Daniel Russell
Daniel Russell
PRO Act rally
In a June 12 2021, demonstration which attracted a sizable crowd to downtown Arlington’s Crystal City high-rise office complex, the group emphasized how workers’ rights—and Amazon workers’ and everyone else’s protections and incomes—would benefit if the 50-50 Senate passes the bill. The Democratic-run House approved it in March, almost party-line.
“For 40 years, workers’ wages have declined and income for the elites has increased,” Virginia Diamond, president of the Northern Virginia Labor Federation and one of the lineup of union speakers, told the crowd.
“We have so much income inequality and racial inequality that we’ve gone backwards by 100 years.” Passing the PROAct can start to reverse that, she said.,
The demonstration attracted members and speakers from the Communications Workers, the Electrical Workers (IBEW), Diamond’s Northern Virginia Labor Federation, the West Virginia Education Association, and a new group of Uber and Lyft drivers.
The protest was near “the headquarters of global greed,” meaning Amazon, declared Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, which organized the event.
While the wealth of Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has grown to $180 billion and counting, his warehouse employees “work nonstop, get few breaks, have to piss into water bottles” while still toiling “and work in unsafe conditions,” Geevarghese said.
“This is unacceptable,” not just at Amazon, “but at other low-wage companies,” such as Walmart and McDonald’s.
CWA Legislative Director Shane Larson linked curbing Amazon’s greed to protections workers would get from the firm if the PROAct passes. But just getting that vote depends on gaining Warner and Arizona’s two Democratic senators as sponsors. “Even Joe Manchin gets it,” Larson said, referring to the most conservative Democrat’s support of the PRO Act.
“Labor law has been destroyed for 80 years,” he added. “And they”—bosses—“benefit.”
“Gig workers don’t have a right to a minimum wage. Gig workers don’t have fundamental protections for health and safety. Gig workers don’t have the right to organize,” said Geevarghese.
And that hurts those gig workers, both he and the Uber-Lyft driver, Daniel Russell, of newly organized D.C.-area Rideshare Workers United, said.
“I do not get paid enough. I do not set my rates. I do not negotiate my own contract,” Russell explained. That counters what Warner believes. “Now I have to work longer hours for less pay…. They can fire me for standing up for my rights, and that is not right. That’s why we need the PROAct.”
Organizing—via politics—also has direct benefits on wages, Don Slaiman, political coordinator for IBEW Local 26, pointed out.
The PRO Act, “would eliminate right-to-work states,” along with allowing common-site picketing—a construction union goal—and other changes which make the PRO Act “the biggest changes to labor law since the Wagner Act in 1935,” the original, pro-worker, National Labor Relations Act, Slaiman said.
“There’s only one way we can rebalance the power of workers versus corporations, and that’s to pass the PRO Act.”[1]
DSA Prairie Dog Caucus
Members of DSA Prairie Dog Caucus closed Facebook group, as of September 16, 2017, included Daniel Russell.[2]
"Wholesome Meme Stash"
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America Wholesome Meme Stash closed Facebook group, accessed November 14, 2017 included Daniel Russell.[3]