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by Andrew_Archive
Christopher wrote:Andrew. wrote:Meanwhile, on the funny-white-dude-hosted podcast front, I started checking out Pod Damn America...Three of the five hosts (honestly, it's really just Jake Flores' baby) aren't actually white, if that's of prime importance to you.Cool. Just started listening. connor wrote:**walks into a room that s 75% white people in a country that is 75% white people** œhmmmm is this some kind of KKK rally? A few anecdotes from the labor movement, where I work full-time. 1. In response to health care restructuring, five health care locals (same union) amalgamate into one large local of 15,000 members. They include a wide range of job classifications, from radiation techs and practical nurses to maintenance guys and hospital laundry and cafeteria workers. Very complicated, bureaucratic sector. The founding convention of the amalgamated health care local is delegated, meaning not any union member can attend. Just delegates. It's' about 300 people making decisions on the structure (bylaws etc) of a 15K union local. Some large health care facilities have large portions of racialized workers. Particularly in the last 10 years, the demographics of the membership have shifted dramatically to include lots of Southeast Asian and Filipinx workers. In some large facilities, more than 50% of the union membership is non-white. The 20-person executive of the local is 100% white. About one dozen of the 300 delegates at the founding convention are POC. One of the facility reps makes a motion from the floor to form a Filipino Workers Committee, that would allocate some resources for Filipinx workers to do outreach, research, etc. The opposition to the motion is voracious. It's like a 98% white room of trade unionists, some of whom are literally banging their tables with their fists in opposition to the motion. They say things like "We are all just workers! We're all Canadian workers! This divides us!" The three Filipinx delegates sit silently avoiding eye contact with anyone. These arguments would nullify every equity committee that exists. There is a well-established women's committee that was hard fought for by women in the union many years ago. Same with an Indigenous committee, LGBTQ committee, etc. These are the most active, vibrant working committees in the union. Activists in the union spent years working against the established "old stock" grain of their own union to carve out these spaces. The motion for a Filipino Workers Committee is voted down nearly unanimously by the 300 local delegates. It frankly feels a bit like being at a white supremacist rally. Meanwhile, amidst 10 years of privatization and austerity under a rightwing government, the union membership remain largely demobilized and disengaged. The Filipinx activists, who are some of the brightest emerging activists, realize they're up against a white power structure in their own union and most give up on and back to organizing their own potlucks and socials etc outside the union. 2. A hotel on the main strip here goes on strike in the winter over wages and benefits. In the process of doing strike support, we learn that less than a quarter of the members are on the strike. The majority of members have crossed the line and are working. After six months of a grueling winter picket, the strike collapses and a couple months later the workers vote to decertify from the union. Turns out there was a big block of Somali workers and Punjabi-speaking workers at the hotel. The union made no efforts to meaningfully incorporate and engage them, to bridge the language differences, etc, and it cost them the workplace, which had been unionized for decades.3.I recently became the staff rep for a local of teaching and research assistants at the university here. It's a small, low-ranked university with a very apolitical student body. The TA and RA local represents about 500 members during the fall and winter semesters. Most are Master's students so the turnover is brutal and just trying to get people on the executive and make quorum at the AGM has been a major objective for years. The uni admin bulldozes them in every round of bargaining because the local is a hollow shell with no leverage and the admin knows it. The local has been without a new agreement since 2016 and wages are shit. The only two execs when I come on are international students.In recent years, universities in Canada have shifted to recruiting international students as a cash cow. This uni charges them literally three times as much for tuition as domestic students. We estimate about half of the members are international students. We decide to foreground their issues doing outreach for the AGM, where there will be elections for the majority of empty exec positions. We fill all the positions and organize a rally on campus during bargaining. A group of my activist friends, mostly queer weirdo types, have a protest samba group who volunteer to make a racket while we march through campus and help us make banners. A Nigerian dude who stepped onto the exec gives a barnstorming speech in the rotunda of the admin building that none of us saw coming. This is the largest union in the province (and in Canada) but this is the only local exec in the province with a POC and young-worker led exec. Where once they couldn't get quorum, now they're marching with drum groups and shouting through megaphones. 4. I get assigned as the staff rep for a care home local that's going into bargaining. The entire exec except for the president are white women over the age of 40. The local president is an Indigenous single mother of four kids. Their wages run from $16 to $19/hour. Their benefits are garbage. Only 10% of workers have permanent full-time positions. They can't get anyone out to meetings. Zero member engagement. One of the union execs has been harassing a Muslim worker on religious grounds. A big chunk of the membership are Filipinas. The president, with my support, goes against the wishes of the exec and makes a concerted effort to poll the Filipinas on bargaining priorities. They start attending meetings. One becomes a shop steward. The local starts to come to life, but the old guard are pissed.Anyway, Pod Damn America seems great. There's a recent episode with an IWW organizer I haven't checked out yet. I attended organizer training at IWW HQ in Chicago in 2007 as part of our grad union organizing drive at the University of Chicago. As much as I can, I try to incorporate Wobblie solidarity unionism into my work as a pork chopper.