Coordinated workplace actions across Roanoke show how workers are standing up together for better pay and working conditions.
During an uncharacteristically cool week of August this year, seven worker-volunteers of the Roanoke Workers’ Assembly took to the entrances and exits of eight of the largest employers in and surrounding the valley.
Donned in yellow reflective vests, worker-volunteers yelled “Roanoke workers are coming together for better pay and better working conditions” as cars started to trickle in or out during shift change. They handed out flyers calling to unite Roanoke workers to any car that voluntarily stopped.
These worker-volunteers were part of a five-day workplace blitz from August 25 through August 29, modeled after the Spartanburg Workers Assembly blitz performed earlier this year in March.
In total, teams distributed nearly 300 leaflets and had conversations with workers from various sectors across the wider mountain metropolitan area, from logistics to healthcare to manufacturing. 55 workers shared contact information with worker-volunteers during the blitz and nearly 30 from various sectors attended the Roanoke Workers Assembly meetings that concluded the five days of outreach.
The workplace blitz model is an effort to go beyond traditional organizing that is confined to a single workplace or sector and provides workers with a path forward to address the crisis of working-class organization, particularly in the South and especially in a hostile political environment.
However, this outreach by assembly worker-volunteers didn’t go unopposed. They had the cops called on them, management and human resource representatives arguing with them on the side of the road, and companies using physical barriers to exert force. Additionally, they encountered workers who repeated anti-union propaganda, despite data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consistently showing that workers in the United States who are members of labor unions make 10-20% more pay than their nonunion counterparts.
Despite the struggles faced by the group, this blitz was a resounding success and there are plans to do more workplace outreach events in the future.
Roanoke has a union density of 1.9% despite lying at the crossroads of various logistical corridors and being a hub of manufacturing. This is by design and a story known all too well in the South. Black workers are oppressed in tyrannical workplaces, kept down by a white supremacy that works in tandem with capital to extract as much profit as possible.
The working class is the sleeping giant of the American political system. But we cannot sleep while our and our children’s futures are sold at the auction block to the highest bidder. Instead, it’s a handful of yellow-vested workers on the side of the road acting as the alarm bell that wakes the giant. This is your invitation to become the solution with the Roanoke Workers’ Assembly.
An update about our first workplace blitz was shared and has since been published by the Southern Workers’ Assembly.
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