For the first time in its 135-year history, WNC’s Central Labor Council is bringing together local unions in a united effort to get out the vote. A look behind local labor’s push to get people to the polls.
Above: Representatives from local unions gather for a group photo during recent get-out-the-vote efforts. Included are members of the Teamsters, IBEW, AFGE and American Postal Workers’ Union. Photo courtesy of the WNC Central Labor Council.
Appearances can be deceiving. Unions aren’t generally talked about as part of the fabric of WNC, or of N.C. as a whole for that matter.
But there is a long, rich labor history in the region, from successes that helped pull thousands of locals out of poverty and win essential workplace rights to tragedies as far back as the Marion massacre and as recent as the hardship caused by declining industry. WNC’s Central Labor Council dates back to 1881.
That, CLC President Josh Rhodes notes with a smile, might make it the oldest non-profit in town. But numbers have gone down considerably from the heyday when places like Haywood County had one of the highest percentages of union employees in the nation.
While even many supposedly liberal business owners in the city remain anti-union and workers in the booming retail and food service sectors remain largely un-organized, union workers in Asheville still include everyone from AT&T’s line workers to mail carriers, bus drivers and the grocery workers at the French Broad Food Co-Op.
In a left-leaning city like Asheville, the election season has brought out various causes and groups marshaling their forces, from the recent Moral Monday rally to party stalwarts working phone banks. The CLC has had political involvement before — it issues annual election endorsements, for example — but this election season the local unions are doing something they’ve never done before, becoming directly involved in get-out-the-vote efforts as a unified whole.
In a small building off Sardis Road that houses the local headquarters for the Teamsters and IBEW, the meeting space has become a mini-phone bank and canvassing headquarters, with members of different unions working the phones each day in five to six person shifts. More, Rhodes notes, are out going door to door in communities around the area, trying to convince voters to go to the polls.
“We’re pulling out all the stops, together with the state AFL-CIO,” Rhodes says.
“There’s never been door-to-door canvassing by the unions before until this year,” Mark Case, of the American Postal Workers Union, notes.
He says he and other volunteers found some surprises, like sympathy and camaraderie with some older voters throughout WNC, based on their common union ties stretching over different decades. They ran into railroad signalman and Enka factory workers who voiced support, legacies of the time when unions had a strong presence.
“We run into a 90-year-old train guy and a 90-year-old American Enka worker, they didn’t know us from diddly,” he says with a chuckle. “But once we identify ourselves it’s ‘come in, have a cup of coffee,’ they want to talk to us.”
“Once you’re in a labor union and understand a labor union, you’re always with labor,” Case tells the Blade, and that loyalty still runs deep among those who retired with a good pension, even in areas that might overall lean more in favor of the candidates the unions oppose. “At one time this was a stronghold for labor, and dominated the state as far as union policy.”
Their goals start at the top of the ballot: the union members are all adamantly against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who they repeatedly assert would be disastrous for labor. Their right to organize, Case points out, depends on a few lines in federal law and they believe a Trump presidency combined with a Republican-dominated Congress would put those basic rights in peril.
“They want to take away the rights you have to have a union,” Rhodes says. “People need to understand that.”
“Where are these good jobs going to come from? They don’t believe in minimum wage, they don’t believe in just economics,” Tommy Pintacuda, the Teamsters local vice president, says of the Republican platform. “They want to destroy labor unions, so they’d have us working for half of what our salary is now. The ‘good jobs’ are a talking point on their end but they don’t have anything to back it up. The only way to have a good economy is to strengthen unions and strengthen the middle class.”
“Collective bargaining was created with the stroke of a pen, it can be taken away with one,” he continues. “People died for the right to collectively bargain and it has become a very fragile right in this country. Whether you’re in a union or not, you should pay attention to that right. If it’s taken away it would be devastating to the middle class.”
But there’s a lot more on the ballot than Clinton vs. Trump. Governor, Lieutenant Governor, the Council of State, the entire General Assembly, an NC Supreme Court seat, multiple judges’ races are all up as well. Charles Meeker, the Democratic candidate for Commissioner of Labor visited union members on Nov. 5, something Case noted was “big for us” and hopes indicates more attention to the needs of WNC workers in the future.
The issues extend out. Case notes that more involvement with other progressive groups with unions could help, as union contracts help to ensure racial and gender equality on the job.
“We’re all in the same battle, we’re all fighting for the same exact thing,” Pintacuda says.
“Just under different generals,” Rhodes adds.
“The basic premise of a union is two is stronger than one and all of us are stronger than being alone,” Pintacuda says. “We work hard every single day, we just get paid and treated fairly.”
Gov. Pat McCrory’s term is also a source of particular ire.
“This election’s more important than any we’ve had before: look at the state of North Carolina, look at this governor, look what he’s done to unemployment benefits, to the workers here,” Rhodes said, also faulting McCrory for not expanding Medicaid or setting up a state health insurance exchange. “He’s cost working people in this state more money than everyone before.”
When it comes to local races, they cite state Reps. John Ager, Joe Sam Queen as well as state house candidate Rhonda Schandevel and congressional candidate Rick Bryson as some of their major priorities.
They also “see 80-year-olds as greeters at Wal-Mart,” as Rhodes puts it, because they didn’t have a union to fight for a fair retirement and pension.
If they prove victorious (current polls have races from President down to some general assembly seats close, though the GOP is favored in some state and congressional races), the union representatives assert that they need to go a step further than they have in the past.
“Where labor unions have dropped the ball and what we’re going to look at after this election is holding the candidates we endorse to the stone and making them follow through with what they promised,” Case says.
“It’s not enough anymore for them to just not do us any harm anymore,” Pintacuda adds.
They want North Carolina’s right-to-work law finally gone. The law places further restrictions on union organizing (though due to federal law it can’t ban it) and prohibits state and local government workers from forming or joining unions.
“The teachers need a union in this state badly, especially when there’s governors like Pat McCrory,” Rhodes says, and Case notes that other workers and schools in universities need that right too.
That might be a hard battle, given that law’s remained under both Democratic and Republican legislatures for decades, and it indicates that as over labor’s long history, the fight for election day is one battle in a much longer war.
“Everything we’ve got today is because people stood together in solidarity,” Rhodes says.
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