UE leaders from Local 506 in Erie, PA and Local 610 in Wilmerding, PA met via Zoom in July with their counterparts in Unite the Union in the United Kingdom, who are in a fight with their mutual employer Wabtec.

The UE and Unite members discussed their current fights with Wabtec.

UE Local 610 President Antwon Gibson told the Unite members about his local’s recent contract fight with Wabtec and the company’s announced plans to close the historic Wilmerding plant within the next two years.

The Unite members, who work at the Wabtec’s facility in Doncaster and at the Faiveley Transport plant in Birkenhead, have been in fights with Wabtec since the company took over their facilities. Wabtec merged with Faiveley prior to its merger with GE Transportation in 2019. The Unite members have accused Wabtec of engaging in the notorious “fire and rehire” strategy in an attempt to impose worse terms and conditions on their members.

Under UK labor law, companies are free to impose new terms and conditions on their workers. At the Doncaster plant, Unite and RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) represent the Wabtec workers and negotiate general wage increases and decide on joint actions, but the workers must sign individual contracts.

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham, quoted in local Doncaster press, said: “Wabtec’s abhorrent fire and rehire plans seek to make Doncaster’s workers worse off, working longer for less, for a company that has billions in the bank.”

The Unite members at the Birkenhead plant voted to strike earlier this year over Wabtec’s actions and the company backed off their “fire and rehire” scheme there.

Nearly 99 percent of Doncaster workers signed their individual contracts, but have been engaging in intermittent strike actions over the company’s new terms and condition, which included taking away two of their breaks and wash-up times. The workers also rejected the company’s wage offer that doesn’t keep up with inflation (which is over 11 percent in the UK).

Prior to the Zoom meeting with UE, the Unite members at the Doncaster plant had voted to engage in an all-out strike, starting on July 19, but Wabtec rescinded it plans to eliminate the workers’ break times and wash-up times. The company also offered the workers a $1,000 bonus in addition to its wage offer. The workers were voting on the company’s latest offer, but the union leadership had recommended a no vote.

While their members were voting on the company’s latest offer, the Unite leaders at the Doncaster plant said the company was trying to soften their members up by giving them ice cream during the current heatwave which was inundating the UK and most of Europe. But they didn’t think it would work and that they expected their members to reject the company’s offer.

The UE leaders offered their solidarity and told the Unite leaders that they would do whatever they could to support their members if they go on strike.

UE Local 506 President Scott Slawson suggested that the two unions continue to work together whether the Unite members at the Doncaster plant strike or not. Slawson said the unions at Wabtec need to build international solidarity among their members in order to take on Wabtec, which has plants located around the world.

When UE General President Carl Rosen, Director of Organization Mark Meinster, and Director of International Strategies Kari Thompson met with a high-level delegation from our Japanese ally Zenroren in June in Chicago, they presented them with a new UE publication celebrating “three decades of Japan-U.S. working-class solidarity.”

The Zenroren delegation consisted of Secretary General Koichi Kurosawa, Deputy Secretary General Keisuke Fuse, Yasuko Sasamoto from Zenkyo, the All Japan Teachers’ Union, and Yumi Yamamoto, a professor of education.

The 24-page, full-color “scrapbook” tells the story of UE’s relationship with Zenroren in photos, clippings from the UE NEWS, and text in both English and Japanese.

As the opening sentence of the booklet notes, “Zenroren and UE are born from the same spirit of militant, class-struggle unionism.” The UE NEWS reported on Zenroren’s founding on November 21, 1989, and within two years then UE Director of Organization Ed Bruno traveled to Japan to participate in an international conference organized by Zenroren.

The booklet tells the story of how “For three decades, the bond between UE and Zenroren has grown stronger through exchanges, sharing of experience and analysis, support for each other’s struggles and joint efforts to win justice for working people and a peaceful world.”

UE’s relationship with Zenroren has encompassed exchanges of information through delegations, written materials and participation in each other’s gatherings; taking direct action in support of each other’s struggles; a series of public-sector workers “convergences” in the late 2000s bringing together workers from the U.S., Mexico, Quebec and Japan; providing moral and material support as Zenroren members dealt with the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan; and working together to end war and eliminate the impacts of war and militarism on the working class.

The booklet concludes, “For more than 30 years, UE has been proud to count Zenroren as one of our closest allies. Through exchanges of information and analysis, concrete acts of solidarity, and a shared vision of militant trade unionism, we have worked together to struggle for a just, peaceful world for all working people. We look forward to continuing our relationship, and our joint struggle, for many more decades to come.”

Chicago

In June, following the conclusion of the Labor Notes Conference, UE hosted a delegation of trade unionists from Zenroren, Japan’s militant labor federation and a long-time UE ally.

Zenroren Secretary General Koichi Kurosawa and Deputy Secretary General Keisuke Fuse led the group, which included Yasuko Sasamoto from Zenkyo, the All Japan Teachers’ Union, and Yumi Yamamoto, a professor of education. The group met with General President Carl Rosen, Director of Organization Mark Meinster, and Director of International Strategies Kari Thompson.

A meeting at UE Hall offered the opportunity to reflect on thirty years of collaboration together, commemorated in a new scrapbook UE produced. The booklet describes numerous exchanges in both countries, as well as in Mexico and Quebec, discussing challenges for public sector workers, teachers, and workers at multinational corporations, in addition to our shared struggle for peace and an end to nuclear weapons.

The Japanese comrades had many questions about the labor movement right now in the U.S., ranging from how to balance competing wage demands from those at the low and high ends of a pay scale, to how to engage more members in educational programs, and how to interact with surging interest in new organizing. UE highlighted our collaboration on the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a project that greatly interested Zenroren. The group also discussed the political landscape in the two countries, where the electoral opportunities are bleak for workers in both places.

Rosen and Thompson also escorted the delegation on a tour of important labor history sites across the city, including the Haymarket Martyrs Monument at Forest Park Cemetery and the Haymarket Memorial in downtown Chicago, where Zenroren had previously dedicated a plaque in honor of the struggle for the eight-hour work day. They also visited a sculpture at the University of Chicago campus commemorating the first successful nuclear technology experiment. It offered a somber, reflective moment with visitors from the only country to experience first-hand the devastation of nuclear weapon detonation.

Following the exchange, Rosen commented, “It was an important opportunity for UE and Zenroren to renew our ties face-to-face and to continue the struggle together to advance the needs of the working class.”

Chicago

A UE delegation joined guests from Italy and hundreds of immigrant rights activists for May Day in Chicago this year. UE hosted representatives of Federazioni Impiegati Operai Metallurgici (Federation of Metalworkers, FIOM-CGIL) to commemorate International Workers’ Day with a new plaque on the Haymarket Square monument.

The day’s festivities kicked off in Union Park, where Marcello Scipioni, Head of FIOM’s International Department and Head of the Health, Environment and Safety Office, addressed the rally. He noted that the immigration struggles in the US mirrored challenges for immigrants in Italy, and that in both places, it’s important to struggle for immigrants’ rights to work to be recognized so that they are not exploited and can be reunited with their families. “Millions of workers came here from Europe and all over the world to win the bread, and they found themselves fighting for the roses too, and gaining dignity,” he said. “To me it’s very important to be here on May Day in Chicago because the symbol of May 1st is an international struggle for workers to have equal rights.” Scipioni was joined on the trip by Daniele Calosi, General Secretary of FIOM-CGIL Florence, and his wife Alida Magherini.

The UE delegation was led by General President Carl Rosen, and included retired Secretary-Treasurer Amy Newell, retired International Representative Terry Davis, International Representative J Burger, Field Organizer Sean Fulkerson, Director of International Strategies Kari Thompson, and Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee Organizer Tristan Brock-Hughes. The UE and FIOM delegations marched from the park to the monument at Haymarket Square, where they met leaders of the Illinois Labor History Society and other trade unionists who were there to honor the memory of those who died calling for an eight hour day for all workers. While there, the group met Congressman Jesus Chuy Garcia, who has been a strong UE ally in congress.

Later that afternoon, Rosen and Thompson brought the FIOM delegation to a birthday party for Mother Jones at the Irish American Cultural Center, where they heard beautiful music from local musicians and rousing remarks from Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. (Nelson addressed UE’s most recent convention by video message.)

On Monday, the Italian trade unionists met Rosen at UE Hall in Chicago for a tour of the mural by John Pitman Weber and Jose Guerrero. Thereafter they had a discussion with Rosen and Director of Organization Mark Meinster about the challenges and opportunities in the US and Italian labor movements. In the afternoon, Scipioni and Calosi saw more of Chicago’s labor history on a tour around the city, including stops at the Haymarket Martyrs monument in Forest Park Cemetery, and the recently restored mural “The History of the Packinghouse Worker” by William Walker.

On Tuesday, Scipioni joined Thompson for a tour of New Era Windows with Armando Robles, president of Local 1110. The plant is a worker-owned cooperative that emerged from the 2008 occupation of Republic Windows and Doors. Scipioni expressed his admiration for the operation, and suggested that perhaps there could be a future exchange with similar worker efforts in Italy.

At the conclusion of his remarks to the May Day rally, Scipioni noted that “We must struggle together” for a world in which workers do not compete against each other. “Happy May Day to you. Let’s struggle together.”

On a recent delegation to Cuba, UE Project Staff Chris Hollis asked local union leaders at an electronics plant in Havana how workers in Cuba would go about organizing a union.

“They didn’t understand my question,” Hollis told the UE NEWS. After several attempts to rephrase his question — “How do you go about building unions in these plants?” — the source of the workers’ confusion became clear: in Cuba, “every job has a union.” Workers are not forced to go through the same difficult process as workers in the U.S. in order to exercise the right of collective bargaining.

Hollis, who first joined UE as a founder of the Blue Collar Workers Organizing Committee at the Valley Proteins rendering plant in Fayetteville, North Carolina, is currently working for UE organizing municipal workers in Virginia Beach and Newport News, Virginia. In November, he took part in a “Friendshipment caravan” organized by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)/Pastors for Peace. Since 1992, IFCO/Pastors for Peace has worked to bring an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba through such caravans, which provide humanitarian aid to the Cuban people in defiance of the blockade.

Before he received the opportunity to join the caravan, Hollis said, “All I knew [about Cuba] was what I was educated to believe coming up in school” — that Cuba was an island full of terrorists. Leading up to his departure, he said he took time to read about Cuba, because “I wanted to not take that mindset with me.”

In Cuba, Hollis chose to visit the electronics factory, because “I really needed to learn and see how the trade unions operated in Cuba.”

He described an “electrifying atmosphere” when he arrived at the plant, being greeted warmly by the union members. “These weren’t people that were just put in place to put on a show,” Hollis emphasized, “these were workers.”

Following up on his question about organizing, Hollis asked whether anyone was laid off during the pandemic. He learned that, although workers’ hours changed because the factory changed to one shift, “nobody lost their jobs during the pandemic.” In fact, when production later picked up dramatically and the plant’s profits increased, “They would take that extra money and distribute it to the employees as bonuses.”

“I thought that was amazing,” said Hollis, “because they actually looked out for the workers.”

“This is a socialist society, we all help each other,” explained the union president.

In the U.S., Hollis noted, “You are going to have capitalist companies that are always going to be at odds with unions,” but in Cuba “company people work hand in hand with labor unions to make sure workers are treated fairly.”

“Their collective bargaining agreements are very detailed,” Hollis reported, including guarantees of workers’ rights to concerted activity and disciplinary action towards management for any violation of the agreement.

The delegation also met with the President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel. During the meeting, in response to a question from Hollis, Diaz-Canel said that the Cuban government supports trade unions in ensuring that workers are treated fairly and have adequate wages and safe working conditions.

Hollis said that because of Cubans’ culture of working together and taking care of each other “in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of a 60-year blockade, they are able to be successful, and the workers are living good lives.” He did point out that “They could live better if it was not for the sanctions” imposed by the U.S.

UE Policy passed by delegates to the most recent UE convention states, “Our government has no justification for the economic blockade of Cuba, which makes it more difficult for Cubans to access medicine, food, and essential life-giving supplies. The blockade hurts workers in both countries. Jobs are lost, while U.S. manufacturers are denied a major market just 90 miles offshore.”

Hollis reported that “A lot of businesses opened up and flourished” in Cuba during the Obama administration, when the blockade was eased somewhat, and people were “able to live better because trade became a lot more available.” After Trump re-imposed full sanctions, however, “those businesses tanked.”

Hollis told the UE NEWS he believes that the culture of solidarity he experienced in Cuba should be a model for unions and working people in the U.S. “If we only had this kind of culture,” he said, we would have more ability “to bring workers together, to give workers a seat at the table.”

Photo, left to right: UE Project Staff Charles Brown, interpreter Rosbel Lazaro, and UE Project Staff Chris Hollis.

In the early morning of Thursday, February 3, workers at a General Motors factory in Silao, Mexico, learned the results of a union election that was held at their plant earlier in the week: the independent union led by workers won by a wide margin. This is a huge victory not only for these workers, but for all Mexican workers who have been struggling to improve their labor laws for decades.

For more than two decades, the workers at this factory had been covered by a collective bargaining agreement under the union Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), but the workers received little benefit from this contract and had no rights to elect their leaders or to be involved in the contract negotiations. Their contract was known as a “protection contract” because it protected the company from having to negotiate with a real union. The CTM is one of many Mexican unions that cuts deals with employers, often before workers have been hired at a new facility. They are known as charro unions.

Under Mexican labor law reforms passed in 2019, this kind of corrupt union practice is no longer legal, and workers have a clear path for getting rid of these protection contracts. However the Silao factory is the first large plant to go through the whole process. That is one reason why this election is so important.

The independent workers’ union, known as SINTTIA (​​Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores de la Industria Automotriz, or National Auto Workers Union), has been organizing at the shop since 2019. Last year, they moved forward with the first step in this process.

In order to get rid of the CTM, they had to hold a vote to dissolve their old contract. They did so in August. Under the new laws, the company had to keep all the terms of the contract in place until the workers had the opportunity to elect new representatives.

The union election was scheduled at the plant on February 1 and 2, but SINTTIA was not the only union on the ballot. In addition to the CTM, two other unions registered themselves: one that was known to have an affiliation with the CTM, and another that sprang up out of nowhere, but had a name similar to SINTTIA. Activists suspected they were added to the ballot to confuse the workers.

Leading up to the election, there were reports that the company and the CTM were trying to disrupt the secret ballot election. The company fired a union activist, and the CTM was trying to bribe workers to vote for them. However, during the election itself, independent observers were there to make sure things moved forward smoothly. These observers included UE allies from Unifor in Canada and the CUT in Brazil.

When the results were announced Thursday morning, SINTTIA leaders claimed a clear victory, receiving 4,192 votes of the 5,389 valid ballots cast, about 78 percent of the votes.

“​​The workers are fed up with the charro unions and seek to have freedom and democracy through another type of union,” said Eladio Abundiz Gaudian, a co-coordinator of UE’s Mexican ally Authentic Labor Front (FAT), who has addressed several UE conventions. “In this victory, it was a great job by all the national and international organizations that always showed their support for SINTTIA. I remain convinced that thanks to the 2019 labor reform and the impartiality of the labor authorities, there are great possibilities for other workers, women and men, to have labor justice. It is important at this time to publicize the changes to the labor law, through training workshops and forums.”

“I am excited to see this victory for an independent union in Mexico, especially one with an American employer,” said UE General President Carl Rosen. “UE has been a strong advocate for reform of Mexico’s labor laws so that workers have a say over their own working conditions. We cannot improve working conditions in the U.S. when corporations can run off to Mexico or another country to take advantage of workers who are forcibly denied basic labor rights. We look forward to SINTTIA putting forward a strong contract campaign to fight for the needs of the workers at this shop.”

Under the new labor laws, all Mexican union contracts will have to be voted on by secret ballot of the workers by May 1, 2023. The process in Silao will be an important example for workers across the country over the next year.

Photo: Unifor

On Sunday, December 19, the working people of Chile decisively elected a new president, Gabriel Boric, who has vowed to fight “the privileges of the few” and undo the right-wing, “free market” legacy of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The labor federation Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Chile (CUT), which endorsed Boric in November, congratulated him on his victory, praising him for his commitment to workers. CUT President Silvia Silva noted that Boric supports raising the minimum wage above the poverty line, and has promised to meet with workers’ representatives within the first hundred days of his administration to discuss a plan for job creation.

Boric, 35, will be the youngest president in modern Chilean history, and one of the youngest in the world. A leader of 2011 student protests demanding free education, he entered Chile’s Congress in 2013 as one of the first congress people not to come from the two established parties.

The election gave Chilean voters a clear choice: Boric’s opponent, José Antonio Kast, was closely associated with the Pinochet dictatorship, in which his brother served as labor minister and president of the country’s central bank. During the campaign, Kast expressed admiration for Pinochet and campaigned on a platform of “law and order” and demonizing immigrants.

Pinochet came to power in 1973 in a U.S.-backed military coup. He brutally suppressed unions and political opponents, privatized public services including the country’s retirement system, and generally turned the country into an experiment in handing everything over to the “free market.” The result, as organizer Yoel Bitran wrote recently in Labor Notes, was that “Poverty rates exploded and inequality soared—while some people made enormous amounts of money.”

CUT leaders pointed out that the stakes in the election were high for workers. Carlos Insunza, who coordinates the union federation’s public sector board, said that “it is enough to take a brief look” at Kast’s program to see that it is based on hostility to the very idea of a public sector. Carmen Luz Scaff, the vice president of the Organization of the National Association of Fiscal Employees and president of the National Federation of Public Health Associations, added that a victory for Kast would lead to “layoffs, reduction of workers and also persecution, especially of trade unionists.”

The presidential campaign occurred while Chileans are in the process of re-writing their constitution — a process that Boric supports but Kast opposed. The current constitution is a product of the dictatorship. Although Pinochet was forced by popular protest and international pressure to call elections in 1989, his constitution has remained in place, locking many of his policies in place, including many directly affecting workers and unions. As Bitran explains, “The current constitution and legal system are extremely hostile to the formation of powerful majority unions,” enshrining “right to work” and limiting collective bargaining to single worksites. In 2016, labor reforms passed by a progressive government were ruled unconstitutional.

In 2019, popular protests, including a two-day general strike called by the country’s unions, forced the government to call for a referendum on calling a constitutional convention. Delegates to the constitutional convention were elected in May, and they began their work later in the year.

In the conclusion of his Labor Notes article, Bitran wrote that “a new constitution could open the door for a radical transformation of the labor movement and increased bargaining power for Chile’s working class … [and] transform Chile into a beacon of worker and union rights for the entire region.”

Many union leaders cited the importance of the constitutional process as they urged workers to vote. ​​Manuel Díaz, the CUT’s Vice President for Organizing, said “This is not a simple election […]. Today is not about having one more President. Today is about dignity. It’s about the Constitution. It is about claiming the fundamental rights of workers.”