The Southern Workers Assembly was founded 12 years ago this month – September 3, 2012 – in Charlotte, North Carolina, during mobilizations around the Democratic National Convention that was held in the city that year. Charlotte is known as the Wall Street of the South given that it has the second highest concentration of finance capital behind Wall Street in NYC.
WATCH this short video with highlights from the gathering that founded the SWA.
The North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, UE Local 150, and Black Workers for Justice initiated the process. Organizing the South was part of UE150’s organizing perspective when it affiliated with the United Electrical Workers National Union (UE) in 1997.
The SWA founding conference opposed holding the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte, NC. The main reason was that Charlotte was behind the passage of the state’s current law that forbids public sector workers from collectively bargaining a union contract, written in 1959 by an all-white state Legislature.
The SWA conference was also a call to both unionized and self-organized workers, to form the SWA as a regional framework to launch a social justice labor movement in the South.
The Charlotte Chapter of UE150, which had been organizing for over 8 years without formal recognition, organized weekly informational pickets outside City Hall the entire summer. The aim was to draw the attention of the thousands attending the DNC to conditions faced by Charlotte city workers denied collective bargaining rights. Their immediate demands were a pay increase and safety for city workers, and for Charlotte to use some of the $50 million federal grant it received for hosting the DNC. Dues checkoff for union members and a system of “meet to confer” between management and union were also demands, which were won in the months after the DNC and the founding of SWA.
There were about 300 participants at the SWA founding conference. They included the following:
- United Electrical Workers Union Locals 150, 160 and 170 from NC, Virginia and West VA, Carolina Auto, Aerospace and Machine Workers Union (private sector of UE150)
- International Longshore Association Local 1422, South Carolina
- AFL-CIO President and delegation from South Carolina
- United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1208 from Smithfield Hog Plant in NC brought a busload and its National Civil Rights Committee made a $5,000 donation
- Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), AFL-CIO
- Unite-Here Local 23 representing airport workers in Atlanta, Charlotte, DC, Texas, New Orleans, Mississippi
- United Campus Workers-CWA Local 3865 from Tennessee
- National Day Labor Organizing Network from Texas
- Black Workers for Justice NC
- Mississippi Workers Center, Jackson, Mississippi
- Ban the Box (jobs for ex-offenders)
- International Longshore Warehouse Union Local 10 from San Francisco, California
- UAW Local 896 from Detroit, Michigan
The work to develop the Southern Worker Assembly network and the struggles of Southern workers have grown mightily since that initial convening.
Since the Southern Worker School held in late May of this year, we have supported the development of additional workers assemblies in formation in these areas: Down East NC (Rocky Mount, Greenville, Tarboro); Catawba Valley, NC (Statesville, Salisbury, Hickory); Spartanburg, SC; Memphis, TN; Knoxville, TN.
We’re also excited to share that our long-time allies – the Charleston Alliance for Fair Employment (CAFE) / Charleston Worker Center – formally affiliated with the Southern Workers Assembly earlier this summer.
The new assemblies above join the following cities in building workers assemblies: Richmond, VA; Tidewater, VA (Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Hampton Roads, Portsmouth); Raleigh/Wake, NC; Durham, NC; Triad, NC (Greensboro, Winston-Salem); Western, NC; Charlotte, NC; Columbia, SC; Atlanta, GA.
If you know workers in any of these cities, or are interested in building an assembly in your city, please reach out to info@southernworker.org!
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