UE Local 150 Convention in Whitakers, NC
By UE Local 150
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.”
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 “Organizing[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.
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.
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.
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 middlemen 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 middlemen, 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 childcare, 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”
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.”
Source: ueunion.org/uenews