Madison Labor 2009

2009 was a busy year

Well, the elections were finally over. Lingering in the back of our collective mind was the question: Was it worth it?

Maybe it was a fit of post-election depression. But, at the January 2009 meeting of the South Central Federation of Labor, delegates voted to establish an Organizing Committee. A month later that committee came back with the outline of a plan.

It was hard to decide where to start. After all, we have over 200 large, non-union employers in the Madison area alone. The OC decided to begin with downtown hotels.

Part of the plan was to “salt” two big hotels with union organizers. We recruited through affiliated locals, the Immigrants Workers Union, the Student Labor Action Coalition and the Workers Rights Center. By early March, we had over 20 volunteers. The Fed held a Saturday training session and the “salts” began applying for jobs at the targeted hotels.

This operation didn’t require a big budget—certainly nowhere near as much as the unions spent in the just-competed election cycle—but there were expenses. As part of the deal with the “salts,” we agreed to supplement their crappy wages and cover them with health insurance.

It turned out that getting money wasn’t a problem. A lot of large unions had significant organizing budgets and union officials were under a lot of pressure to spend the money in some defensible way. They jumped at the opportunity to simply write a check to help out a real organizing drive.

The plan was for the “salts” to lay low for two months, taking names and learning the lay of the land. In May 2009 they made their move. Madison labor and community groups held a Coming Out Party with massive rallies in front of the two hotels just off the Square. The news reported the crowd at 5,000, but we thought there were a lot more.

The internal organizing committees at the two targeted hotels quickly grew and workers at a couple of other area hotels came around and asked how they could set up organizing drives of their own.

From the start, the Fed Organizing Committee decided we were not going through an NLRB election. That, we knew, was the death trap that ended so many organizing drives over the years. Instead, we were going initially for a “non-majority union,” where members voluntarily pay dues and engage in concerted activities.

The lack of a mandatory dues deduction mechanism, and the relatively low dues level, ensured that the big internationals stayed out of the away. Without international staff, professional organizers and lawyers running the show, workers came forward to run their own union and democracy (and militancy) flourished.

The Fed’s Organizing Committee also decided on a model of “social justice unionism,” whereby the union movement would take up the larger cause of the working class. In July 2009 we launched a grassroots campaign for single payer health care. A month later, a petition for a statewide living wage law. We also took up the cause of immigrant rights and demanded that the Dane County Sherriff stop victimizing undocumented workers. Given the makeup of the workforce of the “hospitality industry” in town, the campaign for social justice stoked the energy of the organizing campaign and broadened its appeal.

Oh, we did hear rumors that officials from one international came to Madison and “had a talk with” local AFL-CIO leaders. Seems the Fed’s Organizing Committee was impinging on their jurisdiction. But, those same rumors held that the international reps were asked, if downtown hotels are your jurisdiction, why the hell haven’t you done any organizing in them?

The workers at the hotels came up with the idea to threaten their employers’ lucrative Homecoming weekend trade if they didn’t agree to recognition and a contract. In August, just about the time football revelers would be making their reservations, the labor movement (and, it was a true movement by this point) staged a series of disruptive pickets at the two hotels. The message to fans being: if you plan to get a good night’s sleep, you’d better book somewhere else.

City, county and state cops were called in to keep order, but they only added to the disorder. With a few thousand picketers in the streets, there was no real violence and no serious arrests. The hotels were simply shut down. And, the pictures of “mobs and tear gas down in Madison” were beamed across the state and around the country. We couldn’t have bought better publicity.

Both hotels were owned by big chains so they brought in high-power lawyers and executives to deal with their “union problem” in Madison. On September 8, 2009, management at one of the hotels blinked and they signed what we called “a model contract.” This allowed us to turn all of our attention to the other hotel. A week later they signed the same agreement.

Well, that was 2009. A busy year. But, it seems, there’s no time to rest. Because, as a result of these two successful drives, organizing committees have sprung up around the city, in other hotels, high tech industries, insurance companies and laundries. Fortunately, there was also a spike in the level of activism and energy among working people and new leaders are coming forward every day. So, it looks like 2010 will be even busier.