Biden’s PATCO Moment?
By Rand Wilson and Mark Dudzic
July 7th Update:
Today, The Labor Campaign joins MNA nurses from the St. Vincent Hospital Picket line, CWA-AFA President Sara Nelson, and a national coalition of activists to demand accountability from Tenet and support nurses’ strike for safer patient care during a 1pm ET LIVE STREAM in front of Tent Corporate Headquarters in Dallas, TX.
The demonstration in front of Tenet HQ marks the 122nd day on strike for St. Vincent nurses, making it the second longest nurses strike in Massachusetts history and the longest nurses strike nationally in more than a decade. As of that date, Tenet had spent an estimated $75 million to prolong the strike — all to avoid being held accountable for providing safer patient care.
This strike matters for all workers. Tenet has begun to permanently replace the striking nurses. This action, by a notorious healthcare profiteer has transformed a hard fought strike battle into a red line issue for the entire labor movement. It evokes the rampage of union busting that followed the Reagan Administration’s mass firing of striking air traffic controllers in the notorious PATCO strike of 1981.
WAYS TO SUPPORT
Sign and Share. Join the Labor Campaign, MNA, NUHW, and many others in calling for an investigation into Tenet and other large hospital systems. Sending a letter to your congressional delegation asking them to support an investigation is easy! Simply follow this link and add your name.
Tenet has made it very clear that they prioritize profits of patients and staff. There is ample evidence to suggest that Tenet Healthcare used COVID-relief funds to improperly expand its business, enrich its executives and shareholders, and prioritize the company’s bottom line over patients and caregivers.
Join us in calling for an investigation, today!
Join today’s demonstration– virtually. Nurses are bringing a giant, 16-foot-long petition signed by more than 700 striking nurses and will attempt to deliver the petition to Tenet’s CEO Ron Rittenmeyer. They will also call out Tenet for its blatant misuse of more than $2.6 billion in taxpayer-supported pandemic funding from the CARES Act stimulus package – funding that was supposed to be used by hospitals to provide PPE, staffing and other resources to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, yet in Tenet’s hands was used to fund corporate expansion, pay down debt, and buy back stock for executives. Join via live stream at 1:00pm ET, today!
Donate to Strike Fund. Your donations go to helping support St. Vincent’s nurses.
- Contribute with: PayPal| Venmo
- Checks can be made payable to MNA St Vincent Nurses Strike Fund and mailed to:
MNA Nurses Strike Fund
Massachusetts Nurses Association
340 Turnpike St
Canton, MA 02021
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Speaking on the recent National Solidarity Call in support of striking nurses at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, Our Revolution leader Joseph Geevarghese characterized the situation as “Biden’s PATCO Moment.” The call was convened by the Labor Campaign for Single Payer to help mobilize national support for the 800 nurses at the Tenet Healthcare-owned hospital who are now engaged in the longest nurses strike nationally in over a decade. Tenet has spent more than $75 million to date to prolong the strike. A fraction of those funds could have easily met the nurses demands for the staffing improvements that are the sole issue driving the strike.
Now Tenet is threatening to permanently replace the striking nurses who are represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA). This action, by a notorious healthcare profiteer (Tenet leveraged federal bailout funds intended to provide urgent relief to employees and patients to triple its profits at the height of the pandemic last summer), has transformed a hard fought strike battle into a red line issue for the entire labor movement.
For those of us old enough to remember, it evokes the rampage of union busting that followed the Reagan Administration’s mass firing of striking air traffic controllers in the notorious PATCO strike of 1981.
Busting the air traffic controllers’ union sent a signal to employers everywhere that it was acceptable for management to break strikes and bust unions. In quick order, striking workers from copper miners in Arizona to newspaper workers in Detroit found themselves permanently replaced. Even more significantly, it changed the balance of power in labor/management relations as labor’s most powerful weapon was neutralized. This ushered in a devastating period of concessionary bargaining whose consequences are still being felt today.
Reagan’s decision to fire the striking PATCO members was not some isolated act of pique by an outraged president. In fact, his administration jumped at the opportunity to give teeth to its explicit policy to weaken and undermine the considerable power of the U.S. labor movement. And it was very successful.
The U.S. labor movement was slow to respond to this provocation. Both of us can remember standing on the National Mall on Solidarity Day in 1981 with half a million other union workers. It had taken the AFL-CIO more than six weeks after the initial firings to call the rally and they chose to hold it on a Saturday when Washington was shut down tight for the weekend. As we dozed in the sun listening to endless speeches, we could see the planes taking off and landing unimpeded just across the Potomac at National Airport. What should have been a forceful exhibition of labor power had been turned into a demonstration of our impotence. Like many others who were there that day, we vowed to never let another PATCO moment go unchallenged.
Tenet is a key player in a major strategic sector of the economy. If it is able to make the threat of permanent replacement an acceptable management tool in healthcare bargaining, it will weaken the entire labor movement for decades to come.
That’s why the Labor Campaign for Single Payer and other labor groups are stepping up to support the nurses and their union. They will be joining the MNA at a rally on July 7 in front of Tenet Headquarters in Dallas. They are also circulating a petition urging members of Congress to join Reps. Katie Porter (D., CA) and Rosa DeLaura (D., CT) in requesting an investigation into the use of taxpayer-financed COVID relief funds by Tenet and other large hospital systems.
This strike could be a watershed moment for the Medicare for All movement by exposing the corrupt and anti-worker underpinnings of our for-profit healthcare system. “The simple fact is that, if we had Medicare for All, we wouldn’t even be in this fight,” said LCSP National Coordinator Rhiannon Duryea. “Nurse-to-patient ratios would be set by law, ensuring safe and effective staffing ratios across the country that protect nurses, patients, and the community. Hospitals would not be able to exploit nurses and patients to line shareholder pockets.”
This strike could also be a watershed moment for the Biden administration. Ronald Reagan reversed a 40-year policy to promote the right of workers to organize and to bargain collectively. Before Reagan, corporations feared using the permanent replacement option because the federal government had made it clear that it would not tolerate such brutal behavior in the course of labor relations. After Reagan, it was open season on workers and their unions. Inequality skyrocketed as wealth was massively redistributed upward.
President Biden, to his credit, has vowed to reverse these trends. He has made a number of statements explicitly supporting worker rights and has appointed a number of pro-union advocates to key policy positions.
This is his chance to send a message to Tenet and corporate America that there’s a new sheriff in town. We need to challenge the Biden administration to put its money where its mouth is and to intervene forcefully in this conflict. The president must make it clear that permanently replacing lawful strikers is contrary to the policy of the U.S. government.
Tenet is not alone in trying to pull the rug out from under an upsurge in labor militancy. There are a number of current and pending labor battles where management is engaging in overt union busting, including months-long strikes by coal miners in Alabama and steelworkers employed by Allegheny Industries as well as a nasty lockout of refinery workers at a giant Exxon/Mobil facility in Beaumont, Texas.
You can be sure that employers everywhere are watching how the Biden Administration reacts to these crises. As Our Revolution’s Geevarghese told the participants on the Solidarity Call, “This strike creates the opportunity for President Biden to undo what President Reagan did.” It’s an opportunity that should not be squandered.
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2022, 2024 and Beyond, We best be talking to each other. And Organizing
By Robert Gumpert
This past week the Supreme Court ruled that suppressing voters by who they are is constitutional, as long as you don’t openly say that is what you are doing.
In 2022 and beyond it is more important than ever we find ways to bridge the gaps that seem to separate us by where we live and who we are.
For the last 4 weeks Anthony Flaccavento, Future Generations University, Liken Knowledge and Appalachian Voices have held the weekly webinar “Bridging the Rural Uban Divide”. While the series is now complete you can still watch and learn how to take part in further developments on the Forum.
You can get the guidebook to the series, “The Urban-Rural Divide: A Guidebook To Understanding The Problem And Forging Solutions”with links to resources, ideas and organizations here.
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My Job as an Ecart Shopper
By Patrick Cummings
Editor’s Note: From time to time the Stansbury Forum invites students to write about their experiences. The following piece is about one recent graduate’s experience of “service work”.
During the winter of the Covid pandemic, after graduating with a degree in Math, I got a job at a “Chain Store” as an Ecart shopper within one day of searching. At the time, I was just glad that I had gotten a job so expediently, but perhaps I should’ve been more careful. The experience doing the job was completely different from what I had expected.
To be a “Chain Store” Ecart shopper meant that it was my job to “do other people’s shopping” for them. Orders were assembled from the previous day’s requests, including a complete and thorough listing of the desired items sorted by aisle or department, and grouped chronologically according to the customer’s desired pick-up time. I was to work my way through the store searching for items on the customer’s list, using a laser scanner to verify and mark off items as I found them, and then compile them all together into a cart. Once the items were collected, I had to bag them into categories of food type, such as all the frozen items had to be kept together, the merely cold ones were separated from that, while select meats get their own plastic bag, and wine bottles either get a nifty handbag or cardboard container, and so on. All refrigerated items were stored in a cooler or freezer to match their storage requirements, and all the remaining bagged items were left in the cart.
Every day, starting early in the morning and working into overtime hours at night (very commonly, we were asked to stay late; there was always more work than we could do in a day), me and my coworkers shopped.
Despite being labeled as a “low-skilled” job, I did not find anything low-skill about my task. Shopping very different orders in an entire grocery store, with thousands and thousands of different products seemingly scattered at random throughout the store, requires memorizing tons of minutiae. I never got a clear answer why the flat tortilla shells were only located on one particular aisle cap, or why the frozen pasta was next to fruit drinks. The Deli & Meat department was a mess, with food items not only in glass cabinets but frozen bins as well. And possessing a profound knowledge of different food products and their substitutes was crucial. Whenever an item was out-of-stock, it was my responsibility to find a close substitute for it to offer to the customer instead. But not only does that require having detailed knowledge of the former food item and substitute products out on the market, but it also requires knowing where the substitutes are in the store, if they were there at all. I remember clearly the day when a boss of mine, as a demonstration, helped me find a substitute cheese… by marching me to the opposite side of the store. I couldn’t help but think to myself: How could I ever find this substitute on my own? How am I supposed to memorize not only where items were, but the entire store catalog, and which items were not currently available? Most of my coworkers knew these things from years of practice, but I was asked to perform at their level now.
Another challenge of the job was the time-management aspect. Every order was supposed to be shopped in a half hour or less, and it didn’t matter how large or small a particular order was. Now technically, most people didn’t meet this ridiculous standard, and the pros took around 45-60 minutes for an order, but I almost always was running late. For me, this meant that I was constantly stressed out about finding an item, verifying it was the right one by bar code, and taking as many copies of the item asked for as fast as I could, but commonly it would take me at least 5-10 minutes to find a certain item (or just to affirm that it, in fact, was sold out), and then either move on or spend another 10-15 min frantically looking for a substitute for an item I had little understanding of. I soon had to resort to just not looking for substitutes at all, because it was simply too time-expensive to do so, but when my bosses started noticing my trend they started giving me smaller orders. Now, to be completely honest, this was an incredibly generous and kind move on their part. They had every reason and right to be mad, for I wasn’t living up to expectations, but instead they tried to work with me, and they said I would be tested here and there till my skills improve. Sadly, though, this warning served more to discourage me, because it meant more and more of my fellow employees would start to realize I wasn’t doing as well as them, and also, I didn’t want to get “special treatment” just because I wasn’t as skilled. I didn’t think I deserved it, for one thing, but I also anticipated people might start babying me, or grow resentful at my seemingly unfair treatment, or might start to expect me to make mistakes, and jump to assuming I did something wrong if some other mishap happened. People started double-checking my orders when I arrived, interrogating me about any missing items, double-checking that what I reported was true, and so on.
Least of all did I expect the customers to be an adverse aspect of my experience. While trying to maneuver my way through the store, I had to circumvent and give courtesy to shoppers along the way, and not all of them were graceful. Everyone always expected me to know where every item was. There was one male shopper, for example, who asked me where he could find some obscure item, and once I admitted sadly that I didn’t know where it was, he scoffed at me and walked away. I soon learned to wait for customers to greet me rather than me greet them, as well, because early on I gave customers a warm welcome as they entered the store, saying “Hello! Welcome to “Chain Store”!”, but sometimes they coldly avoided contact and rushed off. Worst yet were the times when we had a mad customer outside waiting for their Ecart order. We delivered the orders, usually having been shopped by ourselves personally, to the very recipient customers in the parking lot. Every once in a while, my coworkers and I would run late on a delivery, and the customers would get pissed off, yelling at any of us they came in contact with until their order arrived. It was soon very difficult for me to feel like I had any respect or dignity as a “Chain Store” employee and couldn’t feel like my work was appreciated or even worthwhile.
Finally, the day arrived when my boss yelled at me in the middle of the store completely unexpectedly. I had to piece this together after the fact, but supposedly, a coworker of mine reported that she had asked me to stay late to help with some final orders the night prior, but I left at the end of my shift. I sure didn’t remember anyone asking me to stay, so when my boss asked me about it, I started to stutter that I didn’t recall her ever asking me, but my boss wasn’t in the mood for excuses and flatly shouted, “If we ask you to stay late, you stay, alright?!” That made it pretty clear how they felt about overtime: it wasn’t requested, it was mandatory. Once this happened, I had had the last straw. So many aspects of the job were not going well, and now I’m getting yelled at because I’m an easy target to blame. I finished out the week and quit.
I can keep going with many other aspects of the job that were difficult, such as a previous elbow injury acting up and causing me severe pain while trying to work, but I’ll try to wrap up with this last important point. One of the things I quickly learned with this job is the monotony and repetitiveness of its task. It’s a job that’s fast paced and very object oriented, and thus there’s not much space of time or memory to let your mind wander. In short, I soon realized that I couldn’t think about math questions or philosophy—topics dear to my heart—in the quiet of my mind while doing this job. The lack of focus slowed my pace and caused me to forget important details of the grocery item I was shopping for. For the first time ever I experienced what it’s like to be an automaton, a thoughtless and mindless cow, whose sole focus and capacity for attention was the very task in front of them, one moment to the next. There was no room for reflection, for active inquiry or questioning, or even remembering. This was especially difficult for me given my natural proclivity to thought. I could tell that as weeks became months, it started to feel more difficult to think like a philosopher or a mathematician, as I did only a few months earlier, even after my shift was over. Those parts of my mind and brain were atrophying very quickly from a lack of use, and that made it harder to even consider them outside of work. This helped me see how hard it could be to study math or philosophy on the side while holding a job like that, for it’s like asking a person to be a robot for 8 hours of the day and a thinking human during the off hours. You just can’t be both simultaneously.
Several months since quitting, I look back on the job as a valuable insight into the lives many people are forced to lead in the US. I have heard it said that most people spend their lives reliving the same year over and over again, my job made me see that as it was even more repetitive than that; it was the same day repeated over and over. Nothing changed about this job – no beautiful glimpses of creativity or novelty could be found. When I look back on my experience I ask myself, what sort of worker I would have needed to have been to be especially good at it. It would have been very helpful if I had been more mindless and thoughtless, less prone to the distractions of reflection and self-conscious contemplation, as these meta-level thoughts slowed down my dizzying manual labor. It also would have been good if I didn’t have any pride or dignity, as then I wouldn’t have recognized the indignation of this job or the way my customers treated me. Furthermore, we might as well rule out all emotional connection with my work, including the ideas of loving your job or yearning to feel like my efforts were making a genuine difference toward the good of society, all of these aspirations would’ve been thwarted.
But is this really the kind of people society wants to cultivate or needs? Thoughtless, servile, nihilistic, and self-erasing? No wonder the turnover is so high in this area of employment. No human being wants to be like that.
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Overcoming the Divide – Part 3
By Robert Gumpert
Adam Serwer wrote today in his NYT opinion piece, “The Cruel Logic of the G.O.P.” there are “no Democratic proposals to disenfranchise Republicans”, not because Democrats are nicer but because “parties reliant on diverse coalitions to wield power will seek to win votes rather than suppress them.”
Mr Serwer points out that the Republican brand of White identity politics is not new. Starting in the 30’s those same politics were the stock and trade of the Democratic Party, the party was remade by “a coalition of labor unions, Northern Black voters and urban liberals.”
To have such a coalition now we must bridge the urban – rural divide. To that end Future Generations University, Liken Knowledge and Appalachian Voices has sponsored a webinar series “The Rural-Urban Divide: How We Got into This Mess, How We’ll Get out”, hosted by Anthony Flaccavento, Virginia famer, activist, and occasional writer for the Stansbury Forum, with a series of guest speakers.
You can listen/watch the first 3 sessions on the Forum (1, 2, 3rd is below) and register here for the fourth and final session on strategies for overcoming the divide.
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The 3rd session begins the discussion on solutions for bridging the gap between rural and urban communities. Special guest speaker: Ericka Etelson, author of “BEYOND CONTEMPT – HOW LIBERALS CAN COMMUNICATE ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE”.
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Can rural and urban communities be united? A Beginning
By Robert Gumpert
“Most of the mines, most of the coal and mineral rights, in Harlan Kentucky and all of East Kentucky, is owned by outside interests, big oil and utility companies. I’ve been to several foreign lands, but this is, I believe, the first colony in North America that I’ve ever visited. They come in here, they take everything out, they don’t put anything back in. They don’t pay their fair share of taxes. The roads they haul the coal over are in real bad shape because of the overloaded coal trucks. They own the company houses. They own the stores that people trade in. They own the towns they live in. Their water supply is furnished by the company. Their electrical supply is furnished by the company. These people are completely dominated and dependent on the whims of the coal operators.” Huston Elmore, UMWA head of the organizing drive at the Brookside and Highsplint coal mines during the 1973-1974 strike.
In 2021 can rural and urban communities say things are that different? The corporate names have changed, but the business is the same, extraction, of minerals, goods, and workers’ wealth and health.
The Stansbury Forum is posting the latest sessions of the Rural-Urban Divide Webinar Series, last Tuesday’s 2nd talk is below.
After watching find out how to ask questions stemming from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd sessions here
The 3rd session will begin the discussion on solutions for bridging the gap between rural and urban communities. Special guest speaker: Ericka Etelson, author of “BEYOND CONTEMPT – HOW LIBERALS CAN COMMUNICATE ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE”.
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Volvo Workers Back on Strike at Virginia Trucks Plant
By Ben Solidaridad
Some 2,900 auto workers at the Volvo trucks plant in Dublin, Virginia are once again on strike after walking off the job for nearly two weeks in April, returning to work, and then voting down by wide margins two contracts negotiated by their union, the United Auto Workers (UAW). The current struggle at Volvo has been ongoing since February, when contract negotiations between the company and union began. Throughout this entire period, workers have maintained their solidarity and steadfast determination to win a better deal from the bosses and beat back years of concessions from previous contracts, including a much-hated two-tier wage structure in place at the plant.
Compared to the 13-day strike in April, this time around management has adopted a harder line against the strike. The bosses have cut off workers’ healthcare and are actively encouraging workers to cross the picket line. In addition, the company has carried out a “survey” of property lines around the plant and marked these lines in front of the facility. The point of this is to push the striking workers closer to the road and undermine the workers’ ability to stage an effective picket line. In the process, this has also made the picket line more dangerous for strikers. Beyond that, Virginia State Police have pressured and threatened the union to stop workers from blocking scabs from entering the plant. A Tuesday post on the UAW Local 2069 Facebook page notes that, “The State Police has informed us to not block the entrances of the plant. We do not want to see anyone get in trouble and we want law enforcement to stay neutral in this process. Do not cross the picket line. Many places are hiring. Take care of your union brothers and sisters on the line and make sure they do not overheat.”
In response to this, it must be said that law enforcement is never neutral when workers enter into struggle. The police are on the side of the bosses, and their efforts to facilitate scabbing at the Volvo plant are just the latest example in a long history of strikebreaking and other attacks on workers.
As it is, Volvo workers are now once again in the middle of a high-stakes struggle with a multi-billion-dollar company. The entire labor movement and the socialist movement have an obligation to support these workers and shine a light on their vitally important fight, which has ramifications for the entire class struggle.
On Sunday, June 6, the workers voted for the second time in less than a month to reject a tentative agreement negotiated by the company and the International UAW by a margin of 91 percent for salary language and 90 percent for common language. This surpassed the previous rejection of a tentative agreement on May 16, when workers turned down that contract’s salary language by 83 percent.
Following the most recent contract rejection, UAW Secretary-Treasurer and director of the union’s Heavy Duty truck department, Ray Curry, sent a public letter to Volvo management on Monday declaring that the union would walk off the job later that day.
The strike targets a critical point in Volvo’s supply chain, with the April walkoff shutting down production at what is Volvo’s only truck production facility in all of North America at a time of booming demand for Volvo trucks and commercial vehicles more generally. The initial strike at Volvo ended on April 30 when UAW officials announced that the union had reached a new tentative agreement with the company and that workers would return to work the following week. As reported in last month’s edition of On the Picket Line, this arrangement was made despite the fact that striking workers had not been allowed to see or discuss, let alone vote upon, the tentative agreement negotiated on their behalf.
As it turned out, the initial tentative agreement that followed April’s strike was filled with what many workers felt were unacceptable concessions and failed to address the core grievances that led workers to strike in the first place. Notably, the problematic content of the contract was only brought to light as a result of the organized efforts of rank-and-file members. The proposed contract was not put online, but members obtained copies of the agreement from the union hall and circulated the proposal to their coworkers in the plant, according to a report from Labor Notes.
In terms of the content of the tentative agreement, workers were angered to learn that the deal failed to abolish the hated two-tier wage system in place at the plant. In addition, the contract included significant increases to out-of-pocket health care costs for workers. Language in the contract also enabled union officials to agree to a so-called Alternative Work Schedule, including “four 10-hour days, alternative shift operations, or other alternative schedules based on the needs of business.” This proposed scheme may abolish time-and-a-half pay for work after eight hours. Notably, such alternative schedules – which have already been implemented at many Big 3 auto plants across the country – are beneficial to management as they allow companies to boost productivity and cut wage costs by paying less in overtime.
According to a worker interviewed by Labor Notes, the successful “no” vote was largely organized through word of mouth and face-to-face discussions by workers. In addition, online discussions and campaigning in a private Facebook group with some 1,900 members also factored into the contract rejection.
Following the initial “no” vote, the next development in the contract struggle came just four days later when, on May 20, the UAW announced that it had arrived at a new tentative agreement with the company. In the press release published by the union international, Ray Curry heralded the new deal and declared that, “the agreement addresses [the] concerns” of rank-and-file members that voted down the previous contract. Many rank-and-file members, in contrast, argued that the new contract did not meaningfully improve on the previous deal. This point was made clear in a rank-and-file petition released the same day as the announcement of the new tentative agreement. The petition – which was circulated as a flyer, posted online, and subsequently reported on in a news segment by the local Fox affiliate, WFXR – denounced the proposed agreement as “almost identical to the previous agreement.” The petition also called for the recall and replacement of union officials.
The resounding contract rejection on June 6 made it clear that workers are not willing to give up their struggle and accept the company’s terms for a new contract. Thus, by their determination, members have pressured their union to continue the fight. This success was made possible by a vigorous rank-and-file movement within the union that, at times, has come to take on the character of a struggle for union democracy. This dynamic will undoubtedly persist as the union fights the company on the picket line.
Notably, workers’ eagerness to fight the company is connected to the fortuitous economic situation at Volvo right now. While Volvo, like all multinational auto companies, has been impacted by the global shortage of semiconductor chips used as component parts at assembly plants, production demand for new heavy duty trucks is currently skyrocketing. The trade publication FleetOwner has reported that, as of March, monthly North American orders for the Class 8 truck produced at the plant had exceeded the company’s productive capacity for the previous six months. Meanwhile, the head of the commercial transportation consulting firm ACT Research has declared that “Demand for commercial vehicles in North America is about as good as we’ve seen in 35 years of monitoring heavy-duty market conditions. Times are so good that demand is far outrunning the industry’s ability to supply right now, and that will likely remain the case into the autumn and perhaps even through the winter.”
Volvo is also making money hand over fist. On June 1, Volvo announced that it would be providing a $2.3 billion dividend payment to the company’s investors. As Volvo CEO Martin Lundstedt announced in a statement, “The board believes that the Volvo Group’s improved profitability, resilience in downturns and strong financial position enable a distribution of the proceeds. Even after the distribution, the group is financially strong with resources to invest in future technology.” Clearly, the bosses have the money to meet workers’ demands – and their claims of poverty during contract negotiations have been entirely fraudulent.
On top of these conditions, the Volvo plant in Virginia has been massively expanding in recent years. According to statements by the company, the Volvo trucks plant is in the middle of a $400 million expansion and upgrade. Since 2016, the plant has added some 1,100 additional jobs – and it plans to add some 600 more during the course of 2021. As already noted, the Virginia plant is Volvo’s only North American production facility, which means that a protracted strike at the plant could completely choke off the sale and delivery of new Volvo trucks for the entire continent.
Within this context, some workers have asked: If not now, then when? If we don’t fight to win back previous concessions and smash the two-tier wage system right now, then when in the future will be a better time?
Notably, what happens with the struggle at Volvo has implications not only for the thousands of workers employed at Volvo, but potentially for the broader workers’ movement, as well.
In the past several years, a movement for union democracy and a full-scale revival of the UAW’s proud tradition of militancy has developed within the ranks of the union. This movement has taken shape within the context of a protracted federal investigation into widespread corruption within the top ranks of the UAW bureaucracy. On top of this, UAW workers have grown weary of international union officials’ propensity for cozying up to the bosses and implementing company demands for concessions.
An internal caucus, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) has been organized by rank-and-file members with the goal of rebuilding the type of militant, class-conscious movement of auto workers that is capable of taking on the auto bosses. The UAWD is campaigning for members to vote yes in a referendum, which will take place within the next six months, that would allow rank-and-file members to directly elect the union’s executive board and president. The upcoming vote is stipulated in a consent decree agreement between federal prosecutors and UAW officials stemming from the corruption probe. UAWD activists have portrayed the campaign to win a “One member, One vote” election system as a fight to “win a more democratic system of electing our International officers [that] would allow for every member’s voice to be equally heard.”
On a political level, the fight for trade union democracy is inseparable from the struggle to transform the unions into fighting organs of the working class. This is a point long upheld within the Marxist movement. In his incisive 1940 essay “Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay,” Leon Trotsky argues that “It is necessary to adapt ourselves to the concrete conditions existing in the trade unions of every given country in order to mobilize the masses not only against the bourgeoisie but also against the totalitarian regime within the trade unions themselves and against the leaders enforcing this regime.” He adds, “The primary slogan for this struggle is: complete and unconditional independence of the trade unions in relation to the capitalist state. This means a struggle to turn the trade unions into the organs of the broad exploited masses and not the organs of a labor aristocracy.”
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Orginally published in: Workers’ Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores
To win in 2022 and 2024 we must connect the rural and the urban – find out how
By Robert Gumpert and Peter Olney
Last Tuesday, the 8th of June, the co-editors of the Stansbury Forum “attended” the first of four webinars on bridging the urban-rural divide. The remaining three run on consecutive Tuesdays, starting on the 15th of June.
The 2022 elections are coming on fast, the time to start organizing is now. They will be overwhelmingly important to working folks – their jobs, income, health, freedoms – and to the democratic process of the country.
We must find a way to engage all in these coming fights, to connect people of common interests in both the urban and rural communities.
Anthony Flaccavento, a Virginia farmer, activist, and occasional writer for the Stansbury Forum, is hosting a series of four webinars on how we can best connect people in these two settings.
Below you will find a brief description of the series, a link for registration to the remaining three sessions and a video of the first section. Anthony has requested, recommended, that the video should be watched first if you did not attend the first seccsion.
Peter and I hope to “see” you there.
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Future Generations University, LiKEN Knowledge, and Appalachian Voices invite you to join Anthony Flaccavento and some of the best thinkers and doers from across the nation in a deep discussion of the underlying causes of this divide and how it can be overcome. You’ll learn:
- Six underlying causes of the divide and how they reinforce each other
- How the neglect of rural development has enabled the divide and how effective, bottom-up rural development strategies can help reverse it
- Better, more accurate ways of understanding rural perspectives on regulations, the environment, and the role of government
- Much better ways to talk about and talk to rural communities
- Other tools and strategies for overcoming the divide
The rural-urban divide is deep, it’s widespread, and it’s getting worse. Liberal people from cities and suburbs think most rural folks are ignorant, racist, stuck in the past, their communities heading towards oblivion. Many in the countryside view urban people, academics, and the government as elitist, contemptuous of rural ways, and dismissive of the people living there. While race and racial resentment play major roles in this polarization, the divide between urban and rural is perhaps the most poorly understood component of our divisions. And it’s killing us, enabling the richest people and biggest corporations to dominate our democracy while the great majority of us fight amongst ourselves.How did we get here, and how do we begin to overcome the divide? More to the point, what role has those who espouse a fair and just world played in exacerbating the divide, and what must we do differently?
The Rural-Urban Divide:
How We Got into This Mess, How We’ll Get Out
Register – Here.
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Labor Must ‘Block and Build’ to Defend Democracy
By Rand Wilson and Peter Olney
In “The White Republic and The Struggle for Racial Justice,” Bob Wing contended that the U.S. state is racist to the core, and this has specific implications for our movements’ work going forward, especially the need to replace this racist state with an anti-racist state. Organizing Upgrade is publishing a series of commentaries on this piece, and we invite readers to respond as well. In this response, Peter Olney and Rand Wilson look at the role that labor unions can play in building the cross-class front against what Wing calls “the re-entrenchment of the white republic.” From their long experience as union organizers, they draw the lesson “thatunity and awareness of our shared enemy is built among trade unionists and allies in the trenches of common struggle.”
Bob Wing argues in “The White Republic” that American capitalism is firmly rooted in the appropriation of the lands and labor of native peoples and African slaves. Throughout U.S. history this system has been one of white supremacy and racial oppression, not only of Native peoples and Blacks, but also of other exploited peoples like Asian Pacific Islanders and Latinos.
The 2020 Presidential election, the battle for the Senate in Georgia, and the January 6 Capitol insurrection illustrated the white supremacist forces at play, Democracy and majority rule are in the cross-hairs. Republicans are moving in lockstep to suppress and oppress the votes of people of color to preserve minority rule. The recent spate of state legislative initiatives to restrict voting is the closest thing to the “Jim Crow” era since before the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
We accept the veracity of Wing’s analysis, and the need for a “united front” to defeat and destroy the white supremacist forces in the long term. Our challenge in trying to bring the labor movement into that front is to operationalize a perspective that builds antiracist practice, tackles white supremacy and fights capitalism – and to do that among a membership that is not rooted in a shared identity or philosophy.
It’s no easy matter. Demographics are not destiny – at least not fast enough. The country remains 62 percent non-Hispanic white. And as we saw in the last election, Trump’s racist, proto-fascist appeals garnered 73 million votes, and his vote totals increased in both Latinx and Black communities.
As lifelong trade unionists, we embrace the challenge of building the broad united front between labor and communities of color to defeat white supremacy. But how best is that elusive unity built? Imagine going to a union meeting and denouncing the “white republic” when many cars and trucks in the parking lot sport “Blue Lives Matter” bumper stickers. It’s a recipe for a very heated exchange, or worse, a brawl! What’s really needed are ways to open discussions with members that don’t condescend or polarize, and do involve deep listening and identifying common values.
Many union leaders have begun this process by centering racial justice in membership education programs, organizing campaigns and bargaining. “Labor organizations are taking up the fight for racial justice in many ways,” wrote Stephanie Luce in a profile of contemporary efforts by union leaders. “They’re developing in-depth member education on racial capitalism. They are using bargaining to address structural racism and developing new leaders.” Luce also cites SEIU 1199 in New England which has used Bargaining for the Common Good to build relationships and common demands with racial justice organizations. This is one approach.
Bonding Through Common Work
Experience tells us that unity and awareness of our shared enemy is built among trade unionists and allies in the trenches of common struggle. We are inspired by the work of UNITE HERE and other unions in battleground states like Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and later the Senate race in Georgia in 2020-21. The bold decision by a few union leaders to recruit and support their members to canvass on the doors during the pandemic built lasting relationships and respect with the organizations of Blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans already deeply engaged in those battleground situations.
The union banners, T-shirts, and buttons (we do bling well!) were welcomed in action, as was the experience and courage of these able trade unionists of all colors. Nothing bonds people better than working together in 95-degree heat, with a mask, a visor, and the determination to knock on every door. That joint work is worth a thousand educational sessions.
The great Italian Marxist philosopher and organizer Antonio Gramsci points to the limits of education and intellectual argument in this passage on “Philosophy, Common Sense, Language and Folklore” from his famous Prison Notebooks:
“Imagine the intellectual position of the man of the people: he has formed his own opinions, convictions, criteria of discrimination, standards of conduct. Anyone with a superior intellectual formation with a point of view opposed to his can put forward arguments better than he and really tear him to pieces logically and so on. But should the man of the people change his opinions just because of this? Just because he cannot impose himself in a bout of argument? In that case he might find himself having to change every day, or every time he meets an ideological adversary who is his intellectual superior. On what elements, therefore, can his philosophy be founded? And in particular his philosophy in the form which has the greatest importance for his standards of conduct?”
The 2022 midterm elections offer an excellent opportunity for the “men [and women] of the people” to forge new convictions and standards of conduct.
2022: Next Battleground, Foundation for Change
Maintaining the momentum to win progressive legislation and beat back the far right and the “big lie” requires a broad commitment to win seats in the 2022 midterm elections on November 8 – and win big. It’s no easy task. The political system is rigged against Democrats who got five million more votes in their 2020 races for the U.S. House of Representatives yet lost 11 seats in Congress.
Can we defy history and increase Democratic margins in the House and Senate? Can we afford not to? The 1934 midterms during Roosevelt’s first term in the midst of the Great Depression are inspiring. Gains were made in both the House and Senate that enabled the passage of key legislation like the National Labor Relations Act, which encouraged millions of workers to fight for and form new unions.
The 2022 midterms are perhaps more monumental. The Trump forces will be determined to recapture both houses of Congress and stymie any positive Biden initiatives in the second two years of his presidency. They will have all the advantages of their voter suppression laws and gerrymandered districts. But the ground forces on the front lines in the last election will not be deterred. They will be out again, and with even more gusto.
LUCHA in Arizona will fight to keep Democrat Mark Kelly in the Senate. The New Georgia Project and Stacey Abrams will be rolling up their sleeves to defend the Senate seat of Rev. Raphael Warnock. All the battleground locations will see healthy mobilizations of activists from all over the country eager to defeat the right. These are the battles that labor must join, and these are the flashpoints where multi-racial unity will be forged in the common struggle to preserve the forward march of the pro-labor Biden agenda and stem the racist right.
Time is Running Short
Prior to the midterms, there will be important primary challenges by progressive Democrats running to win against corporate Democrats. Nina Turner’s primary campaign for the recently vacated seat in Ohio’s 11th congressional district is a great example. These pro-labor/pro-racial justice candidates need support, especially where Democrats have safe seats. But once the 2022 primaries are over, labor must focus on competitive races where congressional seats need to be defended or where seats can be gained. In addition to the seats held by Senators Kelly and Warnock, there are six more Senate seats where Republicans are resigning or are vulnerable, in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, and Missouri.
The labor movement can draw much inspiration from the experience and energy of 2020 combined with the surprisingly good performance of President Biden. The new administration’s taming of the pandemic and its robust stimulus and infrastructure bills should create the foundation to peel away many of the estimated forty percent of trade unionists who voted for Trump. Particularly in the more conservative building trades, funding for infrastructure is something to fight to preserve and extend. Biden’s shutdown of the Keystone XL pipeline, a big issue that many building trades leaders railed against under Obama, is being overshadowed by the massive infrastructure proposals.
After detailing the billions of dollars of infrastructure spending that Biden is proposing in an editorial to the membership, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Lonnie R. Stephenson wrote, “This is enough work to last from apprenticeship to retirement not just for you, but for tens of thousands of new union members in our brotherhood alone…This bill means hundreds of thousands of jobs for construction members, but also for our members in utility, telecom, railroad and broadcasting.”
Stephenson knows “A Lifetime of Work” is what will motivate IBEW members to support the plan regardless of how they voted. And that is what will motivate the IBEW and other unions to recruit and send members to preserve the possibility of anti-austerity measures like the infrastructure bills that have a direct benefit to working people. Few IBEW members will ever embrace the notion of a “white republic” or “racial capitalism,” but when those members are in the trenches (or on the doors) with Blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans with a common purpose, they will come much closer to supporting Wing’s call for “a powerful antiracist movement of people of color and whites” to “defeat the white supremacist right, transform or replace the racist institutions that dominate the country, and to reconstruct society based on peace, sustainability, and justice.”
We can think of our strategy going forward as “Blocking and Building,” as laid out by Tarso Ramos of Political Research Associates. “We need to block the Right Wing…and build relationships, strategies, and campaigns of deep solidarity and shared power across the communities that together will build real multi-racial democracy,” Ramos said. For us in the labor movement, this looks like blocking white supremacy, preserving a pro-labor agenda, and building our power. Funding and supporting union members for the ballot brigades in the key 2022 election races will be the most concrete way to dovetail labor and race in the trenches.
In the run-up to the November 2020 election, Labor Action to Defend Democracy (LADD) was formed to protect the election from being stolen. It was an exciting and relatively broad formation supported by many union leaders. Combined with the energy and resources of other progressive labor initiatives, LADD could be reassembled in some form to support activist union members in the key battleground states to work alongside local organizations battling the Trumpista white supremacists.
Bob Wing’s work is theoretically sound. The Block and Build labor brigades are one example of how to put that vision into concrete strategic practice. It is time to get cracking, as we are only 17 months out from our day of reckoning: November 8, 2022.
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A call to action….
By Peter Olney and Rand Wilson
Union leaders: no deals with Uber and Lyft!
Trade union members, and everyone else supportive of workers’ rights, should be very concerned about proposed legislation in New York, Massachusetts, and other states that would allow limited bargaining rights for independent contractors of Transportation Networked Companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft.[1]
The New York bill (and similar legislation proposed in Connecticut and Massachusetts) establishes a framework for TNC employers and drivers to jointly participate in an industry council.[2] It proposes a “work-around” to avoid violations of the Sherman anti-trust act that will allow the TNCs to engage in what would normally be prohibited price fixing. It establishes a procedure to give a qualifying organization limited collective bargaining and representation rights pertaining to the wages and working conditions of the TNC drivers.[3],[4]
However, these bills raise some serious concerns. While Uber and Lyft claim otherwise, gig drivers are clearly their employees under “A-B-C” tests that are generally used to determine if workers are misclassified as contractors. When subjected to the test, state attorney generals are finding the TNC’s are misclassifying their drivers in violation of their state’s employment law.[5]
Sadly, these “third way” or “contractor plus” bills are backed by some unions seeking to make backroom deals with the rideshare companies to increase their membership without actually organizing workers. Both the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and Machinists union (IAM) are on record backing the New York legislation.
Giving the TNC drivers “representation” as independent contractors makes a concession to the TNCs that labor unions are prepared to accept the current violation of existing state law – contradicting the position of the courts, state legislatures, advocacy groups like the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and the national AFL-CIO.
These unions have argued that as long as the rideshare drivers are contractors, “third way” representation is necessary in order to give them a much-needed voice. They say their proposed legislation wouldn’t prohibit a change in status if the state or federal governments upgrade drivers to statutory “employees.” However, their support for a middle ground will almost certainly be used to argue that state legislatures or the federal government recognize these gig workers as independent contractors. For example, in Massachusetts, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled in a case regarding real estate agents that another unrelated statute recognizing that agents may be independent contractors was effectively a “carve-out” for that industry from the A-B-C test in Sec. 148B.[6]
Without a doubt, the movements by gig drivers for better wages and working conditions across the country — and around the world — is motivating the companies to seek a “compromise” with labor that would give them the appearance of taking steps to make improvements. In reality, if Uber, Lyft (and some unions) have their way with these bills, the drivers’ demands for respect and compassionate treatment could never be achieved.[7]
“We California drivers know what this kind of industry supported legislation means: the companies will do anything to maintain their ability to pay us far less than minimum wage, pay nothing toward the operation of our vehicles, while maintaining no responsibility to fund the safety net needed in this precarious and often unsafe job,” said Nicole Moore, a leader of Ride Share Drivers United (RDU) in Southern California. “Under their new Prop. 22 law in California, drivers are making even less money — as little as 32 cents a mile. Sadly, now it is totally legal. The ‘flexibility’ protections the gig companies bragged about have actually led to less flexibility and less freedom to earn.”
Making any public concession recognizing the drivers as contractors now, will seriously undermine labor opposition to allowing Uber and Lyft to water-down — or eliminate — state A-B-C tests. Support for this “third way” legislation plays right into the companies’ hands, allowing them to twist this proposed legislation to confuse our elected officials and the public by showing that some unions are willing to accept classifying gig workers as independent contractors.
It’s no coincidence that Uber, Lyft and other TNCs are looking to use opportunistic unions as “allies.” This year labor, and many economic and social justice groups have begun an epic battle to strengthen labor law through the national PRO Act.
The movement against misclassification is also gaining momentum. Last January, more than 70 unions, advocacy groups and other organizations — including the National Employment Law Project, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Teamsters and NAACP, sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to reject legal frameworks such as California’s Proposition 22, which exempts employers from treating gig workers as employees.[8]
The letter stated, “Millions of workers hired and managed by companies via internet apps, such as Instacart and DoorDash delivery workers, Uber drivers, and Handy home service workers, are deprived of basic labor protections that many of us take for granted… Because their employers insist on unilaterally calling them ‘independent contractors,’ these workers don’t get a minimum wage, overtime pay, workers’ compensation, unemployment, state disability insurance, or access to federal protections from discrimination, including sex harassment.”
“A proposal to supposedly provide limited benefits to some ‘independent workers’ would threaten our most fundamental understanding of what work ought to provide,” the letter added. “A federal ‘Proposition 22’-like scheme would shunt more and more workers to piecework labor, performing jobs here-and-there with neither individual security nor the possibility of collective action.”
Another serious concern regarding these third way schemes is how the unions are proposing to fund workers’ representation. Instead of members paying dues, the legislation would enact a small surcharge on passenger fares to pay for expenses incurred for representation. The surcharge makes the qualifying union organization essentially employer funded, crossing an important prohibition in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) against employer funding or support for a labor organization.
“A passenger tax is a great way to ensure a fire hose of funding into a union,” added RDU’s Moore. “But where’s the accountability to the workforce? Where’s the guarantee that we are building real power and leading our own fights? This law acts like the union is the Social Security Administration. It’s not – dues give us independent funds to build real power. We need to be classified correctly as employees and have the protections and benefit/wage floor of employees – not something that assigns us a permanent second class worker status. We are a majority immigrant and Black Indigenous People of Color workforce. Where is the equity and power in this compromise of our rights?”
Proposed low thresholds of driver support to trigger “voluntary recognition” from the TNCs is an invitation to sweetheart deals. Majority support for a union is the underlying foundation for worker empowerment. What sort of power will a qualifying organization have with only 10% support? True worker power is built through authentic organizing by workers, their union using its collective power to take advantage of their strategic position in the economy, and existing state and federal labor protections.
Since the passage of Prop. 22 in California, other employers in health care, retail, hospitality – even the Pentagon — are openly looking to shift to managing their workers through digital apps, or outsourcing them through temp and staffing firms, to escape their employer obligations.[9] Legislation enabling this new scheme could break open the dam, incentivizing entire industries to “gig out” more jobs that once provided living wage jobs and a measure of prosperity.
Passage of this legislation could set a very dangerous precedent for Teamster drivers and UFCW grocery delivery workers.
The gig economy, epitomized by employment at Uber and Lyft and similar companies, is a segment of the labor market literally carved out of pro-worker regulation. These companies want to be exempted from an obligation to respect workers’ rights. What’s at issue here is how large we will permit it to grow. Passage of this proposed legislation will further solidify these workers’ status as independent contractors and weaken labor’s efforts at the state and national level to have these workers classified as actual workers with full benefits and real collective bargaining rights.[10]
RDU’s Moore summed it up succinctly, “We’re fighting some of the biggest union busters and richest corporations in the world. We need a real union with real app-based worker leadership to be willing to fight. What if the union isn’t representing us well? They don’t even need us to pay dues – and there is no democracy in 10% of drivers signing a card!”
“Drivers in NYC have fought hard to ensure that they are paid more than minimum wage for all of their time on type job. This bill would ensure that drivers are paid for only the part of their time while picking up a passenger. It codifies the destruction of rights agreements drivers have already won in NY. It is a way to bust the union Lyft and Uber drivers have already built in New York City – with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.”
Unions should not support legislation creating a compromised and weak voice for independent contractors. Labor must stay united to defeat any effort to undermine the A-B-C test and fight for more workers to have access to our federal and state employment protections.
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[1] “Lawmakers Look to Spruce Up Gig Work Rather Than Replace It,” by Josh Eidelson, March 18, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/lawmakers-look-to-spruce-up-gig-work-rather-than-replace-it
[2] “A Bill Requiring Regulation of Network Workers, and Providing for Their Protection and Benefits,” https://aboutblaw.com/XEJ
[3] “Labor, Gig Companies Near Bargaining Deal in N.Y.,” by Josh Eidelson and Benjamin Penn,
May 17, 2021, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-18/labor-gig-companies-are-said-to-be-near-bargaining-deal-in-n-y
[4] “BREAKING: Draft Legislation in New York Would Put Gig Workers into Toothless ‘Unions’,”
May 21, 2021, Joe DeManuelle-Hall, Labor Notes, https://labornotes.org/2021/05/breaking-draft-legislation-new-york-would-put-gig-workers-toothless-unions
[5] AG Healey: Uber and Lyft Drivers are Employees Under Massachusetts Wage and Hour Laws, https://www.mass.gov/news/ag-healey-uber-and-lyft-drivers-are-employees-under-massachusetts-wage-and-hour-laws
[6] Monell v. Boston Pads, LLC, 471 Mass. 566 (2015)
[7] Gig Workers Demand Occupational Death Benefits, Coworker.org, https://www.coworker.org/petitions/gig-workers-demand-occupational-death-benefits
[8] https://www.nelp.org/wp-content/uploads/Letter-to-Congress-Labor-Protections-App-Based-Workers-January-2021.pdf
[9] “The Military Is Creating a ‘Gig Eagle’ App to Uber-ize Its Workforce,” by Edward Ongweso Jr, May 20, 2021, Vice, https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bzvw/the-military-is-creating-a-gig-eagle-app-to-uber-ize-its-workforce
[10] For more along these lines see, “Sectoral Bargaining: Principles for Reform,” a statement signed by dozens of scholars endorsing six principles as starting points from which to consider sectoral bargaining reforms similar to SD 473, https://concerned-sectoral-bargaining.medium.com/sectoral-bargaining-principles-for-reform-7b7f2c945624
Living with uncertainty
By Robert Gumpert
As is the case in all parts of the United States, indeed around the world, too many people are “unhoused”, living day to day with shelter uncertainty.
San Francisco, home to staggering amounts of wealth and innovation is also home to people who live in tents, boxes, cars, RVs. On a couch here, a couch there, or directly on the ground in sleeping bags, packing blankets, or the remnants of Amazon packing boxes.
In San Francisco tomorrow, on two parking lot between Merlin and Morris streets, about 40 people will be evicted from spaces they have “lived” at for between a few months and 5 years because … well there is always a reason. What is never answered fully is why these folks, why here, why now. The lots are owned by Caltrans and were operated by a parking contractor who went bankrupt.
Here are four of the “residents” and a few of their thoughts.
(I’ve been here) all together about 5 years. I have a place, like I said, I can’t afford a, I would have to win the Power Ball to be able to afford a house here. I’ve always had mobile homes before, a “camper”, you know. They’ve gotten towed, a couple of them, so I’m down to this (a box truck). But I’ve always had my own place where I rent or parked. I’ve rented here (a spot in a parking lot) for about 5 years until they declared bankruptcy and gave the place (the parking lot) up. I’m just looking for another place to rent space for my vehicles, a place I could but a small trailer.
That’s how I live. I’d rather live this way than in an SRO and not be as happy and secure. I like to have my own place. I can come in when I want, have my stuff, don’t have to look anybody in the eye when I come in and out, you know. And be me, just like you, you know what I’m saying.”
“Maintaining. It’s hard out here, like as far as showers and food and, security.
It (living on the street as a single woman) got to be self-sufficient and take care of myself, nobody else to do it for me.
We’re kind a like segregated down here. We got people at one end and then there’s people at the opposite end, we kind a stay to ourselves.
(I miss) being with my kids. Yeah, it sucks. Once I get my housing back my kids will be home but it’s hard. Stuff is like irritating. COVID hit and then everything just came to a halt. So now I got to wait.
They (the city) leave us here to fend for ourselves with no resources at all. The only time we do get resources is when we raise hell and cause problems for them.
“I was homeless from 2007 to 2012 and then I became housed through DAAH. I moved in there about 2012, or 2013, and when I moved in there from the very beginning it seemed as if I was targeted. The staff was very difficult to deal with, and just very unpleasant. But I stayed and I thought that maybe I needed to adjust myself. Or maybe I needed to take a step back and take a look at things further. Maybe I’m being treated fairly and I’m not giving people the benefit of the doubt. Well as a human being we’re born with certain things that tell us when something’s not right, or when something’s wrong. Bottom line is that I never felt like I was being treated right from the very beginning. The slowly but surely things started to happen with the tenants. Everybody comes with psychosis issues in those buildings, or disabilities of some sort, myself included. What happens is administration starts to personalize things, so they target you. Next thing you know you’re getting written more, you’re under a microscope. Then you’re being evicted for small reasons, things that only warrant a warning or disciplinary action. There is such a disconnection with the tenants and the staff that there’s no community. You know it’s supposed to be that kind of healthy community originated environment, (but) everybody is walking around in the SROs mad. Very angry and upset. While I’m there I’m not happy, I’ve been assaulted on multiple occasions, asked to be moved, but I was told they don’t do that. … The police downplay everything that happens in the SROs, it’s almost as if they don’t want to take the report, would rather settle it right there, but that doesn’t get anything done. Someone went in my building and killed my dog. Finally, I got fed up and I left. I just go and I pay my rent. Once COVID hit I just even didn’t go back to the building. I’ve just been living out here on the streets. I’m safer out here than I feel like I am in there. I go in my unit and I can feel like somebody’s been in my unit and when I discovered how they were getting in, they (managers) said they had remediated the problem, they didn’t. I’m in court with them Friday to determine some kind of settlement, if they’re going to put me out. If that’s what they are trying to do, what are they going to do for me for everything I’ve been through? You have rodent problems. You have staff issues. Discrimination issues going on in the building, I’ve had all those issues happen to me. I was sexually assaulted in the building, made a police report and they said they couldn’t do nothing about it. I filed reports with DPH asking to be moved. I went to City Hall, I went to the Department of Building and Inspection, I went the people who investigate if people are discriminating against you, and then I went to the rental board. All these places failed me. Nobody could help me. There was nobody to oversee what happened to me at that SRO.”
“(The hardest thing about the street), the harassment, social indifference. The way that people, you know the authorities, address you. They act like it’s my fault. I’m pretty sure, myself, and a lot of these people, if the resources were available, we would take them. Not no hotel room for a couple months and then kick us back out on the street to do this whole recycle thing again because it generates currency, it generates money. They’re getting paid off peoples’ misery.
“They moved us out of this aisle and told us to pack up, that they were sending out resources, that they were going to put us in hotel rooms. We packed on the corner and streets well into the night and no one came, and so I said let’s go in this parking lot. People still park their cars here; we don’t allow peoples’ cars to get broken into. People call the cops on us because they feel some type of social righteousness, that we’re doing something wrong because that’s how it’s portrayed through media. If social indifference continues to happen, they’re going to feel they can do whatever they want to us and not have to worry about any type of repercussions. I don’t understand how that’s right. If you’re moving us off the streets because we’re on the streets, then that means that San Francisco has an obligation to house its citizens. Not just place them in hotels, rundown hotels, that been condemned since ’89 (the earthquake) and cannot be reopened unless all the requirements of building inspections, safety codes, are met. This is not happening. Take for instance the Marathon Hotel, there’s holes in the roof and people are still living there. These are the homeless people that they take off the streets from a bad situation and put them into a worser one. It’s all designed so that you can be kicked out. San Francisco, there not addressing the homeless crisis that’s happening out here in the wealthiest city in the United States of America, and I don’t understand what’s going on. They’re moving (us) and they’re using fear of incarceration to intimidate because people on parole and that’s not right. You’re taking a hopeless person in a desperate situation; you’re provoking them to have some sort of negative episode. It’s going to drive people insane. What do they think going to happen? Now you provoke this situation and everybody’s watching. Not just Americans but other people in other countries are watching America, “home of the brave land of the free”. It don’t feel very free, don’t feel very free at all.”
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All photos copyright Robert Gumpert 2021