By David McCall. is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW). Originally produced by the Independent Media Institute.
Donneta Williams, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1025 and a longtime optical fiber maker at the Corning plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, knows how important it is for workers intent on forming a union to speak directly with peers who walk in the same shoes.
So Williams agreed to send three of her colleagues to Corning’s Tarboro facility, about 145 miles away, when workers at that site approached the union with questions about organizing.
Local 1025 members shared firsthand accounts of how the union boosted their wages, gave them a voice, and kept them safe on the job. And in May 2024, the workers at Tarboro filed for an election to join the USW.
They’re among a growing number of workers across the South eager to leverage the power of solidarity and build brighter futures, even as CEOs and Republicans in this part of the country still conspire to hold them down.
“It’s all about making life better,” said Williams, who also serves as a vice president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO, noting that workers are organizing across numerous industries in a string of Southern states with traditionally low numbers of union members.
“The narrative on unions in the South needs to change,” she added, pointing out that growing numbers of workers are grasping the benefits of collective action and demanding their fair share in the booming post-pandemic economy.
“We’re here,” she said. “We’re strong. We’re standing up, and we’re fighting with all that we have.”
About 1,400 workers at the Blue Bird electric bus factory in Fort Valley, Georgia, in 2023 voted overwhelmingly to organize through the USW.
The vote was a breakthrough for workers on the front lines of a vital, growing industry. It also sent a pointed, defiant message to a Republican governor who lies about unions and tries to prevent Georgians from joining them.
On the heels of that monumental victory, autoworkers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overcame Republican opposition and voted by a huge majority to unionize.
Their counterparts at a Hyundai plant in Alabama continue their own organizing drive, citing safety issues and irregular scheduling making it virtually impossible to make plans outside of work. Despite the poor conditions that these and other workers face, however, the state’s anti-union governor brags about her subservience to corporations and urges workers to vote against their best interests.
Corning, a maker of glass products for broadband, solar power, and many other industries, has seven locations in North Carolina. While only workers at Wilmington enjoy USW membership now, their counterparts at other sites across the state intend to change that.
Williams says workers are educating themselves about collective action, seeing through the right-wing corporate pandering, and then shrugging off the South’s anti-labor traditions to chart a path forward for their families.
“The mindset of workers, in general, has changed,” observed Williams, who credits President Joe Biden’s pro-union agenda and job-creating legislation like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with helping to fuel demand for unions.
“We are in full support of everyone who is trying to organize,” she said, noting that North Carolina’s Democratic governor supports unions, unlike his Republican counterparts in other states. “We’re helping any way that we can.”
In one-on-one meetings and on Zoom calls, for example, Local 1025 representatives talk to prospective union members about how they bargain higher wages, quality health care, and retirement security.
Williams said she can sense the workers’ interest growing as she explains how unions empower their members to look out for one another, fight discrimination, and ensure fairness in scheduling. And she emphasizes that workers at every location control their own destiny and build the contract that’s right for them.
“It’s your contract,” she says. “It’s what you want your workplace to look like. Every workplace is different.”
Unions lift up entire communities, a U.S. Treasury Department report confirmed in 2023.
They raise members’ wages by as much as 15 percent, creating a competitive environment in which non-unionized employers also must increase pay to hold on to workers. Union contracts provide workers with better benefits and retirement security than they’d otherwise earn, and their focus on workplace safety “can pull up whole industries,” the report concluded.
Unions fight favoritism and discrimination, creating more equitable workplaces and communities. The collective spirit forged inside the organized shop extends beyond the plant gates, with union members not only voting more often than other workers but also volunteering and donating to charity more often.
“You own this. Don’t let the boss own this,” longtime USW activist David Beard tells workers who are considering an organizing drive to take control of their futures, noting unions are families that safeguard members from unfair treatment.
“You’re not protected without a union, especially if you’re a mouthy guy like me,” explained Beard, executive board member for Local 752L, which represents workers at the Goodyear plant in Texarkana, Arkansas.
Companies long located in the South because of generous incentive packages and non-union workforces. Although companies and Republicans desperately want to maintain the status quo, he said, “people are hungry” for better.
During one conference call, Williams stunned workers at a non-union Corning site when she explained the holiday premium pay Local 1025 members receive. She pointed out that those workers can fight for the same pay—and get her help doing it.
“We’re just stronger together, and we are here to support them,” she said.
As long as union bosses are FAR more reactionary, corrupted by (now frequently, international) Capital & beholding to duopoly’s Neoliberal cartel Kleptocrats, rank & file union members will simply be beholding to; owned & victimized by another layer of smug, complicit bourgeois scoundrels? So, NO grassroots bottom-up way to fight wholly-owned, corrupt duopoly!
Hear, hear! I was a member of 6 unions – AGMA, SAG, AFTRA, AEA, NYSUT and UFT. Whereas this might have been slightly better (philosophically) than no union membership, they all posed far more than they delivered, while costing a pretty penny to be (and remain) a part of, whether one had work or not, and assuring that union leaders were all tremendously over-remunerated, i.e. they essentially sucked. When push came to shove, we were almost always shoved.
I was an AGMA rep and here’s what I encountered. Management at opera houses wanted free rehearsal time from members. especially when cast changes brought in unrehearsed talent. There were union regulations that required said management to pay for those added rehearsals. When I objected to the free labor, management, in collusion with the union and subverting the contract, agreed to make the extra rehearsals “voluntary.” Now, most artists do not want to deprive either colleagues or themselves from rehearsals that would enable the show to go well and found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Yet, you can imagine that any talent who chose not to give free labor never worked at those houses again. Every job for the journeyman soloists going from house to house was effectively “part-time” (except in Europe where one usually had a “house contract” at one venue/in one town where they sang regularly for a fixed salary w/benefits, while allowing for “guest contracts” at rival venues if you were lucky enough to be called) and these “part-time” US gigs did not include health insurance or significant pension opportunities [this was decades ago and it may have gotten better since i left the grind, but I doubt it].
Trying to be an actor in NYC required accumulating on stage credits which meant working off-off broadway for NO wages. Zero. Zip. Nada… jobs that were openly listed in BackStage as “non-union” and “no pay.” If one was lucky enough to get a job that allowed for, indeed required, union membership than you were forever more disallowed, could not even audition for, those non-union no pay jobs, the credits for which were exactly the thing that got one’s resume looked at seriously. Meanwhile the cattle call auditions for “union only” artists were just that, cattle calls for the sake of “fairness” where the chance of landing a job is almost always nil. Unless you had the right “look” – regardless of talent – you’d show up and ultimately be dismissed before even getting in front of audition panel. If you were “considered” for a leading role and actually got the audition, you knew that role was probably already cast with a “name” for box office purposes.
As a non-tenured faculty member at 3 universities, work loads were ever increasing… but only after the contracts were signed. The only option remaining was to accept or quit. Meanwhile TA’s were regularly exploited to cover even more increasing work. Now, in he past several years TA’s have done well with unionizing,,, but it’s still effectively slave labor, especially compared to the tenured faculty who often put in the least number of hours than anyone.
Part of staying sane is understanding that life isn’t fair. Many are called, few are chosen. And I appreciate Lena Khan’s efforts and rhetoric but most of the wins being trumpeted as a Biden bright spot are too little, too late and include many false promises. IMHO. Never mind that the increases in wages do not counteract the inflation in costs faced by the working classes, while at the same time pushing many wage slaves into higher tax brackets.
Now, mind you AFL/CIA’s economic hit man Stuart Appelbaum is an outlier & WSWS has an agenda. But early COVID/ Biden period was illustrative, yet simply wasn’t covered by media OR liberal blog’s! NYC’s HCWs, teachers, line cooks, warehouse, transit & delivery workers were simply FED to working sick, infectious & unions simply enforced lethal or disabling actions Cuomo, Trump & de Blasio fed them to, ignored by ALL media? Bernie & AOC & Amy Goodman celebrating a Teamsters Local’s sweetheart deal at Hunts Point & Teachers, First Responder, Amazon & gig-app workers tried & failed to organize rank & file walk-out & mass strikes do to Biden’s using unions to feed us to a BSL-3?
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/10/pers-a10.html
Thanks for the extended sharing. I too had a period of union membership. I think they are vulnerable to abuse like any bureaucracy and have both a heroic history in mining and heavy industry and some skeletons in the closet when it comes to the construction and entertainment fields.
But car factories are hard work and if they can work it out down South more power to them.
It’s NOT unions, it’s political corruption of union bosses (party politicians & MEDIA) certainly nothing new? It’s a matter of perspective, but I’ll never be able to unsee union/ party collusion, since Reagan’s Miracle & attempts at grass-root housecleaning, trampled by “our” politicians, various community & religious groups that formerly fought corruption. They’re basically on the other side now? I’ve found the original citation (Google’s SEOd down it’s memory hole, forgive me but it’s virtually impossible to find ANYTHING contradicting DNC’s narrative!
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/10/appe-o08.html
I had seen this article–guess we’ll see what happens. However the UAW did just lose their vote at Mercedes in Alabama and safe to say those Corning plants in NC are not even close to the size of an auto factory.
No hint of anything like this at our local BMW mega plant and SC has been cited for the lowest union participation of any state. It will be an uphill climb here.
And BTW while the politicians are on board it should be noted that the industrial colonizers of the South have almost always been from “away” whether Europe and Asia or New England and a few Detroit led assembly plants which probably were union. Atlanta had at least three.
If my comment prints I don’t know why I mentioned Lina Khan, as I meant to reference the author of the article… my brain is addled with age in ways that continue to surprise. Not good that.
Never understood why workers would *not* want to unionize. Can anybody enlighten me?
Same reason, anybody who claims to represent you ends up on the other side, acting as a gatekeeper, to betray you to those exploiting you, for their cut of the proceeds?
See: teachers, healthcare workers, transit, automotive, warehouse, delivery, first responder, farm, CAFO & food workers, retail clerks, first responders: designated as essential & fed to COVID by their work-from-home bosses? This was all recounted, daily, for all to evaluate, online?
I find the anti-union comments peculiar. I was a high school teacher and union member 30 odd years ago in Montreal, Quebec for a few years. My union represented us well and fought hard to defend our interests. We had a province-wide strike (100,000 workers) and our union leadership was right there with us. No-one that I talked to in my school thought otherwise. Quite the contrary.
In part because of that experience I went on to work for a large Canadian private sector union as Director of research. We had many tough fights with employers including many strikes and other work actions. To my knowledge the union hierarchy never sold out our members to the employers. We didn’t always win everything we wanted and occasionally lost a strike. But it was never because the leadership sold out the workers we represented.
Regarding the salaries of the leadership, they were directly linked to the average wages of our members. The leadership were adequately paid but never lived some kind of life of the elite.
Finally, the Canadian labour movement has been crucial in getting and keeping the social programs we rely on: single payer healthcare for all, public pensions, one year of paid leave for childcare for newly borne children, very low cost childcare for working families. Just next week Parliament will pass a law to introduce the first steps of Pharmacare covering everyone for diabetes medicines and contraception.
All these measures were strongly opposed by Big Business but came into effect thanks to the efforts of the labour movement and its millions of workers on the ground.
To those union skeptical commenters: who else has the ability to protect workers’ conditions of work and health and safety as well as mobilise millions of people to make real change happen?
Interesting and helpful comment.
Also, Canadian union membership is at a rate above 3 times higher than the American rate: 32 to 10.
Lucky you up there in Canada. Obviously the “anti-union” commenters had a different experience. I was not anti-union, I was simply aware that my unions did not protect as promised, were rife with corruption, and often limited how much of my earned income I got to keep. And I was one of the lucky ones, did well comparatively, had a successful career in a world where the competition is extreme and the jobs are scarce, plus I sang mostly opera where the fees earned are significantly higher than for non-classical singing actors. Very few performing artists in NYC survived w/o a day job in my days… which is where non-tenured faculty positions teaching voice (another highly competitive work environment reserved for the lucky few) served to take up the slack. I also had a partner and between the two of us we squeaked by.
But as I said, that was decades ago, things may have gotten better and agree that, if that is so, it will have been because the unions fought for and became more successful at delivering a living wage w meaningful benefits. Unions are only as good as the union bosses who run them. I don’t think that truth is “:anti-union.”
@ Blitzklieg @ 6:43 pm
Certainly every union is different and has its own history, practices and degree of activism.
I do take exception with the term “union boss” since in the unions I know it is the membership that selects its leaders through a system of representative democracy which admittedly has its faults. It also has the connotation that the leadership lives very well, like a boss. I have known many such people in union leadership and they while they do live a comfortable middle class life they do not live the life of the elite by any means.
An addition to my description of social programs unions have worked toward, is the new dental program that covers about one third of the population, those with a lower income. It is not ideal. It should universal, i.e. provide the same full coverage for everyone regardless of income. It was a judgment call by the Labour movement’s political ally the New Democratic Party. The party felt it was the best it could achieve at the time. The hope is to broaden it in the future. Let’s hope this happens sooner rather than later.
Finally, with respect to the initial steps toward a Pharmacare program I alluded to in my previous comment, here is a video of the press conference on June 3 of the leader of the New Democratic Party underlining the importance of the work of the labour movement in achieving this breakthrough (within the first 2 minutes of the video). Note this is only the first step. The labour movement is working to broaden the program in the future.
https://www.cpac.ca/headline-politics/episode/jagmeet-singh-on-pharmacare-bill-progress-on-mmiwg-calls-to-justice?id=393bce6a-a7f0-4953-909e-755766182642
It sounds like the atmosphere in the US is more poisonous on both sides.
I have my own Canadian experience as a paid intern one summer 30 years ago, for the government of Alberta, in the HR department that dealt with everyday claims from employees. We had a well-defined four-level arbitration system with union involvement at each stage.
As it was, it was accepted by HR that there would be valid claims coming in that should be escalated to the lawyers, and possibly go into next year’s contract negotiations, and the lower arbitration levels served as an effective pressure valve allowing people to understand that they are taken seriously even with complaints on the level of “how dare you move the coffee machine to the 9th floor”, and there was general appreciation for the established framework. But I could also see how easy it would be for an ambitious politician to wreak havoc.