Low-wage workers demand $15 & a union

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women, LGBT people, national minorities, etc. We support the right of self-determination of workers and the oppressed. We strive to revitalize the antiwar, environmental, labor, internationalists, and hold that workers of one country have more in common with workers of anti-racist, feminist, student, and other social movements with a mass-action perspective. another than with their own nation’s capitalist class. We seek to link struggles across national Recognizing the divisions that exist on the left and within the workers’ movement, we seek boundaries, and to build an international revolutionary movement that will facilitate the to form united front type organizations around specific issues where various groups have sharing of experiences and political lessons. That is why we maintain fraternal relations with agreement. In this way we seek to maximize our impact and demonstrate the power and Socialist Action believes that the capitalist state and its institutions are instruments of the ruling class, and that therefore they cannot be used as tools of the working class but have revolutionary workers’ party that can successfully challenge the wealthy elite—whose profit- to be smashed. That is why we fight for revolution. When we fight for specific reforms, we do so with the understanding that in the final analysis real social change can only come about with the overthrow of capitalism, the establishment of a workers’ government, and the working-class politics—not alliances with the bosses’ parties. That is why we call for workers fight for socialism. Our ultimate goal is a truly democratic, environmentally sustainable, and in the U.S. to break from the Democratic and Republican parties to build a Labor Party based egalitarian society organized to satisfy human needs rather than corporate greed. We invite Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly by Socialist Action Publishing Association, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.

Postmaster: Send address changes to: Socialist Action, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610. RATES: For one year (12 issues, 1st-class Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Action. These are expressed in editorials. Socialist Action is edited, Clip and mail to: Socialist Action newspaper, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610. CHICAGO—Despite a torrential downpour and thunderstorms, more than 2000 low-wage workers and supporters marched up 22nd St. in Oak Brook, Ill., to the McDonald’s national headquarters on May 25 to demand a $15 minimum wage and union rights. The company’s annual shareholders’ meeting was held there the following day.

Earlier, several hundred low-wage work­ ers and supporters rallied outside Chicago’s Rock N’ Roll McDonald’s restaurant to kick off two days of protests. Many participants were striking McDonald’s workers.

This is the third straight year that a major Fight for $15 demonstration was held at a McDonald’s shareholders meeting. As they did last year, anticipating a large crowd of militant protesters, McDonald’s executives shut down the entire Oak Brook campus, tell­ ing employees to stay home for the day.

The action was organized by Fight for $15 groups around the country, and supported (SEIU). Many workers came from the Chicago area, while buses brought others from cities around the country, includ­ ing Milwaukee, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Memphis, Little Rock, Ark., and Columbus, Ohio.

Tyree Johnson, 48, a Chicago McDonald’s worker and Fight for $15 organizer, explained: “I’m living in poverty after 24 years.” He earned $4.25 when he took his job in 1992 and now makes only $10 an hour doing the same work he was assigned when he started.

Another participant was Shaun Goodwin, 38, from Little Rock, Ark. Goodwin, a McDonald’s worker for two years and making $8.50 per hour, told labor news website Prog­ ress Illinois: “We’re trying to get $15 and a union. Fifteen dollars is a livable wage.” Noting that a $15 minimum wage equals roughly $31,000 per year, which happens to be the average cost of keeping a federal inmate in prison for one year, he asked: “You’re saying I’m more valuable to the country incarcerated than I am working?”

Many low-wage workers from outside the fast-food in­ dustry attended the protest, and other supporters included contingents from SEIU, the United Steelworkers Union, Socialist Action: Where we stand Socialist Action is a national organization of activists committed to the emancipation effectiveness of mass action.

In the process we hope to bring activists together from different backgrounds into a driven system is driving down living standards and threatens all life on this planet.

We are active partisans of the working class and believe in the need for independent on the trade unions.

SOCIALIST ACTION Closing news date: June 9, 2015 Editor: Michael Schreiber Canada Editor: Barry Weisleder mail): U.S., Canada, Mexico — $20. All other countries — $30. Money orders and checks should be in U.S. dollars.

designed, and laid out entirely by volunteer labor.

Name Address City State Zip Phone E-mail the Chicago Teachers Union, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, and Black Lives Matter. Antoinette Brown, 62, a janitor from St. Louis, works full time at minimum wage. She told the Chicago Tribune: “We really need to make more money. … My husband is dis­ abled, and it’s hard to make it between his check and mine. … It shouldn’t be harder now when I’m 62.” Despite the nasty weather, hundreds of low-wage workers continued their protest and camped out overnight in a “tent city” outside McDonald’s headquarters. They held another rally there the following day as corporate executives and shareholders gathered for their annual meeting. In response to pressure from past protests, McDonald’s made a slight change to its salary structure prior to its 2015 annual meeting, increasing wages for restaurant workers about $1. But this change only applies to “company-owned” (non-franchise) restaurants. Ninety percent of McDonald’s stores are franchise-owned, so the vast majority of its em­ ployees did not benefit from even this token wage increase. McDonald’s has claimed that they are not responsible for salaries of franchise-owned stores. However, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled otherwise, saying the cor­ the Fourth International. We support the struggles of those who are specially oppressed under capitalism— for oppressed nationalities, including Blacks, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans. We are you to join us in the struggle to make the world a better place!

• Buffalo, NY: wnysocialist@google. com • Chicago: P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657, [email protected] • Connecticut: (860) 478-5300 • Duluth, Minn.: [email protected]. www.thenorthernworker.blogspot. com • Kansas City: [email protected] (816) 221-3638 • LOUISVILLE, KY: redlotus51@yahoo. com, (502) 451-2193 • Madison, Wis.:

[email protected] • Minneapolis/St. Paul: (612) 8021482, [email protected] • New York City: (212) 781-5157 • Philadelphia: [email protected] porate headquarters does have liability. A court case is pend­ ing on this issue, which may have an impact on unionization efforts and wage negotiations.

Eater.com, reporting on the discussion in­ side the shareholders’ meeting, said there was “much back-and-forth between share­ holders arguing in favor of—and against— minimum wage increases.” Sriram Mad­ husoodanan, an activist with Corporate Accountability International, told the share­ holders that McDonald’s “bankrolls the National Restaurant Association—the larg­ est anti-worker lobby in the country” and “spends billions, all while miring workers in poverty.”

On the other hand, Justin Danhof, Gen­ eral Counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research, representing one of its executives who is a McDonald’s share­ holder, said McDonald’s shouldn’t support “individuals and organizations that would tax and regulate McDonald’s out of exis­ tence.” Eater.com reported: “Danhof argued that the company ‘crowed about increasing wages’ at a shareholder meeting last year, but the [wage] increase [given in 2015] did nothing to deter protesters. … ‘Look—the barbarians are back at the gate demanding more. They saw it as a sign of weakness which they could exploit.’”

It’s clear that Fight for $15 organizing and mass protests are bringing pressure to bear on McDonald’s. Also, the movement has won some gains this year with statewide decisions to increase the minimum wage in New York and California. However, these decisions raise wages very gradually over multiple years, and include various opt-out provisions that could nullify future wage increases. What’s necessary is an unequivocal call for $15 Now! Certainly, much more needs to be done to build a move­ ment that can win. In addition to fast-food workers, the movement needs to continue to expand efforts nationally to draw in the wide range of other low-wage workers, includ­ ing home-care and health-care workers, service industry workers, factory workers, airport ramp workers, logistics and warehouse workers, laborers, and a host of others. This involves uniting forces within the U.S. labor movement in an aggressive drive to unionize unorganized workers across a number of industries. n For info about Socialist Action and how to join: Socialist Action National Office, P.O.

Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610, (510) 2689429, [email protected] Socialist Action newspaper editorial offices: [email protected] Website: www.socialistaction.org WHERE TO FIND US • Portland, Ore.: (503) 233-1629 [email protected] • Providence: [email protected] (401) 592-5385 • Salem, Ore.: [email protected] • San Francisco Bay Area:

P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, Ca 94610 (510) 268-9429, sfsocialistaction@ gmail.com • WASHINGTON, DC: [email protected], (202) 286-5493 National Office 526 Roxton Road, Toronto, Ont. M6G 3R4, (416) 535-8779 http://socialistaction.ca/

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VERIZON GETS A SHOCK By BILL ONASCH Strikes are the most basic and common expressions of clashes between workers and employers. Cartoon­ ists often illustrate these fights as heavyweight box­ ers slugging it out in the ring. But within this meta­ phor there are few knockouts. Winners and losers are usually determined on points for the best punches and most adept footwork. In this century, most deci­ sions—with occasional important exceptions--have gone to the boss.

The boss class has some inherent advantages in these conflicts during “normal” times. Especially in the private sector, they own the workplace and their property rights are vigorously enforced by courts— backed by armed police, sometimes even military forces.

They have the legal right during “economic” strikes to permanently replace strikers with strikebreak­ ers. Many of the most effective strike actions—such as mass picketing to block access to their workplace, secondary boycotts of other companies doing busi­ ness with the struck employer, and “hot cargo” em­ bargoes enforced by rail and truck workers refusing to move goods usually produced by strikers—are il­ legal under the Taft-Hartley Act, which covers most private sector workers.

Many public sector, agricultural, and domestic ser­ vice workers have no legal rights at all to collective bargaining. Major industrial corporations today have alternative sources of production to reduce a strike’s impact on their “bottom line.” These formidable chal­ lenges have succeeded in reducing the numbers and length of strikes in the United States over the last few decades—and especially during this century.

But some modest or partial strike victories in recent years—Temple University Hospital nurses, Chicago teachers, oil workers national agreement, Kohler— have inspired a few unions to continue this tactic even as all the pundits tell them that their shrinking unions are now irrelevant and strikes are futile.

The Borg-like so-called “management” of Verizon apparently believed its own ruling-class propaganda. After months of unproductive “bargaining,” it pre­ sented an outrageous “last, best, and final” offer to the Communications Workers of America, and Inter­ national Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, repre­ senting 39,000 workers in Verizon’s landline sector in Eastern states ranging from New England to Vir­ ginia.

The Verizon bosses might have expected that the workers would capitulate. The last strike had to be wound up after only two weeks—with little to show for the effort. Labor experts retained by Verizon un­ doubtedly counseled them that historically unions have been reluctant to call major strikes during a presidential election year. The bureaucracy that sits NBC Channel 10, Philadelphia atop most American unions does not want to embar­ rass their Democrat “friends.” In fact, its top priority over the next five months is hustling votes for the Donkeys. Verizon’s hubris essentially challenged the unions to “bring it on.”

Though not a hormonal response to a bully’s trash talk, the Verizon workers did indeed bring it on. First of all, they remembered what the company tried to ignore—the boss had been paying them because they needed their work. The landlines can’t be moved to Mexico and there aren’t enough qualified white shirts to keep up with installations, repairs, or even the call centers for long. And efforts to employ “temporary replacements” fell far short of expectations.

The striking unions demonstrated their numbers and determination from Day One, with rallies of thou­ sands in the major cities served by the landlines. And their goals of saving and expanding good jobs were well received by the working-class public.

The unions also recognized the vulnerability of the Verizon “brand” in the highly competitive national wireless market. CWA, along with Jobs with Justice, and other union and community allies conducted in­ formational pickets at Verizon wireless retail stores across the country.

The unions didn’t exactly try to shield their Demo­ crat friends from a boisterous strike. CWA is a strong backer of Bernie Sanders while the IBEW is for Hill­ ary Clinton. Both candidates were obligated to make David Joles / Minneapolis Star Tribune well publicized, though token, visits to the picket lines.

About halfway into the six-week strike, articles started appearing in papers such as The Wall Street Journal reporting that Verizon was taking a hard hit from the strike. To both mend some fences with unions and to give Verizon a dignified path to end­ ing the strike, the Obama administration intervened. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez—who has been mentioned as a possible running mate with Hillary Clinton—personally brokered mediation talks that led to the settlement.

The deal was not completely free of union conces­ sions. Before the strike, the unions had agreed to ad­ ditional “cost-sharing” of health insurance. And other concessions might be hidden in the implementation of the new contract, as is the case with so many other settlements negotiated today under unfavorable con­ ditions. But virtually all of the apparent takeaways in the company’s “final offer” were dropped, and some substantial gains for the workers were won. These include:

• Instead of more outsourcing of call center jobs, 1300 new jobs will be added.

• Instead of a cap on pensions, there will be three one-percent increases in defined benefits.

• A modest number of both retail store workers and technicians in the wireless division are now included in the contract for the first time.

• Some contracting-out initiatives will be reversed, leading to a 25 percent increase in union pole jobs in New York City.

• There will be $1250 signing bonuses and a guar­ antee of at least $700 annual profit-sharing.

• A 3 percent raise in wages takes effect immediate­ ly, and there will be three more 2.5 percent increases over the life of the four-year contract.

What do the ringside judges think of this bout? The bosses’ media, other union officials, and socialist commentators all seem to join in a unanimous deci­ sion that the striking unions appear to have won on points.

But the war at Verizon will continue. The company will intensify their efforts to spin off the landline divi­ sion to concentrate on the more profitable wireless sector. And they will likely bitterly resist union efforts to expand the beachhead they now have in wireless through further organizing. But the bosses will now have to deal with more seasoned and self-confident unions.

Of course, strikes are not always appropriate in every situation. But Verizon is a fresh example that well-prepared strikes can still be effective in beating back boss attacks and can even win gains in pay and conditions. It is the attempts by too many unions to seek “partnership” with the employers, and granting concessions to “save jobs,” that are futile. n (Left) Minnesota nurses on

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