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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 19, 2008)
DEC-Holiday-2008:Holiday Issue 12/16/08 10:05 AM Page 6 Stand For Children, the Community Alliance of Ten- By DON McINTOSH ants, Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United, Associate Editor Oregon Action, and KBOO Community Radio. Over A Portland union activist received a the years, he’s campaigned for immigrant rights, uni- rare honor Dec. 3: a mayoral declara- versal single-payer health care, a raise in the minimum tion proclaiming a day of appreciation wage, and against police racial profiling. In 1988, Par- for his work for social justice. tridge threw himself into Jesse Jackson’s run for the Jamie Partridge, 59, is an Executive Democratic presidential nomination, and for years af- Board member at the National Associ- ter that he continued to work with Jackson’s group, the ation of Letter Carriers (NALC) Rainbow Coalition, to build a progressive alliance Branch 82, and a labor and social jus- with the local black community. In the early 1990s, he tice activist with a three-decades-long helped found the Portland chapter of Jobs With Jus- résumè of community involvement. tice. “I’m nobody special, just a working Partridge has lived for 20 years in the same inner stiff,” Partridge told City Council upon Northeast Portland neighborhood where he delivers receiving the honor. “I’ve worked as a mail, and is an active member of Ainsworth United mailman 25 years now, as well as a Church of Christ, which formed two decades ago garbage man, grocery clerk, day care when a mostly black church and a mostly white worker, and lab tech.” church merged. Partridge belongs to the church social But Partridge was lucky enough to be a child of the ‘60s, he said, and de- Letter Carriers Branch 82 member Jamie Partridge (left) receives copy of a declaration from justice committee. Portland Mayor Tom Potter proclaiming Dec. 3 “a day of appreciation” for Partridge and his At Branch 82, Partridge has been shop steward, leg- velop a sense of outrage about the efforts in fighting for social justice. islative liaison, and organizing committee chair. Last wrongs of the world. And he had role year he was elected to the Executive Board and be- models who showed him how to came editor of the newsletter. This year, he took a sev- knock on doors, organize a meeting, He began delivering what he calls “the people’s mail” in eral month leave from work at the U.S. Postal Service to do lo- and mobilize people against “money power” in order to win 1984. As a member of NALC Branch 82, he became an advo- cal political campaign work for his national union. justice for working people. cate what he calls “social unionism.” Portland Mayor Tom Potter first met Partridge in 1969, Partridge, the son of a doctor and a teacher, grew up in Lake “My concept of unionism has always been broader than la- when Potter was a Portland police officer practicing an early Oswego, and first became involved in his 20s, as a phle- bor movement,” Partridge told the Labor Press. “We need to form of community policing. Potter joined the Brooklyn botomist at the Portland Veterans Hospital and member of see ourselves as part of a working class social movement. We American Federation of Government Employees. Laid off from need to reach out to other organizations and hook up with them Neighborhood Action Center, and the two worked together to create a youth center for high school dropouts. that job, he went to work at Fred Meyer and Safeway and got in coalition.” Announcing the declaration Dec. 3, Potter called Partridge active in the Retail Clerks Union (now United Food and Com- Partridge certainly practiced that preachment, becoming “one of the many unsung heroes of the Portland community.” mercial Workers Local 555). Again laid off, he traveled to something like a full-time activist in his off hours. “Jamie,” said the mayor, “will always strive to do what is Nicaragua and helped found a labor committee on Central Partridge has volunteered for innumerable groups, including right.” America. M a y o r P o t t e r c o m m e n d s ‘ w o r k i n g s t i f f ’ f o r a c t i v i s m Chicago workers to rest of the country: ‘Don’t let it die’ Six-day sit-in at manufacturing plant resurrects a tactic once used in the 1930s By DAVID BACON New America Media CHICAGO — When the day final- ly comes that Raul Flores loses his job, he will face a bitter search for an- other one. “I’ve got a family to sup- port, so I’ve got to do whatever it takes,” he says. “It’s going to be hard. The economic situation is not good, but I can’t just wait for something to happen to me.” That puts Flores in the same boat as millions of other U.S. workers. Last month alone 533,000 workers lost their jobs, the highest figure in 34 years. In early December, the heads of the big three auto companies were in Washington, D.C., pleading for loans to keep their companies afloat. As a price, lawmakers and pundits told them they had to become “leaner and meaner,” and in response, Gen- eral Motors announced it would close nine plants and put tens of thousands of workers in the street. Ford and Chrysler described a similar job-elim- ination strategy. What makes Flores special? He didn’t just accept the elimination of his job. Instead, he sat in for six days PAGE 6 at the Chicago plant where he worked together with 240 other union mem- bers at Republic Windows and Doors. Republic workers were not de- manding the reopening of their closed factory. They’ve been fighting for severance and benefits to help them survive the unemployment they know awaits them. Yet their occupation can’t help but raise deeper questions about the right of workers to their jobs. Can a return to the militant tac- tics of direct action, that produced the greatest gains in union membership, wages and job security in U.S. his- tory, overturn “the inescapable logic of the marketplace?” Can employers, and the banks that hold their credit lines, be forced to keep plants open? Unlike the auto giants, Republic was not threatening bankruptcy. It makes a “green product,” Energy-Star compliant doors and windows that should be one of the bedrock indus- tries for a new, more environmentally sustainable economy. But Bank of America, as it was receiving $25 bil- lion in federal bailout funds, pulled the company’s credit line. Perhaps that alone led President-elect Barack Obama to support the workers. The bank-enforced closure undermines his program for using environmentally sustainable jobs to replace those elim- inated in the spiraling recession. He called Republic workers “absolutely right. What’s happening to them is re- flective of what’s happening across this economy.” Federal law requires companies to give employees 60 days notice of a plant closure, or pay them 60 days severance pay, to give them breathing room to find other jobs. Republic workers got three days, and no money. “They knew they’d be out on the street penniless,” says Leah Fried, organizer for Local 1110 of the United Electrical Workers. “When the negotiating committee came back to the factory to report that the company did- n’t even show up to talk with them, the workers were so enraged they voted unanimously not to leave until they got their severance and vacation pay.” While the workers’ acted to gain their legally-mandated rights, the plant occupation resurrects a tactic with a radical history. In 1934, auto workers occupied the huge Fisher Body plants in Flint, Michigan, and when the battle was over, the United Auto Workers was born. Sitdown strikes spread across the country like wildfire. Occupying production lines in plant after plant, workers won unions, better wages, and real changes in their lives. Seventy years later, the workers who have inherited that legacy of unionization and security are on the brink of losing everything. Just since 2006 the United Auto Workers has lost 119,000 members. The threat of plant closure has been used to cut the wages of new hires in half, to $14.50, the same wage paid on the window lines at Republic, where the union is only four years old. Flores certainly hopes that those whose livelihoods are in peril will re- discover the tactic. “This is the start of some- thing,” he urges. “Don’t let it die. Learn something from it.” And the sit- down was successful. After six days sitting-in, and a rally of 1,000 people in front of the bank, JP Morgan, another benefi- ciary of Federal assistance that owns 40 percent of Republic, put up $400,000, and Bank of America an- other $1.35 million. That was enough to pay the legally-mandated sever- ance, the workers’ accrued vacation, and two months of health care. Flores and his co-workers then voted to end the occupation. Fran Tobin, midwest organizer for Jobs with Justice, a coalition of labor and community groups with chapters around the country, shares Flores’ op- ...Bank of America, as it was receiving $25 billion in federal bail- out funds, pulled the company’s credit line. NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS timism. “I think this is not the last time we’re going to see American workers occupying American plants, as part of a move to save jobs and turn things around,” he says. Organizers for Jobs with Justice are fanning out with a program they call a “Peoples’ Bailout.” “We need to ask, ‘What kind of an economy and recovery do we want?’” Tobin emphasizes. He lists funds for a jobs program, rather than huge loans to banks, a morato- rium on home foreclosures, invest- ment in infrastructure repair, and helping local and state governments (and public worker) survive the crisis without massive budget cuts. Flores, Tobin and Fried all agree that none of those demands can be won without unions and workers will- ing to fight for them. That makes the Republic plant occupation more than just a local confrontation. “This might not be the right tactic in every situa- tion, but people know we need to be fighting back,” Fried says. Will the unions in auto plants and other workplaces hit by layoffs take up the challenge of the Republic workers? To Flores, they have to do something more than just watch the elimination of their jobs. “We’ve got to fight for our rights,” he emphasizes. “It’s not fair that they just kick us out on the street with nothing. Somebody has to respond.” For more articles and images, go to http:// dbacon.igc.org. DECEMBER 19, 2008
