In the year 2014, working for IATSE Local 600, I was representing the news photographers working for television stations KING in Seattle and KGW in Portland. Both stations had been bought by Gannett the previous year, as part of the overall transformation of broadcasting from local ownership to conglomerate ownership. The last labor contracts negotiated with local ownership expired as of the end of 2014, and that year the new corporate beast changed its name to Tegna.

In negotiations with the unions representing its on-air employees (SAG-AFTRA), its technicians (IBEW), and the photographers I represented, Tegna proposed a new idea for union contracts -- they called it the "non-jurisdictional" contract. In short, the idea was to abolish the idea of employees only working at one job, giving management the "flexibility" to assign employees to do any job, irrespective of job title or union affiliation.

There is a surface validity to this concept. Everybody knows the old union-bashing joke about some crap lying on the floor, and the supervisor tells union employees to pick it up -- leading to a long dispute over whose job it is to pick crap up off the floor. The Tegna idea would address this "problem" by abolishing specific job duties altogether, leading to the "efficiency" of a smaller work force. It would also allow the company to solicit amateur "news" -- taking work away from reporters and photographers.

We learned that Tegna was pushing for this non-jurisdictional contract language at all of their stations around the country. So we formed a multi-union coalition to fight back. We approached Seattle City Council member and infamous leader of an organization called Socialist Alternative, Kshama Sawant, to discuss our problem. My labor lawyer premise was that broadcasting is a regulated industry, and that the Federal Government has the primary responsibility for making sure that the publicly owned airways are operating in the "public interest." But massive corruption has led to the Feds abandoning their responsibility to protect the public interest. So we asked Councilmember Sawant to introduce a City Council resolution condemning Tegna for trying to de-professionalize local news to save money. She enthusiastically supported our campaign while introducing a Resolution that called for the divestiture of Tegna stock. She also appeared at a Town Hall meeting I arranged on the University of Washington campus and her speech was more radical than mine.

The resolution passed unanimously, and we took our idea of asking local government to correct the error of the Federal Government with respect to broadcasting to the State level. I appeared at a State Senate Committee hearing suggesting that Washington State should step in with similar legislation. The strategy in this kind if campaign is to make the company you are fighting to wonder what you will be doing next. I believe that Kshama understands that strategic approach to resistance.

At the end of 2016, Tenga caved in, and signed contracts at both the stations that maintained union jurisdiction over specific tasks.

As a lifelong troublemaker, I have often tried to get politicians to help with our campaigns. Nobody else ever introduced legislation -- nor got anything actually passed into law. She is the real deal.

She has started a new organization called Workers Strike Back:

The world is a mess. Workers are falling behind. The climate is out of control. The right wing is on the attack, and the Democrats have done nothing to fight back. War is escalating, and for working people, life is one crisis after another.

Corporate media – from CNN to MSNBC and Fox News – are full of lies and diversions, as they try desperately to prop up the system that makes them rich. Even many so-called progressives and independents have refused to criticize the people who got us into this mess, or point a clear way forward.

We need media that will tell the truth. We need working class media, which doesn’t just comment from the sidelines, but that puts forward the fighting strategies necessary to win.

That’s why Workers Strike Back is launching our video broadcast, On Strike.

On Strike is a different kind of political broadcast. Our aim is to use this show to help build movements of working people, in our workplaces and on the streets. We unambiguously stand with the working class AGAINST the billionaires and their political servants. We discuss and analyze events from the point of view of workers, not the bosses.

Mark your calendars – THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – and tune into the first episode of On Strike, with Kshama Sawant and Bia Lacombe. Workers Strike Back activists around the country will organize watch parties to meet up, watch the first episode together, and begin discussions about building Workers Strike Back nationwide.

Personally, I am totally fed up with despair. She may or may not be on a successful track, but she is making a real effort to do something besides singing the blues about how stoopid the people who run things are, and how stoopid the majority of people are to let them run things so stoopidly.