Building a clean economy ‘on the high road’

March 5, 2020 by

When the U.S. House of Representatives passed the PRO Act last month, the labor movement celebrated – and for good reason. The measure would give working people a fairer shot at organizing unions, bargaining better wages and fighting back against rising income inequality.

But the PRO Act would be a win for the planet, too. That’s according to the BlueGreen Alliance (BGA), which lobbied for the PRO Act on behalf of 13 labor and environmental organizations.

Why? To address the climate crisis, the U.S. and other countries will need to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, and they will need to do it quickly. Mustering public support for that kind of massive political effort won’t happen, BGA Executive Director Jason Walsh said, unless there’s something in it for working people.

“We have to rebuild our infrastructure, we have to retool our manufacturing and we have to repower our grid with clean sources,” Walsh said in an interview for the March 2020 issue of the The Union Advocate. “That’s daunting, but it’s also an opportunity. And if we do it right, if we build this clean-energy economy on the high road, we have the ability to make this a more just and equal country and economy.”

Jason Walsh is executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance.

UA: The BGA works to advance policies that protect workers and the environment. That seems like divisive terrain right now. Where do you see potential to cut through the tension?

JW: Environmentalists and labor activists agree on much more than we disagree on. There have certainly been fights and disagreements. I’m not ignoring that. Those are hard, and they’re hard right now in places like Minnesota. But fundamentally, our labor partners and our environmental partners understand the interconnectedness of the fight for workers’ rights and environmental protection.

The PRO Act is an example of that. It’s obvious why our labor partners would support the PRO Act. Our environmental partners understand workers who are organized and empowered fight not only for their wages and benefits and job security, they also fight for things like making sure their plants don’t blow up, making sure that industries are not egregious polluters. Unions like the Steelworkers were some of the most important supporters of our bedrock environmental laws, like the Clean Air Act, because their members lived it and worked it.

UA: What does the clean-energy economy look like, and how do those jobs need to change?

JW: Not enough of the jobs created or promised are family-sustaining jobs. In 2019 only 4% of workers in solar electric power generation were union members, and only 5% of workers in wind power generation were union members. Obviously, the clean economy is much bigger than that, but those are the two fastest-growing sectors within it.

Companies within the clean-energy economy have just flat-out violated their employees’ rights to unionize. There’s Tesla, of course. There was also a solar company, Bright Power, in New York City, where workers were trying to join IBEW and were fired. And last year we saw at a company called Gestamp Wind in Texas, the company unlawfully firing and suspending employees, making threats, engaging in surveillance… It was so egregious that the National Labor Relations Board under the Trump administration ordered them to bargain with (Plumbers and Pipefitters) Local 404.

Why do those companies do that? They do it because they can, because our existing labor laws are completely toothless. That is why the PRO Act is so important as we make this monumental shift to a clean-energy economy.

UA: What’s the scope of this change our economy will need to go through?

JW: We’ve barely scratched the surface. We’ve seen a shift in the last 10 years within the power sector to renewable sources, but zero-emission power is still below 20% of the total. We have a transportation sector that is now the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. And we’ve got an industrial sector that is the fastest-growing source of emissions.

We’re going to have to shift all of them to zero-emissions sources by 2050, and we’ve never done anything at that scale before in this country.

UA: What potential is there for working people?

JW: To give a taste, just take the offshore wind industry, which is potentially enormous. There is, at this point, one offshore wind facility in this country, off of Block Island, Rhode Island, and it was built with union labor. This was just five turbines, but it created 300 jobs – electricians, welders, ironworkers, pile drivers, backhoe operators. That wind farm is now producing enough clean, local electricity to power 17,000 homes. We’ve got to do that by orders of magnitude more across the country.

There is a ton of work here, but we’re at this inflection point as to whether we’re going to continue what we’ve seen – mostly low-road, often low-quality jobs, almost exclusively nonunion – or build this economy along the high road.

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USW’s Parzino made a career of paper, politics and putting working folks first

March 2, 2018 by

Gerry Parzino at the District 11 offices in northeast Minneapolis.

Philip and Genevieve Parzino were working at Brown and Bigelow when they met in the 1920s. Eventually, they fell in love and married.

Their story may sound typical, but Genevieve and Philip were 12 and 13 years old when they met on that calendar factory floor. It’s a bit of family history their son Gerard never forgot as he pursued a 44-year career in the United Steelworkers Union, fighting to improve the lives of working people.

“Luckily, there were unions to change child labor laws,” he said. “Otherwise, I would have probably fallen into the same type of path.”

Instead, Gerry Parzino graduated from high school in 1974 and took a job at International Paper, where he became a member of St. Paul-based United Paperworkers International Union Local 264. (Today, it’s Steelworkers Local 264.)

Parzino served as the local’s secretary, vice president, president and business agent before taking a full-time job with Steelworkers District 11 almost 18 years ago. His focus there remained the paper industry, but Parzino rose through the ranks to become district sub-director for Minnesota and North Dakota.

Over that time, he and his wife, Joan, raised a family of three children, all of whom now have children of their own. Household chores are the only child labor any of them have ever known.

March 2 was Parzino’s last day on the job before retirement. He looked back on his career in this interview, edited for length and clarity.

UA: What’s your earliest memory, as a local agent or with the district, of tackling something big?

GP: Just after I was elected business agent in January 1995, the Waldorf paper mill’s contract was up, and the international staff wasn’t available to help much. I was a new business agent with 700-plus members at the plant – bigger than the whole local is now. That was a huge challenge, but we delivered that contract without a strike.

UA: It’s amazing to think the mill had more members then than the local does now. So much has changed in the industrial landscape here.

GP: I’ve gone through 10 permanent closures in the forest products industry, almost 1,100 members and families who’ve been affected. It’s just been devastating for families, and I’ve seen it more than any person would want to. Probably the most difficult was the Sartell local in 2012, with the explosion and fire (at the Verso Paper Mill) that burnt out of control for about 10 days. We lost a member in that fire; it was his first day back from a layoff recall. The combined loss of jobs and loss of life, that was really tough.

Parzino (L) showed a visitor from Denmark around the Waldorf paper mill in St. Paul during an international exchange event in 1995. (file photo)

UA: How are Steelworkers fighting back against job losses in the industry?

GP: We’ve been really proactive on illegal trade practices; we’ve won dozens and dozens of cases.

In 2015 we had a small group of workers who make a calcium carbonate slurry up in Cloquet, and their employer wanted to eliminate their pension and their rule of 90, cut their health care plan and give a zero wage increase. We had five guys that went on strike for four and a half months, and they brought that multinational corporation to its knees. It was a 100 percent successful strike, and those five workers stood for everybody in the industry.

UA: The international union also has been proactive in getting ready for inevitable greening of our global economy. How successful has that been?

GP: The bottom line is we really do have more in common, as labor and environmental groups, than we do in opposition. Steelworkers have always believed in strong health and safety, not only for ourselves but the communities we live and work in.

UA: A lot of these fights come back to political issues. Have you enjoyed that part of the job?

GP: I’ve always been politically active… Just take a look at what’s happened to our east, whether it’s Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky… We’d be long gone if it wasn’t for Gov. Dayton. Without his veto pen, we’d be in the same boat.

UA: What are Steelworkers seeing in those right-to-work states?

GP: Obviously, it’s going to affect our membership. When employers can use a divide-and-conquer strategy, it’s going to leak into the strength of our collective agreements. That’s basically the strategy behind right to work.

UA: What’s next for you?

GP: A lot of travel with my wife. Hunting, fishing, golfing. And grandkids.

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Local organizer glimpses challenge of building worker power in South

August 28, 2017 by

Tastad-Damer outside Nissan’s Canton production plant on the day of the union election. (submitted photo)

Lured by generous tax incentives and low wages, foreign automakers have steadily increased their footprint in Southern states over the last two decades. Their employees earn less than union members at the Big Three domestic automakers, but attempts to organize workers in the South’s new, foreign-owned plants have almost always failed.

The most recent defeat came earlier this month, when workers at Nissan’s Canton, Miss., plant voted by nearly a 2-to-1 margin against forming a union.

The United Auto Workers devoted several years to organizing the Canton facility’s 3,500 workers (3,000 more contract workers at the plant were not eligible to join the union), and the UAW projected confidence as the Aug. 3-4 election approached. But in the weeks leading up to the vote, Nissan unleashed a “vicious campaign … of intense scare tactics, misinformation and intimidation,” UAW President Dennis Williams said.

Twin Cities-based union organizer Diana Tastad-Damer saw that campaign firsthand. An organizer on staff at United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189, Tastad-Damer spent 10 days on the ground in Mississippi, answering the UAW’s call for help reaching out to Nissan workers and drumming up support for the “Union Yes” campaign. When an organizer familiar with Walmart’s anti-union tactics sounds outraged, it gets our attention. Here’s our interview with Tastad-Damer, which has been edited for length and clarity.

UA: What kind of response did you get from workers you visited in advance of the election?

DT: They were pretty much half and half, but the company sent workers door hangers that said “No Trespassing UAW.” Quite a few people had those on the door, and I obviously didn’t talk to them.

UA: Sounds like door hangers weren’t the only stops pulled out by Nissan’s anti-union campaign.

DT: They had “Vote No” signs and signs that said “Union” with an X through it… Nissan threatened to take away people’s leased cars. They put up billboards, they aired radio ads and TV commercials talking about how many jobs they’ve brought to Mississippi and how people are lucky they chose Mississippi. Nissan even rented huge air conditioners leading up to the vote. They normally don’t have air conditioning in that plant, but for three weeks life was great for everyone.

UA: What kind of influence does this plant have on its surrounding communities, and how did that play out in the organizing campaign?

DT: Working at Nissan is one of the better paying jobs in Mississippi, and the plant employs over 6,000 people, even though half of those are temps. Even making $15 as a temp worker is more than double the state’s minimum wage of $7.25.

UA: So what were workers fighting for?

DT: It was less about wages because their wages were good money in the South. But they’ve seen their pension frozen, their health care premiums go up and their coverage drop. One worker brought his insurance card to the pharmacy, but they told him his account was frozen. It stayed frozen for about six months, and it wasn’t until at one of the captive audience meetings with management where he brought this up … and a day later an HR person went up to him and said it’s been resolved.

UA: What did you hear from workers voting no?

DT: A lot of workers told us Nissan doesn’t have to negotiate with the union, so I’m not going to risk losing my job and have them shut down the plant. What Nissan was telling them was that the plant would be shut down if they voted for the union. Of course, that’s illegal. (The National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against Nissan, which disputes the charges.) You can talk about having a voice, but these workers felt the pressure: managers constantly talking to them one on one, hour-long captive audience meetings every day until the vote.

UA: Did you sense something different about the challenge organizing poses in the South?

DT: A Levi’s plant down there is union, and some people drive three to four hours to go to work there because it’s one of the best paying jobs. But for some reason if you want to create a union, it’s a problem.

UA: What do you take back from the experience?

DT: Never trust the company unless it’s in writing and legally binding. The UAW thought they had Nissan in a corner to remain neutral because … Nissan is union in the rest of the world, just not in the U.S. But as soon as they filed, it was bam – hardcore union busting.

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