General News

Human-rights rally slams union busting

by Michael Hirsch

Jan 19, 2006 3:15 PM

Five p.m. A crowd of labor supporters is forming in a frozen Washington Square Park and the sky is already pitch black. Not an inviting scene to make the case that union membership is a human right. But the biting wind and the ambient 20-degree temperature didn’t freeze enthusiasm as some 300 unionists shared warm words for striking graduate assistants, hotel and child-care workers and others trying to unionize. Still, as speaker after speaker pledged solidarity, routinely asking, “Is Labor in the House?” one shivering on-looker responded, “I wish we were in the house.”

The Dec. 9 event, organized by the New York City Central Labor Council and called to draw attention to a series of union organizing efforts, also commemorated the 1948 signing of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and Central Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin underscored the connection. “What does labor have to do with human rights?” he asked rhetorically. “everything. If we lose the fight, we lose the war. So we’re here to defend free speech and the right to strike.” The UN declaration enumerates a string of human rights, including that “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”

Standing on a snow-spackled stage that hosted the speakers, platform and bookended by two large, inflated Grinch Santas wearing NYU identification tags — a reference to the surrounding university’s breaking off of negotiations with its own graduate assistants union — UFT Vice President for Career and Technical Education High Schools Michael Mulgrew fired up the crowd. He said that recent moves against unions — including the Ford Motor Company’s announcement of tens of thousands of layoffs — “is a wake-up call that says we will fight.”

He gave as an example of fighting the work of the UFT and its state affiliate, NYSUT, in getting 6,000 family child-care workers to sign union cards, and he demanded that the state pass legislation allowing the union to sign up all of the state’s 52,000 providers.

NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi introduced child-care worker Lourdes Lebronas as “an everyday hero who allows working people to work,” and Lebronas electrified the crowd with her tales of how miserly the state is in compensating child-care workers.

The crowd roared when NYU history graduate assistant Sarah Cornell recalled what conditions were like before her organization — the UAW-affiliated Graduate Student Organizing Committee — was formed. “Don’t tell me I don’t need a union,” she said, turning to face the towering Bobst Library across the park, which houses the NYU administration, “because I was there and I’m not going back. I cannot live without my salary, but I won’t work without the security of a contract.”

Among UFTers at the event was Off-site Education Services Chapter Leader Michael Friedman, who said he was heartened by the broad show of “real solidarity among workers. I’m absolutely freezing, but it made me feel warm to be here.”