(The Battle of Blair Mountain, West Virginia, in 1921, one of the first major confrontations of the 20th century between Southern workers and company owners)
It’s time for another Labor
South roundup, and this time we see union membership growing in the South
despite two big losses in 2017, another case before the U.S. Supreme Court to
undermine public employee unions, the bankruptcy of a crusading newspaper in West
Virginia, and a fight by the Communications Workers of America for call center
employees in Mississippi and beyond.
Dixie holds its own on
the labor front despite two major hits in 2017
Facing South, the
online magazine of the North Carolina-based Institute for Southern Studies,
reports that union membership in the South rose by 130,000 to 2.3 million
workers in 2017, increasing the percentage of workers in unions from 4.9
percent to 5 percent. While still less than half the 10.7 percent national
rate, the South is at least moving forward rather than backward like membership
in other parts of the country.
The numbers above don’t include the more than half a million
Southern workers who enjoy the benefits of a unionized workplace but haven’t
joined the union thanks to the so-called “right to work” laws in place across
the region.
The region suffered two major setbacks in 2017: the lopsided
vote against unionization at Boeing’s North Charleston, South Carolina, plant in
February—nearly three-fourths of voting workers cast their ballots against the
union; and the August vote against unionization that took place at Nissan’s
plant in Canton, Mississippi. In both cases, however, state political and
business leaders joined in a phalanx of opposition, spreading fear and
intimidation via personal meetings with workers and anti-union ads on
television.
“While these stinging defeats garnered national and
international attention—and new speculation about the fate of labor in the
South—the latest government data shows unions in the South were able to
maintain their numbers, in part due to support from younger workers,” Facing South’s Chris Kromm wrote in his
article.
Kromm cites a study that shows 76 percent of the union
membership gains in 2017 came from workers under the age of 35. A good sign for the future!
Another effort to
weaken and even destroy public employee unions
The U.S. Supreme Court later this month will hear the case
of Janus v. American Federation of State,
County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, a blatant effort by the state
of Illinois to impose a so-called “right to work” rule on public employees,
challenging unions’ right to collect dues from nonmembers for collective
bargaining.
A similar effort was made two years ago in the Friedrichs. v. California Teachers
Association case. The death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia before a
ruling left the high court with a 4-4 tie on that case.
The Catholic Bishops of the United States issued an amicus
brief last month supporting the AFSCME. Catholic bishops “have long and
consistently supported the right of workers to organize for purposes of
collective bargaining,” the group’s brief says. “Because this right is
substantially weakened by so-called `right-to-work’ laws, many bishops—in their
dioceses, through their state conferences, and through their national
conference—have opposed or cast doubt on such laws, and no U.S. bishop has
expressed support for them.”
The legendary labor priest, Monsignor George Higgins, once
had this to say about those who claim “freedom of speech” as a justification
for avoiding paying union dues: such a claim is “too absolute and extreme … the
requirement of financial support for the union (is) a legitimate limitation on
such a broad freedom.”
Also joining the fight for the union is the American
Association of University Professors. “Public employees and supporters of
public services and higher education from coast to coast will join hands in
solidarity actions against the attacks on working people,” AAUP General Counsel
Risa Lieberwitz and Senior Staff Counsel Aaron Nisenson said in a statement.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case February 26
with a decision expected by the end of the Court’s term in June.
A crusading West
Virginia newspaper files for bankruptcy
I’ve long been a distant admirer of the Charleston Gazette in Charleston, West Virginia, and particularly
its reporter, Ken Ward Jr., who covers the coal industry.
Eight months after winning a Pulitzer for its hard-hitting
reportage, the newspaper has filed for bankruptcy. Declining circulation and a
costly, federally challenged purchase of a competing newspaper in the city were
factors leading to the filing.
A sale by the owning Chilton family to a buyer could extend
the life of the paper, but many worry whether it will lose the cutting edge
that allowed it to expose “corruption, greed and incompetence” for decades, New York Times writer Niraj Chokshi
wrote recently.
In 2011, the newspaper called for the federal government to
restore the designation of Blair Mountain in West Virginia as a historic site
to protect it from those wanting to strip mine it. Blair Mountain was the site
of a bloody confrontation between striking miners and machine gun-wielding
thugs and deputies in 1921, an event that became in the words of a Charleston Gazette editorial “America’s
biggest armed insurrection since the Civil War.”
The site got the federal designation in 2009 but then lost
that designation in a delisting in 2011. A federal judge then in 2016 ruled
against the delisting. The U.S. Department of the Interior appealed that ruling
but later dropped its appeal.
In September 2002, reporter Ward put the lie to President
Bush’s pat on the back to the “Quecreek Nine” after their rescue from a
Pennsylvania coal mine. “His administration has done all it can to dismantle
the safeguards meant to prevent coal miners from dying on the job,” Ward wrote
in the magazine In These Times.
“Since taking office in January 2001, Bush has proposed mine safety budget
cuts, halted regulatory improvements and reduced enforcement efforts.”
CWA challenges General
Dynamics’ treatment of its call workers in Mississippi and elsewhere
The Communications Workers of America wants the Wage and
House Division of the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate alleged wage
violations by General Dynamics Information Technology Inc.
The union says the company pays its call agents “at a lower
prevailing wage than their job duties merit.” The workers assist callers on enrollment
in and questions about Medicare, Medicaid and other government services.
Approximately 2,000 workers at the call center in
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, could see their wages rise from $3,600 to nearly $6,600
annually if the federal government required the company to classify and pay
them properly, the union says. The company challenges these claims and even
CWA’s right to make them since the workers aren’t members of the union.
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