NEW YORK, New York — The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is excited to announce that workers of the Metropolitan Council on Housing have organized with unanimous support (non-supervisory staff). As of July 18, 2022 the IWW has notified management at the city’s oldest tenant’s rights organization that their staff are exercising their right to organization, while demanding a set of changes to working conditions.

The staff are demanding specific changes related to hours, wages, job duties, work / life balance, and communication between workers and management that workers believe are necessary to ensure the organization’s ability to fulfill its mission.

The staff are also fighting for more fundamental structural changes to the organization, in order to help bring the organization to a healthier, more democratic place.

Too often, non profit organizations leverage their staff’s commitment to a cause to maintain regressive working conditions that ultimately serve to undermine their stability and effectiveness. People working at non profit organizations deserve equitable, dignified workplaces.

Established in 1959, the Metropolitan Council on Housing is New York’s oldest city-wide tenants’ rights organization and is on the steering committee of the statewide coalition Housing Justice for All. During Met Council’s 60+ year history of tenant advocacy, it has not shied away from supporting the more radical elements of the tenant struggle. The organization was involved in organizing the People’s Court Housing Crimes Trial with the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords and I Wor Kuen, as well as supporting the 1970’s squatter’s movement.

The organization now helps organize tenant’s associations in Northern Manhattan, fights for pro-tenant legislation at the city and state level, and operates a hotline that is one of the first sources of support tenants across New York City turn to for help when they have a problem with their landlord.

 

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“We are excited to unionize with the IWW to ensure that we have a voice and that we are respected in the workplace. The fight to build worker power and democratize the workplace is part of the same fight to build tenant power and win tenant control over housing. The more power we have as workers, the better suited we will be to support and center the tenants with whom we organize in the fight for control over their buildings, their communities, and the city as a whole.” – Ben Rosenfield, Tenant Organizer

“After almost a year and a half of urging leadership to make serious structural changes, we are looking forward to being unionized with the support of the IWW. A strong, organized workforce can bring transformative changes and create a better, healthier environment for us to achieve our mission of building tenant power in NYC” – Kate Ehrenberg, Hotline Coordinator

In November, the Industrial Workers of the World’s Moe’s Books Union in Berkeley, California, voted to ratify their first union contract and reached a tentative agreement with management. This hard-fought success was won in spite of many attempts by management to divide and discourage the organizing workers, who celebrated their first year as members of the IWW in late February.

As the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading and workers across the world scrambled to enact measures to keep themselves safe, those at Moe’s Books were doing the same.

“The management was just not listening to us,” says Owen Hill, a founding member of Moe’s Books Union. “And we’re on the floor, we know what to do.”

Increasingly frustrated with management’s resistance, Moe’s Books workers chose to unionize early last year and quickly sought an emergency measure outlining safety protocols. In March of 2021, the union was voluntarily recognized by Moe’s Books owner, Doris Moskowitz.

However, as contract negotiations began, management attempted to undermine the process by offering management positions to workers, which could have removed them from the union. At least one recent hire was also fired, spurring the union to file an Unfair Labor Practices complaint against management with the National Labor Relations Board. The board eventually ruled in favor of the union, acknowledging that management spoke illegally about the union and mandating compensation to the fired employee.

The union contract that was agreed upon in late November gives Moe’s Books workers a starting wage of $20 per hour, 3 percent annual raises and additional raises according to responsibility, as well as dental coverage and more holidays. Also codified was a grievance procedure — the need for which was one of the original inspirations for unionizing, as workers had been fired without cause at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Hill, no one has been fired since implementation of the contract.

In the months following ratification, the importance of the union has only been further confirmed. At the end of December, when a worker was forced into a meeting with management, Hill — the shop steward at the time — showed up alongside a representative from the IWW, but they were initially barred from attending. After some negotiations, a second meeting was held, which both were invited to join.

An employee of Moe’s Books for 35 years, Hill has since retired, but has applied to be a delegate so that he can continue to support the union. The store has recently experienced a lot of turnover, but the new hires are “ very pro-union,” according to Hill.

“I think that’s discouraging to management,” he says. “They can’t seem to find anyone in Berkeley who’s anti-union.”

The current union contract will last for three years, at which time Hill is hopeful that the new generation taking the reins will continue to improve working conditions at Moe’s Books. He also shares that same hope for union organizing in other workplaces.

“We’re seeing some changes here, with this wave of labor politics,” says Hill. “It sure feels good that, in an awful world, there’s some positive things going on.”

Reprinted from Industrial Worker

196 Teachers and staff at California public charter school group bring their employer to the bargaining table following 2 year effort to unionize

RICHMOND, California — On the evening of Wednesday May 26, 2022 California Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Terence Johnson announced that the California public charter school group is officially recognizing the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as the exclusive bargaining representative of its employees.

In the all-staff email announcement, Johnson confirmed that the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) had verified majority support for the union among 196 employees working at the charter school group’s two branches, Caliber: Beta Academy and Caliber: ChangeMakers stating that “PERB confirmed last week that there is majority support across Caliber as a whole for the Caliber Workers Union. Given that… I’m now in a position to recognize the Caliber Workers Union as the representative of our two categories of workers: Certificated, non-supervisory employees (those who are credentialed and who do not formally supervise other staff members); Classified, non-supervisory employees (those who are not credentialed and who do not formally supervise other staff members).”

The IWW welcomes Johnson’s concluding remark that “Caliber and the Union will now establish teams who will work together to develop mutually agreeable labor agreements for both our certificated and classified staff.”

Caliber workers are excited by this major step in ongoing communication and collaboration between their union and their schools’ management.

Caliber Public Schools consists of two campuses located in Richmond and Vallejo, CA serving over 1,700 students in grades TK-8.

 

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“I am proud and inspired to be working alongside such brilliant and dedicated educators. Unionization allows us to join the ranks of thousands of other schools across the country by ensuring that our staff are protected. I see unionization as an investment in our network’s future: Our community has stood up to say yes to partnership, yes to accountability, and yes to the belief that we are strongest when all of our voices get a seat at the table. Our administration has already made some incredible changes. I’m excited to continue partnering with them, and look forward to all that this new chapter will bring!” – Fourth Grade Lead Teacher Gerri Swift

Recent events at the Dill Pickle Food Co-op in Chicago illustrate what workers describe as a pattern of mismanagement by general manager I’Talia McCarthy. In March, two union stewards — individuals elected by workers to deal with management — quit in response to the store’s lax COVID-19 safety policy, which allows customers to shop mask-less. One other steward was also fired after McCarthy accused them of stealing baby wipes with a coworker. Workers at the Dill Pickle Food Co-op are unionized with the Industrial Workers of the World.

“The steward was helping a worker with a clean-up that management refused to help with,” says Jessico Dickerson, a Dill Pickle worker and union member. “They were going to use the baby wipes to clean up the mess in the bathroom — but I’Talia didn’t acknowledge the footage of that worker looking for and being denied help by management prior to them going to the steward for help.”

Dickerson says these problems are symptomatic of a larger issue: mismanagement. Co-ops are supposed to be run democratically, but according to workers, McCarthy has explicitly stated that she does not believe in workplace democracy.

“The general manager has stated in the past that she doesn’t believe in democracy because it’s inefficient and takes too long,” says Dickerson. “But you work at a co-op and democracy is one of our top values, so I think this general manager has effectively become a tumor to the co-op and the store’s going to shut down as a result of her mismanagement.”

The lack of focus on democratic principles has manifested itself in other ways as well. The store’s previous general manager held all-staff meetings once a month and open-book finance check-ins weekly — practices which stopped after McCarthy took over, says Dickerson. The absence of fiscal transparency is particularly problematic because management has repeatedly cited financial troubles as their motivation for cutting hazard pay and other benefits from workers.

“Twice we requested to view the fiscal budgets for both 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, up-to-date sales for the current fiscal year, the salaries of the general manager and human resources department, and all other employees who receive salary pay,” says Dickerson.

Management would only agree to disclose this information to the workers if they agreed to sign nondisclosure agreements — but knowing that they might need to go public with the information, workers rejected the offer.

“I believe that they have something to hide,” says Dickerson. “Otherwise, why ask us to not disclose our financials to the public?”

Despite these issues, workers believe the Dill Pickle Co-op is in a transitionary period and positive change may be possible. They will be electing new union stewards within the next month, and the union contract will be renegotiated later this year.

“There’s hope on the horizon,” says Dickerson. “But management has got to stop their union-busting tactics or else the Dill Pickle Co-op will end up like its namesake, the Dill Pickle Club — a distant memory in Chicagoland history.”

Reprinted from Industrial Worker

RICHMOND, California — On Tuesday May 10, 2022 a Senior Regional Attorney with the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) determined that workers at the K-8 charter school group Caliber Public Schools have demonstrated sufficient support for their union, ordering the school’s management to formally recognize the labor organization.

Despite the Industrial Workers of the World’s full acceptance of Caliber Public Schools preferred bargaining unit, the school’s management submitted hundreds of pages of legal argument to prevent PERB from finding in favour of their 150 teachers and staff.

Caliber Public Schools workers will now be assembling a bargaining team to negotiate a Collective Agreement that would codify new standards of basic transparency and community accountability at the school. Workers and families will be working for a seat at the table where they can meaningfully impact key processes and priorities at the school, such as moderating workloads and class sizes, as well as establishing adequate compensation to retain skilled educators.

Retaining skilled, experienced educators is incompatible with perpetual understaffing, stagnating and uncompetitive compensation, and a lack of job security. A new Collective Bargaining Agreement will establish the necessary levers for workers and families to ensure the school is capable of delivering a high quality level of education consistently and dependably.

 

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“I am proud and inspired to be working alongside such brilliant and dedicated educators. Unionization allows us to join the ranks of thousands of other schools across the country by ensuring that our staff are protected. I see unionization as an investment in our network’s future: Our community has stood up to say yes to partnership, yes to accountability, and yes to the belief that we are strongest when all of our voices get a seat at the table. Our administration has already made some incredible changes. I’m excited to continue partnering with them, and look forward to all that this new chapter will bring!” – Fourth Grade Lead Teacher Gerri Swift

“A staffing shortage and catastrophic turnover rate at Caliber Public Schools is resulting in increasingly crowded classrooms while compensation and resources for teachers are stagnating. At schools right down the street, teachers are stipended when class sizes increase and are guaranteed less prep time, but we are asked to do more on the off chance that uneven benefits are doled out at the whim of management — meaning we are expected to work more with less without standards to ensure equity.” – Fourth Grade Lead Teacher Gerri Swift

The Industrial Workers of the World presents Kim Kelly, author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, in conversation with Peter Cole, professor of history at Western Illinois University, on Monday, May 16 at 8 PM Eastern. Moderated by Maxim Baru, communications officer of the IWW.

RSVP for the event and order your copy of Fight Like Hell from the IWW Store.

About Fight Like Hell

Fight Like Hell is a definitive history of the US labor movement and the people who risked everything to win necessities, like fair wages and access to employment, a safe workplace, disability and discrimination protections, and the eight-hour workday. Here, figures like “first lady of the coal mines” Ida Mae Stull, Latinx farmworkers’ heroine Maria Moreno, queer Black civil rights icon Bayard Rustin, pioneering sex worker’s rights activist Margo St. James, Ford whistleblower Suzette Wright and the indomitable Mother Jones get their due. Kim Kelly’s publishing debut is both an inspiring read and a vital contribution to history, offering a transportive look at the forgotten heroes who’ve sacrificed to make good on the United States’ promises.

About Kim Kelly

Kim Kelly is an independent journalist, author and organizer based in Philadelphia. She has been a labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018, and her writing on labor, class, politics and culture has appeared in The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Baffler, The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review and Esquire. She has also worked as a video correspondent for More Perfect Union, The Real News Network and Means TV. Previously, she was the heavy metal editor at Vice’s Noisey and a leader in the Vice Union. She is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World’s Freelance Journalists Union and an elected councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East.

About Peter Cole

Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University. Cole is the author of the award-winning Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia. He co-edited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW and, most recently, edited Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly. He also is the founder and co-director of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project.

About Maxim Baru

Maxim Baru is communications officer of the Industrial Workers of the World. Formerly head of labor organizing at Efling, Iceland’s second-largest union, Baru specializes in labor issues and organization pertaining to essential workers.

RSVP for IWW Presents Fight Like Hell: Kim Kelly Q&A with Peter Cole.

As employers continue to use the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to amass record profits, more and more workers are reaching out to labor unions for assistance with organizing their workplaces.

For the Industrial Workers of the World, a labor union that trains workers to be organizers, this has meant finding new ways to build capacity for assisting workers who reach out for help.

To that end, the IWW’s Organizing Department Board recently launched the Branch Development External Organizer Shadowing Program, with the purpose of increasing both the number of union members who can assist workplace organizing efforts from the outside — also known as “external organizers” — and the number of local IWW branches capable of supporting campaigns on their own.

Aaron Conway-Fuches, an IWW member who serves on the Organizing Department Board and helped develop the new shadowing program, describes it as important to getting the union to a place where the majority of members are organizing in their workplaces, with a sizable team of external organizers to aid new campaigns.

“The goal is for even a very small branch without many of their own experienced people to be able to build up their own apparatus to support anyone who reaches out to them,” he says.

“Any worker has the potential to be an organizer,” says Conway-Fuches. “Ideally, everyone in the union will be somebody who can organize. That’s not to say, though, that everyone knows organizing best practices.”

While the IWW’s flagship organizer training program, the Organizer Training 101, teaches those best practices, Conway-Fuches admits that it isn’t always practical to get workers into the multi-day training. That’s where external organizers come in.

“The primary role of the external organizer is to bridge the gap, so that you can reach out to us and get organizing from day one,” says Conway-Fuches. “An external organizer is somebody who can talk you through the early steps, check in with you on your tasks, provide feedback and give you an idea of how to organize your workplace.”

Molly D, who also serves on the Organizing Department Board, saw the need for mentorship in the IWW and was excited to help Conway-Fuches develop the new program.

“Branches need help with external organizing,” she says. “We’re hearing that from members, so having a shadowing program follows the path that the union is going toward — which is getting us all better at talking to workers, organizing in our own workplaces and understanding the role that an external organizer plays in getting a campaign up. Learning how to do that is something we’re really cultivating right now as a union.”

The new program is open to every IWW union and branch in North America. Branches can vote to join the program and elect one or two members to participate.

“We think it’s best to have two people on the campaign at once,” says Conway-Fuches. “The ideal participant is somebody who is going to have the time to support campaigns and feels like their current organizing experience isn’t enough for them to do so. That can be somebody who has no organizing experience or somebody who has organized but doesn’t feel confident enough.”

“The most important thing — because part of this is about branch development — is that you can connect with the rest of your branch and you’re able to work with people in your branch to create this kind of support structure,” he adds.

Once an IWW member is chosen by their branch to participate in the program, they will begin sitting in on meetings with workers interested in organizing. After completing the Organizer Training 101 and observing three meetings with the same worker, the participant is considered for the next level of shadowing, referred to as a “junior external organizer,” where they begin handling meetings with workers alongside a more experienced organizer.

Conway-Fuches is optimistic that the program will lead to a new wave of experienced organizers, who will be ready for whatever comes next.

“One of the most important parts of organizing is looking at how you replace yourself,” he says.

“Shadowing is already happening in the union,” says Molly D. “So I like to think that this is just making it easier and more accessible to more members.”

Contact the IWW Organizing Department Board to learn more about the Branch Development External Organizer Shadowing Program: organize@iww.org.

Reprinted from Industrial Worker

The fight for unionization continues at Nitricity, a San Francisco-based start-up company that produces fertilizer. A union election held on April 6 split 5-5 between supporters and opponents, with a single, currently uncounted vote remaining.

A variety of unsafe working conditions and lack of health insurance initially led the workers of Nitricity to begin organizing their union with the Industrial Workers of the World. Early attempts to negotiate with management prior to the unionization effort were met with limited success. Workers’ input on suitable healthcare plans, for example, was ultimately ignored.

Soon after launching their union drive with the IWW, workers also discovered unfair pay disparities. Their efforts continue to be supported by the San Francisco Bay Area IWW, which helped prepare them for anti-union attacks and to organize their own pro-union actions, such as marching on management.

Nitricity workers have endured an array of anti-union tactics. Talk of how workers and management are a team, warnings that the union is a “third party” that won’t actually represent workers and threats that the business may be unsuccessful if a union is formed were all deployed to dissuade workers from organizing. Management even hired anti-union consultants to help quash the workers’ efforts.

“They claimed that if we unionize — and if we unionize specifically with the IWW, with its very anti-capitalist stance — then venture capitalists will be more hesitant or outright deny providing funding,” says Jackson Wong, a research and development technician and union member at Nitricity.

Workers, however, don’t believe these threats to be credible, due to the continued interest from investors that they have observed firsthand.

Nitricity workers attribute the split union vote to management misclassifying one of their coworkers as a supervisor. The worker was allowed to vote, but it does not count toward certification of the union at this time.

“This person does not have hiring-firing power,” says Wong. “They don’t have the power to control salary, take disciplinary measures — anything that’s listed in that part of the National Labor Relations Act.”

The decision on whether the worker in question is indeed a worker or a supervisor will ultimately come down to the National Labor Relations Board. If the federal agency recognizes the worker as a worker, rather than a supervisor, their vote will be unsealed and become the deciding factor in union certification.

“The National Labor Relations Board is basically investigating this classification or misclassification,” says Wong. “At that time, we will open the envelope of this coworker and see how they voted .… but it’s definitely not a coincidence that this coworker is definitely pro-union.”

While the pro-union workers at Nitricity have been dedicated and steadfast in their resolve and efforts, they admit that they could have done a better job of inoculating others against management’s anti-union attacks.

“I think if we had been better prepared or if we’d responded better — both to our employers and to our fellow coworkers who were swayed by their arguments — that would have been helpful,” says Wong.

Wong also acknowledges the difficulties of labor organizing at start-ups, which are dependent on venture capital, but hopes that the efforts of Nitricity workers will prove successful and inspire colleagues elsewhere.

“You want to help inspire other tech workers, workers in the Bay Area, start-up workers to see that this is something that’s possible,” he says.

Reprinted from Industrial Worker

Maria Smith was frustrated and angry. Communication within her Industrial Workers of the World branch had broken down after the resignation of its secretary-treasurer, and Smith felt her voice wasn’t being heard. But after a close examination of the problem, she applied for mediation with a fellow branch member through the IWW’s Gender Equity Committee, in the hopes of sorting out their differences.

“It worked out really well,” she says. “The branch and I now have a good working relationship.”

Smith says the resulting intervention was such a success that she decided to run for a seat on the Gender Equity Committee when it opened in 2021. She has been in the position since the beginning of this year.

Smith and other committee members hope to replicate such successes as they move forward. In particular, Smith would like the Gender Equity Committee to shorten the time it takes to field requests for mediation and to expand the scope of the committee’s work.

While the Gender Equity Committee initially began in 2014 as a standing committee established to deal with gender-specific mediation, Smith says the committee now considers mediation requests for other issues.

In addition to its mission to use mediation to solve conflicts, the Gender Equity Committee is also dedicated to providing educational outreach, resources and advice to branches regarding how to navigate difficult issues. The committee also manages the Sato Fund, which underwrites the expenses of female, genderqueer or transgender IWW members who want to attend meetings, trainings, classes or workshops.

Smith admits that the Gender Equity Committee’s commitment to outreach and Sato-funding has suffered during the pandemic, with the necessity of personal distancing, but she hopes to increase such activities during the coming months.

In the meantime, the Gender Equity Committee is speeding up the process for IWW members who request mediation. Smith urges people who have encountered communication issues to reach out for help. She says IWW members having difficulties should consider coming to the committee prior to filing a complaint against other union members.

“Ideally, someone would come to us beforehand,” she says. “It could be something about being ignored at meetings, a person being sexist toward women at a branch, people who aren’t communicating well, communication that’s hurtful to parties, neurotypical folks who may communicate differently and need help, or minorities who don’t feel included.”

Once an individual requests mediation, the Gender Equity Committee will contact all affected parties and ask if they agree to mediate the dispute. If so, the committee will forward the request to a professional mediator outside of the IWW, who has been hired specifically to address such issues.

All of the parties then enter mediation. From the resulting discussions, the mediator will draft a confidential pledge based on what each party agrees to do to solve the dispute. The Gender Equity Committee only gets involved once more during follow-up, to ensure that all parties are meeting their pledges.

Smith notes that mediation is very different from the IWW’s process for formal complaints, which generally involve more serious charges or differences that can’t be resolved through mediation. She says that she is a perfect example of how mediation can work and hopes that more people will come to the Gender Equity Committee in the future to ask for help.

“Mediation should be the first line of defense,” Smith says. “A lot of those things can be worked out in mediation, rather than going directly to the complaints process.”

“We need to work together, and we have the tools to handle any problem,” she continues. “Please utilize them.”

Contact the IWW Gender Equity Committee to request mediation, apply for the Sato Fund or get involved in the committee’s work: gec@iww.org.

Reprinted from Industrial Worker

Workers at Holler Health Justice began meeting with the West Virginia branch of the Industrial Workers of the World last year to draft their first union contract. The contract, which starts wages at $20 an hour, with 15-hour work weeks, greater time off and worker self-management, is now with the board of the nonprofit abortion support provider for what workers anticipate will be final approval.

Holler Health Justice codirector and union member Peshka Calloway describes the move to worker self-management as part of a trend in which the boards of directors, grant funders and private donors of nonprofit organizations are taking more seriously the sustainability of such organizations. Accordingly, the board of directors at Holler Health Justice has encouraged workers to produce their own job descriptions and seek board approval only as necessary.

“Holler Health Justice has a board of directors, which has been our management,” explains Calloway. “When we organized to negotiate and finalize our contract, our board was entirely behind the move.”

Calloway notes that, in the points of disagreement between Holler Health Justice workers and the board, the latter have actually wanted the former to take on a greater managerial role, if only out of necessity.

“We thought we had a more finalized version of the contract at the end of January, until our board members said, ‘Hey, the management part where we have to do reviews and other duties — we won’t have the time,’” she says.

Instead, more of the responsibilities traditionally held by management will be given directly to the workers themselves.

“Essentially, our board wants us to be a worker self-directed nonprofit,” says Calloway.

“Instead of performance reviews where a manager reviews us and places it in our personnel file, we review our performance,” she continues. “The reviews are done in a way to break through harsh self-critique and center on what we do well.”

Calloway explains that the union at Holler Health Justice is represented by herself and two other codirectors. When the board suggested that they should consider worker-led models of operation, the three codirectors held a meeting to discuss and research a potential move in that direction. They eventually voted to restructure into a worker-led model, as incorporated into their new union contract.

Once the contract is complete, Calloway looks forward to sharing it far and wide. She sees that as one way to support the resurgent trend of workers unionizing in West Virginia and Appalachia more generally.

“We were the first nonprofit in the state of West Virginia to become a unionized shop,” says Calloway. “We want it to be publicly acceptable for other nonprofits — or anyone — to take whatever is in our union contract and craft it into their own. We want people to be inspired.”

Calloway also underscores the pain, trauma and hardships of working in the “nonprofit industrial complex,” as she terms it. She describes many nonprofits as having become mechanical and demeaning to their staff, which is what the workers at Holler Health Justice are trying to avoid with their union.

“You can create a nonprofit full of love and support and joy, where people come on and make a commitment to each other — not to an ideal and not to an organization — but to one another,” says Calloway. “That’s what we’re exploring and that is what we are so passionate about.”

Reprinted from Industrial Worker