Eastern Service Workers Association

My (pen)name is Jinpa Kangri. During my twenty year career in human services, I was involved with two labor unions: [AFSCME] when I was a shop steward for Local 470; [SEIU] when I was on local 509's organizing committee. While those experiences were not without their rewards, for the past seven years I have had a much more satisfying involvement with a labor association of a new kind: [ESWA]. This is not an official website, rather one person blogging his own experience.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Enough is Enough (11/20/09)

The other day I was overseeing various projects going on at the Eastern Service Workers Association office and answering the telephone while the full-time volunteers were out in the community. At the same time I was working on the lead article for the Boston Workers Benefit Council's newsletter. The article is reporting on a public hearing in which the BWBC participated given in August of this year. The hearing given in City Hall Plaza was concerning a change the state wanted to make in their Health Reform Act. It seems the law is not paying for itself and officials are scrambling to cut costs any way they can. There is a provision in the legislation that calls for automatic enrollment into the state's health insurance program once someone previously denied becomes eligible. The cost cutting motion under discussion in this public hearing was to discontinue automatic enrollment.

The BWBC was there because they realized the motion was no more than another in a series of state actions that saddle the working poor with any burden that falls the way of the private sector. The Boston Workers Benefit Council was there to say "enough is enough!" Members and volunteers and supporters and business owners spoke one after the other how the new law is failing in fulfilling its intent: to make healthcare more accessible to residents. The officials continually attempted to cut off the speakers with typical bureaucratic speech," this is not the time and place for this discussion." Each time the BWBC delegation answered with a rousing chorus, ''let 'em finish!" The officials would relent. The authentic accounts continued, how hard it is to get enrolled in the state health insurance plan and even if they do, how difficult it is to get an appointment with a doctor.

The next month the state announced a motion to amend the reform law to make Community Health Centers available to those on the lowest tier of state health insurance who previously were restricted from all health-care except emergency rooms. Coincidence? I shall let the gentle reader decide.

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Both Sides Against the Middle

Why were my experiences with AFSCME [American Federation of State and Municipal Employees] and SEIU [Service Employees International Union] less satisfying than with ESWA [Eastern Service Workers Association]? This is a complex matter but I could put it in a nutshell for the gentle reader with one word: privatization. The Massachusetts Department of Mental Health has been in "partnership" with private vendors for so song it practically does not exist anymore. From the very beginning they pitted the state unionized workers against the underpaid employees of the private vendors. It is the oldest trick in the book and the unions could not do anything about it. They could have organized the employees of the private vendors but the Taft-Hartley Amendment (1947) to the National Labor Relations Act prevents them from venturing onto the workplace, and the unions have no way of finding out where the employees live.

Why is ESWA in my opinion based on a winning model? This is not such a complex matter. A new kind of private mutual membership/benefits labor organization that is community-based rather than occupationally-based, Eastern Service Workers Association seeks to materially improve quality of life for working people and their families without bargaining with employers. They reach out to "unrecognized" service workers, unemployed, under-employed and disabled, at their homes. Unrecognized under the Taft-Hartley Amendment to the National Labor Relations Act (1937) as eligible for unions, there is nothing employers can do to stop organizing these low-income families. Meanwhile, ESWA also reaches out to concerned people in other stratas of society (such as recognized workers, doctors, lawyers, professors, students, business people) that have an historic self-interest in seeing economic justice for those in poverty. It is the only approach I have seen that truly makes sense.

Here to Stay, Here to Win

Facing a scenario not unlike those facing their counterparts in every major city in the United States, the workforce of Boston, Massachusetts, has been forced for years now to witness their good-paying jobs outsourced from under them. Digital, Gillette, Polaroid and Ratheon are some of the most notable in a steady stream of manufacturers leaving the area to increase profits by cutting labor costs. In order to keep their families with a roof, food, warmth and lights these Bostonians find themselves competing in the service sector for part-time and temporary positions with no benefits. Eastern Service Workers Association of Boston is pleased to announce there is no need to be a bystander.

For thirty-two years ESWA has been bringing together professors and students, doctors and other professionals, homemakers and business owners with service and seasonal workers, part-time and temporary workers, unemployed and those living on a fixed income. With its unique brand of arms-length organizing Eastern Service Workers Association has been fighting from Sunday to Sunday, nine in the morning til nine at night, --the government policy that gives license to the increasing of profits in the private sector on the shoulders of underpaid workers. Joining those already in unions sanctioned by federal labor law by focusing on those who are unrecognized, ESWA would have reached every worker in Boston by now but for the lack of enough full and part-time volunteers.

From the moment a new member signs on during one of ESWA's weekly neighborhood canvasses, she or he is encouraged to attend the Boston Workers Benefit Council which oversees the Eleven Point Benefit Program. All the benefits are designed to give members more family budget, from emergency food to clothing distributions across Boston to dental, medical, legal and other informative benefits. However, the main benefit is organization itself.

ESWA's motto is "members helping members." As members participate in the budget savings program and gain a measure of stability by getting more control of their lives, they are also gaining the ability to lead by example for new members perpetually swelling the ranks from the canvassing. The BWBC's combination of leaders and future leaders increasing by one member at a time constitutes a process that can only lead to low-income workers and their families gaining control of the resources in their own communities. And there is no resource more precious than leadership.

Here to stay, here to win!

Welcome to Eastern Service Workers Association

ESWA is a free and voluntary community-based self-help membership organization for workers not recognized under federal law for trade unionization. Let us break it down.

"Free:" like most other membership organizations ESWA has a dues component. Unlike most other membership organizations paying the monthly dues is completely voluntary. If a member is able and willing to pay the suggested dues amount she or he will find it amounts to sixty-two cents a month. 62 cents because that is how much an hour migrant workers were making when ESWA's sister drive Eastern Farm Workers Association of Long Island, New York, was founded in 1972. Free.

"Voluntary:" E.S.W.A. is neither a charitable nor a non-profit organization. For that reason it receives no money from the government. That way it does not have to answer to the government. Full-time and part-time volunteers together with members keep operations going Sunday to Sunday, fifty-two weeks a year. There is no one on the staff that gets a wage. No one. This is a very important piece because E.S.W.A. believes it is the government favoring big business over the rights of the working poor, --largely by keeping their wages particularly low, --that is at the root of poverty. The government may not like this kind of organizing but there is nothing it can do about it. Voluntary.

"Community-based:" ESWA's unique approach is to reach out to working people from all walks-of-life. Whether you are a doctor or lawyer recruited at a 'literature table' in the suburbs, or a janitor or a dish-washer reached canvassing in the neighborhoods, Eastern Service Workers Association brings you all together for on-the-job organizing training on the premise that "if one is injured, all are injured." Community based.

"Self-help:" The self-help piece gets to the heart of E.S.W. A.'s modus operandi. When members take part in the budget savings projects they are encouraged to step up and help out around the office. However, it is by no means mandatory. Whether reading a pitch to volunteers signed up on literature tables, filing index cards of newly signed up members, putting together mailings to supporters or sorting goods for one of ESWA's many clothes and food distributions, there is no end of activities for members. Self-help.

"Membership:" ESWA's motto is members helping members. This gets to the heart of its methodology. Let us say one member gets help in the office with advocacy with an energy company threatening to withhold their services due to past due payments. E.S.W.A. simply will not get off the 'phone until the shut-off date is suspended and a reasonable payment plan worked out. The member learns the consumer laws protecting her or him and how to relate with the customer service representatives (i.e. they are not the enemy). In turn the member can turn around and help another member in the same boat. Membership.

"Workers not recognized under federal labor law:" The National Labor Act of 1935 guaranteed workers the right to organize. However the Taft Hartley Amendment of 1947 restricted those rights to specific trades. ESWA is founded on the decision to organize recognized and unrecognized workers so that all workers will be protected and not vulnerable to being played by management one against the other.This web log will be an ongoing journal of a member/volunteer (yours truly) that should fill in the blanks on how this awesome organization works.

Rising of the 20,000

Women and the Trade Union Movement

At the beginning of the 20th century, the working-class women’s movement became more connected to the suffrage movement. During this time period, women workers initiated many important strikes. In 1909-1910, over 20,000 shirtwaist workers struck in New York and Philadelphia, in what was called the “Rising of 20,000.” They were supported by the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), an organization which united working-class women and middle- and upper- class women in an effort to win the vote, and secure better wages and working conditions for women.

In 1906, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter, founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women (later the Women’s Political Union) to organize working-class suffragists, primarily in New York City. In 1910, March 14, they commissioned the first large-scale suffrage march in the United States, in New York City. Today that date is recognized worlwide as Women's Day. Eventually, the Women's Political Union began working with the National Woman's Party, the new radical wing of the woman suffrage movement.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (8/7/1890 - 9/5/1964)

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn became active at 15 in socialist and IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, the "Wobblies"), and helped organize strikes, notably in Lawrence, Massachusetts. She stood against World War I, and after escaping a charge of espionage for her opposition, helped organize for free speech rights, including helping to found the ACLU.

Just before World War II, after withdrawing from public life for a few years for health reasons, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn joined the American Communist Party. She was expelled from the ACLU and its board for her party membership. After the war, she continued to work with the communist party, becoming its first woman head a few years before her death on her first trip to the USSR.

Historians consider Haymarket one of the seminal events in the history of American labor. On May 1, 1886, close to 300,000 strikers nationwide and 40,000 in Chicago took part in demonstrations for the eight-hour day. This movement was part of an international struggle for workers' rights, and the heart of the movement was in Chicago, where the anarchist International Working Peoples' Association (IWPA) played a central role in organizing the May Day strikes. On May 4, members of the IWPA organized a rally at Haymarket Square to protest police brutality against striking workers on the South Side. As the last speaker finished his remarks, police marched in and demanded an end to the gathering. Then an unknown assailant threw a bomb into the crowd, killing and wounding several police officers and protesters. Police apprehended eight anarchists on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. The trial and subsequent execution of four of the men--Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer, and George Engel--has served as enduring symbol of labor's struggles for justice. Today may 1 is known as labor day Historians consider Haymarket one of the seminal events in the history of American labor. On May 1, 1886, close to 300,000 strikers nationwide and 40,000 in Chicago took part in demonstrations for the eight-hour day. This movement was part of an intern ational struggle for workers' rights, and the heart of the movement was in Chicago, where the anarchist International Working Peoples' Association (IWPA) played a central role in organizing the May Day strikes. On May 4, members of the IWPA organized a ra lly at Haymarket Square to protest police brutality against striking workers on the South Side. As the last speaker finished his remarks, police marched in and demanded an end to the gathering. Then an unknown assailant threw a bomb into the crowd, killin g and wounding several police officers and protesters. Police apprehended eight anarchists on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. The trial and subsequent execution of four of the men--Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer, and George Engel--has served as enduring symbol of labor's struggles for justice. Today May 1 is known worldwide (except in the U.S.) as Labor Day.

Sojourner Truth

Name at birth: Isabella Baumfree

Sojourner Truth began life as a slave and ended it as a celebrated anti-slavery activist. She was born in New York and was sold several times before escaping to freedom with an infant daughter in 1827. She worked as a housekeeper, lived in a religious commune, and eventually became a travelling speaker and preacher. Although she could not read or write, Truth was a captivating speaker: she reportedly stood nearly six feet tall and was a spirited evangelist who spoke out for women's rights and against slavery. Prompted by religious feelings, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth in 1843. Her memoir The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (as told to author Olive Gilbert) was published in 1850 and helped establish her in the public mind. The next year, at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, she gave her famous speech, "Ain't I A Woman," a short but stirring challenge to the notion that men were superior to women. During the Civil War she worked to support black Union soldiers, and after the war she continued to travel and preach on spiritual topics and as an advocate for the rights of blacks and women.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Enough is Enough (11/20/09)

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