Victory for the University of Miami Workers

Less than two weeks ago, I wrote to ask your support for striking workers at
the University of Miami. Those workers had chosen to go on hunger strike
rather than bow down before a company which was refusing to grant them dignity
at work.

Today I am very pleased to report that the dispute is now over, and on May Day
450 poverty-wage janitors won the right to form a union and raise living
standards for their families.

They won because they stood firm, because they were willing to risk their lives
in hunger strikes which caught the attention of the world. They won because
they were supported by students who joined them in the hunger strike and who
helped rally broad community support. They won because they and their union,
the SEIU, were able to mobilize far beyond the campus and involved religious
leaders, civil rights campaigners and politicians like former Senator John
Edwards.

And they won because of you.

Your 5,000 messages of protest and solidarity represented one of the largest
international trade union campaigns LabourStart has ever been involved in.
That campaign took off like a rocket, flooding the inbox of the university
president with hundreds of messages in the first few hours.

The workers in Miami were aware of your efforts and their own website was
periodically updated to reflect the growth of the international campaign you
were part of.

What a great May Day present -- and what an incentive to all of us to intensify
our efforts to pressure employers all over the world to recognize unions, and
to treat workers with dignity.