US public sector workers have had unheralded wins

"Incredible upsurge" of member mobilization, participation, and militancy fuels ' fightback to austerity agenda.

by Ish Theilheimer, video by Samantha Bayard, transcription by Susan Huebert

[On Feb 6, 2013, Straight Goods News spoke with Paul Booth at the first national CUPE conference on bargaining. Booth was a leader in the 1960s at the beginning of the US student movement as National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society, the largest organization of the emerging youth movement.  In 1965 he directed the first march on Washington, D.C against the War in Vietnam and issued the statement to "build not burn" and organized the first sit-in at the Chase Manhattan Bank exposing it as a "partner in Apartheid".  He joined the labor movement in 1966 as Research Director for the United Packinghouse Workers of America and then joined the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in 1974, working to build Illinois AFSCME (Council 31) and then moving to the International as Organizing Director for 10 years and now as Executive Assistant to President Jerry McEntee.]

Paul Booth:
The attacks on us have been intensified in the last couple of years, but they've been going on for the whole 35 or 40 years of the reactionary conservative ideological assault in the States and the neoliberal assault around the world. So we're experiencing what many other workers are experiencing around the world. It's been particularly acute in the American public services. America has a very energetic right wing that's playing out to the tax-aversion of many of the voters, and they were very successful in the November 2010 elections.

And so they chose to take the mandate that they had achieved politically in those elections to engage in a frontal assault, not just on public services, but on the very rights to bargain collectively that we have long enjoyed in most of the United States. So we were attacked directly and rapidly, and the first lesson that I'm here to share with my colleagues in the north is to be prepared to respond rapidly and to respond broadly and deeply. We would not have survived those onslaughts had we not had an incredible upsurge of member mobilization, participation, and militancy that we have enjoyed, and that is the major way that we have survived over the last two years.

Straight Goods News:
You've survived. Tell me about that, because the story we get in the mainstream media is that labour in the United States — public service, unions are being annihilated, but you say you've survived. Tell me about that story.

Paul Booth:
We have done much better than survive. We've suffered significant defeats. I don't mean to minimize any of the defeats in Wisconsin, where we not only lost our collective bargaining rights, but the whole framework of the collective bargaining system, we lost many of our members have fallen away, where they took substantial cuts in their take-home payover 10 percent for the average public employee in Wisconsin, in Michigan and Indiana where the new Right to Work law has been enacted, and many other places, there have been significant defeats. But next to those defeats have been battles on the same subjects where we've turned back the opposition.

Even where Republicans proclaimed that they had the votes, it turned out that because of the reaction of public pressure — pressure from our members, but also from our members' neighbours, our members' relatives, our members' friends, and the citizens at large — they held off from implementing plans that they had. And then we recently had a national election in the States that went much more favourably for organized labour; the re-election of Barack Obama. It's not a cure to all of the ills we face. It's not even a first line of defence, but it's a setback for the right wing. They know that, and they're a little bit back on their heels. And now we have to take this moment of breathing room to try to start rolling back some of defeats we've suffered, and to try to establish a new round of gains for American workers.

Paul Booth says be prepared to respond rapidly, broadly and deeply to attacks on public sector workers and public services.

Straight Goods News:
You mentioned some victories, which we're probably not aware of. Not many Canadians would be aware of these victories. Tell us about one or two of them if you can, especially if they're good examples of things to learn from.

Paul Booth:
So, let's start with Florida, a very tough jurisdiction for us to work in. Two years ago, the new governor — his name is Rick Scott, a guy who made hundreds of millions of dollars as a financier in the private hospital industry and was convicted of the largest fraud of the American Medicare system — nevertheless, he still walked away with a couple of hundred million dollars. He invested it in getting himself elected governor of Florida. They planned to privatize half of the state prisons in one fell swoop. All of the prisons south of the middle of the state were going to be turned over to one private prison operating company, and they had in the Florida State Senate a ten-vote majority for their party — for the Republican party — and the labour movement found eleven Republican state senators who resisted every pressure that was put onto them and voted to defend the unions. They were called in individually by Jeb Bush.

Jeb Bush is the older brother of the great George Bush that you recall. They were worked over by the governor. He went to their offices. He threatened them, he gave them every kind of blandishment, and they stood with us. They stood with us because their neighbours and the public service workers that they knew — the firefighters and the cops and the social service workers and the librarians — had talked to them and had made it clear that this was a terrible thing and that they stood with the prison workers, and then we were all in a fight to defend our pensions against this legislations. That didn't go so well. We've had a setback on the Florida retirement system. It's a very well-funded system, but it's still one that they wanted to take steps at diminishing. So we have these fights all over the country that are going on. Right now as we're standing here, the House of Representatives in the state of Missouri is having a hearing on Right to Work. We think that we have the means to defeat it in Missouri, but they're going to try very hard to enact it. They're inspired by what happened in Michigan last fall.

Straight Goods News:
You mentioned an upsurge from the rank and file in resistance to the privatization and austerity agenda.  Tell me about that upsurge. We're not hearing that either in the news.

Paul Booth:
Well, think back two years.  Think back two years to Wisconsin. Think back to Feb 11, 2011, which is two years ago this coming Monday, when the governor introduced the bill to terminate public employee collective bargaining. His plan was to have it enacted into law within five days. And the graduate teaching assistants from the University of Wisconsin marched up State Street and walked into the state capitol and took over the building. And the next day the high school students from the four Madison-area high schools walked out of class, marched downtown, and joined them. And they stayed overnight. And then the workers from our membership, public school teachers, construction workers, manufacturing workers, workers from every walk of life, every part of the labour movement joined them and stayed in the state capitol, occupied the building. The police department unions were there with us, the firefighters were there with us, and for 28 days, we prevented the legislature — the majority prepared to vote us out of business — from taking the action that they ultimately did. They ultimately did it in a way that was actually illegal, but we had political courts in the States, so they got upheld by a four to three vote at the state supreme court even though they did it without proper notice, open meetings, etc.

But that inspired American workers to fight back, and continues to inspire them. And even though we have suffered additional setbacks we tried to remove that governor from office, and we came up short. But actually, 47 percent of the voters in Wisconsin voted for regime change. It was very bold, what we tried to do. It was a bridge too far, but we are still in the fight. And that happened because tens of thousands of our members who had been perhaps passive about their union — loyal, but passive about their union — realized that the only way that their standard of living and their organization, the things that they enjoyed and took for granted, was going to be preserved was that they took matters into their own hands. "We have to do this ourselves," they realized. And so they did it.

They were there. They went out in the cold of the winter, not quite as cold as you get up here, but it was pretty cold, and circulated petitions and stood on street corners and talked to their neighbours and went to their churches, and talked to their friends and relatives and persuaded many of their fellow citizens that what was being done was wrong and was going to be harmful to everybody, not just to the public employee unions. And we will ultimately win that fight in Wisconsin. We will be in that battle for one day longer than the right-wingers are going to be in it, because that's going to be the day on which we prevail.

Straight Goods News:
So again, to summarize, what's the lesson for Canadian workers facing this nation's onslaught?

Paul Booth:
Well, number one: Be prepared for a serious escalation of the challenge to the things that you enjoy. The things that you maybe take for granted, don't take them for granted any more. Be prepared to fight to defend them. Number two is that it's up to you. It's up to you as individuals collectively to mobilize. Mobilizing means not just marching. It means talking about the subjects to your neighbours who are not in unions, perhaps, to your friends, even your relatives, who don't necessarily understand how important it is for the common good of Canada, for the common good of all of our countries for there to be a strong and powerful labour movement. And be prepared to explain that and get a voice, your own voice. It's your own voice that can move mountains. And then reach out. Have your organizations, your trade unions reach out to every possible colleague and ally, not just those in the same political party, but in every political party, every persuasion. The good of our society is at stake, of all our societies is at stake. The standard of living we've attained is at risk, and the first line of defence is a strong labour movement.

© Copyright 2013 Ish Theilheimer, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca