Workers Rising Up for Dignity, Equality and a Future

Across Connecticut and the nation low wage workers, many young, Black, brown and white, are joining together and rising up for living wages, health care, dignity and a union. This leadership and collective fight is the hope for the future.

Just this week, 1199 NE healthcare workers and Unite Here clerical workers were among the many on New Haven Peoples Center buses going to the national Poor People's and Low Wage Workers Assembly and March on Washington and to the Polls to say “we won't be silent anymore.”

Connecticut nursing home workers joined with their sisters and brothers around the country to demand industry-wide reform with safe staffing and decent working conditions.

Women workers at a suburban clinic of Yale University voted to join Local 34 Unite Here. Graduate Hotel workers in New Haven voted to join Local 217 Unite Here and won union recognition with the support of elected officials and New Haven Rising. In West Hartford and Willimantic Starbucks workers are organziing with support of their communities.

So when FuelCell Energy CEO Jason Few thought he could do as he pleased to keep a union out of his shop he was in for a rude awakening.

The twelve workers voted to join the Operating Engineers Local 478 in April. Their pay was far below the industry standard, and no raises were in sight. Meanwhile in 2020, the CEO's pay increased 300% to $3.5 million. Upper management's raises were above 70%.

Within two weeks of winning their union, two workers were fired and another worker was pressured to resign.

The whole labor movement responded immediately with demands to reinstate the workers and recognize the union. Public pressure against union busting and a planned rally forced TEDx to disinvite Few from his scheduled appearance at their event in New Haven.

It's not okay that during the COVID pandemic, CEOs made out like bandits with recond profits, while most everyone else has been struggling to make ends meet, keep a roof over their heads and maintain health care access and care for their kids.

The inequities of institutional racism in hiring, housing, health care, policing and every aspect of life revealed in the pandemic are being challenged anew.

The leadership and solidarity of these organizing campaigns gives collective strength. As the Poor People's and Low Wage Workers' Assembly says, it's time for a Third Reconstruction, a fusion movement from the bottom up to end racism, poverty, the war economy and ecological devastation. Union rights are human rights.