Cleveland AFL-CIO Secretary John Ryan
by Cool Cleveland contributor Lee Chilcote

John Ryan is the Secretary of the Cleveland AFL-CIO, the federation of labor unions in Northeast Ohio. His email address is unionman01@aol.com, and that pretty much says it all. As I shook his hand in greeting at the AFL-CIO offices – situated in a stout brick building across from a bright new tech center on a checkered stretch of Euclid just east of 30th – I noticed the union poster on his wall and the UNITE t-shirt on his back. When I asked him how his July 4th weekend was, he told me he’d planned a four day vacation when Dick Cheney dropped in to Parma on the campaign trail. The vacation was cut short; the AFL organized a protest and 300 people showed up. He talked about going door to door to campaign for votes to “send Bush back to Texas” in that excited way only a born political junkie can.

Though some would say that the labor movement has gone by the wayside due to corporate dominance, Ryan is far from a relic. He’s fighting hard to hold on to a union heritage of providing a voice for workers, and he’s fighting harder to make unions relevant today. These days, Cleveland’s trying to jump the tracks between the locomotive of the old economy and the high speed train of the new one. What we don’t often hear are the voices of labor leaders in this debate over Cleveland’s future. Lee Chilcote caught up with Ryan to talk about the ‘04 elections, how Cleveland can make development work for workers, and whether or not he’ll support Jane Campbell’s bid for Mayor next year.

Cool Cleveland: Tell me about what you’re working on right now. What campaigns are the Cleveland AFL-CIO engaged in?

John Ryan: Our biggest goal right now is to send Bush back to Texas. We are in the middle of a very serious campaign that began about a year ago. Just recently, we brought about 500 people out on the streets to go door-to-door. The days of putting out a slate card and saying ‘This is what the union wants’ are over. Part of our two-year plan to win Ohio was getting involved in the municipal elections last year, so we could get to know those communities better, in anticipation of this election year. We’re encouraging municipal mayors to get involved in this campaign. The goal is to get those precious swing voters on our side. I’ve never seen a more important election in my 22 years of union organizing. If this was Bush’s first term, I’d hate to see a second term. This is the President that sent his Treasury Secretary into Ohio to talk about what a good thing outsourcing is. I couldn’t write better parody!

Obviously, the hot topic is the role that Ohio is expected to play as a swing state. What’s your organizing plan to get Kerry elected?
It used to be that you could win Cuyahoga County by 100,000 and take the state. Now, you have to win by more than that, and you have to do well in the rest of Ohio, too. One of Gore’s mistakes was neglecting Appalachia, the southeastern part of the state. We need to get Columbus as well [during the last election, it went for Gore, but narrowly]. In 2000, turnout in Cuyahoga County was 3% below average; we need to do better.

You helped to get Tim Hagan re-elected as county commissioner, and unseated Tim McCormack. Why did you support Tim Hagan?
We want elected officials who stand with working people. Unions in Northeast Ohio put $1 billion in people’s pockets; this is the difference in wages because of collective bargaining rights. This isn’t counting the ‘union threat equation’, which means that wages at businesses go up to satisfy the demands of workers that may be thinking about forming a union. During the campaign, we took the controversial step of standing with a non-incumbent. Hagan represents workers, and will help us fight the laws that make it tough for workers to form a union. McCormack said publicly that he did not believe it was his role to stand with working people trying to form unions, and Hagan has family members in unions. Public officials can make a huge difference with a phone call to a boss or a union leader, then workers don’t feel like they’re doing something un-American.

From your perspective as a labor leader, what are the challenges facing our region? There’s been a lot of talk about the ‘Quiet Crisis’ and the need for jobs and economic development to revitalize our industrial-era economy. What is labor’s perspective on this?
One of our goals is to promote living wage jobs. This doesn’t necessarily mean helping people to form unions. It means helping people to move out of poverty. For instance, we’ve been spending time keeping WalMart from coming to Cleveland. WalMart does not offer good wages or benefits, and is fiercely anti-union. Meanwhile, Cleveland has invested heavily in stores like Dave’s Supermarket, which offers higher wages, benefits and a pension plan. Dave’s stores are union. The city ought to look at rewarding entrepreneurs, and not superstores like WalMart. Almost all big-box retail, with the exception of grocery stores, is non-union. We are concerned about WalMart because they sell groceries; we don’t want them to kill Dave’s.

In terms of economic development, our goal is to connect workers’ rights with these issues. Look at the Hyatt Hotel deal [in the Arcade downtown]. We convinced the city to include workers’ rights provisions in the tax cuts, so that when workers organized there, they were allowed greater freedom than the law typically allows. If the Hyatt Hotel were to go against this agreement, the city could take away their tax break.

A few years ago, we were supporting a UNITE local that was trying to get a contract at a manufacturing business on the west side. Their tax abatement agreement said they’d obey all laws, but the company refused to negotiate a contract. This is against the law, because workers had already voted to form a union. Mike White threatened to cancel their tax abatement unless they agreed to a contract. This brought the company to the table, and now we have a good relationship with them.

An example of a grocery store that is union-busting right now is Marc’s. When John Sweeney [President of the national AFL-CIO] and I met with workers there, the management put out a letter to employees saying we’d been disruptive, that we had liquor on our breath! This is nothing compared to what they do to intimidate workers.

Tell me about this. Why is it so hard for workers to form a union?
One of the first things a company does is to hire a union-busting consultant to discredit the union. The law allows this. The management invites workers to a meeting, and if the workers don’t go, they can get fired. At these meetings, they show movies of union violence, and imply that if the company is unionized, operations will have to shut down. Sometimes the employers have one-on-one meetings with the workers; they’re not allowed to ask if they attended a union meeting, but if a worker volunteers information, they can use it against them.

Nationally, it’s estimated that 20,000 people are fired each year because of union activity. Let me tell you, there’s nothing worse than working on a campaign and having someone get fired. We tell people not to do anything that would give their boss a reason to fire them – don’t take more than your 15 minute break, etc. Usually a boss fires one or two people, and then workers get the message.

If a worker wants to appeal getting fired, he has to go to federal court. Let’s say that someone were making $8 an hour and got fired, then spent two months looking for a job and found one making $6 an hour. If the employer was found guilty, then that employer would have to pay only the wages for the two months that person was not working, and the difference in pay between his old job and his new job. The penalty isn’t very high.

Union employees get 20-30% higher wages over time, plus pensions and benefits. Employers have an incentive to fire people forming unions – they’ll lose less money, even if they’re found guilty and fined, than if workers join a union! I wasn’t a math major in college, but that’s what I see. That’s why we need politicians to support unions, because if employers are put in the spotlight, they’re less likely to use dirty tricks.

Are unions coming back, declining or staying the same?
The percentage of union workers has decreased everywhere, and we have to work harder now to have a larger voice. Cleveland’s workforce is still about twice as likely to be union than the rest of the country. Our unions are not doing enough workplace campaigns, partially due to intimidation – this is what they get for exercising their right to unionize. But our track record in the political process is good. We want to get workers to participate in the electoral process; we know that if they’re educated and if we make good endorsements, we can make a difference. After the politicians get elected, we still have to make sure they’re held accountable.

A common criticism of unions is that they drive up labor costs, making us less competitive. How do you respond to this?
Wages are a part of a company’s decision making-process when deciding where to invest in jobs, but there are lots of other factors. As long as we have free trade at any cost, it’ll be easy to move jobs out of Cleveland and out of the country. If communities are willing to give away taxes to slit the throats of other cities, this will happen.

Right now, we’re seeing a lot of telecommunications jobs moving to India. In workplaces that are union, where workers have a say, this is less likely to happen. But free trade laws make it difficult for anyone to keep jobs here. Look at Mr. Coffee, a Cleveland-based company that had a terrific relationship with their union. Workers were making $8-12 bucks an hour, a decent wage. We were able to stop the company from going to other states, but not from going to Mexico. Now, their workers live in shacks that don’t even have concrete floors. In these areas, people can’t organize a union; they don’t even have freedom of speech or religion! That’s a competition we don’t want to be included in.

A few years ago, the AFL-CIO and Jobs with Justice spearheaded a campaign to pass a living wage ordinance in Cleveland. Is it working?
The ordinance was a modest proposal. In effect, by creating a floor of about $9 per hour for the wages of companies that have contracts with the city of Cleveland or that get tax breaks or subsidies, it creates a ‘floor’ for wages. It has helped to move a few thousand people out of poverty. If we’re serious about moving people on welfare into work, we should provide decent jobs for them.

There was a hearing recently to review the ordinance. The Growth Partnership testified it was causing Cleveland to lose jobs, but could only find one employer that would testify. The living wage law prevents companies taking the ‘low road’ and offering low wages from getting subsidies from the city, then competing against companies trying to do the right thing.

We also passed a living wage ordinance in Lakewood, and we’re fighting to pass one at the county level. The county passed the first part of the proposed ordinance, the part that only affects county employees. They have not passed the other two parts, which would impact companies that have contracts with the county and those that receive subsidies from them. That’s what we’re working on now.

You helped get Jane Campbell elected. How would you assess her term so far? Any thoughts on the upcoming Mayoral elections?
They’re upcoming! Seriously, it’s too early to say. When we supported Mayor Campbell, she signed a Workers Bill of Rights. The past three years have been tough. She didn’t create the recession or the budget problems. We were very disappointed in the layoffs, and disappointed that the convention center did not go forward, and that it stalled out not once but twice. The Mayor is a part of that equation, but not all of it. We also have poor leadership on a national level, and no leadership from the Governor’s office, and that has hurt. Our endorsements are a democratic process. The AFL-CIO governing council makes the decisions. During the last election, we asked candidates to support a Workers Bill of Rights, and we’ll do the same thing next year. Our hope is that Mayor Campbell and all of the council members will be successful.

You’ve made a name for yourself at the helm of the AFL-CIO, and have been called one of the most influential people in Northeast Ohio. Why do you feel such a strong commitment to labor organizing?
I have a great job, and this is a great city. What I see is that our confidence level does not equate to what we have – the people, the institutions, the diversity, the affordability. We’re twice as union as the rest of the country, and we tend to be better paid and to have a better work ethic. I’m lucky to be here. I have a friend in Cincinnati, and he likes to joke that I probably don’t have to work after 10 AM, because it’s not as hard to organize unions here!

I remember my first union involvement. My family was boycotting lettuce because of how companies were treating immigrant workers. I grew up in a very Catholic family; there was something spiritual about taking this action together, that while sitting around the Ryan table, we could somehow help other people. And I figured that anything that could get me out of eating salad must be a great movement!

People sometimes have fearful perceptions of unions, but these perceptions usually change when they’re introduced to us. We help to provide fairness for workers – not just union workers, but all workers. What I like to tell people is that we lead one of the best self-help groups in the world. That’s what a union is.

Interview by Cool Cleveland contributor Lee Chilcote (:divend:)