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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (April 7, 2017)
Page 4 News Street Roots • April 7-13, 2017 Unions stand up to racism, hate Labor leadership in Portland comes together in defense of targeted communities and immigrant workers BY EM ILY GREEN S T A F F W R IT E R any activist groups may find their members fall into one school of thought or another, but few organizations represent such varying ideologies among their membership as unions. Now, as the two outer edges of the political spectrum square off in Oregon, leaders of several local labor organizations are taking a stand against the vitriol that’s been echoing from fringe factions of the far right. Since November, Portland-based local unions representing painters, carpenters and stagehands have all passed strongly worded resolutions stating their plans to mobilize against racist and fascist hate groups, with several of their counterparts a ro u n d the Pacific Northwest following suit. M T h e O reg o n AFL-CIO also p a sse d a resolution to stand against hate incidents, and it set up a hotline for workers to call if they experience hate or discrimination in the workplace. Local labor groups have become a regular presence at area immigrant rights rallies and are gearing up to march alongside immigrant workers on May 1. In Salem, immigrant rights organization Causa and Oregon School Employees Association are co-presenting Salem’s main May Day event, and others are planning events in Portland. A recent resurgence of hate incidents in Oregon, along with the history of unions’ organizing against white supremacists, is in part why it’s the responsibility of the labor movement to take a stand against hate today, union representatives told Street Roots. The Industrial Workers of the World in Seattle has also released a statement saying it will organize “against the KKK and other white supremacist organizations, to stand with other unions and other community allies, and to quickly mobilize when these forces present a threat.” Union opposition’s racist roots Most of these unions pointed to the connection between white supremacy and the origin of anti-union “right to work” laws in their resolutions, saying racist organizations pose a direct threat to union members and the labor movement as a whole, and always have. “There certainly were some people who were white supremacist, and very much connected to that ideology, that were supportive of ‘right to work,”’ said Bob Bussel, labor history professor and director of University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center. Right-to-work laws prohibit unions from automatically collecting to-work laws, he argued, it’s worth remembering how they originated - and it dues from member workers. was in states where black people could not “The basic idea of right-to-work laws were vote and political power was concentrated in to make unions weak,” he said. “In the the hands of the elite. Southern United States, “Right-to-work laws unions were viewed as a sought to make it stay direct threat to systems that way, to deprive the and structures of white " I f the U.S. labor move least powerful of a voice, supremacy because they ment is to rebuild Its and to make sure that threatened to organize workers remained workers - in some cases strength during this pe divided along racial riod of crisis of racist interracially - and they lines,” Pierce wrote in threatened to drive a organising and attacks, It the article. “The current wedge through the must tafee up the struggle push for Right-to-Work in divide-and-conquer against white supremacy/ Kentucky and Missouri tactics that employers white nationalism , not as (along with the fueling of and their allies used. It’s nativism) does something no accident a number of an abstract debate, but as part of its social, p o litica l, similar - it is an attempt the states that enacted to persuade white right-to-work laws and organizing agenda." working people that following World War II P A C IF IC N O R T H W E S T R E G IO N A L unions and racialized C O U N C IL . O F C A R P E N T E R S were in the Southern R E S O L U T IO N others are more United States, although responsible for their not just there.” plight than the choices In a recent article for made by capital.” the Labor and Working Today, more than half Class History Association, Michael Pierce, a of U.S. states have right-to-work laws. University of Arkansas associate professor, Proponents say these laws are about examined the connection among the origins workers’ right to choose whether they want of right-to-work laws, anti-Semitism and Jim to pay dues. Union representatives say they Crow. are meant to hurt unions by attacking their As states continue to contemplate right- funding source, and according to the AFL- CIO, workers in states with these laws have lower wages and are less likely to have employer-provided insurance. Despite repeated attempts, no state on the West Coast has passed right-to-work legislation. Corporate power and party politics These days, it’s corporate forces, not white supremacists, that are pushing the right-to-work agenda, said Marcus Widener, labor history expert and professor emeritus at the University of Oregon. “There’s a huge effort to spread right-to- work laws around the country by organizations like ALEC, who are very much aligned with the conservative Republicans,” he said. ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is a conservative organization that writes corporate-funded legislation for lawmakers to introduce in Congress and state legislatures. There are questions, however, around what ratio of “lunatic fringe right” and traditional conservatives compose the Trump administration, Widener said. “There would appear to be some rubbing of the shoulders of these organizations right See UNIONS, page 5
