Note at the bottom of this photo essay are links to media coverage of the actions to end “too big to jail.” Yesterday the Home Defenders League organized a protest that began at Freedom Plaza and ended up occupying the Department of Justice, even staying […]
The Philadelphia City Council, State Legislators of Pennsylvania, The Philadelphia School Reform Commission, We believe that students have agency: the power to change an unjust situation. We, the Students of the Philadelphia Public School District, are protesting the School District’s proposed budget cuts. The […]
Josh Eidelson
The Nation, May 10, 2013
Hundreds of Detroit fast food workers plan to walk off the job beginning at 6 AM today, making the motor city the fourth in five weeks to see such strikes. Organizers expect participants from at least 60 stores, including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Subway, Little Caesar’s, and Popeye’s locations. Like this week’s strike in St. Louis, and last month’s inNew York and Chicago, today’s work stoppage is backed by a local coalition including the Service Employees International Union, and the participants are demanding a raise to $15 an hour and the chance to form a union without intimidation.
Organizers say that over a hundred workers joined the St. Louis strike between Wednesday andThursday. That included a group of Jimmy John’s workers who alleged that management humiliated them by requiring them to hold up signs in public with messages including “I made 3 wrong sandwiches today” and “I was more than 13 seconds in the drive thru.” “Sometimes I walk for more than an hour just to save my train fare so I can spend it on Ramen noodles,” St. Louis Chipotle worker Patrick Leeper said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. “I can’t even think about groceries.”
A spokesperson for Jimmy John’s declined to comment on Thursday’s strike; McDonald’s and Wendy’s did not respond to inquiries last night.
As I’ve written elsewhere, the fate of the fast food strike wave carries far-reaching implications: Fast food jobs are a growing portion of our economy, and fast food-like conditions are proliferating in other sectors as well. Organizers say the fast food industry now employs twice as many Detroit-area workers as the city’s iconic auto industry. These strikes also come at a moment of existential crisis for the labor movement, a sobering reality that was brought into sharp relief in December when Michigan, arguably the birthplace of modern US private sector unionism, became the country’s latest “Right to Work” state.
Along with a shared significant supporter – SEIU – the campaigns in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit have apparent strategies in common. Rather than waiting until they’ve built support from a majority of a store’s or company’s workers, they stage actions by a minority of the workforce designed to inspire their co-workers. Rather than publicly identifying the campaign and its organizers with a single international union, these union-funded efforts turn to allied community groups to spearhead organizing. Rather than training all their resources on a single company, they organize against all of the industry’s players at once. And – faced with legal and economic assaults that haveweakened the strike weapon – these campaigns mount one-day work stoppages that are carefully tailored to maximize attention and minimize, but not eliminate, the risk that workers will lose their jobs.
Whether these strategies can ever compel a fast food giant to negotiate with its employees remains to be seen.
“After what I would consider well over three decades of wage suppression, workers in this particular industry – and then I think it’ll go to others – are realizing that their only way up the wage ladder is through their own organizations,” CUNY labor studies lecturer Ed Ott said Wednesday. Ott, a board member of the community organizing group that spearheaded the New York fast food strike, added, “The only way these workers are going to be able to advance these jobs is through unionization. And I think that idea has finally gotten traction.”
Detroit Free Press
May 10, 2013
Workers at a fast-food restauranthttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png on Detroit’s east side have walked off the job as part of an effort to push for higher wages.
Detroit pastor Charles Williams II says workers want $15 an hour, better working conditions and the right to unionize. The one-day protest starting Friday morning at a McDonald’s is one of about 50 that organizers say they’ve planned around Detroit.
The D15 campaign says many workers make $7.40 an hour or just above it.
A message seeking comment from a representative of the restaurant was left this morning by the Associated Press.
Workers at more than 30 fast-food restaurantshttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png in St. Louis walked off the job Thursday in a similar one-day strike. That followed strikes at fast-food chains in New York and Chicago.
On cloudy days, heavy smoke fills the air of Ponca City, Okla., with grey smog that camouflages itself into the sky. The ConocoPhillips oil refinery that makes its home there uses overcast days as a disguise to release more toxins into the air. These toxins […]
By George Lakey Waging Nonviolence, May 7, 2013 When do activists get to confront the 1 percent directly, in a situation in which we can lay out our case and challenge them to answer? I don’t mean a situation buffered through the mass media, or […]
Occupy Wall Street
May 7, 2013
One of the points Occupy Wall Street made, by choosing to occupy space in Manhattan and not in DC, was that it’s really Wall Street who runs things, not the government.
The votes in the House Financial Services Committee today underscore that point with stark clarity.
Today the Committee considered a slew of bills that tear down many of the Wall Street reforms passed in 2010. These reforms were already imperfect, as Wall Street sent the full force of its lobbying to the Hill in 2010 to compromise these reforms as much as possible.
Wall Street, having succeeded in 2010 in watering down the reforms meant to regulate them two years after they ruined the economy, did not rest. They have been lobbying nonstop since then to do everything they could to gut these reforms even more.
Today, nine deregulatory bills were considered, and nine were passed. The most egregious, HR 992, which we wrote about on Monday, passed 53-6. This bill is named “Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act”, but it should be called, “If Banks Get Bailed Out, We’ll Get Sold Out. Again.” This is the bill that makes the cost of doing business for Wall Street lower by exploiting the implicit backing of the Federal Government. It allows banks to hold risky derivatives in the insured depository–that part of the bank that is insured by the FDIC. As we wrote yesterday, this is dangerous because derivatives are senior in bankruptcy–derivatives counterparties get paid out first.
Only six members of Congress, out of sixty-one total committee members, decided that this risk was too much. That Wall Street has won enough fights. Six out of sixty-one. The only six who dared to not roll over for Wall Street are: Rep Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters) (D-CA), Rep Keith Ellison (@keithellison) (D-MN), Rep Steven Lynch (@RepStephenLynch) (D-MA), Rep Velazquez (@NydiaVelazquez) (D-NY), Rep Mike Capuano (@mikecapuano) (D-MA), and Rep Al Green (@RepAlGreen) (D-TX).
Those six were decidedly in the minority. Fifty-three members of Congress decided that, no, we really ought to make life even easier for the megabanks. The megabanks have it so hard, after all, right?
The banks have laundered money for drug cartels. They have deliberately lied to regulators. They have lied to Congress. They have illegally foreclosed on homes and then had their captured regulator give wronged parties a slap-in-the-face settlement of $300. They have manipulated global interest rates. They have sold predatory loans disproportionately to people of color . They have been bailed out. And they will not lay low.
Fifty-three members of the Financial Services Committee today decided that all this malfeasance, corruption and criminal activity is not only fine, but it should be rewarded. We should make life even easier for them. We should lower their cost of doing business on the backs of the US taxpayer. Only six decided that no, enough is enough.
It is the same old song in Congress. Wall Street owns them, and no amount of disgrace, shame, corruption and crime will deter the fifty-three members of this Committee from pledging allegiance to Wall Street.
Here is the complete list of the Financial Services Committee members. The official twitter for the Republicans on the Committee [email protected], and the twitter for the Democrats is @FSCDems. Wall Street still runs things, but it is worth letting our captured Congressmembers know that we are fully aware that Wall Street also owns them.
Walkout to include workers from McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Follows similar actions in New York and Chicago BY JOSH EIDELSON SALON, MAY 8, 2013 For the third time in five weeks, non-union fast food workers in a major American city are headed out on strike. Starting […]
Shut Down the Corporations On May 8th Bank of America is holding it’s annual shareholders meeting in Charlotte North Carolina. Last year a thousand of those affected by this behemoth bank’s poor decisions gathered outside in protest. This year it’s spreading nationwide, with a call […]
Between sequestration, with its damaging impact on workers and the economy, and the billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other necessary social programs that President Obama is pushing, it is evident that the economic policies of both major parties are not intended to promote a recovery for working people.
You cannot lift up a nation’s economy while slashing away at its consumers’ pocketbooks. In order to justify their defiance of this elementary law, both Republicans and Democrats start talking the language of “austerity,” that is, the notion that economic policy must be guided by reducing budgetary deficits first and foremost, and that workers exclusively must be made to pay the cost.
Policies associated with austerity include the cutting of public programs, privatizing existing government assets, mass layoffs of public workers and wage freezes for those who remain, union busting in the public sector and the revising of labor laws to further enhance the power of employers at the expense of employees.
Enforcing these policies during a recession prevents a recovery. Economic theory predicts this and history demonstrates it. Why, then, would the politicians promote austerity? Because these policies assure that the 1% will be let off the hook from paying their fair share of taxes that help subsidize the social safety net, and will have vast pools of public capital opened up for their private investment.
Why worry about the overall economy when the real power brokers from the corporations and banks are making out just fine with austerity? The message seems clear: As long as Wall Street is enjoying the “recovery,” no one else gets to. Wall Street has used its vast wealth to lobby politicians for policies that are in its interests. In order for working people to climb out of the recession, they will have to organize in order to create their own power base.
Local Struggles
As already noted, austerity is being enforced on a national scale. Below the radar of news headlines, for the most part, the policies of austerity are spreading on a local level as well with even more devastating immediate impact. Along with this, there has been a growing grassroots opposition to austerity starting locally.
This is most visibly the case in Chicago where Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to sacrifice 54 public schools on the alter of austerity and Obama’s “Race to the Top.” Thirty thousand students from primarily low-income black and Latino neighborhoods will be affected. Rising to confront Mayor Emanuel’s threats has been a grassroots opposition that was built from previous battles linking the Chicago Teachers’ Union’s interests with those of the working class communities at large. This was most evident at a large rally against the school closures on March 27.
In Detroit the movers behind austerity have taken their most politically extreme measures yet, putting the city ahead of the curve for what is likely to develop across the country. Michigan Governor Rick Synder has appointed Kevyn Orr, of Jones Day Law firm, as Detroit’s Emergency Financial Manager. Orr has the power to dismiss elected officials, tear up union contracts, privatize public assets and impose new taxes without a vote. He will use this power to enforce austerity. Though Orr has yet to unveil his plans, there have already been numerous protests and rallies, and the actions are likely to increase.
On the West coast at the end of April, hundreds rallied outside the San Jose City Hall to protest proposed cuts to neighborhood services and Mayor Chuck Reed’s threat to declare a fiscal emergency.
On April 11 in Oregon, a public budget hearing in which the Portland City Council intended to sell $21.5 million in cuts attracted over 400 Portland residents, overwhelming city staff. Many citizens spoke to the need to prevent the cuts and instead raise revenue from corporations rather than handing out taxpayer subsidies to them, an idea that received overwhelming support from attendees.
And at an Oakland City Council budget talk, a packed Chamber booed and jeered a presentation on Oakland’s fiscal future, chanting “Enough is enough!” The City Council is projecting a deficit ranging from $19 million to $26 million. Considering that there has already been a 20 percent reduction in the city’s full-time work force and that the city’s three major non-public safety unions are negotiating new contracts, there was no mood to accept the City Council’s austerity story.
In Newark, Illinois, around 1,000 high school students walked out of class last month to protest deep cuts to the district’s budget. Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson claims the district faces a $57 million deficit. Newark’s high school students, correctly, refuse to accept that they must sacrifice their education in order to fill this hole.
Growing Potential
This list over protests in the last two months is not complete. It does display some patterns, however. It shows how education, public workers and the communities they serve are the primary targets of austerity. That means a lot of people are taking hits.
The list also demonstrates how people become empowered when these constituencies work together in solidarity. Austerity promoters prefer to pit communities and/or unions against each other in a scramble to grab what remains of a shrinking budget pie. The events reported above show that a different reaction is possible — one that will strengthen people’s ability to powerfully confront their local governments.
Finally, these developments show it is necessary to go beyond the budget claims of the city government. Budget deficits are the product of allowing big business tax loopholes, obscenely low tax rates, and subsidies paid for by taxpayers. Those expected to bear the burden of cuts are not responsible for this.
In a time of high unemployment it is necessary to stimulate the economy by creating jobs. This stimulus should be paid for by the 1%.
Those uniting against austerity cuts could also demand what they stand for, that is, a budget that puts jobs, education and neighborhoods first rather than corporate profit. To effectively do so the unions and community groups fighting austerity can work together to build their own budget assembly to counter city governments’ “we are broke” excuses and popularize an alternative.
These local struggles and many more are a confirmation that austerity in the U.S. will be met with a fight. Though they are disconnected in terms of their organizing, they are a response to a national problem. This wave of local grassroots organizing shows the potential exists to galvanize a national movement against austerity.
For a while, it looked like we were scraping the bottom of Earth’s barrel of fossil fuels. Then along came hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling, and now some argue that we might never run out of the stuff, though not everyone agrees. But as […]