THE OKLAHOMA
WORKERS’ Issue 4, Vol. 1
MONTHLY
The Newsletter of the Communist Party of Oklahoma
TULSA MAYOR BRANDS PUBLIC WORKERS “UNSAFE”:
Tulsa World acts as management’s mouthpiece
By Daniel Lee Mayor Dewey Bartlett continued his war against Public workers last week, using the local newspaper as his platform to slander city workers. Bartlett is quoted in a Tulsa World article (July 30, “City of Tulsa's 'weak safety culture' costs millions in employee injuries, claims” by Randy Krehbiel) as stating that public employees have a “weak safety culture”, after city management ordered a $71,000 safety report from DuPont “Sustainable Solutions” which gave the city a score of .9 on a 0-5 safety scale. The article also contains numerous graphs and statistics with such statements as “Eightyfour percent of those surveyed said they ‘have had no involvement at all with any safety activities.’” It certainly paints a bleak picture, offering staggering figures of injuries and Workers’ Compensation claims, lack of accountability and unsafe work practices. What the article fails to mention is that AFSCME International, and Tulsa Local 1180, have repeatedly offered to conduct safety training classes for the past 5 years, but the proposals have been rejected each time by city management. In fact, the city has been stonewalling all safety requests made by the union submitted in the City Safety and Health Management Committee, which was originally designed to be a forum for workers and management to come together in a non-adversarial atmosphere to work out issues related to such matters. Union local president Mike Rider told the Oklahoma Workers Monthly that the union has been repeatedly requesting OSHA-rated safety eyewear for the workers, which would cost approximately $60 per pair, but has been turned down each time for over a year by the management on the committee. Yet, despite claims of “budget shortfalls”, the mayor spent $71,000 on the DuPont report. This is the same DuPont, incidentally, which has been repeatedly fined by the EPA for toxic waste dumping - endangering over 7 million people’s lives in the areas around their chemical plants – and has a well-documented history of union busting, health and safety violations, and created an industrial disaster in India, using local police to suppress protesters and murder a 25 year-old activist. The reporting by the Tulsa World was clearly-one sided and designed to paint public workers in the worst light possible. When contacted by the Oklahoma Worker’s Monthly about the article, Tulsa World writer Randy Krehbiel admitted that he had not even bothered to contact the union about the issue, and had approached the article believing the underlying issue to be the falsification of workers’ compensation reports and fraud by city workers. Krehbiel was urged to contact the union’s president and get both sides of the story. The next day, an editorial was published by Tulsa World staff editors, restating the need for safety issues to be addressed, citing the lack of accountability as the problem. There was no mention of AFSCME’s attempts to set up safety training or the most basic of safety equipment requests being denied by city management. Bartlett’s attack on union workers comes as no surprise. In 2010, Bartlett commissioned an efficiency review by KPMG, an auditing and efficiency consulting firm, to study and recommend areas to cut costs and “increase efficiency” in city government and services. KPMG, it may be noted, is a multi-national corporation whose influence reaches into the upper levels of US, British, and Europe-
AUGUST, 2012
Muskogee Workers Successful in fight against Privatization, Win back Collective Bargaining Rights By Charles McCune A long, hard fight was won by Muskogee City workers last month to restore collective bargaining rights and restore city recognition of their union, AFSCME Local 2465. The move comes as a ray of hope in a year which has seen repeated defeats across the nation for public sector workers and the push to crush workers’ rights.
Photo: The Journal Record , ©2011 an government, and was indicted in 2005 for creating fraudulent tax shelters for wealthy clients. The report was used by Bartlett to create a push to cut city services and base an argument for privatization of city contracts, one of the points suggested by the KPMG report. With the jobs of hundreds of workers in the crosshairs, Tulsa city employee union members worked together to create a plan which both cut costs and increase efficiency, and successfully had their contract renewed. Even Mayor Bartlett at the time (as of March, 2012) thanked the city workers on their saving the city $224,000 since last year. However, he had not given up on his war against public workers. In June, Bartlett presented a city budget which he pretentiously called “The Budget of Collaboration” to the Tulsa City Council, which among other things, included spending over $800,000 on “consultants” such as DuPont, but cut raises for city union workers, many of whom are forced to rely on public assistance to make ends meet. When city workers showed up at a city council meeting on June 14th to speak out against the betrayal of their interests and the forced hardship on their families, Bartlett stood up in the middle of their message and walked out. This of course was not reported in the Tulsa World. The newspaper’s headline four days later about the meeting: “Tulsa City Council goes to work on mayor's budget proposal”. No mention about city workers holding up their food stamp cards and pleading to be given enough money to feed their
At the same time that Wisconsin lay in a pitched battle over collective bargaining rights for public employees last year, city officials in Muskogee, Oklahoma were pushing plans of their own to crush workers’ rights, and outsource local public employees’ jobs. What they had not counted on was the collective power of the workers, fighting for their livelihoods and the rights of workers everywhere. Following the signing into law of the bill repealing the Oklahoma Municipal Employee Collective Bargaining Act in April 2011, Muskogee City Manager Greg Buckley began to work to press the Muskogee city council to derecognize the city employee’s union, AFSCME Local 2465, telling the council that the majority of city workers did not want or care about union representation. In June of last year, city councilors voted to end the collective bargaining rights for 186 of the city’s 480 employees. To add insult to injury, they also began to consider plans to privatize the city waste water treatment plant, which would have ended over half of the public worker’s jobs in the plant, outsourcing to a non-local management company. Upon hearing of the plan to undermine their livelihoods, the plant workers and members of AFSCME local 2465 took action. The bid being considered by the city was from Veolia, a French water management company, and would have cost the city $800,000. The city workers knew that they, as American workers and native Oklahomans, could more effectively manage the plant than a foreign-based multi-national corporation could, so they wrote their own “Request for Proposal”. John Reeves, a plant operator at the water facility and proud union member remarked upon being
“WHO WE ARE, AND WHAT WE STAND FOR” The Communist Party of Oklahoma has been reformed. For over onehundred years, the socialist tradition has been kept alive in America’s heartland. Before the Russian Revolution, before the Red Scares and the Cold War, Oklahomans flew the red banner and rallied together around what continues to be Oklahoma’s state motto, “Labor Omnia Vincit” (Labor Conquers All). Although socialist organizations were outlawed and suppressed, Communist activists black-listed and targeted for violence, the radical tradition of our state has persevered. Today, as our country has been racked by senseless wars, corporate swindles, and the sell-out of government to multinational private conglomerates, Oklaho-
mans are once again uniting as a class – the 99% – who are tired of living a poor man’s life in a rich man’s world. The Communist Party has, since the 1840s, been the only consistent Party to uphold without fail the rights of working people, standing with them in good times and bad. The Communist Party of Oklahoma is proud to uphold that tradition, and is once again organizing to put the interests of democracy, of human and civil rights, above the interests of corporate profits.
WWW.COMMUNISTPARTYOK.ORG
CONTINUED FROM FRONT:
Tulsa Mayor Brands...
families, or the dismissive and autocratic mayor getting up and walking out during one impassioned worker’s speech. This latest stunt with the DuPont report is merely an attempt by Bartlett and his union-busting cronies to portray public workers as dangerous, costly, and criminally negligent. And it has worked. Online comments to the story already clamor for privatization and speculate wildly about workers compensation fraud with ridiculous anecdotes which slander the work and sacrifice of our public servants that build our roads, keep our water clean, fight our fires and protect our streets; the city workers who are the backbone of our cities. The Tulsa World has given Mayor Bartlett the soapbox he craves, acting as his personal PR team and refusing to report anything which contradicts the narrative he is pushing. Their reporting resembles something more like propaganda than independent media. One wonders whatever happened to “freedom of the press.” And while they fete his accomplishments, another public worker’s family checks how much money is left on their food card to try to make it to the end of the month, wondering how much longer they might have a job. Party members and Labor supporters are urged to Call Tulsa AFSCME 1180 and show your support! 918.584.0334 Then call the Mayor's action line (918) 596-2100 to protest his attempt to CRUSH WORKERS RIGHTS.
The Oklahoma Workers Monthly Debuts online! Readers of the Oklahoma Worker’s Monthly may have noticed more than a few changes in the format of the Newsletter as of late. Many of you may as well have noticed online articles being shared via such social media sites as Facebook and Twitter. To facilitate speedier production of the newsletter and lessen the workload on our staff writers, we have streamlined the newsletter to a single, double sided page. This will allow Party members and fellow travelers to easily print out copies of the newsletter for distribution, sharing workercentered news and articles with their friends, families, and members of their communities. Members are highly encouraged to do this, using the newsletter as an opportunity to engage others in conversations about worker’s rights and the fight for social and economic equality through socialism. Likewise, the new online version of the newsletter can be a valuable resource, and sharing an article via email or Facebook can take just seconds, but provides a significant alternative to the capitalist propaganda fed through corporate news sources. If you have not visited the web site, you can find it by going to:
www.okworkersmonthly.blogspot.com Also, please check out and “like” our fan page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OKWorkersMonthly, and follow us on twitter: @WorkersMonthly . Since its debut in late June, the website posts updated articles and news stories frequently, and averages about 60 views per day, with a total hit count so far of almost 2,000 views. The twitter account reaches over 5,000 followers, and the Facebook fan page has an effective reach of over 48,000 people (through fans’ status and sharing updates) , bringing the effective total reach of the Oklahoma Workers Monthly to over 55,000 viewers! All party members are encouraged to submit articles for publication, as well as any artwork or graphics related to communism, equality, and workers rights.
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Muskogee Workers Successful...
asked about the proposal, “Had the city adopted our plan, taxpayers would have saved $200,000.” The proposal was brought to Buckley, who immediately shot it down. Undaunted, the public workers presented their RFP to city council, voicing their opposition to outsourcing on the basis that they could manage efficiency and costs more effectively. “We’re the ones that do the work. We know where we can create efficiency and we know how to save the taxpayer’s money,” said Dustin Williams, local 2465 member, to a packed city council meeting in September 2011. As a direct result of the public worker’s arguments, the city council stopped the outsourcing attempt in a 4-5 vote, but the city manager still refused to accept the workers’ proposal.
them back – as reported in the Phoenix: “The ordinance requires the support of 30 percent of the city’s estimated 180 non-uniform employees to petition the city for an election. If an election is set, more than half of the eligible employees would have to vote in favor of representation. Any employee who fails to cast a ballot would be considered to have voted against union representation.” Until such a petition was passed, and elections held, the union would remain unrecognized. AFSCME Organizer Matt Jordan called the measure a “slap in the face” to city workers, stating that it goes against more than 40 years of contract negotiation with the city.
The union immediately set to work, organizing the petition among city workers to hold an Having successfully won the election. Over 100 employees out battle against privatizing the A victory for public workers n Muskogee is a of the 186 non-uniformed workers victory for workers everywhere. waste water plant, the city workfilled out cards stating they wished ers set their sights on restoring collective bargaining rights in to be represented by a union. In the meantime, a closelythe city. A historic coalition of solidarity was formed be- fought city council race resulted in the victory of 3 pro-union tween AFSCME and members of the police and firefighters candidates in the April 3rd 2012 runoffs. Following this good unions, military veterans, pastors of local congregations in news, the new Muskogee city council met in June to revisit the NAACP, and Muskogee County Democrats. With their the city ordinance passed in December, which Councilor contract with the city set to expire on October 31, 2011, Kenny Payne stated was “not even close to being acceptaunion members began a drive to build union membership ble”. After some deliberation, the council struck the part of within their workplaces and present an appeal to the city the ordinance which counted non-voting employees as voting council, showing the city leadership that the workers did in “no” to union representation, and moved the dates public fact want union representation. As Dustin Williams, a Parks employees could petition for an election from November – and Recreation worker, told the local Muskogee Phoenix July to July – November, giving the workers the chance they newspaper, “I would hope the City Council will see employ- needed to organize a collective bargaining vote this year. ees do want a union,” Williams said. “And we are willing to On July 15th, 2012, the day the collective bargaining ordifight for that right.” nance went into effect, city workers filed their petition for a In a city council meeting in October, councilors voted 8-1 to recognition election, exceeding the required number in the approve the drafting of a city ordinance which would allow ordinance: “Over 55% of the employees signed the petition, the return of collective bargaining if city workers petition to even though we only needed 30%,” said Roscoe Beasley, a have their union status re-recognized. Muskogee Mayor John sanitation worker and union member. After the city clerk Tyler Hammons agreed to draft the proposal and return it to certified the petition on July 23rd, the Muskogee city council be voted on in December. In the meantime, however, city set the recognition vote for August 9th , 2012. A successful workers would lose their official union representation. At the vote will mean that Muskogee workers once again will enjoy time, the union supporters heralded the decision as a victory: union protection for their job security, wages and benefits, “We’re just tickled to death that the working man has won and safer working conditions. the right to bargain collectively with the city,” commented A victory for workers in Muskogee is a victory for workers Muskogee County Democrat Party chairman Dennis Wilhite. across the nation, and will set an example in the battles being However, when the mayor’s draft came back and was apfought for American public workers’ rights . To quote Dustin proved by city council on December 12th 2011, the union Williams, “We’re not just fighting for our workplace rights members were less than pleased. Despite opening the possiwe’re fighting for our children and their future. We are bility for the restoration of collective bargaining rights, the fighting for the very survival of the [working] class. Everyordinance placed unusual and stringent requirements to bring one should have the same rights and a voice.”