STRIKE TO WIN!

Build the New Civil Rights Movement!

City Unions & Community Must Fight for Detroit's Future!

 

he struggle being waged by Detroit city workers for fair union contracts is a battle for equality and the future of Detroit. It is the fight for a quality of life the suburbs take for granted, and for the pride and dignity of Detroiters. The outcome of our contract struggle will determine not only the quality of our working lives – but whether our city, our youth – along with poor and working-class suburban residents – have the bright future we all deserve.

 

The AFSCME City of Detroit local unions, representing over 6,000 workers, have voted for strike authorization. Our desire to fight is driven by decades of tamped down hopes and aspirations for ourselves, our families, friends, and the vast majority of Detroit residents. Mayor Kilpatrick is unwilling and unable to stand up for our community against racist political attacks by politicians like Engler and Posthumus and their corporate backers. Kilpatrick, like his predecessors in office, is helping the corporations drain our city like parasites, while city workers are fighting for Detroit's future.

We must not allow the pace of the struggle to slacken. It must escalate and involve the community in struggle for the future of our city and the direction of our nation. We are fighting to defend and expand public services and secure jobs for Detroit's youth. The central issues of our fight will shape the character, availability and quality of public services for Detroit and surrounding communities.

 

Who Will Defend Detroit?

In addition to threatening to takeover the DOT, and threats to privatize the Public Lighting Department, suburban politicians and the news media are on another campaign for suburban takeover of our Water & Sewerage Department. Their unstated racist implication is that black people aren't smart enough to run the system. Kilpatrick says he opposes the takeover, but he can not effectively defend us. He has yet to publicly state that these takeover attempts are motivated by racism, as Coleman Young would have done. City Council members oppose the takeover as well, but they lack the power to stop it. We can not rely on our city's elected officials or the Democrats in the state legislature to defend Detroit from racist Republican politicians. That job has fallen on the shoulders of city workers and the community as we lead the fight for Detroit's future.

 

Fight for Fair & Equal Treatment

A lot is riding on city workers’ contracts. Winning justice will take seeing and telling things as they really are. Our fight is about more than the concerns of a particular set of workers. It's the cutting edge of the fight to build a new civil rights movement to win real improvements for the people of Detroit: a real functioning bus system, streets without pot holes, plowed streets in the winter, working street lights and decent parks, not vacant lots!

We can not win by narrowing our focus solely to the details of city workers' contracts. That is the wrong road. The civil rights aspect of the city workers' fight is the truest and most inspirational political battlefield. It is the moral high ground. Our enemies will only expose themselves if they try to fight on those grounds.

 

Preserving the Union

During the first half of the Civil War, President Lincoln attempted to win on the limited basis of "preserving the union", meaning the unity of the nation. The brilliant abolitionist and ex-slave Fredrick Douglass said that the North could not win without facing the larger social issue and abolishing slavery. Lincoln finally was forced to agree. By abolishing slavery the North "preserved the union", and won an historic victory for humanity.

No More Separate and Unequal Treatment

To win today we must acknowledge and lead the larger social struggle against the forced racist degradation of Detroit. City workers need community support to win, and the community needs city workers to lead the fight. Unity must be built on the understanding that Detroit city workers make less money than suburban workers because resources are withheld from black and working-class neighborhoods. The fates of all city workers, black, white, etc., are tied to the fate of the black community.

 

Detroit is the largest majority-black city in the country, and southeast Michigan is the nation's most segregated area. Everything here is separate and unequal: jobs, benefits, schools, streets, street lighting, health care, parks, housing, pollution, shopping, the cops and courts, the attitude of the news media, etc. The community shares our anger, and our need to fight these racist conditions. The community will side with us if we fight for equality, and fight to win

 

This is a Civil Rights Struggle

Any attempt to counter pose the needs of city workers with the interests of the community is an attempt to artificially isolate city workers from our community. Our fight is a civil rights struggle. Martin Luther King recognized this in 1968 when he joined striking black AFSCME garbage collectors in Memphis, Tennessee. In what was clearly AFSCME's finest hour, there was no separation between the fight against racism and the fight for a good contract for city workers. That's why they won.

 

Detroit teachers conducted their successful 1999 strike shouting, "Books, Supplies, Lower Class Size!" The community supported their strike because the teachers were fighting for the students and community as well as for themselves. And they won both reductions in class size and wage increases! Detroit city workers should demand the necessary resources and equal treatment for Detroit's neighborhoods and its workers. If we unite and win, other cities will follow our lead. Our central strike demands should be:

 

• Equal quality services - equal quality jobs! Decent wages with COLA. Reduce health insurance deductions with no loss of benefits;
• Fill the job vacancies with Detroit youth so we have enough workers to serve our neighborhoods;

 

• New equipment to perform quality services;

 

• No takeovers! No privatization! No contracting out!

 

Just like the rest of the community, city workers want better services in our neighborhoods (not just downtown). But they can't provide them while chronically under staffed, under paid, ill equipped, and top heavy with incompetent, abusive supervision! Meanwhile the city continues to pay private contractors more money than city workers to do city workers' jobs. And city workers often have to teach contractors the job, and repair their mistakes. Much of Detroit's water main repair work has been given away to contractors. Yet the contractors' unskilled flagmen make more money than even the best-paid Detroit city water main repair workers.

 

Our Next Step Toward Victory

City workers' contracts expired in July 2001. Kilpatrick is offering nothing but crumbs and concessions. In the past month city workers have given voice to the community's desire to fight. This has changed our struggle from a hopeless, stagnant ritual at the bargaining table, to a dynamic fight which can unite with the community and actually win. Now city workers must:

 

• Set a strike date;

 

• Form an action committee made up of city workers from AFSCME, Teamsters (garbage truck and other drivers), ATU (bus drivers), etc. to build unity in action among rank & file city workers and our unions;

 

• Take our case to the community by leafleting bus riders, neighborhoods, addressing churches, etc.;

 

• Organize job actions at our work sites;

 

• Conduct a determined citywide strike until we win.

 

 

 

Stop Attacks on Civil Rights! No Takeovers!

Attacks on civil rights are increasing despite the fact that most Americans support integration. But passive support for the idea of equality is not enough. Action is urgently needed. Assaults on affirmative action in education and hiring are denying black and other minority youth the education and jobs they deserve. Entire cities are being taken over (Hamtramck, Ecorse, Highland Park, and Flint). Most of these cities are majority-black, of course. Detroit has suffered too many takeovers already (our public schools, the DIA, Public Housing, Recorders Court). Other city-run institutions are under constant threat of takeover (DOT, Water Department). They are now trying to extend the school takeover past the 2004 deadline! Meanwhile, city officials, the old civil rights leaders, union officials – and the Democratic Party to which they all owe allegiance – either helped these takeovers to happen, or refused to take the action necessary to stop them. A new civil rights movement is being built to fight these attacks, and we must help build it to survive.

 

Privatization and contracting-out of our public services is another form of racist takeover. It drains economic and political control from Detroiters, and puts it in the hands of rich white corporation owners, whose goal is profits, not providing services – just like Enron, WorldCom and Tyco. Every public service contract that goes to big business means more outside corporate money funding and controlling our elected officials.

Come hell or high water, public workers will be there. But what if our services are privatized? Minergy Corporation wants to take over sewage sludge incineration from city workers. What if Minergy folds like Enron while the CEOs split with the money? When public services are privatized, jobs, wages and benefits are cut, and rates inevitably rise.

 

By fighting our battle on the grounds of civil rights, city unions and the community can defend our past gains and move forward toward equality and integration. Our community and unions need fresh leadership and grass roots activism. This battle should be the fire in which we forge our new leadership. United we will be an unbeatable force for progress.