24: National Rank and File Labor Conference in Chicago: Take Back Our Unions!

Stop The Union Busting!
It Is Time To Take Back Our Unions!

When: Sunday, July 24 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Where: Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson Ave.
( just west of the Red Line Wilson Ave. stop; about 7 blocks West of the Outer Drive (Lake Shore Drive) exit at Wilson Ave., Chicago, Illinois )

The growing crisis in the AFL-CIO leadership is a reflection of their complete failure to defend and organize workers in the United States.

On Sunday July 24, 2005 in Chicago, the national Labor Action Coalition and other organizations and unionists invite you and your organization to join us at a national labor conference. We¹re coming together to discuss and plan common actions against the attacks we face - from privatization and cutting benefits to the destruction of our pensions, the growing racism on the job and in the communities and the dismantling of our public education and healthcare systems. There is a war at home as well as a war abroad.

This rank and file labor conference will also look at how working people have in the past, and can do so again, go on the offensive in this country. While the the AFL-CIO misleaders shuffle chairs on the sinking Titanic, promoting organizational solutions for their own career and political-alliance interests, they refuse to mobilize their own members, the families and communities, to stop the barrage of attacks coming from Corporate America, Bush and Congress. These union 'leaders' give the corporate controlled politicians our dues money without a vote by the rank and file and these politicians then vote against us. This conference is one step further in the effort to bring labor/union activists together to learn from each other and learn from our past as well as planning to work together after the conference.

We can¹t look to union misleaders and politicians to do what working people need to do ourselves, to mobilize in favor of our own lives. The working class does have the power to effectively fight corporate America, Bush and Congress, to gain the political power we need for our agenda, our needs, and our future. To do that we need to develop a common awareness of which our real enemies are and how to learn from each other and our past. We also need to discuss how to fight the political power of Corporate America and their two parties.

We need to build support for a national march and rally of millions of workers against this government, both for its war abroad and to defeat the war at home on working, unemployed and homeless people. Working people in this country, along with workers and soldiers overseas, have the power to defeat the union busters and shut the war machine down. We just have to exercise that power, such as ILWU longshore workers do when close the docks in San Francisco.

On July 24, trade unionists and community activists from around the country will speak about their own experiences, view films and videos, and caucus together. We are building a national network of workers, unemployed, homeless and ex-incarcerated that will back each other up in fighting for jobs for all, for justice on those jobs, for the right to unionize, for true democracy within our unions and for a better life for all. Why do we include unemployed, homeless, and incarcerated along with workers on this flyer? Because we are all of us, including you reading this, one paycheck or one 'reprimand", or one complaint, eviction or repossession, away from being unemployed, homeless and incarcerated.

The AFL-CIO national officials continue to shameful support for the bosses¹ war in Iraq that has killed over 100,000 Iraqis and is killing and wounding tens of thousands of US troops who are being used as cannon fodder for Haliburton, Chevron, Bechtel. The AFL-CIO has also has gone along with the reactionary and racist Patriot Act and other repressive legislation. These measures are destroying what democratic rights we have remaining, and allowing immigrants and people of color, especially Muslim and Arab people, to do what has always been done wholesale in Asian, Black, Latino, Native American communities - to be rounded up and incarcerated without any rights. We must stop the growing racist attacks on the jobs and in our communities. We want to reach activists and concerned rank and file attending the AFL-CIO convention that begins on July 25th in Chicago.

The time is sorely overdue for the members to let the AFL-CIO know that we are fed up with their corporate unionism. We will also be demonstrating at the opening of the AFL-CIO convention in Chicago on Monday, July 25, 2005 at the Drake Hotel to demand a democratic and fighting working class movement, one led by our unions with true leaders and our own political party. We also demand direct election of all officials and an end to support to the sell-out political parties of the bosses.

The Democrats have helped push the corporate agenda including the deregulation of the airlines, Tele-communication as well as other industries and the AFL-CIO¹s own hero Bill Clinton helped push through NAFTA. Workers need their own party that will not stab them in the back once they take office. The Labor Action Coalition (LAC) was established to rebuild the trade union movement on the basis of one-member, one-vote democracy, against labor management collaboration and privatization, and for the political independence of working people from the corporate political parties. We need a national network of workers and unions that challenge the bosses, fights business unionism and our so-called representatives in government. Our members have different points of views but we joining together on the basis of working class unity in struggle.

Partial list of participants for Chicago July 24, 2005 Labor Conference

Labor Action Coalition
AFSCME Local 3506
Rafeeq Palel, Teamster UPS Chicago
Tim Kaminski, UAW 110 Chrysler Member.
Mike Griffin, UBC, War Zone Foundation,
Kim Scipes, Labor Educator on AFL-CIO and International politics
Barb Ingals, CWA ITU Detroit (invited)
Alfredo Pena, AFSCME 154 Steward
Jeffrey Blankfort, Former Editor Of Middle East Labor Bulletin (invited)
Earl Silbar, AFSCME 3506 Chicago Community Colleges
Steve Zeltzer, IUOE 39, Labor Action Coalition
Sue Smith, Injured AFSCME District Council 31 member and employee
Larry Soloman, UAW-CAT 751 Retired Past President
David Johnson, UBC44
Giselle Quesada, CWA 9410 Steward,
Todd M. Jordan Future of Union.com organizational director and member UAW 292
Mary Ann Ring, CUE UCSF Steward & N. Cal Chair (invited),
Jim Griffin, Detroit MWM Committee, and Co-Organizer, Socialist Party of Michigan*

*For information only

Proposed Workshops/Discussion Sessions

Current struggles and lessons
Lessons from past workers¹ struggles;
The AFL-CIO Convention in Chicago on July 25: What we face, and what can we do?

We call on all workers, unemployed, homeless, and community activists throughout the country and other labor organizations to join us in Chicago on July 24th and July 25th. If you want to endorse and participate in this conference please contact us at laboractionnow@yahoo.com

Contacts:
Chicago, Ill 773-935-5255
Decatur, Ill 217-428-6372
Champaign, Ill 217-356-8247
St. Louis, MO 314-895-2762
New York 212-864-7595
San Francisco (415)867-0628
East Bay 510-531-0416
Los Angeles Area 714-595-3627