“Solidarity has to be Built in Struggle.” An Interview with Cliff Smith of the Roofers and Waterproofers, Local 36.
by Max Belasco
Local 36 protesting the Sheriff’s Department for the murder of Andres Guadardo. Photo Credit: Cliff Smith
If you have been to a march or demonstration in Los Angeles, chances are you’ve seen Roofers and Waterproofers Local 36. Their union banner with the demand “Build the People’s Democratic Workers Party” is just as noticeable as their regular attendance at actions demanding accountability from public officials. This is particularly true at actions decrying police brutality.
Earlier this year, after Los Angeles and Orange County Building Trades Council president Ron Miller retired and resigned from his seat on the Executive Board of the LA County Federation of Labor, Dr. Melina Abdullah challenged his successor, Chris Hannan, for the vacant seat. Abdullah, best known as the leader of the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles Chapter, was eligible for the seat as a member of the California Faculty Association. This unexpected electoral contest within LA’s House of Labor led to the building trades unions to close ranks around their chosen candidate. The Roofers were one of the more vocal unions that supported Hannan and criticized Dr. Abdullah’s run.
While the building trades are often characterized as “right-wing” or “conservative”, what was unique about Local 36’s intervention in this election was that they critiqued Dr. Abdullah from the left. Chris Hannan handily won re-election, and will complete Ron Miller’s term next February. We caught up with Cliff Smith, the elected business manager of Local 36, to learn more about how the union understands the fight against police violence and how they are organizing the labor movement against police brutality.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Strikewave: Let’s start with these photos you forwarded over to us of the Roofers standing with UNITE HERE Local 11 demanding accountability from the Sheriff’s Department for the murder of Andres Guadardo. Can you tell us the importance this issue has in labor?
Cliff Smith: Andres was 18 years old, he was at his job working at an auto body shop as a security guard. He was not a suspect of any crime and was set upon by Sheriff’s deputies and one of them, Miguel Vega, shot him in the back. The deputy’s own statement stated that Andres was unarmed and the victim’s autopsy showed he was shot multiple times in his back. Cristobal Guadardo, is an active member of his union, UNITE HERE Local 11, as a cook at a downtown hotel restaurant. He was one of the founding members of the union at his hotel restaurant.
This is Cristobal’s only son. An attack on Cristobal’s family is something that affects his entire union -- [UNITE HERE Local 11] has been very active in holding demonstrations demanding the removal of Sheriff Villanueva, demanding the prosecution of deputy Vega, demanding justice and accountability for the murder of Andres and we stand shoulder to shoulder with them. The union family expands beyond any trade or local divisions. We are members of the labor movement and we stand with Cristobal Guadardo as if he were one of our members.
SW: How is fighting police brutality a working class issue?
CS: Certainly it’s part of the struggle for democracy, in the same way that public education is a consequence of the fight for democracy - to have public schooling and having public democratic control over a school district is part of the history of the working class struggle. The same needs to be applied to policing -- so expanding democracy, in any facet of society, is in the overall interest of working people.
Most people, I think, have some understanding that police treat poor and working class and oppressed people far differently than they treat wealthy, well-heeled communities. There is an entirely different standard of behavior, of enforcement, that the police will conduct themselves with depending on what kind of community they are in. So the examples that we see, of police abuse, brutality, terrorism -- these happen on working class communities, oppressed communities, not well-to-do communities. It’s in the interest of all working people and certainly the labor movement to defend the working class from attacks, and that would of course include attacks from police agencies.
SW: The Roofers were instrumental in getting the California Federation of Labor to endorse community control over the police. Could you explain what went into making that happen?
CS: We brought this resolution to the CA Labor Federation in 2016 after the police murder of Philando Castile, who was a Teamster. We brought it to their biennial convention, and it received almost no support. So we had to present it from the floor. We were able to bring it to a vote, it was overwhelmingly defeated, but we were able to bring our position forward.
So we reintroduced the resolution in 2020, we’re at a different moment in time. We were able to organize a lot of co-signers - The California Nurses Association, SEIU-UHW, UFCW Local 770, California Faculty Association. It passed overwhelmingly, and now the official position of the state federation representing 2.1 million California union members is supporting community control of the police.
SW: What does “community control over the police” mean, and what would that look like in Los Angeles?
CS: What we mean is democratic, popular authority of the community over the public agency of the police department in the area that it serves - similar to how an elected school board has total jurisdiction over a school district from policy and budget to recruiting and hiring to investigation, discipline, up to and including the hiring and firing of a janitor to a school superintendent is all under the control of an elected board. The same type of structure should be developed over police agencies. This is the only way to instill accountability and transparency.
SW: One issue that has received a lot of attention on the left in Los Angeles has been the nature of police unions in the County Federation of Labor, such as Los Angeles Police Protection League (LAPPL). How do you see this factoring into the strategy of stopping police violence?
CS: I think that this issue has become a distraction to the actual solution to the problem of police abuse. There’s a concern that has grown about the influence police unions have because they provide defense for members, and when a police officer unjustly kills someone and the police union provides defense, that becomes a lightning rod and people zero in on the police union -- that they’re part of the enemy. To whatever degree that’s true and correct, I think that’s getting us away from solving the problem by zeroing on the police union as a political target.
I think it’s reactionary to get into a frontal battle with the police union -- how are you actually going to win that? As much as you can make a villain out of the police union, how are you going to win that in terms of a fight that gets you somewhere? Because even if you force them out of the County Fed, they’re still there. The Longshoremen are not part of the federation, do they not matter? You don’t have to be part of a labor federation to be a collective bargaining unit.
SW: This last year we saw Ron Miller from the Building Trades retire, with his successor Chris Hannan being challenged by Dr. Melina Abdullah from the California Faculty Association for the vacant Executive Board seat. The Roofers were vocal supporters of Chris Hannan - could you explain why?
CS: When Ron Miller retired, he had to withdraw from his seat on the Executive Board, so it opened up. Chris Hannan was Ron Miller’s successor as president of the building trades, so in the democratic spirit of representation Chris should have been able to finish Ron Miller’s elected term as the Executive Board representing those 150,000 union members when the term was completed -- which would be in February, in a couple months. At that time all the seats will be up for election, anybody who is a proper delegate -- which includes Melina and all the other delegates -- will have the opportunity to run in a fair, open delegate election.
Rather than wait those five months to run in an open election, Melina saw the opportunity to challenge for Ron Miller’s vacated seat. My union has a thousand members in it. We’re never going to be elected to the Executive Board of the labor federation. Our only way to have a voice is through the president of the building trades being elected to the Executive Board. Chris completing Ron Miller’s term gives us continuity of representation.
There are discussions and debates and criticisms to be made within the labor movement in regards to its obligations to the greater community, of its obligations to be self-critical about its history of internal racism and excluding different communities including African Americans. Those criticisms are legitimate and necessary. But this tactic was divisive and counter-productive.
One criticism I saw the Roofers levy at Dr. Abdullah was about her position of supporting police oversight boards rather than community control of the police. Could you explain a little bit about the distinction?
CS: The demand for community control is a direct consequence of the Black National Liberation movement. It was first advanced by Bobby Seale of the Oakland Black Panther Party in 1969 which they put forward as a response to the police murder of Lil’ Bobby Hutton. They developed it to such a sophisticated level that they placed the question on the ballot in the city of Berkeley as a public referendum and drew national attention. The referendum did not pass, but it did push the envelope of what is possible in material struggle and raise the consciousness of the people. You can use the actually existing city charters, the rules and operations of your municipality, to have absolute power over the police. Winning that election is another matter, but it’s something you can concretely put your hands on and apply yourself to as organizers in a political movement rather than just yelling into the wind or screaming at the police department.
Dr. Abdullah’s position is, I would say, vague at best. The Movement for Black Lives, which is the national political program for Black Lives Matter, is a five point platform. One of those points is community control over the police -- completely consistent with the California Labor Federation’s position. However in Los Angeles, Melina does not uphold that anywhere I can see. The closest thing I can see that she puts on record is in Torrance where Black Lives Matter has been active around some police abuses. They are specifically calling for police oversight of the Torrance PD. To me that’s just bizarre. Furthermore, BLM is opposed to the LAPD, and the LAPD has an oversight board. That oversight board has ruled several times in support of the people -- in the case of killing Margaret Mitchell in 1999, or Devin Brown in 2013, or Ezell Ford in 2014 -- but the police commission has no authority to implement any of their conclusions so they get sent as a recommendation back to LAPD and they get thrown into the garbage.
We don’t want to oversee the barbarity of the police department, we want to stop it. What does it mean to go into Torrance and say we’re going to solve the issue of abuse in Torrance by enacting an oversight board that we know does not work in LA? It’s not serious, it’s theater. And Dr. Abdullah is too educated and has too much influence to be putting forward oversight as a meaningful solution.
SW: The Roofers have been a fixture on the LA left for years. How did the union come to develop this kind of politics?
CS: Our members have a high political consciousness. They are predominantly indigenous and immigrant, spanish speakers. They have a different influence than many American-born workers that have been indoctrinated into US ideas. Workers from El Salvador, Guatemala, parts of Mexico–they carry a different history. I think they’re more looking for answers and solutions and are less concerned with pretense and status quo.
SW: The Building Trades is often characterized on the left as being the right wing of the labor movement. Do you believe that to be true, or is the truth more nuanced than that?
CS: First let’s be self-critical -- I think a lot of that characterization is deserved. There’s a long history in the building trades of white supremacy, white nationalism, chauvinism, excluding immigrants, excluding black workers, excluding women. I think some of this is merited. But I don’t think this stops at the building trades. It applies to the labor movement in general. There’s a whole history of auto workers unions in Detroit of excluding militant black workers that had to form their own labor organizations. But as a building trades member we have to take this criticism upon ourselves and own up to it.
To get to the other side of the question, I think the building trades department within the AFL-CIO has been neglected and there’s been a general lack of concern from the larger labor movement with the conditions and circumstances of the building trades. And there’s various reasons for that. One is that the larger labor movement deals with circumstances that are completely foreign to the typical building trades worker. If you work at a factory, a hotel, or a warehouse -- you are working by and large at a fixed location with a fixed set of coworkers. Your schedule may change, but there will be some level of stability and expectation built into this. The organizing is different when you can stand outside of a fixed structure and reach people where they’re going to be and where you can find them.
Organizing in building trades is a million moving parts. We can be on one job one day, we can be in a completely different project the next day with a whole different set of coworkers, or we can not have work at all the next day and not know when the next project will be for a myriad of reasons. The materials could be stuck on a ship floating off the port of Long Beach and now all your construction is interrupted or it’s raining and you can’t work on a roof. So you’re constantly at the mercy of the project, and we’re constantly working ourselves out of a job.
SW: So your membership’s healthcare, wages, even the health of the union is tied up with the pace of development.
CS: Yes, and to an extent that puts us at the mercy of the developers, which then gets us characterized as in the pocket of big development. We don’t have control over the circumstance of our labor - we are at the mercy of the developers. If they don’t have a project, we don’t have work. And it’s not just a paycheck. Our medical insurance is dependent on hours worked within a certain time frame, so if we don’t generate those hours we’re not going to have healthcare for our families. There’s an entire system and network that forces us into a position that forces us to be on the next project.
Our work is so uncertain that it forces us to accept conditions that are outside of our control that other parts of the labor movement do not have to grapple with, it’s an ingrained part of our everyday reality that often makes us seem like the red-headed stepchild of the labor movement up to our own devices. We have to figure out how to maintain standards in this uncertain environment without having to depend on the greater federation to support us.
Let me add one more thing -- it’s the obligation of the building trades to understand and take the extra step. We will go out and walk those picket lines with hotel workers demanding a $25 minimum wage. Because we need the hotel workers to see that we stand in common cause with them. We may clash over a planning commission meeting, but when we have the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with the hotel workers, whether it be in the case of Cristobal Guardado or the exploitation of the hotels. They have to see that we are concerned with their circumstances and we’re going to do everything we can do to support them. So that they can learn to see us as sisters and brothers.
SW: What do you think needs to be done to further popularize left wing politics in the Building Trades?
CS: Solidarity has to be built in struggle. We’re not going to get to understand each other sitting in meetings, principled as we may be. We’re just not going to develop that level of concern and recognition of each other. It has to be built in struggle. So we need to be out on the picket lines with the teachers and hotel workers and food and commercial workers. And their members and leaders need to see that, “Hey there’s those guys from the fuckin Roofers, what’s up with these guys?” And that’s how you build solidarity and trust.
Max Belasco is a rank-and-file member of UPTE-CWA and a member of the Strikewave Editorial Collective.