‘Digging in’: Union leaders strike defiant tone at Labor Day festival in South Philly

The speeches at the annual Labor Day celebration in South Philadelphia on Monday had a noticeably different tone than in the past scant years The parade and festival hosted by the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO were as lively as ever with thousands of unionized workers from around the region marching in matching T-shirts along Washington Avenue accompanied by ear-splitting drumlines and a host of local elected executives A drumline marched and performed in the AFL-CIO Labor Day parade on Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia Sept Meir Rinde WHYY But two years after Joe Biden became the first sitting president to attend the event and spoke about celebrating jobs a moment when one local union leader declared it was a boom time for organizing speakers this year struck a loudly defiant note against a less-friendly administration in Washington and a changed circumstances for union workers We must recommit ourselves to digging in and fighting like we never fought before stated Brian Renfroe national president of the National Association of Letter Carriers who came from Washington D C for the parade We have to fight like hell because we have faced unprecedented attacks on working people in a very short period of time He led the group in a call and response attacking President Donald Trump s administration for eliminating hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and seeking to reduce workers bargaining rights When they come after the jobs of constituents servants the people who care for our veterans administer Social Precaution inspect our food deliver our mail what do we say Renfroe appealed Hell no the crowd responded We re going to fight for our rights Since he took office in February Trump often has proclaimed that he is putting the American worker first At the same time he has acted to shrink the number of unionized workers in the U S stripping collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs Last Thursday he issued an order that would expand that effort to the Patent and Trademark Office NASA the National Weather Institution and other agencies Trump also has attempted to undo Labor Department rules benefiting home care workers and farmworkers and he fired a board member at the National Labor Relations Board leaving it without the quorum needed to hear cases and rule on worker complaints of employer rule-breaking Samantha Zenobi center and fellow members of UFCW Local attended the AFL-CIO Labor Day rally and parade in South Philadelphia Sept Meir Rinde WHYY The parade Monday morning seemed to draw more participants than it did last year explained Samantha Zenobi a steward with United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local who works at a ShopRite in Galloway New Jersey Workers are concerned about what s going on in the world and want to show that we are not going to stand anything anymore We re going to fight for our rights she commented Zenobi declared she felt for postal workers and others who fear for their jobs under Trump The president has discussed privatizing the U S Postal Provision and she declared she was concerned that federal job cuts will increase unemployment generally and hurt the business sector Closer to home unionized workers are also worried about pay rates that lag despite high profits at their employers she disclosed They re billion-dollar companies and they could be giving us more especially with the work that we do and they just give us pizza parties or other things It doesn t feel like they re rewarding the good people that work hard and just toss them aside which is not fair Zenobi commented Mixing celebration and calls for action As usual various local elected officers attended the rally in front of the Sheet Metal Workers Union Local union hall on Columbus Boulevard in South Philadelphia or marched in the subsequent parade on Washington Avenue Mayor Cherelle Parker and Building Trades Council leader Ryan Boyer sat down for a joint interview with a labor-focused radio plan before the speeches began Daniel Bauder Philadelphia AFL-CIO president noted the presence of Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon as well as several Philadelphia City Council members and Pennsylvania state senators and representatives Sheet Metal Workers union members and supporters rally prepared to march in the AFL-CIO Labor Day parade on Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia Sept Meir Rinde WHYY Requested about the mixed mood among union members Republican state Sen Joe Picozzi of North Philadelphia announced that in the long term things look good for unions and he defended his party s relationship with labor in Pennsylvania What people are going to see is my party is beginning to change We ve got a lot of very pro- labor Republicans in the Senate and I serve on the Labor and Industry Committee Picozzi commented as he marched with a group of union members People forget just how much struggle and how much pain there was to get to this point where you have so plenty of rights and we ve got to keep fighting for it Parker and the other politicians did not speak to the crowd this year yielding the stage to Renfroe and other state and national union executives who both celebrated their historical achievements and called for solidarity and action in the face of new headwinds Angela Ferritto president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO commented she was happy to honor the struggles of working people and celebrate the movement s wins but somber that U S Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer was planning to attend Monday s Labor Day parade in Erie Do they think that they can trick us Show up for a parade and somehow we re going to think that they re fighting for working people she stated We see what they re doing You can t pull the wool over our eyes Local organizers in Erie planned to protest the parade there as part of a set of Workers Over Billionaires protests being held Monday by members of the Movement in all states s goals are to uphold the Constitution and end executive overreach according to its website and it was part of the coalition that put on the No Kings rallies earlier this summer Union membership slips Monday s celebrations came at a moment of relative calm for the city s unions following various upheavals over the past year District Council the city s blue-collar union held an eight-day strike in July that resulted in trash piling up in the streets but not in the gains the union had hoped for after Parker held out against their demands She inked a new contract with DC the white-collar union and with the police officers union two weeks ago The city s teachers union also approved a new contract agreement with the school district last month avoiding a threatened strike that would have begun shortly after the start of the new school year A man held a strike sign at a Labor Day rally at the Sheet Metal Workers union hall on Columbus Boulevard in South Philadelphia Sept Meir Rinde WHYY While Philadelphia remains a bastion of unionism nationally at the state level private-sector union membership has slightly declined lately according to a new overview from Keystone Research Center a pro-labor think tank based in Harrisburg A wave of organizing activity at Starbucks the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC a Whole Foods store in Center City the first in the U S to organize and other companies had lifted union representation at private companies in the state to in the summary mentioned The figure then slipped back to last year Job development in Pennsylvania remains relatively strong increasing to in the first half of but would be even better if not for the loss of federal jobs over that period per the description While new years have brought job expansion and record-low unemployment the ground is shifting beneath workers feet Keystone wrote Workers face an unpredictable labor territory unemployment is rising and wages after decades of stagnation are slipping again Erratic federal policies make it harder for families to get by The post Digging in Union leaders strike defiant tone at Labor Day festival in South Philly appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY