Company town

The highlight of yesterday's City Council hearing about the Cantrell Administration's stonewalling of union organizers came from JP Morrell. 

Lloyd Permaul, the executive director of AFSCME’s Louisiana-based chapter — which Cantrell previously acknowledged as city employees’ bargaining unit — told Verite that while Tuesday’s meeting should help, he doesn’t know exactly what is going to happen next.

“I don’t know how to tell you how I feel coming out of that meeting,” Permaul told Verite. “I can’t even tell you I’m optimistic with the group I’m working with up there, to be honest with you. I don’t know.”

Permaul said that he hasn’t faced similar issues with the other government agencies he deals with in the state, including in Baton Rouge, Jefferson Parish and Plaquemines Parish.

“She’s the only mayor within this state that hasn’t met with me,” Permaul said.

“We are supposed to be the blue island in a state of red,” Morrell said, referring to New Orleans’ reputation as the most Democratic-leaning part of the state. “But everything I’m hearing is that this city is more hostile to unions than Jefferson Parish is. Do you know how ridiculous that is?”

JP's full comments are better if you watch the video. Lot's of "this is stupid!" and I think at one point he even says, "This is the most asinine thing I've ever heard in this chamber." The sequence starts around the 1:39:00 or 1:40:00 mark. This link should get you there.  

At the same time, though, JP's casting of New Orleans as "the blue island in a state of red" is simplistic and misleading. Especially when it comes to labor politics. JP and anyone who pays a lick of attention should know well that this city's power structure both in and out of government is generally conservative and viciously anti-union.  The Cantrell Administration, in particular, is closely allied with the city's business and non-profit elite where the dominant ideology promotes privatization of public services and the outsourcing and gigification of work. 

With regard to city workers in particular, her administration has exhibited constant hostility. Just a few examples would include the tacit approval of Metro Disposal's use of prison labor to break a strike, the freezing out organizing efforts at EMS, Public Works, and NORD a well-documented and dishonest attempt to de-fund the library system, and an attempt to relocate City Hall premised explicitly on a plan to downsize the permanent workforce.  In 2020, the mayor moved to replace a member of the City Civil Service Commission for the stated reason that the commissioner was too favorable to unions. 

So, while, we can certainly understand and support Morrell's outrage yesterday, his framing of the matter as though it should come as some sort of surprise may actually do more harm than good. The first step to building a stronger working class and a more union-friendly city is recognizing the size and scope of the challenge. And pretending that Cantrell's behavior is some kind of outlier instead of entirely representative of the rabidly anti-labor company town we actually live in, does not help with that.