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Water Department workers are under assault and we must gear up to fight back and win. The anti-union, anti-Detroit attack we’re under is part of a national and international attempt to force workers and the poor to accept less jobs, social services, wages, benefits and less respect on the job. Locally it is also fueled by racist out-state politicians scape-goating Detroit and other majority black cities and school districts. The members must choose to empower our union to lead the fight in the coming contract negotiations and beyond. We need a significant dues increase to stop our rights from being trampled. WHAT WE’RE WILLING TO PUT INTO THIS FIGHT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN DETERMINING VICTORY OR DEFEAT.

The Attack on Local 207

Last month Federal Judge Cox ordered our three union officers who staffed the union office back to their jobs. This reduced the union’s ability to process and fight for members’ grievances. Cox’s order also allows management to privatize our jobs or sell assets of the Water Department without regard to our union contract, city ordinances or state law. And it cuts into seniority rights and lengthens the time that discipline can be used against us from 14 months to 36 months. This political and economic attack on our city and its workers can be stopped, but only by organizing mass militant actions. Our union must have with the resources to help us organize those actions to win.

Why a Dues Increase Is Necessary

During the last contract negotiations, Mayor Bing stopped deducting union dues from our pay checks for nearly two years. This left our union deeply in debt, without the basic funds needed to pay the bills or defend members’ rights. AFSCME Council 25 collects $36.80 per member off the top of all dues collected each month. This is known as the “minimum dues.” The Local gets about 15% of the dues collected. If a member is paying less than $36.80 per month dues, she or he is being subsidized by the members who earn more per hour and thus pay more than the “minimum dues.” One reason we need more resources is to fight for better entry-level wages. Right now there are a lot of new hires. Most make less money per hour, and therefore pay less than the minimum dues. So the Local is not collecting enough dues to cover obligations to Council 25 and the International. Each month we add to a debt that’s already well over $30,000! Council 25 understands our situation, but unions are under attack everywhere, and they can’t be expected to carry our weight. NOW – MORE THAN EVER – WE NEED A HIGH-FUNCTIONING, FIGHTING UNION. This requires a dues increase now.

Expenses Cut to the Bone

Local 207 has kept dues as low as possible for many years, but we can no longer survive without a serious commitment from our members in the form of a dues increase. Local 207 used to pay $1500 a month out of the treasury for officer stipends, plus hundreds of dollars for mileage, a small stipend to stewards, food for meetings and flowers for funerals. The current leadership ended those practices after taking office in 2001 to save money. We used to have five cell phones, we now have two. Our lawyers haven’t been paid for over a year. Local 207 lost our legal appeal with Judge Cox. Our appeals are now at the second-highest court in the nation, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, who denied our motion to void Cox’s order. We are now waiting for them to hear the rest of our appeal. We must have enough money to continue the legal fight against Cox’s order. We’ve already had to put important legal actions on hold, including our suit against the city’s use of WorkBrain to mess up our pay checks. We need more money so the Local can handle important arbitration cases ourselves. 

A dues increase is a sacrifice, but the alternative is much worse – a union too weak to blunt management’s attempt to blame workers and to make us pay for the bosses’ corruption, incompetence and their mismanagement of the Sewage Plant.  Their attacks on us will do nothing to stop the Plant from polluting the Detroit River and the Great Lakes, but they make our jobs and Detroit’s Water Department more vulnerable to privatization and takeover.

Contract Negotiations

Under Judge Cox’s anti-union, anti-Detroit order, Water Department workers are not subject to the current horrible contract concessions being negotiated for other city workers. These concessions include a 10% base wage cut, doubling health insurance costs, the near elimination of sick time payout at retirement, and reduction of the multiplication factor in determining future pension benefits from 2.2 to 1.5%, These city worker concession talks are being led on the city’s side by Bing’s Chief Operating Officer Chris Brown who oversees the Water Department. Brown will likely play a leading role in the separate Water Department contract negotiations in a few months. There’s no doubt that Local 207 too will have to fight to maintain our jobs, wages, benefits and working conditions.

City workers must reject concessions – and strike to enforce that rejection, or have concessions imposed on them by several potential means. Detroit is threatened with a state-approved “consent decree” which would allow the city to impose a contract shortly after July 1st of this year. Detroit is being coerced by the threats of a state-appointed Emergency Manager who would be empowered to void union contracts and sell off city assets. It will take more than petitions to stop this assault on our democratic rights. It will take a general rebellion by Detroiters and city workers against second-class treatment. Bankruptcy is yet another method being proposed to strip our city like an abandoned house.

The reason that Judge Cox separated Local 207 from the other AFSCME city contract is partly so that we cannot vote against those concessions, and because he hopes that if Bing, City Council and Snyder can gain momentum by defeating other city workers, then Local 207 will be weaker in our own contract negotiations. Regardless of how the current city worker concession negotiations work out, we can only defend ourselves and our city by fighting back. And we can’t fight back with our union sinking deeper into debt, with the office phones cut off. We can and must have a union powerful enough to defend ourselves. We need the resources to help make that fight. Make the commitment on Thursday January 18th. Vote to increase our dues so we can effectively stand up for ourselves and demand the respect we deserve.