the value of conversation

Admittedly I have neglected sharing my experience with you all. After you all caught your respective flights out of New Orleans my internship experience began to truly take shape. Prior to this summer, I had no organizing experience, no real experience with the labor movement, so my time here has been quite eye-opening as I have begun to discover this whole new world. After much reflection, I offer to you all some thoughts about my time here so far.

As a person who has had several years of full-time ministry work, I have struggled this summer. The challenges I have recognized have been mostly with my lack of awareness of the realities of life in post-Katrina New Orleans, struggling with feelings of guilt surrounding the privileges I have, feeling restricted by the shortness of this internship, and experiencing the realities of the limited resources that this one staff member office has available. Even though as time has gone on these struggles have not disappeared, time has provided many valuable conversations and experiences that have moved me from a sense of being paralyzed by these struggles to an awareness of the beauty of being able to bring all of who I am (struggles, gifts, etc.) to each day. I appreciate this awareness because I feel that it makes it possible for me to be in communion with the people I encounter each day. As we attempt to be in solidarity with those around us and to enter into relationships in a spirit of God's love, we need to move beyond that which is paralyzing. (As I have tried to move beyond that which I have recognized as paralyzing, I wonder what things (whether real or perceived) paralyze other individuals and movements for social change? How do we move beyond that which holds us back?)

At this point in my reflection on my internship thus far what I have valued most have been the conversations that I have been a part of. Conversations about health care, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and recovery of N.O., public housing, community outreach, religion, forced evictions, social justice, and racism are the ones which immediately come to mind as the most powerful.

It is through conversations that my eyes have been opened to see injustice and oppression. It is through conversations that I experience God in the midst of this place in which I find myself. It is through conversations that I find hope. It is through conversations that we are going to be able to come together to change the systems and structures so that all people can know justice and peace.

It seems to me that today often times it is our fear of conversation (of open dialog with the "other") that paralyzes us.

I look forward to the conversations that I will have during my last days here as well as those which we will share during debrief.

Nebraskan Atrocities and the Struggle to Organize

Omaha Nebraska is known for its beef industry. Coming through L Street in South Omaha you can smell the raw stench of death. The workers describe to me the condition on the “kill floor” facing 2500 cattle a day. First the head is cut off, then the feet and then slits in the skin so a machine can suck it all off at once. Next comes the slicing and dicing which is hard work, carrying heavy loads and cutting through massive muscle. If a worker isn’t trained to sharpen their knives right it’s even harder work, as a friend of mine from Greater Omaha beef, s

till no union, explained he did not get proper training and hurt his shoulder. Most workers are immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Sudan or Vietnam with some Chicanos, African American and whites mixed in.

The Human Rights Watch put out a report called Blood, Sweat and Fear telling of the now famous rights abuses from the meatpacking industry, “failure to prevent serious workplace injury and illness, denial of compensation to injured workers, interference with workers’ freedom of association—are directly linked to the vulnerable immigration status of most workers in the industry and the willingness of employers to take advantage of that vulnerability (Watch, 2004).”

Maria works at Skyler, a plant that has been organized for some time, and now she helps her union, United Food Commercial Workers (UFCW), to organize other plants. The Nebraska Beef plant is notorious for its anti-union campaigns. In 2001, the UFCW filed charges against the company for its illegal firing of workers which finally, “The NLRB upheld a hearing officer's findings that the company used a broad range of intimidation tactics to deny workers a voice on the job in the 2001 election (Rivera, 2009)."

Now the UFCW is starting to organize Nebraska Beef and Greater Omaha again, but its uphill struggle against these historically anti-union plants that have fought hard and dirty to keep from unionization. Last week, Father Jack McCaslin and myself went to help “handbill,” to get authorization cards. Perhaps this is a new beginning to a long stronghold of worker intimidation wherein the Employee Free Choice Act could pass soon and change the entire playing field to give workers the right to organize, binding arbitration and stiffer penalties against illegal anti-union mistreatment of workers. We must keep on in this struggle and make sure that we are involving faith leaders as we together figure out what it means to live out our faith in this context of extreme capitalitism and exploitation.

Political Education and the Labor Movement

I have been part of many groups throughout college and too often these groups focus on the day to day tasks of running an organization: building membership, filing paper work with student life, fundraising, etc. All of these mundane and time consuming tasks often get in the way of what is important- educating ourselves and those around us. As the political director of the Loras College Democrats one of my duties was political education, but with the election I pushed that aside in order to allow more time for our group to volunteer with campaigns. At the time this seemed to make sense, but now I am realizing what a huge mistake that was!

ROC-Miami is teaching me how crucial political education is to building a movement. We hold political education classes during all of our bartending classes and, to my surprise, people really seem to enjoy it! People want to learn more about the world around them and what they can do to change things. It is not uncommon for people to start shouting things out or to ask “how can I get involved” during a political education class. For example, this week’s class was about the power of organizing. John was asking them what they thought would happen if the fifty people in the room walked down to Ocean Drive to one of the restaurants. One person shouted “we would scare the s*** out of them” to which another person responded “let’s do it!” I am learning that as people learn more they become more eager to join the movement and as they learn even more they become willing to make sacrifices, sometimes as large as losing their job, in order to change things. It is unlikely that an uneducated person would be willing to lay everything on the line, but it seems like an educated person would. This is why political education is so important; people need to truly understand problems in order to fight against them, otherwise they are simply a person holding a sign.

John was telling me about the Vietnamese military, during the Vietnam War. This military had two heads of it: one for the military strategy and another for political education. The sole role of this political education director was to educate the troops about issues. They found that in educating the military more the soldiers understood what they were fighting for and as a result they were willing to do anything necessary to ensure victory. In essence they became better soldiers because they were mentally prepared for the battle through political education.
Another lesson learned…

The last few weeks...

A few weeks ago, sorry I am a little behind; John and I participated in a demonstration in front of a Wal-Mart in Miami! The demonstration was organized by unions in the area and other groups that organize workers. I was very surprised when we showed up and discovered that we were actually allowed on the Wal-Mart property, well at least in the parking lot. We marched around the parking lot of almost an hour educating people shopping their and the workers about EFCA. At the end workers from that Wal-Mart spoke about their experiences as employees of Wal-Mart. I was excited to learn that this particular Wal-Mart is very close to unionizing!

A few days later I attended my first Wage Theft Task Force Meeting. The goal of this task force is to pass a wage theft ordinance in Miami-Dade County, which is very needed because Florida does not have a department of labor which makes it almost impossible for workers to claim unpaid wages. This first meeting was with a commissioner so we spent more of the time trying to convince her that wage theft is a serious problem here and as such it deserves a serious solution- an ordinance. It was a little disappointing to hear that she agreed with us about it being a serious problem but that with budget cuts it would be impossible to fund the enforcement of this ordinance. As a result she recommended passing a resolution first and down the road passing an ordinance. Since then I have attended two meetings with the Wage Theft Task Force alone. In these meetings we have discussed the pros and cons of a resolution. Some of the problems with it is that it has no teeth, it gives the opposition time to organize, and it allows the politicians to say they have done something when they haven’t solved the problem. Some of the advantages are that it allows us to hold three town hall meetings to raise awareness, it puts the issue on the table, and it is a step forward. We also have been working on identifying our opposition and our allies. This has all been very interesting to me because I have interned with a city managing and city planning office so I have seen many resolutions and ordinances from that perspective but I have never seen what goes into passing a resolution from the “outside” of government. It is a lot more challenging that is for sure!

Aside from these two things we have been preparing for our first membership meeting! The national co-founders will be in town for this so it is very important that we have a really good turnout. To ensure this we have send out a postcard, e-mailed everyone, and are currently calling to remind them. It has been a lot of work but it will be very exciting to see the turnout tomorrow! That is all for now from Miami!

ROC-Maine, research and rain...what a summer!

Hey all!

Sorry I haven't posted anything yet - to be honest I've been waiting for something 'exciting' to happen around here that would seem worth blogging about - but I'm learning that the excitement of actions is one thing, but the real work of organizing is in the day to day grind and forming relationships with the community.

The bulk of my work this summer has been conducting interviews with restaurant employers in the area as part of a pretty intense research project for ROC-Maine. I've been hitting the rainy streets and meeting Portland's owners and managers, trying to coax an hour of their time for an interview. If you're ever in the area, I've can give you a run down of just about any type of dining we've got here!

It's been really interesting to see both the worker and employer side of workplace concerns. I've had the opportunity to conduct a few focus groups with ROC members about their experiences in the workplace and it's been fascinating to see how their frustrations over wages, healthcare, sick days, health and safety violations, etc - are echoed by employers. There are certainly employers out there who are taking advantage of their workers, but there are also a lot of great employers who are affected by the economics of the industry and feel they can't create a just workplace and keep their doors open. What's so cool about this research is that we're able to identify 'high road' employers - those who are both just employers and successful business owners. We can lift these employers up as a model to the rest of the restaurant community and help pressure low road employers to treat workers well.

I can't believe we only have three weeks left! For these last few weeks, I'll be finishing up some interviews and planning an interfaith breakfast with Mackenzie. She and I are working with different organizations (but our desks are right next to each other in the same office) and we're collaborating to join her interfaith committee with my ROC members and new employer friends in the area. We hope to create an event where we can bring all these different circles together to facilitate some open dialogue and help create networks that will positively impact the Portland faith and restaurant communities. I think it will be a great way to sum up our time here this summer and kick start ROC's work for the fall!

Our offices in downtown Portland!

A little ROC motivation. We love restaurant workers!

My supervisors Tracy and Genet, and I in our classroom where we do new member orientations, bar tending and fine dining training, and ESL courses.

I can't wait to see you all in just a few weeks and hear about the great work you've been up to!

Photos from Internship Training

Caravan, March, and Rally

This is my first post mostly because I had no idea what I wanted to write about, until now. On Saturday July 11th, national AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka joined Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, Jeff Rechenbach, Secretary-Treasurer of the Communication Workers, Robert Jaeger, International Rep for the Plumbers and Pipefitters (covering Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi) and hundreds of union and civil rights activists and faith leaders in a statewide caravan, march, rally & catfish fry to call for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. The Little Rock Nine were also visible and in support of the effort. The Little Rock Nine were the courageous students who faced down the ugly face of racism and integrated Central High School. Our rally started at the historic Central High School and marched about a mile in 103 degree weather to the state capitol. It was hot but it was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever been a part of. The number of people that came out to show their support from not only Little Rock but across the nation was amazing. It was good to see such a strong and motivated crowd in one area.

I have been working with the representatives from the national AFL CIO that are stationed in Arkansas since February on the Employee Free Choice Act. For this event I was in charge of getting clergy out to support us. I recruited many clergy as well as local elected officials to join in the festivities. Many of the clergy spoke and prayed for our Senators. It was a great experience and I got to meet a lot of incredible people. As of today we are working on a debate on the Employee Free Choice Act so I will keep you all updated on its progress! Hope you all are having a great summer and I can't wait to debrief in Chicago!

Immokalee

I apologize for writing these blogs kind of out of order, but I still thought it was important to write about my first day of work. Jeanette (the director of South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice) set up a meeting for all of us with the IWJ center in Immokalee. I am assuming that many of you don’t know about the atrocities happening in this small town located very close to Miami, so I am going to try to attempt to explain what is going on there and what I took from the meeting. Please understand that I was only there for one day so I cannot even begin to understand the full scope of things there so what I am writing is not even breaking the surface of the issue.

Immokalee is the home to man migrant workers for part of the year. For about six months out of the year these workers live in Immokalee and pick tomatoes, but for the rest of the year they migrate to Georgia or another state to pick watermelons because there is no work in Immokalee during these months. The workers wake up very early (around 4:00) to get ready for the day. It is necessary to wake up so early because most of the workers live in small trailers that house around ten people. Most of the people don’t have beds or rooms; instead they sleep on a mattress on the floor. After they wait in line to use the bathroom and kitchen then they head to a parking lot, located across from the CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) and Interfaith Worker Justice office, to attempt to get hired. There the workers walk around and talk to different contractors until one of them agrees to hire them for the day. If they don’t get hired that day then they don’t get paid and have to return home.

Once they are hired they head to the fields in buses, where they are forced to pick tomatoes until the bosses decide that they are done. They get paid a small amount for every bucket of tomatoes they pick. (Sorry I don’t remember the exact amount.) Obviously, this kind of work is very straining on the body; however the workers are not given health care or offered any other means to cope with health damages that result from work. There were also reports of beatings taking place at the worksite. Once example of this was when gentlemen left for a minute to get a drink of water. He was yelled at and told to return to work. When he did not the boss beat him. When other workers found out about this they organized and marched to the field owner’s house. Following the march they refused to pick tomatoes for that guy for a few weeks, which sent a message to the other field owners that the workers weren’t going to take it anymore.

To continue their organizing efforts the workers formed the CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers). Together the CIW and Interfaith Worker Justice have won many victories for the workers. They have been able to get Subway, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Burger King to agree to pay a penny more a pound for the tomatoes they purchase and currently they are working on a campaign to encourage Publix’s (a grocery store in Florida) and Chipotle to do the same. They also have fought to improve the working conditions in the fields for the workers. On problem that many of the workers were struggling with outside of work is that many of them do not have cars. As a result they are forced to shop at grocery stores within walking distance. Some of the owners of these stories took this as an opportunity to significantly raise the prices in order to Increase their profit. To fight this CIW opened up a store of their own in their office and see grocery products at wholesale price. This has forced the owners of the other grocery stores to lower their prices.

I encourage everyone to go to http://www.ciw-online.org/ to learn more about the issue and about how to get involved!

Wal-Mart, EFCA, and Health Care

The first couple of weeks of my internship at Workers Interfaith Network in Minneapolis have been exciting!!

This spring, United Food and Commercial Workers reached out to several Wal-Mart employees in the Twin Cities. Many workers at a nearby Wal-Mart have expressed desires to organize, so Wal-Mart's corporate anti-union team from Bettonville, Arkansas is running anti-union campaigns in the store. Today, Workers Interfaith Network led a delegation with religious leaders into the store to ask the manager if we could speak with the Bettonville team. Supposedly, we will hear from the corporate team soon. The delegation was a good step because it showed those Wal-Mart workers who want to organize that they have community support.

Last week, I participated in an action at the capital. Minnesota's governor just cut a state health insurance program that provides health insurance for 30,000 people that make less than $8,000 per year. Hundreds of people from different faiths wore all black and carried flowers in a procession from a nearby church to the capital. The point was to mourn the deaths and suffering that will result from the cuts in health care. It was exciting to see hundreds of people speak up for the people that will be affected by these inhumane budget cuts.

Besides working on Wal-Mart related projects, I have called several religious leaders to ask them to sign-on to a letter to show their support of the Employee Free Choice Act. It's hard for me to believe that I only started here a few weeks ago!

Orientation

“There was a restaurant on the top of the twin towers called Windows of the World. The employees were paid very well there because they were unionized and had fought for a decent wage and just working conditions. On 9/11 many of the workers died and they all lost their jobs. A few months later the owner decided to open up the restaurant in a different part of town and decided that he wasn’t going to hire any of the same people back. He thought he could hire people that didn’t know their rights as well- people who were easier to exploit. Well the workers came together and decided to fight. They held protests in front of his restaurant and pressured him until finally he had no choice but to hire them back. Because of this group effort ROC-NY started. Since then ROC’s have been opened in Detroit, Chicago, Maine, New Orleans, and now Miami!"

“Our goal as an organization is to fight for the rights of restaurant workers. Sometimes that means protests, boycotts, lawsuits, and public pressure. Other times that means offering classes so that people can move up in the industry, legal services, and other trainings. We also conduct research on the restaurant industry as well as work on policy.”

“Why are we in Miami? There are 10’s of thousands of restaurant worker here. If we want to build a national movement then we have to be in the cities that are big restaurant markets, service-sector economy. We are seeing similar problems in Miami that other ROC’s are seeing: unpaid hours, stolen tips, unpaid overtime hours, forced double shifts, not paying minimum wage, or in some cases, not paying a wage at all! There is also rampant discrimination: both gender and racial and especially immigrants are facing this. To fight this we need to organize to build power!”

This is a small part of the orientation we give. Some of the groups have been very quite- barely saying anything until it is time to sign up for the bartending classes, while others are very talkative and excited. A day session we had last week was an example of one of the talkative sessions. The people were very into it and excited. They would stop John to tell him about how they weren’t getting paid overtime or how they were injured on the job. At the end John said “We are an organization here to fight for justice” and a man in the back yelled “amen!” to which a women replied “hell yeah!” It was exciting for me to see how inspired people can get and what a difference this organization can make. It also showed me that ROC-Miami is filling a need in Miami- the need for restaurant workers to organize and to have a place they can go.

Welcome to Miami! (A day in the life...)

After a relaxing day in Jacksonville on the beach surfing and kayaking and a not so relaxing day driving we finally made it to Miami! Immediately I understood what everyone had been telling me for weeks- traffic down here is crazy! Everyone drives and it seems like the norm to be caught in traffic for thirty minutes or so. After battling traffic and getting lost (also the norm for us down here) we finally arrived at the place Bekah and I will be staying this summer. The house is owned by a lady named Rosita who is very nice. She has a very nice house and a pool, which I am a frequent visitor to! Aside for the hour and a half commute to work every day I love it!

Almost every day I ride to Florida International University (FIU) with Bekah. This is where she picks him up to go to work for the day and where she drops me off. I wait there for two hours until John, my supervisor, comes to pick me up. That may seem burdensome but so far I have actually enjoyed it because it has forced me to study for the GRE’s, which I desperately need to do! I ride from FIU to South Beach with John to our office.

Our office is smaller than my closet at school (I am not joking), but it works for us. He is the only staff and I am the only intern so we don’t really need much room. We are in a building with other non-profits as well as government agencies such as the beach front community development and children’s services. I am 99% sure that I am the only one in the office that doesn’t speak Spanish, which has been interesting in itself. I am picking up a few words here and there but more than anything this experience has been a good kick in the butt for me to learn more Spanish or another foreign language.

My day usually consists of attending a bartending or language class, offered free from ROC, helping with orientations, and imputing data from surveys. Because ROC in Miami is so new we are still working on a lot of things that most organizations probably have done by now, like creating sign in sheets, brochures, membership cards, etc.

My supervisor has been great! I am learning tons from him because he is very knowledgeable about foreign affairs, especially anything to do with Latin America. He also enjoys learning about things that many people find taboo. For example, right now we are listening to a book on tape about Fidel Castro’s life. I highly doubt I would have ever done that if not for this experience. He also has experience working with unions as well as with ROC so it has been very interesting for me to learn more about ROC and unions throughout this internship.

My First Week!

After having a great experience with blogging during my study abroad in Ireland I decided that I would give it another go for my internship this summer. For the next 9 weeks I will be working with Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) in Miami, FL. From what I currently understand, ROC is a worker center that helps organize workers in the restaurant industry as well as supply job training to help individuals move up in the industry. They help fight against wage theft and help work for better working conditions and overall a more just working atmosphere.

For the past seven days I have been participating in training in New Orleans. For the first few days it was just the interns and four staff members but later in the week people from all across the country arrived at Tulane University to participate in a summit. At the initial training we did everything from discuss justice and mercy to enjoying Po’ Boys in New Orleans. From this initial training I was able to better understand the mission of Interfaith Worker Justice and what exactly I will be doing this summer.

During the Summit I was able to hear more firsthand accounts of the atrocities taking place in the workplace and was also able to talk to people who are working in these centers and places that we will be working in this summer. Overall it was a great week but I am exhausted. Sorry this blog is so short and vague. I will go into details once I start my placement!

Top 5 Reason that I love being an IWJ intern

Top 5 Reasons that I love being an IWJ intern:
by Becky S. working at ICWJ in Madison, Wisconsin

5) Every day, I meet and learn from people of all sorts of backgrounds, talents and interests. We are connected by a shared vision of justice.

4) I get to bring all of me into this work: my faith, skills, experience, values, learning styles, flaws, doubts, and vision. It is all used and challenged and enriched.

3) In our little office, I encounter a host of nationalities and personalities and a whirr of activities. Staff, volunteers, students - working and calling. Visitors –workers, clergy, children, folks from other agencies. In and out. Spanish and English spoken. Stories shared, phone calls to employers made, computer keys clicking, meetings and plans for action.

2) I never do just one thing in one same place all day.

1) Free fair-trade coffee.