The Forum is proud to run once again a dispatch from the fields of working class organizing. This is part two in a series of articles written by Joseph “Sonny” Costa, an organizer with the Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 in St. Louis, Missouri. On January 23 Sonny described the organizing necessary to get the repeal of Right To Work (RTW) on the ballot in Missouri. Now he profiles the smashing victory achieved on August 7th. Jeff Stansbury covered the first Missouri defeat of RTW for the UAW magazine, “Solidarity” in 1978. Sonny remembers standing with his father at anti RTW rallies 40 years ago as a young boy.

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“We knocked on doors, over 800,000 of them.”

August 7^th 2018, 10:05pm there was no other place I would have rather been than Sports Café surrounded by my family, friends and my brothers and sisters of the Heat and Frost Insulators Local #1 in St. Louis. The culmination of nineteen months of work had paid off in the overwhelming defeat of Proposition A., Missouri’s vote on “Right to Work”. The final numbers were staggering even for those of us who had spent the majority of that time on the front lines of this battle. 937,241 No votes to 452,075 Yes votes. A landslide by any definition. At 10:05pm I finally got the chance to tell everyone that this fight was over, and that we had won. It was a moment I had been thinking about for months. Not one time during those months had I imagined telling that room that we had lost. In my heart I knew long before that moment that we were going to win. I knew that the effort our small local had put into this fight couldn’t be matched by the opposition. I knew in my soul that they could not match our passion to protect the working men and women of Missouri. My brothers and sisters had put their hearts and souls into this fight, and this was our defining moment for the new labor movement. This was the moment we had all worked for, and the feeling of pride in that room was electrifying. I had a friend ask a few days later if it had sunk in yet. I told him that it had sunk in the moment the room broke into a celebration. At that same moment it felt as though a hundred pounds had just been lifted off of my back.

Since March of 2017 the Business Manager of my Local had tasked me with handling our part of this fight. It has taken a lot to get to this point, and I couldn’t be more proud of my brothers and sisters for the time and effort they put into defeating Prop A. I often read peoples comments about how the labor movement is dying. From what I’ve seen the new labor movement is alive, well and just getting started. I can’t speak for other locals in St. Louis but Local #1 shined like I’ve never seen before. The goal that was put out for each local was 1% volunteer and shift participation. Local #1 finished with an unbelievable 2620% participation rate. I was told by the people that ran the campaign that “We were like ants. We were everywhere and showed up for everything”. This is what the labor movement is all about. To be a part of what was accomplished is an absolute honor and something that will always stay with me.

How were we able to pull this off? We did what labor does, we worked. Our leaders laid out a plan, and those of us on the front lines executed that plan flawlessly. Our strategy was one that was aggressive, tireless and unrelenting. We hit the streets and educated the voters of Missouri on what “Right to Work” truly means and what it is meant to do. We knocked on doors, over 800,000 of them. We made over 1,000,000 phone calls. We talked to our family, friends and neighbors. We talked to complete strangers about how every working person in Missouri would lose over 10% of their annual income. We talked to them about how the wealthiest 1% of the country wants to destroy the last of unions. Why? Because we are the only thing stopping them from having complete control of the work force in the United States. Because Unions give the working people the wages and benefits necessary to provide a comfortable life for their families. Unions allow workers the freedom to speak up and be heard when they’re being taken advantage of. It gives people the power to fix things that are broken in the work place. We explained how union wages set the standard of pay. One of my favorite conversations was with a retired gentleman who told me there was no way he was going to vote for Right to Work. He explained to me that he was never in a union. But because of what the union offered, the company he worked for had to be competitive in order to keep the good workers they had.

“The day of the 7^th began early. We were working polls starting at 6 AM. The door knocking and phone calls lasted all day.”

Our whole strategy revolved around making sure that our message got out first and repeatedly. We wanted to talk to people face to face to answer any questions or concerns’ they had. What I learned during this process was, its effective. Often when we knocked on a door, after they told us that we had their vote they would ask for yard signs or bumper stickers. But the most gratifying feelings came when people thanked us for being out there fighting to stop the attacks on working people.

The week leading up to the election the campaign shifted into overdrive. This was the Get Out The Vote (GOTV) portion of the campaign and the most aggressive part yet. The GOTV was centered on talking to people who we had already identified as voting with us and reminding them that the vote was one week away. Several people told us that this was the most aggressive campaign they could remember. To that we answered: it’s because of how important it was.

The day of the 7^th began early. We were working polls starting at 6 AM. The door knocking and phone calls lasted all day. While working the polls it began to sink in that things looked like they were going in our favor. We were guessing that close to 7 out of 10 people were telling us that the only reason to go to the polls was to vote NO on Prop A. We were hearing about record numbers coming out to vote in a mid-term, primary election. That was good news for us. We figured higher numbers were in our favor.

One of the last moves of Missouri’s GOP dominated legislative session was to move the vote on Prop A from the November mid-term ballot to the Primary ballot in August. This move they said was necessary because businesses were waiting to see how this vote was going to turn out. The reasons for this was actually because they thought the number of voters would be lower and they didn’t think we would show up again in November to vote them out of office. The reports were close to 50% of registered voters came out on August 7^th. The highest numbers in a primary in years.

Polls closed at 7:00pm. We made our way to the watch party and began watching the early returns. That’s when we realized that this outcome was never in doubt. The numbers were never closer than 20 points. At 10:05 it was over and we could finally celebrate in earnest.

Earlier I said that what we accomplished in Missouri set in immediately. What did not set in until the following day was how people from all over the country were paying attention. I was flooded by phone calls, e-mails and text messages from all my brothers and sisters from other locals. All of them congratulating us on what we had achieved. We were told from the start that the eyes of the labor movement were upon us, and we did our best to make the labor movement proud.

Moving forward I don’t know where we go or how to capitalize on our success here. More emphasis on organizing? More time and effort spent on educating people on what true unionism means? How can we use this to start winning elections again? People smarter than me will have to come up with these ideas. But for starters I would suggest that legislators stop being afraid to say they support organized labor. Remind people that Union is only a bad word when the 1% hear it. Get our message out to working people that we have a lot to offer. Start organizing more aggressively.

Hopefully the tide is starting to turn in our direction. Hopefully we’ve proved that hard work, determination and cooperation are how these battles are won. This is how my mother, father and organized labor beat “Right to Work” in 1978 in Missouri and this how we beat it again in 2018.

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