Occupy Portland Labor Outreach Committee

Labor Solidarity Committee: Mission Statement

The purpose of the Labor Solidarity Committee is to facilitate communication and relationship building between labor and Occupy Portland. Labor and Unions are an essential part of the Occupy Movement and it is the goal of the Labor Solidarity Committee to make sure that they are included as much as possible.

Get Involved

OP Labor Outreach Committee Meeting

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Date: Every Friday
Time: 5:45 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Location: Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church at 1131 SE Oak Street
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Purpose

Need volunteers to facilitate & take notes.

Proposed Agenda: 1. Review our committee work, the process for taking on work and moving it forward, and identify changes we should make now to prepare for a busy spring.
Current Work: - Community Assembly to Create a People's Budget - May 5th, First Unitarian Church; - East County Education Support

Future/Possible Work: - Unemployed organizing; - Labor Education; - Occupy/Labor Panel or conference; - Workers struggles: PSU Student workers, New Seasons workers

Other details
See Also:

Facebook Pages

Historical

Incomplete list.

Occupy Support of Working People

Longshore Workers Name Occupy Movement as Crucial in Settlement with EGT - Coordinated action by West Coast Occupys proves effective as ILWU Local 21 ratifies contract. Major victory for Occupy and the working class!

“The mobilization of the Occupy Movement across the country, particularly in Oakland, Portland, Seattle, and Longview were a critical element in bringing EGT to the bargaining table and forcing a settlement with ILWU local 21.” --Jack Mulcahy, ILWU Local 8

Labor Support of Occupy Portland

External Links

The Occupy Movement recognizes the dire economic situation the country is in and is not held back by mainstream politicians. This gives the Occupy Movement an amazing chance to lead labor down the right path. There is a wide gulf between the demands that the labor movement and the Democratic Party are putting forward and what working people desperately need. Occupy would not exist were this not the case.

The Battles of Occupy Portland

The Occupy Movement will be crushed if the demands being fought for do not connect with working people. A key characteristic of any powerful social movement is the appearance of successive, large demonstrations that draw in new layers of working people, students, and the elderly. The average working person feels impelled to join such a movement because they see their own interests reflected in the movement, and once they join they learn that their interests are the same as those of the others involved.

UNLESS something changes in Washington, American workers will, on New Year’s Day (2012), effectively lose their right to be represented by a union.

More News & Views

“The collapse of the Soviet system was a pretty extraordinary event, and we are currently experiencing something similar in the developed world, without fully realizing what’s happening.”^[1]

-George Soros

Where next for Occupy?

Let us name, then, the underlying object of the protests’ discontent. It is a society that fundamentally isn’t working, a system that coerces us into ruining the planet and exploiting its people, denying us life and liberty if we refuse to comply, and sometimes withholding them even if we do comply. It is a society where life is a little bleaker, gaudier, uglier, less authentic, and less hopeful with each passing year. It is a system of winners and losers, in which even the winners are less happy than a typical Ladakhi peasant or Amazonian hunter-gatherer. It is a society of pretense, image, and illusion. It is a society where more human energy goes to war than to art. Most tellingly, it is a society where it is normal to hate Monday. The discontent behind the protests comes from the conviction, “We can do better than this!”

What Occupy taught the unions - SEIU and others are embracing the movement that has succeeded as they have faded.

Unions are in a death spiral. Private sector unionism has all but vanished, accounting for a measly 6.9 percent of the workforce. Public sector workers are being hammered by government cutbacks and hostile media that blame teachers, nurses and firefighters for budget crises...

On the Brink: Fiscal Austerity Threatens a Global Recession (The Real News)

Dr. Heiner Flassbeck, Director, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, UNCTAD: European austerity policies past the point of no return, driving global economy towards deep and lengthy recession.

On Strike!

Strike Strategy (John Steuben)

Research

The Four Networks Theory of Power: A Theoretical Home for Power Structure Research

This document explains why and how organizations are the starting point for understanding power. It focuses on four main organizational networks -- ideological, economic, military, and political -- as the building blocks for power structures.

Hostile Forces

Anti-union call between Bank of America, Bernie Marcus, et al. and Rick Berman, 17 Oct 2008

Summary: On 27 Jan 2009, the Huffington Post ran a story by Sam Stein titled "Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill".^[2] The story included around five minutes of an hour long recording between federal bailout funds recipients. The call shows the firms to be involved in lobbying, effectively, with public money. The file released here is the full hour long recording.