Will Unions Organize the South?

While turtles and Teamsters were “together at last” in Seattle fighting the WTO last November, the movement was marching to a different — yet just as important — beat in the South.

Within a month, more than 20,000 Southern workers won a union. That’s more than formed unions in the South in the entire previous year. Ship yard workers, textile workers, Delta airline workers, Texas teachers and others across the South won a voice on the job despite a deep historical tradition of employer opposition. Many of them did it with help from their communities.

Dixie progressives had to wonder: Is this the moment we’ve been waiting for? Had the Carolina sands shifted? Had the red clay parted?

“Are things catching fire in the South?” asked Kirk Adams, AFL-CIO Organizing Director. “Not quite. The truth is that there’s always been interest to organize among Southern workers. A nurse in Mississippi has a lot of the same issues and concerns as a nurse in California. What we are starting to see is a steady escalation of union investment and coalition building in the South.”

Adams’ cautious optimism underlines that while the turn of the next century isn’t seeing any seismic shifts in the South, there is an interesting level of activity afoot.

 

When We Try More, We Win More

Statistics show that while Southern organizing still lags far behind 1970s levels, they are encouraging. Since 1996, there’s been a 17 percent increase in the number of union elections held across the South, rising to 435 in 1998. Workers have been winning a greater percentage of elections since the mid-1990s, and the size of the groups voting is also steadily rising.

The efforts are paying off. Informal AFL-CIO data reveals that at least 33,000 workers have formed unions in the South in 1999, up from 12,000 in 1998. This jump is due largely to three large labor victories in 1999: 4000 Avondale shipyard workers, 5200 Fieldcrest-Cannon textile workers, and 9500 Austin teachers.

In addition, unions are growing in the South. Eight of twelve Southern states showed a net increase in the number of unionized workers last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The year before, only South Carolina and Texas showed such a net increase.

Finally, more Southern workers say they want unions. New polling shows that more Southern workers would choose a union today than just two years ago. In 1999, 45 percent of Southern workers said they would definitely or probably vote for a union if a vote were held on their job tomorrow, up from 40 percent in 1997. In fact, the polling shows that while Southern workers were less open than other U.S. workers to unions in 1997, they are now just as likely to choose a union as workers elsewhere.

 

Freedom to Have a Union

While Southern workers are increasingly open to unions, the South still has a cultural history of suspicion toward unions which employers both encourage and exploit. Companies that have a healthy respect for their employees elsewhere will often fight their employees when they try to come together in a union down South. Boeing, for instance, signed a top notch agreement with machinists in Seattle, but successfully fought an attempt by workers in San Antonio to form a union two months later.

At least two forces are at work to combat such deep-set antagonism toward workers’ unions in the South. The first is community-labor alliances and the second is companies’ own self-interest.

It’s no secret that many Southern communities are anti-union. The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce has a “union avoidance information service” which includes a “section on community programs to avoid unionization.”

As much as the Chamber would love to speak for the whole community, however, some Southern communities are speaking in an independent voice. Savannah county commissioners recently passed a resolution backing workers’ freedom to choose a union. South Carolina churches gathered food for striking Continental tire workers last summer.

And dozens of ministers in Kannapolis and Concord, N.C., spoke from the pulpit the Sunday before the big Fieldcrest-Cannon vote on the importance of having a union. Just six years ago, the only ministers who spoke up were those whom the company organized to oppose the union.

Unions, in turn, are beginning to reach out.

“It’s critical for us to get rooted in the community in the South and build long-lasting organizations,” notes Monica Russo, director of the Unite for Dignity campaign in South Florida which has organized 33 nursing homes in the last three years, with strong support from the Haitian community. The unions, in turn, recently supported the Haitian community’s movement to exempt Haitians from the Immigration Reform Act, just as Salvadorans and Guatemalans had been exempted.

“Where else would you see Cubans and African-Americans and Haitians together, rallying and walking the halls lobbying in DC?” Russo asks. “That was real coalition.”

 

Making a Union in the Boss’ Interest

The second force changing traditional Southern mores on unions, interestingly enough, is companies themselves. When workers and their communities raise the decibel level to a point that their issues can no longer be ignored, some companies simply stop fighting. This is especially true of companies new to the South with little historical stake in the region’s anti-union culture.

When California-based Litton Industries bought Avondale shipyard in New Orleans, for instance, they agreed to recognize the workers’ union in November rather than continue a fierce struggle.

“Decades ago, when the workers lost an earlier election, the company put the election results up on the water tower,” notes Wade Rathke, director of SEIU Local 100. “Living here in New Orleans, you can’t overstate the importance of the Avondale victory, for those workers, and for all workers in the area.”

The former Avondale management waged a six-year battle against this majority African-American workforce when they most recently voted for a union in 1993. The campaign was ruthless.

Charles Giles, for example, was a clerk at Avondale. When he came out for the union, management forced him to sit for days on the floor of the giant ship — without a desk, phone or even a pencil to do his job. The company fired dozens of workers and violated labor law so many times that this case became the largest in National Labor Relations Board history. The company even used taxpayer money at this Navy shipyard to fight its workers.

One of the reasons the workers wanted the union was that the shipyard was among the most dangerous in the country.

“You put your boots on in the morning to go to work, and wonder who’s going to take them off for you at night,” said Frank Johnson, Avondale machinist for 16 years.

Workers used Avondale’s reputation to organize the local ministers, many of who knew someone who had been hurt or killed there. A coalition of ministers came to rallies, cut radio ads, wrote legislators, and joined workers in April to carry white crosses emblazoned with the names of the deceased workers.

OSHA later fined the company over half a million dollars and found that the company had willfully broken the law hundreds of times.

Then the Avondale workers finally got a break. The Navy’s need to consolidate shipyards threw the industry into a bidding frenzy for mergers, and Litton Industries — which has a union shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi — bought Avondale. Rather than perpetuating this fight, Litton agreed to recognize the workers’ union.

Why did Litton do this? It’s impossible to know for sure, but partly it was because the spotlight was on them. They owed half a million in OSHA fines. The religious and civil rights communities in New Orleans were watching. The workers never let up. Plus, they needed a smooth operation between their yards, and didn’t have the same personal stake in the fight as former management. In fact, Litton’s decision came one day after Avondale’s staunchly anti-union CEO retired.

Similarly, 5200 Fieldcrest-Cannon workers got their union when new management from Pillowtex finally agreed to end the court battle and recognize that a majority of the workers had voted for a union.

 

Not Optimistic, But Hopeful

Many Southern workers are trying come together for better wages, benefits, and more of a say on the job, even in traditionally hostile territory. More than 30,000 Delta airline attendants, machinists, and ramp workers want to follow in the footsteps of the pilot ground training instructors who formed a union in November. The 9500 Austin teachers who formed a union are part of an ongoing effort by the teachers’ union in Texas. Wireless telephone workers are winning unions at Southwestern Bell in Texas and Arkansas. Hotel workers in New Orleans are organizing with a unique coalition of unions.

Yet, Southern workers still have a lot to overcome. Most employers still would rather fight than play fair, and many communities and already established unions are not building the necessary coalitions. A steady stream of victories will take a new commitment of energy and resources from unions, and a solid repositioning of Southern public attitudes.

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Reverend Jim Lewis, who is bringing together unions, environmentalists, clergy and others to take on the Del Marva region’s poultry industry, and has organized in the South for years. “I’m not optimistic, but I am hopeful.”