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On Friday April 24, 2015, the Penn Fed participated in the Annual Workers Memorial Day held at the SheetMetal Workers Hall on South Columbus Boulevard. The fact the local media gave no coverage to this important event did not deter our members from marking off and attending. We enjoyed a fellowship breakfast followed by guest speakers, concluding with a funeral march and the reading of the names of those who died from work-related injuries and illnesses in the Tri-State area in 2014/15. With teary eyes and against the backdrop of the Delaware River and the sound of bagpipes we reaffirmed our commitment to prevent injury, illness and death on the job.
We know that when workers confront the boss to demand safe conditions, the other workers will step up to join them, even when they are underpaid, overworked, and terrified of retaliation.
View pictures of this event in our Photo Gallery
One of the guest speakers, Eric Frumin, the Health and Safety Director of Change to Win offered the following remarks.
“Brothers and sisters:
Thank you so much for giving me the chance to be with you today.
PHILAPOSH is certainly one of the most important leaders in our national fight to protect our safety and health on the job.
So it’s a special honor to be with you here today.
Change to Win joins all of you in your actions to:
- Honor the workers who lives were cut short
- Support the families who have suffered so terribly, and
- Demand justice in the prosecution of the bosses who killed them.
And we want to pay tribute to the courage of the families who are here today, and are willing to join the struggle despite their loss.
Because we are here not only to remember those who have died. Mother Mary Harris Jones was one of America’s greatest union organizers. She organized coal miners and textile workers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including right here in Philadelphia.
In her in the immortal words, we must -- not only –
Pray for the dead, but also – fight for the living.
And it indeed a pleasure to be among so many great fighters in this room here today.
People like Jim Moran and Barbara Rahke and the entire PHILAPOSH leadership – let’s give them a hand for their tireless commitment and determination to preserve and improve our labor standards for workers across the spectrum of the economy.
People like Rick Bloomingdale and Pat Eiding from the AFL-CIO, who have lent their support to so many crucial struggles.
And how did you like that Shymara Jones, from the national fast food campaign? Isn’t she something?
You know, fast food workers are some of the smartest people in the world. All of us know what it’s like to get up every morning, raise our children, pay the rent, be a good parent, go to work, feed our families – and still participate in the struggle for workers dignity and justice on the job.
But what’s special about shymara and her co-workers?
Well, how many people can do all of those things, including leading their co-workers in the struggle, and do it all on 8 buck per hour?
And they pull off that miracle every day, with the courage and everyday commitment that few of us have had to muster ourselves.
There are many leaders to in the fast food campaign, both here in Pennsylvania and around the nation.
They work in a job that can be every bit as brutal as any factory, warehouse, or steel mill job around.
ncluding the severe danger of burns.
Sure, you might be thinking, how serious could those dangers really be? After all, it’s just a restaurant -- right?
Well, how many people here have had to visit a friend in a hospital after an accident or injury?
What’s the worst version of that experience?
- The long wait while our friend or relative is suffering through surgery?
- The look on the family’s faces when they arrive?
- The painful recovery, wondering if your friend or relative will ever be the same person?
As bad as those are, they are worse if the victim is in the burn unit. The suffering is worse, the recovery is longer, and the scars never heal.
So what does this have to do with restaurant workers?
Believe it or not, there are more restaurant workers in the burn units of our nation’s hospitals than people from almost any other part of the economy.
And those burns are bad. Burns from hot oil are the most common burns to restaurant workers, and they are some of the longest-lasting, painful and severe burns that doctors will see.
There is a reason that the medieval kings would dump boiling oil on their attackers. It is a terrible weapon, and fast food workers routinely suffer severe burns from hot oil as they clean up or prepare food.
We asked fast food workers across the nation how many of them suffered burns.
Almost 4 out or 5 reported that they suffered burns at work, often repeatedly.
And like i said, they are not only teenagers, they are also parents and even grandparents, trying to make sense of their lives after these injuries, with few or none of the benefits or supports that the rest of us consider routine.
Until this campaign started, almost no one paid any attention – least of all the bosses themselves.
Bad burn? “put mustard on it,” the bosses at McDonald’s will often say.
Really, you can’t make this up.
But people like Shymara Jones are standing up every day demanding “$15 and a union”.
Sure they want a real wage increase. Who can really live on $8 a day?
But this campaign is about much more than just the money.
Which is why the money alone will never be enough for Shymara, or for the workers at the McDonald’s at Broad and Market. People like Bernard Giddings, Martisse Campbell, and Ty’jae Johnson. People who told us they got burned every damned week on the job.
So these workers went to OSHA last month, and demanded inspections to make sure that mcdonald’s finally gives them the protection they need, the protection they deserve, and the protection the law requires.
And now they are waiting for the results from OSHA.
But more important, they know– just like we all know – that the only way, the only way – workers will ever be protected from these dangers is if they get the power to deal with the boss straight on.
If they have the power to stop the boss from rolling over them.
The power to tell the boss – enough is enough. Just let me do my job, stop harassing me and threatening me and yelling at me.
In short, the only way they will get a living wage, get protection from burns and get a semblance of dignity is through a union contract that forces the boss to treat them like people, not like animals or machines.
And that’s what they are fighting for here in Philadelphia, in Pittsburgh, in NYC, in Washington dc, in Charlotte, in Atlanta, in Orlando, in New Orleans, in Kansas City, in St. Louis, in Chicago, in Detroit, in Denver, in Tucson, in LA, in Oakland, in Seattle – in every part of this country.
And they are fighting this fight not just the few places where the unions are supposedly strong – although these days, who is kidding who?
Those of us who have a contract are no more than one hedge fund or one governor away from losing our contracts, our pensions and our hopes for the future.
Incredibly, the fast food workers have taken this fight to every area of the nation.
They are taking the fight to places that haven’t seen a grassroots union organizing campaign in decades.
Places, like Nashville, Raleigh, Memphis, Tampa, Jackson MS, – the very places where the business leaders and politicians love to trash unions while they claim to love American workers.
The fast food campaign is showing them that right under their noses, people are standing up to the corporate power that is running our nation into the ditch.
They are forcing McDonald’s -- with their billions of dollars of profits every year -- to admit for the first time that their wages are too damn cheap.
Other workers – and other companies – are watching this very closely, too.
Here in Philadelphia, airport workers are demanding living wages and safety on the job. Is SEIU in the house?
Walmart workers are demanding a living wage.
And the billionaires in the Walton family are also -- finally -- admitting they have to raise wages and stop treating workers like machines they can just turn on and off.
Where will it end?
None of us know. But one thing is for sure:
If you had asked me 3 years ago, did i think it were possible for thousands of fast food workers around the nation to step up and lead this charge?
Step up and risk what little they had to demand a living wage?
Step up and demand safe working conditions?
Step up and call OSHA inspectors – knowing that the boss would start looking for who to fire next?
Step up and march in the streets?
Step up and get arrested?
Step up and say workers lives matter and workers’ bodies matter?
No -- i don’t think i would have considered it possible.
If you had asked me a few years ago -- would unorganized low-wage, immigrant Walmart warehouse workers in California and Illinois confront the biggest corporation in the planet?
Would they go on strike to demand safer conditions, or protest the tens of millions of dollars stolen from them by Walmart and its henchmen?
And if you had asked me would they even keep their jobs in the process?
I don’t think i would have considered it possible.
But today, we know different.
Today, we know that when workers organize, they can win victories, even when they have no union at all.
We know that when workers confront the boss to demand safe conditions, the other workers will step up to join them, even when they are underpaid, overworked, and terrified of retaliation.
We know that when workers stick together and they look for ways to help each other instead of just worrying about their own problems, more than anything else, they can build the power to win.
So these are powerful lessons for the rest of us.
If warehouse workers at Walmart can do it, if fast food workers at mcdonald’s can do it, then certainly those of us with contracts and benefits and protection can ask ourselves today:
- What are we willing to do differently?
- How can we change our own unions so that we can reach out to people who have little power but want to join our fight for fairness and dignity and safety on the job?
- Are we willing to step up and take the risk that we can win?
Because if we do that, we help turn around the very dangerous situation we are confronting in our country.
And brothers and sisters -- we can do it without just waiting for the next election.
Fast food workers can’t wait.
Walmart workers can’t wait.
None of us can really afford to wait.
Today, workers hands are at risk, and workers’ hands matter.
Today, workers bodies are at risk, and workers’ bodies matter.
Today, workers families are at risk, and workers’ families matter.
Today, workers’ lives are at risk, and workers’ lives matter.
Today, women’s rights are at risk, and women’s lives’ matter.
Today, immigrant children are at risk, and children’s lives matter.
Today, black people are at risk, and black lives matter.
Today, we are all at risk – and we all matter.
We are all at risk – and we all matter.
We are all at risk – and we all matter.
But we will only matter if– finally – we can build a movement of workers from coast to coast, north and south, demanding justice, safety and dignity on the job.
We will only matter if we can all stand together in our communities. We will only matter if we can unite around a common program of solidarity for all workers, not just a few workers.
A program of solidarity that gives hope to the hopeless, who have long since written off the possibility of change in their lifetimes.
A program of solidarity that reaches across industry, across the color line, across the immigration divide, across the gender divide, and says to the bosses and politicians –
Enough is enough!
You aren’t going to divide us anymore.
We all matter.
All lives and families matter.
You all know the words:
An injury to one is really an injury to all!
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
Sing the song with me now. You know the words.
[Everyone stands and sings solidarity forever. I’ll lead the singing.]
View pictures of this event in our Photo Gallery
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