11 More Jobs with Justice Victories Sending Us To 2011
Sanitation Workers Win Through Community-based Campaign and Short Strike Popular Uproar Stops Privatization of Women-Infants-Children Program in Whatcom Murano Hotel Workers set living wage job standard for Pierce County hospitality industry Big Box Ban Preserved: WINCO Cuts and Runs Workers Right to a Voice Continues to Rise Statewide while EFCA Takes a Holiday Port Security Workers Win Longshore Union Contract Scrooge Shares the Love Nike SLAPped into Justice Rio Tinto Workers Hold the Line A Decent Rest for Public Assembly Facilities Workers Affordable Housing Symbolic Victory in Tacoma
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2010 also saw JwJ victories additional to these 11, but these are the most recent. As politicians compete more over who is tougher on corporate greed and supports struggling workers, we celebrate our years of community campaigns across the nation that give rise to this renewed focus. Regardless of political candidate or party, it is issue-based struggles like the recent illustrations below that will continue to push the system’s designers to bend to justice.
While we continue to grow in other Western Washington areas as demonstrated by the victories below, the Flash Mob at Tacoma Macy’s and the King5 coverage of our Scrooge of the Year, we are excited about rebuilding in MLKCounty. We hope you recall JwJ’s role in the 5th Avenue Theater strike, the WTO, Waterfront power marches and rallies, and linking mass peace and immigrant rights protests with worker rights. JwJ did this with an organizing model based on our member organizations and a large pool of volunteers. In MLKCounty, we can do this again. This is so important to JwJ that the statewide JwJ Executive Board has now begun to directly take action requests for mobilization in MLK County so that we can insure to rebuild this capacity.
Sanitation workers at Waste Management (members of Teamsters 174 & 117), raised sweeping standards in an industry fraught with hazards and dirty hard work. 450 workers do the dangerous, dirty, and difficult work of trash collection for over 1 million customers in the Puget Sound region. This diverse workforce can also now say they prevented the giant Waste Management corporation’s attempts to roll back the clock . Jobs with Justice celebrated the victory of improving working conditions despite union-busting attacks of corporate greed at our 2010 Honoree Event .
 By organizing a Trash Watch everywhere they serve and live, the sanitation workers and community activists engaged neighbors to hold Waste Management accountable to community values of safety, health, and fair treatment. Local governments contract with Waste Management under enforceable responsibilities in which the community has every right to meddle. Jobs with Justice mobilized for Trash Watch trainings and solidarity activists participated in organizing block teams. The organizing strategy promoted by the Teamsters union is a model of community-labor solidarity that JwJ has championed since its start. When 450 Waste Management garbage workers struck for 2 days, it was unanimous, a historic feat. The strike strategically avoided Waste Management deploying its mobile band of hundreds of union-busters that flew in and holed up in a Bellevue hotel for several weeks. As Trash Watch activists were poised to swing into action, union leaders then negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that was ratified by the vast majority of members.
The Waste Management corporation has profited off government contracts paid by our tax-dollars and the sweat of the garbage workers. Teamster garbage workers have fought to share those profits, to form a stable and efficient workforce, and for an average livable wage of $25.67/hour.
Other trash companies had set higher standards of worker treatment than Waste Management. Waste Management garbage workers simply wanted the same respect as their co-workers in the rest of the profitable trash collection industry and refused to participate in a race-to-the-bottom. A union flyer revealed job hazards, quoting garbage worker Mike Clawson from Seattle, who "got Hepatitis A from having stuff splash on my hands and up into my face. I gave it to my wife and kids. Now Waste Management wants to cut our family health care." Brandon Plantenberg from Tukwila: "A rat jumped out of the can and landed on my face and scratched the top of my head. At the hospital, all my muscles were shutting down. During one test, I laid down, they put a blanket on me, and then I woke up two weeks later."
The Waste Management corporation is the largest waste hauler in the nation and has a recent history of locking out workers. It has been prosecuted by the Reagan Administration and other governments for numerous anti-community practices such as price-fixing, collusion to manipulate customers, hundreds of health and safety (OSHA) violations, scores of unfair labor practice charges, and accounting scandals . Waste Management founder Wayne Huizenga is extremely wealthy and has owned businesses such as Blockbuster Video, AutoNation, and professional sports franchises in football, baseball, and hockey. He has a university BusinessSchool named for him after making lavish donations, and owns a mega-yacht and a private golf course. Mr. Huizenga’s business practices and treatment of people have been called into question often and, in one incident, a court found him to have assaulted a potential customer (“a deputy cop”) by among other things grabbing his testicles without provocation.
A meaningful WIC program is democratically accountable and well-resourced to serve public health, not privatized and defunded. To this end, hundreds of JwJ activists and allies rallied numerous times to reverse a corporate greed plan to privatize and cut WhatcomCounty nutrition and health services to infants and expecting moms. 
First, dominant County Council voices for the wealthy were hell-bent to cut the WIC program while they protected their “fiscal conservative” business buddies profiting off taxpayers. Yet due to a major community organizing campaign involving WIC recipients and frontline providers (members of IFPTE 17) and JwJ activists, County elected officials began to complain that more working families were pressing upon them on this issue than any other issue in recent memory.
Some County Council market fundamentalists fought back with every fiber of their being to prevent viable budget cut alternatives proposed by JwJ and allies. These alternatives included:
- Cutting WIC’s above-market rent paid to businessperson and President of the NW Business Club, Gary Goldvogel. Ironically, the Club promotes “fiscally conservative government” and events for Glenn Beck and Tim Eyman but members seem to benefit personally from liberal spending of our tax-dollars. By relocating the WIC offices to a much less expensive and available facility, the County could yield significant savings.
- Pay cuts to the CountyExecutive and top-manager positions much like a neighboring government just imposed. The CountyExecutive had snuck a large pay raise.
- Pursuing the State's offer to help fund WIC programs like in WhatcomCounty through grants.
- Factoring into the budget lost cost-savings when responding to future public health decline or disasters. The County's Health Officer Dr. Greg Stern, M.D. declared that WIC frontline staff is an important element to protecting our public health at the most recent County Council session.
Rather than relocate the WIC program or accept executive pay cuts, Councilmember Kershner and Big Business ( through the Herald ) tried to mislead people to stop raising a fuss. When that didn’t work, the polarized 4-3 anti-WIC vote suddenly shifted to a unanimous vote not to privatize but rather shift program funding to temporary state grants. While this victory is unstable and doesn’t prevent WIC’s “slow starving,” WIC would have been one more Rove-style "drown government in the bathtub” if not for powerful community organizing and dedicated WIC recipients and frontline providers sounding the alarm.
Immediately after the WIC victory, County officials launched plans to use the WIC state funding to fill positions that were not driving their original budget cut and privatization proposal such as a vacant manager position (estimated at over $100K/year), an RN position, and a Health Prevention Specialist. This sounds familiar. In 1994, JwJ also beat back a market fundamentalist “Contract On America inspired” attempt to eviscerate WIC when budget problems were deemed a crisis but, after resistance, then appeared less dire. Organized WIC frontline providers built a powerful voice through that campaign.
Did County officials manufacture a crisis to achieve an ideological agenda of privatization, tax-dollar profiteering, and policy theorizing over frontline service? We need to be aware of these continuing signs in the battle over our government: Privatization is often an attack on our accountability over government for under-funding programs as well as directly on a program’s advocating power-base. Tax-dollar profiteering grows through lucrative for-profit contracts and rising government and non-profit executive salaries and manager bureaucracies. Government managers advocate minimizing directly serving community needs in favor of think tank research rather than balance doing both. Check out the Bates College fight below for more manufactured crisis tactics to strip working people of power.
Union members of UNITE HERE Local 8 operating the Murano Hotel fought to preserve affordable family healthcare and other living wage job standards. The hotel workers negotiated a new two year union contract that far exceeds worker treatment at nearby hotels where workers have not yet organized a union.
 The Puget Sound hotel industry is notoriously low in union density due to management retaliatory practices imposed on a mostly immigrant workforce. If the industry were to embrace civil standards of organizing like neutrality and majority sign-up , Greater Tacoma would be on track to end its high poverty levels much like many other West Coast cities that have reached labor harmony.
While we celebrate this victory, Murano workers expressed concerns about competitors like Tacoma Downtown Marriott-Hollander driving a race-to-the-bottom over job standards while receiving government welfare to expand. Murano managers implied that “market” pressure from low-wage paying hotels may force it to reconsider the standard-setting healthcare and compensation package in the future unless we can reverse this race-to-the-bottom.
The Murano has been a good ally. It joined community voices publicly and repeatedly to question why the Tacoma City Council continues to lavish corporate welfare on Marriott-Hollander after it broke promises to Tacoma’s taxpayers tied to earlier Council deals. It has challenged Marriott-Hollander on its unfortunate labor history. And taking a page from Jobs with Justice’s recent community organizing to raise quality of life standards, it has challenged Marriott-Hollander’s local development permits.
Arising from this community campaign to hold the hotel industry accountable to quality of life issues, now other voices are shedding light on the aesthetic controversy related to Marriott-Hollander’s new project on the Tacoma Thea Foss waterfront. We expect the Murano victory to launch a new stage in Jobs with Justice’s Responsible Development campaign as it embodies our statewide priority program Corporate Accountability for Low-Wage Workers.
The movement for corporate accountability to low-wage workers recently preserved Bellingham’s Big Box ban, a statewide trend-setting standard achieved by JwJ and allies in 2007 . Wal-Mart, Bellingham Mayor Pike, and the Chamber of Commerce then launched a three-year campaign to eliminate the Big Box ban. In the end, it was Big Business that was surprised by community resistance and openly disappointed with a token loophole in the ban. Despite the Bellingham City Council enacting the cramped loophole, the ban still pertains to a vast majority of the city. JwJ helped organize the resistance with allies such as the retail workers union (UFCW 21), Sustainable Connections, the NW WA Labor Council, and others. 
Perhaps this movement also had much to do with poverty-wage paying Big Boxer WINCO withdrawing from its plans to expand in Bellingham. WINCO still has plans to expand elsewhere on the I-5 corridor.
Winning wasn’t simple. After promising the Labor Council that he supported the big-box ban before he was elected, Mayor Pike secretly started working with Wal-Mart in September 2008 to overturn it. While Mayor Pike again personally promised last Fall that he did not meet with Wal-Mart, government records show that he personally met with Wal-Mart and requested his staff schedule more strategy meetings. Mayor Pike also campaigned to allow for more big-box expansion, by assuring concerned retail workers that he was working out the controversy with union leaders when he was doing the opposite.
Meanwhile Big Business deployed the Bellingham Herald to reverse public sentiment. They used a variety of approaches:
As Wal-Mart’s Bellingham campaign peaked, they got the Ferndale Council to bait Bellingham into a race-to-the-bottom over dwindling retail tax revenues. Disregarding attempts at revenue-sharing , the Ferndale Council rolled out the Big Box red carpet just days before the Bellingham Council show-down. After the State’s recent ruling on retail taxes , this Ferndale blind-side assault may be much ado about nothing. It turns out that new Big Boxes on the Border to attract Canadian consumers may not significantly raise local revenues to compensate for the community headaches. Background: In 2007, Jobs with Justice helped push through the Bellingham Big Box ban to preserve the community’s unique character and support the development of "urban villages" in neighborhoods where residents can walk, bike or drive a short distance to shop. Wal-Mart, the Chamber of Commerce, and Bellingham Herald opposed this effort. What continues to be at stake are two competing models of community and economic growth: Big Business favors the model based on a short race-to-the-bottom driven by corporate greed and pitting communities against each other. JwJ and allies support revenue sharing between towns, democratic designing of our community, and long-term sustainability. A simple comparison of Bellingham to Midwest towns shuttered by Wal-Mart will help us remember which model makes most sense.
When BatesTechnicalCollege former Chair Stan Rumbaugh tried to smash workers’ collective bargaining rights, hundreds of college instructors voted “no confidence” almost unanimously. Thus, Bates became our local movement’s ground zero in the ongoing struggle against the union-busting epidemic , especially as national legislators wilted to corporate pressure over the Employee Free Choice Act. All eyes in our state’s Community College system were looking at how we would react to the first use of a Reagan-era union-busting law that gives near absolute power to bosses in a “financial emergency.” Through a community campaign with JwJ and other allies, the instructors and their union (AFT 4184) were able to minimize the cuts to educational programs and jobs. More importantly, many community college bosses learned it doesn’t pay “to be like Stan.” A nearby Community College president has proudly embraced formal negotiations with staff unions and said his “goal was not to end up on the front pages of the” local newspaper. The jury is still out whether the Stan virus will spread. JwJ stands ready in solidarity.
As it turned out, the Bates “emergency” was much milder than at other colleges where bosses and elected union leaders civilly negotiated solutions. Never the less Mr. Rumbaugh led the attack, hiring a seasoned union-buster, dictating rather than negotiating, and trying to whip Board members into bringing a budget chainsaw to a pedicure. Mr. Rumbaugh’s target was especially programs that benefited infants, expecting Moms, and low-income Communities of Color. While Mr. Rumbaugh dumped his pro-worker track record for union-busting at Bates, he sought to fill a vacant seat as a PierceCounty court judge. Governor Gregoire denied Mr. Rumbaugh that position.
After 2 months of battling against the community and at the election filing deadline, Mr. Rumbaugh declared himself a candidate for Supreme Court, the highest statewide judge position. Questions swirled about the viability of this rushed Rumbaugh campaign and whether it properly addressed if he had ever run for an elected Government position or sat as a Judge in his previous life. As the Rumbaugh campaign went statewide, so too did the debate over his recent worker rights practices. The campaign sought to first dismiss the Bates issues as resolved, and then as ongoing but minor. This last slight helped many advocates seize a teachable moment: rights to a voice in the workplace are regarded as core human rights, and not minor.
Mr. Rumbaugh’s Board chair position has since expired and was not renewed. EdmondsCommunity College has been considering declaring an “emergency” over-ride of collective bargaining, but tabled the issue recently.
Through a courageous organizing drive with the Longshore Union (ILWU), low wage Tacoma port security workers have won a 24% pay increase, 282% increase in the value of employer provided health benefits, and a public employee pension. Persevering through union-busting tactics, the Maersk terminal low-wage workers achieved a first union contract. The three-year campaign was a poster child for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Even the federal Labor Board Regional Director issued indictments to the security company followed by settlements of justice for the aggrieved workers.
JwJ played a key solidarity role, mobilizing the community twice to picket the largest terminal at the Tacoma port causing complete and lengthy shutdowns of freighter loading. In addition to a port security worker organizing victory in Longview , other low-wage workers from Ports of Tacoma and Seattle have been looking to the fight waged at the Tacoma Maersk terminal for inspiration to launch more drives for living wage jobs.
The Tacoma Port Commission unanimously approved the new Longshore contract last Fall. In an act of reverse privatization, the security worker positions ultimately report to the elected Port Commission as the employer. Most comments from Commissioners were that this union contract is a model to extend to other privatized and low-wage security workers at other Port of Tacoma terminals. The private security company Securitas was shown the door. At a time when Port revenues are down with the economy, it is good to see Port bosses model sustainable community investment in our economy contrary to nearby local governments’ de-investment by luxury tax breaks, privatization and poverty-wage job model .
In a dramatic reversal, Tacoma WorkSource Director Linda Nguyen negotiated a first Teamster union contract with staff. Workers overwhelmingly ratified the new agreement which includes $1600 in annual bonuses to share savings to taxpayers that a Teamster health plan brings. Workers also achieved seniority for layoffs to avoid manager favoritism. Participants in JwJ’s Scrooge contest voted to award Ms. Nguyen after 3 years of illegal union-busting verified repeatedly by state investigations. A JwJ delegation delivered the dubious honor at a Board meeting composed of PierceCounty’s highest ranking elected officials.
JwJ hopes this victory sends a message to local Governments that elected officials should support worker rights, not spend tax-dollars on union-busting.
 When corporate apparel giant Nike signed a $1.5 million agreement with 1700 Honduran sweatshop workers and their union CGT, it not only marked history in the Honduran labor movement and the global justice movement but also in local student organizing with JwJ. CGT is a union representing former workers who had not received severance at the Nike sub-contracted Hugger and VisionTex factories for more than a year. Starting last summer, Nike will pay worker compensation and social security including health care for up to a year. Student organization UW-SLAP played a pivotal national role with JwJ support to achieve this victory.
The UW was one of the first academic institutions to experience a full frontal Nike anti-sweatshop campaign. As outgoing UW President Emmert (NCAA) and incoming President Wise (Nike Board) are openly steeped in Nike conflicts of interest, UW administrators passed up the chain to Nike the pressure between a growing campus anti-sweatshop movement and the Board of Regents bent on continuing a lucrative Nike contract. The NCAA, UW, and Wise’s personal Nike financial dealings collectively amass in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Nike’s compromise gave UW managers an out for now.
JwJ mobilized numerous times to support SLAP-UW’s actions directed at the Administration executives and Governor-appointed Trustees as well as provided early critical structural support to students launching SLAP at the UW Seattle campus. From the first stirrings of JwJ’s joint project with USSA to form a local Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), UW students have shown a strong dedication to solidarity with both local worker justice struggles and the global anti-sweatshop movement. Eventually forming an autonomous organization, UW-SLAP is a model for growing student-labor coalitions.
Five-hundred and seventy workers have won their fight to protect jobs after battling one of the world’s largest mining companies that lockout-out employees at Rio Tinto’s Borax mine for five months. The new union contract provides annual 2.5% wage increases in each year of the 6-year pact. Workers maintained protection against discrimination and favoritism involving promotions, shifts, scheduling, and overtime assignments. Current employees continue to receive good retirement pensions. While the British company’s mine is located in California, the fight got local as the Longshore union (ILWU) led a national day of action at British Consulates in Los Angeles, SaltLake, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver. Jobs with Justice mobilized in Seattle as well as several other locations including Salt Lake City.
Shortly after the national Day of Action, Rio Tinto ended the lockout and negotiated the union contract. Success also resulted from widespread support in High-Desert communities, including dozens of small business owners who opposed Rio Tinto’s lockout. The miners are members of ILWU Local 30. Critical support was also provided by working families across the nation and globe, coordinated by Labor Councils. The struggle was similar to the “David and Goliath” battle between miners and the company of decades past. With community JwJ support, Tacoma’s event staff (members of Teamsters 117) achieved the right to a weekend after a 2 year struggle. The fight was not for our parents defined “weekend,” for in the event staging industry, weekends are defined simply as 32 hours without work. The event staff at the Tacoma Dome and Convention Center also won family-friendly job standards through very difficult union contract negotiations with City of Tacoma’s Public Assembly Facilities (PAF).
JwJ helped mobilize for leafleting at the Convention Center Festival of Trees and the Dome’s WIAA football championships.
Quality of life standards now include a right to fair recovery time, first right of refusal for overtime work before the job is temped, and wage increases based on the City’s class comp study. Event staff workers are often abused with temporary work and unstable income, hours, and schedule. These workers have fought for good wages and working conditions to lead this industry into more fair treatment. City managers were attacking guarantees to get a decent sleep.
The Teamsters union reinforced the rights to overtime work in a recent arbitration victory against City bosses’ “skimming.” Rather than erode its tax revenues with poverty-wage temporary jobs and tax breaks to the global rich , the Tacoma City Council should be advocating its managers set standards of full-time living wage jobs so that most wealth stays in our community. The Tacoma City Council has taken a symbolic step to incentivize home building affordable to the workers who construct them and who serve the residents who occupy them. Certain height zoning standards are now linked to housing affordability despite previous Council members declaring this was not politically feasible given the pressure from property developers. While this victory raises the property development standards for our entire region leading a lagging Seattle , it has yet to mean much to Tacoma’s workers.
This progress emerges from an ongoing priority campaign of Jobs with Justice and a multi-year debate with luxury developers and City Council members. Our aggressive community organizing helps create the space for our allies and policy think tanks like Futurewise to get a foot in the door with the Tacoma Mayor when our voices are typically crowded out by the Master Builders’ big money influence.
These new rules will likely never produce a single unit of housing affordable to Tacoma’s workers because the market incentives are not enough. Just as we’ve seen with the luxury condo tax break, if you offer a kid a bowl of ice-cream for free and another with a cherry conditioned on housecleaning, most kids will just take the ice-cream without the cherry.
For example, Tacoma’s property developers are not likely to build tall buildings anywhere soon, especially outside of downtown, as they are now in the death grip of deep consumer debt and a market glut. Even if a single unit is built under these new rules, the term of remaining affordable is 12 years, far less than the usual 30-50 years. Even if market forces suddenly change and developers are clamoring to build very tall buildings outside of downtown, the fee to buy out of this responsibility is a mere .5% of total project costs. This amounts to about 1 affordable unit for every 200 luxury units built, hardly the ratio needed to create a mixed-income community.
None the less, if the City Council can now stomach the principle of linking government subsidies for property development to housing affordability, it might also ultimately swallow making that link meaningful as well as extending the link to job standards.
Donors can give on online , or by mail sent to our mailbox, or by credit card on the phone. Seattle City employees can now give to Jobs with Justice through the Combined Charities campaign by going to this link . Thank You Monthly Sustainers. Through regular monthly contributions of JwJ Monthly sustainers, we can predict and plan long-term programs that make deep and lasting social change for justice. Most of the victories in this message derive from these programs and would not be possible without monthly sustainers. JwJ is stabilizing the dates we process monthly sustainer contributions. These dates will span the first 4 business days of each month. Thank you for your continuing support. If you are not yet a monthly sustainer and wish to become one, please sign up using this form . We don’t get foundation, government, or corporate donations. Our funding, and our work, comes from YOU – our members. This gives us clarity of purpose.
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Port Security Workers Win Longshore Union Contract 
