It has been a sad summer for working people in the East Bay. The
communities served by the BART line are a veritable Trail of Tears. The
economic downturn is pressing on workers especially hard. Alone they
often lack the resources to respond, yet their unions are locked in
internal battles that are rendering them increasingly ineffectual.
The first stop on our journey is Fremont. Some of the East Bay’s
best remaining fair-wage jobs could soon disappear with the threatened
closure of the New United Motor Manufacturing auto plant. The
multiplier effect of factories such as NUMMI has an extraordinary
economic impact on the lives of many people in their communities. And
in an area in which racial issues remain front and center, it should
not be forgotten that it was plants like this one that allowed many
African Americans and other minority-group members to first attain
middle-class lives. These jobs also provided their employees with
adequate health care into retirement, a precious commodity for anyone
today.
Meanwhile, following the BART line north, some of the last Bay Area
working folks who still have good wages and pensions have been roundly
ridiculed for their audacity in fighting to protect them. The BART
workers’ contract struggle is a focus of derision for those who claim
that it is ridiculous that those who operate the trains would make more
than the people who ride them to get to their “important” jobs.
As a result of such tools and the devastation they have wrought,
this summer many people throughout the East Bay have lost their homes
and their tenuous grip on the American Dream. Those who can no longer
afford to make their mortgage payments are the greatest victims. But as
the sale of distressed properties continues to climb, the glut of
foreclosed properties is driving down prices so much that many people
who still can afford their payments are also deeply underwater on their
mortgages.
The pain this crisis has inflicted on the statebudget is just
beginning to affect the East Bay. The final budget is sure to be
painful for working-class caregivers and care recipients in East Bay
communities. California has long had one of the country’s best
home-health-care systems. While caregivers often make little more than
the minimum wage, at least they have stable jobs about which they can
feel justifiably proud.
And the new state budget will hit working people in other ways. In
spite of Proposition 98, which theoretically guarantees a certain level
of funding to community colleges, the new budget is certain to restrict
access for future students. With industrial jobs evaporating, community
college is one of the only roads to success for kids who have spent
time in California’s K-12 educational system. For those without
financial resources or mommy and daddy’s networks of connections, the
community college system is a way to gain the skills and entry into
higher education that can allow one to succeed in the difficult
marketplace of work. Heretofore, this avenue to success has provided an
impressive amount of support for its students, but it is becoming
heavily potholed.
Traveling north to Oakland, we reach the epicenter of misplaced
union energy. Since bitter internal fights have a way of sapping the
creative juices of their leaders, the leadership that unions should
provide suffering East Bay workers is sorely lacking. Creative and
passionate women and men work for local unions, yet they often seem
more focused on fighting each other than on fighting for their
members.
At the Aramark laundry in Oakland, some of the poorest industrial
workers in our country are fighting a battle for a decent contract with
their employer. Unfortunately for these industrial laundry workers,
their union has split in two, and each side is fighting for control,
leaving the workers themselves swimming in a sea of confusion. The
garment workers of Workers United and the UNITE-HERE hotel workers with
whom they recently merged are locked in a Lucha Libre death
match, in which workers are just pawns in battles among union leaders.
Good contracts are difficult to secure for industrial workers in the
best of times; but, when union battles dominate the scene, employers
have little reason to agree to a fair contract.
The same divisive atmosphere permeates the caring professions of
health care. Even as Kaiser Permanente announces new layoffs, the
three-ring circus between the Service Employees International Union,
the California Nurses Association, and the former service workers in
the National Union of Health Care Workers continues. The latter union,
which has maintained a positive and wholesome image among many national
labor activists, recently received a stinging rebuke from a local
federal judge, putting its progressive and democratic reputation in
question.
Given the current political climate, the difficulties that workers
face from budget cuts are not surprising. But battles among unions are
especially sad. Their skirmishes sap the ability of workers to respond
to hardships. All the unions involved in these battles espouse a love
for workers and the importance of focusing on them, but it is hard to
find evidence of these sentiments in what look like ego-driven battle
royales. All are tremendous strategists and tactitians. But while they
claim to put the interests of workers first, each is spending huge sums
of workers’ money on lawyers and public relations specialists of all
stripes.
Unions serve their members when they exhibit a spirit of unity,
solidarity, and self-sacrifice. It is time for these union leaders to
step back and think about their duties to workers. Like the Native
Americans on the original Trail of Tears, the anguish of those who face
difficult conditions is often unheard in our present culture. For those
who live in the East Bay and labor with their hands and minds, this
summer has produced too many external pressures and not enough
organized response.
