Triangle employees seeking fairness in the workplace now have another resource following an announcement Tuesday of the creation of the Triangle Workers' Rights Board, one of several national branches dedicated to using moral and political pressure to lobby employers.
"This joins 20 other Workers Rights' Boards who hear the needs of workers standing up for their rights," said principal organizer Theresa El-Amin, director of the Southern Anti-Racism Network. El-Amin said the group, which also held its first meeting Tuesday, will be particularly helpful for employees who do not have unions to support them.
The board currently has 12 members, who range from community activists to religious leaders in the area. They include former Durham City Council members Angela Langley and Floyd McKissick, in addition to Duke senior Jonathan Harris, a member of the Progressive Alliance.
El-Amin said the idea of the board sprung from a meeting last fall of Triangle Jobs with Justice, a coalition of community, labor, faith and youth groups. The new board will serve as a committee of Triangle Jobs with Justice.
"I really felt a call to come," said Mary Ruth Cook of the Peace and Justice Mission Group at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Cary. "I don't know what I've gotten into, but I'll find out."
Other members echoed that sentiment and championed the workers' rights cause.
"We're talking a great deal these days about peace... but there's no peace without justice," said board member David McBriar, a pastor at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Durham. "It seems to be a blight on our self-understanding as a free people that so many men and women are either harassed in the work place or have no voice." He bemoaned the fact that many workers do not have the right to organize.
Harris said decisions by the National Labor Relations Board, the body that decides labor disputes, have been too biased toward companies in the last few years.
"Their decisions take two to three years," Harris added. "When you have people working minimum wage, entry-level jobs, they can't wait two to three years.... It's important to have people respected and pretty well-known be an intermediary between workers and management to speed up the process."
McBriar, who also serves on the board of Triangle Jobs with Justice, said he hopes the group will be able to put pressure on employers by shaping public opinion on particular cases.
One such dispute the board may work on involves taxi drivers at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
Early last fall, the airport authority began complaining about the taxi services and threatened to replace existing contracts with a single contract, according to a Triangle Jobs with Justice statement. RDU renewed the individual contracts on a six-month probationary basis in January, but drivers say they are afraid the airport will replace individual companies with one single business.
"They're running it as if it's their own private company, and we don't have a choice," said Durham taxi driver Cecil Taylor, who spoke with board members before they met. "We need to stop these people.... They're trying to get rid of us, and we've been working at the airport a long time."
The taxi drivers have several key demands, including the extension of the contracts and recognition of the RDU Taxicab Owners Association.
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