NT-3349

WNET

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Show opener.

Host Lipsyte welcomes audience and introduces himself. He announces what's coming up on the show and cuts away to an offsite segment hosted by Professor Stanley Aronowitz, a former steel worker and union organizer, and author of "False Promises The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness.

Aerial May Day parade in Red Square, people carrying large posters and signs, large crowd celebrating workers day.

May 1st parade in Soviet Union, lots of flowers and balloons

Cutaway to b&w footage a person running through deserted ghetto neighborhood passing closed down store fronts as an officer is shooting a rifle toward him.

B&W caricature cartoon for MayDay reads: "The Eight Hour Day will breed Idle workers"

Renderings of the May 4, 1886 Chicago, Haymarket Square Labor Protest. Man with beard standing tall arm raised in the air in protest, assembled crowd with "Strike and Live" poster.

Rendering of the four organizers of the demonstration about to be hung, standing on platform draped in white with heads covered , man tying noose around their necks.

Pan up on beautifully pencil drawn, 1890, poster of the "Worker's May-Pole" depicting workers male and female around the May-Pole each holding a banner with a message such as, "Leisure for all", "Eight Hours"

Prof Aronowitz reporting from in front of a steel mill talking about May 1st being Labor Day in industrial countries except in the USA. "American employers and culture remain uncomfortable and even inhospitable to the American Labor movement." Our country believes that workers should be able to work on their own and not rely on collective action.

Two blue collar workers having conversation, one is wearing white hard hat.

White male blue collar worker wearing yellow hard hat and knee hi yellow boots at work with large electric saw

Pan out from wide shot of the large abandoned Bush Terminal Associate factories in New York to Prof. Aronowitz standing in front of chained link fence out front.

Window tied in ropes and hovering in mid air as worker in hard hat guides it through brick hi-rise open window.

Black shadow of same worker as Aronowitz narrates about how union worker's ranks are thinning due to: plant closings, flight of capital overseas, corporate mergers, growing imports, technilogical changes. Small black boxes overlay shadow of worker indicating each factor.

Sign reads: Help Wanted Waitress Hostess

AFRICAN AMERICAN WORKERS, UNION WORKERS. BLACK MAN WASHING CLOTHES, DOING LAUNDRY USING INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT. BLACK WOMAN OFFICE WORKER. AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN OF COLOR USING COMPUTER KEYBOARD, WEARING HEADPHONES.

MONTAGE OF WORKERS, PEOPLE OF COLOR: FEMALE FAST FOOD WORKER, FRY COOK DUMPING FRENCH FRIES FROM FRYER. ASIAN WOMAN, OFFICE WORKER. AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN, BLACK FEMALE NURSE OR HEALTH WORKER TAKING TO HOSPITAL PATIENT IN BED, ELDERLY WHITE MAN.

FAST FOOD WORKERS. WOMAN PICKING UP WRAPPED HAMBURGERS. MCDONALDS? LUFTHANSA AIRLINE EMPLOYEES. FEMALE WORKERS.

INTERVIEW - FREEDMAN AND RIVERA

Robert Lipsyte:
Your triumphs with 1199 have really been against the trend of what's been happening in American unionism. You've got a three year contract a 20%. wage increase increased health benefits, what have you been doing? Right?

Dennis Rivera
Well I think that the most important thing is involving the members in the affairs of the Union, we had you and using the more sophisticated techniques of communication, of pull polling, of involving the members and making the right analysis of the situation and trying to bring a coalition of people who believe that our cause was right to come together, I think there was a multiple combination of, of the useful thing of combining a lot of things.

Robert Lipsyte
It sounds to me like it was it was more of selling the membership on the union than going out and fighting the bosses

Dennis Rivera
well not really the reality was that we needed to have the membership feel that there was something that we can achieve that there was something that we could gain that we could make tangible gains. And we were able to initially negotiate a contract with what we termed to be the employer who was the most honest employee, in this case, His eminence, Cardinal Connor, we establish a model of a of a contract. And then we try to impose that contract literally on the other employers and all along we built union solidarity we carefully stage while we call one day strike. So in order to bring everybody to one same place, what I'm saying like location, a, for the purpose of showing our solidarity, we then were communicating on a constant basis with the membership, namely, every member of our union was getting about at least two letters from me a week informing them of what was going on, we were doing constant polling of the memberships

Robert Lipsyte
This sounds terrific, Audrey Freedman. Is is what what Dennis Rivera did with 1199 a model for what every union can do in this country, or was it an aberration?

Audrey Freedman
Well, I think 1199 is unique, is a very special union. First of all, it does more for its members in terms of social services. It is more in communication with its members and listening to its members and to their needs, perhaps outside of the employment relationship is fulfilling, in other words, their their entire social and economic need. And American unions generally are not doing that today. So 1199 is quite the speical

Robert Lipsyte
Its an aberration in what it's doing. Is it an aberration in what it can do? I mean, can other unions follow that model? Or are the situations in other industries different?

Audrey Freedman
Both? The answer is both. First of all, the situations in many other industries where unions have been in the past entrenched, are much different. Most of our union movement has been in the past dealing with employers with a lot of market power, sometimes monopolies oligopolies. In the steel industry in the rubber industry, in autos, they were dealing with employers who had so much power in the market that they could simply bargain higher wages and raise prices. That isn't true anymore. So the union's power to get a high wage, especially high wage for its own members. Isn't isn't available to the union anymore, and they've had to take wage cuts and wage freezes. So this victory in bargaining with the employer that the 1199 local can still achieve because it's not in a competitive industry isn't available to the auto workers, the steel workers, rubber workers, construction workers, airline and trucking workers, for example, can't succeed anymore in the extra high wage bargains,

Robert Lipsyte
Mr. Rivera, you do have the advantage of they can't move the hospital to Budapest or Taiwan. Yet, so much of labor is looking at you as as a model. Do you think that that you have something to offer trade unionism in general in this country, I

Dennis Rivera
think that what we have done is nothing new. It's been there, the only is the efficient application of the concepts and ideas of how what a trade union should be. Unfortunately, I think the labor movement confronts many problems. One of the problems is that the lack of relationship between the leadership and the rank and file where sometimes the leadership of the labor unions are more interested in a feathering their nest, and making sure that they maintain their jobs and their privileges than literally helping the rank and file workers do their job. For example, I am the president of the largest local union in America, I make $801 a week, I make the same salary that a rank and file member of our union basically makes, so not basically the highest paid, I will say, so. And that keeps us in communication with what are the problems? What are the aspirations what are the needs that we have, and I don't feel terribly threatened with losing my job because of my income. But in some other cases, you have a Labour leader who makes $150,000 or more. And it loses that that connection with the rank and file. And what happens is, then the union takes what we believe to be a third party, which is the one side is the employer and one the other side of the workers. And there's the third party, which is called the union.

Interview concludes. Host Lipsyte thanks Freedman and Rivera and cutaway to an offsite interview with Tony Mazochia, Secretary and Treasurer Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union.

OFF-SITE INTERVIEW - MAZZOCHI
So what would you do

Tony Mazzocchi
you provide a forum for ideas, the development of a political agenda, for instance, the right to life movement is country is not a party. They have an agenda. They've articulated that agenda. They've developed a national cadence, every political party in this country responds to the cadence that they've developed.

Robert Lipsyte
Well, why use labor is a basement labor is is in decline. It's in its lowest part in many, many years. 15% of Americans,

Tony Mazzocchi
okay, but labor is a very formidable organization. It has incredible resources, it has organizing the ability organizing talent, we're really not an inconsequential group of people, 16 to 19 million people. That's a good base to start from, not that 16 to 19 million people are going to roll in to a new party, but I think there's a few million people out there would immediately join a party, whether they're members of trade unions or not. The desire is there. I've polled other unions of poll, the polls are all coming back the same 59% say we need a working persons party. A large percentage of the people accept the notion that both parties represent corporate interests rather than their interest. So the sentiment is there. I mean, I'm not holding a view that's not shared by the people I represent. I articulate my point of view it's printed in our newspaper. No one quarrels with it. I run for office saying central feature of my campaign is the need to build a political party of working people

Robert Lipsyte
will Tony why bother calling it a party call it a club or a foundation or an institute or a think

Tony Mazzocchi
tank. We are going the route that our English brothers and sisters in our Canadian brothers and sisters have traveled, in my opinion very effectively. The British Labour Party was once the Fabian Society. Then it became a party that did not run candidates and ultimately vied for power. When they were well established. The Canadian New Democratic Party is the party of the Canadian labor movement that started as a series of clubs, where they develop their agenda, what they were going to articulate in a political arena. It's a process says, Those who are serious about vying for political power have to have patience.

Robert Lipsyte
Well, how much time are we talking about centuries?

Tony Mazzocchi
No, I'm talking about a century things can happen very rapidly when a republican party started, grew out of the necessities of the crisis prior to the American Civil War, Eastern Europe. His thought is that very hard to predict timeframes.

Robert Lipsyte
But if you were starting the American labor party right now, what would be some of the issues you'd engage,

Tony Mazzocchi
I think, a real discussion on work, the necessity for income, the necessity for everyone to be insured through health insurance, and economic transformation and provides meaningful work for people is a broad area for discussion. We're a nation in decline. working people don't have a real future. And they recognize that they use the expression, working people generically to include everyone who works, who possibly, potentially could work that includes the unemployed, the homeless, and everyone else who should be working for wage.

Robert Lipsyte
Wasn't that traditionally the role of the Democratic Party, though?

Tony Mazzocchi
Well, the Democratic Party traditionally articulated this notion of themselves doing that. But I think throughout the post war period, that that was mostly a myth.

Robert Lipsyte
What I don't get is is very little union solidarity. Anyway, unions cross each other's picket lines. And there's a perception in the country that you use are either corrupt or in bed with cooperations management and big government.

Tony Mazzocchi
All that those perceptions are shared by many people. But one of the problems with the American labor movement is its non ideological, a trade union movement, without ideology is just another institution in his society. Jesse Jackson, tap the very populous nerve and American people. I know if we got out there and addressed the real social issues, the unmet social needs, with a hard hitting agenda. We develop resonance. I that's no concern of mine. George Wallace said there wasn't a dimes worth the difference between them, referring to both political parties kept between 10 and 13 million votes overnight. There are a tremendous reservoir of sentiment out there that says we have to do something different. And we have to be responsive to people's needs. American people are ready for that type of program.

Robert Lipsyte
Well, do you think an American labor party would also revive the trade union movement?

Tony Mazzocchi
Yes, it would, because the trade union movement flowered at a time when it addressed the broad social needs of the American people. He had great adult allies and intellectual community. It attracted the best and the brightest in America. Because we were caused in a crusade, we had a commitment. We have a very rich history of commitment. And if we demonstrate that, again, I think people will begin to knock on the doors of organized labor to be part of a movement that's not now but addresses the broad needs of the people.

Robert Lipsyte
That's the 11th hour. I'm Robert Lipsyte.

Show credits run over Lipsyte seated with Rivera and Freedman in the studio .

Reel ends.