Between 40,000 and 50,000 workers jammed Broadway on May 12 in the biggest, most united labor rally in at least two decades. Stretching a dozen blocks from City Hall back to Canal Street, block after block was full of angry union members, determined to put an end to contracts without raises, and to job and service cuts. Despite their anger at the politicians the crowd was full of smiles and cheers, as workers were so happy to be out in force and standing together. This was not a crowd that turned out to be polite to their organizer, or to fulfill a routine obligation. This was a crowd sick of years of sellout contracts and attacks by the mayor and governor, and happy to have a chance to finally do something about it.

The crowd was probably 80 percent Black and Latino, reflecting the composition of the unions which turned out the biggest numbers. In order of participants they were SEIU (especially hospital workers union 1199, but also including impressive showings from 32BJ and other locals); AFSCME District Council 37; and the UFT. The rally was chaired by Brian McLaughlin, head of the city’s Central Labor Council (CLC). Also marching were hundreds from the transit union, construction workers, and virtually every local that’s part of the CLC — including the firefighters and cops. (Of course there were far more cops manning the steel barricades which hemmed in marchers at each block, a tactic they’d used at last summer’s Million Youth March in Harlem. But marchers outnumbered cops by probably 20 to 1, and could have, had they wanted to, flicked the barricades aside with no effort.)

Within days after the march word began to spread that a follow-up activity is already planned: instead of the routine, boring Labor Day parade up Fifth Avenue, labor will hold another protest march on Labor Day, probably in the Times Square area.

The turnout and spirit on May 12 shows the opportunities facing rank-and-file workers to mobilize and politicize our unions — if we know how to seize those opportunities.

Justifying Past Sacrifices

Marchers came wearing union-provided buttons and T-shirts demanding “A Fair Share for Working Families,” and signs were distributed echoing the officials’ main plea: “We shared the pain, now let’s share the gain.” The speeches from union officials on the platform reiterated the statements made in articles and press releases before the march: we sacrificed for years to help the city out of a fiscal bind, but now that the city is flush with a surplus built on Wall Street profits, “we want our fair share.” Hardly a message to inspire a continued fightback.

In an op-ed piece the day before in the Daily News, UFT head Randi Weingarten — who is also head of the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), which includes all unions bargaining with the city — complained that while “Wall Street’s individual bonuses topped $9 billion last year alone, for the majority of the city’s municipal employees this has been the everybody-but-me decade.” Summing up the march’s agenda, which was publicized in hundreds of thousands of flyers distributed around the city, she predicted that “thousands of working people will turn out to support an agenda for good schools, good health care and good jobs in an era of city and state budget surpluses.”

But then she justified earlier givebacks: “When New York was down and out a few years ago, it was the city’s work force that helped get it back on its economic feet by agreeing to a two-year wage freeze. The city asked for help, the city’s workers gave it.” This “help” came in the form of agreeing to layoffs, attrition, pension cuts, productivity deals, and agreeing to replacement of regular workers by workfare workers.

An early warning sign of the dangers of this approach can be seen in the “victory” won in the fight against privatization of the Brooklyn Central Laundry facility. DC 37’s Local 420 has temporarily saved the jobs there by getting a judge to rule that the city had to give the union a chance to show that they could be as “productive” as the New Jersey firm which was going to steal their jobs.

Even the dollar amounts being thrown around by union heads are problematic. Weingarten has said several times publicly that Mayor Giuliani should set aside a billion dollars for salary increases in upcoming contracts. Quite a modest request, considering the $1.9 billion in corporate tax cuts she cites herself. What’s worse, City Controller Alan Hevesi estimates the annual cost of adjusting wages just for inflation will range from $500 million to $1.5 billion from fiscal year 2001 to 2003 — roughly the period covered by upcoming contracts. (The first contract to expire will be that covering transit workers in December, followed by those for members of DC 37 and the UFT in the spring.)

Speakers also denounced tax cuts granted to the rich and corporations (what Ralph Nader in a recent New York Times article called “socialism for the rich”). Just days after the rally another such giveaway surfaced in the form of the repeal of the commuter tax levied on rich suburbanites working in the city — but this giveaway was spearheaded by Democratic Assembly leader Sheldon Silver, working with Republicans — over the opposition of Giuliani!

The mayor, of course, told the press that no raises would be forthcoming without increased productivity — a theme sounded months ago when AFSCME members began to demand restitution of the money stolen from them when their union leaders stuffed ballot boxes to put over a contract with the infamous “double zeros” (i.e., the first two years had no wage increase). Given the union officials’ rhetoric at the May 12 rally justifying past sacrifices, it’s almost certain that while they’ll bargain harder than their predecessors for raises (which still isn’t saying much), they’re just as likely to agree that the raises can be a trade-off for speedup on the job.

(Another mayoral response to the rally was to propose antiunion “financial disclosure” legislation — even though the most corrupt and secretive union heads were precisely those who were the closest to Giuliani!)

The rally, while being the first mass action since the corruption scandals of recent months, and the first opportunity in years to demonstrate anger at city bargainers, also raised a range of social and political issues. Teachers union President Randi Weingarten attacked Giuliani’s call for school vouchers; hospital workers criticized Governor Pataki’s Medicaid cuts, which could close dozens of hospitals and endanger the jobs of tens of thousands of workers; and building trades workers demanded more government spending on new construction jobs, and an end to contracting out to nonunion firms. All speakers called for increased spending on education, health care, child care, and other services.

March organizers told the press one reason they thought such a march could succeed was last summer’s demonstration by 40,000 hardhats, who defied police barricades and marched across midtown Manhattan in protest of a nonunion construction firm hired by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. (The May 12 rally also came one day before the one-year anniversary of the city’s first taxi strike in decades.) What they didn’t tell the press was that city workers would have marched any time in the last several years against takeback contracts and cuts — but at the time their leaders were working with the mayor “for the good of the city.” Although several Democratic mayoral hopefuls were on the platform, there were actually fewer politicos speaking than at the union- backed April 15 rally for racial justice (described below) — and almost no literature or paraphernalia for the unions’ latest pro–Democratic Party front, the New Century Movement (although many in the crowd wondered if the ever-present phrase “working families” was a subtle endorsement of the Working Families Party, another pro-DP front). It’s likely that union officials, under pressure to convince the ranks they were different from the craven crew that bargained away their raises and jobs, decided to be relatively low-key with the Democratic Party spiel at this one event.

Where Did May 12 Come From?

The relief of the ranks at having a chance to demonstrate their resolve was evident in marchers’ smiling faces. During the last year scandals have rocked AFSCME’s DC 37 and SEIU’s Local 32BJ, and many officials have been forced to resign and some even indicted (see the last issue of Labor Standard for details on this). Even the most “progressive” union, 1199, had stayed neutral in the last mayoral race — and the CLC had actually endorsed Giuliani, as did many of the corrupt DC 37 heads since ousted.

DC 37 and SEIU 32BJ are now run by trustees appointed by their International unions. Within DC 37 some dissidents have won local office. Even the UFT has new leadership, as Sandra Feldman moved upstairs to head the parent AFT, leaving the door open for Randi Weingarten.

Since the installation of these new officials, city unions have shown new energy, calling protests against privatization, filing lawsuits against workfare, and engaging in new organizing. (The same week as the rally the media re ported a union victory in a recognition vote for DC 37 at the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) — which, how ever, was almost immediately followed by the firing of several key organizers.)

In the last few months unions have participated in a massive way in protests against police brutality. Hundreds of unionists, officials and rank and file, were arrested during the protests organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton against the cop murder of Amadou Diallo. And a coalition led by Sharpton, Rivera, Weingarten, McLaughlin and DC 37 trustee Lee Saunders, organized the massive April 15 march against police brutality. (Not surprisingly on May 12 these issues were conveniently forgotten in deference to the few cops participating in the march.)

Also during April the new head of the state AFL-CIO, Denis Hughes, had organized statewide mass leafleting on March 30 in 11 cities throughout the state (including, in New York City, at Long Island Rail Road stations and at 60 subway stops). The leaflets attacked Gov. Pataki’s proposed budget, which would cut spending on college tuition aid, mental hospitals, and highway repairs. As part of this “Day of Action” there was also a rally of several hundred on Long Island against state and federal budget cuts at which AFL-CIO head John Sweeney criticized federal budget cuts in Medicare and education. Swee ney told the crowd: “We need to fight our battles in the streets of our home towns as well as in the suites in Albany and Washington, and I’m proud that my New York is leading the way.”

Dissidents Organize “Contract 2000” Rally

While union heads scurry to convince the ranks that real change has come, lower level officials and rank-and-filers are not wasting time. They are organizing to ensure that there’s quicker change that goes more to the root of workers’ problems. The Friday before the May 12 rally a coalition of dissident groups in the public sector held a rally in a school auditorium to demand more aggressive bargaining and solidarity among city unions. The coalition, the City Workers for Real Change (CWRC), was initiated at a conference held in January by the Association for Union Democracy on reform in AFSCME DC 37, and includes that union’s Committee for Real Change (CRC). It also includes the New Directions caucus in TWU Local 100, TDU members from Local 237, and the New Caucus in the PSC (representing teachers at the City University of New York, or CUNY).

Demands of the CWRC include: wage increases of 20% over a three year contract, plus an 8% “fraud bonus” (to make up for the raises stolen when officials stuffed the ballots during the last contract ratification); an end to WEP; creation of union jobs at living wages; funding more public services; Jobs not Jails; open admissions at CUNY; no privatization; no contracting out; restoration of tier one pension rights for all workers; creation of full-time jobs; an end to part-time and provisional employment. A leader of the New Caucus, Cal Winslow, opened the rally by calling for “no more double zeros,” referring to the current contract which provided for no raises in the first two years. Winslow, who put out the call that led to the CWRC’s formation, said its goal was “to find ways to organize the rank and file so they can find ways to fight to get their fair share.” This is precisely the challenge facing union militants.

At the rally Mark Rosenthal, a leading DC 37 dissident and president of AFSCME Local 983, introduced a representative of UFT head Weingarten, who sent greetings in her capacity as chair of the Municipal Labor Committee. The contents of the greetings were telling. While their delivery was significant in and of itself, considering that this was a gathering of dissidents (including some from the UFT), she added the ominous qualification that “maybe we’ll bargain together, maybe not.” What’s more, she said that “it may be premature to come up with a public bargaining strategy now.” Rosenthal himself urged the members of all unions to show up in massive numbers for May 12. Then New Directions representative Roger Toussaint (who was recently fired by the Transit Authority for union activity) criticized the bargaining stance of union leaders, saying that “trying to win over the business community is a losing strategy.” He asked the crowd, “Will we bring to the table a shotgun or a slingshot?” and pointed out that returning to pattern bargaining shouldn’t mean following a bad pattern downward. In this regard Toussaint praised the campaigning by leaders of the court officers’ union against a rotten contract proposed by the CSEA leadership — a contract which would have set a bad pattern for other state workers. This campaign led to that contract’s rejection by the CSEA membership; what would normally have been denounced as meddling in another union’s affairs has instead become a precedent for discussion across union lines of how to raise the level set by those bargaining first. This is one of the main goals of the CWRC: to increase the pressure for solidarity in the bargaining process and for mobilizations around each others’ contracts.

Charles Ensley, head of Social Service Employees Union Local 371 — and for years often a lone voice of dissent in DC 37 — warned the crowd of 200 of the danger that the new “reform” leaders could be coopted, drawing a parallel with the courting of Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, and others by the White House during the civil rights movement. He compared the unions under the old leaderships to churches he’d known in Bir mingham, which were “run like cults; if the pastor says something, the congregation says Amen.” He encouraged mem bers to “take over their unions,” and pointed out that Weingarten had been the first union head to agree to double zeros.

Ray Markey, head of AFSCME Local 1930 and a key force in DC 37’s Committee for Real Change (CRC), made clear that City Workers for Real Change wasn’t just a movement of elected officials: “We said it was also a movement of opposition groups, and a movement of the rank and file.”

During discussion from the floor, Tom Dawes, organizer of the CRC, asked if CWRC members could march together on May 12. And a member of New Directions in transit encouraged the group to issue a special flyer for the event. The latter suggestion was welcomed from the stage by New Caucus leader Barbara Bowen, and was the subject of animated discussion outside the school after the rally.

What Next for Union Militants?

This points to the challenge facing the most conscious workers in city unions: how to take advantage of the new momentum, to broaden and deepen it, to challenge cooptation and sell-outs — while at the same time taking full advantage of every single officially sanctioned opening, building them for all their worth and demanding more of them.

We need to aggressively build the projected Labor Day march, and to demand the opportunity for rank-and-file members to participate in its organization and in the formulation of its demands. This will set a good precedent for similar demands we’ll need to make around upcoming bargaining, and in the ongoing fight against tax cuts for the rich and in favor of increased spending for public services. We also need to demand immediate, massive responses to new attacks as they occur, such as those at ACS and the commuter tax repeal — as well as around attacks against oppressed nationalities and other groups in the city.

To accomplish all this we need to organize ourselves. In this the CWRC can play a key role, gathering newly energized union members in a joint campaign to press for more official action — and to provide alternative venues when necessary.

Among the ideas the CWRC could put forward:

• formation of committees in every local union, open to all members, to build actions called by the CLC and its affiliates;

• formation of a citywide cross-union coalition, with official representation from those local union committees, to build such actions and to decide on their demands and tactics;

• distribution of petitions to all city workers, in our neighborhoods, and passage of resolutions in all our locals, in support of upward pattern bargaining, for more solidarity activities, etc.

• outreach by that cross-union coalition to community organizations such as those active around the April 15 racial justice march, and all those fighting city and state cuts.

Labor Politics

We can also take this opportunity, for the first time in decades, to talk to hundreds of thousands of workers about the real possibility of breaking with the Demo crats. When we talk at work and at union meetings about our actions against government attacks, we can raise the need for our unions to join the Labor Party. We can educate about the role of even those Democrats participating in the union-called rallies in attacking our wages, jobs, and services. Thus a flyer issued on May 12 by the NY Metro Chapter of the Labor Party pointed out that “even at this rally the same politicians who have caused the very job cuts, service slashing, and privatization that brought us into the streets today, will be hustling votes.” Instead, the party urged, “we need to build our own party: the Labor Party.”

The Saturday after May 12 the state body of the Labor Party held its annual meeting. In attendance were Ensley and Markey, as well as AFSCME Local 420 head Jim Butler, and the leader of 420’s fight against laundry privatization, Hulie White. May 12 was uppermost in everyone’s mind, and the possibility of more militant bargaining and more solidarity was in the air. The chair of the meeting and of the state LP, CWA 1180 head Arthur Cheliotes, urged that if the transit workers strike at the end of the year, and the bosses try to get people to walk across the bridges to break the strike like they did in 1980, labor should block the bridges. (That very morning in the Times, TWU Local 100 head Willie James, probably the most worthless union bureaucrat in the city, had said he would demand 10% a year over three years, and threatened a New Year’s Eve strike; not a promise he’s likely to keep, but a sign that even the most brain-dead officials feel the pressure.)

The next monthly membership meeting of the city’s Labor Party Metro Chapter is a good place to start discussing how to inject politics into this new turmoil. The meeting’s theme will be the upsurge in New York labor. Building the Labor Party must be an integral part of any strategy for revitalizing the city’s unions — not just because management in this case happen to be government officials, but because of the political nature of the attack on all workers, public and private, of the last few decades, and of the system which made that attack inevitable.

One rally does not a movement make. For decades 1199 has called massive rallies of its own members around particular contracts, involving thousands, even tens of thousands of members — only to send them quietly home to wait another year or two for the next passive mobilization. Similarly the new Sweeney leadership at the top of the AFL-CIO has replaced the Kirkland pattern of no action with an 1199-like model of occasional, one-shot mobilizations, with no follow-up and liberal politics that don’t really threaten the bosses.