San Francisco Bay Area GMB

This is the news page for our San Francisco Bay Area General Membership Branch. To get an overview about our contact info, news and events, please visit our home page.

Can we rebuild the labor movement with the Employee Free Choice Act?

Posted Tue, 02/10/2009 - 6:45pm by x344543

By Adam W. - Industrial Worker, January, 2009

Much has been said in the United States labor movement around the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a bill many mainstream leaders tout as the solution to the decline of unions. With the recent election of Barrack Obama and the Democratic Party holding the majority of seats in both houses of the US Congress, these same leaders have their hearts set that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions will pay off with the passage of the bill.

The meat of the EFCA would amend existing labor law in the US to allow unions to gain official recognition in a workplace through a majority of workers signing authorization cards and avoid the perilous and employer-dominated election route. Once a union is certified, employers have to begin sitting down with the union within ten days. If no deal is reached government mediators can force employers to sign a first contract, even without the vote of workers. The EFCA also would drastically increase the penalties companies face for violating workers rights, such as with firing workers for organizing, which happen at record rates in the US compared to the rest of the industrialized world. Workers could receive up to three times the back pay owed and companies could be fined up to $20,000 for willful or repeated violations.

What are members of the IWW to think of this? We are a small but growing international union with a vision of a completely different world. Not the vague change promised by both sides in the US presidential elections, but a world without bosses, where everyday workers are in the driver’s seat, and where hopes and dreams for a better world can truly be realized. Will the passage of the EFCA move us closer to our vision of a new world? There is certainly a great deal of hope in the change that the EFCA could bring, but I think we need to look more critically whether substantial change will come even if the EFCA should pass.

Bay Area IWW iu670 Organizing Committee Urges: Bail out the Public Sector!

Posted Wed, 01/28/2009 - 1:08am by x344543

Practically every state, county and city in the country is in fi nancial crisis and the plan is to make you pay for it. (for details see attached PDF)

This crisis is actually getting worse, and all these projected defi cits will probably continue to increase. If allowed to pass, these cuts will only get worse. Other cities in the area and most states in the country face similar or worse deficits.

We do not have to be the victims! There is a solution!

Right now, the federal government has committed some $7 trillion to bail out banks, insurance companies and even the auto industry.

And many of these banks, they won’t even tell us, the taxpayers, how they are spending that money. This is our money and we have every right to say how it gets spent!

If the federal government can bail out Corporate America, then they can bail out “public America”. The unions should all get together and call mass public meetings to organize a campaign to demand that federal bail-out money be used to eliminate the budget defi cits of our cities, counties and states.

  • No cuts in services, public jobs or pay of public workers and retirees
  • Use federal bail out money to make up the budget shortfalls

Who we are:

The Industrial Workers of the World is a union that currently represents several different workforces. We have a long, revolutionary tradition in American’s labor movement. We do not seek to compromise the interests of workers to benefit the employers. We want to work with the rest of the unions and with all workers’ organizations to launch this campaign:

IWW-Represented Workplaces:

  • Buyback Recycling (Berkeley)
  • Curbside Pickup (Berkeley)
  • Shattuck Cinema (Berkeley)
  • Stonemountain & Daughter retailer (Berkeley)

The IWW is also conducting a nation-wide organizing campaign at Starbucks, as well as other organizing drives nationally.

IWW Curbside Recyclers Negotiate New Contract, Win Wage Increases

Posted Sat, 01/17/2009 - 5:30pm by x356641
Union and Ecology Center Sign Contract The "non-profit" Ecology Center, under contract with the City of Berkeley, runs the Curbside recycling pickup program in that city. We, the IWW, are the representatives of these workers. The economic (wages and benefits) portion of this contract expired on Jan. 1 and we have been in negotiations for the last several months (up until today operating on a contract extension).

Basically, the position of the Ecology Center (EC) is that because the City of Berkeley is having a budget crisis (as are almost all other cities), that they could not afford a decent raise and, in fact, had to reduce the level of health benefits. They also made the claim that since they are a non-profit that we should regard them differently. Neither the workers nor the Union was buying this. This is especially so because they refused to give us the figures for how much it costs to run Curbside and, therefore, how much of the contract with the city they are creaming off of the top to finance other EC operations and salaries.

Their offer ended up as being a 3% wage increase plus a payment of $2,000 per year into each worker's 401(k) plan. In addition, family members of the workers would be covered by the health plan before they have been up until now. This was an improvement over their original offer which did not include the $2,000 payment but did include a demand for a significantly worse health care package.

San Francisco Bay Area IWW statement on Oscar Grant (executed by BART police)

Posted Wed, 01/14/2009 - 7:15pm by x344543
The cameraphone videos which have surfaced on YouTube seem like a scene out of some futuristic movie. But the cold-blooded murder is all-too real, and is one more tragic body in the capitalist carnage that is already hundreds of years old.
 
Police brutality and racism are just as much parts of capitalism as the real estate brutality that we are all facing. The ruthlessness and seeming irrationality of the BART murder is no different that that of a broker who evicts a family that can't pay their mortgage. Capitalism is the only social system that sees overproduction as a problem -- when too many people have homes, they must be evicted until houses become profitable again. It is the same with us the workers, who have to sell our labor to live and can only live as long as we can sell our labor. Capitalism has always seen us, not as human beings, but just as one more thing to be bought and sold. This is why it has been starving the workers, especially those from ethnic minorities, in all the industrial cities of America for the last thirty years. It is the same kind of "market adjustment" that is happening with houses right now. They are both done with the same ruthlessness and they both require armed thugs called police.
 
The capitalist media will claim that this is a case of particularly bad cops, just as they claim that the economic crisis comes from bad bankers. But bad cops and bad bankers will always exist as long as there are cops and bankers, and there will always be cops and bankers as long as we allow ourselves to be robbed at work, as long as those who rob us need men in ties to invest their stolen wealth and thugs to protect it. Also, since our exploiters are only a tiny minority of society, they must divide up the majority. In the US, this , this means racism first and foremost. As Malcolm X said, "You can;'t have capitalism without racism."
To get rid of a system that relies on murderers, the workers of Oakland and the entire world have to develop a revolutionary form of unionism, one that recognizes the inherent opposition between workers and bosses and which wants to end exploitation. The Oakland General Strike of 1946, and the workers occupation of Republic Windows in 2008 both give us a glimpse of how powerful we really are.
 
We want to express our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Oscar Grant, and on the issue of this police execution, we call for the immediate arrest of the police involved on charges of first-degree murder.

Motion Passed by SFBA GMB of the IWW on Siege of Gaza

Posted Wed, 01/14/2009 - 6:59pm by x344543
The following motion was passed at the San Francisco Bay Area GMB January meeting, Thursday, Janury 8, 2009 with few dissenting votes:

"WHEREAS the Apartheid State of Israel has conducted a siege of Gaza for many months; and

WHEREAS this siege, itself, is an act of war as well as an act of collective punishment; and

WHEREAS  this siege is simply a further extension of the apartheid policies of the State of Israel, including calls within Israel for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel, stealing of land and water rights from Palestinians both within Israel as well as in the West Bank, and the
building of the Apartheid Wall, as well as other measures; and

WHEREAS the Industrial Workers of the World stands for working class unity, which is impossible as long as any sector of the working class is oppressed in the way that the Palestinian people are by the State of Israel; now be it

RESOLVED that the San Francisco chapter of the IWW unreservedly condemns the Israeli attack on the people of Gaza; and be it further

RESOLVED that we also oppose all terrorist acts aimed at civilians, whether they be Palestinian, Jew or anybody else, and in this particular case we recognize that the rocket attacks on Israel being carried out by Hamas can only serve as a cover for official Israeli racism and expansionism, even though we recognize that the State of Israel bears primary responsibility for the situation; and be it further

RESOLVED that we call for complete Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders, including dismantling of the settlements and the Apartheid Wall, the right to return of the Palestinians driven into refugee status, and for equal rights for all within the State of Israel; and be it further

RESOLVED that we recognize that the Histadrut leadership, in their support for the Israeli bosses and the bosses' politicians as well as their support for the apartheid policies of the State of Israel, have placed themselves squarely in the camp of the class opponents of the working class; and be it further

RESOLVED that we oppose the state imposition of or support for any religion; and be it finally

RESOLVED that we will support any steps to oppose division within the working class as well as racism and all forms of special oppression in our struggle for workers' rights and workers' power internationally."