I arrived in South Florida
10 years ago. It was not quite the voyage my grandparents took from Naples, Istanbul and though
it will never be verified --from Havana (the old
joke was that they thought they were in the US
but stayed in Cuba for 17
years) – yet, my journey was still quite the drive from Brooklyn to Palm Beach County. I came here like all other
immigrants from the City – in search of the sunshine, bare bodies, and to be
closer to whatever family was left and who had migrated years prior. While
those goals were met, there were other things waiting for me that I did not
expect. Things like severe racism, bigotry, and the clear unobstructed view of
income inequality.
West Palm Beach is a short walk to the oldest money in the
world on the island of Palm Beach and I would sit at the Intracoastal waterway
wondering; how can people be so close and yet so far away from one another?
There were only owners and workers – and the disparity between the two seemed
longer and stranger than Broadway on a Thanksgiving Day parade. Even certain
family members, who found a particular success in their careers, seemed to
forget we were raised in a single-parent home in a housing project in Queens. Granted, we were poor but we never did without –
but granted, someone’s mom worked two jobs to put the food out, pay the rent
and clothe us. Florida
just seemed to make people forget important things, a collective amnesia?
Growing up where I did was interesting in that we never knew
we were poor; everyone around us was as well. The next neighborhood over was
where Local 3 of the IBEW had its union hall, and those apartments were mostly
occupied by journeymen and their families; and they were a step above than the
folks in my area – but not by much, as far as I know.
If our families were not in the IBEW they were Teamsters. It
seemed that unions and union jobs were what everyone wanted and needed once out
of high school. It was what our parents thought was best. I worked once at a
nonunion cane warehouse in Flushing, a job
that was a hazard in every way imaginable. My tenure there was brief and I ended
up loading and unloading moving trucks, remembering the horror in my mother’s
eyes hearing that I carried a refrigerator strapped to my back that “an
old-timer taught me how to balance.” My job list is endless – but the point is
that I respected work and worked at places that respected me, and mostly
because the majority of the jobs back then had a structure, a benefits package,
a contract, and co-workers who looked out for one another.
All of my earlier work experience before the ripe-old age of
30, when I got here to sunny South Florida, might as well have been thrown out
the big metaphoric window, including the Army-like insanity of loading
double-wide UPS trailers in Maspeth.
In South Florida there is no
sense of honor in one’s work – at least that I have seen. You have to own a
company, be born with a silver spoon in your mouth, or live off a trust fund --
so it seems, to walk with your head held high. Clearly that is only how it
seems, and there are workers here, I see them every day of the week – and I
have no idea how high their heads are in the sky. I see the workers hauling
trailers in and out of the ports or plowing down Interstate 95, they are
building endless buildings for more wealthy people to show up, they are paving
roads, and after hurricanes you see the workers climbing electrical towers or
moving fallen trees around. All the workers here seem to be scattered and well-
camouflaged. Fork it over to one man’s perception, but the workers here seem to
care less about their work environments, their co-workers, and most people’s
view of unions in Florida
is filled with ignorance fueled by propaganda machines. For 10 years I have
wanted to be wrong on my perception – to the point of seeing who in town, other
than the postal workers and cops, had a union.
One teacher I know recently told me on the way to Orlando that she believes
her union is “in bed with the school district to the point that if there were a
work or labor issue, I would rather pay to get my own attorney than use the
unions.” I didn’t know what to say. I thought about it for a minute and said
she should run for an office – but even the overly idealistic words coming from
my mouth seemed absurd. I think I switched the subject to some victories I
heard about in Washington state or Minneapolis, I don’t
recall.
What does it take to change people’s perceptions of labor?
Does labor need to grow up a little, go to technology to organize its workers
sitting on MYSPACE for hours on end? Perhaps we really need to do what we can
at the top to get the Employee Free Choice Act passed into law – and then go
about educating massive amounts of nonunion working people regarding their
rights.
The idea of educating workers means talking to them, and that
seems to be a labor that labor hasn’t been able to deal with too well in the
past. When unions bolted from the AFL-CIO in 2005, rumor has it that not one
rank-and-file member was told, asked to give an opinion, or Heaven help us,
vote – it just happened. As another friend of mine back in the old country- New York, says, “We
learned just like everyone else, in the morning paper on the way to work that
morning.” For a minute I thought, well, at least the papers covered it up
there.
In South Florida it was
probably covered as well, but I was stuck online and didn’t look for how the
local media handled the story. I watched, instead, what was happening at
Labourstart.org, Labornet.com and other labor-related sites. I wanted to see if
anyone in labor, watching labor, being labor – would cry foul, and many did; I
did.
I took on the mission of informing workers of everything that
I possibly could get my hands on in my free time as I tried to get jobs with
local unions in Florida, in NY and I think I
sent a few resumes to California.
I had one interview – but the union said it had to “re-allocate its funds,” and
thanked me for my interests. I guess I just don’t have the skill-set to
organize or communicate with workers – the same skill-set that I used for most
my professional life at both unionized and nonunion shops.
I have learned over time that not working directly with one
union is the best thing that ever happened to me. It is not just the SEIU or
the Teamsters, it is not just the NWU or the Carpenters that need people
speaking out in support of labor, it is all of them – and even more
importantly, it is for the people that are not yet organized, the workers in
places like South Florida that have no understanding of labor laws. So, I
applied recently to a job at the Florida State AFL-CIO, but I haven’t heard
back yet. I also applied for a job with CTW – but I think that one was already
taken before the ad was posted, at least that’s the inside rumor I am told. But
this is not about me, its about a lot of conscious working people.
In South Florida the income
inequality is ridiculous. The workers who labor in the wealthiest of
neighborhoods earn the least, the janitors who clean some of the most expensive
universities are living in poverty, and the roofers, the landscapers, etc.,
they are all working below standards that most of us in the Old Country would
just shake our heads at, suck our teeth at, and thank some greater power that
we are unionized. For those of us that are unionized, have fair representation
and an equal quality of life to that of our labors – we should, somehow try to
close the gaps between the haves and the have-nots. Though I am sure this will
be debated a million ways to the beach, we are a contract away from being
have-nots ourselves.
Once upon a time there were strong unions that grew stronger
– and too many stories are circulating with wild concessions, substandard
contracts, and union officials so intermingled with the bosses that members
would rather hire their own attorney to handle a grievance. While that is one
huge and on-going fight to have the unions belonging to the workers, there is
another one …of equal, if not greater importance. That is the fight to organize
in places like South Florida -- in communities like Fisher
Island off Miami
and Palm Beach, in Fort Lauderdale where endless retailers take
advantage of young working people – most of whom don’t even know they are being
taking advantage of or just gave up caring.
As the Employee Free Choice Act is debated in the Senate, and most of
us are at work as usual, there is a bizarre reality that we
should be prepared for. The EFCA will get a presidential veto. The
Democrats
will blame the current administration or the other side of the aisle,
but in
the end – those who need and want the EFCA now will have to wait a
little
longer.
In talking with some people about this I am told that we need
to continue to organize online, get people motivated / educated, and share
ideas – in other words, not to lose hope. One friend wrote saying that it
should be as easy to join a union as it is to join a political party – but it
is not. He went one to say that one can join the Army with greater ease than
voting yes to be part of a union and having that vote heard.
It is a big job to spread the word of unions and the Employee
Free Choice Act – especially in South Florida.
In one respected local business journal there was an article that ran a few
months ago in favor of the Nova
Southeastern University
workers. I called the journalist and told her what a great job she did with the
story, thanked her, and told her that she should consider following that piece
up with a story on the EFCA – she had no idea what the EFCA was or what it was
all about.
Maybe labor needs a PR firm? Hell, I am for hire!
