U.S. Supreme Court Heard Challenge to Bread and Butter Survival of Public Sector Unions
with
Caroline Fredrickson, President American Constitution Society for Law and Policy
and
Joe Burns, Labor Lawyer and Author, Strike Back: Using the Militant Tactics of Labor's Past to Reignite Public Sector Unionism Today

On Jan.11th, the U.S. Supreme Court considered a conservative legal challenge targeting public sector unions when the justices took up a case brought by non-union teachers who object to having to pay for collective bargaining rights. The dispute pits 10 public school teachers and the Christian Educators Association International against the California Teachers Association, a union with 325,000 members and a history of backing liberal political causes.  Unions that are certified to represent a group of employees are legally compelled to represent all employees in that unit, which means bargaining on behalf of all the workers for health care and other benefits, higher wages and representing them in grievances to adjudicate their rights against their employers.  The “dues” pay for unions to be able to  advocate for services to its members and to administratively function as an organization.  This court challenge seeks a decision that would economically starve the public workers organizations affecting their ability to advocate for their members individual economic benefits and their political rights as workers.   

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http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesNycRallyToSavePostalJobsServicesFromAManagement
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Saving Postal Jobs & Services From A Management Gone Postal

Community/Labor United for Postal Jobs & Services joined with postal
workers to rally to save postal jobs and the services provided. The
plan is to shut down 4,000 post offices, eliminate 223 which is half of
the mail processing centers nationwide , end Saturday mail delivery
and fire 220,000 postal workers. In N.Y.C. alone, Postmaster General
Donahoe wants to eliminate 34 post offices. There is no fiscal crisis
that warrants these cuts, which will destroy the post office system. But
there is a Congressionally manufactured crisis caused by its imposition
of onerous and unnecessary financial mandates on the Post Office.
Unless we stop Congress, the public postal system will be destroyed
and Wall Street will swoop down and sell it to corporate vultures.

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The current struggles of public sector workers rights in Wisconsin and
around the country has galvanized public and worker sentiment and
support to an extent not seen since the battle to organize the Memphis
City sanitation workers in 1968. This was part of the upsurge of the civil
rights movement of the 1960’s and also of the mass unionization of
public workers in that decade.

“Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign”
with
Michael K. Honey, Prof. of Ethnic, Gender, and Labor studies, University of Washington, Tacoma

Martin Luther King was in Memphis to add his voice to protests in support of striking sanitation workers – the civil rights movement paralleled with the struggles of organized labor. Professor Honey details the daily evolution of the strike and what it meant to Memphis and the larger civil-rights movement. He chronicles the events that led up to that fateful day at the Lorraine Motel, and to larger social change. Honey’s analysis of King’s role is particularly telling. “King,” he writes, “had qualities that allowed him to lead a mass movement that joined working-class people to the middle class through the black church” until his “Crucifixion.”

Plus Taylor Rogers, a past Pres. of the Memphis Sanitation Workers
Union talks about the 1968 Strike which was Dr. King's last struggle and a selection from King's speech at a strike rally.

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Selections from Building Bridges Live Coverage
OF MASS RALLY OF NYC PUBLIC WORKERS
AGAINST THE CUTS!

With
. Michael Mulgrew, Pres., United Federation of Teachers
. Judy Wessler, Dir., Commission on the Public’s Health System
. John Samuelsen, Pres. , Transport Workers Union, Local 100
. Ed Ott, Distinguished Lecturer, Murphy Inst.of Workers Studies,
CUNY; former Executive Director, NYC Central Labor Council
. David Jones, Pres. & CEO of the Community Service Society

A coalition of municipal labor unions, turned out tens of thousands of
workers and community activits to protest job losses and service cuts
that will permanently alter the lives of NYC workers and residents.
Mayor Bloomberg is sharpening his carving knife and on the chopping
block are thousands of civil service jobs: educators, transit workers,
public health, social service workers, and library workers. The loss of
these jobs mean reduced transit services, education, healthcare, fire
services, and the myriad services provided by public sector workers.
And, as the city hemorrhages public sector jobs and services, it
aggressively advances the privatization of public sector jobs and the
services they provide. It’s an all out attack on public sector unions and
the workers, and benefits those unions fought for. So in the fight for its
life, public workers and their unions say hell no to pro-corporate
policies that serve the wealthy at the expense of the majority.

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