AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff gives us this first-hand report of Student Labor Action Project events he took part in this week.

For the past six days, I’ve been privileged to be a part of the SLAP Week of Action. Sponsored by the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), Jobs with Justice, United States Student Association, and United Students against Sweatshops, the week of action honors César Chávez and Dr. Martin Luther King by uniting students and workers in local fights and struggles for worker rights.  The actions take place between March 30 and April 4, the anniversaries of the birth of César Chávez  and the assassination of Dr. King.

The experience this year for me has been inspiring, uplifting, incredible, and hopeful.

As I write this, I’m on the way home from Buffalo where 250 students and workers celebrated a huge victory this week for 200 SUNY Buffalo Janitors to win union recognition with CSEA/AFSCME.  Just last Friday, responding to news of a major action to be held today, and after a student-led campaign, President Simpson of SUNY Buffalo announced they were ending the outsourcing of janitor work, that all campus janitors would come back to work for the university and that they were free to join CSEA/AFSCME.  In making the announcement, he made an important argument for the union movement.  He said the outsourcing work paid too little and led to high turnover, low productivity and low quality.

Today’s rally and march was a real celebration, the kind of celebration that comes after a significant victory. CSEA/AFSCME leader Flo Trippi spoke of her gratitude to the students for leading the effort to end outsourcing.  Allison Duwe, local Jobs with Justice leader, spoke about the importance of honoring Dr. King and César Chávez  and fighting for economic justice.  Students spoke about their passion for economic justice—a  passion we desperately need in the debate about the future of America and the future of our union movement. We rallied first at the Student Union, then marched to the Administration Building and rallied there.  After the rally, the students took me for the best Buffalo wings I’ve ever had—and the hottest.

I started last Thursday, March 30, with students at the University of Vermont, the Vermont Workers’ Center/Jobs with Justice, and organizers and leaders from the Burlington labor movement.  We rallied on campus for the respect of workers’ rights by the administration.  Students chaired and emceed the rally and spoke about their responsibility to fight for economic justice and workers’ rights on their campus, in their community.  One group of workers is fighting for the freedom to form a union with the AFT.  The coalition is also fighting for a livable wage for all campus workers and union recognition and responsible contract language for new university construction.  That rally issued a fresh challenge to University President Fogel to respect the human rights of everyone working on that campus.  After the rally, two of the students joined me on a live radio broadcast.  Their familiarity with the issues and compelling arguments for the respect of workers’ rights in academia evidenced a very impressive seriousness and a commitment with which the university administration will have to deal.

That Thursday night, many of us from the rally joined a large dinner and discussion where the Fletcher Allen Hospital nurses, members of AFT, prepared to bargain their second contract with the solidarity and unity of the students, Jobs with Justice, political leaders, and other unions behind them.

On Saturday, April 1, I joined Jobs with Justice, Interfaith Worker Justice, students from several Chicago universities, and the Coalition for Immokalee Workers for a five-mile march from the McDonald’s in the Latino immigrant community of Pilsen past five other McDonald’s to a huge, rockin’ rally at the Rock ’n’ Roll McDonald’s in the Loop in downtown Chicago.  We marched and rallied as part of the coalition’s campaign to get McDonald’s to join Taco Bell in forcing the growers of their tomatoes to pay the farmworkers in South Florida a penny more per pound of tomatoes they pick and to negotiate to improve horrendous conditions in the fields.  You may remember that this organization, the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, exposed slavery in those very fields a few years ago.

We began Saturday with a traditional indigenous prayer and blessing and prayers from the local Catholic bishop and Father Brendan Curran, longtime labor supporter and pastor of the local church.  The coalition believes in rigorous marches, and this was no exception.  But the two-plus hours of the march gave me a wonderful chance to listen to coalition activists and organizers talk about their innovative and nontraditional organizing and campaigning.

Given the erosion of workplace rights in America, we in the AFL-CIO have a lot to learn from other forms of organizing, campaigning and collective activity.  Exempted from coverage by the National Labor Relations Act when it was enacted in 1935, farmworkers in America have never experienced the freedom to form unions.  That fact makes the victory of the Immokalee coalition over Taco Bell and their campaign at McDonald’s and the great North Carolina victory by Baldemar Velasquez and FLOC so impressive and heartening.

Once we got downtown to the Rock ’n’ Roll McDonald’s, we were greeted by a crowd that swelled to 300-plus.  Students, workers, activists and ministers joined the Immokalee workers in their demand to McDonald’s.

Yesterday, April 3, back in Washington, D.C., I joined a rowdy march for workers’ rights from the AFL-CIO building to the administration of George Washington University (GW).  We had short protests at the American Beverage Association against Coca-Cola’s practices in Columbia, at McDonald’s, at a Verizon Wireless store for Verizon Wireless’s refusal to honor the right of its workers to form a union, at Admiral Security, and finally at the GW for its refusal to honor the results of a National Labor Relations Board election of their adjunct faculty.

This seems like a lot to me, but these are only four of 250 actions at 162 campuses this week.

At these four actions, I was privileged to speak about the significance and potential power of this student-labor coalition and to note that the most powerful force for economic justice in the modern world has been coalitions of students, unions and people of faith.  At each stop, we brought the very real gratitude of the AFL-CIO for the actions, organizing and campaigning of the Student Labor Action Project, United Students Against Sweatshops, United States Student Association, and Jobs with Justice.  I also reminded students of the fundamental necessity of fighting and winning our struggle to restore the right to organize and bargain collectively.

This work is a critical ingredient in our fight to restore the freedom to form unions.  Forming coalitions and alliances with like-minded people and organizations, linking local organizing campaigns and workplace fights to our larger national struggle, turning local efforts into human rights campaigns—all happened this week and all are essential to our ultimate victory.

It was a real privilege for me to be part of it all.

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