SIU rank-and-file members early last month joined their brothers and sisters from other unions, community activists and religious leaders in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, San Francisco and other cities across the country to participate in events spotlighting International Human Rights Week.Workers around the globe took part in rallies, teach-ins and other events as part of a worldwide effort to support workers’ freedom to form unions. In the United States, thousands of activists in more than 100 cities called lawmakers to restore the freedom of workers to form unions.
More than 2,000 union members and allies—including rank-and-filers from the SIU and a large contingent of trainees from the SIU-affiliated Paul Hall Center for Maritime Training and Education in Piney Point, Md.— gathered at the AFL-CIO building in Washington, D.C., Dec. 8 for a rally and march. The trainees bore the colors and served as marshals during the event.
“America used to stand proud before the world as a land where the right of working people to have a union was respected,” said AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson during her address to the masses. “But today, that right has been destroyed…. The corporations trample on workers’ freedom like it’s their personal doormat.”
Clyde Rucker, a Maryland Verizon worker fired for seeking to form a union also was among the others to speak as were AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, AFGE President John Gage, Air Line Pilots President Duane Woerth, AFT Executive Vice President Antonia Cortese, and NEA President Reg Weaver.
Following all speeches, the workers marched and later delivered a petition signed by 100,000 workers calling for federal workers’ freedom to form a union to be honored and also urging strong collective bargaining rights for the 650,000 civilian Defense Department workers and 160,000 Homeland Security employees.
SIU members in Philadelphia on Dec. 6 joined others from the labor sector and community activists to welcome AFL-CIO President John Sweeney at an event sponsored by the Philadelphia Central Labor Council, which focused on the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 1696). “Unions lift up the standards for all workers, and 50 million workers would join a union if given the opportunity,” said Sweeney.
U.S. Congressmen Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) prior to the start of the event signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation, which would strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to choose by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers authorize union representation.
In San Francisco, SIU members were among those who attended a Dec. 5 San Francisco Labor Council-sponsored press conference at a City Hall. Tim Paulson, San Francisco Labor Council head, called for citywide actions to uphold workers’ rights on the job, while Peter Olney of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union urged support for more than 600 almond workers facing an aggressive anti-union campaign at Blue Diamond Growers.
Elsewhere in the United States:
- Hundreds of Oakland, Calif. workers marched to City Hall Dec. 6 to highlight the struggle Comcast workers face in their efforts to join a union with Communications Workers of America. At a workers’ rights hearing that same day, workers testified about the failure of U.S. labor law to protect workers who try to join unions.
- In St. Louis, more than 1,100 workers and activists marched on the headquarters of Peabody Energy as the Mine Workers launched the largest organizing campaign in the nation’s coalfields in decades on Dec. 9. Peabody miners are seeking to form a union to win safety improvements and better pay and benefits.
- Thousands of unionists and supporters braved bitter cold Dec. 8 in Boston to march from Boston Common to a rally on the State House steps, highlighting what they described as the anti-worker attitudes of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, corporate giants Wal-Mart and Verizon Wireless and the Harborside Nursing Home in Wakefield.
- In Tucson, Ariz., Jobs with Justice activists held a picket line Dec. 10 in support of workers allegedly harassed by management at Desert Diamond Casino. The Border Action Network led a march and rally of more than 150 demanding immigration reform, an end to persecution and deaths of migrants, a halt to militarization of border communities, respect for workers’ rights, and fair trade. The group also held actions in Douglas and Nogales. In Phoenix, the Arizona AFL-CIO held a spirited rally of over 200 at Phoenix College, supporting HR 1696 and a new voter initiative to raise the minimum wage.
- A Dec. 9 rally sponsored by UAW Local 2157 in Wichita Falls, Texas demanded justice for Delphi workers. Delphi seeks to join a growing list of major American companies using bankruptcy to void their contracts with workers, both active and retired, while rewarding the mismanagement of top executives.
In another development, 11 recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, including distinguished international leaders such as former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Former Polish President Lech Walesa on Dec. 6 issued a statement in which they expressed grave concern about the state of workers’ rights around the globe. They urged all nations to vigorously protect and defend workers’ inalienable human right to form unions free of discrimination, threats or harassment. The statement ran as a full-page ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune.
The thousands of U.S. workers who mobilized were supported in their fight to restore the freedom to form unions by workers in the international arena, according to the AFL-CIO.
On Dec. 9, the Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union Confederation (KSBI) released a report showing at least 45 companies in 12 provinces violated freedom of association laws, including the arrest of two labor activists and the dismissal of more than 1,400 workers over the past year.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dec. 10 marked 10 years of peace by focusing the country’s attention on workers’ rights as human rights. Unions in the Upper Drina region launched a joint organizing program aimed at reaching out to workers of all nationalities within the region.
In Bahrain, workers on Dec. 10 draped buildings in the capital city of Manama in white sheets and formed a human chain on a major bridge as part of a national campaign against poverty.
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