“We certainly don’t support any killing, whether it’s in the form of bombs, guns, starving people through blockades, or through apartheid, from any side,” says Andrew Dinkelaker, the UE’s general secretary treasurer. “U.S. military aid going in is pouring gasoline onto a fire. It encourages that there be military solutions, and military solutions will get more people killed.”
“Every single person deserves fair employment standards and competitive pay rates. The world is changing quickly; we all have the right to try to secure our futures, pursue our dreams and raise our families. Our employers would have us sacrifice those rights to secure their own profits,” said [UE Local 728 member Tiffany] Wittenback. “I have worked at this facility for over seven years, and while I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished, I am no longer interested in the empty promises and hollow praises.”
“You need long-term capital investment to get the conversion of the rail industry off diesel fuel,” UE General President Carl Rosen told The Lever. “And the railroads just won’t do it.”
It’s not just that railroads have proven unwilling to invest in an energy transition; their profits have increased as freight loads fall.
“It helps them earn high profits — they don’t have to run as many trains or keep as many people working, and they make more money by cutting down the amount of freight traveling by rail,” said Rosen. “Which is exactly the opposite of what we need as a society — we need rail to be replacing trucks, not freight hauling to be displaced to trucks.”
“We’re here to make a stand. At least 40 trucks should be on the road right now, and as far as we know, no trucks have gone out this morning,” said Durham, North Carolina, sanitation worker Christopher Benjamin, flanked by 100 sanitation and other city workers at a September 6 press conference.
Even though strikes are illegal for public sector workers in North Carolina, the difficult and sometimes dangerous work — coupled with low wages and the rising cost of living — led Perry and his co-workers to refuse to get in their trucks to pick up trash on September 6. The action reflects growing labor agitation in the South — a region where union organizing and striking are exceptionally challenging, but workers are nevertheless coming together to improve their working conditions.
The planned appearance of U.S. Sen. John Fetterman seemed to be the spark that drew hundreds of striking union members at Wabtec to Napier Park in Lawrence Park shortly before noon on Monday.
But members of the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America, who have been on strike since June 22, didn't seem to need Fetterman to summon enthusiasm for their cause.
Many of the nearly 1,400 striking union members, who carried signs and wore a variety of strike-themed T-shirts, made a dramatic entrance after walking to the park from their respective picket locations along Franklin Avenue, East Lake Road and Water Street.
July was the hottest month on record — possibly the hottest in the history of human civilization — and August is bringing more scorching temperatures and supercharged storms. Amid this climate crisis, 1,400 locomotive builders and clerical workers on strike in Erie, Penn. are modeling how unions — and workers walking off the job — can make climate justice demands of an employer.
The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) union has long been pushing for a transition to cleaner locomotives, in keeping with the spirit of a Green New Deal. UE general president Carl Rosen says the transition to clean locomotives fits with UE’s commitment to environmental justice and fighting climate change, and it could mean new union jobs including at the Wabtec Corp. locomotive factory in Erie, Pennsylvania.
"[Fetterman's] bill to allow striking workers to qualify for SNAP benefits would help us immensely in our struggle to make Wabtec provide family-supporting wages and benefits and hold them accountable to their workforce," Scott Slawson, the president of UE Local 506, said. Slawson represents the production workers at the Wabtec plant outside Erie, Pennsylvania, who make up the vast majority of the workers who are on strike.
"Workers should never be forced to choose between standing up for what's right and feeding their families," he said.
UE General President Carl Rosen also told Newsweek, "For decades, corporations have had the upper hand against workers, and it has resulted in stagnating wages, widening inequality and rampant corporate greed. Senator Fetterman's bill would be an important step in restoring power to workers so they can fight for a decent standard of living."
In an op-ed posted today on GoErie.com, Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) writes, “let's be clear: what’s good for workers is good for America. So when workers stand up and strike, I believe it’s our duty to have their backs. ... I understand that it’s thanks to unions that countless Pennsylvania families can put food on the table every night. That’s why I always have and always will go the mat to fight for unions and the workers they represent.”