By Percy Lujan
September 12, 2024
Source: Labor Notes
Image by Local 78
Donald Trump and his accomplices want working people to look at each other with distrust and divide ourselves over banal differences. The prejudices they foment against Latino immigrants, Black people, and LGBTQ people mask their real agenda: stomping on the rights and power that organized workers have won.
But for progressives who want to engage with our co-workers on these issues, we have to watch out for the mirror image of these prejudices in our own attitudes. It’s important to listen to your co-workers’ concerns before drawing conclusions about their true attitudes and world outlook. Just because someone likes Trump, that does not automatically make them a fascist.
In my experience talking with my fellow construction workers, you have to start by building a relationship grounded in mutual respect and recognition of each other’s contributions to the workplace.
WHO’S ON YOUR SIDE?
At one job, I used to engage in arguments over immigration policy or government spending with a union brother who was a Trump supporter. But at the end of the day we both had to work outside under inclement weather, removing asbestos-covered pipes, and deal with the many risks associated with the job.
This union brother backed me up when another worker wanted to confront me for saying my priority as a shop steward was the well-being of the workers, not production. Despite being a Trump supporter, he understood the role of a steward.
I began a conversation with this brother before one of the rallies during the #CountMeIn campaign in Hudson Yards—a major struggle in New York City from 2017 to 2019 over whether the largest real estate construction project in U.S. history would be built entirely with union labor.
The conversation touched on how the non-union companies had brought immigrant workers to work on the project. Some union workers thought we should call immigration on them.
I told him I didn’t think that was the solution—the correct approach was to organize them. We should think of immigrant workers not as a threat to our jobs, but as future members of our union. It’s in the union’s interest that all workers doing the same kind of work be organized and united. It’s in the bosses’ interest to throw up obstacles, make solidarity look impossible, and keep us disorganized and divided.
The worker replied that before helping immigrant workers, we should attend to the interests of Americans first. I pointed out an obvious contradiction: I, an undocumented immigrant union laborer, was standing with him against a big developer who was taking away our work—and who was an American citizen like him. This was a class struggle, and solidarity among workers mattered more than his shared nationality with the developer.
Image by Local 78
Donald Trump and his accomplices want working people to look at each other with distrust and divide ourselves over banal differences. The prejudices they foment against Latino immigrants, Black people, and LGBTQ people mask their real agenda: stomping on the rights and power that organized workers have won.
But for progressives who want to engage with our co-workers on these issues, we have to watch out for the mirror image of these prejudices in our own attitudes. It’s important to listen to your co-workers’ concerns before drawing conclusions about their true attitudes and world outlook. Just because someone likes Trump, that does not automatically make them a fascist.
In my experience talking with my fellow construction workers, you have to start by building a relationship grounded in mutual respect and recognition of each other’s contributions to the workplace.
WHO’S ON YOUR SIDE?
At one job, I used to engage in arguments over immigration policy or government spending with a union brother who was a Trump supporter. But at the end of the day we both had to work outside under inclement weather, removing asbestos-covered pipes, and deal with the many risks associated with the job.
This union brother backed me up when another worker wanted to confront me for saying my priority as a shop steward was the well-being of the workers, not production. Despite being a Trump supporter, he understood the role of a steward.
I began a conversation with this brother before one of the rallies during the #CountMeIn campaign in Hudson Yards—a major struggle in New York City from 2017 to 2019 over whether the largest real estate construction project in U.S. history would be built entirely with union labor.
The conversation touched on how the non-union companies had brought immigrant workers to work on the project. Some union workers thought we should call immigration on them.
I told him I didn’t think that was the solution—the correct approach was to organize them. We should think of immigrant workers not as a threat to our jobs, but as future members of our union. It’s in the union’s interest that all workers doing the same kind of work be organized and united. It’s in the bosses’ interest to throw up obstacles, make solidarity look impossible, and keep us disorganized and divided.
The worker replied that before helping immigrant workers, we should attend to the interests of Americans first. I pointed out an obvious contradiction: I, an undocumented immigrant union laborer, was standing with him against a big developer who was taking away our work—and who was an American citizen like him. This was a class struggle, and solidarity among workers mattered more than his shared nationality with the developer.
HARDER TO ANSWER
I don’t have the answers for everything, however. The recent wave of immigrant asylum-seekers has proven very difficult for many workers to accept.
Older day laborers like my father have been able to integrate into the informal economy, slowly establishing particular rates for the work they do. Newer immigrant asylum-seekers are selling their labor power at a lower rate, outcompeting this older generation.
Union labor, too, now has to compete with a larger pool of immigrants, who—ignorant of their rights as workers, or afraid to enforce them because of vulnerable immigration status, or just desperate for work—fall victim to the overexploitation at construction body shops and other unscrupulous employers.
I hear workers taking issue with the services provided to asylum-seekers, including shelter, contrasting it with New York City budget cuts at schools and public agencies. They say, “The roads are not paved, the streets are not clean, but the city has money to give these migrants food and let them stay at five-star hotels.”
Immigrant workers contrast the services the city gives to these asylum-seekers with their own experience of arriving in this country. In their view, no one helped them get where they are; they did it through their own hard work.
I don’t have the answers for everything, however. The recent wave of immigrant asylum-seekers has proven very difficult for many workers to accept.
Older day laborers like my father have been able to integrate into the informal economy, slowly establishing particular rates for the work they do. Newer immigrant asylum-seekers are selling their labor power at a lower rate, outcompeting this older generation.
Union labor, too, now has to compete with a larger pool of immigrants, who—ignorant of their rights as workers, or afraid to enforce them because of vulnerable immigration status, or just desperate for work—fall victim to the overexploitation at construction body shops and other unscrupulous employers.
I hear workers taking issue with the services provided to asylum-seekers, including shelter, contrasting it with New York City budget cuts at schools and public agencies. They say, “The roads are not paved, the streets are not clean, but the city has money to give these migrants food and let them stay at five-star hotels.”
Immigrant workers contrast the services the city gives to these asylum-seekers with their own experience of arriving in this country. In their view, no one helped them get where they are; they did it through their own hard work.
MIXED EMOTIONS
It would be easy to assume that these workers hate immigrants, but I find that this is not the case. In fact, many are immigrants themselves.
They will often sympathize with the plight of the asylum-seekers. Their issue is with the resources the city is providing, which from their perspective is straining the budget and taking away from other areas, like homeless shelters.
They’re also afraid that bringing all these immigrants into the city will increase crime rates—a fear that’s often fanned by lurid news stories, though the actual statistics show that immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S.
One way I’ve tried to counter these arguments is by reminding other immigrant workers that the same was said about them when they arrived in this country—but this isn’t very effective, since it doesn’t really address the issues they are raising.
We can’t simply brush off concerns by blaming them all on Trump’s scaremongering. We have to acknowledge that people have legitimate worries about their family’s safety, their city’s meager public services, and their own bargaining power for better wages.
But we must also express that there’s more than one way to solve these problems. The MAGA approach of criminalizing immigrants and supporting massive raids on jobsites will not only terrorize our communities, but also break apart any chance of working-class solidarity.
DON’T DEPORT—ORGANIZE
When over-exploited immigrants are outcompeting other workers, the union approach should be to support these immigrants in organizing on the job.
A Biden administration policy called Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement offers a work permit and protection from deportation to workers willing to testify against a company that has committed labor or safety violations.
DALE is the cornerstone of the organizing approach my union is pursuing in its campaign at body shops. It’s a worker-centered approach that protects workers while going after bad employers.
Organizing can not only protect immigrants and integrate them better into working-class communities, but also make the union movement the backbone of the immigrant movement.
My union, LiUNA Local 78, a union of asbestos removal workers, was founded in 1996 by immigrants. When our first contract was signed, the news was read in English, to little fanfare; then in Spanish, to which half the room exploded in cheers; and then in Polish, to which the other half of the room exploded in cheers.
Our local is infused with the culture and attitudes of immigrant communities. This is a consequence of the right organizing approach: seeking to bring all the workers doing this particular work into the same union.
FEELINGS, NOT FACTS
Many of the concerns I hear about immigrants and asylum-seekers are based on misinformation—and I could spend a lot of time countering these assertions with facts.
I could point out that undocumented immigrants contribute $1 billion in tax revenue in six states alone. I could say that much of the $1.6 billion that New York City spent on services for asylum-seekers last year went to non-profit emergency shelter agencies, many of which lack appropriate sanitary facilities like showers or toilets—hardly five-star hotels. I could argue that politicians are scapegoating immigrants for their own bad policies.
I could also spend a good part of my 30-minute lunch break breaking down how wars, climate disasters, sanctions, and social instability have caused the recent wave of immigration we are seeing.
But I think such efforts would be futile. The social discontent that fuels MAGA is not based on specific disagreements over policy.
The problem is not that people are uninformed. The problem is that people feel alienated from their work and powerless to change things in their community. That’s why they’re angry at the thought of someone getting some help.
MAGA is built on sentiments meant to divide us. It offers a very narrow definition of what is normal or acceptable, and blames every problem on outsiders or people who are different. But solidarity and diversity have always made the union movement strong.
Combating Trump can’t only be done by arguing facts with people. You have to practice solidarity at the worksite, and be the example of how a good unionist thinks and acts.
In the workplace, rather than combat it by moralizing—which is what MAGA itself does—we should combat it by reminding our co-workers of the mutual toil, respect, and struggle that unites us as working people. We do this by being good co-workers, respectful debaters, and overall, committed unionists.
And if the threat of fascism does materialize, the groundwork laid in our jobsites may be crucial to inspiring and mobilizing workers to come out and confront it. While the class struggle is fought on the shop floor, fascism has to be fought in the street.
Bridging Political Divides Through Solidarity
September 10, 2024
Source: Labor Notes
How should unions engage with members drawn to right-wing, anti-worker politics and candidates? One union trying to tackle this disconnect is the Communications Workers (CWA).
Steve Lawton, former president of CWA Local 1102 in New York (now merged with Local 1101), has been heavily involved with political education through his work as a local leader and in the District 1 political department.
In this interview he discusses organizing in a union with many Trump-supporting members, how to talk with members about immigration, and strategies for organizing and building solidarity across political divides.
Katy Habr: You spent some time as the president of CWA Local 1102 in Staten Island. What was the political landscape of the local?
Steve Lawton: We had a local where 45 percent of the workers came from Verizon, which is where I came from. They were mostly white men. Over the 31 years I worked there, I watched them change politically. They went from being apolitical, maybe supporting the union’s political programs because they were strong supporters of the union and it’s what they thought they should do. About 60 percent of members even joined the Working Families Party and the union went to visit Occupy Wall Street.
But after a bad strike in 2011, they started to be discontented with the union and were less willing to accept the union’s political programs that they didn’t think were helping them.
Today they are probably 70 percent conservative-leaning, on a spectrum from really conservative right-wing to maybe conservative but pro-union to maybe even a conservative Democrat type.
Then 55 percent of the local was a group from EZ-Pass, newly organized call center workers. That group tended to be workers of color and mostly women, maybe 80 percent. I don’t know if they are Democrats or Republicans, but they were much more connected to things like paid sick leave and paid family leave. I could see the difference between these two constituencies in terms of politics.
How has it been trying to talk to people across these divides, and what do you think is the most effective way? Is it through trainings like “Runaway Inequality,” workplace action, or one-on-one conversation?
When Trump got elected, we were able to cross some bridges because we had an open, democratic organization, although we continued to push progressive politics like supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
We allowed anyone to be a leader, no matter what their political views. We welcomed them and we gave them responsibility. We did not try to censor them. We held open and respectful general membership meetings where debate was allowed.
Some people are dug in on their ideas. But I like to think that people in the middle politically were open to having conversations.
We talk a lot about solidarity in the labor movement. Often U.S workers are pitted against immigrants and are told that immigrants are taking their jobs or it’s not in their interest to support immigrants’ rights. How do you have those conversations with people?
One of the things we did about immigration was we held a luncheon with undocumented workers and our core union leadership groups, which were mostly right-wing Republicans, in concert with the local worker center. And it was a great conversation.
What came out of it was that a lot of the members did not understand the plight of the undocumented workers in terms of why they’re not coming legally because they couldn’t afford it, the fact that they were here so long and had families, that they pay taxes—all those things really made them understand. Also hearing about the mistreatment that immigrants faced.
They agreed that people shouldn’t be picked up by an employer here on Staten Island, taken to a job in Pennsylvania, and be left there to have to walk home or get beaten up. These are some of the horror stories that these immigrant workers told. That really translated to our members. It was very fruitful.
I have an example of this guy Jeff, who is a total Trump supporter. I’ve known him a long time, so I’m able to engage with him. I remember one time during Covid-19, we did a huge event, an essential worker caravan that included undocumented immigrants with a worker center. The right-wing members were so pissed at us. Jeff comes at me saying “What are you doing? Immigrants!” This whole thing.
And I said, “I understand you have a hard, deep position on this, but let’s break it down. I’m not the politician who creates the policies. Whether or not we agree with the policy, I am not in charge of that. I’m also not the employer who hires these folks. There’s people that hire them. Do you agree with me? Does our society rely on undocumented workers?”
He goes “Yes—they shouldn’t. They should be held accountable for that too.”
I said, “Here I am, the labor leader in this community. You’re a worker. You might not see what I’m doing to support that worker as support for you. But the truth of the matter is, as a labor leader I’m not concerned with how they got here, I’m not concerned with why they’re here, and I’m not concerned with who’s hiring them. What I’m concerned with is the safety and welfare of every worker in this community.
“Because by looking at it from that angle, whether it be OSHA, whether it be wages, that affects you and affects all of us, right? If we allow workers to be mistreated by OSHA because they’re undocumented, doesn’t that affect your OSHA standards?”
And he got there. He was like, “You know, no one’s ever explained it to me this way.”
I said, “I’m not here for a political reason. I’m here simply because of solidarity and understanding that the principle of safety is one that we have to put across the board as labor.”
I was able to break through that way, and he calmed down and actually engaged in it and understood it. When they’re coming at you fired up with all the rhetoric that they’ve been pumped with, and the misinformation, you can’t engage with them with the way that they expect you to answer. That’s what they want. I try to remove that out of the equation first, and then bring it to where they are as a worker.
It seems like these one-on-one conversations really work. Can you tell me a bit about how that translates into a larger setting?
We’ve been developing this curriculum called Democracy Defenders. Immigration, inflation, and crime were the three issues that we put up. We’d go through the slideshow, and then we’d ask the groups to answer a prompt—something like a member saying: “What about all these illegal immigrants that are coming here and taking our jobs?”
The themes that we wanted to capture were: a) The migration problem was due to reasons that are outside of our control: poverty, violence, and ecological disaster; b) It’s happening globally, it’s not something that’s just here; c) Asylum seekers are not here illegally. We explained about asylum. And then we gave them a bunch of data points about the positivity of immigrant workers.
The second part of the training is how to have a one-on-one conversation. We did a thing called Organizing Theater where we model those conversations. We teach our organizers how to engage; to have that philosophy of meeting people where they are, not being judgmental, not engaging in in direct conflict.
You’re not here to win a competition or a debate. You’re here to try to move the conversation into something that you can connect on, or you’re looking to deescalate and get out of here. We make the point that some conversations aren’t worth having and gauging them is part of the job as the organizer.
We tell them, here’s some points that you can be making—not right away, but if you’re able to engage and open a conversation, then you can say, “Did you know about this point or this point?” We called it Identify, Educate, and Mobilize. Identify people who want to have conversations with you, educate them where you can, then mobilize them for actions.
So the purpose of the trainings isn’t so much to change everyone’s mind, but to train people how to have these one-on-ones where the change can happen?
We currently have a big problem. The political fights of the Trump years really beat up our front line, and a lot of union leaders have pulled back on political conversations. I think that’s a mistake. I think that we’re giving too much voice to too small of a group.
We need to start listening to our members that don’t fit the traditional framework. New members coming into the unions are much more progressive, more Black and Brown. I think they’re going to be more in line with policies like immigration reform. There’s a lot of opportunities in these newer groups for political power.
I think we need to teach our frontline members to break through the fear. We need to push forward mapping and having targeted conversations and building lists of people who support us. We never had 100 percent of the people doing political work for our unions. Let’s start building from this core who does agree.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.Donate
Katy Habr
Katy Habr is a former union researcher and Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Columbia University in New York City.
How should unions engage with members drawn to right-wing, anti-worker politics and candidates? One union trying to tackle this disconnect is the Communications Workers (CWA).
Steve Lawton, former president of CWA Local 1102 in New York (now merged with Local 1101), has been heavily involved with political education through his work as a local leader and in the District 1 political department.
In this interview he discusses organizing in a union with many Trump-supporting members, how to talk with members about immigration, and strategies for organizing and building solidarity across political divides.
Katy Habr: You spent some time as the president of CWA Local 1102 in Staten Island. What was the political landscape of the local?
Steve Lawton: We had a local where 45 percent of the workers came from Verizon, which is where I came from. They were mostly white men. Over the 31 years I worked there, I watched them change politically. They went from being apolitical, maybe supporting the union’s political programs because they were strong supporters of the union and it’s what they thought they should do. About 60 percent of members even joined the Working Families Party and the union went to visit Occupy Wall Street.
But after a bad strike in 2011, they started to be discontented with the union and were less willing to accept the union’s political programs that they didn’t think were helping them.
Today they are probably 70 percent conservative-leaning, on a spectrum from really conservative right-wing to maybe conservative but pro-union to maybe even a conservative Democrat type.
Then 55 percent of the local was a group from EZ-Pass, newly organized call center workers. That group tended to be workers of color and mostly women, maybe 80 percent. I don’t know if they are Democrats or Republicans, but they were much more connected to things like paid sick leave and paid family leave. I could see the difference between these two constituencies in terms of politics.
How has it been trying to talk to people across these divides, and what do you think is the most effective way? Is it through trainings like “Runaway Inequality,” workplace action, or one-on-one conversation?
When Trump got elected, we were able to cross some bridges because we had an open, democratic organization, although we continued to push progressive politics like supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
We allowed anyone to be a leader, no matter what their political views. We welcomed them and we gave them responsibility. We did not try to censor them. We held open and respectful general membership meetings where debate was allowed.
Some people are dug in on their ideas. But I like to think that people in the middle politically were open to having conversations.
We talk a lot about solidarity in the labor movement. Often U.S workers are pitted against immigrants and are told that immigrants are taking their jobs or it’s not in their interest to support immigrants’ rights. How do you have those conversations with people?
One of the things we did about immigration was we held a luncheon with undocumented workers and our core union leadership groups, which were mostly right-wing Republicans, in concert with the local worker center. And it was a great conversation.
What came out of it was that a lot of the members did not understand the plight of the undocumented workers in terms of why they’re not coming legally because they couldn’t afford it, the fact that they were here so long and had families, that they pay taxes—all those things really made them understand. Also hearing about the mistreatment that immigrants faced.
They agreed that people shouldn’t be picked up by an employer here on Staten Island, taken to a job in Pennsylvania, and be left there to have to walk home or get beaten up. These are some of the horror stories that these immigrant workers told. That really translated to our members. It was very fruitful.
I have an example of this guy Jeff, who is a total Trump supporter. I’ve known him a long time, so I’m able to engage with him. I remember one time during Covid-19, we did a huge event, an essential worker caravan that included undocumented immigrants with a worker center. The right-wing members were so pissed at us. Jeff comes at me saying “What are you doing? Immigrants!” This whole thing.
And I said, “I understand you have a hard, deep position on this, but let’s break it down. I’m not the politician who creates the policies. Whether or not we agree with the policy, I am not in charge of that. I’m also not the employer who hires these folks. There’s people that hire them. Do you agree with me? Does our society rely on undocumented workers?”
He goes “Yes—they shouldn’t. They should be held accountable for that too.”
I said, “Here I am, the labor leader in this community. You’re a worker. You might not see what I’m doing to support that worker as support for you. But the truth of the matter is, as a labor leader I’m not concerned with how they got here, I’m not concerned with why they’re here, and I’m not concerned with who’s hiring them. What I’m concerned with is the safety and welfare of every worker in this community.
“Because by looking at it from that angle, whether it be OSHA, whether it be wages, that affects you and affects all of us, right? If we allow workers to be mistreated by OSHA because they’re undocumented, doesn’t that affect your OSHA standards?”
And he got there. He was like, “You know, no one’s ever explained it to me this way.”
I said, “I’m not here for a political reason. I’m here simply because of solidarity and understanding that the principle of safety is one that we have to put across the board as labor.”
I was able to break through that way, and he calmed down and actually engaged in it and understood it. When they’re coming at you fired up with all the rhetoric that they’ve been pumped with, and the misinformation, you can’t engage with them with the way that they expect you to answer. That’s what they want. I try to remove that out of the equation first, and then bring it to where they are as a worker.
It seems like these one-on-one conversations really work. Can you tell me a bit about how that translates into a larger setting?
We’ve been developing this curriculum called Democracy Defenders. Immigration, inflation, and crime were the three issues that we put up. We’d go through the slideshow, and then we’d ask the groups to answer a prompt—something like a member saying: “What about all these illegal immigrants that are coming here and taking our jobs?”
The themes that we wanted to capture were: a) The migration problem was due to reasons that are outside of our control: poverty, violence, and ecological disaster; b) It’s happening globally, it’s not something that’s just here; c) Asylum seekers are not here illegally. We explained about asylum. And then we gave them a bunch of data points about the positivity of immigrant workers.
The second part of the training is how to have a one-on-one conversation. We did a thing called Organizing Theater where we model those conversations. We teach our organizers how to engage; to have that philosophy of meeting people where they are, not being judgmental, not engaging in in direct conflict.
You’re not here to win a competition or a debate. You’re here to try to move the conversation into something that you can connect on, or you’re looking to deescalate and get out of here. We make the point that some conversations aren’t worth having and gauging them is part of the job as the organizer.
We tell them, here’s some points that you can be making—not right away, but if you’re able to engage and open a conversation, then you can say, “Did you know about this point or this point?” We called it Identify, Educate, and Mobilize. Identify people who want to have conversations with you, educate them where you can, then mobilize them for actions.
So the purpose of the trainings isn’t so much to change everyone’s mind, but to train people how to have these one-on-ones where the change can happen?
We currently have a big problem. The political fights of the Trump years really beat up our front line, and a lot of union leaders have pulled back on political conversations. I think that’s a mistake. I think that we’re giving too much voice to too small of a group.
We need to start listening to our members that don’t fit the traditional framework. New members coming into the unions are much more progressive, more Black and Brown. I think they’re going to be more in line with policies like immigration reform. There’s a lot of opportunities in these newer groups for political power.
I think we need to teach our frontline members to break through the fear. We need to push forward mapping and having targeted conversations and building lists of people who support us. We never had 100 percent of the people doing political work for our unions. Let’s start building from this core who does agree.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.Donate
Katy Habr
Katy Habr is a former union researcher and Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Columbia University in New York City.
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