Wear your DSA merch, bring a sign with a witty slogan, and show your pride with us in the 2023 San Diego Pride parade!

DSA San Diego is going to be contingent line-up 256 at check-in point Blue, right at the intersection of Centre St. and Lincoln Ave. between 8:00 am and 8:45 am. Parade starts at 10:00 am sharp!

Parking will be limited, so a good option is to take the shuttle service that starts at the Old Naval Hospital on Park Blvd. and President’s Way, but get there early before parking runs out.

Additionally, there should be event parking provided by Bernie Elementary and Theodore Roosevelt Middle School for $20.

Click here to let us know that […]

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“I recognize at the outset that there’s some irony to a non-coffee drinking Mormon, conservative, defending a Democrat candidate for president, and perhaps one of the most liberal companies in America.”

— Senator Mitt Romney to former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, as the latter testified before the Senate in March 2023

“No that’s the bottom line, it’s all a big smokescreen. This movement has become so capitalist. It is a capitalist movement. I see this movement becoming a straight-gay movement, that only believes in that almighty dollar. Now what kind of logic is this?”

— Sylvie Rivera, interviewed at Pride in 2001

This weekend Starbucks workers went on strike in Cleveland, part of a week of 150+ stores protesting the removal of Pride flags from shops nationwide. Partners struck at the newly unionized Strongsville location and in Crocker Park. With the Summer weather, turnout at both stores was excellent. For the first time in a while, stores failed to open altogether, with management apparently not mustering enough scabs to make the attempt. Overworked baristas and their allies celebrated their victory, playing music, chanting into our many megaphones, fanning ourselves with cardboard signs, chatting with supporters. A resident from the Crocker apartments brought several boxes of popsicles (and a dog!) to the picket line. Spirits were high as the baristas turned away a full-day’s business during a major holiday weekend.

Community support was strong. The Amalgamated Transit Union, Workers United staff, former Starbucks workers, supporters of the One Fair Wage ballot initiative, and, of course, DSA members, all came together for the Crocker picket. From all reports, the Strongsville Starbucks on Royalton Road held a great picket as well. There community support included a strong DSA contingent as well as Teamsters, Building and Construction Trade Council workers, the Postalworkers, Machinists, Steelworkers, and the working class superhero from Queens, Spiderman, who is a longtime supporter of the union movement.

When Crocker Park’s Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) crew joined the struggle last November, things were beginning to drag. Union representation had been won at several stores, but the fight had clearly shifted from exciting first waves toward a longer and more difficult battle for a national contract. It is not clear that all bargaining units would survive decertification¹ votes. The shape of Starbucks criminal unionbusting strategy was revealing itself. Partners braced for a long battle of attrition with management. In the service sector such battles are particularly vicious, as employers often have a great deal of power over scheduling. Partners found they simply weren’t getting shifts anymore, or were being scheduled for less hours than they’d need to retain benefits. Cleveland DSA, as a small part of its Labor Solidarity campaign, has tried to bridge the gap, holding concerts and Drag shows to bolster the Starbucks Organizers Support Fund (which you can donate to here!). Yet needs are always mounting, and as Cleveland SBWU grows so too do the number of workers needing to make rent every month. In this context, Crocker partners’ energy, cleverness, militancy, and sense of humor were badly needed. They rejuvenated our chapter’s Labor Solidarity Campaign at the start of a long winter, and have consistently ensured Cleveland SBWU stores were represented in national strike efforts. We’ve been honored to join them at the picket line over and over again, in much colder, rainier weather. Partners know we’ll be happy to picket all Summer long if Starbucks continues to bust the union. Compared to the organizers on the shop floor, our job is easy!

My fellow DSA members were surprised when Starbucks took down the Pride flag at the Clifton location. It’s not unusual to see flags go up at urban cafés during Pride month. Clifton Starbucks has had their flag up all year, for years. Resting as it does in Edgewater, a historic gay neighborhood in Cleveland, with one of Cleveland’s most popular gay bars just next door, there is nothing risky or unusual about this display of community. It is well within the local mainstream. Taking it down only served to anger workers and alienate locals. When I learned this was a deliberate, national decision, rather than a ridiculous error by an incompetent local manager, I was floored.

Socialists often see these sorts of pride displays as hollow corporate PR, yet another variant of “pinkwashing” to launder capitalist politics into the progressive movement. But in this case, and many others, I believe this was an earnest expression of community by the workers there, merely tolerated by corporate. Starbucks has confirmed as much, if only in retrospect, by forbidding workers from displaying their flags. The argument that this decision was solely a capitulation to political backlash against gay rights, while probably true of some companies, just doesn’t ring true for Starbucks. The vast majority of Starbucks customers are, at worst, perfectly willing to ignore a Pride flag. Where backlash does exist, “wokeness” controversies have long served as free advertising for companies, forcing their brands to the center of a national discourse. Strategically, attacking Pride only illustrates why gay and allied partners need a union, just one more thing you’d use a union for. Why would Starbucks attack their largely progressive workforce like this in the middle of a sensitive unionbusting campaign? If they are hoping to win workers over from the union camp, this is no way to go about it!

There was no need for confusion. Starbucks has been abusing partners across Cleveland however they can since at least the moment they began to stick up for their rights as workers. Their plan isn’t to win workers over with reasoned argument or high minded concessions, it is to crush their spirits and replace them with more compliant workers. Many of our friends face this abuse every time they clock in. Corporate has thoroughly replaced those managers willing to comply with labor law, those few who respected their workers enough to oppose criminal union busting, with the nastiest people in our cities. If this campaign of abuse destroys stores in the process, they don’t seem to care. Removing the flags is just one more way to attack their workforce, and Starbucks is taking every opportunity.

This is part of how Reaction will look as the fringe right desperately tries to reverse the culture shift in our country. We will see assaults from elites, even from “the most liberal companies in America”, on gay people. We’ll see it where the vast majority of gay people spend the majority of their time, and where they are most vulnerable to the whims of bigoted elites: at work. We’ll see it silently, every day, in non-unionized workplaces across the country, and then loudly, for years, when gay workers and allies straighten their backs and say no.

Corporations will continue to appropriate LGBT iconography for years to come, but new lines are emerging between this and more genuine bottom up expressions of Pride. A city as close as Columbus has, for years now, held a parallel “Community Pride” to break with the pro-police politics of the liberal funders (basing its finance instead in fundraising and in local black businesses). This country is nothing like it was in the 2000s, socialists should not underestimate the importance of the culture shift on gay rights. But the degree of organization and independence of the working class LGBT community has still not recovered from the AIDS crisis. Cleveland Pride’s funders have just put on a much needed celebration, but we must remember 2016, when, “because of the changing social climate,” Cleveland Pride was called off altogether. This was a decision “the movement” had no say in, and is what we earned by putting our festival in the hands of a private Board. “Progressive” corporations and their community partners cannot and have no intention of defending us when things get hard. There is a desperate need for queer people to learn how to organize, so we can rebuild a Pride that is based on our own power rather than on the good graces of capitalists, the whims of nonprofit boards, and the support of the state. It was not Target that brought about the culture shift on gay rights in our country, they merely reflected it back at us.

The relationship between LGBT representation and the greater whole of progressive politics has long been debated on the left. The truth will arise out of struggle and is not predetermined. SBWU offers up one answer, and the (largely queer-led) DSA another, compatible answer. The vast majority of queer people are workers. And as workers, there is no question of separating out one from another, of praising the trans manager who pays for treatments by pushing trans subordinates into medical debt. She has misunderstood her true interests, betrayed her community, and sided with people who cannot and will not protect her.

No matter how enthusiastically and sincerely corporations promote LGBT representation, it is only where this is a bottom up phenomenon that it may survive the 2020s. We have long been winning the battle in our culture, but the American public does not control the government, and there is no pretense of democracy in the American workplace. Any policies protecting the rights of gay Starbucks partners can be removed as easily as the Pride flags themselves, unless they are built on contracts that are themselves built on the power of the workers there to enforce them. Starbucks Workers United is an organization for all partners regardless of their sexuality, but whatever else it is, it does constitute a major uprising of queer workers in our country. Queer workers are fighting for their future, together with workers of all sorts, at companies across the continent. Win or lose we are learning how to fight back. Organizations like DSA help to carry this knowledge over to subsequent fights and give workers a political organization under their own control. Those many workers who do not join organizations like ours will still take their sense of solidarity and practical organizing skills to their next job, where regardless of their level of demoralization, the objective need for a union will eventually reassert itself. We should take heart: with capacity built from organizing campaigns in a store near you, we will not allow a bigoted minority of rich dicks to take our country back to the 1950s.

By Alek N, Cleveland DSA member
Special thanks to Koby P for reviewing my draft!

Want to support Starbucks workers? Please donate here, and join DSA’s email and phone bank list to help with future strike support!

Notes
1: A decertification vote may take place when 30% of the workers sign cards requesting an election be re-run in a given bargaining unit, and can take place a year after a union election.

The post Our Pride: a Starbucks Workers Strike and the LGBT Movement appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

This weekend, three academic workers and UAW 2865 members at the University of California San Diego were arrested in retaliation for union activity. The University has continued to repress union members, notably bringing code of conduct violations against 67 workers last month, as it refuses to adhere to the contract these workers won in a strike last year.

Click here to sign the UAW petition to the University of California.

Click here to sign the petition to the San Diego District Attorney.

The San Diego chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America denounces in the strongest possible terms the actions by the UCSD administration that led to these arrests, and calls on the University to drop the charges and to

Syracuse DSA condemns the recent Supreme Court ruling that threatens protection of marginalized and colonized communities in America and dramatically limits access to the current education system. Already coming off one year since the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the curtailing of EPA powers to regulate air quality and carbon emissions, we already see the results of allowing hard won civil rights to remain issues of litigation as opposed to legislation. 

As socialists, we cannot sit idly by as an unelected, reactionary judicial body influenced by right-wing billionaires slowly strips the rights away from working-class people. It is up to us to organize a movement that can build the kind of world we need. A world that can meaningfully address the systemic racism woven within its structure. A world where free, high-quality education is accessible from cradle to grave.

The Supreme Court rulings show us that the ruling-class will always oppose even the most basic interests of oppressed and working-class people. Dozens of cases, ranging from Dred Scott v. Sanford, Korematsu v. United States, to Plessy v. Ferguson have upheld the right to discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender expression and sexual orientation. The most recent decisions should not be viewed as an extremist anomaly, but as a continuation of a trend—one that abets capitalist hegemony and white supremacy.

The Supreme Court, unlike every other court in the United States, has failed to adopt an ethics code that compels justices to recuse themselves from cases where there are clear conflicts of interests. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, in particular, have accepted lavish trips and gifts from right-wing billionaires with business before the court. 

This makes a mockery out of a major branch of American government, instead turning it into a transparent example of the two-tiered system conservative justices might deny exists—one designed for the wealthy, and one for everyone else.

We must not let empty promises by centrist Democrats derail and thwart demands for accountability that arise organically, products of the increasingly apparent contradictions of the capitalist system. Those demands for accountability and a truly just world cannot be paralyzed by election promises, freedoms to perhaps be realized in future election cycles. People are tired of their rights being used for fundraising pitches with no intention to actualize or advocate for them—they want a society that provides for their needs and defends their humanity in the here and now.

It is up to us to wield our collective power and make a better world, one built from the ashes of the old, and inspire our neighbors and comrades to make it with us.

July 3rd, 2023

The post On the Supreme Court, July 2023 appeared first on Syracuse DSA.

DSA stands in unwavering solidarity with UE Locals 506 and 618 and all workers engaged in shop-floor struggle for a better world. The capitalists at Wabtec, Amazon, UPS, Starbucks, and other multinational corporations hate strikes for the same reason they inspire workers everywhere: they show workers that our labor creates all value and we have the power to withhold it to win our demands. UE has been part of the resurgence of new shop organizing with its role in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a joint venture between Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and UE that supports the formation of militant rank-and-file led unions in all industries throughout the United States. UE’s demonstration of what workers can demand when they use the power of the strike will inspire workers across industries. 

UE has represented workers at this plant since 1938 but lost this right in their 2019 agreement with new owner Wabtec. This loss makes it difficult for UE to enforce their collective bargaining agreement. UE Locals 506 and 618 are fighting not only to regain the right to strike, but also for a just transition in the locomotive manufacturing industry. The contract they are demanding would not only protect current jobs and create new ones, but also orient railroads away from a dirty, fossil-fuel-guzzling status quo towards a greener, cleaner, worker-centered future through its Green Locomotive Project.

But a contract is only as strong as a union’s ability to enforce it; a worker-led Green New Deal can only be won when workers are empowered to strike when necessary.  We encourage members to use this link to donate to the strike fund, and chapters can send letters of support to UE Local 618 (3923 Main St., Erie, PA 16511) and UE Local 506 (3923 Main St. Erie, PA 16511). 

At a time when the anti-democratic Supreme Court is attempting to strip workers of their rights, including the right to strike, UE Locals 506 and 618 (who manufacture locomotives in Erie, PA) are using their contract fight to expand the right to strike, create new green jobs to benefit their community and the planet, and make Wabtec give workers the respect and compensation they deserve. We stand with these workers in the fight for what they deserve.

The post Stand in Solidarity with UE Wabtec Strikers appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

On Wednesday, June 28th, the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America distributed over 1,000 quality masks to working people across Chicago in the midst of an ongoing air quality crisis.

When Chicagoans awoke Tuesday morning to the news that our city had among the lowest air quality in the entire world, organizers in CDSA mounted a plan. With only 5 hours of notice, over 50 people attended a call Tuesday evening to coordinate a rapid response to the health crisis. The following day, organizers distributed over 1,000 quality masks, predominantly KN95, to hundreds of Chicagoans, including CTA workers at the Kedzie bus depot, working people at the Howard and 95th/Dan Ryan CTA stations, and UPS Teamsters at the Jeff Street and Morgan/Pershing sites. This mutual aid was accomplished in cooperation with partners at 48th Ward Neighbors for Justice and made possible through mask donations supplied by Jobs With Justice, Edgewater Mutual Aid Network, and other community groups. 

These volunteer-led relief efforts were necessitated by our government’s failure to mobilize an adequate response. CDSA urges Mayor Johnson and Governor Prtizker to consider future times of low air quality within the city and state a public health emergency. In doing so, they can distribute PPE to the general public to keep residents, especially vulnerable ones, safe from the potential health hazards.

This unpreparedness extends to the private sector. UPS is one of countless employers who failed to notify employees of the hazardous working conditions on Tuesday — conditions which will doubtless be a recurring danger to workers’ health as the climate emergency escalates. UPS also failed to make any new masks available to workers going out on the job this week, behavior which fits into a pattern of refusing to address safety concerns. UPS Teamsters have authorized a strike if today’s June 30th negotiating deadline is not met, and CDSA is prepared to support in solidarity.

Disturbingly, our volunteers attest to encountering many dozens of Chicagoans — including CTA employees — who were completely unaware that the hazy skies were due to dangerous wildfire smoke, that going outdoors for any period of time can cause health complications, or that wearing a mask outdoors at this time was recommended by health agencies. This deficit of education and resources is unsurprising given that the top health official in Chicago is actively aligned against the health of working class Chicagoans. The Chicago Department of Public Health is headed by Dr. Allison Arwady, a Lightfoot appointee who has repeatedly put business interests ahead of public health, even siding with notorious air polluter Southside Recycling over the complaints of residents who pointed to illnesses derived from the company’s car shredding operation. CDPH messaging under her watch has been unclear and their advice completely ignores the many working people who cannot “stay inside” until air quality considerably improves. CDSA joins our partners at the Collaborative for Community Wellness in calling for Mayor Johnson to uphold his campaign promise to fire Dr. Arwady.

Ultimately, the working class can only achieve lasting public health equity through mass mobilization against climate change. We encourage anyone who shares our vision of a Chicago which prioritizes everyone’s safety to join us in fighting for an ecosocialist future. Our Democratize ComEd campaign would municipalize Chicago’s power grid, allowing for democratic control, progressive rates, energy equity, and gradual decarbonization. A better world is possible.

The post CDSA Distributes 1,000 Masks To Chicago Workers Amidst Air Quality Crisis appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

by Gumbo

On Tuesday, 27 June 2023, hundreds of nurses organized with National Nurses United (NNU) walked out on strike at Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin (ASMCA) in Austin, Texas. Hundreds more struck at two other Ascension-owned hospitals in Wichita, Kansas. Over 2000 workers in total withheld their labor to demand safe staffing levels, better pay and improved working conditions from hospital executives sitting on cash reserves of over $18 billion. 

Community members turned out in droves to support them. Among the supporters were members of many other union locals including UNITE-HERE Local 23, Restaurant Workers United, AFSCME 1624, ATU 1091, News Guild–CWA 32035, TSEU–CWA 6186, Austin EMS Association–CWA 6914, Education Austin, Air Line Pilots’ Association, United Workers of Integral Care–CWA 6154, and what seemed like half the membership of the IBEW 520 along with their 20-foot inflatable fat cat, complete with cigar and money bag. The line grew so dense that it eventually extended down the entire block. People grew hoarse from shouting, then others joined in to keep momentum going. There was not a moment of silence.

Background to the Strike

Nurses at ASMCA voted to authorize the strike by a 98% margin at the end of May after months of stalled negotiations with management. They initially won union recognition in September 2022 and began negotiating that November, but have yet to receive a fair contract offer. Chief among their concerns are short staffing and low pay. DSA asked many nurses why they were striking and every one responded first with “safe staffing.” They are demanding improved recruitment and retention practices to keep nurses at the bedside, and dignity and respect for themselves and their patients. The working conditions of nurses are the same conditions patients experience.

The nurses say that staff shortages have created unmanageable workloads and they cannot provide adequate care to their patients. Ascension’s poor labor practices have directly jeopardized nurses’ licenses and put patients’ lives in danger, leading to preventable deaths and a revolving door of nursing staff. The Bureau of Labor Statistics in April 2023 showed that there are over a million registered nurses who actively choose not to work in their licensed profession. Sandy Reding, NNU president and nurse, pointed out that, “There is no nursing shortage. There’s a shortage of nurses who want to work under these conditions.” One NNU nurse and Austin DSA comrade, Lisa L, explained that many nurses are locked into two-year contracts right out of school in order to get a signing bonus. They are treated so poorly on the job with no avenue for respite that as soon as their contract is up, they often quit nursing altogether. For herself however, she makes clear, “I’ve been a nurse for 16 years and I’m not going to stop fighting to make this profession better.”

Management Fails to Bargain and Fails Patients

Rather than bargain with the nurses in good faith, Catholic healthcare giant Ascension’s management has stalled and rejected union contract proposals. In return, nurses fought back with the greatest tool in the working class’ arsenal: the strike. They withheld their labor for 24 hours to demonstrate that the hospital does not run without them. Ascension hired agency nurses to scab at a supposed rate of around $300/hr, over eight times the average wage of their own nursing staff, and locked NNU nurses out for three days. On the picket line, word spread that not only were these scabs being paid exorbitant amounts to break the strike, but they had no idea where any of the supplies were stored!

ASMCA further jeopardized their patients and doctors in the name of crushing workers who dared to demand a say in how their workplace is run. The community was not enthused. One elderly woman named Bridgette was sitting at the supply table cutting bananas and donuts and handing out water to picketers. She said that when her late husband was in the ICU, the nurses at ASMCA were incredibly helpful and kind and made the best of a difficult time in her life. She simply wanted to return the favor and called on Ascension to follow their supposed Christian values by valuing the people they employ.

Strike Don’t Win Themselves

The strike was not a haphazard action. It was deliberate, it was disciplined, and it was coordinated, the culmination of years of organizing at the hospital. This organizing was made possible by the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and by NNU. Nurse and comrade Kellen G. shared that it was “the ultimate socialist trial by fire to organize a brand new union in Texas. The fact that Austin DSA and the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee had our back made the biggest difference.” Kellen and fellow nurses went through EWOC’s Foundational Training Series as part of their preparation for taking control over their workplace. “We have so much gratitude toward the many comrades who showed up to support our historic strike,” said Kellen. “It was an honor to share this day with you all.”

On the picket line, chants echoed off of nearby buildings. Hundreds of cars honked in support as they passed, notable because Austin has not historically been a hotbed of labor activism. Many aggregate drivers (trucks hauling rocks, gravel or sand – common in this city of endless construction) also honked in support, remarkable because that isn’t a sector of the industry in which the Teamsters have much strength in the region. 

Amidst the joyous rebellion, one NNU staffer, Mallory, was hard at work reinvigorating nurses all day long. There were shifts organized to ensure a continuous flow of fresh energy to the line. NNU, DSA and others ensured there was sufficient water and food to keep everyone lively.

Fights like this are not won in a day. What the nurses showed us all is that every workplace is run by the workers and can be won by the workers. Nurses showed up on the morning of Wednesday, 28 June 2023, ready to work. Ascension would not let them in because they “weren’t on the list,” (i.e., they were locked out) but come Saturday, 1 July, they will be on the payroll and their struggle will continue.

Lessons for DSA

What the successful union recognition campaign and strike on Ascension shows is that the resurgent socialist labor strategy is working. By providing valuable training through EWOC, DSA has made steps toward becoming an organization of organizers – not just volunteers on an email list, but disciplined organizers ready to take the struggle to their workplaces and their neighborhoods.

The future of labor unions and the future of socialism are inextricably linked. Socialists bring a developed class struggle analysis to the labor movement which strengthens labor and informs socialism. If we commit ourselves to this kind of outward-facing mass work, we will make DSA a place that comrades focused on organizing their neighbors and co-workers can easily join and participate in. The socialist movement will be stronger for it.

When nurses did return to work, they were met with continued understaffing and hostility from management, plus the realization that the scab nurses, despite higher staffing ratios, had cared poorly for patients. The Austin Chronicle published a good follow up article.

The post Largest Nurse Strike in Texas History Shows Resurgent Labor Movement first appeared on Red Fault.

By Paul Garver and Eli Gerzon

DISCLAIMER: The entire Working Mass board appreciates the research and reporting that went into this important article and of course the big wins for rail workers across the US. However, some members of the board strongly disagree with some of the analysis in the article especially regarding the actions by members of Democratic Socialists of America who are in Congress. This is a controversial topic across DSA. We welcome any op-eds or letters to the editor in response.

Most of the 115,000 rail workers in the US now have paid sick leave! Many workers are also getting safety improvements they have been fighting for for years. In December 2022, Biden and Congress voted to impose a contract on workers with no paid sick leave and took away their right to strike – a move that angered many socialists and other supporters of labor. How can workers get what they need when the right to strike has been taken away? And yet, rail workers have gotten these major wins. What happened and what more needs to be done?

Several factors for positive changes for railroad workers:

• More attention to the issue following lobbying by rail workers and Biden’s imposed contract in December 2022
• Efforts by members of Congress such as Senator Sanders and Representatives Bowman, Bush, and AOC
• Bad press following the railroad catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio
• Several states have recently passed regulations requiring at least two person crews on freight trains 
• Rank-and-file organizing by railroad workers especially by RWU and BMWED
• Many rail workers have been quitting their increasingly stressful and dangerous jobs –  to deter quitting and recruit replacements, rail corporations have improved some conditions

A few things which have NOT caused positive changes for rail workers:

• Greedy railroad barons suddenly became nice guys
• Bureaucratic rail union leaders have done fundamental union restructuring and reforms so all railroad workers can boldly wield their power as a united workforce
• DSA expelled Bowman, Bush, and AOC and gave up completely on electoral work that has any association with the Democratic party

Railroad Workers’ Organized for Better Conditions in 2022

Rail corporations reaped record profits during the pandemic era for people like Warren Buffet. But the workers who made that possible were denied paid sick days and forced to work under increasingly dangerous understaffed conditions. Freight trains have become longer and heavier, with safety inspections more cursory. Workers organized across 13 different craft unions with the four major rail corporations for better pay and conditions. This culminated in calls for strikes in 2022 and a vote by Congress to impose a contract at the end of the year.

Many socialists considered the votes of Congressional DSA members Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the imposed contract on rail workers to be an indictment of those individuals as anti-worker. Some also considered those votes to be an indictment of DSA, electoralism, and any association with the Democratic Party.  

It was the BMWED (Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters) Rank and File Caucus that led lobbying efforts in the fall of 2022 to get Congress to vote on an amendment to include seven paid sick leave days for rail workers. That included urging Bowman, Bush and AOC to vote for the resolution and the amendment. It was a “Hail Mary Pass” that passed the House but narrowly failed to clear the 60-vote hurdle in the Senate. Although that tactic did not succeed in the short run, it cleared a path to the current successful negotiations.

“A Rail Strike was never intended by Rail Labor leaders… never in the cards. Anyone with an appreciation of American Rail Labor History knows this.” This is according to Carey Dall, one of the founders of the BMWED rank-and-file caucus in his article “Rail Unions in the U.S. are in bad need of consolidation, democracy, and militancy.” He notes the years of preparation and strategizing needed to accomplish any successful strike which would “endangers interstate commerce.” None of the leaders of the 13 rail craft unions had lifted a finger to prepare for a strike in December. In fact, Dall in some ways places more blame on Rail Labor leadership than on Biden – let alone members of Congress.

There were some rail workers who expressed support for going on strike. But even some militant leaders of rank-and-file rail workers’ caucuses expected that the tentative agreement would be imposed by Congress. Since no strike was envisaged or prepared, the legislative route to winning paid sick leave, a gamble that could have been better executed in practice, seemed the only alternative. It should have been made possible for legislative champions of the rail workers to vote against the imposed contract as a whole after voting for the sick leave amendment. But Speaker Pelosi out-maneuvered the union lobbyists.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representatives Bowman, Bush and AOC, plus other members of the Squad and Progressive Caucus, continued to put pressure on the Biden Administration through public statements and organizing a public letter to Biden in support of the demands of rail workers signed by 70 Senators and Representatives.

Progress For Rail Workers in 2023

The freight rail corporations, which had appeared triumphant at the end of 2022 after successfully using the blackmail threat that a rail strike would cripple the U.S. economy, then faced blowback from the negative consequences of their political victories in Congress.

Also the lobbying efforts by railroad workers earned lots of press coverage and sympathy. That has helped put pressure on rail corporations. The catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio also put pressure on rail corporations to make safety improvements.

Most of these agreements provided for four new paid annual sick days, with an option of converting three personal days into unscheduled paid sick leave. In general, the agreements cover non-operating personnel rather than locomotive engineers, where negotiations with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLET-IBT) continued until May 29, when the BLET reached a tentative agreement including work schedule changes still subject to ratification by the members.

The best roundup is by veteran labor reporter Steven Greenhouse in The Guardian: US rail companies grant paid sick days after public pressure in win for unions (msn.com)

An updated recent story appeared in the Associated Press: Norfolk Southern is 1st railroad to give all workers sick time as others negotiate with unions | AP News 

Norfolk Southern will have to pay out at least half a billion dollars for their disaster. But insurance coverage and tax breaks will limit the impact on Norfolk Southern’s bottom-line profits. 

A more significant threat to the excessive profits of the entire rail freight industry is posed by legislative action at the federal and state level to require at least two person crews on freight trains. 

Kansas just joined eight other states in announcing that it would do so for trains passing through its territory: Kansas will regulate railroad crew size under Kelly proposal | The Kansas City Star

The Pennsylvania State House also just passed a bipartisan bill to regulate freight railroads: Pennsylvania House passes rail regulation bill – Trains

State-by-state legislation poses at best a minor nuisance to the industry. The current SCOTUS would probably overturn state rail safety laws, but it demonstrates that the federal Railway Safety Act as proposed by the Democratic and Republican Senators from Ohio could be enacted: Senate panel OKs rail-safety bill as railroad vows to help homeowners affected by Ohio derailment (msn.com)

The current profit model of the major rail corporations is highly dependent on reducing labor costs by cutting staffing to the bone, and super-exploiting a dwindling workforce. Since the end of the last contract cycle in November 2018 some 40,000 rail jobs have been eliminated, without any technological changes to justify the cuts. As RWU co-chairman Ross Grooters, a lifetime member of DSA, was quoted in 2022, “The job is really just becoming fewer people doing more work faster.”   

As predicted by rank-and-file rail worker reformers in 2022, following the imposed settlement that did not address the underlying causes of worker anger at Precision Scheduled Railroading and other schemes to cut the rail work force to the bone, large numbers of rail workers took the large bonuses and back pay settlements under the agreement, and quit their increasingly stressful jobs.  

To deter some workers from quitting and to recruit replacements, the rail corporations have a self-interest in providing somewhat less onerous working conditions. Bargaining over paid sick leave, which alleviates some of the stresses on rail workers, but does not touch the core issues of scheduling and adequate staffing, in fact happened because the rail corporation management were themselves beginning to do it unilaterally.  

Railroad Unions Still Fragmented

Bureaucratic rail union leaders are quick to claim credit, complacent that no fundamental union restructuring or reforms are required of them. But these wins are not thanks to better bargaining skills by union leaders. The unions are still bargaining fragmented agreements in an uncoordinated way as they have in the past.

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” said Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation. “This is being done the right way. Each railroad is negotiating with each of its individual unions on this.”

Greg Regan is technically correct that under current law and union structures, there is no alternative for the rail unions that now are bargaining from a position of fragmentation and structural weakness.  13 small craft unions are powerless against big corporate management. Real and lasting progress for rail workers will come only from a major restructuring of the rail unions into a single union, together with the mobilization of a unified and democratic rail workers’ movement.  Rank-and-file reformers are advocating for one big Railway Workers Union, as imagined by Eugene Debs in the 1890s.

Resistance to the negative consequences of super-exploitative rail capitalism for rank-and-file rail workers has been coordinated by two rank-and-file rail reform caucuses, Railroad Workers United (RWU) and the BMWED Rail & File Caucus. These caucuses have developed in different historical ways strategically, and use differing tactics, but taken together have already made a major positive impact for rail workers. I described these two caucuses more fully in an article in Democratic Left posted on the DSA website. 

Both caucuses are contributing to help shape a better future for rail workers and their unions.

The BMWED Rank and File Caucus stems from an internal organizing effort within the Brotherhood of Maintenance Way Employees – part of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).  The internal organizing campaign was headed by Carey Dall, an organizer hired from the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union). Over several years, utilizing as many as twelve internal organizers at a cost of over $10 million, the BMWED slowly increased its capacity to mobilize rank-and-file members.  In 2016 the union was capable of staging a coordinated National Day of Demonstrations.  However, the financial costs of the campaign became too much for the small union to bear alone, and the campaign ended with Carey Dall’s departure back to the ILWU.  The BMWED Rank & File Caucus, now aligned with other Teamsters reform caucuses, is insisting that rail workers need a unified and democratic industrial union to be effective: Fighting isn’t easy, but united we can win. (bmwepower.com)

An energized network of 26 state legislative coordinators from the BMWED rank-and-files, led by Deven Mantz of North Dakota, visited Congressional offices in November 2022, to lobby for paid sick leave.  They gained the enthusiastic support of Representatives Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush and AOC for including paid sick leave in the tentative agreement that would end the current round of negotiations.  After Speaker Pelosi refused to include that sick leave provision in the agreement and insisted on separating the votes, the House passed both the sick leave amendment and the imposition of the Rail Labor Act.

Although the legislative team focused on lobbying Republican Senators from their home states to support legislation introduced by Bernie Sanders that would amend the tentative agreement to include seven paid sick leave days, several Republicans who had promised to vote for paid sick leave reneged under pressure from business lobbyists.  The Sanders amendment passed the Senate., but without the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

Yielding to pressures from the four major freight railroad corporations, on December 2nd President Biden signed his approval of a tentative agreement that did not address the essential demands of rail workers for proper scheduling and staffing, safety requirements and adequate paid time off.

Later that day Biden flew to Boston to sip tea with Prince William, only to be met by a protest of some 200 persons hastily organized by local members of the Railroad Workers United, by the Boston DSA labor working group, and others.  The rally noisily called out Biden as a SCAB, was well covered by the Boston Globe and local news media, got national attention, and led to editorials in the Boston Globe and other news media calling for paid sick leave for railroad workers.  A week later, a smaller rally in Worcester brought out members of Worcester DSA and a larger presence of rank-and-file rail workers. An article by Henry de Groot in Working Mass captures these actions, which remain among the largest protest actions in support of rail workers to date.  

Solidarity From DSA and Others for Bigger Changes for Rail Workers

This setback for the rail workers did not end the struggle for paid sick leave days for rail workers. Both the BMWED Rank and File Caucus and Railroad Workers United [RWU] made use of the public outcry against the unwillingness of the freight rail industry to keep agitating for paid sick leave as one measure to address the concerns of rail workers. The RWU, with an executive board and organizers made up entirely of rank-and-file rail workers from several different unions, expanded its already vigorous presence in a variety of media, including numerous interviews with organizer Ron Kaminkow and Executive Board Co-chair Ross Grooters.  The RWU also organizes an excellent weekly email mailing that includes news, editorials and excerpts from all sorts of articles including mainstream and industry publications. The RWU is committed to organizing regional solidarity chapters open to DSA members and other supporters along with rail workers.

As part of its agitational campaign, the RWU is pushing for nationalization of the freight rail industry. This campaign has been endorsed by the UE (United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America) and by DSA Labor. The national DSA Labor Commission and its various organizing committees (EWOC, Labor Corps, etc.) have sponsored numerous group discussions and webinars that include rail worker issues, attended regularly by Ross Grooters, Ron Kaminkow, Deven Mantz, Carey Dall, Matt Weaver and other rank-and-file rail workers.

This growing relationship, begun just several months ago, seems to be a useful experience both for the rank-and-file rail workers and for DSA. It is an important part of DSA’s commitment to joining and supporting broad working-class struggles from Starbucks and Amazon through the UAW and other academic workers’ unions, teachers and nurses. DSA Labor Commission has been prioritizing the UPS campaign, the success or failure of which will set a tone for all worker organizing in the USA, including that in logistical industries like freight rail.  

Building a militant, broad, environmentally conscious, and inclusive working-class movement in the USA makes every other goal of democratic socialism more possible. The DSA Convention will be debating a consensus resolution put forward by the National Labor Commission to make this a top priority for DSA as a whole.  Likely friendly amendments include ongoing support for nationalizing the rails and to support the rail rank-and-file caucuses’ demand for the creation of a big industrial union.

When we have a big industrial union we will have the power to improve everyone’s lives. This is especially clear when it comes to rail road workers: if we had nationalized rails and good working conditions we could prevent catastrophes like the train wreck in East Palestine. We would also rely on cars less and help prevent the worst of the climate crisis. If we combine the values of democratic socialism with the power of a big industrial union we could accomplish almost anything.

Paul Garver (he/him) worked as a union organizer in the USA for SEIU from 1974 to 1990, and organized and coordinated unions at the global level for the International Union of Food Workers (IUF) from 1990 to 2006. After formally retiring, he has continued this work through DSA, through the International Committee and as its liaison to the National Labor Committee. He is one of the founding members of DSA.

Eli Gerzon (they/them) is the managing editor at Working Mass. They are active members of Boston DSA and Jewish Voice for Peace – Boston. Gerzon got their start in political organizing as part of the climate movement helping start and lead statewide campaigns in Massachusetts.