Union broadens city workers' cause

UE 150 tries to turn laborers to leaders

RALEIGH -- They back some of North Carolina's lowest-paid workers: toilet cleaners and garbage collectors. No bosses allowed.

They don't lobby much. They don't endorse candidates. They have only about 3,000 members statewide and -- according to their last filing with the U.S. Department of Labor -- about $18,000 in available cash.

But after two weeks with Raleigh's troubled sanitation workers, the organizers of UE Local 150 have helped bring workers' issues into a new light.

Last week, labor strife in Raleigh prompted Mayor Charles Meeker to meet exclusively with leaders of UE 150. Some lawmakers think Raleigh's negotiations could lead to change across North Carolina -- one of the country's least unionized states -- especially by chipping away at its ban on collective bargaining.

"There's increased momentum" to loosen restrictions on organized labor, said Rep. Deborah Ross, a Raleigh Democrat. "I think it's in a better position now than it's ever been. But the passion about this is really Triangle-based right now."

Unions are at a disadvantage in North Carolina -- by law.

It is a right-to-work state, which means that a union shop -- a workplace where union membership is compulsory -- is illegal.

Workers can join unions, but unions cannot enter into contracts with employers on their behalf.

State law prohibits public employees from striking, although some walkouts still happen when working conditions get unbearable.

But unions can rally support, which Raleigh workers have enjoyed from residents who hang union fliers on their trash cans.

Longtime City Hall workers said they had never seen a Raleigh mayor bargain with union leaders alone before Meeker did it Tuesday. City Manager Russell Allen had already refused to do so.

Changing top management has been a cry among all Raleigh sanitation workers. On Monday, picketing union members called for the ouster of Gerald Latta, director of solid waste services, and of Operations Superintendent Lash Hocutt. On Friday, the city announced that the two men would leave their jobs.

Teaching self-reliance

Saladin Muhammad, the union's international representative, said that the group's higher profile in Raleigh is no accident.

It is an outgrowth of work that UE 150 has done with housekeepers in the UNC system, city employees in Charlotte and some workers with the state Department of Health and Human Services.

The strategy has always been to teach workers self-reliance and let them lead their own meetings. When two UE 150 staff members met with Meeker last week, four sanitation workers came along.

Its other tactic has been to link workers' rights to civil rights by bringing church groups and NAACP leaders to events.

When the sanitation workers picketed outside City Hall on Monday, state NAACP President William J. Barber was there to remind the crowd that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was fighting for sanitation workers in Memphis when he was assassinated in 1968.

The idea, Muhammad said, is to turn local labor disputes into a broader cause that the average person will want to join.

It was the workers themselves, not the union, who organized their own walkouts in mid-September.

Still, Muhammad said, "This work stoppage was an act of desperation by workers who had no voice. But it took organization into a union in order to move beyond this important act of courage to more consciously build support."

Grass-roots approach

The UE, which stands for United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, represents about 35,000 people.

It started in the 1930s with workers in appliance factories who built refrigerators and radios. And it was one of a number of unions that was split in the late 1940s by the "red scares," said David Zonderman, a history professor at N.C. State University who specializes in labor issues.