Sean McKenny, President of the Ottawa District Labour Council, [...]]]> Ottawa The members listened intently and applauded frequently as they were addressed by friends from the Canadian labor movement.  Unfortunately what they were hearing was less a Canadian problem than part of an orchestrated international attack by governments and corporations on basic employment standards and unions.

Sean McKenny, President of the Ottawa District Labour Council, and Chris Robert, Senior Researcher for the Canadian Labour Congress, were both vivid in describing the real issues behind the settlement of the Air Canada strike with the Canadian Auto Workers over the weekend.  For the government to move within 16 hours of the strike was little more than a signal that the new Harper majority administration was fired up for a power play with a slap shot at labor.  Clearly the economy was not endangered.  Furthermore, a lot of the issue was about pensions, particularly defined benefit pensions which are essentially deferred compensation, and the company’s effort to run from that responsibility and put retirements at risk without paying for the risks.  The same thing is happening throughout North America and many other parts of the globe.

Lynn Beu, a vice-president with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) showed up and let people know that essentially the lockout imposed by the Postal Service was the same kind of thing.  The excuse for the lockout was a 23 person called strike!  Lynn had the crowd going as well when she talked about the partnership already being forged between CUPW, ACORN Canada, and ACORN International in the Remittance Justice Campaign and the fact that they had circulated the original ACORN International report to unions all over the world.  Why shouldn’t the postal service be offering a cheaper alternative, she asked?  Absolutely, the members agreed!  In talking about her enthusiasm for the New West and Ottawa living wage campaigns, she mentioned that when she had first heard about it, she had thought, “Living wages…what could be better than that?”  It sounded like a new slogan for the campaign to me.

Later in the evening, the executive vice-president for the Ontario Labour Federation repeated the same themes.  Her best line was:  “When labor and ACORN Canada stick together, we can’t be stopped!”

Hard times but good friends.

Prince George, British Columbia I wanted to hear Napoleon Gomez Urrutia speak to the British Columbia Government Employees Union (BCGEU) leaders gathered in the northern part of the province to look at how their union connects to the community.  Gomez is Secretary General of the 250,000+ member Union of Mining, Metallurgical, Steel and [...]]]>

Prince George, British Columbia I wanted to hear Napoleon Gomez Urrutia speak to the British Columbia Government Employees Union (BCGEU) leaders gathered in the northern part of the province to look at how their union connects to the community.  Gomez is Secretary General of the 250,000+ member Union of Mining, Metallurgical, Steel and Allied Workers of Mexico, known popularly as Los Mineros in  Mexico.  Every year Gomez has been elected unanimously by the miners for the number of years since 2006.  His miners are on huge strikes, where the Mexican  government has intervened militarily throughout the country, in Guanajuato,  Zacatecas, and Coahuila.  He and his miners have been in a life-and-death struggle with Grupo Mexico in the giant copper mine in Cananea where the strike has gone on for several years.

Just more grist for the mills in the hard life of mines and miners?  Not really, because the other part of this story is that Gomez is on the run.  He ran from trumped up charges of embezzlement from the government, first to the United States and then to Canada where he has lived in Vancouver – and directed Los Mineros as its chief officer – since 2006 from a loaned office given him by the United Steelworkers regional office in BC.  Gomez and three of his fellow officers, including one still be held as a political prisoner in Mexico, were accused by the Mexican government of misappropriating a fund of $55 million USD.  Swiss auditors and Mexican courts have audited, investigated, and exonerated Gomez and his people, and the government has frozen $20 M USD in assets and accounts.  The support of

Gomez by his members is so strong and consistent, that Gomez continues to negotiate contracts with  the employers where the union has contracts after meetings in Vancouver where they travel to meet him and bargain with him, except of course for Grupo Mexico.

After a decades of calm in the 80′s and 90′s, Los Mineros have been involved in 30+ strikes in Mexico  in the first decade of the 21^st century under Gomez, and it is hard to escape feeling that this crackdown is prompted by the miners increased militancy.  Gomez was quick to compare the abandonment by the Mexican government and the company of trapped miners in Coahuila, trapping and burying more than 60  miners in an underground grave, compared the job done recently to  save the miners in Chile and earlier this year in China.

Talking to Gomez after his remarks, he seemed resigned.  He has applied for permanent status in Canada, and seems not to believe a return to Mexico is anywhere close in his future.  His English has become superb, and he has built huge support and solidarity throughout the international labor movement coupled with the Canadian Labor Congress and the AFL-CIO.  He now carries 3 cell phones rather than the 5 he had in his early years as an exile.

Organizing is rough, but Gomez and Los Mineros are teaching the labor movement something about “the people united, shall never be defeated,” and that should give all of us heart and hope for  the future, no matter how difficult and uncertain the future seems for them and for us.

            New Orleans               It’s amazing to me how many people came up to me over the last week on the East Coast and mentioned having read my recent blog about “Pink Sheeting and One-on-One’s” in UNITE-HERE and elsewhere in the labor movement.  Google analytics tells me that this is most frequently visited current item on [...]]]>  

            New Orleans               It’s amazing to me how many people came up to me over the last week on the East Coast and mentioned having read my recent blog about “Pink Sheeting and One-on-One’s” in UNITE-HERE and elsewhere in the labor movement.  Google analytics tells me that this is most frequently visited current item on the list.

            An email shared with me by some young labor organizers who were veterans of the Cornell program reminded me how destructive such conflict is to the future of the labor movement.  An SEIU organizer was recounting the struggles to put together a majority in a unit of a couple of hundred workers over a number of months to suddenly find six UNITE/HERE organizers swoop down to turn the unit topsy-turvy.  There are probably similar stories with the union’s names reversed.  All of this redefines the “race to the bottom” in union membership and relevance for working people in America.

            Other former organizers tried to pull me on either side of the divide.  An ex-AFSCME organizer told me about a recent fundraiser in Montclair for the divisive effort being led by Sal Roselli in the Bay Area.  He was interrupted by an SEIU contractor who had done some communications work in California telling him he had no clue of what was going on.  I left them still arguing the fine points of this disaster.

            Most interesting to me have been the messages from ex-UNITE/HERE folks chiding me for being too easy on John Wilhelm and protective of Carl Lechow, the long time organizing director for HERE.  In my earlier piece I assumed that Wilhelm and Lechow were distracted and the pink sheeting was an aberration and the “one-on-one’s” simply out of control.  These folks believed they both knew and encouraged these kinds of practices.  It is so contrary to my experience with either of these brothers, that I simply can’t believe it, so I won’t, but neither have I have wanted to really believe the Synanon period of the farmworkers until at this point there seems no way to deny its existence and impact.

            The best news shared with me on the trail was the rumors that there may finally be a real resolution and a true peace in this inhospitable conflict between SEIU and UNITE/HERE.  The architect of this potential settlement seems to have been Joe Hanson, president of the UFCW, who from what several people shared with me, has been indefatigable in trying to keep front doors, back doors, and all channels open in pursuit of an agreement.  What both parties are reviewing now was described as a “tough, but fair” settlement with each side having to eat some good portions of crow and a fair division of units and assets.  All of which is dandy for the accountants, but most importantly in my view I also heard that there would be real clarity and a complete understanding on organizing jurisdiction and that would be huge. 

            The only happy ending to this tawdry episode would be a real agreement on jurisdiction that once again paves the way for unions that have been committed to organizing, having their sights clearly trained on real targets and the objective of building mass organization among hospitality and other low wage service workers who desperately demand their own organizations and the right to fight for a better future at their workplaces.  To me it all seems to come down to whether or not President Wilhelm wants to keep fighting or to have peace and get back to organizing, since he has had the strongest cards in his hand throughout this mess.  John Wilhelm has been a seminal organizer and leader for hospitality workers in our time.  I hope he sees a way to be a leader here in binding the wounds of our crippled labor movement.