Posts Tagged: AFL-CIO

UFCW Local 1208 members joined other labor groups and community allies to participate in Moral Monday in support of protecting workers and speaking out for workers’ rights.

Following a court victory reaffirming the right of people to protest in the General Assembly, members of UFCW Local 1208 joined labor groups and protestors at the last Moral Monday of the North Carolina General Assembly Legislative Session.

Mass Moral Mondays is a North Carolina NAACP coalition led movement fighting regressive legislation in the GOP controlled Assembly. Yesterday’s rally focused on protecting workers, the poor, women, and people of color who speak out for worker’s rights. UFCW Local 1208 Keith Ludlum, along with nearly 20 other protestors, were arrested on behalf of union members.

“This company has just settled a discrimination lawsuit with the EEOC and has been cited by OSHA for countless serious safety violations. Now they are violating our rights under federal law to form, join or assist my union,” said Jasmine Isom, a Mountaire Farms poultry plant worker working with UFCW Local 1208, addressing the crowd. “My name is Jasmine Isom, my daughter and I need your help. Please stand with the Mountaire workers! Forward together, not one step back.”

North Carolina units of the UFCW, AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFGE, IAM, and NEA are part of the labor movement in North Carolina addressing harmful legislation and political chicanery while fighting for workers’ rights on the shop floor. The alignment of labor, clergy, and other key constituency groups in North Carolina has helped bolster protests against the General Assembly and strengthen progressive actions across the state.

Neighboring states, Mississippi’s Ethical Thursdays and Moral Monday Georgia, are also following suit and attempting to bring together broad-based coalitions on singular state issues.

As a way of giving workers a voice so that the economy starts working for all workers, the AFL-CIO has developed Common Sense Economics (CSE), a flexible organizing tool. It’s a workshop and curriculum designed to help participants (union and non-union workers, stewards and local union activists) understand that working people can and must change the direction of our national economy; that economic outcomes are a result of political choices; and that working people can impact political choices through voting, volunteering, and activism.

CSE complements what the UFCW is already doing with our organizing, bargaining, and political programs to try to change the national discussion about working people and low wage workers. It’s particularly relevant to the UFCW’s work to raise the bar for workers in the retail industry.

The core module of the workshop is an hour and fifteen minutes. It includes:

• A “lived experience exercise” in which participants will explore how the economy is affecting their lives.
• A presentation of facts, an interactive “inequality exercise” that helps participants visualize how wealth is distributed in our country.
• A “victory video” that shows that when people work and fight together, we win and create change in public policy.

There is also a section at the end designed to connect with local organizing, bargaining and political campaigns.

Additional modules that cover other important topics using an economic lens (each module is approximately one to two hours in length) include:

1. Women and Families

2. Young Workers

3. Globalization

4. Immigration

5. Mass Incarceration

The AFL-CIO is sponsoring Regional Train-the-Trainer Workshops:

• Northwest Region
  June 4 – 5: Vancouver, WA (Portland airport) Contact: Randy Parraz at rparraz@aflcio.org or (602) 284-9745
• Southern Region
  June 9 – 10: San Antonio, TX Contact: Carmen Rhodes at crhodes@aflcio.org or (720) 849-2758
• Southern Region
  June 12 – 13: Orlando, FL Contact: Lorenzo Scott at
  lscott@aflcio.org or (678) 644-0392

Two UFCW staff have already been trained in using the CSE tool and UFCW will be training more staff this summer in order to assist local unions and regions who want a CSE program at a region conferences, stewards conferences, or other activist trainings. Local unions can contact their region director for more information.