The Struggle of Haitian workers -- their alliance with Steelworkers Local 8751
Steve Gillis, President, USWA Local 8751 & Frantz Mendes, Vice-President, USWA Local 8751
What follows comes from the scrapbook of the Boston School Bus Drivers Union, which is United Steel Workers of American Local 8751. This union has supported the struggles of the Haitian community in Boston since the mid '80s. The pictures are fuzzy copies of copies, but we are using them because they show how Local 8751 struggle.
We are very glad to have this contribution since it shows how Haitians have enriched and deepened the union movement in the United States. -- editors
The struggle that the Haitian working class in the diaspora has waged against racism and U.S. colonialism has been part and parcel of the daily activity of the Boston School Bus Drivers and Monitors Union for nearly two decades. Currently, about 75% of the 800 bus drivers and 400 monitors represented by the Local are immigrants from Haiti. They have been in the leadership and filled the ranks of the Local's battles over the years, battles which include nine strikes since the Local's founding in 1977.
The Local has been in the forefront in Boston in defense of the rights of Haitian workers.
In 1990, the Local's leadership and hundreds of its members helped organize mass marches, pickets and a boycott to protest the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Red Cross racist ban on Haitian blood donations. The union produced and distributed thousands of leaflets, reprinted by our members' families in Haiti, which condemned the U.S. government's scape goating of Haitian immigrants and gay men for the AIDS epidemic. The leaflets called for massive government resources for scientific research and medical care to defeat the virus, like the billions the government spent on the Manhattan Project's nuclear weapons program during World War II.
During the late 1980s, the Local's members had joined tens of thousands in the streets of Boston -- sometimes weekly, sometimes daily -- in the popular upsurge, both in the U.S. and Haiti, that led to the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Duvalier dictatorship and swept the Lavalas movement into power in Haiti. Jean-Bertrand Aristide made several trips to Boston during that time. One of his rallies filled Boston City Hall Plaza with thousands of supporters. Many school bus drivers were on stage as part of his security. Union activists attended many of his lectures on campuses in the Boston area. They brought literature and his call for an "avalanche" to sweep away misery and repression in Haiti into the bus yards for daily discussion.
So when the CIA-backed military coup against President Aristide's new government shocked the world, Haitian unionists in Boston were among the first to hit the streets again. Mass marches and demonstrations rocked the streets around Boston's government center. The banners of Local 8751 always waved up front.
This momentum carried over into labor/management relations in the fall of 1991, when the school bus drivers launched a militant, close to six week strike against their private employer, who was trying to ram concessions and cutbacks down the throats of the drivers. Haitian workers did double duty, lighting the fire barrels on the strike line before the sun came up, battling wannabe scabs driving stretch limousines during the day, and hitting the bricks of government center in the evening with the thousands protesting the re-imposition of military death squad rule in their homeland.
To fight the fear which the military coup spread in the drivers' families, the local launched a campaign of solidarity with workers and their organizations in Haiti. The union participated in the boycott of Disney and other corporations who were using the coup as a chance to impose draconian labor conditions on their workers in Haiti. Local 8751 also sponsored meetings and tours of Haitian union leaders, many of whom were under threat from the military's death squads at home, such as the meeting with the Konfederasyon Jeneral Travayè (CGT) in the bus yards described below.
More recently, Local 8751 participated in mass pickets at Boston's JFK Federal Building demanding the immediate release of hundreds of Haitians locked up in federal detention from Boston to Miami during the FBI/INS mass roundups and detentions of Haitian and other immigrants in the U.S. following September 11.
And in an initiative which brought to the fore the alliance between the Haitian and progressive communities, the union movement and the anti-war movement in the U.S., Local 8751 launched a defense committee in February 2002 which got Haitian and Local 8751 activist Marcus Jean acquitted by jury in Boston District Court. Brother Jean had been framed up by the bankrupt Laidlaw management firm and the local district attorney's office on charges of "making terrorist threats." What he did was to stand up for his union rights against a racist boss hell-bent on utilizing discrimination and intimidation against the largely immigrant work force.
Local 8751 is honored to be asked by the editors of this book to contribute a chapter. We offer excerpts and photos from articles that first appeared in our Union's newsletters. We do so with a sense of urgency, as the political and economic crisis now developing in Haiti, due in large part to what the United States has done to Haiti since 1804, directly affects many of our loved ones. We also hope that others in the working class movement in the U.S. will see the need to broaden the scope of activity in our unions and organizing drives to include the struggle against racism, anti-immigrant scape goating, U.S. colonialism and war. That is and must be an essential ingredient in the struggle to better the living standards of our members.
Lè nou ini nou pap jam fè bèk a tè!
United we can never be defeated!
Viv lit pou Haiti rété indépandan-an!
Long live the struggle begun by Haitian independence!
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8,000 marchers denounce FDA's anti-Haitian racism
by Ernst Merisier, shop steward USWA Local 8751 and
Stevan Kirschbaum, Vice-President USWA Local 8751
Boston, April 4, 1990
Today over 8,000 members of the Haitian community and their supporters converged on the JFK Federal Building here to protest Bush's and the Food and Drug Administration's new policy banning Haitians and Africans from donating blood.
In early February the FDA set out guidelines recommending that all Haitians be excluded from donating blood. The reason the FDA gave for this bigoted policy was to "slow the spread of AIDS."
The logic of this false reasoning flies in the face of all scientific data and smacks of the worst brand of racist scape goating. AIDS activists have pointed out that barring Haitians and gay men, the other group banned, from blood donations stigmatizes groups where simply screening all blood would be the correct scientific approach.
Union participation
Many unionists participated in the demonstration, including hotel and restaurant workers, service workers, and teachers. Visible at the front speaker's area was the banner of the United Steelworkers of America, Local 8751- School Bus Drivers, which had a delegation of over 50 workers. Union stewards Ernst Merisier and John Accime played a leading role in coordination and security.
Local 8751, whose membership includes Haitian workers, distributed a statement entitled "Stop the Government's Racist Discrimination Against the Haitian Community." The statement called for a "massive Manhattan Project"-type full-scale coordinated scientific, medical campaign employing all available resources, initiated by the government to combat AIDS
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Haitian drivers do double picket duty
By Steve Gillis, Executive Board USWA Local 8751
Boston, October 14, 1991
Many of Boston's school bus drivers are from Haiti. They've been most diligent in doing strike duty and then joining thousands of others from Boston's Haitian community to protest the right-wing coup d'etat in their homeland.
Hundreds of drivers rotate picket shifts between round-the-clock demonstrations at the JFK Federal Building in downtown Boston and the strike lines at ICBM [bus management company]. On October 1, the day after the coup, 7,000 marchers took over the streets chanting, "Konplo sa'a pase." [This plot will fail.]
Ernst Merisier, Local 8751 Executive Board member, told Workers World, "like the people struggling in Haiti, Haitians in the diaspora have fought too long for the gains we have today. We're sending a message to both ICBM and the Tonton Macoutes that we are prepared to fight until justice is done."
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Boston meeting salutes Haiti unionists
By Ernst Merisier, Executive Board USWA Local 8751 and Stevan Kirschbaum, Vice-President, USWA Local 8751
November 29, 1993, Boston
On Nov. 29, Steel Workers Local 8751 school bus drivers and monitors hosted a noon solidarity meeting with Cajuste Lexius and Porcenel Joachim, the general secretary and executive secretary respectively of the Konfederasyon Jeneral Travayè (CGT). The CGT is a Haitian trade-union federation formed in 1990.
The 22,000-member CGT has been a strong voice in the Lavalas movement. Lexius and Joachim went to Washington in early October at the request of ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to help plan his return to Haiti.
Like Aristide, these union leaders have been unable to return to their country because the U.S.-supported fascist military continues to illegally hold power in Haiti.
The union leaders' visit to Boston is part of a campaign to build solidarity with the Haitian trade-union movement. While in Boston, Lexius and Joachim also met with the Hotel and Restaurant union and the Service Employees union.
The Local 8751 meeting was held in the drivers' room ... conducted in both Creole and English. Ernst Merisier of the Local's Executive Board and Philippe Geneus, a leading Haitian community activist, translated ...
In April 1987, while Joachim was president of the Haitian Steel Workers Union, the union went on strike for a decent contract. Not only did the workers have to face an intransigent steel company but they also squared off against five units of then-dictator Gen. Prosper Avril's military.
Despite these odds the 600 striking workers remained firm and eventually won a contract.
During the time of the Aristide government, unions for the first time were able to begin achieving some basic democratic rights to organize. The Lavalas movement fought to expand these rights and also mounted a struggle to raise the minimum wage in Haiti.
All these moves were met by openly hostile opposition by the international corporations in Haiti, most of them U.S.-based.
Since the coup, unions in Haiti function under extremely brutal conditions. Meetings, collecting dues, and other basics of organization must all be done clandestinely. Over 300 CGT leaders are currently in hiding.
Lexius ... a former president of the Public Transportation Union ... was en route to a radio interview in Port-au-Prince on April 23. He was kidnapped by the military, beaten and tortured to unconsciousness ... Finally, international protests won his release on May 21.
"You in the U.S. can play a key role in pressuring the U.S. government to end the Haitian crisis," said Lexius ... Joachim said in closing his remarks, "'All workers everywhere have the same common interests!"
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Boston's Haitian Community Protests
Bush / INS Mass Detentions in Florida
by Steve Gillis, Grievance Committee, USWA Local 8751
July 25, 2002
On July 25, 2002, hundreds from Boston's Haitian community rallied at the downtown Immigration and Naturalization Services office to demand the immediate release of over 250 Haitians including women and children locked up in Florida jails. 37 of them began a hunger strike on July 15.
These immigrants arrived by boat on Dec. 3, 2001, seeking political asylum from the U.S. and fleeing corporate orchestrated violence and poverty on their island. Within days, the Bush administration secretly changed its policy toward Haitian asylum seekers, singling out all Haitians for indefinite detention in maximum security Miami-area prisons. This is a significant change from the previous policy, which allowed the asylum-seekers to be released to the custody of friends, relatives or immigration advocates.
Many at today's spirited protest charged the INS with blatant racism and discrimination, pointing to the case of Cuban asylum seekers who are released from detention immediately following a preliminary hearing. In a statement from the Boston Haitian Reporter distributed at the action, publisher William J. Dorcena writes, "This is a Human Rights issue that all sectors must embrace. The Haitian community is under attack by the very leaders in the U.S. who ask us all to 'come together as a country in a time of war.' Well, the Bush administration is privately waging its own war, a very racist and ugly war against immigrants, specifically against Haitians."
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Boston frame-up foiled: Anti-war, labor unity wins victory for Marcus Jean
By Steve Kirschbaum,
Boston Labor's ANSWER, member Steel Workers Local 8751
photo of Victory celebration on steps of courthouse, Nov. 21, 2002.
Boston Nov. 21- On Thursday, Nov. 14th a jury in the West Roxbury Court returned its verdict of not guilty, after less than 30 minutes of deliberation, in the case of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Marcus Jean. This brings to a successful conclusion a critical phase in the struggle to win justice for Jean, a Boston School Bus driver and militant activist member of United Steelworkers of America (USWA), Local 8751. It also represents an important victory for the anti-war movement and the movement to defend labor's rights.
Laidlaw, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, had targeted Jean as part of their policy to weed out union militants that stand up to their plans to downsize, cutback wages and tighten their iron handed grip on the work force. Last January 30th Mr. Jean was involved in a minor disagreement with another driver concerning a bus parking spot. Jean and his union steward met with Readville Asst. Manager Diane Kelly and resolved the matter. No warning or discipline of any kind was issued. The following morning Readville Terminal Manger Rick McLaughlin, in a provocative and threatening manner tried to interrogate Mr. Jean about this same incident. Jean knew that this was a gross violation of his union rights and called McLaughlin on his racist discrimination and refused to submit to unjust management harassment . That afternoon McLaughlin went to the police and claimed that Marcus Jean repeatedly threatened to blow up the building and that he posed a serious "terrorist" threat. ...
Government attacks on the labor movement are nothing new. The Teamsters, AFSCME, SEIU, the Steelworkers are just a few of the recent targets of this management tool. Injunctions during strikes, false "Rico" charges, and fraudulent persecution by the so-called Labor Department have become routine. However Bush's "enduring war" hysteria has qualitatively upped the ante on the attacks on labor. The Bush/Ashcroft "Homeland Security" machine clearly has the unions in its sights. The White House has given the green light to corporate America to use the war to declare war on union rights. When Homeland Security boss Tom Ridge recently called the president of the ILWU dock workers in California, under the guise of national security, to threaten the union if it took action in support of their rights the message was clear...
The March 2002 issue of the Unity Bulletin, the rank and file newsletter of Local 8751, explains that Marcus Jean's case is part of "a national wave of government directed anti-immigrant hysteria sweeping the country" which includes racist profiling, government detention of Arab people without charges and racist violence against immigrant communities. It is in this context that the District Attorney for Massachusetts embarked on a ten-month prosecution of an innocent Haitian union activist based on the uncorroborated story of a racist Laidlaw boss.
Boston Labor's ANSWER leads struggle to defend Marcus Jean
It is regrettable that much of the leadership of the unions on a local and international level has been unable to respond to the corporate/government attacks on the unions in the post 911-war climate. This was the case with Marcus Jean. However the rank and file members need and are ready to fight back. Boston Labor's ANSWER, made up of activist from the coalition Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), established the Marcus Jean Defense Committee. The Committee secured the top criminal attorney in the region; people's lawyer Barry Wilson, knowing that he would bring the struggle of the street into the courtroom.
ANSWER activists launched a full scale, all out defense campaign to mobilize support which included packing every court appearance, getting endorsers, holding picket lines and press conferences, speaking at churches and community meetings and spreading the word through the Internet. The Committee conducted a massive letter campaign to the DA demanding that the charges be dropped. Marcus Jean spoke at and marched on countless ANSWER protests against war in Iraq and in defense of Palestine. He was a featured speaker at the June 29th rally at FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. against the Patriot Act. This campaign to defend Marcus Jean is a concrete expression of ANSWER's view that Bush's war has a domestic front. The anti-war movement must also fight on this front in order to build unity with the labor movement. This unity is key to a vital anti-war movement.
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