Tag Archives: Student Labor Action Project

Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) Connects College Campuses to Union Movement

1 Feb

AFL-CIO Now Blog:

Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) Connects College Campuses to Union Movement

AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita joins Chris Hicks, Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) coordinator, to discuss the parallels between campus and community organizing.

Founded in 1999 as a joint initiative between Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association, the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) engages student activists with economic justice campaigns in their communities and campuses.

Across the country, students in local SLAP chapters meet to organize around issues that affect both students and workers. Currently, campuses are working together to campaign against dramatic state budget cuts that threaten the layoffs of thousands of workers and increase fee tuitions, which leave students with astronomical amounts of debt.

As coordinator, Chris Hicks helps student activists build relationships with local unions and community and faith-based groups and Jobs with Justice coalitions. Hicks said:

SLAP supports the growing student movement for economic justice by making links between campus and community organizing, providing skills training to build lasting student organizations, and developing campaigns that win concrete victories for working families while breaking the poverty cycle by fighting for access to higher education and full and fair employment.

Every year from March 28 to April 4, SLAP organizes more than 150 campuses during the National Student Labor Week of Action. Across the country, students hold hundreds of events to celebrate the lives of César Chávez and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and build solidarity between students and workers.

Before joining SLAP, Hicks, a recent college grad from Wichita State University, worked as a union organizer for SEIU. His first memory of the union movement came from his mother’s attempt to organize her workplace. The experience helped to expose Hicks to the collective power of working people.

For Hicks, the student and union movements have always gone hand in hand.

Students graduate [and] want the best workplace conditions possible. The interest of the union movement is the interest of the student movement, and that goes both ways. Students should care [about unions] because as soon as they graduate, the labor movement is where they will be. If they don’t fight as students to protect jobs, to stop corporate greed and to stand with workers, then they will be worse off for it. If they do those things, though, and understand that what directly affects workers, indirectly affects them, they will be much better off.

Learn more about the Student Labor Week of Action at www.studentlabor.org. For individuals or groups interested in getting involved with SLAP, please contact slap@jwj.org.

WI Students and AFSCME Members Fighting for Human Rights

10 Dec

Great letter to the editor in the University of Wisconsin’s student paper, The Badger Herald, about the Student Labor Action Coalition and AFSCME Local 171 standing together in protest of the privatization of food services at a new facility on campus:

Wisconsin Idea corrupted by WID privatization move

By Letters to the Editor
Wednesday, December 8, 2010 5:00 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, December 8, 2010 11:17:37 p.m.

When students and workers protested the opening of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery last week, they did so after a semester-long campaign and as part of a carefully planned escalation strategy.

The issue at hand is the privatization of food service at the WID. As such, the employees of these restaurants are not guaranteed the same benefits or wages as every other campus employee.

The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 171 represents over 1,600 blue-collar workers on campus and has fought to guarantee them a living wage, affordable health care and fair representation. In contrast, Food Fight, the private company contracted to run the WID restaurants, pays their employees barely above minimum wage and offers an unaffordable health care plan. Working families cannot support themselves on $8.50/hour.

The exploitation of workers on campus is absolutely unacceptable. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation defends this privatization of food service through a plethora of legal technicalities and in doing so merely proves that they are willing to exploit Madison workers in an effort to turn a greater profit.

The WID validates these actions through the facts that it is part of a “public-private partnership” and that 70 percent of the building is controlled by private interests. The logic that the WID can gerrymander the building into areas where they can disregard the ethics and governing principles of the University of Wisconsin is extremely questionable and becomes even more debatable when the unionized janitorial staff services 100 percent of the building.

The Student Labor Action Coalition and AFSCME understand that these arguments might hold up in court; our outrage is not in regards to legality, but rather, to basic human rights.

SLAC and AFSCME have been running the campaign to stop the privatization of campus jobs for the past four months and are well aware of the legal arguments, despite The Badger Herald’s assertions.

SLAC knows this campaign will not be easily won, but also knows that this fight is critical because it is emblematic of the problems of the public-private partnership model which Chancellor Biddy Martin touts in her mysterious Badger Partnership.

The fact that the WARF is able to blatantly ignore the ethical standards of the university, from which it receives the totality of its funding, demonstrates that the privatization of the UW will result in a destruction of the university’s mission and values.

The Badger Herald argues that the restaurants should be privately run because “Union food sucks.” As logically sound as this argument may appear, the food quality is not dependent on the treatment of the worker who makes it. The WID could easily allow Food Fight to make the food while also requiring that it employ public workers. It could just as easily allow the Wisconsin Union to manage the restaurants while requiring a new menu.

AFSCME and SLAC demand that the WID hires public, unionized employees, because if we allow the WID to trample on workers’ rights, we are sanctioning the corruption of the Wisconsin Idea and the distortion of social justice on this campus.

Jonah Zinn (jzinn@wisc.edu) and Xander Gieryn (gieryn@wisc.edu) are members of the Student Labor Action Coalition.

Netroots Nation Young Workers Panel

26 Jul

On Friday at Netroots Nation, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler led a panel of three young grassroots labor activists on “Taking Charge of Our Future“.  As Maria Escobar of the Student Labor Action Project commented, the economic crisis makes this the ideal time to build a young workers movement.  She has seen the student-worker connection grow stronger as more students leave higher education to enter the workforce because of skyrocketing tuition, and more workers go back to school to learn new skills because of the employment situation.

Shuler began the discussion by noting the precarious state of young workers in the labor market and the efforts of the AFL-CIO, but the conversation quickly evolved into how can the labor movement better engage young activists.  The panelists themselves represent the varied ways young workers get involved:

  • Sara Flocks, who founded Young Workers United based in San Francisco, became an activist because she held a variety of low-paying service-sector jobs before working for a union and learning all of the benefits of a union contract.  After looking around and seeing her friends caught in a “Bermuda triangle” of going to college so they could get a good job, but unable to pay for college because they were living on a service-sector job salary, she decided that something must be done.  She began with conversations and workplace organizing, which spread to political organizing and then involving more workers through community college organizing.
  • Cory McCray, of Young Trade Unionists in Baltimore, was an apprentice in the trades who noticed that the union gave him greater wages and benefits than his friends had in non-union workplaces.  One day the seasoned (i.e. older) leadership of the labor council brought a group of young workers together and asked them to lead an effort to engage young workers so everyone recognizes the economic benefits McCray already did.  Within a week it was up and running.  Now the group holds monthly meetings that are “fun and interesting”, but also bring young people across industries together to build solidarity.
  • Escobar grew up in a working-class, immigrant household.  As a student at Florida State University she connected with the workers on campus because she understood their struggle and led other students in economic justice campaigns.  SLAP is a joint initiative of the United States Student Association and United Students Against Sweatshops that works on supporting campus worker contract fights, living wage campaigns, anti-budget cut battles, and general economic justice awareness campaigns.

So what were the magic words of wisdom?  What is the silver-bullet?

There is none.  Flocks made the important point that the one-on-one conversations are necessary, but so is making a real difference in the lives of the members.  By first leading workplace organizing in restaurants and malls to win back wages, end sexual harassment, and prevent the abuse of immigrant workers, YWU built trust and had real success.  From there they were able to mobilize their members politically to “vote themselves a raise”.  Workplace organizing victories will only get them so far, but by winning an increase in the living wage, paid sick days, and health care for all in San Francisco they were able to help out many more workers.  Now they even have one of their own running for office!

McCray made the point that YouTube helps get the message out if videos are kept short and to the point, like their recent film: Young Trade Unionists Join Forces.  He also made the point that to re-brand the movement, unions need to do a better job of getting out into the community.  To which Shuler agreed and noted the work many of the trades do with Habitat for Humanity.

With regard to the work of SLAP, Shuler made the great point that very often unions rely on students and young activists for help when there are contract issues, but it needs to be more of a two-way street.  The labor movement needs to better partner with many of the organizations out there that are already engaging young people whether around student aid issues, or the environment, or whatever.

Perhaps the most important point for those in the 60 person crowd looking for inspiration was made by McCray: Young Trade Unionists is 100% volunteer.  Folks wanting to figure out how to make their organization work should not worry so much about economic resources.  If you see the need for a young workers organization, just make it happen.  That’s the real answer to the “how” question.

You can watch the panel here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/8465000.

AFL Continues Outreach to Young Workers

22 Jul

Good news, the AFL-CIO’s outreach to young workers with two events over the next week!  The first is tomorrow at  Netroots Nation where Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler will join Tula Connell, the AFL’s media director, Maria Escobar, of the Student-Labor Action Project, Sara Flocks, with the California Labor Federation and Young Workers United, and Cory McCray, with Young Trade Unionists of Baltimore.   The event can be watched live on the Netroots Nation stream.

Young Workers: Taking Charge of Our Future

Friday, July 23rd 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM
Panel, Brasilia 1

More than a third of workers age 35 and under cannot pay the bills; seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses; and a third are forced to live at home with their parents. How can young workers avoid becoming the nation’s new underclass? Hear from panelists who are taking charge of their economic future by forming coalitions and networking with unions to reshape the traditional structure of workplace-based unions and reach young people where they’re at, while building on the power of collective bargaining. Find out how you can take part in a grassroots mobilization that’s shaking up the traditional face of the labor movement.

The second event features Shuler talking with young union members in Minnesota as a follow-up to the Next Up Summit in DC last month:

Young Workers Roundtable with AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler

July 28, 2010 – 4:00pm – 6:00pm

How can we reach young workers and build the labor movement ? How can young union members shape their unions? How can we build upon what so many others fought for to protect working families? How can we take advantage of technology to communicate with union members?

Curious? These are some of the questions that will be asked at the Young Workers Roundtable Discussion hosted by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler on July 28. Sponsored by the Minnesota AFL-CIO, this event builds upon the Next Up Summit held in Washington, D.C. in June that brought hundreds of young union members together to discuss the same questions. Minnesota’s union members are ready to take it to the next level through this discussion and design a program that local unions can use to engage locals and bring the young worker’s voice to the table.

If you are a union member between the ages of 18-35 and would like to participate in this discussion, please contact Jessica Hayssen, Field Coordinator at the Minnesota AFL-CIO, at 651-261-8559 or jhayssen@mnaflcio.org by July 19.

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