Unions Are Democracy in Action

that last year I had the wonderful pleasure. There's not a lot that I get to do sometimes outside of direct and that political analysis, which is just becoming so fucking draining. I cannot express to you all enough. But anyway, last year I had the pleasure of doing some wonderful storytelling workshops and media training for members of Ask Me, and it was such a fucking joy. I cannot express

it enough. To talk with janitors and you know, and teachers and optometrists and you know, the people who make our communities tick that don't get the respect and the pay that they deserve and to talk with real people, right, some of which were quote unquote essential workers, and talking to them about their experience of working, you know, going to work during COVID while so many of us were

quarantining at home, and what that experience was like. And while we love to say that these folks are essential, we treat them in many ways in our society like they are disposable while lifting up the fucking you know, billionaires and millionaires that make money off of their backs and our backs. So this conversation with President Saunders today was just you know, a little bright light, you know,

in really increasingly just exhausting and dark times. I've said this to you all before that it is imperative, imperative to look for the light daily so that you do not succumb to darkness. And I hope that today's conversation is and can provide a bright light. Coming up next my conversation with President Lee Sounders, folks, I am very excited to welcome back to WOKF Daily President Lee Saunders, who is the president of the American Federation of State,

County and Municipal Employees. Ask me, you have heard me talk about this organization which represents about one point four million people across the country in a mirror of different occupations, including nurses to correction officers, childcare providers. It runs the gamut and President Lee Saunders is the first African American to serve as ask Me's president. President Saunders talk to me about the importance of ask ME and how unions, and particularly your union, impact communities.

We represent those members across the country and they provide essential public services to all of us. And sometimes they work in the background and you don't even know they're there. Sometimes you forget about the public services that are provided, whether you're drinking clean water or having your trash picked up,

or protecting one another. And that's what our members do every single day, and that's why it's very important for them to have a seat at the table and a voice on the job, and the union provides that for them.

or when something goes wrong and you need it. And these are jobs that are integral to how our communities function. And so why do you think that it is so important, particularly in this day and age where we're seeing so many union battles, that unions exist well.

and wanting to organize into unions. And you especially see it, Danielle, with young people wanting to come together and understanding the importance of doing this. They want to have some control over their lives. They want to have that seat at the table to talk about their wage increases or their wages. They want to talk about pensions, they want to talk about healthcare, they want to talk about working conditions, all

of those kinds of things. The way that you do that is not through one on one conversation, but it's through an aggressive, proactive choice of belonging to a union to fight for these things at the table. And you see it happening all over the country.

your mouth, but these are my words. Very greedy corporations who have forgotten why they have received so much wealth over the years. Right and unions then are demonized because they say, well, corporations, they can't be regulated because then they'll lose money and people will lose jobs. What do you say to that, Well.

another statistic. Okay, in nineteen sixty five, CEOs were making twenty one times as much as the typical worker, union and non union. Okay, today, as we speak, CEOs are making three hundred and fifty times more than the average worker. People understand that that is wrong, that that's not a level playing field, and the way to combat that, the way to get in the game and put skin in the game is to join a union and fight for your rights at the bargaining table.

standing up and saying no way. I mean, you mentioned Starbucks, right, I mean you mentioned what happened with the UAW strike and with the Teamsters, with us organizing absently organizing childcare and home care workers. People are saying, get real, get real, and people are willing to stand up and fight for it.

People also understand this when you look at our history, labor unions have stood tall, especially in the sixties, and connecting ourselves with progressive movements that fight for workers' rights. Look the March on Washington. The original topic of that was March on Washington for Jobs right. And you look who helped plan that along with doctor King and his people. But it was a guy named a Philip Randolph, and it was a guy named bayart Rustin who came out

of unions. They understood the connection between civil rights and labor rights. And it's so important that we remind your listeners of this, especially in African American history month Black is Free Month, where there is a direct connection in developing the necessary alliances between labor and communities of color and folks who believe that working people should have a shot at that American dream to come together and fight

for it. You know, we're a union that came out of a major struggle in nineteen sixty eight, and you're aware of this. When thirteen hundred sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, decided that they were sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they went on strike on strike February twelfth of nineteen sixty eight because two of their co workers were crushed in the back of a sanitation truck

trying to get out of bad weather. And this problem had been brought to the management's attention on many times that they were dealing with faulty equipment, and guess what, they didn't listen to them. They just told them to get back out there and work as hard as you can. We don't care what happens to you. There's a history there and there is a struggle there that people have got to connect with today. I mean, that struggle is real today as well, especially in the African American community.

That's why we put out a podcast called I Am which talks about the struggle in nineteen sixty eight, but what we must do today to continue that fate. If thirteen hundred sanitation workers in the Deep South African Americans could fight back with their union and they were members of Local seventeen thirty three ass me and be successful and win, then you know what, we can overcome any obstacle. And that's what the story is that we've got to

continue to tell folks. So when people are organizing, you look back at that nineteen sixty eight strike or other strikes that we've had across the country and saying it can be done. It can be done when we're bringing our communities together and talking about the injustices that exist, the fact that corporations are making so much money, the CEOs are making so much money, and they don't want to share in those profits. Then people relate to that.

And that's why it's such an exciting time for labor right now, because you've got young people organizing within our union. We're organizing cultural workers like never before, and museums and libraries and zoos and they're coming and you know what, they're coming to us asking us to help them provide

support so they can organize at the workplace. And so we've got to make all of these kinds of connections and understand that we've come a long way, but we've still got a long way to go, and we've got to take advantage of the moment. And this moment is that people understand the importance of organizing.

so hard to ignore during COVID. How do you think that that, particularly as it was affecting more black and brown workers that were in the quote unquote essential roles, how do you think that that helped to reshape our vision and thought around workers and unions because.

This is we're living in the richest country in the world, that we're being forced to work under slave labor, to work under situations that are not healthy. And people said enough was enough. And you had this happening in each industry. You had it happening in the public sector, in the public service with healthcare workers having to go to those hospitals because they were short staffed, having to wear garbage bags as gowns. Right, yeah, okay, because the employer didn't

provide them with the necessary equipment and masks. And so I think that there was a storm brewing and all of it came together where folks said, Okay, this is crazy, We've had enough, and people rallied around the importance of coming together and make your collective voice heard. And we've got to take advantage of this moment. And you see

it happening, especially in the African American community. I mean, if you look at the last BLS statistics, three hundred and nine thousand workers of color joined the labor movement last year. I mean, that's a good number. But we can do better, and we can do more, and we've got to we've got to continue the level of excitement that exists right now, and we've got to continue to talk to workers and talk about the importance of unions and to have that seat at the table. And they

will come. Now I will say this, we will continue and labor is committed to organizing new workers, people of color, and all workers. But we've got to have a change in the labor laws in this country because the level the playing field is not level. And if you look at the Amazon workers, for example, where they organized what two years ago in New York, they haven't even had

a chance to sit at the table. Yet. You look at the Starbucks workers, they've been at the table, but a number of them have been fired and they have not resolved any or come to an agreement on a contract because the employer can spend billions of dollars stalling those negotiations instead of putting those dollars into the pockets of workers who are providing those functions and those services across the country. So we've got to attack this from

a variety of points. We've got to continue to organize, we've got to change labor laws in this country. And the way you do that is through the political process in the public sector. In the private sector, you've got the National Labor Relations Act that must be changed. And the public sector, we're pushing for something called the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act because we are not covered

under the national law. Where there is a level playing field for workers to organize and to reach fair contracts, or there will be impeditiments put on and we'd have to figure out how to deal with the employer. Different fact, they try to block those kinds of efforts. So we're going to continue to organize, but we really need labor law change, in labor law reform in this country as well.

bargaining committee set up. When a tentative agreement is reached, and you saw that with the UAW and with the Teamsters and with all of us, then we take those agreements, those tentative agreements back to the members to vote it up or to vote it down. So we are democracy in action. But we also understand that there's a threat to our democracy with all the kinds of things that we have fought for and stand for every single day.

Whether it's voting rights, okay, that's one, whether it's labor rights, whether it's economic justice, whether it's women's rights. I mean, we support those efforts all the time, and not only support it by talking about it, but many times supporting

it through our resources that we have. Because even if you may not be a union member, you care about those values that we care about, we believe and what we've got to do is show that there is a bigger picture and that we are involved in a movement within labor and among our allies and friends in our communities across the country to make our voices heard together and fight for the things we really believe in. And we're doing that every single day. And that's why the

political environment right now is so important. Where we fight for what we believe in, and we vote for what we believe in, and we're educating and mobilizing and organizing our members and our communities across the country not to tell them how to vote who to vote for. We should never do that, but we try to educate our folks about Okay, who's going to improve your lives and the lives of your families and who wants to destroy your life?

members of your own families. Everyone is impacted by the policies that are being established by federal and state government regarding workers having a better life or having a light that is not so good. So you've got to stand up in coalition and make your voices heard every single day. We can't run from this battle. We can't run from this fight, and we've got to be very vocal and active about working with folks to have a better life across the country.