UNIONS in the US like the Teamsters have made big strides forward in the fight for higher wages for the US working class, however the corporate class and its allies are doing all they can to tear that down.
A Supreme Court will hear in the coming months a landmark case. Public sector unions are the target of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, where a handful of public school teachers are suing the state’s teachers union affiliate saying they shouldn’t have to pay union dues.
This, of course, even though they get the full benefit of the union hammering out a contract and representing them. The Los Angeles Times explains what’s at stake: ‘At issue is the court’s 1977 precedent in Abood vs. Detroit Board of Education, which today allows government worker unions in California and 20 other states to collect “fair share” fees to cover the costs of collective bargaining, even from employees who do not join or support the union.
‘Though the High Court has said workers cannot be required to pay for a union’s political activities, it has concluded that they should contribute something toward a union’s cost of negotiating better wages and benefits for everyone. The court’s conservatives, particularly Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., have long questioned whether these forced fees in the public sector violate free speech because they require employees to support a union they may oppose.
‘While any ruling wouldn’t affect private sector unions because only the government is required to abide by the First Amendment, its effect could be substantial nonetheless. The Teamsters represent more than 260,000 public sector workers, and millions are represented by other unions.
‘Representatives from the NEA, AFT, AFSCME, SEIU and the California Teachers Association said there is no reason the freedom of public workers to advocate for better services and communities should be curtailed as part of this case:
‘We are disappointed that at a time when big corporations and the wealthy few are rewriting the rules in their favour, knocking American families and our entire economy off-balance, the Supreme Court has chosen to take a case that threatens the fundamental promise of America — that if you work hard and play by the rules you should be able to provide for your family and live a decent life.
‘The Supreme Court is revisiting decisions that have made it possible for people to stick together for a voice at work and in their communities — decisions that have stood for more than 35 years — and that have allowed people to work together for better public services and vibrant communities. Government employees are not the enemy. They are just hardworking Americans doing what they can to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.
‘Powerful interests are trying to demagogue these workers for their own political gain. Workers represented by unions shouldn’t lose one of their only vehicles they have to fight for their rights.’
Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO, the US equivalent of the UK’s Trade Union Congress (TUC), has said that they have thrown a serious spanner in the works of finalising the notorious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement or ‘Fast Track’ as it is known.
TPP has yet to be finalised, however, if it is allowed to go through it will mean that private companies can take control of nationalised services in any country covered by the agreement.
If the government of that country refuses to allow these multi-nationals to privatise the public services, the bosses can sue the government in question!
Irreversible privatisation is one of the main reasons that trade unionists around the world oppose TPP. Although the text of the treaty has not been made public, Wikileaks has published several leaked documents since 2013. The director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, Lori Wallach, said: ‘We consider it inappropriate to elevate an individual investor or company to equal status with a nation state to privately enforce a public treaty between two sovereign countries.
‘TPP gives extraordinary new privileges and powers and rights to just one interest. Foreign investors are privileged vis-a-vis domestic companies, vis-a-vis the government of a country, and vis-a-vis other private sector interests.
‘The basic reality of TPP: it provides foreign investors alone access to non-US courts to pursue claims against the US government on the basis of broader substantive rights than US firms are afforded under U.S. law.’
The AFL-CIO said: ‘All I can say is: wow. I’ve been working on stopping Fast Track for years now and I can tell you that — even though Congress pulled some last-minute political manoeuvring to get Fast Track passed last month — we beat all the odds and changed the game. And we did it together.
‘One year ago, if you had told me that Congress would vote against this awful legislation, I wouldn’t have believed you. But despite the arm-twisting from corporations and the 1%, we nearly got Congress to defeat Fast Track because of the pressure you and millions of others put on your legislators.
‘And now the real debate has begun. In the coming months, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — the biggest trade deal in the history of US trade deals — is going to be finalised, and Congress will have to vote on it.
‘We need to make sure the TPP doesn’t sell out working people here and abroad, gives foreign corporations special privileges to sue US taxpayers to recover lost profits, or undermines efforts to stop climate change. When this Fast Track fight began, corporate CEOs and high-powered Washington lobbyists thought it was going to be a walk in the park.
‘But because we put enough pressure on legislators by sending emails, making calls, taking action on social media and turning out for events, we slowed down and almost thwarted their plan to rubber stamp more bad trade deals that ship jobs overseas, lower wages and give more power to big corporations.
‘This should send a strong signal to our elected leaders and the 1% that we’re not going to tolerate corporate CEOs and billionaires undermining our democracy. So this is only the beginning of our fight to demand better trade rules that benefit our families and communities.’
• Richard Trumka the president of the AFL-CIO has a message for state and local AFL-CIO leaders tempted to endorse Bernie Sanders: ‘Don’t’.
The trade union movement in the US is split with many local leaders and workers not willing to support the right wing Hilary Clinton and instead wants to endorse Bernie Sanders. The leadership of the AFL-CIO is attempting to whip its membership to fall in line behind Clinton, but the working class of America is refusing.
Sanders is the longest-serving independent in US congressional history. A self-described democratic socialist. He is a junior United States Senator from Vermont. He supports legislation that would make it easier for workers to join or form a union.
In a memo this week to state, central and area divisions of the labour federation, and obtained by POLITICO, the AFL-CIO chief reminded the groups that its bylaws don’t permit them to ‘endorse a presidential candidate’ or ‘introduce, consider, debate, or pass resolutions or statements that indicate a preference for one candidate over another’.
Even ‘personal’ statements’ of candidate preference are forbidden, Trumka said. The memo comes amid signs of a growing split between national union leaders, mindful of the fact that Clinton remains the undisputed favourite for the nomination and local officials and rank and file, who are increasingly drawn to the Democratic Party’s growing progressive wing, for whom Sanders is the latest standard-bearer.
The South Carolina and Vermont AFL-CIOs have passed resolutions supporting Sanders, and some local AFL-CIO leaders in Iowa want to introduce a resolution at their August convention backing the independent senator from Vermont.
More than a thousand labour supporters, including several local AFL-CIO-affiliated leaders, have signed on to ‘Labour for Bernie,’ a group calling on national union leaders to give Sanders a shot at an endorsement.
The AFL-CIO’s constituent unions — as distinct from divisions of the federation itself — remain free to make endorsements however they wish. But they can’t make those endorsements acting through local and regional divisions of the AFL-CIO, as Trumka reminded everyone in the memo. His message wasn’t anything new for the federation’s state leaders: They know that endorsement decisions belong to the national leadership.
Still, it was unusual for Trumka to call them out in a memo. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one before like this,’ said Jeff Johnson, the president of the AFL-CIO’s Washington state labour council. Johnson agreed that it was important for the AFL-CIO to speak with a single voice.
But ‘there’s a lot of anxiety out there in the labour movement,’ he said, ‘and we’re desperately searching for a candidate that actually speaks to working-class values. The Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders camp is very, very attractive to many of our members and to many of us as leaders, because they’re talking about the things that need to happen in this country.’
Similarly, Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steven Tolman said he agreed that Trumka had to lay down the law. More tellingly, though, he added: ‘Bernie Sanders has spent his life actually fighting for working people. He’s made no secret of it, and he’s used it as his mantra. And that I respect very much.’
When asked about Clinton’s candidacy, Tolman was less effusive: ‘Who? Who? Please. I mean with all respect, huh?’ Other state-level union leaders affiliated with the AFL-CIO didn’t bother to give Trumka and his memo lip service.
‘I was disappointed by it,’ said UPTE-CWA Local 9119 organising coordinator Lisa Kermish, of Berkeley, California. I think that local unions and national unions, while it’s important to work together for strength, I think that this is in some ways truncating dialogue. And I find that very unfortunate.’
Larry Cohen, former president of the Communication Workers of America said: ‘Across the country there is a huge surge of union members and of working class people stepping up for Bernie.’