Just over 100 Days into 2024: What Beacon Hill Has Accomplished

Now that we’re in mid-April, we’re just over 100 days into 2024 and just over 100 days until July 31, i.e., the last day of the formal period of the legislative session.

So what’s happened in 2024 so far?

74 bills have been signed into law in 2024:

  • 44 are about just 1 town.
  • 17 are about just 1 city.
  • 12 are about just 1 person

That totals 73 out of the 74 being about 1 town, 1 city, or 1 person. (Some are about 1 person in 1 city or 1 person in 1 town, or 1 person in 1 county, of course.)

And that 1 bill left over? Perhaps something promising?

It’s about 2 towns.

We have a lot of work to do.

Universal School Meals: Good Politics and Good Policy

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools were able to offer meals to all students at no charge through the pandemic-related child nutrition waivers offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

Massachusetts chose to extend it and then last year voted to make it permanent, using funding from the Fair Share Amendment.

A new report by the Food Research and Action Center highlights the positive impacts of universal school meals. As the report notes, the research is clear: participation in school meals improves academic achievement, attendance, and student behavior at school; decreases childhood food insecurity; leads to children eating more fruits, vegetables, and milk; and reduces visits to the school nurse.

As the chart below shows, breakfast participation in Massachusetts went up by 25% from 2018-2019 numbers, and lunch participation went up by 16% from 2018-2019 numbers.

We will continue to see these benefits from universal school meals — a reminder that they are both good politics and good policy.

Happy Sunshine Week! (Don’t Mind the Clouds…)

Happy Sunshine Week!

Sunshine Week is an annual collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, government, and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government. We could use some of that sunshine in Massachusetts.

We are supporting two bills this session that would advance such a vision of open government:

  • H.3040 / S.2024: An Act to Modernize Participation in Public Meetings, which would phase in a requirement for hybrid meeting access for state and local public meetings and provide grants to municipalities to boost technical capacity
  • S.1963: An Act to provide sunlight to state government, which would promote transparency in state government by removing the Governor’s exemption from public records law and requiring committee votes and legislative testimony (with appropriate redactions) to be public

Find out if your legislators are currently on board with these bills, and then write to them to urge them to support such basic measures to expand civic participation and promote good government.

Email your legislators
 
Sunshine Week Statistic: Roll Call Votes This Session

Has the legislative session felt somewhat slow to you? Well, one statistic that stands out is the sharp decline in roll call votes (i.e., formal yea / nay votes during a debate): in the MA House, state representatives have taken only about half the number of recorded votes this session as in recent ones.

So much of the legislative process occurs behind closed doors, and recorded votes are a critical opportunity for legislators to show the public where they stand. When the House refuses to bring up votes until they are unanimous and when legislators withdraw their amendments without discussion or debate, we lose out on opportunities to make progress on the many critical challenges facing the commonwealth.


Total Number of Roll Call Votes by Session

Line Item Veto Override: a vote taken by the Legislature to reject the Governor’s veto of a specific budget appropriation. Since veto overrides require a 2/3 vote, this recorded votes are mandatory; the Legislature cannot take a voice vote (i.e., call of yea’s and nay’s).

Quorum call: a vote that is simply a call of the roll for attendance reasons and to ascertain if sufficient legislators are present
 

What Happened on Joint Rule 10 Day Last Week

Last Wednesday was Joint Rule 10 Day, a deadline in the State House for joint (House-Senate) committees to take action on all the timely-filed bills in their purview. 

For many bills, that’s simply an extension, i.e., a new deadline. But some bills did get out of committee. Here are a few that we were especially happy to see:

  • Common Start Bill (Lightly Redrafted as S.2619), which would establish a framework for delivering increased access to affordable, high-quality early education and child care with greater investment in providers, better pay for workers, and a cap on costs for families
  • Full Spectrum Pregnancy Care Bill (S.646 / H.1137), which would ensure health coverage for prenatal care, childbirth, and postpartum care, without any cost-sharing
  • Overdose Prevention Centers (S.1242 / H.1981), which create a ten-year pilot programs for overdose prevention centers that use harm reduction strategies to address the opioid crisis 
  • Access to Counsel (S.864 / H.1731), which would guarantee legal representation for low-income tenants and owner-occupants in eviction proceedings
  • Healthy Youth Act (S.268 / H.544), which would require school districts that provide sex education to ensure that it is comprehensive, age-appropriate, and LGBTQ-inclusive, with an emphasis on consent
  • Language Access Bill (S.1990 / H.3084), which would build the capacity of key public-facing state agencies to meet the language access needs of an increasingly diverse population by standardizing and enforcing language access protocols and practices
  • Facial Surveillance Regulations (Lightly Redrafted as H.4359), which would implement the recommendations of the commission created by the 2020 police reform bill to create a tight regulatory framework for facial surveillance
  • Gas Moratorium (S.2135), which would pause the approval for any new or expanded gas infrastructure through 2026
  • Sunlight Bill (S.1963), which would promote transparency in state government by removing the Governor’s exemption from public records law and requiring committee votes and legislative testimony (with appropriate redactions) to be public

Most bills received extensions to a later date: in other words, the committee will have a new deadline for action. See a list of new deadlines here.

Some bills we care about, unfortunately, were “sent to study,” a polite way of voting down a bill. Bills that are sent to study do not advance in a given session outside of extremely rare circumstances, but the campaigns can still continue and build for the next legislative session. Among those sent to study were

  • Make Polluters Pay, which require fossil-fuel producers to fund the state’s climate adaptation programs based on past emissions, a proposal that would extend the long-standing “polluter pays” principle for toxic waste cleanups to addressing climate change
  • Prison Moratorium (House bill only), which would enact a five-year pause on new prison and jail construction in order to provide time to develop more effective, community-based approaches to public safety (The Senate bill received an extension.)
  • Same Day Registration
  • Ranked choice voting local option bill
  • All-resident voting local option bill
  • Vote16 local option bill

Shining light on the darkest day of the year

State House at night

Today marks the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

It is also a reminder of the importance of sunlight–and not just when it comes to the weather.

Bringing greater sunlight to state politics is a core part of what we do at Progressive Mass:

  • Shining light on how legislators vote with our Progressive Scorecard
  • Shining light on how to take action on important bills when thousands upon thousands get filed each session
  • Shining light on elections with our public candidate questionnaires
  • Shining light on how to engage effectively at the local and state levels through chapters that organize year-round
  • Shining light on how our commonwealth can live up to its professed values and be a progressive beacon for other states

We have a lot of work to do in the new year, and we’re looking forward to fighting alongside you.

Can you donate $50, $100, or $250 to support our work in 2024 and beyond?

MA House Sets New Precedent for Legislating Outside of Public View

By Margaret Monsell

In what will not come as a surprise, Beacon Hill lawmakers set a new standard in procrastination this year. By the time they finished their work on a supplemental budget last week, formal legislative sessions for 2023 were over.

“Formal sessions,” under the Legislature’s rules, are distinguished from “informal sessions” in that debate and roll-call votes are permissible. During “informal sessions,” legislative business requires the unanimous consent of the members present, which is typically very few. (And because debate is barred, it requires the wordless consent of those few members as well).

Completing work on the budget in this tardy fashion involved a party-line standoff in the House of Representatives. The impasse lasted nearly a week, with the Republicans calling for another formal session and the Democrats refusing that demand. In the end, the House Democrats prevailed. The precedent their victory created has unfortunately expanded the possible range of lawmaking that happens informally, outside of public view.

                                             ***

When the Legislature first turned its attention to the budget, with the end of formal sessions already looming, Republicans and Democrats disagreed about adding money to the state’s emergency shelter system, which is being strained by the arrival of migrants fleeing humanitarian crises in other countries. Republicans in both the House and Senate proposed restricting shelter eligibility to exclude anyone who had not already established residency in the state. The amendments failed and the budgets passed – all on recorded votes.

On November 15, the last day of formal sessions, the House and Senate still needed to reconcile the differences between their versions of the budget. Midnight arrived, however, with that task still unfinished.

To put the Legislature’s recent dilatory behavior into perspective, in the three decades since adopting the current two-year calendar, with its six-week break in formal sessions from November of the first year to January of the second, the Legislature has rarely had to make special arrangements for unfinished business. There have been only three occasions when the Legislature thought that a formal session might be necessary during that period. And each time (in 1999, 2001, and 2005), the Legislature voted to schedule that formal session before starting its break in mid-November. But this year, the Legislature allowed formal sessions to end without taking that step, landing in uncharted parliamentary territory.  

What would happen next? Three possibilities: (1) the budget would not pass until the Legislature resumed formal sessions in January, which would further delay funding for scores of popular causes, like long-overdue raises for unionized state workers, (2) the Legislature would allow the budget to pass during informal sessions, thus torturing the definition of the required “unanimous consent” to include bills that 28 lawmakers had already voted to oppose, or (3) the Legislature would agree to call another formal session to finish its work.

The Thanksgiving holiday came and went without any progress. Finally, a week after Thanksgiving, the lawmakers charged with reconciling the House and Senate versions of the budget announced that they had reached agreement and that the compromise bill was ready to be enacted. The House, where the bill had originated, would go first.

House Republicans moved to return to a formal session. “A controversial spending bill of this magnitude should be taken up during a formal session, with debate and roll calls,” argued Minority Leader Brad Jones.

Rebuffing the Republicans’ motion, Speaker Ron Mariano scheduled an informal session to advance the bill, which about 15 of the 160 House members attended. Republican Representative Paul Frost of Auburn doubted that a quorum was present, ending the House session with no action having been taken.

The Speaker then scheduled another informal session for the next day, Friday, and yet another one for Saturday (a rarity) with no apparent intent to change the Democrats’ strategy. “We’re just gonna keep doing it. We’ll keep going at it,” House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz told State House News Service. The Republicans kept going at it, too, refusing to let the bill advance during the two sparsely-attended sessions.

After the Saturday session failed to break the logjam, Speaker Mariano denounced the Republicans “dilatory tactics,” blamed them for the delays in funding for important projects that his own party’s foot-dragging was responsible for, and suggested that, having lost the debate on the shelter funding issue, they really ought to reconsider their insistence that the rules of the House must always be followed.  

He also hinted that the Democrats might be considering a change of course. “There will be enough” Democrats at the next informal session on Monday, he predicted. Enough Democrats to do what? Agree to the Republicans’ call for a formal session, something they could have done days earlier and which could have been a cost-free way to blunt the criticisms that they’re indifferent to, if not hostile to, small-d democracy?  

No, nothing of that sort happened on Monday. The Democrats did turn out in much greater numbers – three-quarters of them attended, but only to ensure a quorum. Representative Paul Donato of Medford called the session to order and established that a quorum was present. Then he asked whether there was any objection to taking up the supplemental budget (or “proceeding with the orders of the day” in Legis-speak). There was no objection; this time the Republicans allowed the bill to move forward, a reversal for which they offered no parliamentary or political explanation. The budget thus advanced with neither a debate nor a roll-call vote. The required unanimous consent was recorded by a hand-count vote in which no names were taken. Unanimity prevailed, 105-14. House Minority Leader Jones later argued that the outcome “highlighted the dysfunction on Beacon Hill,” but for the successful Democrats the outcome highlighted the overpowering of that dysfunction.

When the Senate’s turn to advance the bill arrived later that day, its members quickly voted to hold a formal session, a welcome endorsement of transparency, but in view of the resistance on the part of the House, a meaningless one. The bill was on the governor’s desk by the end of the day.

Lawmakers who are impatient with hallmarks of democracy such as debate and roll-call votes have likely taken from this experience that those niceties can be rendered expendable. We may be moving toward the day when formal legislative sessions happen only when the state constitution requires them — for veto overrides, land transfers, pledges of the Commonwealth’s full faith and credit, etc. For any other business, unanimous consent can apparently be manufactured with a little patience, if necessary, and not much trouble.   

Margaret Monsell is a former assistant attorney general and former general counsel to the state Senate Committee on Ways and Means.

Over-criminalizing Our Youth: How MA’s Own “Crime Bill” Harms the Most Vulnerable Among Us

Prison

By Zoraida Fernandez

Over the past few years, there has been an important and growing societal reckoning with the damage done by the 1994 federal crime bill and the racist legacy of mass incarceration.

However, as a new report from Citizens for Juvenile Justice reminds us, the federal crime bill did not exist in isolation: it inspired a wave of misguided “tough-on-crime” bills in the states, including Massachusetts’s Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA” — Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 269 § 10G), with lasting harm on Massachusetts communities of color, particularly youth of color.

ACCA imposes harsher penalties on people convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm who previously had been convicted of at least one “violent crime” or “serious drug offense.” As this report demonstrates, however, ACCA has imposed unwarranted and draconian punishments on people, especially some of the most vulnerable in our community, including young people of color. And its effects have had devastating and long-lasting consequences not just for those incarcerated, but the communities who bear the burden of losing families to incarceration for extended periods.

How ACCA works to punish people more severely and curtail their rights

When the government convicts a person of unlawfully possessing a weapon, the conviction may trigger consideration of harsher punishment if the person has prior convictions for certain crimes (“predicate offenses”). When there is even one such prior conviction, including ones from someone’s youth (“juvenile adjudication”), ACCA imposes harsher punishments that must be served in state prison. One such prior conviction would trigger a mandatory minimum sentence of 3 years, two such prior conventions would trigger a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, and three such prior convictions would trigger a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years.

Strikingly, the report’s authors found that nearly half of all defendants charged under ACCA were charged under its most punitive provision, mandating a minimum of 15 years of incarceration.

  • ACCA imposes harsh punishment regardless of an individual’s circumstances

In non-ACCA criminal cases, judges consider not just the circumstances of the offense and the person’s criminal history, but also the person as an individual, when imposing a sentence. The defendant is entitled to present contextual information to explain why they committed the offense, information related to the impact of incarceration on their family or community, or any other information that would assist a judge in imposing a fair sentence. ACCA eliminates all contextual information. It also eliminates all opportunities for the criminal legal system to address the root causes of an individual’s repeat offending; it requires judges to simply impose at least the minimum term of years prescribed, no questions asked.  

  • Offenses committed by children can count as ACCA predicate offenses

Alarmingly, even juvenile adjudications—offenses that a person committed as a child—can count as predicate offenses for ACCA. There is a wealth of research indicating the immaturity of children’s developing brains and how this can affect decision-making. Given all this evidence, continuing to consider these offenses to justify enhanced punishments is deeply unjust. 

  • Prosecutors threaten defendants with ACCA enhancements to secure guilty pleas

Federal and state prosecutors routinely use the threat of charging defendants under ACCA as a cudgel to secure quick guilty pleas. When criminal defendants are faced with an enhanced 15-year sentence, the best of bad options for them may be to plead guilty to the charged offense—whether they committed the crime or not—rather than go to trial and risk spending decades in prison. Likewise, the report notes that criminal defense attorneys have had to forego filing motions to dismiss on behalf of their clients because prosecutors threaten ACCA enhancements. Neither the Legislature nor District Attorneys, whose mission is supposed to be the pursuit of justice, should stand for this systemic denial of people’s constitutional rights to their defense and to trial.

How ACCA disproportionately harms residents of color

The report notes that Black and Latine defendants make up over 75% of Massachusetts ACCA cases, despite making up less than 20% of the population. Moreover, ACCA cases are overwhelmingly charged in urban areas, with the Boston Police and State Police alone charging nearly half of ACCA cases during the time period analyzed, with the overwhelming majority of cases involving Black and Latine individuals.

More specifically, ACCA’s predicate drug offenses mean that people of color are disproportionately affected because, as noted in the report, laws criminalizing possession and distribution of drugs disproportionately target people of color. Police and prosecutors are more likely to charge residents of color with serious drug offenses because of overpolicing in their neighborhoods and prosecutorial discretion, respectively. ACCA exacerbates these inequities by using these charges to justify overly harsh punishments.

Similarly, stop-and-frisk policies and so-called hot-spot policing practices have meant that police disproportionately charge residents of color with gun possession charges that trigger ACCA.

And this disproportionality in charging residents of color with gun crimes as compared to white residents is even wider than that involving drug crimes.

Finally, the report notes that documented discrepancies also exist in charging decisions between white defendants and Black and Latine defendants. Prosecutors tend to charge Black and Latine individuals with more severe crimes than their white counterparts for the same or similar conduct, which leads to harsher punishment, including possible ACCA enhancements. The answer, however, is not to increase punishments for white individuals, but rather to decrease unwarranted and severe punishments for all criminal defendants.

Recommendations for action

Given the documented harm caused by ACCA punishment enhancements, the report details several recommendations for action. A few that stand out are:

  • The Legislature should eliminate ACCA. At the very least, it should start by modifying ACCA to enhance punishment only for individuals with three predicate offenses and removing drug offenses and charges of simple weapon possession as qualifying offenses.
  • The Legislature should prevent juvenile adjudications from counting as ACCA predicates.
  • Prosecutors should stop widespread use of ACCA charges and instate policies for its use only under limited circumstances.

The Legislature and District Attorneys’ offices should act expeditiously to ameliorate the harm that ACCA punishments have caused to entire communities.

PM Joins Coalition of 100+ Groups Calling on Legislature to Fund Emergency Assistance Family Shelter

Progressive Mass signed onto the following letter organized by the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless and the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. You can see the full list of signers here.

October 30, 2023

The Honorable Senate President Karen Spilka
Office of the Senate President  
State House, Room 332
Boston, MA 02133

The Honorable Speaker Ronald Mariano
Office of the Speaker of the House
State House, Room 356
Boston, MA 02133

Re: Please Fund Emergency Assistance Family Shelter; Don’t Leave Kids Out in the Cold

Dear Senate President Spilka, Speaker Mariano, and members of the Legislature:

Thank you for your longstanding strong support of children and families in the Commonwealth. We are grateful for your commitment to meeting residents’ basic needs, and especially the needs of the most vulnerable members of our communities.

We write to ask you to urgently provide enough supplemental funding for the Emergency Assistance (EA) family shelter program to enable it to continue to serve all eligible families who are experiencing homelessness at least through January. This would give state leaders time to carefully consider policy solutions to the surge in demand for family shelter. It would also be consistent with the 90-days advance notice that the line item, 7004-0101, requires before eligibility changes are made. Such notice has not yet been provided by the Administration to the Legislature.  

There is no greater basic need than shelter from the elements, which is why we are so proud to live in a state that guarantees a right to shelter to eligible children in need. We are keenly aware that the EA system is under great strain at the moment, and you and the Administration are working to develop solutions. In the meantime, however, we are deeply, deeply troubled by the notion that the state may shut shelter doors to new applicants and place eligible families on a waiting list starting this week, on November 1st.

We have seen what happens when families cannot access shelter. Toddlers huddle with their parents on the street. Children are forced to sleep in cars in the bitter cold. Parents and guardians attempt to protect themselves and their small loved ones from inclement weather and physical danger in places not meant for human habitation.  

Please appropriate the necessary funds to sustain our shelter system through January, at a minimum, as an interim measure while working to develop a more comprehensive, family-focused response that could be enacted when the Legislature returns from its winter recess.

Sincerely,

What’s in the Governor’s Bond Bill? And What’s Next?

On October 18, the Healey Administration released their proposed housing bond bill, named the Affordable Homes Act. 

The bill includes $4 billion in capital spending authorizations, 28 policy changes or initiatives, three executive orders and two targeted tax credits focused on addressing the state’s worsening affordable housing crisis.

The $4 billion in capital spending authorizations includes $1.6 billion for public housing ($150 million of which would go toward decarbonization efforts). You can read an overview of the spending authorizations here, but below we want to focus on a few of the policy proposals that align with legislation we have been supporting. 

But first: what is a bond bill? A bond bill is legislation that authorizes the state to issue and sell bonds to fund capital projects and programs. The bond bill contains capital authorizations, which identify programs that can be funded through revenue raised through said bonds. Importantly, a bond bill only authorizes the spending; continued advocacy is necessary for the spending to become a reality afterwards. 

But back to the policy overview…

GOOD 

Creation of a five-year housing plan

The bill would require the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to prepare a statewide housing plan every 5 years, conducting regional outreach following robust data analysis. Having more intentionality around our housing needs is certainly important. 

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) As-Of-Right

Many cities and towns across the state have been fighting to pass zoning reforms to allow Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) — small, independent residences built on the same lot as a single-family home — as a way to increase affordable housing stock. The bill would permit ADUs of <900 SF to be built by-right in single-family zoning districts in all communities–in other words, eliminating the need for special zoning ordinances by the city or town to permit them. 

The bill would prohibit owner occupancy requirements, which have worked against efforts to desegregate communities. Affordable rental stock is key to having a racially and economically diverse community. 

The bill also prohibits parking mandates to ADUs within ½ mile of transit, making them more affordable to build as parking spaces cost money and thus make housing less affordable. 

Inclusionary Zoning by Simple Majority

When Massachusetts recently updated the state’s zoning laws to allow cities and towns to approve certain new zoning ordinances by simple majority, this suite of reforms notably did not include inclusionary zoning ordinances, which would require developers to build a certain percentage of affordable units as a part of new construction. 

This bill would correct that omission and add inclusionary zoning ordinances and bylaws to the list of zoning changes municipalities can pass by a simple majority in the relevant legislative body (e.g., city council, town meeting).

Surplus Public Land Disposition Reforms

We need to build more housing and more affordable housing, and that requires land to build it on. The bill would help streamline the disposition of land under the control of a state agency or quasi for housing purposes. When the state owns the land, it can also lower the costs of building housing, making it easier to build affordable units. 

Establishing the Office of Fair Housing

The bill establishes an office within the  Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities with explicit focus on fair housing and establishes a trust fund for enforcement initiatives, fair housing testing, education, and outreach. Strong fair housing laws and enforcement ensure that people are not discriminated against in buying or renting a home for reasons of race, color, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, etc. 

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

Local Option Transfer Fee

Cities and towns across the state facing a dire lack of affordable housing have turned toward transfer fees as an option: by imposing a modest fee on high-end real estate transactions, cities and towns can raise money for their affordable housing trusts. Seventeen cities and towns have home rule petitions to do this before the State House, a sign of both the breadth of support as well as the limitations municipalities face in addressing the crisis on their own. 

The bill would allow municipalities and regional affordable housing commissions to adopt a transfer fee of 0.5% – 2.0%, paid by the seller, on the portion of sale proceeds over $1M or the county median home sales price, whichever is greater, with the revenue used for affordable housing development.

This proposal is great for Boston, whose transfer fee HRP would apply to property sales over $2 million (on their value over $2 million), but it would limit some of the other HRPs. 

For instance, Amherst is interested in a transfer fee, but the median home sale price in Hampshire County is only $427,500. Pushing the threshold up to $1 million would severely limit how much they could raise. 

And on Martha’s Vineyard, where all of the towns have been actively lobbying for their Home Rule Petitions given a dire housing crisis, this would push up their threshold to over $1.3 million, again limiting how much they could raise. 

Eviction Sealing

Having an eviction record is creating a devastating barrier for tenants looking for housing. Records are created as soon as a case is filed and are publicly available forever–– regardless of the outcome. These records impact people’s ability to obtain housing, credit, and employment, harming many and disproportionately impacting women and people of color. Regardless of whether one does anything wrong or is actually evicted, being party to an eviction or housing case is being unfairly held against tenants when they try to rent a new place.

There’s a clear solution to this problem: sealing eviction records, either immediately in cases of no-fault or for a defined period of time for other cases. 

The bill would provide a process for tenants to petition the court to seal an eviction record for (i) no-fault evictions: after conclusion of the case; (ii) solely non-payment evictions: no other eviction action within past 3 years and judgment for underlying eviction has been satisfied; and (iii) all other fault evictions: 7 years from conclusion of the matter and 3 years without any other eviction case filed against the tenant. It would also prohibit consumer reporting agencies from disclosing information in a sealed eviction record.

Although this is a step forward, we should not burden tenants with unnecessary bureaucratic steps to seal eviction records. Rather than enabling them to petition a court, the court should automatically seal records at the given benchmarks, as was the case in a prior iteration of the HOMES Act. 

What’s Next?

The bill will have a hearing with the Joint Housing Committee and possibly other committees, and given the history of past bond bills, it may not be finalized until the end of the session. But what that means is that your state legislators need to be hearing from you.

Why the UAW Strike Matters

UAW strike

By Enid Eckstein, JP Progressives

On September 14, United Automobile Workers took to the picket lines to begin their “Stand Up Strike.” The first week, workers struck a number of strategic profitable plants at the “Big 3” automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. Over the next few weeks, the strike expanded to parts suppliers and other assembly plants. The idea is to increase pressure gradually and keep the companies guessing what is next. On September 21, Massachusetts Stellantis workers at the Mansfield facility joined the strike. Over 30,000 workers are now on the picket lines in 22 states. President Biden made history when he joined the UAW line in suburban Detroit, demonstrating his support to the striking workers.

It is not just our strike, it is a strike for social justice”, Shawn Fain, UAW President

During the 2007-2008 recession, the automakers were in trouble and facing bankruptcy. The Obama administration and the automakers pushed for major concessions. The UAW leadership agreed, and workers were forced to weaken pensions and retiree health benefits, give up cost of living adjustments, cut overtime pay, and agree to a multi-tier pay structure and temporary workers. Those hired after 2007 would be paid significantly less, and not receive the same pensions. As the employers hired more workers and began recovery, there were workers working side by side with radically different pay rates for performing the same work. One worker would receive $ 32/hour and another $19 for the same job. It would take a worker 8 years to reach the top of the scale, and many never make it since they are considered temporary workers, making even less an hour.  

In March 2023, UAW members voted in a historic direct election for the officers of their union, following a long fight for a more democratic union. A new leadership, led by Shawn Fain, took charge and immediately began to educate, organize, and mobilize workers in a contract campaign. Key demands for this contract campaign include the end of the temporary workers classification and the end of the multi-tier system. The workers want everything they gave up to be restored and to receive a significant pay increase to make up for the years of concessions. Union members sacrificed and lost income for the last 16 years while the companies made billions.

This is also a strike about the future of the auto industry and its transition to electric vehicles. The union is demanding job security—the right to strike over plant closings and for Electric Vehicle workers to be bought under the union’s three master agreements. As UAW President Shawn Fain says, this is about a “just transition”: ensuring that the transition to a green economy is one that lifts up workers, not leaves them behind. The union has also fought for a reduced work week. It was during the 1930s that the UAW won the five-day work week. Yes, the folks “that brought you the weekend” are once again fighting for a shorter work week.

A recent Gallup poll found that 75% of the public supports the UAW strike. Just as the Writers Guild and AFTRA/SAG strike were about more than wages, this strike is a strike against corporate greed and high CEO pay, and it is an effort to restore the American dream for auto workers. This is a fight for the future of American manufacturing workers.

The companies and CEOs raked in billions while the workers lost out

All three companies have been extremely profitable. In the first 6 months of this year, they took in $21 billion. Estimates are they made $32 billion in profits due to the concessions, yet workers lost 19% of their wages during the same period. Car prices rose by 35% over the last four years, so the companies are doing well as are the CEOs. Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, was paid $28.9 million last year. The CEOs of Stellantis and Ford each $24.8 Million and $21.0 million respectively. According to UAW President Shawn Fain, “a worker would have to work 400 years to equal a year of CEO pay.”

What you can do!

The Mansfield Stellantis Facility (550 Forbes Road) is a small facility, and the 60-some workers need your help and support. They maintain a 24-hour active picket line. So far, many unions have joined the picket line, providing needed bodies and moral support. Senators Warren and Markey have also joined the line. Special shout-out to State Senator Paul Feeney who has walked the line many nights and is working to build other support.

The picket line is lively since the company is moving supplies and trucks in and out.

Organize a group of friends or members of your chapter to take a trip to Mansfield. Talk to the workers on the picket line. They are very friendly and appreciative of support. Make a sign telling them who you are and why you are there. Bring coffee and other refreshments.

A recent Labor Notes story also encourages people to call the Big 3 CEOs at 318-300-1249 and leave a message telling the CEO’s to settle. Let people know you support the members of the UAW in their fight against corporate greed.