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Claiming financial issues, developer Quadrant will pay a $1 million penalty to get out of an $18 million deal with Tacoma Housing Authority (THA). Quadrant had signed a deal to develop the Salishan housing project, an affordable housing complex for low-wage workers in East Tacoma. Quadrant is a multi-billion dollar subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser. Quadrant backing out clears the way for a real community-friendly developer to convert our public housing tax dollars into living wage jobs, more workforce housing, and career training opportunities for local residents.

As work on Phase 3 of the project approached, Quadrant executives promoted themselves as community-friendly to local groups despite a track record of paying poverty-wages while prioritizing high-end suburban sprawl. Community groups such as the Black Collective, Tacoma Ministerial Alliance, and A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), with JwJ’s solidarity, had urged Quadrant to convert from their development model in which many Quadrant project workers can not even afford to live in “affordable housing” that they would build. Grover Johnson, President of APRI-Tacoma, stated, “It’s unfortunate they were unable to meet our community needs.”

Quadrant executives had indicated that they were on the verge of signing an agreement to build in a more community friendly way before pulling out of the project entirely. Quadrant could have easily transitioned many of the skilled local workers and seasoned woman and minority-owned contractors from the successful Phase 1 project. Instead, Quadrant throws great doubt into how “community friendly” the company really intends to be.

The national movement for immigrant workers rights has forced a big shift in the national debate surrounding federal immigration legislation. Only a year ago, millions of immigrant workers and their allies hit the streets in response to proposed federal legislation. JwJ provided critical support for these mobilizations by: 

• Contacting thousands of our “I’ll Be There Pledge Card” signers in MLK Jr. County through emails, telephone calls and mailings
• Mobilizing many of our member organizations, especially unions, to have a presence at these demonstrations
• Supporting the primary organizers of the demonstrations, The Committee for General Amnesty and Social Justice, with peacekeeping and other logistical support

In 2006, U.S. Rep. Sensenbrenner came out with his infamous legislative proposal which was nothing more than an attempt to criminalize all immigrants and their supporters. Unaware of what his vile contemptuous hate had unleashed, Sensenbrenner along with his cohorts continued to threaten and intimidate immigrant workers.

Multiple times in 2006 immigrant workers and their allies came out in the millions to protest the attacks. The impact of these demonstrations was evident not only in the streets but in the factories that were left empty, in fields that were idle, in the hotels and restaurants that stopped serving the affluent and in the gardens of the wealthy where the only noise came from an occasional bee.

The April 2006 demonstration’s impact on the economy has never been acknowledged by the corporate media. However the following mobilization on May 1st proved to mark another overwhelming outpour of the spirit of resistance that finally killed Sensenbrenner’s legislation. Thanks Sensenbrenner . . . your attempt to punish workers has awakened this giant and it is clear that it is possible for working people to put the brakes on the economy. What fuels this economy is not the rhetoric of vile legislators but the sweat and muscles of working people.

Given this outcry repudiating the repressive policy attempts is it any wonder that the dialogue has shifted from out and out repression to some discussion of legalization? The events of the past couple months have made it even clearer that humane social policy is not driven by benevolent legislators but through the demands of working people and their allies when expressed through non-violent direct action.

JwJ supported and continues to support the efforts of immigrant workers because it’s through these examples of bravery that all workers can see their own capacity to change our society. However, the struggle is far from over.

Federal immigration legislation that respects the rights of all workers appears far away. Washington State has been targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to receive a large portion of the 30 million dollars allocated nationally for attacks on working people. With the increased enforcement efforts by ICE currently taking place, we must be ready to fulfill our pledge to “Be There" five times a year for someone else’s struggle or our own until we achieve justice for all workers regardless of immigration status.
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Members and leaders of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 367 working at Tacoma Macy’s have beat back a major attack on living wages and healthcare. The workers recently voted to approve a new union contract after organizing for months to repel a corporate strategy to destroy the union at Macy’s and impose poverty-wage job conditions common in the retail industry. Union members prevailed with the support of Jobs with Justice actions that garnered media and enhanced a consumer boycott that deeply impacted corporate Macy’s-Federated local profit margins. The I-5 Fife lit billboard screen will no longer read “Macy’s Unfair to Workers.”

When even Bush’s federal Labor Board indicted Macy’s management for illegal worker rights violations recently, Macy’s executives moved quickly to dissolve their anti-union campaign, resolve contentious negotiations, and avoid an escalating community campaign to expose the company’s practices. Macy’s executives will remember that the union members of UFCW local 367 in Tacoma will powerfully struggle to preserve local living-wage jobs, especially when the union contract expires again in a few years… And that local workers in struggle are supported by a vibrant local labor movement and broader worker rights community.

• Trying to convert South Sound residents into Macy's debt-slaves. Lorton wanted Macy’s workers at least once every 30 hours to lure Macy's shoppers to apply for a credit card. If Macy’s workers fail to meet this quota, they could be fired. To make it easier to go into Macy's debt, the company recently lowered the credit rating so that low-income and already indebted people are eligible. Macy's “loan shark” credit cards have notoriously high interest rates (about 25%) and they exported the service jobs on these credit cards to countries with high poverty to avoid paying living wages locally.
• Refusing most Tacoma Macy’s workers a raise in the last 3 years. Lorton proposed no future wage increase for over half of the employees and then cutting wages by increasing medical premiums by 11 to 29%
• Denying over half of Tacoma Macy's workers an affordable healthcare plan
• Defending Macy's greed. Macy’s parent company Federated has doubled its profits while it cut costs on workers’ and shoppers’ backs. Federated sales rose to over $23 billion, driving profits well over $1.4 billion this year. Federated CEO Terry Lundgren's 2006 salary & bonuses are $5,029,256 and other compensation amounts to Vested Stock Options of $7,050,530; Nonvested Stock Options of $8,190,810; Exercised Stock Options of $98,344. We wonder what Lorton is compensated but Macy's has not released that info.
• Yelling at Macy’s workers (“friends” before her promotion in management) on the shopping floor for exercising their legal right to organize JwJ activists also participated in numerous solidarity activities including a sing-in at the store entrance, mall leafleting, consumer education about Macy’s predatory lending, and mass picketing.

On April 12th Jobs with Justice marched and rallied alongside mental health workers, members of Service Employees Int’l Union District 1199NW, as we supported their demands for quality mental healthcare for all. Mental health workers had seen their co-workers leave their ranks because they could no longer afford to do the work that they loved and cared for.

These workers had been advocating in the 2007 Legislative session for improvements in workplace safety and improvements in mental health staff recruitment & retention. On Sunday, April 22, the Washington State Legislature approved a new budget that includes more than $24.4 million in new state and federal funds specifically to improve the wages and benefits of community mental health workers in Washington State. Beyond the immediate victory of the budgeted monies were the restrictions placed on those monies, specifying those resources directly for front line staff.

This new funding is a huge victory for the mental health community which was seeing its services deteriorate as a result of the burgeoning population requesting these services. This victory comes as a result of an extensive campaign by mental health workers from around the state and support from their allies. For more information, check out SEIU 1199NW’s website.
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Tacoma City Council has set a new precedent for a tax-subsidized property development at Urban Waters. The City will not only enforce living wages, hiring local, and using reputable construction career training programs during construction (which is required by financing rules), but also will, “Ensure livable wages for maintenance staff after completion.” Council-member Stenger conditioned his swing vote to support this project scheme upon raising job standards. Local standards need to rise to stem area poverty growing due to a flood of new low-wage construction and service jobs.

This shift comes after JwJ launched a project to link government welfare for developers with a fair jobs and housing policy. JwJ coordinated many local organizations conducting months of dialogue with Tacoma City Council and industry-leading developers to join this campaign. The Urban Waters living wage jobs issue surfaced at the City Council when Mark Martinez of the Building Trades Council posed questions of the project. Given the pattern of poverty wage Tacoma construction jobs, a victory like this will not happen unless we show up. The original Urban Waters property purchase raised serious flags when it was reported that the City was looking to save money on construction by privatizing the project. This is usually code for finding a way to pay poverty wages instead of paying government required living wages. For background, see the Tacoma News Tribune article.

We shall see if the City of Tacoma applies this higher standard to many of the high-end residential projects subsidized with our tax-dollars. The City purchased the Urban Waters property from the poverty-wage paying developer Mike Cohen for over 5 times the price that Cohen paid just a few years earlier. Mike Cohen is gaining notoriety for his hostile response to our living wage jobs and affordable housing campaign and for his aggressive attack on the quality of life in Ruston where he plans to build an 800 luxury home and commercial village development on top of the Asarco toxic Superfund site. Check out the article in a Ruston town civic newsletter.
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On May 15th 2007, members of the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) at the University of Washington won a major victory in the national movement to make university apparel sweat-free when University President Mark Emmert announced his decision to support the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP). Click here to read the entire statement. See below for more information about the DSP from the United Students Against Sweatshops’ website.

UW SLAP members ran a year long campaign which included:

• A Sweatshop clothesline that educated UW students about where UW Apparel is made and under what kind of working conditions (pictured above)
• Mock-wedding between the University of Washington and the DSP (see the video clip here) 
• March, rally and banner drop during “Washington Weekend” when incoming freshman, parents and alumni toured the UW campus (see pictures of the action here)

These creative actions were in addition to hosting multiple speakers, regular tabling, a petition campaign, and other educational events. In addition, SLAP had two representatives on the UW's Licensing Advisory Committee, a committee created by President Emmert to explore whether or not the UW should support the DSP.

Once implemented, the DSP will ensure that all apparel bearing a Husky logo is produced at a factory where workers have:

• A voice on the job: The best way to eliminate sweatshops is for workers to have the power to advocate for their interests on a daily basis through the collective voice of a union. University products must be made in factories where workers have this voice to eliminate sweatshop abuses.
• A living wage: The prices paid by U.S. clothing companies are simply too low for factories to pay workers enough to meet their basic needs. In order for workers to earn the income they need, we must require brands to pay the designated factories prices high enough to enable living wages.
• An alternative to the Wal-Mart model: Currently, most university apparel is produced in the same factories that produce for big box retailers like Wal-Mart, and under the sweatshop conditions that Wal-Mart has established as norms for the industry. We must create an alternative model -- a race to the top -- in which university apparel is produced in factories that demonstrate respect for worker rights (not just low prices) and in which worker victories are sustained and protected.

Although the University of Washington had previously adopted anti-sweatshop policies, the reality is that UW apparel is still made under sweatshop conditions in factories around the world:

• Sweatshop conditions and poverty wages: Workers making university apparel face abusive treatment, excessive working hours, dangerous conditions, and wages that are inadequate to meet basic needs.
• Illegal repression: When workers organize and demand improvements, they are subject to threats, harassment, illegal firings, and the closure of their factories.
• The race to the bottom: As multinational brands scan the globe for the cheapest products, supplier factories face tremendous pressure to keep costs to a bare minimum. In this reality, workers and their unions have little hope of winning the wages and conditions they need.

Members of UW SLAP will be closely monitoring the implementation of this new program over the coming years . . . stay tuned for upcoming actions!
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After many frustrated attempts to dialogue with Tacoma School District’s new Superintendent, community groups and local unions publicly challenged the School Board to resolve an atmosphere of disrespect. Requested by JwJ member organizations such as Tacoma Para-educators (American Federation of Teachers Local 261) and the Pierce County Building Trades (PCBCTC) as well as allies such as the Black Collective, JwJ brought a presence to a School Board showdown last month. Check out the story in the Tacoma News Tribune.

Rather than work together with parents, school staff, and the broader community, the Superintendent resigned. We expect that the Board got the message that the next District leader they hire needs to have a good history of collaborating with the entire community on all issues that create a strong schooling community. For more background on some of those issues, check out some of our allies’ comments from East Tacoma.
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The Tenants Union asked Jobs with Justice to work with them in solidarity around a campaign to make sure “development” and “improvements” in the Rainier Valley don’t displace area residents and to support the growth of low-income housing for workers.

Recently, the Seattle Housing Authority purchased two apartment buildings in the Rainier Valley with a pledge to “help the tenants” and to improve the conditions. Due to a very poor track record from SHA, tenants from the Douglas Arms apartment building, one of the purchased buildings, quickly began to organize with the Tenants Union to ensure that the transfer of ownership truly results in improvements for these families and for the broader community.

The Douglas Arms residents are 99% workers of color and the tenant organizing committee is comprised of both documented and undocumented immigrants of color and of life-long Seattle residents who have been pushed further and further south in search of safe, affordable housing.

On April 18th the Tenants Union, the Douglas Arms apartment tenants, Jobs with Justice and other community organizations met with Seattle Housing Authority. The tenants presented 9 demands, ranging from a promise for relocation assistance at the Seattle standard of $2,000 + for all families regardless of immigration status, to the right of first refusal, to relocation in the Rainier Beach neighborhood and they won a solid yes to each demand, minus one.

The one demand SHA refused was the demand to revoke a $75.00 rent increase imposed by the previous landlord to justify a higher selling price to SHA. After it became clear that SHA was not going to budge on this one, the tenants caucused and made a counter-offer that SHA agreed to. This counter offer is for SHA to make significant repairs in the next month to bring the property up to health and safety standards and to sit back down in about a month to revisit the issue.

Jobs with Justice brought a group of leaders and activists on April 18th to support the demands the tenants were asking for. Because of the strong organizing of the tenants and the Tenants Union and the community support from Jobs with Justice and other community groups SHA bowed down and did the right thing for these workers and their families!
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