Category: labor

Gearing Up for a May Day Protest

My Regular Pagan Holiday Post

50th anniversary celebration of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution. Photo: IF DDR

May 1 International Workers Day

Beltane, the pagan holiday

April 25 Portugal’s Freedom Day

International Workers’ Day on May 1 had its start in the USA. The observance was first proclaimed after scores were killed in police raids on nonviolent workers agitating for the eight-hour day in Chicago in 1886. In the U.S., anti-socialist sentiment and political pressure has limited its observance. But other—many other—countries in the world celebrate this holiday that honors the people who actually work to build our societies and cultures and infrastructure!

This May Day, Americans are organizing a massive day of nonviolent, economic disruption to protest the pillaging of our environment, the dismantling of our democracy, and the shredding of our social safety net at the hands of the billionaire class.

We are on the way to Morocco for a women’s hiking trip in the Atlas Mountains, and on May Day we’ll be in Portugal. Both of these countries celebrate International Workers Day with marches, community gatherings and a day off work. I hope to parade with the Portuguese in Lisbon.

Portugal’s prime minister, Luís Montenegro, said “Today we celebrate with all workers: those who produce, create and contribute to a more productive and socially responsible country.”

Perhaps we Americans can take inspiration from the Portuguese revolution. The 1974 revolution, known as the Carnation Revolution, was a nearly bloodless military coup that overthrew the Estado Novo regime, ending over 40 years of fascism. It marked the beginning of Portugal’s transition to democracy and led to the independence of several African colonies.

The Carnation Revolution got its name from restaurant worker Celeste Caeiro who offered carnations to soldiers when the population took to the streets to celebrate the end of the dictatorship. Other demonstrators followed suit and placed carnations in the muzzles of guns and on soldiers’ uniforms. In Portugal, April 25, Freedom Day, is a national holiday that commemorates the revolution.

Free America Walkout Jan. 20, 2026

With Santa Rosa Women’s March and SEIU Local 2021

Folks Get Creative With Their Signs

She was Bludgeoned to Death with a Sledge Hammer on the Job

Say Her Name: Amber Czech

https://19thnews.org/2025/11/amber-czech-welder-murder-tradeswomen-demand-action/

Tradeswomen Organize for Job Safety

She was not the first. I wrote about the murder of another tradeswoman in 2017: https://mollymartin.blog/2024/06/27/a-sisters-murder-sparks-action/

Countering Trump’s Threats to Labor

Indigenous women in Ironworkers Local 725, Canada. Photo: Lightframe

Tradeswomen Reject Union’s Capitulation

Tradeswomn Inc. is a nonprofit I helped found in 1979. Still going strong, the organization helps women find jobs in the union construction trades. Here’s the text of a speech I gave October 30, 2025 at Tradeswomen’s annual fundraising event.

Sisters, we’ve come a long way.

When we first started Tradeswomen Inc., we had one goal:
to improve the lives of women — especially women heading households —by opening doors to good, high-paying union jobs.

It took us decades to be accepted by our unions.
Decades of proving ourselves on the job, standing our ground, demanding a seat at the table.

And now — by and large — we’re there.
We are leaders. Business agents. Organizers. Stewards.
We have changed the face of the labor movement.

But sisters, we are living in a dangerous time.

Our own federal government is attacking the labor movement.
And we cannot look away.

We all know that Donald Trump is gunning for unions.
Project 2025 is his blueprint — a plan to dismantle workers’ rights and roll back decades of progress.

Let me tell you some of what’s in that plan.

It would roll back affirmative action, regulations we worked so hard to secure,
Allow states to ban unions in the private sector,
Make it easier for corporations to fire workers who organize,
And even let employers toss out unions that already have contracts in place.

It would eliminate overtime protections,
Ignore the minimum wage,
End merit-based hiring in government so Trump can pack the system with loyalists,
And — unbelievably — it would weaken child labor protections.

Sisters and brothers, this is not reform.
It’s revenge on working people.

And yet, too many union members still vote against their own interests.
Why? Because propaganda works.
Because we are being lied to — by the media, by politicians, by billionaires who want to divide us.

That means our unions must do more than just bargain wages.
We must educate. Engage. Empower.
Because the fight ahead isn’t just about contracts 
It’s about truth.

We women have proven ourselves to be strong union members — and strong union leaders.

We’ve built solidarity.
We’ve organized.
We’ve made our unions more inclusive and more reflective of the real working class.

And now it’s time for our unions to stand with us.

Many of our building trades unions have stood up to Trump, and to anyone who would divide working people.

But one union — the Carpenters — has turned its back on us.

The Carpenters leadership has disbanded Sisters in the Brotherhood, the women’s caucus that so many of us fought to build. 

They have withdrawn support from the Tradeswomen Build Nations Conference, the largest gathering of union tradeswomen in the world.
They’ve withdrawn support for women’s, Black, Latino, and LGBTQ caucuses claiming they’re “complying” with Trump’s executive orders.

That’s not compliance.
That’s capitulation.

But the rank and file aren’t standing for it.

Across the country, Carpenters locals are rising up,
passing resolutions to restore Sisters in the Brotherhood
and to support Tradeswomen Build Nations.

Because they know:
You don’t build solidarity by silencing your own. And our movement — this movement — is built on inclusion, not fear.

While the Carpenters’ leadership retreats, others are stepping up.

The Painters sent their largest-ever delegation — nearly 400 women —to Tradeswomen Build Nations this year. 

The Sheet Metal Workers are fighting the deportation of apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The Electricians union is launching new caucuses, organizing immigrant defense committees, and they are saying loud and clear:

Every worker means every worker.

Over a century ago, the IWW — the Wobblies — said it best:

“An injury to one is an injury to all.”

That’s the spirit of the labor movement we believe in —and the one we will keep alive.

Our unions are some of the only institutions left with real power to stand up to the fascist agenda of Trump and his allies.

We have to use that power — boldly, collectively, fearlessly.

Because this fight is about more than paychecks.
It’s about democracy.
It’s about equality.
It’s about whether working people — all working people — will have a voice in this country.

Sisters and brothers, we’ve built this movement with our hands,
our sweat,
and our solidarity.

Now — it’s time to defend it. Together.
Solidarity forever!

Sign Making Party Santa Rosa

Neighbors Getting Ready for the Big Demonstration Saturday

Celebrating May Day

Demand for the eight-hour day inspires a world-wide holiday

My regular pagan holiday post

No one ever knew who threw the bomb that killed a cop during a peaceful rally. Then the police opened fire, killing seven more of their own and several bystanders. 

But the Powers That Be said someone had to pay. They arrested eight men and charged them with conspiracy. 

The accused, immigrants and anarchists, became convenient scapegoats in a city gripped by fear and suspicion. The mainstream media fanned the flames of anti-immigrant hysteria with sensationalized tales and outright lies.

As the trial unfolded, prejudice tainted the proceedings. The judge’s bias was palpable, and jurors were selected for their predispositions. Despite a glaring lack of evidence, the men were convicted.

Four were hanged. One committed suicide in prison. Others were given long sentences. 

The progressive governor, burdened by the knowledge of their innocence, commuted the sentences of the surviving men. Then he faced the wrath of voters who, swayed by fear and misinformation, ousted him from office in a bitter electoral battle.

It happened in Chicago in 1886, but to me it reads like today’s news. Except for the bomb. Our modern methods of murder are far more sophisticated.

Could history repeat itself in a modern age? 

I worry. The specter of prejudice still haunts our land, immigrants demonized, and dissent silenced. The media—mainstream and social–wields its influence with impunity, shaping public opinion with biased narratives and sensationalism. 

Meanwhile, our judiciary does not even try to conceal its corruption. The militarization of police forces and the epidemic of police violence create more distrust in those pledged to keep us safe. We won’t forget the killing of a 13-year-old boy, Andy Lopez, in Santa Rosa at the hands of a deputy sheriff.

So, yeah. It seems little human evolution has taken place since 1886.

At that 1886 Chicago rally, workers had agitated for the eight-hour work day, a movement then brutally crushed by employers with the help of federal, state and local police forces. With its leaders executed and imprisoned, the Chicago labor movement’s head was cut off. Labor lost that battle, but eventually won the war for the eight-hour day. Their slogan, written in a song of the time, was “Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.”

The eight defendants were all thinking and articulate men, but the one I find most interesting is the one man who was not an immigrant, Albert Parsons. Born in Alabama in 1848, he traced his ancestry back to English colonists in 1632. Some ancestors fought in the American revolution.

Parsons moved to Texas and fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Then he realized he had fought for the wrong side. He called the war “the slaveholders’ rebellion.” 

He became a Republican, supporting Reconstruction efforts and running for office, making enemies of his former comrades and the KKK. Then he joined the socialist movement, eventually denouncing electoral politics and joining the anarchists and the labor movement. 

His marriage to Lucy Parsons (Gonzales), a Black woman, defied the norms of a society steeped in prejudice, and her activism would become legendary in its own right. As she led the campaign to win a new trial, one Chicago official called her “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” 

Albert Parsons saw the connections between slavery and capitalism. He said: “My enemies in the southern states consisted of those who oppressed the black slave. My enemies in the north are among those who would perpetuate the slavery of the wage workers.”

What made Albert Parsons switch sides? I think it was working with previously enslaved people after the war and at the start of Reconstruction. He began to see things from their point of view. 

The Haymarket Affair, as the events in Chicago came to be called, inspired May Day, or International Workers Day, as a labor holiday in countries around the world on May 1. It was never a national holiday in the US because of ourgovernment’s resistance to encouraging worldwide working-class unity. But workers in the US celebrate May Day anyway, and it will be marked again this year in cities across the country.

Photos are from the 2019 Santa Rosa May Day march

California Labor Councils are planning actions up and down the state. This year’s May Day actions are about solidarity across sectors as workers push for higher wages, stronger contracts, the right to join a union, and fight back against corporate greed.

Here in Sonoma County on May 1 we will be marching for “Immigrant Rights Are Human Rights” starting at the county sheriff’s office. Marchers will demand that the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors proactively advocate for a Path To Citizenship policy in Congress and also support a county ordinance which would prohibit any collaboration or information sharing between the Sonoma County Sheriff and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Haymarket Affair was a seminal moment in the struggle for workers’ rights. The martyrs of that turbulent era—Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer—must not be forgotten. Their legacy endures, inspiring movements for social justice and workers’ rights around the world. 

The Haymarket martyrs memorial and Lucy Parson’s grave at Forest Hill cemetery in Chicago

A happy Beltane and a revolutionary May Day to all!

Wharlest Jackson Died for Our Rights

The Black Freedom Movement and Tradeswomen History

I want to take us back in time and imagine a world, a culture, in which job categories were firmly divided between MEN and WOMEN. Women were restricted to pink collar jobs that paid too little to raise a family on or even to live without a man’s support. Even doing the same jobs, women were legally paid less than men. Married women were not allowed to work outside the home. Single women who found jobs as teachers or secretaries were fired as soon as they married. Black people were only allowed to work as laborers or house cleaners.

This was the world we fought to change.

Tradeswomen who have jobs today must thank Black workers who began the fight for jobs and justice. 

The Black Freedom Movement has advocated for workplace equity since the end of the Civil War.

The movement gained power during and after WWII. A. Philip Randolph headed the sleeping car porters union, the leading Black trade union in the US. In 1940 he threatened to march on Washington with ten thousand demonstrators if the government did not act to end job discrimination in federal war contracts. FDR capitulated and signed executive order 8802, the first presidential order to benefit Blacks since reconstruction. It outlawed discrimination by companies and unions engaged in war work on government contracts. This executive order marked the start of affirmative action.

The fight to desegregate the workforce continued.

In the early 1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area, protesters organized successful picket campaigns against businesses that refused to hire Blacks, including the Palace hotel, car dealerships and Mel’s Drive-In. Many of the protesters were white students at UC Berkeley.

In August 1963, the march on Washington brought 200,000 people to the capitol to protest racial discrimination and show support for civil rights legislation. The civil rights act of 1964, signed into law by President Johnson, is the legal structure that women and POC have used to put nondiscrimination into practice.

But change did not come quickly or easily.

Black workers at a tire plant in Natchez Mississippi were organizing to desegregate jobs. The CIO, Congress of Industrial Organizations, supported them in this fight. In 1967, three years after the civil rights act became law, a Black man, Wharlest Jackson, who had won a promotion to a previously “white” job in the tire plant, was murdered by the KKK. They blew up his truck as he was driving home from work. No one was ever arrested or prosecuted for this crime.

Wharlest Jackson was the father of five. His wife, Exerlina, was among those arrested for peacefully insisting on equal treatment during a boycott of the town of Natchez’s white businesses. She was sent to Parchman penitentiary.

Jackson was just one of many who died for our right to be treated equally at work.

Tradeswomen are part of the feminist, civil rights and union movements. We continue to seek allies because we are few.  

Discrimination has not ended, but, because of decades of organizing, our work lives have improved. We owe much to the Black workers who sought equity in employment for decades before us. 

Photo: the Zinn Education Project

Don’t Bleed in the Shark Pool

Book review

Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood by Hilary Peach, Anvil Press, 2022

A woman navigating the challenges of the male workplace makes a good story and Hilary Peach does the genre proud in her new book, Thick Skin. A Canadian from BC, Peach writes of working for twenty years as a boilermaker on big projects in Canada and the U.S. She has worked at coal fired power plants, the tar sands in Alberta, pulp mills, gas plants, shipyards—big industrial power generating companies of all kinds, often staying in their company towns. 

I enjoy reading about the work people do, especially hard dirty jobs like construction. In this book Peach tells us about the world of boilermakers, a subculture all its own. She describes the often difficult working conditions while she schools the reader about the intricacies and art of welding. 

Most stories center on the men she works with, the psychopaths as well as the nice guys. 

She encounters sexism and discrimination regularly as might be expected as the only woman among hundreds of men. But Peach always finds humor in the stories and often had me laughing out loud. Tradeswomen who go through the same challenges in our workplaces will delight in her creative comebacks and her various inventive ways of responding to harassment.

“How do we know it’s sexual harassment?” asks an apprentice.

“Just stop talking about your penises. That’s 80 percent of it,” say the women in the break room.

I loved this book. It’s well written and an engaging read with truly general appeal. And, of course, it reminds me of my own experience working construction.

Electricians, too, have a subculture of travelers, boomers, tramps, journeyworkers—those who travel around to different jobs—and my sisters and I used to dream of traveling. We thought it would be the greatest thing—that is until we heard from others who were on the road, mostly because they couldn’t get work in their own union locals. Sandy said she had to wear so many layers of clothes working in the Boston winter that her arms stuck straight out at her sides. Barbara of NYC told about burning refuse in high rises to keep warm and to help the concrete set, risking the hazards of smoke inhalation. Betsy complained of the Texas heat and miles of smelly porty potties.

Maybe we didn’t want to travel after all. 

Hilary Peach does it for two decades—driving hundreds of miles, often in the driving rain or snow, to get to a job. Staying in work camps whose last century accommodations have been condemned and then reopened without remodel. Working 12 hour shifts happy for the overtime, working nights, working in cramped quarters in the freezing cold and boiling hot.

As the hard hat sticker says, “If you can’t stand the heat get the fuck out of the boiler.”

Peach does indeed develop a thick skin. A favorite maxim, repeated often:

“You don’t bleed in the shark pool.”

Later, as more women begin to come on to the jobs, they tell her conditions have improved. She writes, “When other women were on the job it made a remarkable difference. One other woman and you are no longer the freak, the anomaly. You have an ally. Three or more, and everything changes. We can no longer be isolated and targeted in the same way…Someone has to organize a second bathroom.”

Thank you Hilary Peach for making women look good out there and for paving the way for more women to enter this industry. A published poet, she’s now working on a novel. As boilermakers say at the end of a job, “See you on the next one.”

Molly Martin is a retired electrician whose latest book, Wonder Woman Electric to the Rescue, is available on Amazon and Kindle.

To order Thick Skin: https://www.anvilpress.com/books/thick-skin-field-notes-from-a-sister-in-the-brotherhood

PLAs are Good for Us

Don’t scapegoat workers in the race for bigger profits

Here in Santa Rosa, in an era when small cities often have none, I’m pleased we have a decent local newspaper, the Press Democrat. I usually agree with their editorials, and when I don’t I write a letter to the editor. Here’s my latest.

Dear Editor,

You came out on the wrong side of project labor agreements in your October 12 editorial. Yes, our tax money is being used to build community structures we all will enjoy.  But it seems to me you are promoting union busting and lower wages for the construction workers who build our public spaces. A PLA is a pre-hire collective bargaining agreement with labor organizations that establishes the terms and conditions of employment for a specific construction project.

One difference between union and nonunion construction is training. My career as a union construction worker has allowed me to live a middle class life. In my union, apprentices must graduate from a five-year apprenticeship program to work as journey-level workers. 

How do nonunion construction workers learn their trades? You may not know that (free) union apprenticeship programs–certified by the state and run by both unions and industry–teach workers necessary skills. 

Building trades are skilled trades. When contractors employ unskilled workers to do skilled work they take the chance of mistakes that could cost lives down the line.

Let’s not scapegoat workers in the race for bigger contractor profits.

Molly Martin

A Woman’s Work

The Fight Fight Fight for Decent Treatment by NFL Cheerleaders

I admit I was prejudiced. I was one of those feminists who thought cheerleaders were the antithesis of feminism, sucking up to powerful men and athletes, embodying or seeking to embody the male ideal of woman.

But then I saw the PBS film A Woman’s Work, about the struggle of the NFL cheerleaders for better wages and working conditions. Now I think some cheerleaders are feminist heroes. 

The film documents their years-long campaign against wage theft by their employer, the National Football League. The NFL and its 32 franchises are worth $80 billion and yet, rather than do the right thing and pay their workers a decent wage, they round up their corporate lawyers and fight to keep women down. The industry, run by rich conservative old men, still views itself as untouchable. Now the cheerleaders are on the front line in the feminist struggle against male chauvinism, male privilege and toxic masculinity.

I’m a retired electrician who has fought for the last half-century to insure women’s entry to the skilled trades. The construction industry is the other side of the gendered employment coin. We were kept out of lucrative union construction jobs because of our gender. The bosses said we were not strong enough to do the work and they’re still saying it, even though we’ve been doing the work for decades. Of course just because the job is physically difficult does not mean a worker makes better pay. Quite the contrary. Plenty of women (and men) work at hard jobs for low pay. Union construction workers make good money because of union contracts.

Women wanted to work in construction for many reasons: We wanted to build something valuable, to learn a craft and take pride in it. Many of us chafed at being required to wear dresses, pantyhose and makeup to work. But the big reason was money. Men working in “men’s” jobs make way more money than women working in “women’s” jobs.

Watching this film I felt an immediate sisterhood with the cheerleaders. Their plight brought up questions for me: What do they, working in a “woman’s job” have in common with us women who work in the construction trades? The film asks “What is women’s work? What is men’s work?” Cheerleading was once the domain of men, that is until team owners realized sexy women shaking their booties could make money for them. 

I didn’t know how bad it has been for cheerleaders. Maybe no one did. They were traditionally paid less than minimum wage and not paid for much of the work they did. Some teams paid them nothing at all. They were required to practice—wage free—for nine months before the season. And they were fined when late to practice. They were constantly scrutinized for body fat and rated on the size of body parts.

The film introduces us to three women from different NFL teams who chose to fight the NFL’s sexism. Lacy’s story is compelling. The product of a poor family in small town Alabama, she had always wanted to be a dancer and she began winning dance contests early on. The first to file a lawsuit, in 2014, she worked for the Oakland Raiders. A cheerleader in high school and college, Lacy was used to being paid for her work. “Louisiana Tech compensated us well,” she says. So it was a shock to find out the Raiders and the NFL didn’t value the cheerleaders even enough to pay minimum wage. The women didn’t get paid till the end of the year, and then not at all for the nine months of required practice sessions. Hair, nails, tan and required travel were out-of-pocket expenses. Waiting for her first paycheck to come, Lacy says she didn’t know all this.

Lacy retained the San Francisco law firm Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams, known for taking on major employment discrimination cases. I was pleased that the film includes interviews with the lawyers, all women. The firm’s symbol is Rosie the Riveter and their motto is “Who would Rosie hire?” Prominent in the office, besides numerous images of Rosie, is a picture of attorney Leslie Levy with Mary Dunlap, a civil rights hero in the San Francisco Bay Area. A well-known feminist and gay activist who died in 2003 at 54, Mary was a founder of Equal Rights Advocates, a law firm that we tradeswomen have worked with since the 1970s. Without our dedicated lawyers we could never have succeeded in integrating the construction trades. As with the cheerleaders, class action lawsuits were the basis of our ongoing struggle.

Also profiled is Maria who, along with five other cheerleaders, filed suit against the Buffalo Bills, a team that expected its cheerleading squad, the Buffalo Jills, to work for free. In response the NFL used tactics that employers typically use to fight unions. The Buffalo Bills team simply abolished its cheer squad. Then they blamed the women who filed the suit, using the divide and conquer tactic and bullying the others to opt out of the suit, which has still not been resolved.

Bailey Davis is the third cheerleader profiled in the film. She filed an EEOC complaint against the New Orleans Saints. Davis was one of the Saintsations, the Saints’ cheerleading squad. That is, until she posted a photo of herself in a one-piece lace bodysuit on her private Instagram account. The Saints fired the 22-year-old in 2018 for violating a code of conduct that prohibits cheerleaders from appearing nude, seminude or in lingerie. It wasn’t the only strict rule that Davis and her former colleagues had to follow—cheerleaders for the Saints can’t have players follow them on social media, must have private social media accounts and are required to leave parties or restaurants if players are there. The company says the rules are in place to prevent cheerleaders from being preyed on by players.

“The players have the freedom to post whatever they want to on social media,” Davis told the press. “They can promote themselves, but we can’t post anything on our social media about being a Saintsation. We can’t have it in our profile picture, we can’t use our last name for media, we can’t promote ourselves, but the players don’t have the same restrictions.”

The women who filed suit against the NFL were attacked mercilessly. “I just kept telling myself I’m doing the right thing,” says Lacy.

At the same time as it keeps a tight reign on the cheerleaders’ behavior, the NFL protects players charged with domestic violence. There’s a connection here. “Wage theft, sexual harassment and domestic violence are all about power,” say the lawyers. 

Scenes later in the film show these women at home taking care of kids and husbands with a not-so-subtle message that all women’s work is undervalued. Here these women work for free and there is no time off.

Another issue, the sexual harassment and pimping of cheerleaders is only hinted at in the film, which focuses on labor issues like wages and working conditions. In 2018 Washington Redskins cheerleaders complained of being pimped out to male donors. “I don’t think they viewed us as people,” said one. 

Football reeks of toxic masculinity. And having a posse of sexy females ready to do your bidding and totally under your control is just part of the deal. Women are seen by these men as sexual objects. Decades ago the Dallas Cowboys led the way in selling sex on the sidelines while paying the cheerleaders next to nothing. “It was a business,” said members of the squad. “And we were the merchandise.” 

In the construction trades, after decades of fighting for equal treatment, our efforts are paying off. It took years to get our unions on board, but now they are partnering with women to improve working conditions. Because of our advances, when the #Metoo movement erupted I was shocked—not that sexual harassment existed in Hollywood and elsewhere, but that it was so widespread and institutionalized. The world of construction is changing, if slowly, and we are ahead of some industries.

The world of cheerleading is changing too. It’s now seen as a competitive sport that incorporates gymnastics with athletic dance. Millions of people watch and participate in worldwide competitions. The NFL needs to get with the program.

Lacy won her lawsuit, after four years of fighting, but many more lawsuits are in process. Ten teams have been sued so far. The NFL has met its match in cheerleaders. Lacy, who had not considered herself a feminist, now says, “I realize feminism is everything I’m fighting for—equal rights, equal pay, equal treatment.”

Published in New York Labor History http://newyorklaborhistory.org/web/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/WHN_wintersping2021_F.pdf