‘We Organize or We Die’

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/05/%e2%80%98we-organize-or-we-die%e2%80%99/

Organizing & Bargaining

Sep 5

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‘We Organize or We Die’

From Washington, D.C., to Boston and Las Vegas, unions are meeting to figure out the best ways to help workers join unions and to increase working people’s strength at the bargaining table and the ballot box.

The Iron Workers, meeting in Washington, D.C., Aug. 14–17, unanimously approved doubling, in most cases, assessments to the union’s organizing fund, devoted exclusively for helping workers organize. The money will be used to expand the union’s innovative Analyzing Construction Employers Strategically (ACES) program, which provides training for organizers, funds research and strategic planning and hires Latino organizers.

Iron Workers General President Joseph Hunt, who was re-elected to a five-year term, told the delegates organizing is the key to the union’s future:

We organize or we die. In our jurisdiction, we must increase our market share and that happens by developing an organizing blueprint for every local.

The delegates also viewed an independently-produced documentary, “Metal of Honor,” that chronicles the pride and passion of the Iron Workers who cleaned up and searched for bodies at the World Trade Center towers after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The film takes viewers behind police lines to witness the events at Ground Zero through the eyes of the structural ironworkers from Iron Workers Local 40.

“Metal of Honor” will be broadcast on Spike TV, a basic cable station, on Tuesday, Sept. 5, from 9 p.m.–10:30 p.m. EST/PST. The broadcast will be repeated from 10:30 p.m.–midnight. The film will be shown again on Saturday, Sept. 9, from 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

In other union convention news:

* The Painters and Allied Trades, reaffirmed the union’s commitment to changing to organize. Meeting recently in Washington, D.C., President James Williams, who was re-elected to a two-year term, told the delegates that the future of the union depended on boosting organizing and training.

Vice President Al Monroe, who oversees organizing, reported that tens of thousands of members have been trained and mobilized to organize and that locals can expect more emphasis on organizing:

At your next local meeting be prepared to see us. And when you do, be prepared for action. Be prepared to organize.

* In Las Vegas, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) heard AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff’s challenge to continue its fight for working people by making the freedom to join a union the top issue in the 2006 election. Said Acuff:

We’ve got to have a fight about it. And it is a fight we can win. It doesn’t have to be this way. We need to turn our despair, our fears, our insecurities, and our sleepless nights into anger; and then turn that individual anger into public, collective rage.

BCTGM President Frank Hurt also was re-elected to a four-year term.

FULL story at link above.