Day: December 14, 2018

Less than two months ago, teachers and other school employees in East Baton Rouge demonstrated that when they organize themselves and their community, they can use their collective power to hold thieving corporations to account.

Members of two teachers unions, the Louisiana Association of Educators and the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teaches, as well as members of a Service Employees local and the East Baton Rouge Bus Operators Association came together under the auspices of a local faith, labor, and community coalition called Together Baton Rouge to study, discuss, and strategize around the issue of corporate theft of tax dollars.

Louisiana, pays out in one year as much as $200 million more in tax credits and rebates that it collects in corporate taxes. In 2016, the state granted ExxonMobil over $70 million in property tax exemptions alone.

Meanwhile, teachers haven’t received an across-the-board raise since 2008 and lack for basic classroom resources. “People don’t have have what they need to have to do their jobs,” said Gretchen Lampe of the Louisiana Association of Educators.

As a routine measure, ExxonMobil expected to submit a request for a $6.5 million property exemption at the Oct. 31 meeting of the Board of Commerce and Industry. Teachers and school staff decided to act. On October 23 they almost unanimously (445-6) voted to stage a one-day walkout the following week. Teachers planned to pack the hearing to protest ExxonMobil’s requests.

Within hours of the union vote, the company had withdrawn its bids for exemptions and the walkout was postponed “permanently, if the exemption requests do not return; temporarily, if they are placed on a subsequent agenda,” according the members of Support Our Educators Coalition. “If these after-the-fact exemption requests do return, so will our fierce opposition to their approval, along with our commitment to assure that public school funds are used for the purpose for which they were intended… for the education of the children of our community.”

On October 29, hundreds of call center workers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, held a rally protesting low wages. Most of these workers are Black women. They were calling for fair pay and for a union. The workers are employed by General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), a federal contractor. These workers handle calls by people from across the country with complex questions concerning the Affordable Care Act’s Marketplace and Medicare. The job requires a level of expertise relating to healthcare. The recent raise to 10.35 an hour given to the workers by GDIT is not even a living wage; according to the Living Wage Calculator project at MIT, a living wage for U.S. workers in 2015 would be $15.12 per hour.

Call center workers had already filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, claiming that GDIT had misclassified them in order to pay them at a lower rate than their job duties required. However, forming a union would give these workers not only greater bargaining power, but open up the possibility of receiving federal funds to supplement a wage increase, with no cost to GDIT. Nevertheless, GDIT has resisted unionization, launching an anti-union campaign. In a federal lawsuit filed in September, it has also been alleged that GDIT has engaged in racial discrimination and wage theft.

For the rally itself, dozens of workers gathered outside the GDIT center in Hattiesburg. Employee, Regenia Keys, told the Hattiesburg American, “When I get paid this Friday, I’ve got a car note that’s due,” she said. “I’ve got to pay my rent. My check is gone. My paycheck is not even enough to cover my bills. I’m having my kids come to help with odds and ends and whatever.”

Don Freeman of Hattiesburg has worked at GDIT for three years. He said, “A great number of us are in favor of joining a union, but I understand that a lot of them are scared,” he said. “Unions are not looked at favorably in these parts.”

Don Freeman, Regenia Keys, and other organizing GDIT workers understand that, although unions have been demonized by the media mouthpieces of the ultra-rich ruling class (all over the country, and not just in states like Mississippi), forming a union is their best bet for improving their conditions. Workers are the majority and bosses are the minority. Banding together and fighting gives workers the ability to take on the bosses who want to horde all wealth and resources for themselves. The GDIT workers in Hattiesburg are part of a wider trend of workers organizing in this country, including in the South.

On November 24, Take Em Down NOLA marched from Congo Square to Jackson Square to demand that any statue or monument that honors mass murderer and slaver Andrew Jackson be removed from public land. Jackson led attempted wars of extermination against the Native peoples. In 1830 he enacted the “Indian Removal Act” to seize the homelands of Native Americans for the sole benefit of his fellow white slaveholders.

With righteous outrage and determination, indigenous members of the community marched alongside Black leaders, and lent their voices in the chant “We won’t get no satisfaction until we take down Andrew Jackson!”