More than 10,000 in Pro-Union Rally
Workers Respond to Anti-Unionists: ‘We Are One!’
by Yuridia Peña
On April 9, active and retired CSA members were among thousands of public, private and building trade union
employees, as well as their supporters, in Times Square chanting “We are one” in response to recent anti-labor attacks and government union busting.
New Yorkers showed solidarity with the nation’s working class with signs that read: “This is what democracy looks like” and “Bargaining rights are human rights.”
Said George Young, the Principal of PS 46 in Manhattan: “I am here because I feel unions are the backbone of America.”
For more than 100 years, the labor movement has been at the forefront in the fight for a safe work environment, the right to a living wage, access to adequate health coverage, and protection from discrimination and nepotism. “I’m here because… every profession of the middle class is under attack, said Richard Oppenheimer, Family Day Care Director at Brooklyn’s Nuestros Niños and a CSA Vice President.
Labor leaders and workers spoke from the stage among a sea of unionists and their families who wore red t-shirts, sweaters, hats, armbands, ties, scarves, and headbands. “We are standing together for the American dream, for a dream that says that better days are ahead of us not behind us,” said Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers. No official crowd numbers were available, but various reports said between 10,000 and 15,000 people attended the mid-day rally.
The attack on the working class continues to escalate in many states following in the wake of recent union-busting legislation passed in Wisconsin and Ohio. Many states have blamed their financial woes on state employees’ pensions and rising salaries. Right-wing conservatives are once again pushing states to adopt “right to work” laws. Twenty-two states in the country have similar laws, but at this writing, New Hampshire appeared set to become the first northeast state to pass such a law.
These laws weaken the power of unions and end collective bargaining rights. Elected officials like Governor Scott Walker disguise the statute as a freedom for workers since it allows them to opt out of paying dues to unions. But union advocates characterize these laws as designed to reduce the power of unions as well as demolish collective bargaining rights. “CSA has to support what’s going on [fighting anti-union interests], not only in New York but in the country,” said Pedro Cordero, Director, Goddard Riverside Day Care Center in Manhattan.
According to the NYS AFL-CIO, New York employs nearly two million unionized workers. In NYS, proposed budget cuts and layoffs are expected to eliminate nearly 75,000 public sector jobs. The AFL-CIO has found that 78 percent of private-sector union workers have access to medical insurance through their jobs, compared with 51 percent of non-union workers. And 77 percent of private-sector union workers have access to guaranteed retirement plans through their jobs, compared with just 20 percent of non-union workers.
The NYC Central Labor Council and the NYS AFL-CIO organized the mass demonstration that took over many blocks in midtown along Seventh Avenue. The event was one of more than 1,200 AFL-CIO Days of Action events across America held during the week of April 4 in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a champion of labor and a leader of the Civil Rights movement.
Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, where he had joined the city’s striking sanitation workers who were in a major labor dispute with the city over collective workplace safety and bargaining rights.
