters thereafter.
Hill and other Wobbly bards and writers should get some credit for their use of sarcasm and irony in the development of American literature. They had sharp wits and tongues that worked deftly and quickly, which only pissed off the lunkhead bosses, the law and the ruling elite even more. The authorities and their lackeys dislike radicals even more when they’re much smarter than they are.
What was the role of music in the creation of the Wobbly movement culture?
Music was a centerpiece of the Wobbly “movement culture.” However, I wouldn’t say this came into existence with the IWW. Earlier, the abolitionists and the Gilded Age labor movement made singing, songwriting, poetry and other forms of writing a key part of their efforts. Coal miners and Jewish textile workers had already developed a strong working-class poetic and musical tradition, as did the Knights of Labor. So Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie were standing on big shoulders.
Having said that, the IWW took the music and poetry to new heights and cleverly used singing and chanting as a way to garner attention from workers, the media, and the authorities. Fifty workers singing makes a lot more noise at a rally or in a jail cell than one speaker on a soapbox or one person ranting in the joint.
What kinds of considerations did you take into account in updating Hill’s music?
I quickly decided I wanted to record a couple of the sentimental love songs because that part of Hill’s personality had been neglected. They read like old vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley lyrics, so I worked on melodies and chord changes that were common to those types of pieces. I also decided that on songs like “Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay” and “It’s A Long Way Down to the Soupline” that I wanted to use a brass band that had the flavor of the music hall that Hill was leaning on. I hoped to make it a bit like a drunken Salvation Army band in the process, which fit the brass band sound anyway.
I knew he’d been to Hawaii and the Pacific Islands too, so I decided to do a couple songs with the ukulele at the center, which was appropriate given some things I’d read on Hill and the music he heard on that trip (plus the ukulele had become popular at the time).
I wanted to make a record that Hill would like. That was my priority from the beginning. I don’t think he’d like a straight folk revival, strumming acoustic guitar approach, as that has nothing to do with most of his material. He played the piano and the fiddle, after all. The folk revivalists did a great service by keeping Hill’s work in circulation, but trying to keep him in that small musical box is way off the mark. So, I borrowed from vaudeville and the music hall, piano blues and early jazz, alt-country, swing, punk and gospel.
I think Joe would be very happy with this recording—more so than what’s preceded.
What sorts of musical choices did Hill make? What kinds of influences did he draw on?
Hill came from a music-loving family and he also had some musical training as a child before his dad died and the family fell on hard times. He heard a lot of religious music, as his family were strong Lutherans and sometimes attended Salvation Army gatherings. Since hymns were well known, even across sectarian religious (and political) lines, hymn tunes were often used by labor songwriters going back to the mid-19th century. Hill’s use of “In the Sweet By and By” as the tune for “The Preacher and the Slave” was very much in a labor tradition, as was “Nearer My God to Thee” for his “Nearer My Job to Thee.”
Hill also wrote his own music for some of his songs—for his classic “Rebel Girl,” for example. And though he leaned heavily for the music of the “Internationale” for his “Workers of the World Awaken,” he did include clear pieces of his own work in writing that one, too.
But most often he drew on the vaudeville, music hall, early Tin Pan Alley songs that were popular with workers at the time. For “Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay” he took the tune from a music hall hit by the same name. For “Scissor Bill” he took the tune from “Steamboat Bill,” which was a huge hit at the time and a best-selling early recording.
With all his tune choices, he was like other working-class writers and had the same goal—use tunes that workers knew already for labor songs and then they’d be easy for workers to sing.
Can you give the background of some of the other songs?
“Der Chief of Fresno” grew out of the IWW’s free speech campaign. Fresno was a place where the police were notably confrontational. Hill added his voice to the mix with a piece that appears to have been a chant of sorts. That’s why I added the multiple voices on the words “der chief” whenever it comes around. I like the use of the German “Der” in the title, as if the chief might make a good member of the oppressive Prussian army.
“Stung Right” represents the strong anti-military bent of the IWW, even before the outbreak of World War I. Many immigrant workers had already come from regions of the world where they were drafted and made to fight the battles for the ruling class and were determined to stay out of future such wars. What’s more, many working-class groups saw war as a senseless ruling class fight that only pitted workers against each other. Nationalism was seen as suspect.
Little wonder, then, that after the Spanish-American War in 1898, and the needless slaughter it entailed, anti-war and anti-military sentiments found welcome ears. Hill was aware that workers also signed up with the military when their economic situations were difficult. At least they gave you a bit of cash and some food in the army. In this piece, he’s warning workers not to fall for it
“Rebel Girl” is another of his best efforts. Hill wrote it himself for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Hill followed her career closely and admired her work on behalf of labor. They frequently corresponded while Hill was in prison. He even wrote a cute little song for her son called “Bronco Buster Flynn.” Flynn had visited Hill while he was awaiting execution and sent him a photo of her son Buster.
One song that struck me was "Come Take a Joy Ride in My Aeroplane." As you say in your liner notes, that seems to represent a "romantic and carefree side" that we don't typically associate with Hill.
There were three of these romantic, sentimental songs that Hill wrote, all of which were discovered after his arrest and none of which had music or tunes for them. Of course, there may be more, but we haven’t yet found those. They weren’t typical of Hill’s writing, which is generally focused on labor and political issues. But you can find some of this same sentiment in his letters, so it clearly was a key component of who Joe Hill was.
Frankly, I think historians and musicians have missed the boat in not addressing this romantic impulse. I suppose it seems counter to our image of the left-wing radical. But hell—I’d rather hang out with a person with strong romantic tendencies and a left-wing leaning personality, than some dour old sourpuss like Marx or Lenin, wouldn’t you? I also think within the IWW there was a strong sense of romance about the world. This can be found clearly in Wobbly writers like Haywire Mac or Ralph Chaplin. Some of this could be channeled toward a utopian impulse, as in the classic IWW song “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
Hill just gave it a more personal twist. Why shouldn’t he want to fall in love and be carried away for a while in the reverie of romance? Don’t we all? Here’s a guy who went to work at age nine, contracted tuberculosis, went on the tramp to survive and worked an endless stream of low-paying jobs. Why not dream of taking flight above this dreary earth with your gal and soar above the troubles below? Sounds like fun to me.
What is it about Hill that makes his legacy resonate so widely?
Obviously, the injustice of his arrest, trial, and execution continues to resonate, especially when a day doesn’t pass without some prisoner being released from prison after new evidence or DNA tests exonerated him or her.
Beyond that obvious point, I think there are many people who hear his songs and immediately sense that the issues raised by Hill and other Wobbly bards remain important to our national discussion, including decent wages and working conditions, immigrant rights, discrimination based on race, the oppression of women, the right to form a union and the right to free speech.
I have to admit, however, that I’m often bewildered by conservative labor leaders in the USA who pull out Hill’s legacy when it’s convenient and make positive comments about him. If he were around today, they’d throw him out of their conventions in a minute.
I also think there’s considerable appeal to Hill’s personal demeanor throughout the trial. He died a heroic, noble death—something few people can claim for their lives. He gave his life for the cause, and his trial and execution played out in the international media of the day. He’s a romantic character of the type that is more common in early movies than in reality.

David Cochran