by Kerry Taylor
Labor Notes

Sanitation workers in Charleston are knocking on doors to drum up support for their battle to gain recognition for Local 1199B, part of the National Union of Hospital and Healthcare Employees- AFSCME.

On April 4, the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination during a 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, the Charleston workers launched a door-to- door petition drive to raise awareness of their struggle and pressure the City Council to recognize the union.

City officials have offered to meet with any individual worker about their concerns, but maintain that the state’s right-to-work laws prevent them from negotiating with public sector employees. Union supporters counter that no South Carolina law forbids public employees from collectively bargaining.

Workers have complained of abusive supervisors, an ambiguous system of promotions that pits workers against one another, and treacherous working conditions.

One driver was blamed for an incident in which a falling tree branch pinned her in the cab and seriously injured her neck and shoulders. She was rushed back to work, as was a collector whose eyes were burned by chemicals that shot from a paint can as it was being compacted.

Until recently the sanitation workers had hoped to resolve these grievances through discussions with their supervisors. The discussions have provided a few token concessions such as new rain jackets, but little actual relief.

The workers have now concluded that establishing an employees’ organization with democratic rights to negotiate with the city is the only way to win some measure of equality and fairness.

“If you’re a public servant you deserve dignity, respect, and acknowledgment that you’re doing a service for the community,” said Richard Polite, a 12-year sanitation department veteran, who adds that the workers’ demands are not primarily economic but center on basic human rights.

“We’re overworked, underpaid, and disrespected. The people who are in charge of sanitation have got to realize that they’re dealing with human beings.”

While the City Council has the power to grant the union’s request, the decision likely rests with Mayor Joseph P. Riley, who enjoys considerable influence over the Council.

LEARNING FROM THE ‘60s

Since last summer, the workers have been meeting with Mary Moultrie and other leaders of a historic 1969 struggle. Forty years ago, Charleston was the center of a bitter 113-day strike by 400 hospital workers, almost all of them black women.

It drew strong support from Local 1199 and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and many civil rights and union activists viewed the strike as an indication of the potential for joining black power with labor militancy.

“There is more openness in Charleston today. It’s a different city,” acknowledges Moultrie. “But what drew me to the sanitation workers is that the day-to-day grievances are exactly the same as the ones we faced 40 years ago. This petition drive has brought those hidden grievances to the attention of the public.”

Area students and members of Longshoremen (ILA) Local 1422 have joined the workers in collecting more than 4,000 signatures.

“Our reciprocal approach to workers who are organizing is a lesson we learned well during our struggle,” said Leonard Riley of Local 1422 [a member of the SC Progressive Network], which was at the center of a nearly two-year international solidarity campaign to resist union-busting and to free five of its members- the Charleston 5-arrested during a picket line protest.

“We know that we have to be there for any group of workers like the sanitation workers who are doing what they do to earn a living and protect themselves on the job,” he said. “No one does it in this political and economic climate on their own.”

By Tim Wheeler
People’s Weekly World

South Carolina AFL-CIO President Donna DeWitt [and Chair of the South Carolina Progressive Network] quickly brushes aside questions about Gov. Mark Sanford’s tearful admission June 24 that he flew secretly to Argentina for a week-long tryst with a paramour.

His aides put out the story that Sanford, an avid hiker, had gone for a long walk on the Appalachian Trail to clear his mind after losing several bruising fights with the legislature. It turned out to be a lie. Instead he had flown to Buenos Aires pursuing his love affair with an Argentinian woman named “Maria.”

The story is pouring out in sordid detail, including steamy emails between the woman and Sanford, married and the father of four children. There are reports that the Governor, a fiscal barracuda who slashes programs that serve the poor, flew three times to Argentina at State expense. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Sanford, then a member of the House of Representatives, called on Pres. Bill Clinton to resign to restore “moral legitimacy” to the White House. He voted to impeach Clinton.

Yet DeWitt focuses instead on the other source of Sanford’s notoriety: His much publicized rejection of hundreds of millions of dollars in President Obama’s Economic Stimulus funds that South Carolina was to receive. The South Carolina legislature repeatedly overrode the Governor’s vetos of spending bills funded from the economic stimulus and a State Court recently overruled his rejection of the money.

“It’s a sad, sad story from a sad State,” DeWitt told the World in a phone interview from her office in Columbia, the state capital. “The Labor Council gave Sanford a 20 percent rating when he was in Congress. He slept on a futon in his Washington Office. But his door was open to labor. He came to the ILA picnic and brought his wife and kids. She comes from a very wealthy family and has always been his main political adviser.”

Sanford, she charged, “hasn’t been focused on running the State of South Carolina but rather on running for President. All the things he did flowed from his political ambitions.”

She stressed the dire economic crisis that afflicts the Palmetto State. “We needed the money,” she said, referring to the Obama stimulus funds. “Across the board we were looking at 20 percent cuts to our schools, tremendous cuts in healthcare. If he is truly the compassionate conservative he claims to be, those cutbacks would have been important to him but he put his political ambitions ahead of our schools and healthcare.”

His loud rejection of the economic stimulus funds, “was a political ploy. Don’t forget, John McCain invited him out to Arizona to discuss naming him his running mate in last year’s election. Sanford wants to make a name for himself.”

There are other scandalous facts about South Carolina not aired by the corporate media. “South Carolina ranks 50th in the nation in the number of women elected to public office,” DeWitt said. “South Carolina is the only state with no woman in the State Senate. We are always in the top five in the number of women killed by domestic violence. Our unemployment rate is 12.5 percent among the highest in the nation. In some rural counties, it is in the 20 percent to 25 percent range. We have rural counties that are just devastated and they desperately needed that economic stimulus money.”

The South Carolina Progressive Network (SCPN) and the State AFL-CIO organized a rally of nearly 4,000 people April 1 on the steps of the State Capitol to denounce Gov. Sanford’s grandstand play against the stimulus package. The multi-racial crowd held up pink signs with the message, “Pink Slip for Mark Sanford.” Banners proclaimed, “Recall Sanford” and “It’s Our Money: Jobs, Education, Healthcare.”

SCPN Executive Director Brett Bursey told the World he has known Gov. Sanford more than a decade and takes no satisfaction in his personal “tragedy.” But he too stressed that the overriding issue is the plight of hundreds of thousands of unemployed, and poor people in South Carolina as the economic crisis deepens. “We’re tops in the nation in unemployment,” he said. “Its over 12 percent. There were going to be severe cuts in services — critical services — even with the economic stimulus package, including severe teacher layoffs.”

SCPN, the AFL-CIO, and other allies responded by mobilizing the biggest protest demonstration to demand the stimulus funds of any state in the South.

Some in South Carolina believe Sanford cannot survive and will be forced to resign. He has already stepped down as Chairman of the National Republican Governors Association. Once considered a presidential contender, he joins U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. on the GOP’s lengthening roster of disgraced and discredited might-have-been GOP presidential candidates.