IN THIS EDITION
- Maine AFL-CIO Applauds Passage of Build Back Better Act Through US House
- Update on Bates Workers' Organizing — 3 Ways YOU Can Support Them
- Nearly 100 Picket Merrill Auditorium to Call for Union Busting to Cease
- IATSE Members Ratify Contract with Film & TV Producers
- Harlan Baker’s Labor Play “Jimmy Higgins” — Sat., Dec. 11
- Have a Union Thanksgiving!
- Worker Struggles in Saco & the Rise of the Modern Corporation in Maine
Maine AFL-CIO Applauds Historic Passage of Build Back Better Act Through US House; Urges Quick Senate Passage
Last Friday, the US House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better Act— historic legislation that makes generational investments in workers, the care economy, American manufacturing, labor standards, education, housing, childcare, expansion of Medicare, infrastructure and climate resilience. The measure will also create millions of good paying union jobs, build out the renewable energy economy and reduce emissions driving climate change. It now heads to the US Senate for further negotiations.
“Passage of this pro-worker legislation through the House is welcome news for working class Mainers,” said Cynthia Phinney, President of the Maine AFL-CIO. “Build Back Better will dramatically improve the lives of working Mainers by investing in childcare, healthcare, affordable housing, American manufacturing, the creation of good union jobs and strengthening workers’ right to organize.”
Phinney continued, “Time and time again we hear from working parents who struggle to find affordable child care so they can go to work and earn a living. This bill will relieve stress for thousands of working parents by helping them access affordable, quality child care. By investing in clean energy union jobs, we can address climate change in a way that strengthens collective bargaining rights, creates pathways to good-paying jobs with benefits and builds a highly skilled Maine workforce for the 21st century.”
In addition, the Build Back Better plan will crack down on illegal union busting by providing meaningful penalties for companies that commit unfair labor practices and reinstate the tax deduction for union dues that was taken away in the Trump tax cuts.
“Too often union-busting employers get away with breaking labor laws because they know the penalties are so weak that they have every incentive to illegally prevent workers from exercising their right to form a union,” Phinney added. "Build Back Better will finally begin to hold corporate law breakers accountable and strengthen workers' right to organize and bargain for fair treatment and a better life. After years of suffering stagnant wages and attacks on workers rights, the Build Back Better plan is a tremendous step to building a fairer economy that works for everyone, not just those at the very top.”
Update on Bates Workers' Organizing — 3 Ways YOU Can Support Them
As many of you know, the workers at Bates College in Lewiston have come together to form a union- the Bates Educators and Staff Organization (BESO).
They are organizing to have a voice on the job and a seat at the table when decisions are made that affect them and their work. They are forming a “wall to wall” union where workers across job classifications come together in their common interests and goals, so the union will include everyone except managers and tenured or tenure track faculty. Workers from dining services, housekeeping, grounds and maintenance, athletics, administration, adjunct and contingent faculty and more have come together around their shared vision for a more fair and equitable workplace. You can read their mission statement here.
Unfortunately, Bates College administration has hired expensive union-busting consultants to attempt to dissuade the workers from voting for the union. We believe the decision whether to form a union is the workers’ to make, not management’s.
We want to show these workers that we in the community have their backs. Here are 3 ways you can help.
If you live in Androscoggin County, sign-up to put up a lawn sign in support of the Bates workers. https://forms.gle/tZ5gqc1ws3YxJu1AA
You can also sign up at the same link to volunteer to deliver lawn signs (driving) or canvass to distribute signs (walking), no matter where you live.
- Have your local union sign-on to a letter of support. You can read the local union support letter here. You can have your local sign on by emailing sarah@maineaflcio.org.
- Do you go to church or participate in a faith community, or do you know a local faith leader? Mike Seavey, the faith liaison of the Maine AFL-CIO, is helping to organize a letter of support from Androscoggin County clergy and faith leaders. Please reply to this email and let us know, or contact Mike directly at mick0825 at gmail dot com
Contact Sarah at sarah at maineaflcio dot org with questions, ideas, or to get more involved.
Union members Join IATSE 114 in Calling on Merrill Auditorium to Cease Union Busting
Last week nearly 100 people, including union members from several locals, showed up to support International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 114 workers in calling on the City of Portland to rejoin contract negotiations and cease undermining wages and benefits by bringing in non-union workers for stage events. Members of the Maine State Nurses Association, IBEW 567, UA Plumbers & Pipefitters 716, AFSCME, Teamsters 340, Maine Service Employees Association, LIUNA and others were there to show their solidarity with stage workers.
IATSE 114 is currently working without a contract after its previous contract expired in 2020. Despite several efforts to bring management to the table, union members have been repeatedly rebuffed.
Most recently, Merrill Auditorium announced that it will no longer honor an exclusivity agreement with the union to provide stage labor and instead is allowing non-union workers to take union jobs. Members of IATSE 114 handed out leaflets to audience members last week to call attention to the venue’s anti-union tactics. A stage-light was used to shine a “Stop Union Busting” signal on the auditorium’s wall.
“So many people come to these shows, but very few know what we do,” Steve Price, President of Local 114, told the Maine Beacon. “We are the hands behind entertainment. We roll out the cables, take the stuff off the trucks… We’re the folks that help to put on the shows that you enjoy. We’ve been taking care of this building for many years and we’d like to do that with something more than is in these offers right now.”
Representing 85 members, IATSE 114 has provided labor for a variety of stage events in Maine since 1904. However, despite a longstanding relationship with the city and having an exclusivity agreement to provide labor to the facility in its last contract, former city manager Jon Jennings made the decision to go through a competitive bidding process for stage labor a few months ago. IATSE 114’s contract expired in 2020 and the city has yet to rejoin negotiations despite requests from union leaders.
“We have been the de facto sole provider of stage labor at Merrill since it opened in 1997,” IATSE 114 business agent Doug Born told the Beacon. “And our members provided labor at the old City Hall auditorium for decades before that. We finally got the city to put it in writing several years ago to avoid situations just like this one, but suddenly the city wants to ignore that history and our continuing contribution to its operation.”
Born said that the local received "an amazing outpouring of support from the community and the positive responses received from the many City Councilors and City Councilors-elect," including two of whom came to the picket. He added that IATSE 114 members have decided to push the City of Portland to make the stage hands city employees working under a collective bargaining agreement. "We are no longer interested in chasing another exclusivity agreement only to find ourselves facing the same dilemma in another two years," he said.Speaking to the Beacon, Plumbers & Pipefitters members Brian Clark said he came out to support the IATSE crew because Born has always been there for other unions during labor struggles.“Doug Born has shown up for everybody, all the working class causes, all the union causes. So I’m here for Doug,” Clark said. “And for all my brothers and sisters that are working in labor. Working class power.”Maine IATSE Members Ratify Contracts with Film & TV Producers
Members of the New England Studio Mechanics (IATSE Local 481) have voted to ratify two new contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade group representing producers, major studios and streaming services. The combined popular vote for the two contracts being voted on was very close: 50.3% voted yes and 49.7% voted no. Members voting to reject the contract for the West Coast Locals held the popular vote, and the members voting on the contract for most of the rest of the US voted yes. The union uses a weighted delegate system so supporters narrowly prevailed.
“It was a squeaker and I think there are a lot of people who feel like they were let down and a lot of people who are really glad that we didn’t have to go on strike and that we got some really solid concessions from the producers. We gave nothing up and got pretty much everything that the negotiating committee wanted,” said Wayne Simpson, President of IATSE 481, which represents 1,100 technicians, artisans, and craftspeople in the motion picture industry in Maine and New England.
Simpson said the most important issues in negotiations were hours and working conditions. The previous Area Standards Agreement with the local allowed producers to frequently require members to work “Fraturdays,” which is when employees start working late on Friday and finish when it’s light on Saturday, only to go back to work at 6am Monday. The new contract addresses these some of these concerns by including:
- Guaranteeing more rest at the end of the workday and on the weekend
- Stiffer financial penalties to producers who require IATSE members to work through meal breaks
- Across-the-board wage increases, including lifting those at the bottom of the pay scale with a living wage
Simpson said one of the major sticking points for members who opposed the deal was that it only requires a ten-hour turnaround between work days. They would like it to be longer so that they can get proper rest between shoots. He said members will be carefully evaluating the extent these new changes will create a culture change in the film and TV industry from the traditional practice of overworking workers and treating them like machines.
“I think the biggest take away is that you can’t communicate too much in different ways to members about what’s going on during negotiations,” said Simpson. “You have to try to do your diligence with membership so that everyone understands what’s going on. You’ll never be a hundred percent effective because some people don’t pay attention, but my feeling is that there could have been more member involvement.”
Harlan Baker’s Labor Play “Jimmy Higgins” — Sat., Dec. 11
After a two-year absence, playwright and actor Harlan Baker (PATFA-AFT) will once again be performing his one-man play "Jimmy Higgins Line Byline" on Saturday, December 11 at 7pm at Geno's, 625 Congress Street in Portland.
Jimmy Higgins: Line By Byline is about an old radical who tells his story to a young man. Jimmy grows up in the first half of the 20th century in middle America. The play follows his involvement in various labor and socialist struggles from the campaign to free Tom Mooney, the presidential campaign of Eugene Debs, the May Day rallies of 1919, the campaign of Sen. Robert La Follette Sr. on the Progressive Party Ticket to his becoming a reporter on labor struggles in Alabama and Michigan.
He witnesses the Battle of the Overpass and Henry Ford’s violent attempt to intimidate labor leader Walter Ruether. This is a tour-de-force production for a single actor. While many of the characters have a basis in actual history, Jimmy Higgins, himself, is a fictional character tying together the events of the early 20th Century.
There will be musical accompaniment by Kurt Baker, most know as the frontman of the pop punk band The Leftovers and The Kurt Baker Combo. Stay tuned to "Jimmy Higgins'" page for updates.Have a Union Thanksgiving!
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Maine Labor History:
Worker Struggles in Saco & the Rise of the Modern Corporation in Maine
On Monday, March 29, 1841, 500 young women marched out of the York Manufacturing Company on Factory Island. They paraded through the streets of Saco and Biddeford waving banners with slogans like “We Scorn to Be Slaves” as the village band marched along with them playing jaunty tunes.
The women were fed up with living in crowded company-owned boarding houses, sleeping in cramped, uncomfortable bedrooms that had poor ventilation and lacked privacy. They were constantly under the watchful eye of boarding house attendants who made sure the rooms were kept “scrupulously clean and carefully supervised.” The previous year the company had imposed a wage cut, allegedly necessary to remain profitable, and there were rumors of another.
Then came the breaking point — the company announced a new rule prohibiting workers from seeking their own housing. As a citizen review committee later reported, the women, “who had previously been distinguished for growing intelligence and hitherto perfect propriety of behavior,” “turned out” right after breakfast and “greatly disturbed the quietude” of the “usually peaceful village” of Saco.
According to an account in the Boston Post, between 8 and 9 a.m. the strikers “waded through the clay-mud, for which Saco is peculiarly distinguished.” Most of them wore “India-rubbers,” but many of them had only thin shoes to trudge through the muck. Some bystanders were disgusted by the workers’ decidedly un-feminine behavior and their flagrant disregard for authority. “Vile!” shouted one. “Wretch!” spat another. But the textile workers defiantly chanted back:
We are not slaves! – We scorn the name!
We ask not friend’s or foreman’s favor.
We’re freeman’s daughters – and we claim
The rights that woman’s father gave her!
Not all the locals were offended by this act of defiance, and some men even joined the strikers to support the “weaker party” in the labor struggle — “especially when the party is women,” the committee observed.
It was the first “turn-out” of female workers in Maine and part of a broader struggle by textile workers throughout New England for dignity and fair treatment in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. As young Yankee Protestant women in the 19th century, they were expected to be submissive, pious and pure. But when they found themselves among an emerging working class in the machinery of a profit-hungry corporation, many realized the power they could wield if they withheld their labor to force their demands.