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With the slogan “Resist, Restore and Revitalize!” the 13th Biennial Convention of statewide UE Local 150 convened at the Franklinton Center at Bricks on August 10 and 11. Local 150 members from across North Carolina shared their experiences fighting for fair wages and dignity, and building their union, in one of the least unionized states in the country.
In her address at the start of the convention, President Sekia Royall told the story of how she got involved in the union. A new manager in her department had fired one of her fellow workers, and she went to a meeting called by the union “not knowing what to expect,” as she had grown up in Kansas, another “right to work” state without a strong union culture.
“That day something changed in me,” she said. “I’ve always been a fighter but UE taught me how to fight different.”
Royall, who was not seeking another term as president, shared how her six years as a local officer (two as vice president and four as president) had been “a very humbling experience and rewarding, helping workers to find their own strength. In that moment, I found my power as well.”
Organizing the South
In one of the highlights of the convention, former Local 150 President Angaza Sababu Laughinghouse chaired a panel of Local 150 chapter leaders on “Organiz[ing] the South.” The importance of organizing the South for the entire working class was laid out in a resolution on the topic passed by the convention, which points out that “North and South Carolina are the least unionized states in the entire country. This allows the big multinational corporations to make super profits and not have to bargain with workers and their unions.” Another resolution, on collective bargaining rights for all workers, identifies one of the reasons why North Carolina has such a low union density: “In 1959, during the Jim Crow era when Black people largely had no rights to vote, an all-white state legislature passed General Statute 95-98 banning public worker collective bargaining and strikes.”
Despite that ban, Local 150 members who work for the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), for the state’s largest cities, for its university system, and at the Cummins Diesel plant, have been uniting workers to engage in aggressive struggle to win improvements in wages and fair treatment, and leaders from all of these sectors participated in the panel.
The panel began with Terry Green, president of UE Local 111, the Virginia Beach City Workers Union. Until recently, the state of Virginia had also banned collective bargaining in the public sector, but new legislation passed in 2020 allows municipal workers to win collective bargaining rights — but only if their city council passes a resolution allowing it. Green reported on how municipal workers in Virginia Beach, despite setbacks in their efforts to win such a resolution, have won two ten-percent raises, and are making plans to engage in political action to secure a solid city council majority in favor of collective bargaining.
Willie Brown of the Durham City Workers Union spoke about the “stand down” action by sanitation workers last September, which won $6.5 million in bonuses in October and helped the union win $28 million in raises in the budget adopted by the city this spring. Workers took the action despite the state’s anti-union laws. Brown also gave an honest assessment of mistakes the union had made during, and how union members had learned from them.
William Young from the Cherry Hospital DHHS chapter reported that DHHS workers have seen an uptick in Covid-19 cases, severe understaffing, and fear of hospitals closing down — but the union has been actively protesting these conditions, and keeping workers informed through its newsletter. “We’re going to continue to write letters or do whatever we have to do,” he said.
Khin Su Su Kyi, a housekeeper at the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus in Chapel Hill, described how the UNC housekeeper’s chapter of the union had won a minimum wage of $15, then of $18 per hour, and are now fighting for $20 per hour. The union is also fighting so that workers don’t have to pay to park when they come to work. However, perhaps the most important change since workers have established the union, she said, is that “Now, we have a worker union … before, we listen[ed] to the supervisor, now [the] supervisor listen[s] [to] our voice.”
Hwa Huang told the convention about several campaigns the grad worker organizing committee at North Carolina State University has been carrying out, including a cost-of-living survey, a petition that won a significant increase to stipends in one department, and fighting to end fees.
Tim Hunt of the Carolina Auto, Aerospace and Machine Workers Union chapter of Local 150 said that the union at Cummins Diesel has been around for 32 years, and discussed the union’s challenges with connecting to and bringing in younger workers. He also spoke about how the newly-formed Down East Workers Assembly is bringing together workers in the region to share their struggles. “We show up at city council meetings,” he said. “We want people to know the struggles that people are going through.”
In the discussion of the resolution on organizing the South which followed the panel, Jim Wrenn, a retired member of the CAAMWU chapter, pointed out the “crucial role” that the Southern Workers Assembly, which was founded in 2012, has played in supporting efforts to organize in the state and throughout the region.
Understanding the Political Moment
Dr. Ajamu Amiri Dillahunt of Black Workers for Justice, a professor of African-American history at North Carolina State and Local 150 member, gave a presentation on “Understanding this Political Moment, What’s At Stake in 2024 Elections.”
“You all don’t need me to tell you that we’re in a political, economic, social and environmental crisis,” said Dr. Dillahunt. “Our people are suffering, our communities are suffering, our planet is suffering, and by the looks of it, it doesn’t seem like that crisis is going to let up anytime soon.”
Noting that “We have a long battle ahead of us,” he emphasized the importance of focus and discipline, because “We have to be on our game more than we have ever been.”
Dr. Dillahunt reviewed various aspects of the political moment, including the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza, police violence against Black communities, and Project 2025, the far-right plan for expanding corporate power under a second Trump presidency. He also noted that at the state level in North Carolina, the crisis for working people has intensified, with right-wing supermajorities imposing their extremist agenda on the University of North Carolina system and failing to pass budgets, leaving public schools and public workers “in a mode of crisis, without the resources needed to thrive.”
In this context, Dr. Dillahunt asked, what is the role of the upcoming elections? He suggested that, while there are important differences between the two major parties, both of them represent capitalist exploitation. “Elections are important but they are not the fundamental element that will transform our society,” he said. Real change comes from organizing and “people power.”
Following his presentation, Dr. Dillahunt led a robust discussion in which Local 150 members and guests discussed what to do after the election, the role of white supremacist movements in the current moment and how to effectively oppose them, how to best engage faith leaders in workers’ struggles, and more. Montrell Perry of the Durham City Workers Union chapter decried the role of money in politics, declaring that “We deserve more and we have to figure out how to come together.”
Brigette Rasberry of the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, a long-time UE ally, also spoke to the convention about “The Long March for Unity and Justice” (happening September 20-29) which the center is organizing to “push for the type of North Carolina that we know is possible.” The march’s mission is to “create a compassionate and more just” North Carolina.
“We are fed up and we are ready to do something different,” Rasberry said. “We are coming together … workers and unions coming together with ordinary citizens to say no more.”
Speakers: How to Win for Workers in a Right-to-Work State
Keynote speakers Bryan Proffitt, the vice president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, and Braxton Winston, the Democratic candidate for North Carolina Commissioner of Labor, both laid out visions of a North Carolina that would respect workers’ rights and plans for how to achieve it.
Proffitt, a high school history teacher, began his talk with the observation that public education in North Carolina owes its existence to the newly-freed slaves who, in 1868, wrote a guarantee of public education into the state’s new constitution. As recently as twenty years ago, the state still valued education — and the job of teacher was so desirable that Proffitt was unable to secure a job fresh out of school.
However, after right-wing Republicans took over the state government in 2010, they immediately went after public schools. Proffitt noted that the right wing hates public schools because they are one of the few places in society where people connect with each other across racial divides, and the rich and powerful rely on dividing people in order to stay in power. “When we all go to school together … and play ball together, and eat lunch together and learn together … and stand together in our unions together, we are very dangerous,” he said.
Proffitt reviewed how educators in North Carolina, inspired by the Chicago Teachers Union’s 2012 strike and the Moral Mondays movement in their own state, began to rebuild their union, and in 2018 and 2019 participated in the “Red for Ed” movement, shutting down schools across the state to demand more investment in public education. Then he told the story about how his own local in Durham, starting with 10 percent membership, used rank-and-file, worker-to-worker organizing to achieve majority membership this past May. Bolstered by this new majority, the union won $27 million in additional funding from the county this year, more than twice what they had been able to win in previous years.
“We could be less than a decade away from repealing the ban on collective bargaining in our state,” Profitt told the convention. NCAE is planning to use the same kind of worker-led organizing that brought them to majority status in Durham to win majorities elsewhere in the state, win elections to the state Supreme Court, and challenge North Carolina’s gerrymandered electoral map in 2030 — potentially paving the way for a repeal of the collective-bargaining ban.
“The majority of the people in our communities, in our state, in our country, in our world, are on our side,” Proffitt said. “And if we fight effectively, they will join us, and we will win all the things that our people deserve.”
Winston, a union stagehand and a member of IATSE who is running for Commissioner of Labor, addressed the convention via Zoom. He told UE members, “I’m a guy who clocks in and clocks out,” and that “it’s high time that we had a worker being the lead advocate for workers all across our state,” and noted that, when elected, he will be the first union member to hold the position of Commissioner of Labor.
He cited his experience advocating for workers as city councilor and mayor pro tem in Charlotte, where he was a strong ally of Local 150’s Charlotte City Workers Union chapter, and promised to bring strong leadership at the state Department of Labor.
“We have to realize that the foundation of this nation’s economy was built on stolen labor,” he said, and pointed out that this legacy hurts all workers, because “today’s American economy continues to rely on the use of unpaid or underpaid labor.”
All North Carolina workers suffer from the same system, Winston said, one that “aims to grow the pockets of a small population of business owners” while “ensuring that most of our workforce is indentured to a life of living on the edge of financial ruin, despite people’s willingness to be honest, hard workers. This is a rigged system and it’s supported by middle-men who will do the bidding of the ownership class.” These middle-men, he said, sow division among the working class along lines of race, immigration, and sexual orientation, in order to distract working people from “the owners’ thirst to survive off stolen labor.”
He noted that his opponent is one of these middle-men, and that “His platform is to sell you and other workers out.” Winston’s opponent has never been elected to public office, and currently works as a lawyer defending construction companies who are under investigation by the very department he now seeks to lead.
“Whether it’s urban or rural, in the mountains or the coast, our North Carolina communities are more alike than we are different,” Winston said. “So many of our workers are on the edge because they lack access to affordable child care, affordable housing, or reliable transportation methods.” When elected, he said, he will build coalitions to improve all aspects of working people’s lives, what he called a “whole worker” approach. “If we take care of North Carolina workers, then North Carolina can work for all of us.”
After his presentation, Winston took questions from the audience. In response to questions about the limited powers the Commissioner of Labor has in North Carolina, he said he would use the position as a “bully pulpit” to advocate for workers and be creative in using the office to push for improvements in workers’ lives on multiple fronts.
Following the discussion, convention delegates voted unanimously to endorse his candidacy.
Fighting for Social Change
A second panel of UE members and allies addressed “Community-Faith-Labor Coalitions to Win Broad Social Changes.” Chaired by Local 150 Recording Secretary Nichel Dunlap-Thompson, it featured presentations by Ashaki Binta of Black Workers for Justice and the Southern Workers Assembly, Angaza Samora Laughinghouse of Black Workers for Justice and Refund Raleigh, and Hwa Huang of the NC State grad workers’ organizing committee of Local 150. Laughinghouse spoke about efforts to redirect funds from policing to other city services, Huang spoke about organizing tenants, and Binta addressed the leading role of Local 150 in organizing the South, even in the absence of collective bargaining rights. “UE150 has shown that rank-and-file leadership can take on these struggles and build organization,” she said. “Even though the day-to-day may be difficult or challenging, don’t ever underestimate the significance of what you all have been doing for the past 20 or so years”
In his remarks to the convention, UE General Secretary-Treasurer Andrew Dinkelaker said, “Local 150 is to be recognized for … challenging us all to do more and to do better.” Reflecting on the UE mottos “the members run this union” and “the union for everyone,” he reminded the delegates and guests that “it is up to all of us to live up to them.” Eastern Region President George Waksmunski also addressed the convention, emphasizing the importance of finding the potential in all workers: “A lot of our members out there don’t know that they are great labor leaders.”
Keith Bullard of the Union of Southern Service Workers and Don Cavellini of the Coalition Against Racism in Pitt County brought greetings from their organizations, and Local 150-CAAMWU retiree Jim Wrenn welcomed delegates on behalf of the Franklinton Center, on whose board he serves.
Taking a formal stance on many of the issues discussed in the various panels and presentations at the convention, Local 150 delegates discussed and passed resolutions on fighting racism, international solidarity, justice in policing, and “The Ongoing Genocide in Gaza and Palestinian Liberation.”
Education, Elections and Organizing
On Saturday afternoon, convention-goers attended two rounds of workshops, covering topics including how to have an organizing conversation, elements of a strong local union chapter, movement healing and self-care, what lawyers can and cannot do for workers, and UE’s philosophy of “Them and Us Unionism.”
Following the workshops, delegates elected a slate of officers to lead the union for the next two years. Willie Brown from the Durham City Workers Union chapter was elected president, and William Young from the Cherry Hospital DHHS chapter was elected vice president. Treasurer Dominic Harris and Chief Steward Craig Brown, both of the Charlotte City Workers Union chapter, were re-elected to new two-year terms; Alexandra Fox from the Central Regional Hospital Chapter was elected as Recording Secretary, and Vincent Daniels of the Durham City Workers Union chapter was elected as Assistant Chief Steward. Dr. Rakesh Patel (Central Regional Hospital) and Montrell Perry (Durham City Workers Union) were elected as trustees, and Chris Benjamin (Durham City Workers Union) was elected as the alternate trustee. Rob Davis of the Charlotte City Workers Union chapter also ran for president.
On Sunday morning, International Representative Dante Strobino, Field Organizer Kass Ottley and Project Organizer Lora Tate gave reports on organizing and membership numbers for the local over the past two years.
