We Need to Elect More Leaders from the Labor Movement into Government. Councilman Roddey, USW Member
- Opinion, Tom Conway and Independent Media Institute September 28, 2022. Alternet. - Ed.
When a group of custodians in York County, South Carolina, learned their bosses planned to sell them out to save a few pennies, they knew exactly who to turn to for help—a fellow worker who’d walked in the very same shoes. County Councilman William “Bump” Roddey, a longtime member of the United Steelworkers (USW) and a former custodian himself, assured the county workers that he had their backs.
Roddey ultimately helped quash the scheme to contract out the county’s janitorial services, a victory both for the custodians and the taxpayers relying on their quality work.
Electing more union members like Roddey to councils and mayoral posts will help to combat right-wing attacks on workers and hold local government accountable to the ordinary people it’s intended to serve. “We speak for the American worker,” Roddey, a member of USW Local 1924 who works at New-Indy Containerboard, said of union members. “We speak for the middle class. The agenda is not about us if we are not at the table.” If the county had privatized cleaning services, any small budgetary savings would have paled next to the pain inflicted on the custodians, Roddey said, noting officials out of touch with working people “don’t too quickly grasp these scenarios.”
“The perspective of the people who sign the front of the paycheck is different from the perspective of the people who sign the back of the paycheck,” said Roddey, whose colleagues on the council include 3 business owners. “I bring that back-of-the-paycheck perspective to everything I do.”
Attacks on working people aren’t unique to South Carolina. After the school board in Putnam, Connecticut, contracted out custodial services, for example, workers lost access to their pension system even though they’d been promised no change in benefits. In recent months, USW-represented school bus drivers in Bay City, Michigan, beat back efforts to contract out their work, while union members in Los Angeles County, California, won their own fight against privatization. Electing more union members would ensure that local officials instead invest their energies in productive ways, such as building robust, worker-centered economies.
Some forward-thinking local officials have used their authority to pass worker protection laws, to establish agencies for enforcing those safeguards, & to create workers councils to take testimony on job-related issues, noted the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a Wash., D.C.-based think tank, in a recent report. At Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards, a full-time equivalent staff of 34 enforces 18 worker-centered ordinances, including those requiring paid sick time, employment opportunity, & protections for gig workers. Local officials have the power to hold corporations accountable when they accept public subsidies with promises of creating dignified, family-sustaining jobs. It’s also the prerogative of mayors & councils to provide resources, like affordable housing, that help level the playing field for struggling workers...
- More, https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/elect-more-leaders-labor-government/