Workers vs. billionaires fight
begins in Southern Maryland
Hollywood, Md., is home to something most people in Southern Maryland don’t know exists right in their backyard.
The William W. Winpisinger Education and Technology Center, tucked off Maryland Route 235, is the only facility in North America dedicated solely to educating union members. Since it opened in 1981, over 100,000 workers have come here to learn collective bargaining, organizing and how to stand up for themselves on the job.
It is named for former IAM Union (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) International President William W. Winpisinger, or “Wimpy” to those who knew him, who believed that an educated membership was an unstoppable force.
Wimpy envisioned a facility where workers could come together, share ideas and learn from instructors and each other. His vision of worker education was considered radical at the time.
In the spirit of Wimpy and May Day (May 1), the day the world honors the generations of workers who sacrificed for safety, dignity and justice on the job, we chose Hollywood to launch our Workers vs. Billionaires campaign from the W3 Center, our crown jewel, because the fight we are in right now is exactly the kind of fight Wimpy built that place to prepare workers for.
Southern Maryland families know what is happening. Groceries cost more. Rent has gone up. Many of our members and workers across Southern Maryland are working overtime or picking up extra shifts to break even, while the corporations they work for reward Corporate CEOs and executives with compensation that most working people could never earn in a lifetime.
We are living through the greatest concentration of wealth in American history. A small number of people have accumulated more money than many countries’ entire economies, and they are using it to buy politicians, break unions, offshore jobs, and gut the regulations that protect workers and families.
And nowhere is this fight more personal than here in St. Mary’s County.
IAM Local 4 members at Naval Air Station Patuxent River are among the most skilled defense workers in the country. They support the aircraft and systems that protect this nation, while living in fear of a federal workforce slashing campaign driven by billionaires. Gutting the civilian workforce at Pax River does not make America safer. It makes us weaker.
We also want to recognize our members at the Charlotte Hall Veterans Home, who show up every day to care for the men and women who served this country. Their work is a reminder of what it means to put people before profit.
We recently witnessed this closer to home. The IAM has filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against Apple with the National Labor Relations Board over its treatment of workers at the Towson store, the first unionized Apple retail location in the United States. When Apple closed the store, it offered transfer rights to employees at two non-union locations that were closing at the same time, while telling our Towson members to reapply as outside candidates. That is retaliation for organizing.
That is not the free market. That is a rigged game. And IAM members know exactly who rigged it. Workers vs. Billionaires is not a slogan. It is a description of what is actually happening in this country right now.
Wimpy believed there was nothing working people couldn’t win if they were organized and educated. Southern Maryland is where that belief still lives.
Brian Bryant
Upper Marlboro
The writer is president of IAM Union (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers).
