WA State JwJ Update and
Local Workers' Rights Victories
April 2009
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In a few weeks, you may receive a phone call with our annual request for a contribution to continue JwJ's critical organizing. If you have already sent in your contribution, thank you!
If you have not yet received a call but would like to contribute, please call us at (206) 441-4969 or (253) 459-5107 to receive an envelope or to contribute via credit card. Or simply mail your contribution to PO Box 9662, Seattle, WA 98109-0662 or 3049 S. 36 Street, #201, Tacoma, WA 98409. You can also make a tax-deductible donation online.
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Our monthly donor program has grown to 150 people contributing over $2,000 per month. This source of steady, reliable income helps us make organizing plans for the future. In 2009, we hope to sustain the incredible growth we've experienced in the past years and make plans for future expansion.
Three quarters of our funding comes from local individuals like you and local democratically-run organizations. We are an almost all-volunteer organization except for 3 staff organizers working in 4 different counties, and have a small organizing expense budget. Even with these modest costs, our bills are about $200,000 per year.
As we are devoting the next month to this fund-drive, we greatly appreciate your timely contribution so we can get back to committing more of our time to organizing and less time to fundraising.
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Converting Pierce County’s affordable housing into Big Box anti-union malls, are now costing much more to companies like Home Depot and Kohls. In a precedent-campaign partnered with Jobs with Justice, residents of manufactured home communities have heated up a movement to end this predator pattern conducted in the name of job creation but resulting in poverty-wages and union-busting.
Beyond the individual payouts which ranged up to nearly $38K, Home Depot's agent also reluctantly accommodated residents with transitional hotel stays, new home repair, stacker washer & dryer to fit in new home, movers, and storage pods. Meanwhile, local state legislators have pledged to enact statewide protections against evicting mobile home community residents from affordable housing targeted by Big Box anti-union companies like Home Depot. Unfortunately, Pierce County council-member Terry Lee broke his solemn promise and cast the decisive vote to deny addressing this issue at the local level with a moratorium.
Country Aire Manor residents recognized JwJ members for catapulting this struggle for justice at a recent Organizing Committee meeting. Without JwJ's on-the-ground organizing, there would be little pressure on elected officials to address this crisis, little attention by the media stretched to investigate injustices, little resources by web blogs to broadcast this story. In fact, our activities were so effective that Home Depot's agent proposed a financial settlement that prohibited residents from taking "part in any demonstrations, public hearings, or other activities intended to inhibit Verus' ability to develop the property."
Just 6 months ago, Home Depot’s agent Verus was not applauding itself for the $400K they now claim to compensate residents they were retaliating against. JwJ believes this dollar amount is far higher but Home Depot prefers that others not know to avoid higher pay outs if they repeat this injustice in the future. Home Depot’s credibility was shattered by the recent expose that it was named on the 2008 permit application that would evict seniors. The next time Verus and Home Depot (or any other developer) considers evicting seniors to create "300 jobs" that pay poverty-wages, they know the cost will be much steeper.
Home Depot is contributing millions of dollars to the anti-union smear campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act. Home Depot's CEO, Bernie Marcus, has been taped calling the Employee Free Choice Act "the demise of a civilization" and insisting that corporate honchos who didn’t donate big sums to anti-worker incumbent senators "should be shot, should be thrown out of their [expletive] jobs."
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These staff have won with the teachers union (AFT-WA) despite union-busting run by CPTC administrator Jim Tuttle. Seventy-seven percent of the workers signed with the union. In the process, these workers have more deeply confirmed the right to organize for certain Technical College staff statewide according to a PERC ruling. CPTC managers agreed to recognize the union and end a pattern of legal delays and anti-union tactics after workers, AFT leaders, and Jobs with Justice began a series of public protests. We expect this new unit’s first contract negotiations as well as protracted faculty and other staff negotiations to resolve quickly. The CPTC Board has reformed with union leaders filling open seats. Stand by for more news especially if we are called on to solidify this victory.
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Jobs with Justice and others have launched national protests against union-busting at Rite-Aid. Workers organizing with the Longshore Union (ILWU) to address sweatshop conditions at Rite Aid’s largest West Coast warehouse are inspiring a national movement to enact stronger labor rights through EFCA. Within weeks, President Obama openly declared that EFCA needs to pass.
Another round of national protests at Rite Aid stores followed 14 Valentine Day protests including ones by JwJ in Tacoma, Seattle, and corporate headquarters in Harrisburg, PA. At the headquarters, protests were led by California warehouse worker Sylvia Estrada and local Rite-Aid drugstore workers, members of UFCW Local 1776. (background is below)
Now more than ever, we need your support as we sprint toward the finish line.
JwJ local coalitions across the nation are taking action to support local struggles for worker justice while building and demonstrating support for labor law reform. With your donation of $20 , $50 , or $100 , we can produce additional materials to increase our visibility during our Weeks of Action and spread the word about the critical need for economic and labor law reform.
Rite-Aid Background
- 700 Rite-Aid workers are organizing at the massive distribution center in Lancaster, California that supplies the Puget Sound and most of the West Coast.
- The very diverse workforce want to end punishing production quotas and mandatory overtime piled on 10-hour shifts and endure working in hot desert summers with no air conditioning in their work areas
- When workers tried to improve their working conditions and form a union, the company responded by threatening and firing union supporters. After workers voted to join the union in March of 2008, Rite Aid continued their union-busting tactics. Now Rite Aid is refusing to seriously bargain a fair contract.
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Modeling property development that sustains our community, Centro Latino plans to pay living wages and healthcare to workers renovating its Tacoma headquarters. Workers will also have the right to unionize for a voice on the job and contributions to a pension. The nonprofit serves the local Latino community with job training, youth mentoring and family services. The state granted $2 million to Centro Latino to buy and renovate the building. The organization has invested another $900K into the project that starts in early April and ends this summer. Jobs with Justice has helped strengthen relations between local Latino union members and Centro Latino leaders recently. A labor leader sits on Centro Latino’s Board. If a low-budget non-profit serving an economically impoverished community can meet this standard of jobs with justice, no for-profit company has a valid excuse.
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