We March on Washington for Job Creation and Job Security

Thousands of CWA members joined 200,000 Americans representing 400 labor unions, environmental groups, civil rights groups, and other organizations on the mall in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, October 2, for a massive demonstration in front of the Lincoln Memorial. More than 100 buses full of CWA members from District One went to the historic event to demand that workers’ rights be pushed to the forefront of the national political agenda.

CWA President Larry Cohen spoke at the march, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. “Forty-seven years ago, our predecessors stood here fighting for the dream to end Jim Crow, and at that time, one out of three private sector workers in the United States had a union contract,” he told a crowd stretching far into the distance. Today, only one in 15 private sector workers have bargaining rights.” He denounced the current Senate minority that has blocked 400 bills passed by the House of Representatives, among them the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would provide for fair union elections free of employer intimidation, enforcement of faster contract negotiations, and increased penalties for employer discrimination against union-supporting employees.

Cohen was joined by CWA District One member Barbara Eliot, a worker at the E-ZPass call center in Staten Island, New York, where employees have been fighting for a contract since voting to join CWA Local 1102 over a year ago. To applause from the crowd, she spoke about the recent denial of parent company Xerox’s appeal to discount the election results. Eliot went on to challenge lawmakers to do more for labor, saying, “We need real organizing rights, not the imaginary rights of the National Labor Relations Act.”

Watch Cohen and Eliot below:

“We thought it was a great day,” said Bennie Brantley, the President of CWA Local 1077. “We were ecstatic about it.”

Brantley said more than 60 members from the East Orange, NJ local attended, and came away energized to become active in the upcoming elections. “Everything we heard today, we have to continue it forward every day to motivate people, friends and neighbors, to get out and vote. If we’re going to bring about change we have to keep moving forward.”

Brantley was particularly pleased to see so many young people at the rally. “Back in the sixties, we were the kids, and we had to carry it forward to make change after the Martin Luther King rally,” he said. “Now it’s their turn.”

The march was organized by One Nation Working Together—a broad-based coalition of progressive organizations—served as a strong rebuttal to the “Restoring Honor” rally organized by media personality Glenn Beck and Tea Party supporters last August. But rather than just responding to Beck’s event, One Nation pushed for a strong platform of its own. Among other demands on the labor front, organizers called for immediate relief for those who are currently unemployed, the creation of public jobs to promote green energy, the extension of jobless benefits, and stronger legislation to support unions and those who wish to form a union.

Praising workers like Barbara Eliot who have been brave enough to stand up to anti-union employers like Xerox, Larry Cohen spoke for the tens of thousands of union members present: “Workers should not need courage to have a union in the United States of America.” If Saturday’s rally was any indication, America’s workers have the determination necessary to make that dream a reality.