Category Archives: Public Employee Organizing

Saladin Muhammad, Black Workers for Justice Founder and Leader Joins the Ancestors

It is with great sadness and profound loss that we announce the passing of our exemplary revolutionary warrior and leader, Comrade Brother Saladin Muhammad. Saladin passed this morning after a long battle with illness. His wife, Naeema and son Muhammad were with him as he transitioned. He fought until the end. They described him as being at peace.Saladin on courthourse steps

Brother Saladin leaves an outstanding legacy of revolutionary commitment, leadership, consciousness, and direct organizing of our people’s struggle for liberation. He was a commander-in-chief of revolutionary forces throughout the Black Liberation Movement and a staunch fighter for the Black Working Class. He worked tirelessly and with phenomenal energy to organize, guide, and lead our people’s fights and battles against oppression. He was an internationalist, upholding the world-wide struggle against capitalism and imperialism. His intellect, insight and analysis was outstanding in the theory and practice of organizing class and revolutionary struggle and the tactics and strategy of social transformation, national liberation, and socialism for the African American people.

Saladin’s unmatched organizing skills led to the formation of the Black Workers for Justice, UE Local 150, and the Southern Workers Assembly, just to recognize only a few of his impactful accomplishments. And these organizational formations of the Black working class were built in the context of North Carolina, a state widely recognized for it’s anti-unionism and racist history and in the US South where the lack of a strong, progressive labor movement in the southeast region has been the Achilles heel of the US national labor movement. The struggle to build a “new trade unionism” in the US South must continue.

His leadership and guidance, upon which thousands around the country and the world relied, is irreplaceable and will be sorely missed by all of us. Saladin was active in the struggles for justice and liberation for more than 50 years.

Saladin Muhammad, PRESENTE!!!

The Executive Committee,Black Workers for Justice

Virginia Beach City Workers Demand Collective Bargaining, End to Jim Crow Legacy

January 20, 2022

Virginia Beach, VA

Virginia Beach city workers held a rally and press conference at City Hall on Tuesday, January 18, demanding a real voice for safety, dignity, living wages and an end to institutional racism on the job. The members of newly formed Virginia Beach City Workers Union, UE Local 111, were joined by supporters from the faith community in calling on the Virginia Beach City Council to pass a resolution in support of collective bargaining.

Alfred “Red” McClenny

“We have to confront this systematic racism and racial disparity that manipulates the city’s decision making when it comes to social and economic equality,” said Alfred “Red” McClenny, who works in waste management for the Department of Public Works. “I feel collective bargaining is a step to help us bridge that racial divide.

”https://www.ueunion.org/ue-news/2022/virginia-beach-city-workers-demand-collective-bargaining-end-to-jim-crow-legacy

SOCIAL-ECONOMIC CRISIS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC SHOWS NEED FOR PUBLIC SERVICE WORKERS COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS

The recent national wave of workers resistance, sickouts and strikes across the U.S., the largest in many decades, shows that today’s workers’ demands and concerns must be heard and addressed! Objectively, the demands are real, reasonable, and necessary for everyone because they impact the quality of all our family lives and community. We are all workers! Hence, in North Carolina and many southern states, the call to repeal and abolish “Right to Work” laws that deny worker protections and public sector collective bargaining rights, has come front and center again.

The recent wave of militant actions by bus drivers, cafeteria, school workers and city workers in Elizabeth City, Greensboro, Charlotte, Forsyth, Pitt, Durham, and Wake Counties, as well as State workers, show that public workers cannot serve us – the residents and voting citizens of the 10th largest state in the US – when they are understaffed, underpaid and disempowered by NC state laws like General Statute section 95-98. This law bans public service workers from exercising the nationally recognized human right to collectively bargain. It was legislated to keep Black housekeepers, cafeteria workers and ground keepers on the State university campuses from union organizing and collective bargaining.

In 2006, the United Nations’ International Labor Organization found that NC’s ban on collective bargaining was in violation of the UN Charter on Human Rights. Our delegation with representatives from Black Workers for Justice, NC Public Service Workers Union – U.E. Local 150, and others walked into Governor Mike Easely’s office to deliver a copy of the ILO formal decision. His top administrative team responded with an Executive Order and series of “meet and confer” sessions that fell short of a needed political initiative to repeal the Jim Crow era statute’s ban on collective bargaining.

Public service workers provide clean and safe water and sewer services, schools, food and buses for our children, and sanitation services for our communities. Public workers staff our mental health hospitals, repair our roads and build our bridges. Public workers make North Carolina a great place to live, play and work!

We must challenge the present Governor Cooper’s administration, and educate others, while pushing the state to take action to bring collective bargaining to the public sector. If Virginia can, so can we!

Angaza Sababu Laughinghouse

NC Public Service Workers Union-UE local 150/ Executive Board

Raleigh Area Workers Asembly/Co-Chair ( affliliated with Southern Workers Assembly)

Rocky Mount Sanitation Workers: Paid After 40 years for Their 1978 Strike

In 1978, from July 10 to September 25, 1978 about 36 City of Rocky Mount Sanitation workers went on intermitting strikes demanding the rehiring of Alexander Evans a Sanitation workers that was unjustly fired for picking up a suit left by a trashcan that was emptied by workers. There was policy that anything left within 10 feet of trash can be picked up by the workers. Evans was known to take clothes to people in need as part of his religious mission. A week before being fired there was an article in the Rocky Mt newspaper honoring Evans for caring for the poor. These workers were not unionized, but acted collectively to send representatives to meet with the City Manager and community forces to build support.

The City prosecuted Evans in court and was defeated, but the City wouldn’t rehire Evans, so the workers went on strike again.

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A Profound Attack on Workers and Their Organizations

Viewed by many as the most serious assault on labor organizations in recent history, the Supreme Court decision in Janus vs AFSCME is a call for the unions and worker organizations to adopt more militant and aggressive tactics in dealing with employers. Following is a statement by the Southern Workers Assembly (SWA) with an analysis and ideas on the way forward.

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U.S. SUPREME COURT DEALS BODY BLOW TO PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS, HURTS ALL

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans such as ‘right to work,’” Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1964. “It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. “Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions for everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer, and there are no civil rights.”