Super Solidarity over Super Bowl Weekend
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Over the weekend, all eyes were on the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, where tens of thousands traveled to see the event and hundreds of thousands more watched it on television. But while the spotlight was on the game, workers across the city took to the streets to protest the outrages happening to working people.
In one such event, we rallied at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis, where hardworking hotel housekeepers are fighting to keep their jobs and boost their poverty-level pay at a hotel where rates can be more than $1,000 a night for a Super Bowl week room. Twenty longtime hotel workers may be out of jobs in a few days when the hotel ends a subcontract with Hospitality Staffing Solutions.
The hotel workers are not in this fight alone. In the midst of what is undoubtedly the busiest few days for football players, DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), and NFL players joined Hyatt housekeepers at the rally to demand Hyatt end its abuse of subcontracted workers and hire outsourced workers directly. Smith said NFL players would continue a year-old boycott of Hyatt over its treatment of workers and told the crowd:
I love people who stand together to fight for what’s right.
Just blocks from the Super Bowl, these football players, together with construction workers, office staff and steelworkers, stood side by side with hotel housekeepers, joined in common cause by the struggles that unite all working people—all of the 99 percent in this country who are fighting against corporate greed and challenging politicians who seek to take away our rights as citizens of this great country. Read the rest of this entry »
Indiana Working Families Ready to Take Back the State
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AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this from the Indiana statehouse.
Far from conceding defeat after the passage of a so-called right to work (RTW) bill, tens of thousands of Hoosier workers came together in solidarity to march from the statehouse to Super Bowl village in Indianapolis. From the steps of the statehouse, Indiana AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott said today would mark a new start to taking back the state, starting with “the biggest march Indiana has ever seen!”
Construction workers and teachers, grocery clerks and truck drivers cheered on the workers and elected officials with chants of “Remember November,” vowing to take back the state door by door, neighborhood by neighborhood. WISH-TV has some great aerial footage here.
The overreach and extreme politics that led to today’s vote—including actions by RTW supporters that included shutting the doors to the statehouse, cutting off debate and an ad campaign bankrolled by secret special interests have given the voting public a window into the Indiana Capitol. In poll after poll, Hoosier voters say they don’t approve of these strong-arm tactics by GOP leaders. Read the rest of this entry »
What Do Packers and Steelers Have in Common?
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What do the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers have in common–besides playing in the Super Bowl Sunday? Both teams are named after the major manufacturing industry in their towns. Both cities were built on manufacturing and enjoy a loyal following built on the middle-class, blue-collar jobs supported by these industries. The Packers’ middle-class fans are also the team’s owners–the only team not owned by a super-rich person.
This is not the first Super Bowl with both teams hailing from proud working class communities. The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) has launched the first-ever Super Bowl Manufacturing Index, which shows how many people were employed in manufacturing at the time of each working class Super Bowl. The index shows that in 1967 when the Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, there were 17.9 million manufacturing jobs. This Sunday, there are only 11.7 million. Read the rest of this entry »
Give the Gift of Football
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On Super Bowl weekend, not all eyes will be on Cowboys Stadium in Dallas. On Feb. 5, the day before the big game there, the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) and the AFL-CIO will host a special all-star football game at San Antonio’s Alamodome. What’s special about it is that we’re working to fill the stadium with workers who have lost their jobs, members of the military and youth. And you can help by donating a ticket for someone who’s having a tough time.
The annual NFLPA Texas vs. The Nation game features the football stars of tomorrow—draft-eligible college seniors playing before hundreds of NFL scouts and other personnel. Unlike the hundreds or even thousands of dollars folks will spend to watch the Super Bowl, tickets to the NFLPA Texas vs. the Nation game are just $10. You can donate $10, $20, $40 or more, and your gift will be matched 100 percent by the NFLPA—so for every $10 you donate, you’ll give the gift of football to two jobless workers, people in military service or children.
The NFLPA game pits college seniors with ties to Texas against top seniors from across the nation. The five-year-old all-star game is making its debut in San Antonio this year, after previous games in El Paso.
Learn more about the game here. If you’re interested in attending the game yourself, click here to learn more and click here to buy a ticket for yourself.
IBEW Team Makes Super Bowl Work
Super Bowl XLIV was the most watched show in TV history. But before the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts took the field, a different kind of team was behind the scenes, making sure the game was seen around the world.
More than 500 broadcast technicians, all members of the Electrical Workers (IBEW), were in the stands, on the field, behind cameras and in the control room to make the Super Bowl work. In a new video (above), IBEW tells the story of this unseen but vital group that made watching the game possible.
There were 90 cameras alone. Neil McCaffrey, a member of IBEW Local 1212, has operated a camera at seven Super Bowls. He says:
Everyone wants to participate in it [Super Bowl] because it’s so big. So it’s a great sense of brotherhood.
$3 Million for Super Bowl Ad. $3 for Workers Who Paid For It
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| Liberian rubber workers walk for miles with heavy metal buckets of rubber on their backs. |
Nearly 100 million football fans across the country will be tuning in to watch Bruce Springsteen belt out his trademark songs celebrating America’s workers during halftime at the Super Bowl this evening. They also will see two new 30-second commercials—estimated to cost at least $3 million each—from Bridgestone Firestone, the world’s largest tire company and the halftime sponsor.
But none of the viewers will see Austin Natee and his fellow workers. Natee is president of the union that represents the thousands of Liberian rubber workers who earn $3 on a good day, but whose hard labor creates the profits that Bridgestone Firestone uses to pay for the halftime spectacular.
When he was in Washington, D.C., last year to accept the 2007 Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award on behalf of the rubber workers, Natee explained how Bridgestone Firestone continually exploits workers and pollutes the environment. Saying the workers live in modern-day slavery, he explained that rubber tappers work 14 hours a day and must tap 750 rubber trees and accumulate 150 pounds of latex daily—all for little more than $3 a day and a monthly 100-pound bag of subsidized rice if quotas are met.
