Above photo: Jamie Ding/AP.
Of The Entire Working Class.
55,000 SEIU members in California have gone on strike. A victory for these public sector workers would mean a victory for the labor movement and a defeat for Trump and the bosses. Unity and organization are essential.
On Monday, April 28, more than 55,000 Los Angeles County workers, members of my union, Service Employees International (SEIU-721), began what is planned to be a two-day strike in response to unfair labor practices by the county. The SEIU represents workers who provide a huge range of vital services to the county, from sanitation and parks and recreation workers, to mental, public health, and homeless outreach workers. The union membership authorized the strike by 99%. The union leadership called the unfair labor practices (ULP) strike because the county has failed to fairly negotiate a new contract for months now, offering workers insultingly low wage offers that do not keep up with the out-of-control cost of living in Los Angeles. The Democrats who run the LA County Board of Supervisors claim they cannot pay us more because of, among other things, the loss of grants that were canceled by the Trump administration.
But for us this strike is about more than just wages. For the rank and file members whom I work with, it’s about dignity, safety, and the necessary investment for us to perform our jobs. Many of us worked through the pandemic and the wildfires, sometimes risking our lives to help the people we serve, many of whom are some of the most precarious and poorest people in the city. This strike is also about power and solidarity. About standing together with other working people to say we have had enough of austerity, enough of the attacks on our unions, enough of the repression of students, immigrants, trans people, and Black people and other people of color, enough of police violence, of homelessness and out-of-control rents. It’s about saying enough of the Republicans and the Democrats who have sold us out time and time again, and enough of the growing concentration of wealth among a minority of billionaires like Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Unite Our Struggles…
The Trump administration has public sector unions in its crosshairs. He is cutting parks and recreation, firing federal workers, and trying to stop the right to unionize. Unions around the country and protesters are fighting back with determination. But it’s not just the Trump administration that has been at the forefront of these attacks. In LA, in particular, the Democrats are also responsible. Governor Gavin Newsom, while positioning himself to be next in line to the throne of the Democratic Party, has spearheaded attacks on LA’s working class, making us more precarious. And beyond that, California Democrats have helped both Trump and Biden repress the Palestine movement; and despite their position as pro-immigrant, have helped to prop up the inhumane U.S. immigration system. In response, we, the rank and file of the labor movement, need to use strikes like this to build our strength through a united struggle against both parties of capital.
Unions around Los Angeles including UTLA, SEIU 99, AFSCME, UAW 4811, SAG-AFTRA, Starbucks have all been on strike over the past year. Many of us stood with them on their picket lines and we are now calling on the labor movement to support the strike, show up at our picket lines, and to come to the LA County Board of Supervisors and speak in solidarity with our strike and for a united and fighting labor movement. Although the strike is specific to SEIU 721 we are all of us in a larger fight for the labor movement and the working class including immigrants who have been detained, harassed, and threatened with deportation, including SEIU member Rumeysa Ozturk. This is also a fight for trans rights since many of us work with trans clients, patients, and have trans coworkers who are facing an increased culture of bigotry, discrimination, and who are often denied the healthcare and social services they need. We must bring the labor movement and the fights for the oppressed together so that every time any of us are attacked we stand up together and fight back together.
This strike is happening against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s vicious attacks on working people, immigrants, trans people, students, the movement for Palestine, and the people of Gaza. Although the Democrats in the State of California, and more specifically in Los Angeles, have been positioning themselves as an opposition to Trump, we cannot rely upon them or the courts to fight these battles for us. We saw where that got us with Genocide Joe Biden. A bottom-up, grassroots resistance to Trump’s policies has been kindling, however. Since Trump took office there have been massive demonstrations of tens of thousands of people in cities across the country, and hundreds of protests at Tesla dealerships and Republican town halls. The people of Los Angeles in their unions and on the streets have been organizing direct actions against immigration raids, and high school students continue to walk out for immigrant rights. All of this is a good start, but we have to channel that anger into working class methods of struggle which include strikes.
…And Keep The Strike Going
The strike is the most powerful weapon of the working class. The 55,000 workers of Los Angeles County – healthcare workers, social workers, secretaries, nurses and many others – are essential to the functioning of the healthcare system and this gives us enormous power. This is all the more reason why we cannot allow the bureaucrats that lead our union
to continue to plan this strike from the top down or to limit our power by setting an end to the strike in advance. Striking for just two days with a set end date only shows our hand and has given the LA County Board of Supervisors the ability to plan for the strike. Worse, this top down approach has taken power away from the workers who should be the ones planning the strike and deciding when the strike begins and ends. Members have been attending practice pickets for months in preparation for this strike. The picket lines and mass worker assemblies should be places where workers discuss the strategy of the strike, not the boardrooms of the union offices.
The County Board of Supervisors is using the spectre of Trump and his attacks on state funding grants to go after county workers. If we settle for the scraps they are offering us, it could prove to be a setback for the whole public sector labor movement. Instead we need to fight for it all! The two day strike, albeit a strong Wall To Wall strike, is undermined by the leadership giving a set end date. But we don’t have to accept this. We can extend the strike as long as we like if we stay and organize in the streets from the bottom up alongside the rest of the working class.
The SEIU 721 strike has the potential to ignite the labor movement and inspire workers across the country to stand up to both Trump and the Democrats. By uniting the unions that are already fighting, including UAW 4811, who went on strike across the University of California last year for Palestine and free speech, the Starbucks, the AFSCME workers who struck in February over working conditions, and the United Teachers of Los Angeles and SEIU Local 99 who struck together, we could increase our power exponentially. We can use that power not only to win contracts but to fight to defend ourselves and our rights. When students and professors protest for Palestine, we must all stand together to defend them. When ICE comes to our schools and our communities, seeking to detain our immigrant brothers and sisters, we must use our numbers and our labor to defend them. But we also need to fight to force our unions to break with the parties of the bosses, and to build our own political organizations independent of the capitalist classes. SEIU 721, for instance, has organized for and given our dues money and endorsements to many of the very same Board of Supervisors members who are now attacking or defending attacks on our living standards. That must end! We need to form independent political organizations that fight explicitly for the working class and oppressed. We need to strategically organize for our own interests and build a national, combative movement against Trump, the Far Right, and the Democrats who are their neoliberal partners in crime.
Last year, during the height of the university occupations for Palestine there was an all out attack on the UCLA encampments. Reactionaries came together and used clubs, fireworks, and pepper spray to assault the protesters. The campus police, LAPD, and the LA sheriffs all stood by while the hours-long assault took place. The next day, May 1st, thousands of people came to the defense of the encampment which managed to stay strong throughout the assault. They surrounded the camp with members of labor unions, including the UC union UAW 4811, who later went on strike to protest the university’s treatment of these students. This was a powerful example of mass workers action against the Far Right and it showed the power of worker self-organization.
The Strike of SEIU 721 is upon us. We have the power in our hands in a city with a combative labor and social movement. We can win this strike by uniting our struggles with other unions and the working class, organizing our rank and file, and extending the work stoppages until all of our demands are met.
