Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 2019)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | November 15, 2019 | PAGE 7 Who’s on our side? By Graham Trainor Oregon AFL-CIO President ...BATTLE IN SEATTLE Graduate employees are workers too A job is so much more than a paycheck. It gives us pride, be- comes part of our identity, can provide meaning to our life, and makes us feel productive and valuable to our communi- ties. Whether we love or hate our job, whether we work part time, full time, or overtime, our work plays a significant role in our daily lives. Unfortunately, the lens through which workers and bosses analyze the value of work often couldn’t be more divergent. Working people have to fight for everything we have, nothing is given to us. At the same time, bosses look for ways to de- value our work, marginalize our demands, and keep us in our place. These divergent views are starkly evident on university campuses nationwide and across Oregon. Graduate employ- ees and graduate researchers from Eugene to Corvallis to Marquam Hill in Portland have for months been fighting for a recognition that their work has value and is, indeed, work. Meanwhile, university officials are pulling out all the stops to devalue and disrespect these workers. Take the Graduate Researchers United at Oregon Health and Science University as an example. These graduate re- searchers organized their first union with AFSCME more than a year ago, and yet they continue to face disrespect at the bargaining table and are still without a first contract. The sticking point? Management’s claim that these hard-working researchers are not employees, while blatantly disrespecting the union’s bargaining team with constant delay tactics. Just a few weeks ago, the Graduate Teaching Fellows Fed- eration, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)-affiliated union of graduate workers at the University of Oregon, was gearing up for a strike after months of negotiations where management seemed hell-bent on attacking their healthcare benefits. In the 11th hour, just days before a strike was set to begin, the two sides reached an agreement. Why was yet an- other group of workers at a public institution in Oregon ready and willing to strike? The value of their work was chal- lenged, their benefits were being attacked, and they collec- tively chose to take a stand. Today, the Coalition of Graduate Employees, an AFT-af- filiated union of graduate workers at Oregon State University, is bargaining with management and fighting some of the same challenges at the bargaining table. Whether it’s the Trump Administration’s recent Depart- ment of Labor rule aimed at reclassifying graduate workers at private universities as students and eliminating their ability to form unions and bargain collectively, or these examples of public institutions of higher learning right here in Oregon un- dermining and devaluing the work of graduate workers, it’s clear to me the Corporate Agenda recognizes the power that has come with the growth of graduate worker unions in re- cent years. From calling out the undue influence of Corporate Amer- ica on our public universities, to educating the public about the significant drop in state funding for higher education, to debunking the myth that graduate workers can’t be employ- ees — faculty, classified, and graduate employee unions on our public university campuses are holding the line and fighting back. This work has value and is important, and the Oregon Union Movement stands united behind these fights for fairness and dignity on the job, and won’t stop until we get it. The Oregon AFL-CIO is a 138,000-member-strong federation of labor unions. around, individual labor union members made their own deci- sion. Others stood in the street and caucused with fellow mem- bers. Maybe a third of the marchers kept going, and were greeted with cheers like rein- forcing cavalry when they ar- rived at occupied intersections. Steelworker Erv Schleufer is one of those who kept going. Now retired, in 1999 he was a participant in a bitter strike- lockout at the Kaiser aluminum smelter in Spokane and had traveled the West as a union “road warrior” speaking about their struggle. “We had spent all those months and tens of thousands of miles preparing for this,” Schleufer says. “I started think- ing about my history teacher in high school.… I realized this was becoming a moment in history.” While Schleufer and thou- sands of other labor marchers lingered with the occupiers for an hour or two, police held back from further attempts to clear the streets. As unionists left, the po- lice moved back in forcefully. As night fell, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell declared a curfew and po- lice pushed the remaining pro- testers out of downtown into the Capital Hill neighborhood. Police crackdown Further protests had been planned throughout the WTO summit. But now the mayor de- clared a huge area of downtown Seattle a “protest free zone,” in violation of the U.S. Constitu- tion. On the morning of Wednes- day, Dec. 1, National Guard members stood watch near the Convention Center. Squads of police in riot gear zoomed through the streets in armored personnel carriers on the lookout for protesters. Groups of protest- ers who entered downtown were subject to mass arrests. Over 500 were arrested, put on buses, taken to Sand Point Naval Base, and later transferred to King County Jail, where they were held until the end of the WTO summit. Unable to assemble near the Convention Center, pro- testers and community members surrounded the jail demanding their release. Contingents of unionists brought food and sup- plies to the jailhouse vigil, which continued for days. Photo by Mike Barkin. From Page 3 In the afternoon on Dec. 1, the USW led hundreds on a march to the Seattle waterfront, outside the protest-free zone. When the rally there ended, activists pleaded for unionists to enter downtown and defy the ban. Schleufer and oth- ers marched into downtown and soon felt the shock of police con- cussion grenades and the sting of tear gas. “We could see canisters flipping through the air, and peo- ple running from the gas. I lost about half my vision and had a hard time breathing,” he said. On Dec. 3, the final day of the WTO meeting, the King County Labor Council was ready to defy the “protest-free” zone. With marshals holding ropes to mark the perimeter of the march, unionists and allies marched into downtown … and were left alone by police. Meanwhile, local labor lead- ers had pushed for jailed protest- ers to be released. McWilliams, the ILWU president, threatened to shut down the port again if the mayor didn’t release them. The mayor relented. The WTO talks collapse Lori Wallach, then and now the leader of Global Trade Watch, spent much of that week inside the WTO meeting, lobbying for- eign trade ministers as a creden- tialed observer. Wallach says leading up to the summit, there’d already been tensions among trade negotiators. The United States and some other developed countries were pressuring poor nations to agree to things like stricter pharmaceutical monopo- lies, and arrogantly dismissed the proposals of African and Latin American nations. What brought the situation inside to a boil was the existence of invitation-only “green rooms,” where delegates from the “important” nations met for long hours to hash out a final deal they expected the rest of the nations to approve. “Because of that, there were extended periods of time where there would be a whole set of delegates from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, basi- cally left in the halls watching the protests on big TVs hung in the halls,” Wallach said. “They’d come all this way and now they were being left out of the nego- tiations, watching these Ameri- can protesters being beaten up and tear gassed. “The passion and commit- ment displayed in those protests was the last special ingredient to tip over the edge a process that was already seen as illegitimate and not in the interests of a lot of the member countries.” On the final day of the sum- mit, the WTO announced that the meeting had failed: Dele- gates were unable to agree on the terms of a new global deal. The aftermath Exhilarated by the Battle in Seat- tle, anti-corporate-globalization activists tried to recreate that success at other international summits, but with less success. The WTO held its next meeting in 2001 in Doha, Qatar, a Gulf State monarchy where visa re- strictions prevented a recurrence of protest. After the 9/11 attacks, the anti-WTO activist move- ment subsided. But the political stigma of the WTO persisted. “The WTO never recovered from its crisis of legitimacy,” Wallach says. Negotiations con- tinued for 15 years, but never re- sulted in a new agreement. Now, even the WTO’s trade dispute process is grinding to a halt. When two member nations can’t resolve a trade dispute, it’s supposed to be decided by a three-judge panel selected from a seven-member WTO court of appeals. But as their terms ex- pire, the Trump Administration has been unilaterally blocking the appointment of new judges. The body is down to just three members, the minimum needed to hear a case. On Dec. 9, the terms of two more judges will expire, at which point the WTO will be incapable of hearing ap- peals, and thus have no way to enforce its rules.
