Author: Workers Voice

Unionized dockworkers rejected bosses’ white supremacist divide-and-conquer campaign and upheld bi-racial working-class solidarity.

by Malcolm Suber

In the early twentieth century, New Orleans’ unionized dockworkers demonstrated the absolute importance of bi-racial working-class solidarity and rejected the bosses’ use of white supremacy to quash working class aspirations to advance their living conditions. They were following in the footsteps of New Orleans workers who led the general strike of 1892.

A legacy of the 1892 General Strike was the effort to maintain a 50-50, or half-and-half, labor system on the New Orleans docks. Under this arrangement, both Black and white workers insisted that any work crew hired by ship owners be 50% Black and 50% percent white. Workers would labor side by side, performing the same work for the same pay. This was understood by the dockworkers as a tactic to prevent the bosses from lowering all wages by pitting workers against each other by offering more to one group of workers than the other. Both Black and white union leaders recognized that when the owners were allowed to hire without parity between black and white workers, as was the practice before the 1892 General Strike, animosity between black and white workers flared and the working class as a whole suffered a setback.

In October 1901, the separate Black and white unions created the Dock and Cotton Council (DCC) that coordinated the unions of Black and white screwmen, longshoremen, teamsters, loaders and general laborers on the waterfront. An accommodation to the Jim Crow white supremacist system required that the President and financial secretary of the DCC be held by white workers and the vice-presidency and corresponding secretary position be held by black workers. By 1903, the DCC oversaw eight separate unions of Black and white dockworkers with a total of approximately 10,000 members and helped ensure that all unions adhered to the 50-50 rule. In time, the DCC assisted member unions in negotiations with the owners. The DCC was also given the right to call a general port strike.

The New Orleans screwmen were responsible for tightly packing cotton bales in the holds of the ships. This critical task put them atop the labor force on the docks thus providing the screwmen with the highest wages on the docks. However, in contrast to other waterfront laborers, white screwmen in the 1890s refused the 50- 50 arrangements and voted for a quota system limiting the number of black screwmen to a small percentage of the jobs.The black and white locals had separate contracts with different terms and there was no way to support workers in labor disputes. In addition, rumors began to spread that the shipping agents were trying to find ways to remove the 75-bale per day limit instituted by the white screwmen by using black screwmen who would work for lower wages with no limit on bales stowed. These types of racial division led to bloody fights between the screwmen.

By the turn of the twentieth century, all screwmen faced new pressure from the ship owners to increase their output by introducing a new method of loading the cotton bales known as “shoot-the-chute”. This system required crews of 4-5 men to throw down between 400 to 700 bales per day into the holds of ships where other workers waited to pack them. This new system required 4 to 5 times more productivity with no raise in pay. In addition, the work day would no longer be determined by the number of bales but by the whistle of the shipping agent. The screwmen could see that this faster pace would mean less work left for the next day, thus depriving them of pay.

The issue of a fair day’s work and pay became the central issue for the screwmen. In April,1902 the employers’ Steamship Conference declared that only the owners and not any contract had the right to control who worked on the docks and for how long and for what pay.The screwmen fiercely resisted this attack on their living standards. The two screwmen unions agreed to the 50-50 rule; a uniform wage scale limiting the days’ work to 120 bales as opposed the SC demand 400-700. In the fall of 1902, the unions jointly presented their demands to the steamship conference.

The screwmen’s alliance launched a series of strikes from 1902-1903 that forced the Steamship Conference to adopt the production rate and adhere to the 50-50 demands. During these strikes, the screwmen enjoyed the backing of the other waterfront unions and the newly formed DCC.

The bosses tried to break the strike by the usual divide and conquer scheme by spreading a rumor that the black screwmen were violating the agreement and getting more work than white workers. The strike remained united and ended in early December 1902; by December 25 screwmen were packing on average 110 bales per day.
In response to the screwmen’s strike, the bosses instituted two lockouts in 1903. Again, pressing for control of hiring and more production from the screwmen. The screwmen held firm and the bosses were unable to impose new labor standards.

The screwmen were again locked out on October 1, 1903, but they received the support of black and white longshoremen. Shippers led for an injunction and Mayor Paul Capdevielle unsuccessfully tried to mediate. The strikers garnered so much support during the two-week lockout that even scabs refused to cross their lines. Ultimately, the lockout ended when the employers proposed terms that required screwmen to produce 160 bales per day. The unions accepted this proposal and the bosses admitted defeat.

In the fall of 1907, both black and white longshore workers launched an extended general strike against the shipping company bosses. As in 1902-03, screwmen were at the center of the struggle as the bosses resented the contract concessions made in the 1903. When the 1903 contract expired on September 1, 1907, the ship owners sought what they called a ‘parity’ argument, demanding that New Orleans screwmen stow as much cotton as their counterparts in Galveston, TX – a rate of 200 bales per day. On October 4, all of the ship owners locked out the screwmen. In response, the DCC called a general strike. 9000 dockworkers, black and white, struck the New Orleans port in a show of solidarity with the screwmen. Freight handlers from the Southern Paci c line also struck, ending all work on the port.

The bosses responded by bringing in black and white strikebreakers. Some of the strikebreakers quit when they learned they were being used by the bosses and by the extraordinary show of support by entire working class of New Orleans.

During the second week of the strike the owners launched a strong attempt to divide and conquer the unions along racial lines. The owners revived the White League to attempt to intimidate Black strikers. They also appealed to the other dockworkers that this was a fight against the screwmen and they should not lose wages supporting their strike.

On October 11, the screwmen proposed a return to work at the rate of 160 bales per day. The bosses rejected this proposal and demand a rate of 200 bales per day. During the impasse, the bosses worked overtime to divide the workers along racial lines by circulating rumors that the white workers had returned to work, or alternately, that the black workers were returning to work. However, labor solidarity held.

The general strike ended on October 24, 1907 with a compromise plan endorsed and urged by the city’s mayor. Under the compromise, screwmen agreed to return to work at the rate of 180 bales per day. In response to union demands, the agreement included provisions for an investigation into the port’s viability. White supremacy clearly emerged as the screwmen appointed their representatives to the investigative committee along the 50- 50 principle- but white ship owners refused to work with the black representatives. When no resolution could be reached with the racist ship owners, the mayor and state legislature appointed a committee to investigate port conditions. Its focus was cross-racial cooperation among the workers on the New Orleans docks. This cooperation of course violated all norms of Jim Crow segregation. The DCC unions rejected the pressure and held out for working class solidarity to advance working conditions.

By Ryan Jones

Three years ago I was a full-time worker at Burger King and like many others, my experience was not good. I was working five days a week, making the federal minimum wage, which is 7.25 an hour. Working full-time i was making $700 a month, which is not a livable wage. Not only was I supporting myself, but also my family. I didn’t receive breaks, and was required to fill multiple positions in the workplace. Like many workplaces, Burger King kept minimum staff on, expecting workers to take on the workloads of multiple people, cutting back on costs at the expense of us workers. The managers would often be aggressive towards workers, yelling at us, snatching our phones away (taking our personal property). They would often yell at us about not “doing our jobs” while we were busting our asses!

They electronically deposited our checks, so we didn’t get our check stubs in person. You could access them online, but without smartphones or computers, it can be very difficult to check and make sure your pay & hours are done right. We in the industry know it’s very common for bosses to shave a couple hours off workers’ checks. They often do this in ways that aren’t noticeable, leaving many workers experiencing wage theft without even realizing it. This is why it’s very important that we have access to our pay stubs.

I feel we should get our pay stubs in person, so we can better hold our bosses accountable. I also feel like everybody should get paid breaks, and a free shift meal. All workers should get a living wage, which at the minimum should be $15 dollars an hour. We all should have a union, so we have the power to demand the dignity and respect we deserve in the workplace. We as workers must make our voices heard, and demand the bosses start listening to what we have to say. We need to get organized as working people. Our bosses aren’t going to give us our rights, we must demand them. We gotta shut shit down.

by James York

People everywhere face an uncertain future due to climate change. That is especially true in south Louisiana, where the combination of sea level rise and disappearing coastal wetlands will force many residents to leave within decades. It is undeniable that most of the damage to this area is due to oil and gas exploration and production, and it is undeniable that we are facing a $50 billion budget shortfall just to fund the megaprojects that are supposed to provide some protection against coastal erosion.

In this light, the economic development statistics offered by the proponents of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline are absurd. In exchange for destroying 150 acres of forested wetland and “temporarily impacting” 450 more to build 163 miles of oil pipeline through the Atchafalaya Basin, Our vehemently pro-oil state government has we are being offered only $1.8 million per year in taxes paid to the state and 12 permanent jobs. While the pipeline will continue to make money for its owners and funders year after year, we the people will see nothing for this damage to the wetlands. Pipelines reduce the wetlands’ ability to protect cities and infrastructure from flooding due to hurricanes and irreparably change the hydrology of the affected area, damaging wildlife habitat. We also face the possibility of an oil spill that would threaten the drinking water of some 300,000 people and one of the most productive wetlands in the world, the heart of our $1 billion per year seafood industry. With that in mind, one would expect a reasonable government to say”no” to an obviously bad deal, but in Louisiana we are not so lucky. Our vehemently pro-oil state government has done the opposite (even with a Democratic Party governor).They have given Energy Transfer Partners, the oil corporation behind the hated pipeline, free reign to build despite ongoing legal challenges and violence by local sheriffs that they have hired for off-duty work as private security.

The state government has introduced new legislation in the past three months that pins felony terrorism charges on water protectors who are exercising their first amendment right to peacefully protest. These brave people of the L’eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) camp are living near the pipeline construction and standing up for all of our right to say NO to these projects that could damage our communities forever. Their work can be followed at nobbp.org.

The family of Keeven Robinson and the Jefferson Parish NAACP demand cops’ arrest

On May 10, 2018 Keeven Robinson was choked to death by four white cops. The Parish coroner has ruled it a homicide. But the cops are still on desk duty. Taxpayers are still paying their salaries. The police cannot act as judge, jury, and executioner. The murder occurred in the course of arresting Keeven who the cops had been following on nothing more than “suspicion” which smacks of racial profiling.

“I am not comfortable knowing the people who took my brother’s life in cold blood are just walking around like nothing is going on and (are) still getting paid,” Robinson’s younger brother, Randy Martin Jr., told reporters on November 28. “They were getting paid when they took my brother’s life, and they are still getting paid today.”

TEARS FOR KASHOGGI BUT NOT FOR GENOCIDE IN YEMEN

For decades during which tens of thousands of people have died at the hands of the Saudi monarchy, the U.S. government proclaimed the Saudi kings their great friends and allies. Whether Republican or Democrat it was all the same. Now there is outrage over their murder of Kashoggi while the Yemeni people are facing bombings, famine and genocide at the hands of the royal family with U.S. military support.

It is painful to see all the tears for Kashoggi while no action on Yemen is planned except a resolution in Congress that is not considered urgent even as the bombing intensifies.

The U.S. Saudi alliance goes back decades. First England and then the U.S. government supported the absolutist reign of the Saudi kings for two purposes: to help put down the Arab masses in their fight to free themselves from foreign domination and to control the vast oil fields of Saudi Arabia. They promised the Saudi kings weapons, money, political recognition and the right of the kings to total control and wealth if they carried out the interests of the U.S. capitalists, especially the oil companies.

So-called liberal Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that “the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States.” On 14 February 1945, he met with King Ibn Saud aboard the USS QUINCY to discuss the creation of Israel on Palestinian land.

The Trump family has deep ties to the Saudi monarchy both personally and on behalf of war profiteers and oil companies. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was acting as ambassador without confirmation. Recently Trump, always a salesman for the war profiteering U.S. military corporations, signed a $110 billion arms sale with King Al Saud, part of a $350 billion economic and military package.

DEMOCRATS LOVE THE SAUDI KINGS, ESPECIALLY HILLARY CLINTON

But it’s not just the Republicans. President Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton loved the Saudi kings. According to the International Business Times BT during the three full years of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state (FY 2010-12), the department approved commercial arms sales worth a total of $165 billion to twenty nations whose governments had given to the Clinton Foundation — nearly double the total sales to those countries approved in FY 2006-08, during President George W. Bush’s second term.

Arms exports to Saudi Arabia totaling $8 billion were approved in FY 2010-12 — up from $4.1 billion in FY 2006-08 — including $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets delivered by a consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing. In the years before Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, while Boeing contributed $900,000 to the foundation just two months before the deal was finalized.

According to IBT, governments and corporations involved in the arms deals approved by the State Department have contributed between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to the Clinton family in the form of speaking fees.

KASHOGGI MURDER UPSET CAPITALISTS – HE WAS ONE OF THEM.

Kashoggi comes from an ultra rich family loyal to the royal family. He became a critic of the Kings in order to protect the legitimacy of their rule. His uncle was the infamous Adnan Kashoggi, who helped Oliver North provide weapons to the brutal contras (right wing death squads) in Nicaragua. These arms were banned by Congress, but North (now head of the NRA) funded the arms by importing drugs which then flooded the U.S. The main airports that received these shipments of drugs were New Orleans military bases. Just recently the Saudis murdered another journalist who was a real opponent of the Saudi kings, and beheaded a domestic worker (they are treated like slaves in Saudi Arabia) with no mention in the big business media.

GENOCIDE IN YEMEN

Yemen had actually freed itself from the grips of the Saudi regime decades ago and attempted to build a socialist country. This was militarily crushed by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi monarchy wants to annex Yemen and prevent the masses from reasserting their independence. To this end, with U.S. weapons and military support, tens of thousands of Yemenis, mostly civilians, have been murdered. Because of the bombing of sewage plants and blockade of medicine by the Saudis, Yemen is facing the biggest cholera epidemic in world history. The continued Saudi/U.S. assault on Yemen puts 14 million Yemenis at risk of death by starvation and disease.

CONGRESS – A LIMP RESOLUTION. CUT ALL TIES TO THE HOUSE OF SAUD

We are talking about out genocide of civilians by a fascist government that has been going on for years. Yet Congress is merely “considering” a resolution against more arms to the Saudi kings. Even this has been sitting in Congress with no urgency or determination to pass it. Both parties of capitalism, the Democrats and Republicans are wary of upsetting their loyal partner in the Middle East. But we workers have no problem demanding an end to all U.S. support for the Saudi kings and their war against Yemen—not with our tax dollars and not in our name.

By Sally Jane Black

The Trump administration is continuing its assault on transgender people. Its most recent attack is the most sweeping yet: altering the definition of sex to mean what one was assigned at birth. The Department of Health and Human Services is currently leading the charge to get all major departments in the U.S. government to follow suit. This change would simply erase transgender people from existence in any legal sense, denying us any legal protections, stripping us of our legal identities, making it impossible to change our IDs, our birth certificates, our genders in any database of any kind. The bureaucratic assault will result in people losing jobs, homes, medical care, drivers licenses, passports, or more if an official decides they’re invalid.

It will mean a cementing of what the current administration has been doing since it took office. Already, they have stripped trans people of rights in schools, prisons, and on the job, and those rights were feeble and hinged not even on an official rule change but just a directive to interpret existing rules differently. No administration has taken the stance needed to actually protect trans people in the eyes of the law–defining gender as more than a biological construct (one that ignores how human biology actually works, no less). What is needed is a major legal change that would allow people to define their own genders on any legal document.

Few trans people have the resources to challenge discrimination in the courts, and the violence trans people face has never been discouraged through any law or social change. Murder rates for trans people, especially black trans women, continue to be astronomically higher than for cisgender people. The capitalist class benefits from dividing the working class. Using the smokescreen of religious freedom or fake concern for the safety of children (a laughable sentiment from an administration currently putting them in cages and kidnapping them from their parents), they inspire fear in the working class and drives them to exclude and attack trans people. We need a united working class with the freedom to be who we are and the legal protections in place to back up the diversity of gender and sexuality that exists. We cannot let the bourgeois attacks continue to drive a wedge between us at the expense of the trans people among us.

At a press conference called by parents whose diabetic children have died due to high price of insulin, Sanofi Pharmaceuticals was denounced for its murderous greed. “Sanofi’s high prices are killing people like my son Alec Smith-Holt”. Along with parents of two other young people who died rationing insulin, Holt-Smith attempted to deliver Alec’s ashes to Sanofi officials during a protest at the research facility on November 16. The parents were joined by local diabetes patients, doctors, nurses and students.

A vial of insulin that once cost around $25 now goes for about $400 to $500. Dr. Vikas Saini, co-director of the Right Care Alliance said insulin has been around for a century and costs about $5 to manufacture. Globally, half of the people who need insulin can’t reliably get it. A class-action lawsuit led in a federal court in New Jersey accuses Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi of acting like an insulin “cartel” and raising prices “in lockstep.”

“The Trump administration, and its small maneuvers on drug pricing, ultimately aim to protect Big Pharma from public outrage and calls for greater changes to its abusive, monopolistic business model,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program, in a statement on Friday.

By Gavrielle Gemma

In the latest attempt to criminalize working class folks, the Department of Labor is proposing a new rule that forces a mandatory drug test on people who lose their jobs and need unemployment insurance. They want to extend this to food stamp users.

This is a back-door attack on benefits that we pay for. For years, the right wing, ultra-rich parasites attacked welfare programs with false stories and a lot of racism. The fact that most welfare recipients were white, and a majority children, did not stop racist attacks or keep the greedy from taking from the needy. They wanted workers to turn on each other.

In several states, drug testing is already imposed on adult users of TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare). Tests have shown drug use rates to be very low, around one-tenth the national average. But the dirty work has been done with the help of big business media. Politicians claim that drug tests are aimed at getting people help yet no rehab is actually offered and benefits are cut off regardless of harm to children.

The rich are also trying to cut people off social programs by requiring that recipients work to get benefits. Instead of providing decent paying public jobs, the state gets away with paying welfare recipients less than minimum wage to work in public parks, streets, hospitals, schools, offices and more. Already, more than 12,000 people in Arkansas have lost Medicaid coverage for failing to provide evidence of hours worked; 6,000 more are at risk of losing coverage in December. Many poor and rural residents lack access to the internet in order to complete the mandated web reporting. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said his administration is “actively working” on imposing work requirements for Medicaid recipients.

This is what the capitalists want: slave labor in prisons, forcing people to work just for food. Apart from causing misery to those targeted, these schemes have the effect of lowering wages for all workers. This shows how necessary it is that workers reject the capitalist lies about welfare (another form of unemployment insurance). If you believe their lies, they will come back to take away another benefit that we have paid for.

THE BIG LIE

So how does this work? Rich capitalist parasites and their flunkey politicians hire media firms to convince us overworked and underpaid workers to blame even poorer workers for our troubles. “Those people,” they say, are lazy while you’re working your fingers to the bone. They trot out whatever racist garbage their experts deem effective and maybe show a poor woman driving a Benz. These stories are all invented for the purpose of turning workers against one another and for drawing our attention away from our common enemy: the parasites whose endless piles of cash pay for these ugly fantasies.

The capitalists and war profiteers act like the budgets belong to them even though they use countless loopholes to get out of paying the taxes that we workers pay. The more they cut programs, the more of the budget they feel they’re entitled to. Amazon, headed by the richest man on earth, is getting billions in subsidies and tax cuts and we’re supposed to blame poor people for our unmet needs? Really?

Our lives, just like the lives destroyed by their drone bombs overseas, do not matter to the rich. They don’t consider our lives, our families, our children to be important. They consider themselves royalty entitled to “their” wealth, endowed with the right to own everything and to exploit our labor at whatever cost to us. They think that we’re stealing from them when we demand a raise, a vacation, or a benefit that we paid for!

We need to build a workers’ movement that stands by the motto “An Injury to One Is An Injury to All.” Workers are angry at how difficult our lives are, but we need to turn this anger in the right direction. Just start by asking yourself: How do you know that politicians and the rich are lying? Their lips are moving.

Roads, infrastructure crumbling but these profit-makers won’t pay a dime.

If you were born in New Orleans, chances are it was at Charity Hospital. Now this historic site is being turned over to developers to turn it into luxury housing, a technology and medical center and expansion of Tulane University. All tax exempt.

Charity Hospital is being given away by the state of Louisiana, LSU and New Orleans city officials. They undemocratically chose 1532 Tulane Partners, a partnership of two developers, CCNO and El-Ad Holdings, an Israeli based company that has been destroying Palestinian homes for illegal Israeli settlements. These developers will get huge tax exemptions. 1532 Tulane Partners will get $80 million in tax credits, $25 million in tax-exempt bonds, a $95 million loan and $30 million in equity to finance its plan.

This would have been the perfect site to create affordable housing and a child care center for hospitality workers who have been forced out by high rents. Instead, hundreds of mostly white technocrats will move here to take advantage of the food, music and good jobs. The contract for the project includes no guarantees for local hiring or training of New Orleanians. We are treated as their servants. They feel entitled to luxury at our expense.

Charity Hospital belongs to the people of New Orleans. But this deal was struck behind closed doors, denying the people of New Orleans any say in the decision. There should have been public hearings and tax paying residents should have had a vote on these decisions.

This rip-off follows proposals to give profit making enterprises exemptions at the Convention Center, DCX Technology, the World Trade Center development on top of the hundreds of other exemptions handed out by the rich to their friends. Of course, the politicians who receive campaign contributions (bribes) from these companies are celebrating with them.

With developers running the city and controlling the politicians, nothing will get better until the working class organizes to flex our powerful muscles and make demands that benefit us.

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.”