UFCW is considering rejoining the AFL-CIO next month

I know. I read that and went what? But it looks like it is true. Mike Elk had the exclusive for In These Times. I know what you’re thinking, wait they are separate to begin with? Just kidding, I make my own fun.

The UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) broke off from the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) back in 2005, but UFCW frequently cooperates with the AFL-CIO because that’s kind of how things have to be done to get anywhere. However, Elk’s sources within the AFL-CIO say the UFCW are in talks to rejoin the AFL-CIO bringing its 1.3 million members with it. The UFCW are expected to vote at the annual convention in Chicago this August, and it is expected to pass because of the support from leadership.

So back in 2005, several large unions split from the AFL-CIO including the UFCW, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Brotherhood of Carpenters, the Laborers’ Union, Unite Here, and the United Farm Workers of America to form Change to Win, a rival federation. There is some controversy over the split including allegations an underlying motivation was to cut down on dues; Change to Win charges about half the dues per member as the AFL-CIO does.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has pushed for the reunification of the labor movement (and its 14 million members) since his election in 2009 so this would be a pretty big victory for him. Change to Win has lost some of its membership including Unite Here, who voted to rejoin the AFL-CIO. However, the UFCW would be the largest to come back. Elk rightly points out this begs the question: will any of the other members, the SEUI, the Teamsters, or the United Farmworkers, enter talks to rejoin the AFL-CIO? Elk’s requests for comment went unanswered.

Trumka has courted the UFCWs for a while; memorably back in March when he joined the UFCW in criticizing the Obama administration public relations event emphasizing jobs for returning veterans with Wal-Mart. UFCW launched Our Wal-Mart.

The details of the potential union aren’t known yet. Elk expects the AFL-CIO to offer some kind of deal like discounted dues, as motivation. Other discussions to be had are about leadership, where UFCW officers will fit in and if the AFL-CIO will take on issues the UFCW cares about.

The Wal-Mart question is where this all gets the most interesting. The AFL-CIO have vast resources, which could be used to really take on Wal-Mart, but at this point we don’t know how much of their resources will be devoted to that. All that said, Wal-Mart isn’t going down without a fight, and it will probably be bad. As we've seen with before and most recently with their threats to the DC Council.

I go back on forth on labor unification. Part of me thinks labor (like everyone) is more powerful when acting as one. Of course, this can happen through coalition building. There is also a history of a power struggle within organized labor with special populations not getting much attention, recognition, or power. Of course, at this point everyone recognizes that low-wage women and people of color are the future of organized labor. But that means, old labor is going to have to be more inclusive, and while they are running to embrace the low-wage retail and service industry, I haven't seen them do quite as much in other highly gendered and raced fields such as home health aids and domestic care work. The later of which has been scoring some pretty huge victories in recent years with the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights (New York, Hawaii, and Oregon have passed it with California still trying, I think). I’m looking forward to what is going to happen.

Oh Wal-Mart

A labor post, I know I’m surprised too. With the crazy coming at reproductive rights and the discussion around using the word feminist, I’ve been a bit distracted. Also, final this week, lame I know.

Oh, Wal-Mart, just when I think I won’t be able to find anything to write about this week aside from the “lady issues” you’re there. I can always count on you. I’d thank you, but I find your company and business model exploitative and possibly evil (a word I don’t like using). Alex Barron, a regional general manager for Wal-Mart U.S. wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post. He is responsible for about 90 stores and 30,000 employees in the DC area, and this will include any DC stores. JJ wrote about this yesterday because he's a day ahead of me, but my version has far more sarcasm so there's that. So get ready…because you know those arguments abusers use about how their victims made them do it? That’s what Barron's piece read like.

Barron argues that Wal-Mart has been acting in good faith to bring jobs to the District and continuing an open dialogue with the residents, stakeholders, critics, and elected officials. They increased their stores from four to six and from 1,200 jobs to 1,800 to expand and serve under-served communities.

And break: What he means by this last part is make money off the poor by driving out all other business and then increasing prices. They’ve done it before.

Barron actually began his piece with this gem, “Unfortunately, the District may soon adopt legislation that discriminated against business and threatens to undo all that we have accomplished together.” End scene. I actually giggled when I read that. Corporations, they are the real victims here, luckily they have the Supreme Court on their side.

Barron notes that Wal-Mart’s polling supports what they heard, “73 percent of residents were ‘in favor’ of Wal-Mart.” I’m in favor of Wal-Mart closing all their unsafe overseas factories and ceasing their exploitation of workers at large, but I’m guessing that isn’t what he and their polling meant.

As a result Wal-Mart rolled out a Community Partnership Initiative and shared it with the city. Mayor Vincent C. Grey (D) said then, “this agreement represents an unprecedented, citywide commitment from a retailer…Wal-Mart is showing what it means to be a good corporate neighbor, and I encourage other firms interested in doing business in the District of Columbia to show a similar level of commitment to our residents.”

Barron is very proud that this document was voluntary, and Wal-Mart weren’t accepting any tax incentives, even though he stressed some of their projects qualified for government assistance. He also notes, “our agreement spelled out our plans to stock local products, allow space for local retailers, provide good jobs, ensure an inclusive construction process, fund transportation measures, create a citywide job-training program and support nonprofits to help fulfill unmet needs throughout the city.”

Slow clap for Wal-Mart, folks. However, Wal-Mart is threatening to not open three of the six planned stores if DC raising the minimum wage to $12.50. Barron says this (and it is so great), “…[S]ome members of the DC Council are advancing an eleventh-hour effort to try to undermine our efforts and change the way businesses like Wal-Mart must operate in the city. New legislation—the Large Retailer Accountability Act (LRAA)—would require that a few large employers pay a starting rate that is more than $5 per hour above the minimum wage.” He goes on to call the legislation discriminatory.

Take a minute. These lefties are picking on Wal-Mart. Quick someone get Scalia to issue a statement defending the corporation from the elected City Council. One particularly concerning line from Barron is “For months, we have chosen to use hard facts, statistical evidence and common sense—instead of idle threats—to educate DC Council about the negative consequences of the LRAA.” Let’s all agree Wal-Mart shouldn’t educate anyone. Also, these consequences are a direct result from Wal-Mart’s refusal to comply with the legislation. If the legislation passes, Wal-Mart opens fewer stores, resulting in the under-served sectors, and low employment, etc.

Barron says Wal-Mart will not open three of the six planned stores if LRAA is passed. He also threatens the stores currently under construction saying they will have to “review the financial and legal implications of the bill on those projects.”

Come on DC, pass this bill. Wal-Mart has a variety of awful consequences for the communities they force their way into. I also really love that this situation brings to the conversation corporate interests verses employees. Wal-Mart claims discrimination because they would have to pay a living wage to their employees. It is that simple. Wal-Mart has a vested interest in keeping their employees in poverty and their profits up. 

LRAA passed DC's Council 8-5 vote at the end of the day on Wednesday. 

Page, Sarandon, Poehler, and why we need to call ourselves feminists

And a more serious post for today as well. 

I’m a feminist, and I’ve been one since childhood, possibly before I completely understood what it meant. As an adult, I wear my feminism proudly. I try not to, but I am skeptical of any one who responds unfavorably to the word feminism (or more broadly the concept of feminism). Feminism argues for equality for everyone. While some would assert that it is just for women. These people aren’t familiar with feminism, and they fear what they refuse to attempt to understand [pass].

In the past week Susan Sarandon, a woman who has championed the rights of women, came out as “she wouldn’t call herself a feminist.” Because you know the word is divisive. On the flip side, Ellen Page, my personal hero, argues that feminism should be radical people should call themselves feminist. Preach. As of Tuesday, Amy Poehler weighed in as a feminist in awesome and epic fashion.

Sarandon is quoted, “It’s a bit of an old-fashioned word,” she refers to herself as a “humanist” because the word is “less alienating to people who think to feminism as a load of strident bitches and because you want everyone to have equal rights, education, and health care.” She continues to say the feminist identity is used to “minimize you” and her daughter can’t relate to it.

Page says, “I think if you’re not from America you read this stuff and you’re like, ‘What?’ But I don’t know why people are so reluctant to say they’re feminists. Maybe some women just don’t care. But how could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word? Feminism always gets associated with being a radial movement—good. It should be. A lot of what the radical feminists [in the 1970s] were saying, I don’t disagree with it.”

Poehler made this statement, "It's always just been in my nature--its just kind of my everyday. Sometimes I access it in a conscious way, but it was always the headline of stuff that I was doing. We just had Gloria Steinem do ASSSSCAT, which was so great. Kathleen Hanna [musician and activist] came, and I'm just a huge Kathleen Hanna fan. She, for me, was closer in age and a practicing and working feminist, at the time, that I related to. When I was in my late twenties and thirties, there were these amazing female musicians, like PJ Harvey and Bjork and Kim Gordon...These musicians are all still around, but, I mean, they were the most popular musicians! Just constant really interesting women; sex wasn't their currency, but they were really sexy and sexual. I gave you a long-winded answer. [Laughs] So the answer is: Yes, I consider myself a feminist, and it informs my work only in that it's just who I am, in the same way that I'm a woman, or I'm 5'2" or whatever. I was lucky that I came through a system that had many people who did much more hard work and road-clearing before I got there."

Take minute and look at those statements from women in the same field where women are underrepresented, ageism runs rampant, and women are regaled to specific roles within the industry and on screen, as the abortion debates rage on, as inmate sterilization is uncovered, as child poverty rates sky rocket, and as women are actively silenced in political debates. Come at me bro. I also find it interesting that Sarandon claims her daughter can’t relate to feminism while Page, someone close to Sarandon’s daughter’s age, embraces feminism. Poehler hits how I relate to feminism; it just is part of who I am. I wouldn't be me without it.

I choose the term feminist over humanist because humanist is a way to pander and frame the discussion once again to center on men, better make sure the men feel included or they won’t support equality? Um, no. I think more of and expect better from men. Feminism is supposed to make people take notice, and if you enjoy privilege as a result of the oppression of others then you should find feminism a scary word. Also, humanism is rooted in the Renaissance (talk about old fashioned word) and is kind of about individualism and in some definitions pushes for the rights of human beings at large.

Feminism should be radical (though I have a lot of issues with the Radical Feminism of the 1960s/1970s), but it should be “take to the streets” encouraging. People are the most powerful when we demand our rights and that our representatives listen to us.

I’m not going to get to into what is a feminist and how it is defined, but a basic rundown: there are discussions about personal feminism, but feminism as a politic statement includes reproductive rights, the ERA, equal pay, child care, health care, voting access, and workers’ rights. This is just a basic run down. Additionally, this is why there are conflicts over the book Lean In because can the COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, argue for feminism while participating in the oppression of others? Complicated, yes. Worth considering, yes.

My boss and I discussed at length today the ramifications of Roe being overturned in what I can honestly say is the first conversation I’ve ever had like this. Women are people, which at some point gets lost in this debate because “oh, the unborn” is chanted over and over. Remember this because the pro-life community (anti-choice community) doesn’t give a damn about these children after they are born. Also, remember that anti-choicers claim humanism, specifically, that fetuses are human, and by extension more human than the women carrying the fetuses. I mention the anti-choice because the Right is excellent at crafting their message usually making it sound better than it is. For example, pro-life, they aren't pro-life they are anti-choice. People who are pro-life are anti-capital punishment and pro-increasing assistance programs to the needy. It is the same with right-to-work. These people can brand, and they did it to feminists, too. Now feminism is a word people want to distance themselves from.

I’m a feminist because I believe in:

Equal pay

Reproductive choice

Organized labor

Universal healthcare

The Equal Rights Amendment

Title IX

The Voting Rights Act

Affirmative Action

The separation of church and state

And so much more

I’m exercise my feminism by:

Voting

Working outside the home

Working inside the home

Traveling unaccompanied by a male relative

Owning property

Participating in higher education
Accessing to birth control and control over my reproductive rights (for now)

Etc, etc, etc…

Women who distance themselves from feminism aren’t necessarily ignorant, which in the past is what the people who distance themselves from feminism were. They didn’t realize what feminism meant. But what these people distancing themselves now are, is cowardly. Being afraid to identify as a feminist because some people find the word decisive? Weak. You disagree with the movement, the direction, the whiteness of the feminist blogosphere? Fine. But Rush Limbaugh made it a dirty word? *SMH and scowls* Atheist, Liberal, Progressive, Florida Gator’s Fan, these are all words that have a negative connotation, but people still embrace them. They embrace these words because these people believe (or don’t believe in one case) in something; they support it.

Language matters. Using the term feminism matters. It matters because it is a politically charged word. Using it sends a message, and it is a message worth sending. And in its most basic form it means women like men are people and deserve the same rights and treatment under law.