Breaking: Pentagon workers strike over poverty pay
Source: Salon.com
“Mr. Obama, I work hard to serve American heroes, and I shouldn’t end up with zero”
Josh Eidelson
Non-union cleaning and concessions workers at the Pentagon plan to walk off the job for the first time Wednesday morning, the latest in a series of federally contracted worker strikes designed to force the president’s hand. Organizers hope dozens from the Pentagon will participate today. They’ll be joined on strike by workers from the Air and Space Museum, Ronald Reagan Building, and Union Station, government-owned buildings where workers have staged a series of past one-day work stoppages for the same purpose.
“I moved back with my parents because I couldn’t afford rent,” 52-year-old Pentagon cooking and cleaning worker Jerome Hardy told Salon in a pre-strike interview. “My teeth are decaying, my teeth are bad,” he added, but “I can’t afford to take off to get my teeth fixed.” Hardy said after eight years of work at the Pentagon, “I still make $9 an hour. Eight years, I haven’t gotten a quarter raise, a dime, a nickel, nothing. So my bills are falling behind. I need more money.”
As I’ve reported, the strike campaign by the coalition Good Jobs Nation – backed by the union federation Change to Win – aims to urge President Obama to wield executive authority to raise labor standards for those employed under federal contracts. Taxes fund around 2 million jobs that pay no more than $12 an hour, according to the progressive think tank Demos; federal contracts worth $81 billion went to companies that had collectively paid out close to $200 million in penalties and back pay, according to congressional Democrats. “Mr. Obama,” said Hardy, “I work hard to serve American heroes, and I shouldn’t end up with zero.”
The White House and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to inquiries last week about workers’ call for executive action. Since Good Jobs Nation’s launch last May, organizers say the campaign has secured a (reportedly inconclusive) meeting with the head of the General Services Administration, spurred union recognition for about 220 museum workers, sparked a Department of Labor investigation into alleged wage theft, and largely succeeded at using community protest to reverse or avert retaliation against strikers. But the campaign so far hasn’t received any direct public response from the president.
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Read more: http://www.salon.com/2014/01/22/breaking_pentagon_workers_strike_over_poverty_pay/
(Credit: Reuters)
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Unlike Patco even though they endorsed him: The Strike That Busted Unions
By JOSEPH A. McCARTIN Published: August 2, 2011
THIRTY years ago today, when he threatened to fire nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers unless they called off an illegal strike, Ronald Reagan not only transformed his presidency, but also shaped the world of the modern workplace.
More than any other labor dispute of the past three decades, Reagan’s confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or Patco, undermined the bargaining power of American workers and their labor unions. It also polarized our politics in ways that prevent us from addressing the root of our economic troubles: the continuing stagnation of incomes despite rising corporate profits and worker productivity.
By firing those who refused to heed his warning, and breaking their union, Reagan took a considerable risk. Even his closest advisers worried that a major air disaster might result from the wholesale replacement of striking controllers. Air travel was significantly curtailed, and it took several years and billions of dollars (much more than Patco had demanded) to return the system to its pre-strike levels.
But the risk paid off for Reagan in the short run. He showed federal workers and Soviet leaders alike how tough he could be. Although there were 39 illegal work stoppages against the federal government between 1962 and 1981, no significant federal job actions followed Reagan’s firing of the Patco strikers. His forceful handling of the walkout, meanwhile, impressed the Soviets, strengthening his hand in the talks he later pursued with Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
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Hieronymus; photograph by Teresa Zabala/The New York Times
