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

Golden Opportunities (12/8/09)

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Besides serving on Eastern Service Workers Association Advisory Committee and serving as delegate for my neighborhood to ESWA's Boston Workers Benefit Council and writing for the BWBC's newsletter The Boston Worker, if the gentle reader has been following this web log she or he knows many of my opportunities to help further the aims of ESWA have come from the fact that I have a car. One of the greatest opportunities ESWA has provided me was to deliver some formula and pampers one night to a member who had too much week at the end of the check. The apartment if spare was spotless. Instead of a bed there was a mattress on the floor but the sheets and blankets were neatly tucked in. The baby was sleeping blissfully on it with her own blankies. From her third story window the member was watching for me. One of the full-time volunteers earlier had attempted to deliver the emergency request but the member had dozed off. Having with my wife raised three babies of our own I know how it goes: you get sleep when you can. All I can say is to walk into such a tender situation was my good luck. And it was thanks to ESWA. If I had gone into that situation as a licensed social worker I would have had to report them to Child Services for the fact that the ESWA member was taking care of an infant and had run out of money. It was obviously a great home for the baby. It was not the member's fault she found herself in that predicament. There is something very wrong about a society that refuses to allow our working communities to martial their own resources. That is what creates such an unfair predicament.

The other night ESWA gave me another opportunity that, --although it did not surpass the pampers and formula delivery, --came pretty close. ESWA has organized an oil-filled space-heater and winter blanket for members whose heat was cut off by the energy company while advocates work on getting it turned back on. One such member who got to use the heater and blanket after her heat was on again, agreed to drop it off for another member on the front end of the same situation. However, she was unable to find the apartment so dropped off the heater to the office. I was there taking a labor class and afterwards agreed to make the delivery since I was fairly familiar with the neighborhood (central Dorchester). It was not as easy as it looked on ESWA's street map, but in Boston it never is. When I finally found the right street there were odd and even buildings on the same side. I thought to myself, "only in Dorchester."

When the member buzzed me in, she was overjoyed to see someone with heater and blanket in hand. She had just finished a prayer that they would arrive because she was so cold. "You are my angel!" she exclaimed. I told her that I could not even count how many times ESWA had saved my life, to which she responded, "I know." What she did not know was that the delivery was itself for me one of those times. The Eastern Service Workers Association has saved my life because economic injustice bothers me; because one of seven children in my state going to bed hungry bothers me; because my city has arguably the best hospitals in the world whose workers being denied their care bothers me; and ESWA gives me something to do about it. In a very real sense ESWA has given me a lease on life because before they reached out to me at my neighborhood grocery store I was dying little by little every day stymied to find a way to tip the scales towards economic justice.

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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

Golden Opportunities (12/8/09)

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