From Wisconsin to West Virginia, UE Locals Rallying for Worker Rights

RALLYING FOR RIGHTS. From the Upper Midwest to the Upper South, UE members have joined the fight to defend unions and basic worker rights. At top, UE Local 506 members march down State Street in Erie, PA’s “We Are One!” labor gathering. When corporate backers of Wisconsin Gov. Walker brought their anti-union road show to LaCrosse, Local 1121 members were there with hundreds of union members to un-welcome them. (President Charlene Winchell hold the “United We Stand” sign.) Local 150 members confer with Rev. William Barber, pres. of the North Carolina NAACP, center, at a Feb. 21 rally. Bottom, Local 170 members in West Virginia’s capitol, and David Betsworth and other Local 893 members outside Iowa’s capitol.

UE members are joining in the wave of labor activism in response to the attack on workers’ rights by governors and legislatures in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states. In Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Iowa, West Virginia, Connecticut and other states, UE members are in the thick of the battle to preserve and advance the rights of working people.

Rallies in Madison have been going on for weeks, and members of UE’s private-sector  locals around the state have been regular participants. Rank-and-file members from neighboring states have also joined the protests, including members from Iowa who raised the UE Young Activist banner inside the capitol and camped out overnight inside the building. Armando Robles, president of UE Local 1110, a local that made labor history with its December 2008 occupation of Republic Windows and Doors, also helped occupy the Wisconsin capitol building one recent weekend.

But the protests in Wisconsin – a state with proud traditions of unionism and of progressive politics – have not been limited to Madison. Workers and citizens have taken to the streets to defend labor rights in towns and cities across that state. Members of UE Local 1121 joined a March 5 protest in LaCrosse against a corporate-sponsored bus tour in support of Gov. Walker’s union-busting.  Protesters lined several blocks around the building where the event was taking place.

UE participation in solidarity rallies across the country started in early February and has continued to grow in the first few days of March.  When UE Local 170 members held their annual Presidents Day Rally and lobbying on February 21 at the West Virginia state capitol in Charleston, solidarity with workers in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states was high on their agenda. West Virginia is one of the states where public workers do not have the right to bargain, and Local 170 has been fighting to gain that right.

Meanwhile in Raleigh, North Carolina, also on February 21, members of UE Local 150 were part of a rally of 100 people, including the new Labor, Faith and Civil Rights Coalition in Defense of the Public Sector.  Members delivered North Carolina’s Speaker of the House and to the Senate President copies of the 2007 ruling by the International Labor Organization that the North Carolina law banning public employee bargaining violates international law on labor rights. Speakers linked the fight to gain the right to bargain in North Carolina to the struggles to defend that right in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states.

Some 1,000 members from a cross-section of unions marched through downtown Erie, Pennsylvania on March 8, with a big delegation of UE Local 506 member playing a major role. Local 506 President Jim Pifer delivered a strong speech to the “We Are One” rally.

UE members in Ohio joined the March 1 mass protest in Columbus against Senate Bill 5, Gov. John Kasich’s effort to bust unions. Rallies are planned for March 15 in several Ohio cities, and members from central Ohio UE locals plan to be in Columbus while a Northwest Ohio local will join the protest in Toledo.

After making solidarity with Wisconsin a theme of their own Political Action Day on February 15, some Iowa UE Local 893 members were back in Des Moines for a Wisconsin solidarity rally organized by MoveOn. As noted above, some members of Local 896 from the University of Iowa joined in the occupation of the Wisconsin capitol.    

We’ve previously reported on UE participation in other solidarity rallies in support of Wisconsin workers – in Hartford, Washington, Raleigh, Des Moines, Washington and Montpelier, Vermont. It’s expected that size and number of these labor rallies will grow in the weeks ahead. Find out what’s going on in your area (one place to check is the Jobs with Justice Blog), and organize members of your local to join in. We are fighting for our rights – all of our rights – and for the future of unions in America.