Working Together: Jobs with Justice @ 25

In Miami in the summer of 1987, Jobs with Justice was born after months of preparation. CWA was a principal founder and as CWA organizing director at the time, I had been pushing for a different approach to workers’ rights and economic justice. The CWA convention was in Miami and Miami was home to Eastern Air Lines, recently acquired by Continental Air Lines and robber baron CEO Frank Lorenzo. The fight at Eastern/Continental, restructuring that resembles plundering, has continued almost unchecked ever since.

Jobs with Justice from the beginning was about resistance—fighting back to defend our standard of living, our jobs and organizing and bargaining rights. Union and community activists signed a pledge to “Be There” five times a year for someone else’s fight as well as our own. Local coalitions were the key and remain so today. Local unions, community organizations, greens, students, faith based groups, seniors, civil rights activists, all banding together to fight corporate greed and to fight for the American dream.

But Jobs with Justice was and is more than a series of nationally networked local coalitions. JWJ calls on each of us to make a systematic commitment to stand up and fight back for others, not just ourselves.

In early December in Washington hundreds of us gathered to mark the occasion. We honored Smithfield packing workers, janitors and our own Verizon members for historic fights over the years. We honored immigrant workers and local coalition leaders who have dedicated their lives to JWJ and looking for new ways to build our movement.

2012 has been another tough year for American working women and men who have seen nearly four decades of wage stagnation, plus health care cuts and pension destruction. We’ve experienced four decades of manufacturing and service jobs being shipped overseas. Most management and elected officials cite the global economy as an excuse, but never address the fact that bargaining and organizing rights in the U.S. have fallen to the level of Mexico and Colombia, while workers’ rights are on the rise in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and nearly every other country that calls itself a democracy.

VERIZON and JOBS WITH JUSTICE

CWA Chief of Staff Ron Collins and Baltimore City Council President Jack Young ask, ‘Where’s the FiOS?’

When Jobs with Justice activists met recently to celebrate 25 years of standing up for each other’s fights, the campaign for a fair contract at Verizon was a big part of the story and a great example of how movement building works to support working families.

Throughout the months-long campaign, JWJ and allies took on leafleting at Verizon Wireless stores, joined marches and demonstrations in the many Days of Action, leafleted at businesses run by members of Verizon’s board of directors and helped bring a big crowd to the Verizon shareholder meeting in Huntsville, Ala. Verizon may have thought that holding its meeting in Alabama would limit demonstrations, but it got a wake-up call that day.

College students from the University of Central Florida, part of the Student Labor Action Project, a JWJ ally, made the 11-hour bus trip from Orlando to join the fight. Protesters from the 99 Percent came from New York and New Orleans. The Greater Birmingham Ministries helped put up signs before the action.

JWJ’s goal: To be there for one another’s fights and unite to take on struggles that none of us could win alone. That’s the way we’re building our movement.

This issue of the CWA News looks at bargaining in our sectors: Why it’s tough and what we can do to turn things around. We know we won’t do it alone.

Many progressive allies have joined our fights for fair contracts at Verizon, AT&T and other companies, and are standing with us against the attack on public workers in Ohio, New Mexico, Wisconsin, New Jersey and too many other states.

That’s how we’ll win economic justice, not only for CWA members, but for all working families.

Today there are more than 40 JWJ coalitions around the U.S., and in most cases CWA locals are already involved, from Orlando to Oregon, Boston to Colorado.

For nearly two years CWA has been sounding the call for movement building, not just union building. We have been working across the country to forge groups like JWJ, to link the fight for economic justice to the growing democracy movement. These are critical: the fight for Senate rules that will create real debate and end the decade or more of a Senate that resembles that of ancient Rome, not a modern democracy; the fight for voting rights, and the fight to get money out of politics.

On December 10 we celebrated International Human Rights Day by launching a democracy initiative with nearly 100 other groups of all types. Our leaders and active members know that we can’t end the frustration of current collective bargaining without a real movement for social and political change.

As we celebrate the holidays and are thankful for all we have and for each other, we need to commit again to Jobs with Justice, the Democracy Initiative and many other state and national campaigns that help us build to a movement of 50 million Americans. Otherwise we will face frustration or worse, looking for answers that we cannot find. It is hard but not hopeless, it is frustrating but not impossible, as long as we are willing to work with others for economic justice and democracy as we Stand Up and Fight Back!