 This is going to be a great discussion. Have we got anybody from the Southwest over in Texas and Oklahoma, Arkansas? Let me hear you. What about Appalachia, West Virginia, Kentucky? We got anybody from there? Okay, okay. What about the Deep South, Mississippi, Alabama? So just a table set really quickly. Here's what I've got in mind for today. We've only got 75 minutes, and it's difficult to get to a Q&A. I know that everybody's got fantastic questions, so to get to as many questions as possible and reach the kind of broadest number of questions possible, I have created a Google form that folks can submit their questions to. That way, you know, where I see similar questions, I'll be able to pull them out and combine them and everything like that. I don't have a QR code, but I did make a little small URL, tinyurl.com slash LNOTS, Labor Notes Organize the South, LNOTS 2024. So that's tinyurl.com slash LNOTS 2024. Okay, so I think I'm sure that if some of you all got that and if you can help your neighbors out with it, if they're having trouble, and submit your questions there, you'll also be able, if you want to submit your name, where you're from, the union you're with, stuff like that. I don't know how to do that. Can somebody else, can somebody put it in an airdrop? Okay, I think somebody, I'm tasking y'all in the audience, put that in an airdrop, whatever that is. So, I also want to mention that along with the themes of this panel, my labor council and others have built an initiative to encourage labor councils, state federations, local and international union, any labor body to endorse Sean Fain's call to align contract expirations for May 1st, 2028. We have small information cards up here and in the back, so on your way out, pick one up if you're in a position to push that in your labor council or state federation. We've got a little toolbox to help you out with it, with some follow-up and a resolution template, so pick one of those up on your way out. For the panel, we're going to have short introductions and move right into open conversation. I'm going to be pushing and pulling the conversation as it makes sense, right? I have some prepared questions, but I have told everybody here not to feel afraid to ask each other questions because as southern organizers who are on the ground, who are doing real shit, right, they're the experts and so they're going to have really great questions that I'm sure a lot of y'all are going to have as well, so they know that they can ask each other questions. And so with the table setting out of the way, we'll get the discussion started. My name is Jacob Morrison. I'm a union steward with the American Federation of Government Employees, AFGE Local 1858. I'm president of the North Alabama Area Labor Council and a talk radio host with the Valley Labor Report, the largest union talk radio program in the South and the only union talk radio program in Alabama now on four stations in three states. That's right, that's right. The topic of the panel today is organizing the South and it's an incredibly important one. Michael Goldfield observed in his book the Southern Key that the South is, well, the key to understanding the political economy of the United States, the failure of labor and the left to organize the South is one of the causes for so many problems in our country today and not just in the South, right. We work in the United States months more than workers in Germany do every single year. We are more likely to die on the job. We don't have universal health care and the U.S. has never had a major national socialist or workers party. And a big reason for all those problems is the iron grip that the corporate bosses have on the political system in the economy in the South and that's why Organize the South has been a slogan on the left and in the labor movement for decades and yet as Chris Townsend, somebody that I know, many of us in here know, he has observed that it's just that, a slogan until now and until what happened last night in Chattanooga with Volkswagen and the UAW, historic union election at Volkswagen and Chattanooga, 73% win. Absolute room is going to see to it that we spread that victory across every single state in the South and we are going to congratulate the Southern workers at Volkswagen on their organizing victory. There are some workers here from Germany with the Volkswagen Union and Fritz wanted to have a couple of words. So thank you Fritz for being here. Thank you folks, my name is Fritz. I am coming from Germany and I bring you the warmest greetings of the Volkswagen workers of Germany. This message was sent to me two days ago so people could not know about this tremendous success of UAW but they wanted to strengthen you and to wish you the best success for the brothers and sisters and Volkswagen in Chattanooga. In Germany, Volkswagen workers have fought for the 35 hours week with full-wag compensation with the IG Metal Union for decades. At Volkswagen today we have an agreement, collective agreement with 33 to 35 hours a week. We are organized in the International Automotive Workers Coordination and we are spreading the demand for a 30 hours week with full-wag compensation. And we want to tell you this is possible. We are struggling for this for decades but now we have achieved it and we want it to spread all over the world. You know the giant corporations of the car industry are promoting an America first policy or in Germany they say Germany first or Europe first but we as workers we say working class first. They want our money, they want our working power to plunder it into weapons and to war and to destroy the environment to promote fascism but it's our money, we are working for it. And we don't want to have workers to be driven into war against each other. We are working for peace and for protecting the environment and against fascism. So we say the industrial workers of the world have a great responsibility to fight for a better future. We are preparing the third international automotive workers conference next November in India. The Indian automotive workers unions are inviting the workers of the world and if you need better information just speak to me. Thank you so much. Chris, let's give him a round of applause. We have to give a round of applause to Labour Notes because where do you see German auto workers being able to address a group of southern organizers. Give it up for Labour Notes. Like I said, we're going to have some short introductions. Everybody on the panel is going to tell us their name, their job, their union and what made them want to get involved in the labour movement. Why are they doing what we're doing and then like I said, we're going to jump into some open conversation. We'll start over here with Yuman. Hi, everyone. I'm Yuman and I'm a teacher in Durham, North Carolina. Woo! Yeah, and I'm with the Durham Association of Educators which is a local of NCAE and NEA and why I'm in the union is everyone knows public schools in a crisis. How many of y'all are teachers out here? Woo! Yeah, and y'all know the struggle of being a public school worker. So I'm in a union because I don't trust I'm fed up with these leaders, politicians trying to make decisions for us and terrible ones. So I believe in the power of our collective of all the workers in public schools and everywhere around the world to do actions collectively by ourselves in a rank and file. I think that's where the power is coming from today. Hi, my name is Deondra Bridges. Edward. I'm married now. Congratulations! Thank you. I work in Maximus Call Center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I'm a part of CWA. So we're organizing because we basically, we just want fair pay. We deserve respect, the dignity. On our jobs, it's very important to us. I mean, it's very clear it's our job. We also fight for fair and just treatment as part of an important legacy in Mississippi because of the struggle for label and civil. So we're standing in solidarity with my co-workers to join the union to fight for the union and to organize in Hattiesburg, Mississippi at Maximus. Hi, y'all. I'm Kallen Gildersleeve. I am a registered nurse in Austin, Texas. I'm a member of... Thank you. I'm a member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee and I started getting interested in organizing because whenever I became a nurse, it was to help people. But it was very clear that upon entering the profession, that I was entering into a broken system and I was doing harm just by doing the labor that I loved. And I felt that the solution was Medicare for All. And... Thank you. And I felt that the best way to push for single-parent health care was to organize a union and to fight for better working conditions for my co-workers and myself. Hi, everybody. My name is Naomi Harris. I'm a substitute teacher and a dishwasher in Columbia, South Carolina. And I'm one of the founding members of the Union of Southern Service Workers. I got involved with the movement because I got tired of how my job was treating me at my pizza when I first joined. And, honestly, the working class needs to be heard. We deserve to be heard. We deserve everything that's coming to us. We're tired of these corporations treating us like we're nothing and just getting away with it. And it's time for the South to say something because the South has something to say. Hi, my name is Kuchelle Liggins. I'm an auto worker at the Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama. I've been at that plant for 13 years, and I got involved because of my work-life balance and family. I'm a single mother, and I spend more time at work than I do with my son. And so the reason why I feel so passionate about it is because we don't have any rights. I don't have any say, my sons are heavily involved in sports, and I have to make a decision whether to go to work on a Saturday or to call out or to take a hit or get penalized just for doing the main reason why I work, and that's to provide for my family. Right, right, right. Kuchelle, on that point really quickly, can you tell the story that you told me the other day about when you wanted to take off to go to your son's basketball game? You know the one... Yeah. Can you tell that story? So this is the turning point for me. I had a scheduled half a vacation day, so that's four hours of vacation. I was on the second shift. That's from 2.30 to 10.30. My son was in the playoffs, and so I prepared by actually putting that time in, getting it approved. When it was time to go, there was no one there to relieve me. I had to leave because, you know, literally that hour is really like 30 seconds. So for me to get to my car and travel to the destination of the game, I really had to leave on time. So I did... Unbeknownst to me, when I left, a coworker called me on the following Sunday to tell me that they're going to accuse me of job insubordination, that I left the job without notification. And so on Monday morning, that's exactly what happened. I was called into the office with my manager and the TR, that's the team relations, the mediation between management and worker. And I was told that I needed to understand that the job is more important than my family. That ain't right? And they know that when it comes to my kids, I don't care about a job or the money. So he really wanted to strike it up with me because he knew that was something that would push my button. And I had him a different way. That's right, that's right. I'm actually one of the lead voluntary organizing committee members and we're organizing at Hyundai. And we will be successful. That's right, yes. And so just one more question for Kieshell. Because how can I not, here at the top of the panel, ask you what are folks at Hyundai and Montgomery saying after last night? My phone has been texting and calling like nonstop. I actually, I came here to network and get more information on how to strengthen the organization drive that we do have going on at Hyundai. And so I was overwhelmed with that and really trying not to concentrate on that, but how could you not? So one of the guys that I was on the panel with Zach from Volkswagen, we actually were on a panel and we actually were able to celebrate his victory last night and we had a group chat. Thanks to Ben, he's in the audience now. And he connected us and we said that we're going to be brothers and sisters from this point on. I'm encouraged. I'm excited. I'm determined. And I just can't wait to get back to Montgomery because the only message that I responded to was the group message that said if I get back, it's all gas, no brakes. So, you know, Kellan, you have just won a contract at your hospital, right? And so that is, I mean, that's a huge deal. And so how do you build on that victory with your contract? Can you talk to us about some of the things that you want in your contract and how do you build on that victory and what happened in Volkswagen to, you know, energize folks in your workplace and in your city and your state and, you know, across the south? How do you build on the victories that you've had and that other workers have had? So I am really proud of our contract. It's a really good first contract for nurses in Texas. Across our hospital, we got about an 11% raise on average, which was really great for retention because we've got some issues with turnover. And another thing that we won, which is the first contract in the south to have this for nurses, is nurse to patient ratios. So for those of y'all that don't know, that is a huge deal. It helps us kind of hold the hospital accountable for inappropriate patient care loads. So that is absolutely huge. What we're hoping to do to build on our victory is take this contract to the other hospitals in our area and say, hey, this could be y'all. Do you want to join us? And I think that also within our own hospital, for people who had been on the fence or even anti-union this whole time, the contract is a piece of evidence that all of this work that we have done together is bearing fruit. Which I think a lot of my co-workers had doubts about. The nurses in other hospitals that we were trying to organize, they were like, we're going to wait and see what happens with y'all's contract because it looks like a lot of work. And we don't want to do that if we're not going to get paid dividends. So I think that that's one way that we'll be able to build. Also another thing that we can do is coalition building within the city. Yes, with other unions, but also trying to reach out to workers who are not organized yet. And show them, hey, this is what we can do together. As a worker in industry's Naomi that are seen as less organizable, what do you think that things like this do for folks in your industry? Are folks who work at Waffle House or Papa John's and things like that do they feel like this is also for them? Well, nothing's unorganizable. So the amazing thing that I love about the union of southern service workers is versus how everybody goes out for contracts and everything, we more so cross sector organize. Which means when we hear Solidarity in action, it means we cross sector organize, we just organize the entire sector. And for us, it's a service sector. So fast food, restaurants, warehouses, some CNAs, like if you're providing a service, the union of southern service workers are here for you. It's no such thing as just staying at one particular job because it's better if we have power in numbers by going to all different service sectors in the industry and standing side by side and so on these employers that no matter if I work at McDonald's at this warehouse or being a CNA, we're all there. We have those powers in numbers. People thought Waffle House was unorganizable until July when I organized my Waffle House. When I started working at Waffle House, I was making $3 an hour as a server plus tips. It's this dumb mandatory meal deduction policy that comes out of our checks. Every single time we work, if you work a double, there's two of them coming out to check for that day. And it doesn't matter if we eat the food or not. And Waffle House makes $30 million every year off of these mandatory meal deduction policies that they're taking from their employees' checks. Just alone, not including everything else, just straight off of our meal deduction policy checks. They make $30 million annually. Let that register for y'all. And so we went on, first we did demand delivery that didn't listen. So we went on strike that following Friday and we delivered 13,000 signed petitions to the Waffle House corporate office and we also had another Waffle House going on strike in Atlanta. It was just like a big old domino fall for Waffle Houses coming that just started happening. And then we also delivered a petition to the U.S. Department of Labor letting them know how Waffle House makes $30 million annually off of our meal deduction policies. We're looking forward to seeing them rescind that policy. So we've been talking on this side of the table to a lot of, you know, everybody here is a private sector worker. And we saw the folks at Waffle House going on strike. But everybody knows there's also a lot of public sector workers in the south. And because when the National Labor Relations Act was passed, it excluded state and municipal and also agricultural and domestic workers, there's a real hodge podge across the country of collective bargaining laws and rights on paper for public sector workers. And so I'm incredibly excited that we have a public sector worker from Durham, North Carolina, a teacher who just went on an illegal strike and won. So, Yuman, can you talk to us about the, you know, the state, how do you talk to teachers because getting teachers to strike just anyway is like a big deal, right? But then you've got the added difficulty of technically it's illegal in North Carolina. And so how do you go about organizing towards, you know, how do you get people to realize that that was a necessity in your instance? So, yeah, talk to us about that. Yeah, thank you, Jacob. So, as Jacob said, for North Carolina and many other right-to-work states, public sector workers cannot legally strike or even collectively bargain. So, it's very difficult for us because we have to go through alternative avenues. So, in terms of our action in Durham, we actually did a lot of rank and file work at our work sites, one-on-one conversations. It's not something like super complicated. You would think, I don't need to do this. But really the most important thing that we learned is that you need to talk to your workers one-on-one and we ran action cards in order to do that. So, at every work site in our district, we will have organizing committee members who will go and take a stack of paper cards. We don't do digital because that gets lost and people don't answer those things. And plus it's a good opportunity to build relationships and to see what we're actually concerned about. So, for our strike action back in February, what we did is we ran these action cards with a survey style. Like, would you be willing to do like a walk-in where we all walk into the school together to show solidarity? Would you be willing to take one day off, three days off, a week off, indefinite? So, it's like from the lowest level of escalatory action to the most. And, you know, I explained very clearly to people, we are not, you know, it's technically legal and even on our paper we don't have any words about strike. We can't even put the word strike on there. We called it days of protest, you know. So, to kind of navigate that legal boundary. And so, we ended up running these cars and I was very frank to people about these actions. I'm like, we might face retaliatory action from our management. It's not that, you know, I can't promise you you will not be punished. I can't promise there will be no actions against you. But here's why it's important. And I was really surprised actually through this whole action, how many teachers and school staff were like, hell yeah, let's do this. Because we're in such a crisis in public education. Well, one, we have leverage because not like a long line of people lined up to try to go work for public education. On a given day we have many, many positions open out of 5,000 workers in Durham. I mean, we have like hundreds of open positions on a daily basis. So, that's one leverage. And two, people know how bad it is in public schools. I mean, like literally at an elementary school that I work at, teachers don't even have time to go to the bathroom, like most of the time. I'm like, five minutes, I'm going to talk to people. I take my own time. I mean, this is rank and file power is what I'm talking about. I take my own time to talk to people on any breaks that I have, little slivers of breaks that I have, and a slivers of breaks that we have as a school to talk to people. Because people know how important it is to do this action. So, in the end of what happened we collected all the cards and we were able to get over 75% of the people at each of the strike buildings to agree to, yes, I'm going to take a day off to protest. And throughout the district, our first way, we had 12 schools go out on one day. So, it was a coordinated action. Yeah. And then we also had a second day of nine schools. So, we were able to coordinate this because we had that kind of structure that we built by ourselves that we were able to do this. It wasn't like a bureaucratic union. I mean, we don't have the same kind of unions they would have in northeast. But the advantage to that is that we can actually build it the way that we want to build it, and not in a way that's like, oh, you got to take six months to vote for a strike action. Hell no. This was a wildcast strike and we did it in a very short amount of time, like in a month. And I'm really glad to see so many of our workers concerned about this so much that they're like, I'm ready to go and I, you know, think that our labor is the one that we can really affect the system. And we were able to win the actions for to get our paychecks back for our classified workers because the district was trying to take away their money. So, we were able to keep both January and February checks. And on top of that, we were able to start a process for like a work around for collective bargaining. So, we're in the process of working on that with our school district and our board of education. So, those are some of the wins that we had through our action. You know, Yuman, that is a, I loved that point that because people talk about the cons and the obstacles of organizing in the south and the obstacles of not having kind of the significant power that unions do in other parts of the country and real powerful institutions, you know, and we can talk about the obstacles and we need to talk about the obstacles. But like you said, there's some amount of benefit, right, to being like we're building this right now, ourselves, so we don't have to work through all of those kind of cobwebs and stuff. And so, you know, on that theme, Deandre, what do you see as some other opportunities that are presented to workers organizing in the south, you know, as far as differences in organizing the south, what are some of the benefits, the things that we have that may be more difficult to find in other parts of the country? Well, the benefits that we have is like the communities in the south. I mean, we are all aware of Mississippi, basically where we're at. Mississippi is basically one of the state that ranked number one for poverty, basically. We ranked last for everything else except for poverty. So with that being said, so most of us at these call centers is like in Mississippi, you have Florida, you have Louisiana, you have Virginia, Kentucky, just to name a few. These are places where Maximus as the federal contractor who employs us, they know that they can get away with paying us the lowest possible wage anyway. So they, you know, they go at places like Mississippi, Florida, et cetera, Virginia, and Kentucky. So in the past two years, what we've done, we basically walked off the job, we went on strike to spread the word of org to organize and board to basically to all the neighborhoods that surround us. We can also get like other people that's not even employed at Maximus, support from just the community, people that's just hearing our stories on just know that that's not right. So with organizing, we've also taken the demands to Washington directly to the federal government who gave Maximus the contract. We went directly to Becerra and stood in front of the headquarters and basically like we're not going to take anymore. We stood, we protested, we presented him with like, you know just basically listen to us, just listen. So what we did, we had a protest as the workers and the public outside of Becerra's office in back in December. We tried to deliver the petition, but of course, they didn't want to accept it. So, us and some of CWA members and the co-workers, we went in the middle of Independence Avenue. We chanted and we chanted and we chanted and we chanted. Of course, the police come and ask us to move. No, we're not moving. We need to be heard. We did not move. Just like rose apart, we basically, we sat down and we sat down and we did not move. They literally had to come and arrest us in order for us to move. And we did that so others in the future can stand up and be heard. Do not stop, do not give up. Throughout all of these actions, we actually since organizing we started out at 9.05. I was one of those that accepted at 9.05 when we first organized. Now, Mississippi is at $17.20. We had a $4,500 healthcare deductible. This is just for a single person, not for a family. So, they did deduct it down to $1,800 which is still not enough. But we know we deserve better. We need a living wage that's comfortable at least $25 an hour. At least. We also need a union this year, not next year, not the year after that, we need it now. We have coworkers that basically have to live in their cars and it's so fat. They even at the job they want to collect like clothing for people that can't even afford clothing. That's the slap in our face. How can you X employees to bring other clothes for other people? That's not right. So, it should be paid a living wage of $25 an hour. They can afford their own clothes. Our CEO he makes $20 billion. I'm going to correct that. $20 million. I'm sorry. That's still as a mother of five kids I have three of my own. I have two stepchildren. Yes, I mentioned I just got married but that's not enough to help my household. Things happen. My husband was my fiance at the time. He had an accident on his 18 wheeler. So yes, we have five kids who had an accident. Accident on the 18 wheeler the job that he works at they only had insurance on the truck. How can you not have insurance on your worker? So when she hit the fan the worker is like well he's not insured, the truck is only insured. So I'm the only one that's making money in the household off of maximums less than $25 an hour. With five kids two of them are graduating this year prom so we can't survive off that and if they want to look at it like well you have like you're not a single family home or anything like that even if you have a husband even if you have a partner you cannot live off what maximums is paying us. We have to take our loans which is not right. Sometimes we have to decide if we're going to go to work we have to put in ATO which is approved time off that they do not approve some people don't even have gas money to get to work. Luckily I work from home and I don't have to worry about but there's still other things that I have to worry about. So with that being said in the action we are organizing in the south we're not going to stop we're going to continue because just like Ludacris he came up with a song When I Move one of our chants our favorite chants that we do on the picket line as a reminder that change won't happen unless you fight for it so when we keep on moving we're going to keep on chanting because when we move they move when we move they move and you know before the panel was starting and stuff and one of the problems that we have and this is anywhere in the country anywhere in the world we are going to have to deal with people with our fellow workers who are not initially on board with the union and who sometimes even can be like leading anti campaigns and so how do we deal with folks like that and does anybody have any stories about the transformation story of turning anybody around and how did that happen and now Deandre she wasn't leading an anti campaign but she was not she's not always been incredibly really interested in this kind of stuff so can you briefly tell us what was it that got you to the point where you are so invested in organizing your workplace and in linking that project to organizing the south what was it that got you to feel like this is something that you want to dedicate a significant amount of time to okay well it started out like I mentioned to him earlier I was one of those like when we first started out years ago I was young of course I probably had maybe one baby and when it was mentioned to us about organizing at that job which was general dynamics at the time I found up forward I figured yeah that's cool but I understand with some of my co-workers were there at now I was one of those persons like I'm just going to sign up I don't have time for that it's not going to change anything we don't have collective bargaining there so it's just wasting my time I just want to go to work I don't want you guys to stop me to ask me questions about anything I'm going in and I'm coming out straight to my car so after leaving that job and going back maybe two years later I saw that it was a dramatic like a big change like everything had changed the policies and I'm like we cannot accept this any longer so I saw that those people were still out there in the little red shirt CWA and I'm like oh wow y'all still around so so when they approached me to talk with me it was like something that just come over me like I'm going to do it this time and I'm going to be serious about it because I have kids now that's watching me and it's like I want you to stand up don't just accept what someone is giving you we have co-workers that they accept the pay because they feel like well I'm not making this anywhere else and it's just me so they're very comfortable with it I started and got serious with it when I went back to work and I'm like the pay is not good the policies has changed and it's just not fair and we should be treated fairly so with that being said I got serious with it and here I am today so I want the rest of my co-workers to feel like you know I understand where you're at it's okay just take your time and when you are ready you will be ready so you know obviously we have a huge diversity of course on this panel a bunch of different occupations and stuff like that and really the the big project of organizing the south is to link all of these movements together link organizing you know in call centers to hospitals, to wobble houses to classrooms and to auto manufacturing facilities and so you know Kishel can you talk to us about how do you feel like how can we do that how can we link each other's struggles together to turn it not just into a campaign to organize our workplace but into a campaign and a project and a movement to organize the south so so I'm from Montgomery Alabama so that's the birthplace of the civil rights and so back in the day in the 1960s the way that they brought labor into the civil rights they actually bused in 40,000 union workers they went just as bodies they were just down for calls so I think that in the 20th century now the way we link each person is because the slogan I think it goes an injury to one is an injury to all so if we network across if we all link our powers together no matter what the cause is the people power will help strengthen each and every entity I think that's important so it's based against a lot of people some people don't understand what unions are really for and it's mainly about community and service and giving back so we need all of the we need food, we need hospitals, we need schools we need the automotive industry so if everybody puts in their little bit put together a whole pie I think that's the way that we help each other or network it's not just about what your issue is because across the board basic pay better working conditions safer working conditions are all important but I think the main thing is about the people power and just having strength and being able to encourage one another to fight your fight even when you don't think you have the strength it's just overwhelming just to see the people here that support us in our different entities so just showing up could be motivation to motivate one of us to do something that we didn't think we could do until we saw you guys so just having that support and not just on the backs of us but on the side of us unfortunately we know at Labor Notes that sometimes one of the problems or one of the obstacles that we can face can be our own union leadership at times and so we got a question from Maxi APWU Local 189 in Little Rock, Arkansas asking about how do you talk to and I'll put this question to you because your union was able to organize this strike and so how did you in Education Association you know I mean I love the folks in the NEA but it's not known to be the most kind of militant right organization nationwide so how were you able to build a union with leadership that is either willing to lead or at least go along with an aggressive organizing a power approach yeah great question at the national level and even at the state level I would say we're pretty we're not very militant so the opportunity I would say is really at the local level because we're able to make it the way that we want to make it as I said before and the way that we've done it is that we've set up this organizing structure that's focused on the rank and file organizing committees at each of the schools at each of the worksite and then we have another organizing committee for the district so the schools organizing committee leaders will go to the district meetings and then on top of that we have another coordinating committee that's like a smaller group of representatives from ideally all the schools so we've set up those structures to really you know organize this mass amount of people I mean we have 1000 employees in our district so I'm on the both the worksite committee at my school and on the district committee so in those meetings at the worksite we focus on our specific worksite issues so like if we have some issues management or whatever I don't know a classroom has leaking air conditioning will address those issues at the worksite and then at the district level we make decisions about district campaigns and issues that are going on at the district and then at the top level with the coordinating committee the representatives would decide what campaigns were running and what kind of actions we will be suggesting so all these structures are still I would say the rank and file will still vote on them so even our union president doesn't have all to say we can always override her in any direction because every single action that we take and every single issue that we bring up are voted by our members and as yeah so the responsibility of all the organizing committee members is that you go and actually talk to the people at your site so at my school for example there are about 80 employees and there are a lot of people who don't know what to do and those who don't see members are generally responsible about 10 people just to not have a big workload so yeah that's kind of like I really emphasize that structure because building it will really enable you to mobilize people really quickly especially in our strike action I'm going to hand the microphone back to you because there's another part of this and talking about the community campaign in your campaign that you had in Durham teachers are really I think in a unique place to be able to bargain for the common good and so what did that outreach look like collaborating with parents and families to try to garner support for the strike what did that look like yeah so community support is always important especially as we serve parents and students I think that's definitely something that we always try to garner for the strike action I would say we actually didn't have a lot of issues dealing with parents were very supportive across the board because they have relationship with a teacher on a daily basis and they know that the service that schools provide for their children it's not just education a lot of our kids come to school to eat the lunch and the breakfast there like for example my school is 100% free reduced lunch so some of our kids if they don't go to school they actually won't even have meals for the day so they rely on the schools for those services and in order to build that community support on those days where we were off for those schools that were on strike we actually had bag lunches for the community so in case anybody needed food we provided them food and then for parents who needed any kind of service we always elicited input so we were able to mobilize that and I do have to be frank I think community wise we are less organized in other aspects so that's something that our district leaders are trying to work on in terms of the union because at our school we don't have an active PTA so a lot of schools struggle with that so we do have some barriers to communicate with parents and be able to do more community-based actions so that's something that I think that would be a goal for our union in the future to build that structure to be more organized and more streamlined so Naomi one of the reasons that people say that service workers are unorganizable is because they they face so many problems on top of having to fight their exploitation and this goes into a question that we got from Adam Endurum with Caroline Amazonians united for solidarity and empowerment the question was Amazon workers like so many other southern workers including in the service sector are finding the consequences of their exploitation on top of their exploitation and so how do you translate those grievances into the workplace not into resignation and this is just the way it's got to be and I just need to try to kind of figure out how I deal with this on an individual level but how do you turn those grievances into organizing what are some of the first steps that you found with to join the campaign okay so one thing we love to say is don't quit organized you can't make your job better if you just quit when it starts to get tough you have to stick it out, you have to keep fighting through it when I was working at my piece when I had first joint in the movement in 2022 it was kind of easy for me to organize it because we had a separate group chat where some of us were just being there talking but y'all know so and so is on their stuff again today they picking, they nitpicking they doing all these different things we will always just constantly talk about our issues and try to figure out different ways on how we can fix our issues before we came in contact with the union and somehow my co-worker was able to find the back then we was raised up 515 and they was able to find them on instagram and we got in contact with an organizer and we told them what was going on and we got to hear from other people and a lot of general workers was going on strike at the same time and so we got to talk to them and get knowledge from them on how to get our other co-workers roped into it as well and we just I just ask like you tired of it do you think you deserve that like you have to question them for real and just kind of put your foot on their neck like if you wanted to get better this is what we have to do like it's not no option, it's not a choice this is what we have to do they're forcing us to go this way it was that same knowledge at Waffle House because it was some workers that I worked with that Waffle House has been there for like 30 plus years and they was like we thought unions were dead in the south like we didn't know and I was like on the contrary again but also one thing that I found that's easy to do to organize if you already know that you already have that power within you and everything just wait for it to find you I promise you trouble will always find you I saw that my best friend's car and it was all just again everybody was talking about their grievances and I was just standing there and I was like which I want to do about it, I want to go and strike let's go and strike, let's go and strike this Friday they was like yeah let's do it I was like no seriously like let's go and strike this Friday they was like okay okay I was like yeah I was like Deanna we're going to strike Friday I'm going to give you more details tomorrow and I hung up the phone and I was like we're going to strike tomorrow you guys and so we came for like have our meeting to talk about how we were going to go and strike and everything and you know everybody got cold feet I was like okay too much too much juice for y'all at one time how about a demand delivery we just delivery and everybody can still work in everything because of course money always comes into the aspect like oh if I'm going to be out okay well let's do a demand delivery so we did our demand delivery and it was amazing we had we had a lot of community support out there it was we had Ann McDaniel out there with us it was amazing they didn't do anything and so everybody was still fed up and still going on and on about these issues I was like strike strike strike strike I was like okay we're going to strike like this we're doing it so we went on strike and we got tons of community support and everything it's just been uphill ever since and you can't quit like you cannot quit now it's different if it's like if it's taking a toll on your mental health then about all means yeah quit but if it's if you know you got tough skin you can keep sticking it out you've been sticking it out that long there's no reason for you to quit now when when he gets tough it's always it's always a light at the end of the tunnel you just gotta go through a rough patch first Kellan what about you how did you how were you able to turn some of the grievances that you know nurses face nurses all across the south and all across the country you know I mean you know the south is a very kind of particular place and there are a lot of things that are unique about it but there's also a lot of similarities and you know nurses across the country and across the south face a lot of similar issues and on one hand that can make it hard to organize because they feel like oh you know I already work you know 60 hours a week I already have all of these issues I can't add you know another call or another meeting how do you fight to make sure that their exploitation doesn't turn them to apathy or resignation but but turn it into or turn that energy into organizing so whenever I first entered the nursing profession a decade ago I already knew that I was interested in labor organizing but I could tell that I was gonna be basically just me working by myself so what I waited for was a change in the way that my coworkers were talking about their grievances essentially I had to gather evidence and have them gather their own evidence that the method of begging management to fix our staffing issues kept not working for some reason and so I it had to definitely come from each individual person that I was having those conversations with so early on I was talking to people back in like 2016 being like I think we need a union what do you guys think and that was I think the problem with my approach as I was going I think we need a union so what I ended up doing is shifting it more to those issues based conversations and being like what would you fix about our workplace if you have the power to do so and then they were giving me some great ideas about agitation conversations I could have with other people so the key moment that things changed and I know that this was the case for a lot of workers across the country but particularly for nurses I started to hear my coworkers say wow in 2020 whenever the pandemic was happening and they would not provide us with the appropriate protective equipment to prevent us from disability or death our coworkers were like wow they really don't care whether we live or die and I was like it definitely is like that black and white they really do not care and they're not putting their actions you know with their values that they say that they have and I had already started having these conversations like many years ago so there I would be like what do you think we need to do about it and finally some of them started to say we need to unionize there we go and if people on my unit in labor and delivery are saying that then I know people are saying that in the ICU and so I was able to see that shift and take it and run with it and coincidentally another nurse in the ICU had the same exact idea and independent of me had also contacted our same parent union national nurses united to organize our workplace and we found each other before and then you realize that we were both doing that from different units so we were able to come together and really start pushing throughout the hospital to have these conversations one of the things that we do in union campaigns that is a necessity but we have to you know there's a tension there and we have to wrestle with it and figure out how where and when to speak out and we know that in the south there is a political attack on many of our sisters and brothers our folks in the LGBT community women immigrants and in particular one of the things that women in the south are facing is the attacks on their rights to have an abortion and so have you have you Kellan been able to have any conversations with folks in your workplace or in your community about connecting the fight for women's reproductive rights to your to your union so I do believe that there is a connection between the work that we're doing with labor organizing and the work that we're doing with reproductive freedoms I think that in terms of the conversations I've had in my workplace I'm not often making that connection directly because our conversations are still more rudimentary than that I think that for certain co-workers who are interested and kind of want to nerd out about the big picture stuff it can be helpful in driving them forward but for people who are newer to organizing I am usually sticking to the basics about like what even is our union and what are we doing with it so it's something that I have made the connection but I think that a lot of my co-workers are still you know on the more basic level so I wonder if anybody else has something to add to that I don't know if anybody else on the panel has any it's a difficult question nobody's jumping up at it but that is something that I'm trying to wrestle with and because seems like everybody else on the panel there is a real struggle to connect folks freedoms because it is a real issue like I said women, immigrants, LGBT folks our sisters and brothers are under attack and so there is a real question about how do we make sure that we do embody the spirit of an injury to one is an injury to all like Michelle was saying and make folks see that connection because it's absolutely there and it's really really imperative so Deondra I'm interested do you have any stories about organizing in Mississippi like politically like have you talking about these political issues has that been an explicit obstacle that you've had to face people saying that I'm not going to join the union because the union is pro-choice or anything like that and if you have how have you dealt with those conversations well a lot of people they really don't discuss like the politics side of it like we're not going to join the union because of that most of it is because they're not really educated as to the word union when you mention the word union it's like they don't in the south where we're at they don't think of the political side of it it's like the word union I guess from the past with not being educated about what it is they just don't want to get involved into it because they all everybody just look at the negative side of it well not even negative side in their view they've been told that it's bad don't talk to those people be careful what you sign and this is even at maximus they will send out emails and to every co-worker and say be careful what you sign you have those people outside which is we have like some of the O.C. members they will come up to the job and sit out in like the front or whatever other members and other co-workers to be a part of the union so when maximus managers or supervisors or whatever see us out there they will send out an email and say be careful about what you sign don't talk to those people you know and when they see that it's like well I'm not interested anyway versus being educated on what it is well it's really not they don't really be interested in the politics side of it and then in Hattiesburg the community is very very supportive the neighborhood is supportive because they know that you know it's not fair but as far as the co-workers it's more of they don't understand the word union you know Kieshell y'all have been the auto campaign in particular has faced concerted attempt from the corporate and political class to inject like a partisan lean into the campaigns and so we've seen you know Governor Bill Lee in Tennessee and Governor Ivy and some of the other exactly that's the right reaction and folks like that trying to convince your co-workers and you that you don't need a union that you don't deserve better that you don't deserve to have any say in your workplace how have those messages been going over on the shop floor what is what's folks reactions been to you know all of their supposed leaders people that are supposed to represent them attacking them like she discussed earlier if you're uneducated and you don't understand you have to understand that in the south it's been ingrained in people they've been raised to have a closed mind that they don't understand the word union so you actually have to not use the political terms you have to actually meet people where they are so if that's just a general conversation as to hey how are you today and leave it at that and then actually just keep expressing and doing what you know is right as far as to form a union leading by example so I've had different situations where people I'm not going to be involved in a union I don't want anything to do with a union and just recently this past Sunday I had a guy who was totally off from a union inbox me and say hey what's the link I want to join and I said are you serious and he's like yes I said I'll send it to you and then we had a conversation and he actually had ideas about it so it's just we have to continue to just do what we know is right meet people where they are develop and come to your level and kind of start to understand but mainly it's personal experience so if it happens to her and it's not happening to me I'm okay but when it happens to me I want all of you guys to be fully sympathetic and empathetic to my problem so the only way that you can do that is if you feel both ways so I can't be empathetic with you if you don't share the pain with me and my experience with the people so I just keep being me I just keep being humble just keep doing what I'm doing and they see well there's nothing happening to you Kay Ivy is a past well she was in a union she's a retired teacher so how can someone that has not been in the shoes that I feel every day tell me what I don't need that's what I try to explain to my co-workers that these people have not been in your shoes can't tell you how to feel what to think and what you need because they have the security that you don't and so my passion comes from and stems from my family and that's the reason why we all go to work whether it's to take care of a dog a cat or your significant other so if you keep that presence forward and provide a sufficient and structural stability for your family then I think it comes closer and it's a personal interjection on why we need to form a union not so much as the adjectives of what a union is but collectively it is community it is taking care of the people that take care of you what's been the interaction with yes absolutely yeah what's been the interaction with the faith community in Montgomery I did see there was an anti-union op-ed from apparently a large preacher in Montgomery are you familiar with him is it past just Searcy yes yeah okay so how are people reacting to that and then is there a pro-labor kind of faith contingent in the area well I think when it comes to faith if you're a true man or woman of God and you know right from wrong you cannot condone wrong and you know that by the Bible and the teaching that you're supposed to do right so I brought it to my coworkers attention on the Facebook page and people were just in awe that he even had the audacity to speak on it but that's because he was paid they pay a lot of our community leaders and they had a trip that past March where they sent some councilmen and some preachers over to Korea and so they kind of gave them some babysitting money so that when the community came when we came to present ourselves to the community that they would be against us but the only way that you can combat that is to continue to fight your fight because the power is in the people you guys have only heard from the company until now so I'm a worker, one of many who's speaking out on behalf of the people because I go through what every other worker goes through so whatever you read if you have not heard it from the worker you can't believe that side so that's the difference in this campaign it has to be people driven because the people are the ones that actually suffer so we're working on a faith-based a specific person in the community to be our religious leader we don't have one as of yet but we do have support from some of the religious leaders not anybody specific yet but like I said people power and listening to the truth and the people that actually go through it I think that's the best way to deal with a combat against people that speak on something that they don't even know yeah I'm glad to hear that it doesn't seem like his op-ed is being very persuasive so that's I'm glad to hear that so Naomi what are some of the worst examples of union busting that you have faced maybe in your workplace in your organizing or that you have been in community with people that have faced what are some of the worst examples of union busting that you've seen experienced or heard of and how did those folks involved fight back against it okay so I'm trying to think some of the worst union busting would be when Nikki Haley was just running and she was very she was very opinionated about how she doesn't like unions and everything and so one way that we combated against that every time she was in South Carolina best believe the Union of Southern Service workers was out there at her event we we had like a little small group of people that would be in charge of interrupting her at her events like she'll be mid-talking and we'll just start screaming and asking her basic questions like what do you plan if you don't want unions here what do you plan to do to help us and we would get like some people that was out there supporting her would actually be like well Nikki they're asking good questions how are you going to help them because she would like we would get expeditiously kicked out like I got we got followed all the way to our car the first time we did it and we still have more people going we had people chanting in the middle of her talking and the people that was there supporting her started looking at her like okay wait the working class makes sense what are you going to do to help them like we just did I did like a reaction video to um what was his name McMaster McMaster McMaster was y'all know he's very opinionated too and I got to do a reaction video to him we just like we do reactions like y'all want y'all call us out okay let's give you we're going to give you what you're asking for we're going to follow you back up with facts because you're coming with wrongs and lies but we're going to give you the hard stone facts and the people that support you are going to start looking at you crazy like wait they're asking real questions that actually should be answered like that kind of applies to me too how are you going to help us at Waffle House my manager when we did our demand delivery my manager called my best friend and another coworker who went on strike who delivered it as well to the back and the district manager was back there as well and they were trying to press them and kept asking them who's the ringleader if y'all wanted to make a change y'all should have went to Waffle House corporate Naomi just left Tennessee corporate y'all she knows all about that y'all could have went to corporate why y'all bring it to my store like she took it very personally and just kept attacking them and trying to get them to pinpoint who was the ringleader and they had like meetings with everybody except for me same thing in my piece that they when they found out that we was on the on the verge of trying to go on striking everything because our petition got leaked they had meetings with everybody I had to have one of my co-workers reach out to them for me to request a meeting because they wouldn't set up a meeting for me and we just yeah we just react to them because we just since you want to know so bad about why we want a union here we're going to tell you why we need a union it's not a one it's a necessity because nobody else is protecting us except for a union and then we also like South Carolina OSHA they discriminate against black workers because they do not go on their regular program inspections like they are supposed to with these disproportionately black and brown workforces so the union Southern Service workers filed an official complaint against them with the U.S. Department of Labor and so that's just like another way that we keep their foot on their necks we just we go the legal right we file the complaints we let people know that's above y'all what y'all doing wrong and how they need to fix it and we continue to go on strike do speakouts walkouts march on the bosses sit-ins whatever you need to do that you feel like your voice will be heard do it because at the end of the day they don't care they've shown time and time again that they don't care which is why we have to keep our foot on their neck there you go hell yeah so there's there's a long tradition in the labor movement and in the south of the incorporation of music and art and culture into our struggles that is that unfortunately in a lot of spaces it don't it doesn't seem like we make an effort to maintain and keep but I think more than any other union the union of Southern Service workers does a fantastic job of incorporating the the art and creativity and culture and the ability of the working class to express itself why is that so central or such a big part of your union and how can other unions incorporate that into their campaigns because I think it's like really really cool and I think people get get something out of that that that we miss when we don't when we don't incorporate art and expression and music and culture into our campaigns so a big thing that helps a lot especially when you have like cameras and news like if you know camera and the news is going to be there you want to have like bright signs bright colors that's why we chose like red like we chose bright colors on purpose so you have no choice but to see us like when these corporations see these bright red shirts coming they already know what's that they already know and then when you're on the front line you people are driving by you want them to be able to like capture what you're trying to do like yesterday at the rally when everybody was like free free palace like you can hear clearly why we're on a rally so when you're rallying up or striking or speaking out you want to make sure that the people that you're talking to they understand what's going on so like the chance have to be concise and clear and then like the arts and the culture that's what we're about like the union is so it's like we want everybody to feel like they belong so if you're creative with like making clothes and we have someone who makes clothes in our union and they like make it all look all nice and fancy and it's real cute especially when you see the cameras and you see it on the TV you can tell that it catches your eye and everything and you're going to want to keep listening like what's those folks doing they look good out there they sound good out there oh that's a good chance it's a catchy chance next thing you know you're going to be walking around your house chanting our chance and it's like dang I didn't call the union bug so it's like it's always just like a really good way to keep people engaged with you and to make them want to especially community support like it makes them want to keep coming out because like they know when they come out they're going to have a good time they know they're going to have those good chance and then everybody else around is going to want to be like maybe I can make me a little chinny chance too let me try to make a chant or let me try to make a little sign like we love to make signs and that's one of our biggest things is making signs the day of our actions because it's like it's amazing seeing the different things that people can come up with to put on a sign it's just like it's amazing thank you so another one of the divides that folks kind of that bosses and folks like that try to wedge between working folks is a you know a division between industrial workers manufacturing people people who wear hard hats and then folks you know like you shell and then folks like you you man folks who are you know professional or have degrees or you know don't like manually you know manipulate things right and and and there's a real effort to try to make people feel like you know you mon and kishel are on kind of they're they're not part of the same class and so how how how do you you mon as a you know as an educator try to you know and it can even come from without from within like the quote unquote professional side right like there are folks that I work with that can really kind of get in their head about how since I don't work with my hands I'm like not working class how do you overcome that artificial divide yeah that's a great question and I think one of the great things about DAE is that we're an industrial union so we represent all workers in our school district all together there's no division between the teachers and the cafe staff the custodial staff we're all part of the same union and we always emphasize that we're like we're public school workers we're not just like a teacher's union we all work together and all of our staff know how much it takes to run schools and it takes everybody we always say without our bus drivers our schools can't run literally will shut down without the custodial staff without our cafe staff we cannot run they're the most important people that provide the central services for our buildings for example for our strike action we actually before we even did the coordinated strikes there were just like wildcash strikes from the custodial staff from the cafe staff so some buildings were without cafe staff some buildings were without custodial staff and it was extremely difficult to run buildings so we always emphasize when we do organizing is that we're all in this together and whatever we talk to workers even a day-to-day organizing and make sure I hit as many departments as possible we always like help did we check in with the cafe staff did we check in with the custodial staff so we always make sure that we're together and that there's no like oh we're like better than y'all or we're different than y'all are important to providing education for our students thank you that's great absolutely so you know trying to think of like big picture stuff somebody asked somebody I was asking I've been asking people like you know what would you want to hear and somebody I thought had a really good question you know so basically what would if the president the AFL-CIO comes up to you and says anything you need I'll make it happen Kellan what do you say if you get that offer if you could have anything to make your union campaign the exact kind of campaign that you need what would that ask be if the president of the AFL-CIO asked me what I needed to support my campaign I would probably say childcare for union organizers because I've only been organizing since I became a parent in 2020 I gave birth to my son and it has been a particular challenge for me versus some of my other co-workers who do not have small children to make the meetings that are at 8pm to make the meetings that are anytime when my child is not in daycare and not everyone can afford daycare so it's a privilege that I have that and I'm able to organize in those hours while he's there but I think that that's a huge thing that's missing especially for women who are organizing and other parents who are the primary caregivers who are organizing because just like Kishel was saying we are doing this for our family and we're showing up at work we're showing up at the union and that means that that's less time that we can spend with our kids and we want to make sure that they're being well taken care of thank you thank you so much everybody give it up for our great panel Yuman Wang Durham Association of Educators Deondra Bridges Kishel Center Workers United CWA Naomi Harris Union of Southern Service Workers SCIU and Kishel Liggins United Auto Workers from Hyundai and Alabama okay so we're building our union and working with CWA it has shown many of us that it's truly possible when we all stick together so we are all in this room for the same reason and the number one reason and we're going to continue to stick together you guys are my brothers and sisters and of course I'm your sister so what I want you guys to do is to join with me with this chant when I move they move when I move they move and then we're going to say just like that so I'm going to get my coworkers to help me since they know the chant so when we move when we move when we move when we move just like that