From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sun Dec 1 00:32:22 1996 Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 23:20:31 -0800 (PST) To: joe-berry@uiowa.edu, can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu, Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: (Fwd) Savio Memorial plans update Sender: meisenscher@igc.org With apologies for this lengthy message, but for many who hold Mario Savio in deep esteem and who were as deeply saddened by his untimely death, this will hold special significance. For those too young to remember (or perhaps even know) Mario (either personally or by reputation), this may help establish the historical connection that ties the young activists of this generation to those of the last. >Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 22:21:40 +0000 >Subject: (Fwd) Savio Memorial plans update >Reply-to: pwillett@igc.apc.org >Priority: normal >Sender: pwillett@igc.org > >Hey! Read to the end. In addition to the information about Mario's >memorial, he describes a very interesting archive to which you might >want to contribute -- or which you might want to use/see. > >Love, >P > > >------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- >Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 23:37:14 -0800 (PST) >From: Michael Rossman >To: bon@MIT.edu >Subject: Savio Memorial plans update >Cc: csiri@igc.org, david.walls@sonoma.edu, issc2@garnet.berkeley.edu, > jack.weinberg@g2.greenpeace.org, jack.weinberg@green2.dat.de, > jwood@sciences.sosu.edu, peter.vogel@forsythe.stanford.edu, > pwillett@igc.org, sjzorn@pipeline.com, zaretsky@garnet.berkeley.edu > >>From mrossman Wed Nov 27 22:34:17 1996 >Return-Path: mrossman >Received: (from mrossman) by igc6.igc.org (8.7.6/8.7.3) id WAA09388; Wed, 27 Nov 1996 22:34:14 -0800 (PST) >Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 22:34:14 -0800 (PST) >Message-Id: <199611280634.WAA09388@igc6.igc.org> >From: Michael Rossman >To: madler@npr.org >Subject: Savio Memorial plans updated >Cc: 102173@compuserve.com, ablack@uclink2.berke, b.berger@ucsd, > b.berger@ucsd.edu, baxelrod@igc.org, baxelrod@IGC.APCIDRG, > bberber@ucsd.edu, caploc@peak.org, cbancto@smptplink.maam.edu, > dbell@uci.edu, howard@info.SIMS.Berkeley.EDU, law4@pge.com, > mrossman@igc.org, ratkins@aol.com, stewa@aol.com >Status: RO > > > > 1741 Virginia St. mrossman@igc.org > Berkeley, CA 94703 > 20 November 1996 510-849-1154 > >Dear Friends, > > By now, you must know that Mario is gone. A sudden heart >attack on November 2 left his brain without oxygen for too long; his >consciousness was fled irretrievably, and his body died quickly and >peacefully when life-support was reduced four days later. > > That day I had gone to help Mario and Lynne move into the home >they had finally just barely been able to afford -- a modest but lovely >place, with a fine view and a room with its own entrance below for >Daniel, now 15. Their old place was a chaos, half-packed. While we >schlepped boxes awkwardly around him, Mario sat at the kitchen table, >his body cramped in apology for not helping, even after he turned his >mind again to the maze of legal papers. For two months, he'd been >pushing to help organize resistance to Prop. 209, and to the coming >regimen of student fee hikes in the state college system, being tested >first at his own campus, Sonoma State. Opposition was growing, he felt >there was a real chance; he was working against a deadline, to file a >lawsuit challenging the adminstration's manipulation of a student >election. I was too bent on carting stuff into my wagon, and too >respectful of his focus, to have the sense even to hug him; by the time >I got back from the third load to head home, he had gone, to deliver >his brief to the lawyers. > > This done, Mario unwound. He drove with Lynne to Sausalito, to >meet in the flesh an artist whose cherished landscape had guided their >questing along the coast of Italy. It was a warm evening, with the >sweet feel that couples know in times of concord. They got back to >their own pastoral landscape in Sebastapol in time to help Daniel take >his musical gear to a party. Mario was carrying his amp to the car, >set it down gently as he crumpled to the gravel. He had long been >afflicted with a heart-valve problem, and had been four times >hospitalized with bacterial infection; but this danger was not taken to >portend a heart attack. Even so, he knew something more, for he had >mentioned months before, with quiet factuality, that his heart was >fragile and could go at any time. One might see him, in this last >cameo, as a political hero who died in the saddle of overcommittment; >but his heart might as well have stopped while hiking. He was a man >who died of life, while striving to live it fully. > > A small private service was held in the garden of their new >home that Saturday, attended by family members and close friends. >Between the Tibetan Buddhist chant, the rabbinical prayer, and "We >Shall Overcome," many thoughtful and tender things were said, some >sharply-edged, of the sorts that all who knew Mario will be saying, and >that we hope to sound in public. The one that struck me most was the >briefest, from one who said simply that Mario's passing left her more >afraid, not of the world outside, but of herself and of us all to each >other, for it feels somehow even harder to be a good person with him gone. > > ******* > > There will be a public memorial service in Berkeley on Sunday, >December 8, in Pauley Ballroom in the Student Union on campus, adjacent >to Sproul Plaza. The memorial will begin at noon. Its planned program >will probably run for two hours or a bit more; some part will be >conducted from Sproul Steps, depending on the weather. A second >segment, probably also in Pauley, will invite further remembrance and >reflection about Mario from the community gathered in his memory, >through a well-moderated "open mike" process; we can't predict its >length. The planned program is still being developed, by Bettina >Apthecker, Lynne Hollander, Michael Rossman, and Reggie Zelnik, in >consultation with many others. We expect that music will play a vital >role; and that those speaking will have known Mario well in many ways, >and will speak of him as a (political) person rather than a political >object. The speakers will probably include the four of us and others >from the FSM; other members of Mario's family; colleagues and students >from his academic life at San Francisco and Sonoma State Universities >and his recent political engagements; and an activist from the Berkeley >campus, along with the ASUC President, who will announce its Senate's >resolution to rename Sproul Steps after Mario. > > There will probably be more private gatherings for FSM people >later, and perhaps the night before, but nothing has been arranged >yet. We have as little idea of how many will want this, as of the >public attendance to expect. There is no organized "we" to do things, >only a loose net of friends routinely overstrained in life, able >perhaps to form Mario's public memorial, but needing help even in >publicizing this to those who may want to attend. We hope that those >who care to come together will find ways and open places. At the >memorial, you'll hear about whatever may be happening afterwards among >us. Such details as we have about this, and to update what's below, >will be available on my message machine (510-849-1154); please access >it sparingly, as this thin pipeline is overstrained. If you're coming >from afar, need lodging, and can't find an old friend, Paul Cotton >(eternity@sirius.com 652-2666) may be able to help you, if those who >have space to offer contact him. > > As for Mario's family, Lynne and Daniel are left with a >mortgage way too large for her single income, and college coming on. >Jack Kurzweil (510-548-7645, jkurz@igc.org) and Barbara Epstein >(510-548-3348, bepstein@nature.berkeley.edu) are organizing a >fund-raising drive, and would welcome assistance. Contributions to >the Mario Savio Family Fund should be sent to I.L.E. Program, Sonoma >State University, 1801 E. Cotati, Rohnert Park, CA 94928. A letter >announcing the drive is enclosed; your help in distributing it further >would be appreciated. > > Suzanne Goldberg and others in Washington D.C. are setting up a >nonprofit (501-C3) organization to establish a lecture series at UC >Berkeley in Mario's memory. A grant would be be given each year to >someone of stature, chosen by a board established for this purpose, to >speak on issues related to free speech, civil rights and justice. >Contributions to the endowment fund would be tax deductible. If you >want to contribute, to assist, or to learn more about this project as >it develops, please send a note to her at goldberg@essential.org; or >to Savio Memorial Lectures, 1833 Mintwood Place NW, Washington, D.C. >20009, with a SASE to expedite reply. Those who respond will be >notified of where to send contributions as soon as the endowment fund >is legally established. > > Anya has set up a web-site for Mario, at www.hooked.net/~anya. >The site features her fine tribute to Mario, with links to thoughtful >obituaries and others' personal reflections. She invites further >contributions via anya@mail.hooked.net. Updates on what's happening >may be posted there. > > An hour-long, professionally-produced video film about FSM >veterans, built around a long and delightful interview with Mario >during the last reunion, has just been completed by Ron Dexter and >Douglas Gilles (Concensus Designs, 3756 Torino Dr., Santa Barbara, CA >93105; 805-682-7033.) We expect to schedule its first screening(s) on >the memorial weekend, if help can be found to carry this through; >details will be posted on the web-site, and may be available by phone >(see above.) Copies of the VHS videotape may be ordered for $40, >payable to MCLI-FSM, from FSM Video, 1741 Virginia St., Berkeley, CA >94703. It might make a meaningful holiday gift. Our half of the >proceeds will go to the Savio Family Fund. As the film is meant for >educational markets, its makers would welcome help in promoting it, >from any of us connected with schools or other appropriate audiences. >Please note that it is offered here at special discount for FSM vets >and associates; the public price will be higher, particularly for >institutions. > > Lynne Hollander hopes to produce a book, and perhaps tapes, >from Mario's talks and writings. She would welcome correspondence (at >7300 Fircrest Ave., Sebastapol, CA 95472) from anyone having written, >taped, or filmed material that she may not know about or have. She >will need help with the practical tasks, from transcription and >text-entry to editing. > > Barbara Stack has resumed her remarkable tending of the FSM >mailing-list, after the heroic effort by Marilyn Noble and Thom Irwin >to update it and distribute it to the 150 of us who had asked for it. >All corrections and changes, particularly in added email addresses, >should be sent to FSM Mailing-list, c/o Stack, 2629 Benvenue, Berkeley, >CA 94704. If you attend the memorial, please check the copies of the >list available there to make sure that the your own details are full >and accurate. It may be ordered from Barbara for $4, payable to >MCLI-FSM; the e-mail list will be available soon to those on it. We're >still searching for many who should be on the list; the names of some >are included here separately. This mailing cost $600, besides the >human energy; your help in offsetting this and other costs of Mario's >memorial will be appreciated. The mailing-list is important to >maintain, as a functional form that connects us; please take Barbara's >separate note seriously. > > Lynne and his sons Daniel, Nadav, and Stephan hope particularly >to receive stories and reminiscences about Mario, in written form, at >the memorial or subsequently; this would be a kind condolence. We wish >you comfort in the solidarity of feeling, in this time of grief for our >departed brother, who lit our lives. > > Michael Rossman, for many > > > >************************************************************************** > >Dear Friends -- > >To many of you, this text will arrive in the mail in a few days, along >with some relevant enclosures. > >Some updates and emendations to it: > >- KPFA in Berkeley and KPFK in LA will broadcast the first (planned) >segment of the memorial live; they're still deciding about the second. > >- Jack and Barbara would appreciate leads/targets for the Savio Family >Fund drive. > >- Re gatherings for FSM people: Folks coming from afar may well >prefer Saturday night and be unable to stay for Sunday gatherings, as >may many local folks; the problem is how to communicate them. I'll >post whatever is known about both on my answering-machine, for what >that's worth; but the problem is how to know (and coordinate) what's >happening. So here's my proposal: If you or someone you know is >willing to host a gathering, email the details of time/place/capacity >to me with the header "potential gathering place"; I'll concatenate all >such messages and send the bunch to each sender; the potential hosts >will communicate among themselves, decide what's happening, and tell >me; I'll put the info on my machine and inform others as I can. If you >or others you know will be here and would like to know about >gatherings, email me to ask with the header "where gatherings?"; I'll >either concatenate these messages and pass them to the host(s) to >answer, or do so myself in a group message two days before the event. >(I'll try, but cannot promise, to post the info to the whole FSM email >list, 155 people.) If each of you on email will contact a few friends >who aren't, whether or not you're coming or are interested in such >gatherings, the word will get around fairly well. > >- The note about the FSM mailing-list neglects a vital subject. The >list is available to any of the 1200 people on it; 150 have requested >it so far. Any of them may send vital news, crank manifestos, worthy >proposals, fund-pitches, and poems to us all. I trust that its uses >will be more interesting than annoying; expect that they will be >sparse; and hope to facilitate its constructive employment. I myself >would like to use it to tell people about the political poster archive >I've been working on for twenty years. I'd like to advertise its >11,000 posters, slide-sets, and coming CD-ROMs as a resource; and to >ask people to send me any posters they can, to extend the archive's >sparse coverage of past and present movements. Thirty years on, we're >a bunch of interesting people; I know there are a good many others >among us with concerns as peculiar and reasons as pertinent as mine, to >offer to and ask of us all. The trouble is, it costs $450 to send a >one-sheet enclosure to the whole list (and not greatly less with a >nonprofit permit.) So I propose this: People who want to mail to the >mailing-list, and hope for partners to share the cost, may send brief >descriptions of their proposed mailings, including the time-frames >desired or tolerable, to FSM Mailinglist Cooperation at my street >address, or with this header to my e-mail. After I coordinate a shared >mailing, I will continue as the central to connect people who want to >cooperate in this way. (They will of course be enabled to choose with >whom.) As this proposal is circulating now only among the 150 of us >with known e-mail addresses, and can't be circulated to the whole list >until another mass-mailing occurs, whatever you can do to make it more >widely known among us would be welcome. About offering it to >strangers, I'm not so sure; my instinct is to shield us from arbitrary >exploitive bombardment. Now that the list's public among us, its use >is uncontrollable. All I can say is, choose the company you keep. > >Phyllis Willett >510-524-7425 > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* Four More Years! For More Tears! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "The LAW in its MAJESTIC EQUALITY forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread." .....Anatole France..... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From dow@pinc.com Sun Dec 1 09:37:33 1996 Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 08:37:28 -0800 (PST) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu, Labor Research and Action Project From: David Wolsk Subject: Re: Discontent in Lotus Land At 8:35 PST 01/12/96 David Wolsk wrote At 23:25 29/11/96 -0800, Aaron wrote: > >That just makes my point, as quoted by Sid (see below), even clearer. Any >party that takes on the administration of the capitalist state, unless -- >perhaps -- it does so with both clear subversive intentions and a movement >to back it up in the streets, schools and workplaces, will act within >whatever constraints capital imposes on it. To avoid this, a government at >a sub-national level would have to be willing and able to confront its >national government, including its courts, cops and troops. A national >government would have to deal with intensive economic warfare, and probably >with at least 'covert' military attacks, a la Chile 1970-73, Portugal >1974-75, Nicaragua 1979-90, Cuba 1959-now, Libya ??-now, to name a (rather >diverse) few. > >In the old days, it was a peaceful transition to socialism that was a >pipedream. Nowadays, peaceful defense against immiseration is an equally >dangerous illusion. What the French truckers have been doing is a small >taste of what is necessary. > >--In the struggle, >--Aaron > >>Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 12:29:27 -0800 >>Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy >>From: D Shniad >>> Remember the old saying, 'Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame >>> on me!' What did the NDP do when it was running Ontario? >>> >>> But it's not just a matter of being fooled twice! Labor and >>> social-democratic parties throughout the world have been carrying out the >>> neo-liberal agenda of international capital since around 1980. Hi, it's Sunday, the cold wind is blowing strongly off the Pacific, the trees are absorbing all that energy and converting it into beautiful motion, and I'd like to do the same. (I hope you don't feel mine is hot air despite it's length!) When Good People Rule the World outline of a novel novel When fear starts to spread, when one can see and feel it on the streets everywhere, it grows as panic and rage. The kinds of anxiety that people have learned to shake off with a deep breath and a few moments of nothingness ...... these old behaviours become useless. People move through their days going through the motions but there is a flatness ..... hushed voices.... tension. At every possible moment, they return to a television set tuned to CNN. Yet they know this is like returning to the forbidden fruit. This was where it all started. On Friday, the 13th of December, 1997 the television news was electrifying: mounting death tolls on all continents, bloody children, frozen in fear or running in a desperate attempt to get away, filled the screens. First it was the Chinese conflict around Hong Kong. Then, the dense Burundi forest, the crack of rifle fire chasing fleeing families. As the cameraman ducked, the blurred image was of an elderly woman, with half a face just torn away by a bullet. The voice-over commentator is of the failed UN mission. Without a pause, we're in southern Mexico. The Chiapas guerrilla bands are shooting their way through a run-down town. The police station was blown up at dawn and there is a gaping hole where 8 died. Without a break, the scene moves up North. The same voice now brings us the images of Quebec's Northern Cree, brandishing assault rifles behind log barriers. Another cameraman is covering the other side of that barrier where the Provincial Police are huddled behind an armoured vehicle, getting ready for the assault. The voice and accent changes, the horror stays the same. Now it's from Chechnya. A failed peace process has unleashed an escalating conflict, now deserving to be labelled a war. Armed women and children have joined the men. There is a look of determination masking their body language ..... exhaustion. Nelson Mandela is also watching. His mind is racing ahead. A simple vision is taking place. He turns off the TV set, checks his watch and picks up the telephone. Reaching the Carter Centre in Atlanta, he identifies himself and asks if President Carter is in. Within seconds the course of the world begins to change. These two elder statesmen agree on a course of action. (end of page 1) So begins a novel of ideas for our troubled times ..... times when books with titles like Saul's Unconscious Civilisation and When Corporations Rule the World by Korten and Trust by Fukuyama and The Story of B by Quinn have been widely read. Yet, although they are all most excellent at analysing the problems, they leave the readers to cope with briefly developed and inadequate solutions. And, many of their smartest readers find themselves going from one book to the next so they hardly have time to reformulate their own set of priorities. Although all these save - the - world books call for an increasing mobilisation of civil society, its members find themselves with scarcely the time to make sense of the committee meetings and grass-roots activation plans. What was planned to take place in three months is still struggling to get off the ground after six months. Meanwhile, the non-civil or formerly civil now land mined and bullet-ridden parts of every continent compete with sporting events for the public's eyes and ears ...... and a brain that keeps wanting to turn it all off and get-off. This is a proposal for a new kind of novel. It mixes real - life and the worlds wisest elders with the strength of language to shape our destiny. its a novel about themselves, getting together in Bellagio, Italy, at the Rockefellar Centre. They come together to develop a global peace plan, one that takes seriously the damaged planet and its increasing population. They are fully aware of all those who have preceded them with similar global visions. Several had previously been together on the Commission for Global Governance. Their plan for strengthening the U.N. and civil society had been well received and solemnly neglected. What's different this time? The vision now has a dramatic new step: a world-wide vote administered by coalitions of NGO organisations in each country, in every hamlet, covering every nook and cranny of this earth. And what will the vote be on that would actually be able to change dreams into reality? The group of elders will ask the people to give them 1 year of power ....... power to change the relentless mindless course of killing conflict and ecological destruction. As a Council of Elders, they will re-plan the world. They will be granted power by the people to reshape the powers of corporations, their bankers, and the sovereign states that have become their handmaidens. For the first time, all those separate but related major dimensions of conflict will be re-designed in relation to each other: religious and ethnic conflicts; economics, unemployment and poverty; hunger, population growth and land reform; pollution and climate change; a properly financed and workable U.N. When the elders have the makings of an integrated plan, they will call for another global vote. Perhaps, there would be a series of votes, as progress moves through several stages. The novel will explore this scenario. Its power will come from reality. For it won't be the author's save-the- world text but one that combines the freedom of a novel with the pragmatism of the outcomes of an actual world gathering of elders jointly contemplating their possible rise to power. They must decide together on a plan. The 10,000 NGOs that dot the global landscape await their group wisdom. They have already put in place the administrative mechanism for the first global vote. The worlds of fiction and non-fiction, of printed word and the power to govern become intimately related. The actual "novel" can be translated and presented in a variety of formats to reach literate and non-literate, those with and without television. How and why will something like this come about? Because nothing else is truly working and most of us know it. David Wolsk Victoria, BC Canada (1st draft: 30 Nov 96) phone: 250 478 9795 fax: 250 478 9707 email: dow@pinc.com From donjprat@mailbox.syr.edu Sun Dec 1 20:52:07 1996 Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 22:52:00 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald J. Pratt" Reply-To: "Donald J. Pratt" To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Web page: "Downsize This!" Organization: Syracuse University http://www.randomhouse.com/downsizethis/ From mreview@igc.apc.org Mon Dec 2 09:50:41 1996 From: mreview@igc.apc.org Date: Mon, 2 Dec 1996 08:36:12 -0800 (PST) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: GUESS Campaign Sender: mreview@igc.org e are very interested in this issue. At 08:13 AM 11/28/96 -0800, you wrote: >Hi Labor Rappers, > Several of our members have actively participated in >the GUESS campaign by UNITE (garment workers union) and, in >case you haven't heard, I want to fill you in on the latest >news. There have been two important advances in this campaign: > 1. The US Dept of Labor is investigating GUESS and >took it off the Trendsetter List (they are on 60 day probation) >because the DOL found enough violations to declare that the >company's monitoring program is ineffective. The DOL hasn't >finished its investigation yet, and we KNOW they are going to >find worse offenses than they have already found. This is an >important victory because GUESS has been denying all claims that >they work with sweatshops, and has been slapping lawsuits on >anyone they can lay their hands on who says they do. In >particular, they've been using their position on the DOL's >list as their major point of rebuttal to the sweatshop charge. > 2. The NLRB was ready to issue a complaint against >GUESS for egregious violations of workers' rights to organize >in their main factory headquarters. Indeed, President Paul >Marciano had personally threatened workers if they participated >in union activities. The company also spied on workers who went >to union meetings, and fired 18 activists. The violations are >so bad that it looked like the NLRB was going to take the rare >step of asking for injunctive relief. GUESS is now seeking to >limit the damage by negotiating an out of court settlement >with the Board. They will certainly have to reinstate the fired >workers and pay them back pay, as well as other remedies. > > Belatedly I want to report on the tremendous support UNITE >got from several Labor-Rap members. On the weekend on Nov 8-9, >actions were taken at GUESS boutiques all across the country. >Among the Labor Rap members who organized at the store near them were: > -David Croteau, who did an incredible job at the Richmond Mall. >He developed great new materials, and got strong press coverage, which, >as most people know, is rough to accomplish for a labor demo. > -Joyce Chinen, who, with Steve Philion at the University of >Hawaii, has helped to organize several actions at the Honolulu Mall. >Since the union has no presence in Hawaii, they've covered that site >whenever the union has called on them. > -Margie Zamudio, at U of Colorado, who was able to take a >group of students to the Denver Mall and teach them the joys of >protesting. The Denver store is one of GUESS's top 10 money-makers, >so their action was important. > I hope I haven't left any of our members out. Others have >participated in other ways apart from that weekend store action. > > The GUESS campaign continues. UNITE is trying to develop student >support groups on campuses all across the country--and in other countries >too. If you want to join, or would like to examine materials, please >E-Mail me. Edna Bonacich > > > > From teldor@teldor.com Tue Dec 3 04:40:12 1996 Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 13:41:43 -0800 From: Eric Lee Reply-To: teldor@teldor.com Organization: Teldor Wires and Cables Ltd. To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu Subject: The Labor Movement and the Internet The Labour Movement and the Internet: The New Internationalism is the title of my new book just published by Pluto Press in London. It is also the title of the Web site accompanying the book, which is available at the following URL: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2808/labour01.html The Web site features: * Every Thursday, the Labour Web Site of the Week * Almost every day -- updated news about trade union use of the Internet * The Table of Contents and selections from the book * Other Pluto Press titles of interest to trade unionists * An easy online order form -- without using credit card numbers * Corrections to the book (like new URLs) which keep it up to date * An opportunity to question the author online -- and we'll post the answers Please check out the Web site and let me know what you think. If you have a suggestion for the next Labour Web Site of the Week, let me know. Send us news (like new Labour Web sites, new uses of technology by trade unions, new newsgroups and discussion lists, etc.). Add a link to this site to your own site. If you need a review copy of the book, please write directly to the publisher: pluto@plutobks.demon.co.uk. Discounts are available on bulk orders of the book for trade unions and workers' education associations. Thank you. Eric Lee -- Eric Lee Kibbutz Ein Dor, D.N. Yezreel 19335, Israel URL: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2808/ From ebonacic@wizard.ucr.edu Tue Dec 3 06:31:09 1996 From: Edna Bonacich Subject: Re: GUESS Campaign To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 05:24:42 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19961202122517.3f4fee7e@pop.igc.org> from "mreview@igc.apc.org" at Dec 2, 96 08:36:12 am Hi, I received this message, the first line of which indicates interest in this campaign. But I can't tell who it is from and how you would like to hook up. If you want more information please E-Mail me at ebonacic@wizard.ucr.edu. Looking forward to hearing from you. Edna > > e are very interested in this issue. > > At 08:13 AM 11/28/96 -0800, you wrote: > >Hi Labor Rappers, > > Several of our members have actively participated in > >the GUESS campaign by UNITE (garment workers union) and, in > >case you haven't heard, I want to fill you in on the latest > >news. There have been two important advances in this campaign: > > 1. The US Dept of Labor is investigating GUESS and > >took it off the Trendsetter List (they are on 60 day probation) > >because the DOL found enough violations to declare that the > >company's monitoring program is ineffective. The DOL hasn't > >finished its investigation yet, and we KNOW they are going to > >find worse offenses than they have already found. This is an > >important victory because GUESS has been denying all claims that > >they work with sweatshops, and has been slapping lawsuits on > >anyone they can lay their hands on who says they do. In > >particular, they've been using their position on the DOL's > >list as their major point of rebuttal to the sweatshop charge. > > 2. The NLRB was ready to issue a complaint against > >GUESS for egregious violations of workers' rights to organize > >in their main factory headquarters. Indeed, President Paul > >Marciano had personally threatened workers if they participated > >in union activities. The company also spied on workers who went > >to union meetings, and fired 18 activists. The violations are > >so bad that it looked like the NLRB was going to take the rare > >step of asking for injunctive relief. GUESS is now seeking to > >limit the damage by negotiating an out of court settlement > >with the Board. They will certainly have to reinstate the fired > >workers and pay them back pay, as well as other remedies. > > > > Belatedly I want to report on the tremendous support UNITE > >got from several Labor-Rap members. On the weekend on Nov 8-9, > >actions were taken at GUESS boutiques all across the country. > >Among the Labor Rap members who organized at the store near them were: > > -David Croteau, who did an incredible job at the Richmond Mall. > >He developed great new materials, and got strong press coverage, which, > >as most people know, is rough to accomplish for a labor demo. > > -Joyce Chinen, who, with Steve Philion at the University of > >Hawaii, has helped to organize several actions at the Honolulu Mall. > >Since the union has no presence in Hawaii, they've covered that site > >whenever the union has called on them. > > -Margie Zamudio, at U of Colorado, who was able to take a > >group of students to the Denver Mall and teach them the joys of > >protesting. The Denver store is one of GUESS's top 10 money-makers, > >so their action was important. > > I hope I haven't left any of our members out. Others have > >participated in other ways apart from that weekend store action. > > > > The GUESS campaign continues. UNITE is trying to develop student > >support groups on campuses all across the country--and in other countries > >too. If you want to join, or would like to examine materials, please > >E-Mail me. Edna Bonacich > > > > > > > > > > From wkramer@ucla.edu Tue Dec 3 19:27:24 1996 Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 18:18:45 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: LAMAP Job--Administrative > >JOB DESCRIPTION: BILINGUAL ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT > >The Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project (LAMAP) is looking for a >bilingual person for a clerical and administrative-support position in our >new office. LAMAP is a community-based labor-organizing project focused on >the largely immigrant workforce of the Los Angeles manufacturing sectors. >We are working to link workers, community organizations, academics, and >multiple unions into organizing drives that target whole sectors rather than >individual shops. > >JOB RESPONSIBILITIES INCLUDE: > -- Providing clerical and logistical support for administrator, organizers, >and researchers. > -- Maintaining and improving office systems, including files and >communication systems. > -- Front-office tasks such as reception, mail, office machines, and dealing >with a stream of incoming phone calls in both English and Spanish. > -- Drafting and editing correspondence, press advisories, and fundraising >materials in both English and Spanish. > -- Data entry and word processing, including mail merges and potentially >some bookkeeping. > -- Administering benefits, payroll, and membership programs. > -- Acting as the public face of the organization when required. > >JOB REQUIREMENTS INCLUDE: > -- Verbal and written fluency in Spanish and English. > -- Solid computer skills in a Windows environment. > -- Solid writing skills and verbal communication skills. > -- The ability to initiate and to organize your own work and to juggle >multiple projects. > -- The ability to work methodically in a chaotic environment. > -- The ability to work in a team (flexibility, open communication, and a >sense of humor). > >OTHER HELPFUL QUALIFICATIONS INCLUDE: > -- A knowledge of the Los Angeles community, including labor organizations, >churches, grassroots community organizations, professional nonprofits, >ethnic communities, and academic institutions. > -- More advanced computer skills, including basic network management, >hardware and software troubleshooting, and database management. > -- Fundraising experience. > >Salary is dependent on experience, generally between $20,000 and $25,000, >plus benefits. Women and people of color are especially encouraged to >apply. Please send a resume, any references, and a brief writing sample to >Dan Ringer at LAMAP. > >**************************************** >Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project >3114 East Gage Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90255 >213-585-4596 phone 213-585-4597 fax > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX William Kramer UCLA LAMAP Coordinator 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90024 310-794-0698 310-794-8017 fax wkramer@ucla.edu XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From wkramer@ucla.edu Tue Dec 3 19:31:49 1996 Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 18:24:12 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: LAMAP Organizing Jobs >JOB DESCRIPTION: LEAD ORGANIZERS AND FIELD ORGANIZERS > >The Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project (LAMAP) is looking for >experienced organizers to help drive one of the most innovative labor >campaigns in the country. LAMAP is a community-based labor-organizing >project focused on the largely immigrant workforce of the Los Angeles >manufacturing sectors. We are working to link workers, community >organizations, academics, and multiple unions into organizing drives that >target whole sectors rather than individual shops. > >JOB RESPONSIBILITIES FOR BOTH POSITIONS INCLUDE: > -- Working with researchers and workers to understand targeted >manufacturing industries and related social networks. > -- Developing contacts and committees among workers at targeted firms and >in related communities. > -- Working with the media, including drafting press advisories and other >outreach materials in both English and Spanish. > -- Basic word processing and layout of materials. > >JOB REQUIREMENTS INCLUDE: > -- Verbal and written fluency in Spanish and English. > -- Excellent verbal communication skills and an affinity for working with >all kinds of people, including workers, politicians, journalists, and >community leaders. > -- A commitment to the economic and social rights of workers and immigrants. > -- A self-motivated and organized work style. > -- The ability to work long hours both in a team and in isolation. >Flexibility, open communication, and a sense of humor are key. > -- Solid writing skills. > >OTHER HELPFUL QUALIFICATIONS INCLUDE: > -- A knowledge of the Los Angeles community, including labor organizations, >churches, grassroots community organizations, professional nonprofits, >ethnic communities, and academic institutions. > -- More computer skills, including advanced layout design and database >management. > >Lead Organizers will coordinate overall campaigns. Field Organizers will be >responsible for individual pieces. > >Salary is dependent on experience, generally between $25,000 and $30,000, >plus benefits. Women and people of color are especially encouraged to >apply. Please send a resume and any references to Dan Ringer and Joel Ochoa >at LAMAP. > >**************************************** >Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project >3114 East Gage Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90255 >213-585-4596 phone 213-585-4597 fax > >Attachment Converted: C:\BOLW\EUDORA\DSCRORGR.txt > >Attachment Converted: C:\BOLW\EUDORA\DSCRORGR.WPD > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX William Kramer UCLA LAMAP Coordinator 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90024 310-794-0698 310-794-8017 fax wkramer@ucla.edu XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From shostaka@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu Thu Dec 5 04:35:08 1996 Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 08:02:13 -0500 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: shostaka@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu (Art Shostak) Subject: SSSP Meeting, Toronto, August 1996 Brothers and Sisters: Permit me to repeat a previous message, as I still have room on my SSSP Panel: From August 8-19 the Society for the Study of Social Problems will be meeting in Toronto (preceding the ASA Meeting). I will be chairing a panel on "Leadership Issues confronting the American and Canadian Labor Movements." Can you recommend any pro-labor sociologists in Canada who work with organized labor, and might be available for my panel? If you will be there at the SSSP Meeting, would you be interested in participating on my panel? Please let me know a.s.a.p. Fraternally, Art Shostak Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of Psych/Soc/Anthro, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax 610-668-2727. email: SHOSTAKAt@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu http://duvm.ocs.drexel.edu/~shostak/ "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking [and feeling] we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein. Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of Psych/Soc/Anthro, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax 610-668-2727. email: SHOSTAKAt@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu http://duvm.ocs.drexel.edu/~shostak/ "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking [and feeling] we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein. From global@uk.pi.net Thu Dec 5 07:29:48 1996 Date: Thu, 5 Dec 96 13:35:10 From: global@uk.pi.net Subject: FW: Error Condition Re: RE: The Labor Movement and the Internet To: Labor Research and Action Project , listproc@csf.colorado.edu > >Revolutionary History has a big review section. I will like to review your >book > >Jose Villa >Review Editor. > >Please send me a copy to >Jose Villa >Revolutionary History >BCM 7646 >London WC1N 3XX >UK > >--- On Tue, 03 Dec 1996 13:41:43 -0800 Eric Lee wrote: > >>The Labour Movement and the Internet: The New Internationalism is the >>title of my new book just published by Pluto Press in London. It is >>also the title of the Web site accompanying the book, which is available >>at the following URL: >> >>http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2808/labour01.html >> >>The Web site features: >> >>* Every Thursday, the Labour Web Site of the Week >>* Almost every day -- updated news about trade union use of the Internet >>* The Table of Contents and selections from the book >>* Other Pluto Press titles of interest to trade unionists >>* An easy online order form -- without using credit card numbers >>* Corrections to the book (like new URLs) which keep it up to date >>* An opportunity to question the author online -- and we'll post the >>answers >> >>Please check out the Web site and let me know what you think. >> >>If you have a suggestion for the next Labour Web Site of the Week, let >>me know. >> >>Send us news (like new Labour Web sites, new uses of technology by trade >>unions, new newsgroups and discussion lists, etc.). >> >>Add a link to this site to your own site. >> >>If you need a review copy of the book, please write directly to the >>publisher: pluto@plutobks.demon.co.uk. >> >>Discounts are available on bulk orders of the book for trade unions and >>workers' education associations. >> >>Thank you. >> >>Eric Lee >> >>-- >>Eric Lee >>Kibbutz Ein Dor, D.N. Yezreel 19335, Israel >>URL: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2808/ >> > >-----------------End of Original Message----------------- > From terje.gronning@esst.uio.no Thu Dec 5 08:00:32 1996 Date: Thu, 05 Dec 1996 15:57:58 +0100 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Terje Gronning Subject: Re: SSSP Meeting, Toronto, August 1996 At 08:02 05.12.96 -0500, you wrote: >Brothers and Sisters: Permit me to repeat a previous message, as I still >have room on my SSSP Panel: From August 8-19 the Society for the Study of >Social Problems will be meeting in Toronto (preceding the ASA Meeting). I >will be chairing a panel on "Leadership Issues confronting the American and >Canadian Labor Movements." > >Can you recommend any pro-labor sociologists in Canada who work with >organized labor, and might be available for my panel? > I don't know them personnaly, but you could try Chris Huxley (Trent University) or James Rinehart (University of Western Ontario). >If you will be there at the SSSP Meeting, would you be interested in >participating on my panel? > >Please let me know a.s.a.p. Fraternally, Art Shostak > >Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of >Psych/Soc/Anthro, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax >610-668-2727. email: SHOSTAKAt@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu >http://duvm.ocs.drexel.edu/~shostak/ >"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of >thinking [and feeling] we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein. > >Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of >Psych/Soc/Anthro, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax >610-668-2727. >email: SHOSTAKAt@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu >http://duvm.ocs.drexel.edu/~shostak/ >"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of >thinking [and feeling] we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein. > > > > Best regards, Terje Gronning, research fellow, ESST (Education in Society, Science and Technology), University of Oslo, P.b. 1108 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway. http://www.sv.uio.no/esst/ E-mail: terje.gronning@esst.uio.no Tel: (+47) 22 85 89 62 Tel: (+47) 22 85 88 18 (direct line) Fax: (+47) 22 85 89 60 From sunshine@comp.uark.edu Thu Dec 5 10:01:06 1996 Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 11:01:02 -0600 (CST) From: "Dionne S. Ward" To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu subscribe LABOR-RAP Sunshine Ward From rsaute@email.gc.cuny.edu Thu Dec 5 14:41:09 1996 05 Dec 1996 16:41:04 -0400 (EDT) ; Thu, 05 Dec 1996 16:41:02 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 05 Dec 1996 16:41:02 -0500 (EST) From: ROBERT SAUTE To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu X-attachments: C:\RBS\SOCSCHOL\PANLCALL.TXT; C:\RBS\SOCSCHOL\SAVEDATE.TXT; --=====================_849832858==_ --=====================_849832858==_ ========================================================================== ***1997 SOCIALIST SCHOLARS CONFERENCE*** ***RADICAL ALTERNATIVES ON THE EVE OF THE MILLENNIUM*** ***CALL FOR PANELS*** Dear Friends, Scholars, Activists, The 1997 Socialist Scholars Conference will take place this year from 6:00 PM Friday March 28 to 6:00 PM Sunday March 30, at Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, New York City. This year's theme is "Radical Alternatives on the Eve of the Millennium," and we encourage panels to address issues covered by it. We are also eager to have panels on any and all subjects of interest to socialists, radical democrats, activists and intellectuals who want a better world. Each year the Socialist Scholars Conference, the largest non-sectarian gathering of the Left in the United States, attracts between 1500 and 2,000 intellectuals and activists from more than a dozen countries. At one hundred panels, plenaries, and workshops, scholars and militants debate and exchange ideas about struggles around the world and in our communities. Last year's Conference hosted spirited debates on the "end of work" vs. jobs for all; identity politics and the Left's universalism; Cuban economists on market reform; the Million Man March; and the war on drugs. This year, panels will discuss changes in the labor movement at the top and bottom; independent politics and NY's race for mayor; struggles for survival and justice in Asia, Africa and Latin America; bringing culture back in; and dozens of others on race, ecology, gender, class, and the building of a better world. In general, we have participants organize panels rather than submit papers. We ask you to organize panels because panels with coherent themes are more interesting; they allow for meaningful debate and encourage participation from the audience. Panels are an hour and fifty minutes long and typically have three to five speakers, sometimes including a moderator. Talks of less than twenty minutes per speaker work best. They allow for exchange among panelists, and between panelists and the audience. Videos, slide presentations, and/or overhead projections can be accomodated with *advance* notification. We encourage panels to include debate and dialogue. Debates are more interesting for speakers and audience. Diversity of opinion and experience, as well as in race, class, and gender, give your panel and the Conference strength. This year we want to stress the importance of dialogue between academia and activism. Include and integrate activists (academics) in your panel. At the least, remember to be political! **Deadline for panel submissions is February 24, 1997.** To submit a panel, please include a panel title, a list of panelists with one -and only one- affiliation per panelist, a sponsoring organization (if applicable) and a contact person with phone number and email. Panels take place on Saturday March 29 and Sunday March 30, from 10:00 AM to 11:50 AM, 1:00 PM to 2:50 PM, and 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Please let us know your preference, and, given early notification, we will do everything possible to meet your needs. The cost of a panel is $100. The fee includes admission for each of the panelist for the entire three day conference. There are no additional charges for panelists. Please make your checks payable to: Socialist Scholars Conference c/o Dept. of Sociology/ CUNY Grad Center 33 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036 If you have further questions, please contact us at the above address, phone us at (212) 642-2826 or email us at: risserle@email.gc.cuny.edu  --=====================_849832858==_ ========================================================================== **1997 SOCIALIST SCHOLARS CONFERENCE** **RADICAL ALTERNATIVES ON THE EVE OF THE MILLENNIUM** ** SAVE THESE DATES** The 1997 Socialist Scholars Conference will be held the weekend of March 28 to 30, 1997 at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, in downtown Manhattan. The Conference's theme is "Radical Alternatives on the Eve of the Millennium." Each year the Socialist Scholars Conference, the largest non-sectarian gathering of the Left in the United States, attracts between 1500 and 2,000 intellectuals and activists from more than a dozen countries. At one hundred panels, plenaries, and workshops, scholars and militants debate and exchange ideas about struggles around the world and in our communities. Last year's Conference hosted spirited debates on the "end of work" vs. jobs for all; identity politics and the Left's universalism; Cuban economists on market reform; the Million Man March; and the war on drugs. This year panels will discuss changes in the labor movement at the top and bottom; independent politics and NY's race for mayor; struggles for survival and justice in Asia, Africa and Latin America; bringing culture back in; and dozens of others on race, ecology, gender, class, and building a better world. The majority of panels each year are put together by participants and not the organizers. Here is your chance to combine theory and practice. Write to us for further details. The Socialist Scholars Conference is a great place to renew old acquaintances, meet new comrades, and share ideas. We hope to see you there! DETAILS: When: 6:00 PM Friday March 28 to 6:00 PM Sunday March 30, 1997 Where: Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, New York City Cost: Pre-registration (postmarked by March 14, 1997) Regular Income $30 Low Income $20 Undergraduate/HS $8 One Day $15 On-site Registration Regular Income $45 Low Income $30 Undergraduate/HS $8 One Day $20 Checks should be made payable to: Socialist Scholars Conference c/o Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center 33 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036 For further information write to the above address or call (212) 642-2826, or email us at risserle@email.gc.cuny.edu  --=====================_849832858==_-- From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Thu Dec 5 22:38:35 1996 Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 14:34:10 -0800 (PST) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Sender: Franklin Wayne Poley Reply-To: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Re: http://mondragon.mcc.es/english/mcc.html To: Ftr_Cities@websightz.com United@cougar.com, LABNEWS@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU, jshields@essential.org, info@mcc.es, workingtv@cyberstore.ca, coc@web.apc.org I received a letter from C.A.W. President Buzz Hargrove dated March 31/93 in which he says "You asked if Mondragon in Spain is a worker-owned industrial city. Mondragon is a highly successful worker-owned appliance factory in the Basque Region of Spain. The city is not worker-owned." I had proposed and still propose, a worker-owned city. From the web site it would seem Mondragon has come a long way. Why not a worker-owned city complete with worker-owned businesses and a full-employment policy? FWP. > > MCC is a business corporation with close to one hundred companies. Our > > aim is to produce and sell goods and services and develop retailing > > activities. We use democratic methods to elect our governing and > > management bodies and to distribute the material and social wealth > > generated, for the benefit of our members and the community, on the > > basis of solidarity. > > > > Our social ethos and business philosophy can be found in the Basic > > Principles of the Mondragon Co-operative Experience. > > > > Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa offers the following prestigious > > brand names: [11]CAJA LABORAL ,[12]COPRECI ,[13]DANOBAT ,[14]EROSKI > > ,[15]FAGOR ,[16]IRIZAR ,[17]LAGUN ARO ,[18]ORBEA ,[19]ORKLI ,[20]ORONA > > ,[21]URSSA among others. > > > > Located in the north of Spain, MCC companies occupy a privileged > > position between Spain and the rest of Europe. This excellent > > geographical location is complemented by a good motorway network and > > the large sea ports of Bilbao and Pasajes. > > > > Address: > > > > Paseo Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, n-o5 > > 20500 - Mondragon - Guipuzcoa, SPAIN > > Telephone: 34+43+ 77 93 00 > > Fax: 34+43+ 79 66 32 > > E-mail: [22]info@mondragon.mcc.es > > > > > > Footnote > > If you have any questions or comments, please, contact us at > > [23]WEBMASTER@mondragon.mcc.es or [24]MONDRAGON. > > [25]Copyright (c) 1996 > > Revised: November 1996 *** To discuss cities and city-states for C. 21 email Ftr_Cities-request@websightz.com with subscribe in the body; http://www.websightz.com/ftr_cities *** From dreier@oxy.edu Fri Dec 6 15:16:50 1996 Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 14:16:35 -0800 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: dreier@oxy.edu Subject: Re: SSSP Meeting, Toronto, August 1996 To Art Shostak: Regarding the SSSP panel: I'd recommend getting in touch with Elaine Bernard, a Canadian, who runs the Trade Union Program at Harvard. She's written a great deal about the Canadian and US labor movement, was active in the NDP in British Columbia, and is a good public speaker. Several years ago she and I edited a special issue of SOCIAL POLICY magazine (Summer 1992) about Canadian social and economic policy. She co-authored the article on the labor movement, so you might check it out. Peter Dreier Occidental College >Brothers and Sisters: Permit me to repeat a previous message, as I still >have room on my SSSP Panel: From August 8-19 the Society for the Study of >Social Problems will be meeting in Toronto (preceding the ASA Meeting). I >will be chairing a panel on "Leadership Issues confronting the American and >Canadian Labor Movements." > >Can you recommend any pro-labor sociologists in Canada who work with >organized labor, and might be available for my panel? > >If you will be there at the SSSP Meeting, would you be interested in >participating on my panel? > >Please let me know a.s.a.p. Fraternally, Art Shostak > >Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of >Psych/Soc/Anthro, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax >610-668-2727. email: SHOSTAKAt@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu >http://duvm.ocs.drexel.edu/~shostak/ >"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of >thinking [and feeling] we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein. > >Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of >Psych/Soc/Anthro, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax >610-668-2727. >email: SHOSTAKAt@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu >http://duvm.ocs.drexel.edu/~shostak/ >"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of >thinking [and feeling] we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein. > > > > From knowware@mindlink.bc.ca Sat Dec 7 12:55:24 1996 by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 1.58 #1) Date: Sat, 07 Dec 1996 11:54:58 -0800 To: pen-l@anthrax.ecst.csuchico.edu, LABOR-L@YORKU.CA, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, swt-digest@di.com, futurework@csf.colorado.edu From: knowware@mindlink.bc.ca (Tom Walker) Subject: The ninth hour I am writing a research funding proposal (due Dec. 16) and would welcome any suggestions on the analysis presented below. I'm particularly interested in hearing of any work that has been or is being done along similar lines. According to my rough calculations, using the B.C. pulp and paper industry as a case in point, the "ninth hour" of a hypothetical "annual working day" costs employers about 7.6% less than the "first hour", in spite of the legal requirement for overtime pay at time and a half. At an industry standard hourly rate of $23.50, the total cost to employers (including payroll taxes, benefit premiums and allowance for paid time off) is $36.60 for the ninth hour compared with $39.40 for the first hour. This is because most of the non-wage labour costs are loaded on the standard eight hour day and some are loaded on the first six or so hours of the day. The obvious implication of such a relationship is that employers will favour overtime over creating new employment because it is cheaper -- even at time and a half. In the late 1970s or early 1980s, U.S. Rep. John Conyers had a proposal to increase the overtime premium to double time as a way of offsetting the effects of non-wage labour costs. The argument against such a proposal was that it would actually lower total employment because the higher labour costs will result in loss of demand and the substitution of capital for labour. Similarly, proposals for shortening the workweek run into a cost wall. And this is not simply a question of "shorter hours at no loss in pay". When I recalculate the employer costs assuming a 32 hour week instead of a 40 hour week and assuming the same structure and level of benefits and payroll taxes, and keeping the hourly base rate constant, the cost of the first hour jumps to $42.25, while the cost of the first overtime hour (the "seventh hour" of a hypothetical annual working day) remains at about $36.70. In other words, the employer cost of the first overtime hour would become 15% less than the cost for the first reuglar hour (again because of loading of fixed and quasi-fixed non-wage labour costs on the regular hours). The perverse result of a legislated reduction in the standard workweek thus could be that average weekly hours worked would remain about the same and the average amount of overtime would increase by around 8 hours a week -- although scale and substitution effects should again lead to a _total_ reduction in hours worked, thus increasing, rather than decreasing, unemployment. The relationship between overtime costs and straight time costs is counter-intuitive and clearly contradicts the intent of employment standards legislation. The solution to the problem is, in theory, extremely simple: distribute non-wage labour cost proportionately over the working day. In practice, however, this would require that many well-established assumptions of social security finance, employment standards regulation and collective bargaining strategy would have to be reviewed for their effects on working hours, total employment and employment equity. It would be reckless to underestimate the intensity of political resistance to pro-rating non-wage labour costs over the entire working day, including all overtime hours. I suspect that many people would refuse to even look at the calculation that clearly shows that "one and one half" is less than "one". But I think this approach solves the dilemma of why the momentum for the reduction of the working time has been stalled since the end of world war two and, for many people, *reversed* in recent decades. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ knoW Ware Communications | Vancouver, B.C., CANADA | "Only in mediocre art knowware@mindlink.bc.ca | does life unfold as fate." (604) 669-3286 | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sat Dec 7 19:44:47 1996 Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 18:19:33 -0800 (PST) To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: FYI Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu >Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 14:25:35 -0600 >Reply-To: irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu >Originator: irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu >Sender: irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu >From: "Daniel J.B. Mitchell" >Subject: CPI >X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0b -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas > >You may have noticed in the press that the >Congressionally-appointed taskforce appointed to find >biases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has - lo and >behold - found some. The press is filled with statements >such as "most economists believe that the CPI overstates >inflation." Of course, most economists have never looked >at the CPI's methodology and at most vaguely remember >something from grad school about substitution effects >(which empirically are not all that important). > >The politics behind all of this are simple enough. Social >Security benefits are indexed to the CPI, as are income tax >brackets. Anything that makes the CPI rise more slowly >cuts "entitlements" - mainly Social Security - and raises >taxes, thus reducing the federal deficit. If all this can >be done by pressuring govt. statisticians, Congress does >not have to undertake unpleasant policies. Hence, you will >find bipartisan statements of support for the taskforce's >findings. > >(An added attraction to some is that because CPI components >are used to estimate real output, productivity, and real >wages, sluggish growth in these measures can be made to >vanish from official data. The electorate, officially at >least, will always be better off than it was 4 years ago.) > >Sadly, there are many things wrong with the idea of >tweaking the CPI to achieve political goals covertly. > >The first is, of course, that we should not play with >official data to achieve political goals. Any time it >wants to, Congress can adjust tax rates and social security >benefits. We are starting down a very slippery slope here >if in fact diddling with the CPI takes place. You can >already see the results. The taskforce's views were in >fact made public months ago. It announced that it thought >the CPI overstated inflation by around 1% per annum. The >Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) came back with a statement >that in its view the bias was only a couple of tenths. In >effect, we have a kind of public bargaining already set in >motion. > >Congress/taskforce: "We demand 1.1%." >BLS: "Sorry, we can only afford 0.2%." > >Since Congress controls the BLS budget, however, the >bargaining parties are not evenly matched. In any event, >the entire process fails the famous "smell test" that >should be applied to public policy. > >Second, the notion that the indexing must be done precisely >implicitly assumes that the base to which the index is >applied is somehow perfect, precise, and optimum and will >therefore be distorted if perfect indexing is not applied. >But this is ridiculous. Social Security benefit formulas >and tax rates are essentially arbitrary political >decisions. They could have been higher or lower than they >are. The idea that these levels are sacred and must be >precisely preserved in real terms is absurd. If there is >anything imprecise in the process, it is the determination >of base tax rates and benefits, not the comparatively minor >impact of indexing with an imperfect CPI. > >Third, the CPI is filled with anomalies. And not all of >these bias the measured inflation rate up. Example: If >auto manufacturers are mandated to put pollution controls >on their factories, and they raise car prices as a result, >those price hikes are included in the CPI. But when the >govt. mandates the placement of a catalytic converter on >the car itself, the resulting price hikes are not included. >If you went line by line through the CPI, you would find >lots of such oddities. There is no perfect inflation index >in the real world. (By the way, a BLS study a few years >back found that if you were to construct a CPI for retirees >under Social Security, you would have to put more weight >on health services. Since health service prices have >historically risen faster than other prices, the official >CPI can be said to be biased down for purposes of Social >Security indexing.) > >Fourth, the purpose of indexing is to guard against the >impact of sudden inflation shocks, e.g., middle east oil >crises. If inflation were perfectly predictable, why would >we need indexing? So the question to be asked is whether, >in a reasonable way (not a perfect way!), the CPI inflation >rate will jump up (or down) when there is sudden inflation >or dis-inflation. The taskforce worried about such things >as quality adjustments and locations of purchase. But >since we don't have sudden shocks in the quality of goods >and services or the kinds of stores from which consumers >buy, these considerations are irrelevant. > >There is lots more to be said about U.S. official >statistics in terms of quality, responsiveness, and >efficiency of administration. But on this matter, the >message should be "HANDS OFF THE CPI!" > >---------------------- >Daniel J.B. Mitchell >daniel.j.b.mitchell@anderson.ucla.edu >Professor at UCLA >Anderson Graduate School of Management >School of Public Policy & Social Research >Mailing address/phone/fax: >Anderson Graduate School of Management >U.C.L.A. >Los Angeles, California 90095-1481 USA >Office phone: 310-825-1504 >Home phone: 310-829-1246 >Fax: 310-829-1042 > > > ************************************************** ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From ebonacic@wizard.ucr.edu Mon Dec 9 06:36:24 1996 From: Edna Bonacich Subject: Guess boycott - Buffalo (fwd) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 05:30:02 -0800 (PST) Hi Labor Rappers, Here is a report from a group that did an action at a GUESS store in Buffalo. These kinds of actions are occuring all over the country. If you want to get involved, contact me or Suzi Hoffman at (213) 239-6520. Also if you'd like to form a campus support group. The GUESS workers need your help! Edna Bonacich > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Sun, 8 Dec 96 15:44:54 CST > From: Ricky Baldwin > Reply-To: can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu > Subject: Guess boycott - Buffalo > > I'd like to report an enormously successful leaflet-action at Buffalo, > in one of our local malls where there's a Guess store. Thirty or forty > activists from local unions, the Coalition for Economic Justice/Jobs with > Justice, the local chapter of the Labor Party and other groups including > the International Socialist Organization, risked arrest to saturate the > mall with flyers on the Guess boycott. We stuffed the pockets of clothes > on the racks at the Guess store, posted flyers in the fitting rooms and > restrooms, and distributed leaflets from one end of the mall to the > other before the security and local police could chase us away. > > Guards snatched the flyers from the hands of startled mall patrons while > they were trying to read them, and then had the nerve to falsely accuse > at least one activist of having stopped passers-by to force leaflets on > them -- they even said he stuffed leaflets down bystanders' shirts (and > none of them took a poke at him?!!?) Luckily, his two kids were there to > witness the paranoia and overactive imaginations of the forces of law > and order. > > In the end, no one was arrested, but several people were threatened with > arrest, including one student (and ISO guy) who was wearing a shirt that > says, "Sweatshops suck." The guards said it was "unsuitable for family > viewing". (Mind you, there's a Hooters restaurant in that mall, not more > than a few yards from where this confrontation took place.) > > All in all, the action was a success, and another is planned for next > Saturday at the other mall in town where there is a Guess store. > Members of the Teamsters 264, ACTWU, the Graduate Student Employees Union/ > CWA 1188, the Public Employees Federation , the Western New York Peace > Center and local churches were also involved. > > > > From wkramer@ucla.edu Mon Dec 9 10:10:13 1996 Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 08:55:44 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: GUESS Rally Dec 14 Beverly Center >ACTION ALERT!!!!! > >Fired Guess workers picket Guess retail stores throughout Southern >California every day to pressure Guess to respect their rights as workers >and sign a union contract. The Christmas shopping season is a crucial time >in the Guess campaign--and here's how you can help. > >GATHER WITH US 11 DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS > >IN FRONT OF THE BEVERLY CENTER > >TO SHOW COMMUNITY SUPPORT FOR GUESS WORKERS > >WHEN: DECEMBER 14, Saturday, 12 to 2 pm > >WHERE: N.W. Corner of Third Street and La Cienega Blvd. > >WHAT: An airing of Guess's "dirty laundry" (illegal homework, minimum wage >violations, firing and intimidating workers, etc. etc. etc.). > >For more information, call Jessica at (310) 572-7971. > >**************C O M M O N T H R E A D S*************** > > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX William Kramer UCLA LAMAP Coordinator 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90024 310-794-0698 310-794-8017 fax wkramer@ucla.edu XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From sscipe1@icarus.cc.uic.edu Mon Dec 9 13:09:13 1996 Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 14:06:16 -0600 To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu From: sscipe1@icarus.cc.uic.edu (Kim Scipes) Subject: Posting developments Folks-- We've had numerous accounts of strikes, or plans for strikes and other issues posted to this net over the past couple of months, and it sure seems to me that very few follow-ups get posted. In other words, you say something's going to happen, and then we never found out if it went off, what happened, or anything else. Not to pick on the folks at UCLA, but ... my recollection was that there was a strike called, it sounded like it would be militant, well organized, etc, and then I can't remember hearing anything about what happened. If you're thinking we'll hear about results in the mainstream media, well ... I sure don't read it in the Chicago Tribune. And since there are worse papers out there than the Trib.... Can we make it a practice that if we post a message to the net about an upcoming action--especially at the local level--that we put up a follow-up within a week? I'm thinking that we should get at least a report on what happened. Obviously, an analysis and discussion of action would be preferable, but at least a report should be provided. This seems important to me. We've got to create these knowledge and information flows, so we all have a better idea of what's happening. Cheers--Kim From global@uk.pi.net Mon Dec 9 15:04:48 1996 Date: Mon, 9 Dec 96 21:54:31 From: PO Subject: Invitation for a unity meeting To: left-unity@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU (aproved by moderator) Public Meeting Revolutionary regroupment - the way forward Sunday December 15 at 5pm Speakers: Alberto Rios (Poder Obrero Peru) Dave Bedggood (Communist Workers Group, New Zealand) Jonathan Joseph (Committee for Revolutionary Regroupment) Richard Price (Workers International League) The Calthorpe Arms 252 Gray's Inn Road (Corner of Wren Street) London WC1 From wkramer@ucla.edu Mon Dec 9 20:22:21 1996 Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 19:07:57 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: Job with HERE Local 11 Dec. 10, 1996 POSITION AVAILABLE: BOYCOTT COORDINATOR Full-time; salary and benefits TBD Contact: Jay Mendoza 213-481-8530 ext.330 Jennifer Skurnik 213-481-8530 ext.229 e-mail jaymen@aol.com Must be aggressive, have experience in organizing, be a team player, have writing skills, research skills, speaking skills and initiative. Duties: * organize forums, events and actions * work with press/media * be part of a strategizing team for campaign * walk the picket line * organize in the community regarding the issue * prepare letters, mailouts, updates to various officials and community organizations * argue with arrogant customers * run committee meetings with supporters * represent Local 11 at various Union events The Boycott of the New Otani Hotel symbolizes the strength and unity of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union, Local 11. The boycott was launched on January 24, 1996 due to a viscious anti-Union campaign by management which included the mass-firing of an entire department, the firing of three housekeepers who were pro-Union (who had worked at the hotel for 16 years each), spying and illegal surveillance. Endorsements for the boycott have come from hundreds of elected officials, community organizations, student groups, religious leaders, civil/human rights groups, and labor Unions from around the world. Be part of an exciting labor campaign to fight for workers' rights, social justice and challenge a multi-million dollar corporation! Send inquiries to: Boycott Committee c/o Local 11 321 S. Bixel St. Los Angeles, CA 90017 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX William Kramer UCLA LAMAP Coordinator 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90024 310-794-0698 310-794-8017 fax wkramer@ucla.edu XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Wed Dec 11 23:51:49 1996 Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 16:43:30 -0800 (PST) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: The Worker-Citizen Owned Economy. To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy letters@GlobeAndMail.ca, ptn@toronto.cbc.ca, news@ctv.ca, opinions@thecitizen.southam.ca, publabor@relay.doit.wisc.edu, LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu, United@cougar.com In-Reply-To: <3.0.16.19961208094752.47d78928@pop.peg.apc.org> On Sun, 8 Dec 1996, david griffiths wrote: > I would like to offer three brief comments on the Mondragon issue: > > 1. There is a major difference between employee-owned firms and worker > co-operatives. > > 2.The Mondragon co-operative experience is an important example for us all > - to learn the lessons of and not simply emulate. > > 3.Mondragon is not an "ideal". It is a reality which is subject to genuine > dispute about its achievements and limitations. > > > David Griffiths > Co-operative Energy Ltd > davidg@peg.apc.org I agree with all three points. Mondragon is another stepping-stone towards a citizen-owned city, indeed a citizen-owned country. I suggest starting with the city. Note that I am only saying that the public domain belongs to the public. I am not saying "nationalize the private domain". Currently large private companies have stolen the public domain from the citizenry. There are names attached to these Organized Crime Families. One is the Chretien-Desmarais millionaire/billionaire clan. Last night J. Chretien lied his way through the C.B.C. Town Hall meeting. The TV journalists, in rare show of journalistic integrity showed past filmings which clearly prove the P.M. to be a scurrilous liar. He has said repeatedly, in Parliament and in public that "The Constitution belongs to the public and we are going to give it back" (Ref. Senate Hansard, Sept. 11/92, p. 1975, speech by Senator Frith). Few things in this country are more valuable than the Democratic Constitution so I don't care how many "Red Book" promises the thief keeps while he is vandalizing my home. Elsewhere I have proposed a Municipal Corporation which will be owned by citizen-shareholders. That Corporation would make all the amenities for the modern lifestyle. A share would include the right and obligation to work for the Municipal Corporation so there would be full employment. Equitable distribution to the shareholders would end absolute poverty. This of course would not prevent a private economy. A Network of such cities would have independence from the GATT/NAFTA racketeers who are J. Chretien's employers. It would have full economic self-sufficiency. What population is required for this? Some have said 10,000,000. With high efficiency, I would say less. Is it so difficult to organize 10,000,000 from the Labour Movement of North America? FWP. *** To discuss cities and city-states for C. 21 email Ftr_Cities-request@websightz.com with subscribe in the body; http://www.websightz.com/ftr_cities *** From abudak@alumni.ysu.edu Thu Dec 12 21:20:50 1996 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 23:15:25 -0500 From: Tony Budak Subject: Trade Deals & Indonesia To: Tony Budak ######################################################################### COMMUNITY/LABOR Filter and Mail brings YOU this message. For information about COMM/LABOR, send email to, Tony Budak with COMM/LABOR REQUEST INFO, in Subject Header, nothing in Message Body. Send replies to the original author, listed below in the, From: Field. You may forward this message, but please do not use the "redirect" command. Thanx ######################################################################### <---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 13:19:14 -0500 Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy From: Sam Lanfranco Subject: Trade Deals & Indonesia (fwd) Forward by Sam Lanfranco, LABOR-L ListManager Subject: Trade Deals & Indonesia Contact: Bob Russell at SFU, Burnaby B.C.: rdr@cs.sfu.ca TRADE DEALS BUILT ON THE CORPSES OF CHILDREN by Stephen Hume (Vancouver Sun, Saturday, November 30, 1996) On December 7, 1975, Indonesia launched a surprise dawn invasion of a peaceful former colony of Portugal. The aggression against East Timor was condemned by the United Nations. But not by Canada. Canada abstained from the vote. Since then, 200,000 East Timorese have died in an orgy of bloodshed that former solicitor-general Warren Allmand describes as the worst per capita genocide since the Nazis' "final solution." Vancouver filmmaker Elaine Briere was in East Timor before the invasion. She remembers a tranquil paradise of friendly, happy people. Today, her grainy black-and-white tourist snapshots of Eden contrast with full-color images from a blood-soaked hell of fear, repression and lies -- not the least of which are our own. Her new film "Bitter Paradise: The Sell-out of East Timor" is a raw, riveting, shame inducing examination of a culture in extremis and of the smug exculpatory hypocrisy of those Canadians who serve as Faustian accomplices to an ongoing crime against humanity. Recent refugees from behind the Bamboo Curtain erected by the government tell her camera that Indonesia now has a program for sterilizing East Timorese school children while flooding the territory with migrants to swamp the indigenous population. When East Timorese people mounted a demonstration to show visiting journalists that they were not the happy, consenting supplicants for citizenship that Indonesia insists they are, the film documents the army's slaughter of 270 men, women and children -- including a visiting student journalist from Australia. But Canadian government officials, displaying a selective memory worthy of Ernst Zundel, business leaders with the morals of Pontius Pilate and a Western media that is either paralyzingly stupid or has abandoned any notion of higher principle called finding out the truth, studiously continue to avert their eyes. In the past decade, of the 87 stories this newspaper has run mentioning East Timor, only 14 also mentioned massacres. By comparison we've run 17 stories about frog jumping. I choose frog jumping for the comparison rather than the 2,521 stories about a conflict in Bosnia that has produced one-tenth the casualties of East Timor in a population six times as large. I do so because one of the saddest segments of "Bitter Paradise" involves listening to an "As it Happens" producer explain why the extermination of one-third of East Timor's population is less worthy of coverage than a frog-jumping contest. 'Canadians', the CBC producer said, 'just can't connect.' Why might that be? Because the fiction that the agony of East Timor has nothing to do with us grants permission to be chums with a gang of corrupt butchers in hopes of lining our own pockets. Somehow, the question of whether Bre-X Minerals Ltd. can be forced by the Indonesian government to sell 75 per cent of its huge Busang gold deposit to Barrick Gold Corporation of Toronto deserves bigger headlines than the extirpation of indigenous peoples who get in the way. This is because Canadian shareholders expect big profits from the greed-feast that East Timor represents to corporations currying favour with Indonesia for access to the vast mineral and petroleum reserves in the illegally seized territory. "Bitter Paradise" juxtaposes the sorry spectacle of buttoned-down executives explaining that they know nothing of what's happened in East Timor with images of laughing Indonesian army units holding up the severed heads of dissidents. There are many severed heads in this film! Torture, mutilation and debased barbarism appear to be the speciality of the Indonesian army. Canadians, of course, cheerfully provide the weapons used for killing East Timorese peasants and then mugging for posterity with their body parts. 'The best solution would be for the East Timorese to go quietly', says one business executive for the camera. Just, one is compelled to think, as the Jews were expected to go quietly to their Holocaust. That such rhetoric, echoing Himmler and the "final solution," should be so calmly used in today's boardrooms and escape without public outcry, is enough to make one want to vomit. Briere's film shows Vancouver university professors earnestly justifying the value of accepting huge grants from Indonesia to go there and raise the level of scientific knowledge. They contrast with images of bloodstained walls where young East Timorese intellectuals have just had their brains smashed out by the Indonesian government. A young man talks of having his fingernails pulled out. A young woman talks of rape and murder. Joe Clark obfuscates. Andre Ouellet evades. Jean Chretien bubbles over billion dollar trade deals. Mephistopheles grins. 'We used to go in with lists of political prisoners we wanted released', a senior foreign affairs official told "The Sun" not long ago, 'Now we go in with lists of companies that want contracts.' Briere insists we bear witness to the relentless truth behind those contracts: rows of mutilated corpses, dead women with their legs still spread, children of tender years with their faces shot off, a young girl staring at us accusingly through a mask of blood. Last Tuesday, when some demonstrators at UBC tried to burn a Canadian flag in protest over human rights violations in China, patriotic students took the flag away from them. They were Canadian, they said, they love what Canada stands for. Perhaps they could do themselves a favor of going to see Briere's horrifying film. It might cause them to ask whether trade deals that are built on the corpse of children and profits ground from the bones of an entire people can be wrapped in the Canadian flag without leaving unspeakable stains. "Bitter Paradise" premiered Sunday December 1 in Vancouver, and is available for sale. See it if and when it is shown elsewhere in Canada and weep for your country's dishonor in the name of greed and hypocrisy. --------------- From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sat Dec 14 11:03:01 1996 Date: Sat, 14 Dec 1996 09:53:30 -0800 (PST) To: preeve@igc.org, H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu, irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu, can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, united@cougar.com From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Clinton may appoint anti-union AIDS CZAR Sender: meisenscher@igc.org Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: notes >Date: 13 Dec 1996 15:48:34 >Reply-To: Conference "labr.party" >From: tg@sfsu.edu >Subject: Clinton may appoint anti-union AIDS CZAR >To: Recipients of conference >X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org >Lines: 18 > >From: tg@sfsu.edu (Tasso Geist) >Subject: Clinton may appoint anti-union AIDS CZAR > > is strongly opposed to Pat Christen >being appointed so-called "AIDS CZAR". She opposed the efforts of the majority >of her employees at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation to unionize. She >attempted to render union protection contract provisions worthless. She also >was in close collusion with the heads of other national AIDS groups, to fight >unionization in these organizations. She is anti-union to her very core. Please >oppose her candidacy. > >Vince Quackenbush >415-841-8370 >Vquack@HoTMaiL.com > >Anthony J. Geist > > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From dow@pinc.com Sat Dec 14 12:37:00 1996 Date: Sat, 14 Dec 1996 11:36:53 -0800 (PST) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu, Labor Research and Action Project From: David Wolsk Subject: Re: Trade Deals & Indonesia At 09:30 PST 14/12/96 David Wolsk wrote: At 23:15 12/12/96 -0500, Tony Budak wrote: (snipped) >Why might that be? Because the fiction that the agony of East Timor has >nothing to do with us grants permission to be chums with a gang of corrupt >butchers in hopes of lining our own pockets. Somehow, the question of >whether Bre-X Minerals Ltd. can be forced by the Indonesian government to >sell 75 per cent of its huge Busang gold deposit to Barrick Gold >Corporation of Toronto deserves bigger headlines than the extirpation of >indigenous peoples who get in the way. This is because Canadian >shareholders expect big profits from the greed-feast that East Timor >represents to corporations currying favour with Indonesia for access to >the vast mineral and petroleum reserves in the illegally seized territory. > >Joe Clark obfuscates. Andre Ouellet evades. Jean Chretien bubbles over >billion dollar trade deals. Mephistopheles grins. 'We used to go in with >lists of political prisoners we wanted released', a senior foreign affairs >official told "The Sun" not long ago, 'Now we go in with lists of >companies that want contracts.' > Hi Tony, I agree with all you say. I saw the documentary, which reiterated with all the horrible images, things which I've long been aware of. I've also spent a month in Indonesia, mostly Bali .... and avoiding Jakarta. We were there during the pre-election campaign season. Every day a different political party had their noisy street demonstrations and shouting-riders and banner-laden truck drive abouts. What I'd like to add is that Chomsky (I believe) has well documented the degree of USA sponsorship of this genocide while George Bush, I believe, was head of the CIA, the lead agency in in. They apparently supplied Suharto with the money, the arms and the encouragement. Now, you and I wish the Chretian govenment had the guts to oppose the USA on all this. When I try to put myself in Chretian's shoes, sitting next to Paul Martin at a cabinet meeting, hearing what the Wall Street bond traders are about to do with Canadian interest rates, aware of the degree to which our accumulated debt payments severly limit one's thinking, etc, etc., ....I can't be that certain I wouldn't be acting as he is for what gets rationalized as "the greater good" or something equally misguided. And, if Suharto is just one of the many tools of a USA industrial-military syndicate, I suspect that demonizing today's glabal corporations & WTO (as Korten does in "When Corporations Rule the World") will do less to change them then developing the scenarios by which enlightened self-nterest would demonstrate the long-term stupidity of their current economic and free-trade trends. Currently, they hold the overwhelming power. David Wolsk Victoria, BC Canada (a province also looking for contracts in China & Indonesia) From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sun Dec 15 01:42:20 1996 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 00:33:48 -0800 (PST) To: labr.party@conf.igc, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Detroit Newspaper Strike Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: lbw@cougar.com >Date: Sat, 14 Dec 1996 22:19:42 -0700 (MST) >From: Len Wilson >X-Sender: lbw@cougar >To: united@cougar.com >Subject: Detroit Newspaper Strike >Sender: owner-united@cougar.com >Reply-To: united@cougar.com > >Newspaper Guild of Detroit >Local 22 of The Newspaper Guild-AFL/CIO > >3300 Book Building >Detroit, Michigan 48226 >Telephone: 313-963-4254 >Fax: 313-963-6944 > > Newspaper Strikers' Appeal for a > National Labor March on Detroit > >We are newspaper workers who have been on strike since July 13, 1995 against >the Detroit News, owned by Gannett, and the Detroit Free Press, owned by >Knight-Ridder. We were forced to strike by these greedy billionaire >newspaper chains who are out to bust our unions and deny us and our families >a decent livelihood. >Gannett and Knight-Ridder are demanding the elimination of hundreds of our >jobs as well as takeaways that would gut our contracts. In a public statement >made a month after the strike began, Robert Giles, Editor and Publisher of >the Detroit News, said: "We're going to hire a whole new workforce and go on >without unions, or they can surrender unconditionally and salvage what they >can. " >That has been the publishers' position from the beginning and it has not >changed in all these months. They are taking heavy financial losses in >Detroit as a result of the strike but they are prepared to absorb such losses >to achieve their main objective: bust the unions. >We believe the labor movement can stop them, that the Detroit newspaper >strike can be won through labor solidarity and strength demonstrated in a >massive national mobilization of the entire labor movement. >At its August 1996 meeting, the AFL-CIO Executive Council considered a >proposal for a National Labor March on Detroit. Although the proposal was >endorsed by the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO and the Metropolitan Council of >Newspaper Unions (made up of all striking Detroit newspaper unions), the >An-CIO Executive Council did not issue a call. >Now that the national election campaigns are over, we are appealing to unions >around the country and supporters of our strike to join us in urging AFL-CIO >President John Sweeney and the Executive Council to reconsider. A national >labor march on Detroit will show Gannett and Knight-Ridder that all of labor >supports this struggle -- physically as well as financially. And it can help >spur united labor actions in cities around the country directed against >Gannett and Knight-Ridder facilities, including USA Today. >We believe we must act now because the future of the labor movement will >be critically affected by the outcome of this strike. Afterall, if >corporations like Gannett and Knight-Ridder can break unions in a labor >stronghold like Detroit, what union anywhere is safe from similar >union-busting? > >It's time for Solidarity Day 111, this time in Detroit. Please send a message >to AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., urging a national labor march on >Detroit in support of striking newspaper workers. And please send a copy to >us. We deeply appreciate your continuing support. > >Write, fax, call or E-mail: >John Sweeney >President, AFL-CIO >815 16th St. NW >Washington D.C. 20006 >Fax: 202-508-6946 >Phone:202-637-5000 >E-mail:71112.53@compuserve.com >Internet:http://www.aficio.org > >Copy to: >Dia Pearce >Newspaper Guild of Detroit 3300 Book Bldg. >Detroit, Mi 48226 > >E-Mail to: >Daymon2001@AOL.COM > > UnionBusting in the 1990's - What We Can Learn From the Past to Fight It. > >(Remarks by David Sole, President of UAW Local 2334, opening the Dec. 7, 1996 >Conference supporting the Detroit newspaper strikers at Wayne State >University, Detroit) > > It is an often repeated statement in the labor movement that >strike-breaking and union busting began with PATCO and the Reagan presidency >in 1980. This is not really correct. Resigning from the top-level >Labor-Management Group in 1978, UAW International President Douglas Fraser >issued a remarkable statement giving his reasons for refusing to sit across >from the CEOs of the biggest corporations. Before PATCO; before Phelps- >Dodge; before Hormel, Caterpillar or the Detroit Newspaper Strike, Fraser >wrote: "leaders of the business community ...have chosen to wage a one sided >class war today in this country - a war against working people, the >unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old .... >The leaders of industry, commerce and finance ... have broken and discarded >the fragile, unwritten compact previously existing during a past period of >growth and progress .... Where industry once yearned for subservient unions, >it now wants no unions at all .... I cannot sit there seeking unity with the >leaders of American industry, while they try to destroy us and rain the lives >of the people I represent .... We ... intend to reforge the links with those >who believe in struggle: the kind of people who sat down in the factories in >the 1930's and who marched in Selma in the 1960's.... > Already by 1978 it was becoming quite clear that there was a change >occuring among the corporate bosses, so much so that for the first time in a >long time a top labor leader was talking about class war! What is it about >the 1930's that attracts so much attention? There have been many big strikes >both before and after. > From the growth of industry after the Civil War until the 1930's >American workers made heroic efforts to organize into unions. There were some >successes, but most of those decades were strewn with the blood and bodies of >labor's martyrs. > In 1877 a nationwide railroad strike turned into a mass labor uprising >that was crushed by the National Guard in many states. Remember the Homestead >Steel strike, the Pullman railroad strike and the hanging of four leaders who >fought for the 8 hour day. The great Industrial Workers of the World, the >IWW, had a militant 15 year history of strikes in mass industries. It ended >in jailings and mass deportations. Racism, lynchings and segregation kept the >labor movement divided along racial lines for generations. And the tremendous >1919 steel strike ended in defeat. > The 1929 crash of the stock market and the Depression drove the living >standards of all workers down. Millions of unemployed, desperate for work, >were used by the bosses as a threat against those still working. > Yet the driving force behind the great sti uggles of the 1930's was not >the leadership of the established unions. The old AF of L was very >conservative, based on the skilled trades. The battles that we all remember >today were organized and led by militant rank and file workers along with >radicals, socialists and communists. This came together in a new formation >the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the CIO, that succeeded in building >the industrial unions we know today. > The Toledo Auto-Lite strike of 1934 was a milestone in the organizing of >auto workers. Confronted with scabs, police and injunctions, the picket line >was saved when thousands of unemployed workers, organized into the Lucas >County Unemployed League joined the strikers. Together they defied >injunctions and battled cops and national guard, until victory was won. > The Minneapolis Teamster strike of 1934 saw the workers, at times, >virtually in control of the city. They had a daily strike newspaper, food >kitchens, unemployed committees. When police violence threatened the strike, >the Teamsters organized a workers' militia that battled hand to hand with the >cops, guarded strike headquarters and protected union leaders. >The dock workers in San Francisco in 1935 saw two of their members shot dead >on the picket line by the police. The entire labor movement of San Francisco >rose up in rebellion by holding a two day general strike, almost >unprecedented in U.S. labor history. >The greatest battle of all, the Flint sit-down strike of 1937, again, was one >that came from below. The top leadership of the UAW and the CIO did not make >the plans. If anything, they were fearful of so great a challenge to the >bosses and the government. But the seizure and occupation of the GM plant >electrified workers across the country. They Came from everywhere to help >out. Women organized their Emergency Brigade which started with cooking >meals and ended with women carrying two by fours battling the cops. >With the victory at GM there immediately followed hundreds and hundreds of >sit-downs in factories and offices. The tide had turned. When the Steel >Workers Organizing Committee threatened to lead a national strike, the steel >bosses, undefeated in unionbusting for 60 years, gave up without a fight and >recognized the union! >The workers of the 30's knew that the laws had all been written by the >bosses. They knew the cops, the judges, the politicians and the military were >all working for the bosses. To win a measure of justice they said to hell >with the cops! To hell with the judges and injunctions! To hell with the >national guard! And to hell with unjust laws! Many went to jail; many were >beaten and gassed; many were injured; and many workers were killed. But their >iron determination, their unity and their creative energy created a political >crisis for the entire ruling class of this country. In the end the bosses >decided they would rather live with unions then face a full scale civil war, >a class war. >For forty years there was, as Doug Fraser called it, "a fragile, unwritten >compact." Sure, there were still strikes, sometimes long ones. There were >still struggles and contention. But outright union busting, with scabs, >injunctions and mass police attacks, were rare. >Starting with the 1971 Nixon wage-freeze has come the steady decline in the >living standard for the average American. It has taken various forms. >Contract concessions was one. Inflation, another. Co-pays and benefit >reductions. Unfortunately, even though Doug Fraser saw it coming in 1978, the >unions soon caved in to the pressure and bought into concessions, labor- >management cooperation and supporting the Big Three's downsizing plans. This >led to the disaster of the loss of half a million auto workers'jobs over the >past 15 years. >But this is a different era than the 1930's when mass industries were >expanding. We are in the era of the scientific-technological revolution. We >are witnessing the restructuring and downsizing of American industry. Profits >rise to record levels while wages decline and millions of union jobs have >been lost. Work can be shifted from one plant to another. Entire factories >can be shipped overseas. American labor cannot simply look to the past to >reclaim its power. We must come to grips with the issues of international >competition, multi-national corporations and restructuring. >Are we, the hundred million workers of America any less capable or >intelligent than the workers of the 1930's? Do we lack their resolve? Their >determination? Their courage or inventiveness? >No. If anything, we, the workers of today, are more numerous, more educated, >more organized than those of generations past. African American, Latino, >other nationalities and women constitute a great and progressive force in >today's labor movement. >Yes, there are millions of unemployed, desperate for work especially with the >latest round of welfare cuts approved by both the Democrats and Republicans. >Sure, we face hostile judges, injunctions and bought off cops. And, yes, we >have too many labor leaders who are timid and fearful of any great >confrontation. >But we have no choice. We cannot, and we will not, surrender all that has >been gained in the past sixty years. The solution is simple and terrifying. >Instead of one-sided class war, where we get beaten up and crushed down, >labor must be willing to fight a'TWO-SIDED CLASS WAR, where the labor >movement unleashes the entire strength of our forces into the battle. This >means a broad program to Organize the unorganized, including work-fare >workers and even prison labor, into unions. This means fighting all forms of >racism, bigotry and anti-immigrant hysteria. This means real international >solidarity among workers of all countries. > >Just as in the 1930's, not every strike today can become an historic test of >wills, a critical political confrontation. But the Detroit Newspaper Strike >can. We are in tabor's stronghold with 350,000 union members in the southeast >Michigan area. The unions here have enormous resources of personnel, funds, >equipment, lawyers, media. I-ast year, in the week following Labor Day, the >newspaper strike stood at the edge of such a great confrontation. All eyes >were on the struggle. Thousands of strikers and supporters stood shoulder to >shoulder, unafraid of hundreds of riot cops, spitting in the face of >injunctions, ready to do whatever it took to win the strike. Behind these >thousands stood tens of thousands more workers ready to come forward. Ten >union locals, some of the biggest in the UAW, as well as locals on strike, >even voted to support the call for a general strike to back the newspaper >strike. A real workers' militia was forming in combat operations every >Saturday night. > >Labor was in a position to declare that union busting was going to be stopped >here and now. Does anyone really think that the banks, the corporate bosses >or the polititians would have allowed this strike to escalate any further? Do >you think they could afford to let things in Detroit get out of hand, setting >an example for the many millions of frustrated workers and unemployed around >the country? It isn't likely. And if things had escalated it would have meant >the re-emergence of a real fighting labor movement. > >Labor is not best prepared for long, drawn out strikes. Trying to out-wait >the bosses "one day longer" ignores the multi-billion dollar nature of >today's corporate giants. That's not a winning strategy that can reverse >labor's decline. >Today's leaders were not brought up in the fire of the 1930's. Most had no >part in the civil rights battles of the 50's or 60's or in the militant >anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's. They are holding back from the edge >of the great unknown of class war. But the militant spirit of the rank and >file is being felt at the highest levels of organized labor. Just last year >the old Kirkland-Donahue leadership of the AFL-CIO was voted out and Sweeney, >Trumka and Chavez-Thompson were put in office. >This is only a reflection of what is happening below. It will not be leaders >who show the way, just as in the 1930's it wasn't the leaders. It is the mass >of rank and file, in alliance with community organizations who can and must >break through all the barriers that stand in our way. >An idea has been circulating for many months now. The idea for a massive, >national labor solidarity march to be held in Detroit to support the >newspaper workers and say NO! to union busting. 850 strikers began a new >appeal for this march. The Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions has now >put its support behind it. Workers around the country are always asking - >"When will the call go out for us to come to Detroit?" Now we can say the >campaign is on to get that call issued soon. >We must all get behind this effort and build it from below. But we need to >let our leaders know that we cannot continue as before, that masses of >Detroit newspaper strikers ought to be listened to and they are demanding >action NOW! >And who is to say what could happen if hundreds of thousands of workers start >out in a march? Who is to say what inventive new or OLD tactics wouldn't >arise from such a massive mobilization? >The newspaper strike is not dead. The strikers continue to show that they >will not disappear. Support continues to pour in from around ine nation. What >is needed is a clarion call for ACTION that unties labors hands to give the >enemies of labor a taste of our own brand of class warfare. > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From knowware@mindlink.bc.ca Sun Dec 15 08:58:01 1996 by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 1.58 #1) Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 07:57:54 -0800 To: pen-l@anthrax.ecst.csuchico.edu, LABOR-L@YORKU.CA, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, swt-digest@di.com From: knowware@mindlink.bc.ca (Tom Walker) Subject: Who is Robert Clark? I've just read a monograph titled _Adjusting Hours to Increase Jobs_, by Robert Clark, published in September 1977 by the (US) National Commission for Manpower Policy. Clark's central analysis was that US government tax policy over the preceeding 50 years created a significant bias toward overtime and against employment and he made some recommendations for ameliorating that bias, namely tax credits to be applied against payroll taxes for new hires and reassessment of the tax exempt status of employer payed fringe benefits. I need two pieces of information: Who is Robert Clark? and whatever became of his policy recommendations? I suspect that Robert Clark may be Robert L. Clark, an economist at North Carolina State University. In 1975, Robert Clark co-authored a book with Juanita Kreps, who subsequently went on to become Commerce Secretary in the Carter Administration. Any leads will be appreciated. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ knoW Ware Communications | Vancouver, B.C., CANADA | "Only in mediocre art knowware@mindlink.bc.ca | does life unfold as fate." (604) 669-3286 | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sun Dec 15 12:25:10 1996 id LAA06372 for ; Sun, 15 Dec 1996 11:22:22 -0800 (PST) Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 11:22:22 -0800 (PST) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: New Web Site on Corporations Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >/* Written 9:18 PM Dec 11, 1996 by trac in igc:women.news >/* ---------- "New Corporate Watchdog Web Site!!!" -- */ >From: trac@igc.apc.org (Corporate Watch) > >** Please cross-post and redistribute ** > >12/10/96 > >CORPORATE WATCH WEB SITE ONLINE >http://www.corpwatch.org > >A new watchdog website dedicated to monitoring the >activities of transnational corporations went online >today. > >Corporate Watch is designed to provide journalists, >activists and policy makers around the world with up to >date information and analysis on social, ecological and >economic impacts of transnational corporations. > >"We intend to be an online clearinghouse for >information on these companies," explained Corporate >Watch editorial board member Antonio Diaz. > >The site will also serve as a mini-online magazine that >runs features on related issues. > >"One of the reasons we've created Corporate Watch is to >keep an eye on all those Fortune 500 companies that are >jumping on the World Wide Web bandwagon," remarked the >site's editorial coordinator, Joshua Karliner. "That's >why our first Feature focuses on the corporatization of >the Internet itself." > >Entitled "The Battle for the Future of the Internet," >the Feature includes commentary from Hot Wired >executive producer Gary Wolf, media and technology >critic Jerry Mander, NetAction director Audrie Krause, >and Brazilian Internet activist Carlos Afonso. > >The Corporate Watch site also includes: > > *An eight part nuts and bolts manual on how to >research transnational corporations. > > *Monthly "greenwash" awards given out by Corporate >Watch and the environmental group Greenpeace to the >most outrageous corporate "environmental" >advertisements. > > *An Image Gallery, with a permanent environmental >art collection and rotating monthly exhibits. This >month's exhibit features images from Bhopal, India, >commemorating the 12th Anniversary of the Union Carbide >Gas Disaster. > > *In-depth analysis on corporate globalization, >including reports from the Institute for Policy Studies >in Washington DC and the New Delhi, India-based Public >Interest Research Group. > > *News from various sources, including >Multinational Monitor, the Malaysia-based Third World >Network, Ecuador-based Oil Watch. > > *Direct Links to the Corporate Watch Affiliate >Group--a collection of organizations which provide in >depth research services. > > *Links to hundreds of other websites with analysis >of or information produced by transnational >corporations. > > >Corporate Watch is a joint project of TRAC--the >Transnational Resource and Action Center and IGC--the >Institute for global communications. > > >contact: Joshua Karliner >tel: 415-561-6567 >fax: 415-561-6493 >email: trac@igc.org >web: http://www.corpwatch.org > >** Please cross-post and redistribute ** > >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >George Gundrey ggundrey@igc.apc.org 415-285-4604 >Internet Publishing * Networking * Training * Project >Management >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Mon Dec 16 00:01:59 1996 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 22:57:16 -0800 (PST) To: H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: CFP: SW Labor Studies Conf., L.A., May 1997 (fwd) Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: tsampson@sfsu.edu >Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 18:01:14 -0800 (PST) >From: Tim Sampson >X-Sender: tsampson@pluto >To: Michael Eisenscher >cc: Mike Miller >Subject: CFP: SW Labor Studies Conf., L.A., May 1997 (fwd) > >fyi! hi ! tim > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Sat, 14 Dec 1996 21:35:14 -0800 (PST) >From: Robert Cherny >Reply-To: balhwdl@thecity.sfsu.edu >To: tsampson@sfsu.edu >Subject: CFP: SW Labor Studies Conf., L.A., May 1997 > > > ***** CALL FOR PAPERS ***** > > Southwest Labor Studies Association > > 23rd Annual Conference, May 2-3, 1997 > California State University, Dominguez Hills > and > Southern California Library for Social Studies & Research > >Theme: UNITY WITHIN DIVERSITY: COALITION BUILDING AROUND REGIONAL >ECONOMIES > > The emphasis is on current organizing and activism. Historical analysis >and narratives of past events are always welcome. Subjects include: > > Labor and Legislation ** Labor Economics ** Labor and Politics > Gender Issues ** Working-Class Culture ** Literature and Labor > International Labor ** Affirmative Action ** Radicalism > >The conference promises to be informative and exciting. There will be >cultural and social events in addition to panels, keynote speakers, and >plenaries. The SOUTHWEST LABOR STUDIES ASSOCIATION is an organization >composed of academics, activists, and trade unionists. A conference is >held yearly combining the rich heritage of the labor movement and its >current undertaking. > > **** PROPOSALS FOR PAPERS OR PANELS DUE JANUARY 1, 1997 **** > >Please send to Prof. Luis Arroyo, Chicano and Latino Studies Department >or Prof. Nancy Quam-Wickham, History Department >at California State University, Long Beach > 1250 Bellflower Blvd. > Long Beach, CA 90840 > > > > > > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Mon Dec 16 00:55:35 1996 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 23:31:05 -0800 (PST) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: SUPPORT RUBBER STAMPEDE STRIKERS Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: lbw@cougar.com >Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 20:15:03 -0800 (PST) >From: Brian Wiles >To: united@cougar.com >Subject: SUPPORT RUBBER STAMPEDE STRIKERS >Sender: owner-united@cougar.com >Reply-To: united@cougar.com > >SUPPORT STRIKING WORKERS AT RUBBER STAMPEDE! >Immigrant women take a stand against ruthless exploitation > >In an unusual labor action, about 140 factory workers spontaneously >walked off their jobs November 13, without warning and without union >representation or contract protection. > >Employees at Rubber Stampede, an Emeryville-Oakland [California] company >that makes decorative rubber stamps sold in stores around the world, are >fighting for their lives against a union-busting employer. > >Mostly Latinas, the workers saw their hopes of unionization dashed last >April, when Warehouse Union Local 6, ILWU, lost a National Labor >Relations Board representation election after the company hired about 15 >new management employees and threatened and harassed many workers into >not voting. The union election was lost by 13 votes. > >Since the April election, the union has charged the employer with >various violations of federal law, including using threats, >intimidation, and discrimination against employees. After an >investigation, the Board issued a complaint against the company for >coercing workers during the organizing drive prior to the election. A >hearing is scheduled before an administrative law judge on January 27. > >Workers were already outraged that their bosses were stalling on >settling the unfair labor practice charges filed on their behalf by the >union. But when Rubber Stampede recently retaliated against workers by >cutting back their wages from an hourly rate to piecework--the >proverbial straw that broke the camel's back--the workers walked out... >and then contacted the union for support. > >Since the strike began, pickets have complained of threats (including >one death threat) and verbal harassment from management officials >outside the plant. Some women strikers have received obscene phone calls >from management personnel during the wee hours of the morning. And the >windows of four strikers' cars were smashed during a single night >recently near their homes in the East Bay. > >Owen Marron and the Alameda County Central Labor Council have been very >energetic in organizing support for Rubber Stampede workers, and ILWU >Local 6 is throwing all possible resources into winning this strike. But >support from other trade unionists and the community at large is >essential in order to defeat this brutal employer and force a new union >recognition election. This crucial struggle can and must be won! > >YOU CAN HELP! RUBBER STAMPEDE WORKERS ARE IN NEED OF... > >* PICKETLINE REINFORCEMENTS: The picketline is being maintained 14 hours >a day. Greater numbers are needed to cover the plant's four different >warehouses located over several blocks. Supporters are urged to join the >picketline at any time. Volunteer pickets who can commit to a regular >shift would be greatly appreciated. > >* DONATIONS OF FOOD & COFFEE FOR THE PICKETS: Let's keep our sisters and >brothers alert and fed on the picketline. Please donate coffee, cream, >sugar, bagels and cream cheese, etc. > >* CHRISTMAS TOYS FOR KIDS: Many of the strikers are Latina single >mothers, making gift giving this holiday season a difficult or even >impossible task. Donated toys will brighten the hearts of strikers' >children, keeping the magic of Santa and the warm glow of the holidays >alive during this trying time. > >* AND, OF COURSE, FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS: Please help with a donation >of whatever amount you can afford. Every little bit will help ease the >hardships of these fighting workers' families this winter. > >SEND FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ALAMEDA COUNTY CENTRAL LABOR >COUNCIL, 7992 CAPWELL DRIVE, OAKLAND, CA 94621. PLEASE MAKE CHECKS >PAYABLE TO: "ILWU LOCAL 6 -- RUBBER STAMPEDE STRIKERS FUND." IF YOU CAN >HELP IN ANY OTHER WAY, PLEASE CALL THE RUBBER STAMPEDE STRIKE SUPPORT >HOTLINE, LEAVE A MESSAGE, AND A MEMBER OF THE RANK-AND-FILE SOLIDARITY >COMMITTEE WILL CONTACT YOU. > >WAREHOUSE UNION LOCAL 6 >INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S AND WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION >99 HEGENBERGER ROAD, OAKLAND, CA 94621 > >RUBBER STAMPEDE STRIKE SUPPORT HOTLINE (510) 819-3339 > >ALAMEDA COUNTY CENTRAL LABOR COUNCIL (510) 569-1426 > > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From wkramer@ucla.edu Mon Dec 16 11:05:53 1996 Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 09:55:22 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: UC Grad Strike Update >Return-Path: jmedeari@ucla.edu >Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 09:23:55 -0800 > >Dear Sisters and Brothers: > >In response to requests for follow-up information on our statewide rolling >strike, here's the update we sent out to newspapers in late November. >Thanks for staying interested! > >Yours in solidarity, >John Medearis, SAGE/UAW > >xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx > > >>Association of Graduate Student Employees >>AGSE/UAW Local 2165 >>2372 Ellsworth >>Berkeley, CA 94704 >>Voice 510/549-3863 >>Fax 510/549-2514 >>agse@netcom.com >> >>For Immediate Release >>Attention: Assignment, Education, California, and Labor Editors >> >>Statewide Press Release >> >>Contacts: >>SAGE/UAW, Los Angeles >>Mike Miller, Lead Organizer, 310/396-4624 >>John Medearis, Spokesperson, 310/572-7971 >> >>ASE/UAW, San Diego >>Molly Rhodes, Lead Organizer, 619/595-7966 >>Joel Beeson, Spokesperson, 619/457-7681 >> >>AGSE/UAW, Berkeley >>Lily Khadjavi, President, 510/653-1047 >> >>Academic Student Employees to Escalate in Spring >> >>BERKELEY, November 22 -- Members of academic student employee unions >>at University of California campuses across the state have voted to >>escalate action after the first of the year to win collective >>bargaining rights. >> >>Teaching assistants at UCLA, UC-San Diego, and UC-Berkeley went on >>strike this week in a rolling action across the UC system. They were >>joined by readers and tutors at UC-San Diego and UCLA. Academic >>student employees went on strike after the administration refused to >>implement a Public Employment Relations Board judge's order to >>acknowledge the collective bargaining rights of teaching assistants. >>The order includes readers and tutors at UCLA and UC-San Diego. >>Readers and tutors at UC-Berkeley already have collective bargaining >>rights. >> >>"We went on strike to demonstrate that the University cannot educate >>undergraduates successfully without the work of teaching assistants," >>said Association of Graduate Student Employees/UAW President Lily >>Khadjavi. "We chose a short strike to send this message to the >>administration without doing long-term damage to our students' >>education." >> >>Approximately 2,400 academic student employees withheld their labor at >>the three campuses, and well over 1,200 strikers turned out to walk >>the picket lines. >> >>"We've shown we can mount a very successful strike that gains support >>among faculty and undergraduates," said Tim Hall, president of Student >>Association of Graduate Employees/UAW. "With our vote authorizing a >>strike later in the academic year, we're sending a message to the >>administration that our movement is only getting stronger." >> >>Association of Student Employees/UAW spokesperson Joel Beeson said, >>"One of the most gratifying aspects of the strike was the support we >>received from our communities: many professors and undergraduates >>honored our picket lines; academic student employees and labor >>activists from around the continent conveyed messages of solidarity; >>and local store owners gave discounts to picketers." >> >>"We garnered widespread support from undergraduates, who see that >>their long-term interests coincide with SAGE/UAW recognition," said >>York Chang, a member of SAGE/UAW and an undergraduate working as a >>tutor. "Obviously people were concerned about the disruption of their >>education, but most agreed that it was the administration's >>stubbornness and unreasonableness that was to blame." >> >>Scott Prudham of the AGSE/UAW executive board said "Academic student >>employees are angry that the administration has refused to respond to >>our work stoppage and continues to deny our collective bargaining >>rights. The administration is irresponsible in choosing a course that >>increases labor unrest on campus. The University of California could >>end this costly and disruptive dispute simply by agreeing to bargain >>with its employees. Instead, the UC is forcing us to escalate our >>pressure." >> >>"Walking the picket lines really builds solidarity and friendships >>with people from other departments," said Mark Quigley, a teaching >>assistant in the English Department and a member of the executive >>board of SAGE/UAW. "I was struck by the fact that undergrads >>expressed appreciation both for the work that TAs do in the classroom >>and their willingness to walk a picket line in the rain to win better >>learning conditions at UCLA." >> >>Teaching assistants completed their fall walkout for collective >>bargaining rights on Friday, November 22, and have voted to escalate >>action in the spring. >> >> >> >>-- 30 -- >> >> > > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX William Kramer UCLA LAMAP Coordinator 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90024 310-794-0698 310-794-8017 fax wkramer@ucla.edu XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From wkramer@ucla.edu Mon Dec 16 11:59:54 1996 Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 10:50:08 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: Labor Teach-In at UCLA Feb 20-21 >December 16, 1996 > > >Dear Friends, > > We would like to invite you and your organization to endorse an exciting >Labor Teach-In scheduled for February 20 and 21, 1997 at UCLA, which will >feature the new leadership of the American labor movement. > > Since the October 1995 election of John Sweeney, Richard Trumka, and Linda >Chavez Thompson to the top positions within the AFL-CIO, there have been >significant and fundamental changes throughout the labor movement. The >university community has been following these developments, and faculty, >staff, and students throughout the country have expressed tremendous >interest in the "new" labor movement. > > The Executive Council, the highest leadership body within the AFL-CIO, will >convene their annual meeting in Los Angeles from February 17 - 20, 1997. >This provides a unique opportunity to hold a Labor Teach-In to promote >thoughtful dialogue between the labor movement and the academic community of >California. > > The Labor Teach-In will include prominent university faculty and labor >leaders, workshops, and a cultural event. We will begin with an opening >panel presentation on Thursday, February 20 from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m., >followed by a full day of panel presentations and workshops on Friday, >February 21 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. We will conclude Friday evening >with a cultural event from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. All events will be held at the >UCLA campus. > > We encourage your organization to endorse this event, and help us mobilize >for what promises to be an engaging Teach-In on the future of the American >labor movement. > >Sincerely, > > > >Miguel Contreras Kent Wong >Executive Secretary-Treasurer Director, UCLA Center for >Los Angeles County Federation of Labor Labor Research and Education kentwong@ucla.edu > > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX William Kramer UCLA LAMAP Coordinator 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90024 310-794-0698 310-794-8017 fax wkramer@ucla.edu XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From jstein@laedu.lalc.k12.ca.us Tue Dec 17 08:57:55 1996 Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 09:05:21 -0800 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: jstein@laedu.lalc.k12.ca.us (Julia Stein) Subject: Re: Labor Teach-In at UCLA Feb 20-21 >>December 16, 1996 >> >> >>Dear Friends, >> >> We would like to invite you and your organization to endorse an >>exciting >>Labor Teach-In scheduled for February 20 and 21, 1997 at UCLA, which will >>feature the new leadership of the American labor movement. >> >> Dear William, I met you at the Common Threads picket line November 14 at Bevery Center. I'm writing you for Common Threads. I'm the poet whose literary reading September 9 at Midnight Special bookstore is being sued by Guess Inc. Guess filed a big lawsuit against UNITE, Common Threads & the literary reading I organized, charging libel/slander, etc. The first hearing is December 23, 1996, at the Santa Monica Courthouse. Both the UNITE lawyer and Common Threads lawyer are asking for the judge to dismiss the case. The lawsuit is a S.L.A.P.P. suit, a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Corporations use them to try to shut up & intimidate criticis. Guess filed a 2nd S.L.A.P.P. suit against Sweatshop Watch regarding a flyer they put out criticized Guess. Common Threads is holding a press conference 12:30 pm on December 23, 1996, on the steps of the Santa Monica courthouse. We'll send you more information in a couple days regarding this press conference. Julia Stein Julia Stein jstein@laedu.lalc.k12.ca.us From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Tue Dec 17 21:44:38 1996 Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 20:32:05 -0800 (PST) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, united@cougar.com, H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu, can-labor@pencil.math.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Report on Stampede workers' struggle Sender: meisenscher@igc.org At the request of the author, I am posting a story on the self-organized strike of immigrant workers at Stampede Company in Emeryville/Oakland, CA. Volunteers are encouraged to join their picketlines and donations of food, toys, and money are encouraged for their strike fund. They are supported by ILWU Local 6, which had lost an NLRB representation election at the plant some months before the strike began. ULP charges are pending. A second story on the Price-Pfister struggle in LA is posted separately. >IMMIGRANT SWEATSHOP WORKERS STRIKE OAKLAND TOYMAKER >By David Bacon >=A91996 by David Bacon, 510-549-0291 > > OAKLAND (12/4/96) - What began November 13 as a spontaneous walkout >by immigrant Latino sweatshop workers in Oakland is stirring up a political >firestorm from the East Bay to Sacramento. After unsuccessful attempts to >jumpstart negotiations between strikers and the employer at the >Rubberstampede factory, Oakland City Councilmembers Sheila Jordan and >Ignacio De La Fuente are calling for council hearings on the issue. State >Senator Barbara Lee has joined their efforts, while Assemblymember Richard >Floyd plans to hear testimony in Oakland before the Assembly Labor >Committee on the dispute. Even new Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante (the >first Latino to hold that office), has told strikers he will demand the >dispute's settlement. > The conflict has hit a rapidly-expanding company. Starting as a >small shop on Tenth Street in Berkeley a few years ago, employing less than >50 people, it is now an enterprise with four factory buildings in Oakland >and Emeryville, employing over 300. Rubberstampede, which counts among its >customers large retailers like Costco, Michaels, Wal-Mart and Toys-R-Us, >makes rubber stamps, stamp pads, and small rubber toys for children. The >company also produces a line of stamps for the Disney Corporation. > According to strikers, however, expansion has come at a high price. >Most workers in the factory are immigrant women from Mexico, many of whom >are single mothers, receiving wages close to the legal minimum. Their >strike grows out of an attempt by the company to speed up production while >continuing to pay these very low wages, while violating their legal right >to organize. > Last October, owner Sam Katzen held meetings with workers, >department by department. "In my department," explains striker Amalia >Cerrillo, "Sam wouldn't let us speak, only listen to what he had to tell >us." Katzen's message, she says, was that the company was switching from >paying its workers by the hour to paying by the piece. "He told us he >wanted to double production, and that if we weren't willing to go along >with that, there was the door." > Another striker, Maria Angiano, explains that her job required her >to separate two heart-shaped rubber pieces from their foam backing, and >then to push one into the other. For this operation, she was told that the >company would pay 1=A2, and wanted her to assemble 3-400 pieces per hour. >Her hourly wage had been $5.00. To equal that wage at the new piecerate, >she would have had to assemble 500 foam toys each hour, or one every 7.2 >seconds, for the length of an 8-hour shift. > According to Cerrillo, the high degree of repetitive hand labor >caused chronic pain in her wrists and hands, a potential symptom of carpal >tunnel sydrome. When she requested permission to see a doctor, her >supervisor told her that the pain wasn't due to her job, and that if she >wanted medical help, she had to find it on her own. "I was really afraid," >she says, "that having to work much faster, because of the piecerates, >would make the pain unbearable, and damage my hands for the rest of my >life. Lots of other women here have the same problem, and didn't want >piecerates for the same reason." > On October 12, workers gathered in one of the factory buildings, >and asked to talk to Katzen about the problem. He refused to speak to >them, and they walked out the following day. > Sam Katzen refused to speak to this reporter. Rubberstampede >refered inquiries to Rob Tiernan, a labor consultant in Portland, who did >not return numerous phone calls. > The strike was not the first attempt by Rubberstampede workers to >negotiate with the company. Last April 25, after an intense organizing >effort, workers voted in a National Labor Relations Board election. Union >representation by Local 6 of the International Longshoremens and >Warehousemens Union was defeated 78-114. The votes of an additional 25 >workers were challenged, and not counted. > Two union committee members, Martin Aquino and Santos Ruedas, were >suspended, which they believe is due to their support for the union. On >October 31, the NLRB concluded that there was evidence that the company had >made unlawful anti-union threats and promises in 37 separate instances, and >issued a complaint against Rubberstampede. A hearing is scheduled in >January. > "The company had lots of meetings we were required to attend," >remembers Aquino. "They showed us videos of violence which they said was >caused by unions. They promised better treatment, benefits and higher wages >if we voted the union down, and that we'd lose our bonus if we didn't." > When the strike started, about 170 of the 250 employees eligible to >belong to the union walked out. That means, Aquino says, that many of >those who voted against the union decided to walk out as well. > A week ago the union made an unconditional offer to return to work. >Under labor law, that could make the company liable for back pay for the >strikers. As the strike continues, that liability mounts up, and can >become a heavy source of pressure on the company to reach a settlement. > The company, however, has hired strikebreakers, and its relation >with the workers has grown very tense. A number of strikers say the >windows in their homes or cars have been broken. The Saturday night after >the strike started, Cerrillo received a call telling her to take care >"because I could be found 'tirada,' which means dead," she says. > Strikers also complain of a heavy police presence, used to ensure >that strikebreakers come and go freely, while their own complaints of >violence receive scant attention. According to councilmember Jordan, >neighbors in the predominantly African-American community around the four >company buildings on the Oakland-Berkeley border also complain about the >police. She plans to refer the issue to the council's public safety >committee at its December 10 meeting. > The strike is drawing wide support from local unions and Latino >community activists. Joel Ochoa, past head of the California Immigrant >Workers Association, and one of the state's leading Latino labor >organizers, says that strikes like Rubberstampede are not isolated events, >that California's immigrant workforce has been the backbone of a >decade-long wave of strikes and union organizing. > "Immigrant workers are reaching out to unions," he says. Partly, >he believes, this is due to the economic conditions they face. "But people >are coming here from Mexico and all over Latin America, with expectations >of economic justice, and a long tradition of fighting for it." > Strikers and supporters are currently leafleting customers at the >toy chains. Alameda County Central Labor Council secretary-treasurer Owen >Marron and other unionists went with strikers to Sacramento, and organized >a Thanksgiving Day demonstration at the Katzen residence in the Berkeley >hills. An official boycott of Rubberstampede products awaits discussions >between Marron and his counterpart in Orange County, where Disneyland is >located, to iron out ways of identifying products made in the struck >factory. > > - 30 - > >For more information on the strike, contact Alameda County Central Labor >Council, 510-632-4242. > >--------------------------------------------------------------- >david bacon - labornet email david bacon >internet: dbacon@igc.apc.org 1631 channing way >phone: 510.549.0291 berkeley, ca 94703 >--------------------------------------------------------------- > > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* =20 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =20 Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.=20 --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =20 From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Tue Dec 17 21:45:37 1996 Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 20:32:15 -0800 (PST) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, united@cougar.com, H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu, labr.party@igc.conf, irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: report from Italy on labor & politics Sender: meisenscher@igc.org The following report on the Italian political and labor scene is posted with permission and by request of the author, a Bay Area labor journalist and former union organizer. Those interested in cross-national and comparative labor studies, European labor politics, left politics and related issues will find this worth a read. Bacon has written two other stories on the struggles of immigrant workers in the Bay Area and L.A. areas of California (Stampede Company and Price-Pfister). I have posted them to some lists but not others. If you are on a list that did not receive them but would like to have them forwarded, send me a personal message (not to the entire list, please). > >ITALY'S LEFT GOVERNMENT STEPS BACK FROM THE BRINK >By David Bacon >=A91996 by David Bacon, 510-549-0291 > > ROME (11/20/96) - Tension is rising in Europe. Governments across >the continent are bent on cutting the extensive network of social benefits >workers have won since World War Two. Workers and unions resist, and both >France and Germany have been rocked by this escalating conflict. > In late November Italy came close. But at the last moment the >country's new left-wing government stepped back from the brink. Italy's >powerful union movement, the General Confederation of Italian Workers >(CGIL), which had threatened a general strike, instead signed an agreement >Tuesday which for the moment preserves social peace. > Italy's left-wing government, like more conservative ones elsewhere >in Europe, is in the end committed to the process for European union. But >the Italian experience suggests that left-wing governments may be able to >convince workers to accept the conditions required, and avoid social >explosions as a result. > All governments in the European Community are facing a deadline >next June, when under the Maastricht Treaty their deficits must be cut to >3% of their gross national product in order to join the new European >currency union. The individual national currencies of participating >countries will then be replaced by a common European currency, a key step >in forging one of the most powerful trading blocks in the world. None of >the major European countries have yet met this goal. > The conservative French government of Prime Minister Alain Juppe a >year ago sought to reduce its deficit by making heavy cuts in the French >public healthcare and welfare systems. It provoked the largest >confrontation with French workers since 1968. A similar conservative-led >effort to cut workers' vacations in Germany this year met confrontation as >well. > But since last May, Italy has had a left-wing government, the Olive >Coalition, whose very name invokes an image of social peace. Its leading >party, the Party of Democratic Socialism, was formed when the old Italian >Communist Party split, following the end of socialism in the Soviet Union. > > The PDS, despite its name, doesn't view Soviet-style socialism as >even a remote possibility in Italy any longer. Nevertheless, its rise to >power last spring was an historic step in Italian politics. In the >aftermath of World War Two, U.S. intervention forced the Communists out of >the Italian government, despite their wide popularity. For 50 years, >successive governing coalitions were designed to keep them out of power. > But the Italian corruption scandals of the last five years weakened >the legitimacy of conservative parties. The reformed Communists, untouched >by scandal, were the only political party with the strength to pull >together a coalition and form a new government. The other party born of >the Communist split, the Refounded Communist Party, is smaller and to the >left of the PDS. It supports the government, keeping it in power with a >narrow 5-vote margin. > Seeing the path chosen by the French and German governments to cut >their deficits, Italian workers elected a left-wing government last spring, >hoping to avoid an economic attack on them as well. So far, they have >succeeded. > In the debate over the budget which just concluded, the government >agreed not to pass any new taxes or cut any services at this time. But in >the spring, it is proposing an additional EuroTax to provide funds for >cutting the budget. Five thousand billion lire will be paid by workers, >and six thousand billion by companies. > A year ago, the Italian CGIL labor federation negotiated an >agreement in principle with the previous government for the creation of a >national jobs program. Unemployment in Italy has surged to 12%, a postwar >high. In the industrial cities of Milan and Turin factory shutdowns and >deindustrialization have brought unemployment to an unprecedented 6%. In >the poorer, southern part of the country, over 25% of workers have no jobs. > Facing the 3% deficit-cutting goal, the new government didn't >include in the budget the legislation needed to set up the jobs program. >The CGIL threatened a general strike. The federation has launched many >similar strikes in its history against more conservative governments, but >this would have been the first against a left-wing one it helped put in >power. In round-the-clock negotiations, however, which went down to the >wire, the government and the CGIL reached agreement. > The new jobs program will set up Italy's first comprehensive >job-training program, and will spend about 5 billion lire on creating >100,000 new jobs. In addition, in areas like the south, companies will be >allowed to pay wages less than the national standard in each industry, and >will receive tax incentives for job creation as well. > "There are new possibilities for us now," explains Gulielmo >Epifani, CGIL vice-secretary. "It's much easier to talk to this >government, because we have the same politics. Nevertheless, meeting the >conditions for going into the European currency is creating great problems >for us." > Italian workers are already living under an austerity policy, which >has held wage increases to less than the inflation rate for three years. >Epifani believes that the sacrifice is necessary, and credits it with >cutting inflation from over 7% to its current 2.3%. > Unlike U.S. unions, which negotiate wages and conditions with >individual employers, Italian unions negotiate pacts with whole industries, >which cover both union and non-union workers. No company tries to pay less >than the agreement, but if one were to do so, it would be unable to bid on >government contracts or receive any government assistance. This year the >CGIL is demanding a 2.6% wage hike. The machine-building industry, one of >Italy's largest, has not agreed. An industry-wide strike seems likely. > As part of the reforms moving toward economic union, the CGIL has >accepted the privatization of many formerly government-owned businesses. >"We know this may cause some job loss, and we want to defend the existing >level of employment," Epifani says. "But we can't always do this, since >other workers wind up paying the price. In a competitive global economy, >we have to accept the profit logic as a reality of life." Workers may >receive shares in some privatized enterprises, such as the phone company >Italian Telecom, in exchange for the EuroTax hit. > The elephant in the closet, however, is the Italian pension system, >whose eventual obligations to the present workforce is as large as the >entire current government budget. Italy's birthrate is declining, with >fewer workers paying into the fund each year, as the number of retirees >gets larger and older. > Some voices in the PDS have pointed to irrationalities in the >system as a justification for making cuts. Teachers, for instance, can >retire after only 19 years, while the retirement age for most laborers has >gone up from 55 to 65. Italian workers who lose their jobs have extensive >unemployment benefits under the system, but it provides no equivalent to >U.S. welfare or social security to those who've never worked. > "So far our government hasn't cut social expenses, and we will >defend our system if they try to do it," Epifani warns. The existing law >governing benefits must be renegotiated in 1998, however. "Some changes >may be necessary, and we'll discuss pensions then, but not before." > Meanwhile, the more left-wing Refounded Communist Party, the >Refundazione, calls for no cuts in pensions, and opposes privatization. >Since the government would fall without their votes, they hold a veto power >on some issues. > Differences in political positions reflect developing class >differences on the left as well. Some observers speculate that the >Refundazione is building a new social base among young working class youth >from the suburbs of Italian cities. Unlike the U.S., Italian suburbs >aren't wealthy areas, but more marginalized ones. Many of these young >people work at "black jobs," where they don't get pension deductions or >other benefits, and are paid less than the legal minimum. These conditions >are legally prohibited, but they are often the only jobs employers are >willing to offer. > The old Italian Communist Party had its strongest support in the >traditional industrial workforce. The PDS has inherited much of it. But >its base has become more middle-class, in part because many children of >working-class families in Italy were able to go to free public >universities, get skills, and move up the social ladder. > Within the governing PDS, the party's changing composition and >willingness to consider austerity measures causes doubts among some people. >One veteran journalist worries that "if the left cooperates in austerity >programs, there really isn't a left anymore. Who represents the workers >then?" But others in the party say these measures are necessary if the >left really wants to hold power. Sounding much like New Democrats in the >U.S., they say the old PCI never really wanted to govern, and that the PDS >has to move towards the center to be able to win an electoral majority. > The CGIL, while led by Communists for most of its history, has a >long tradition of autonomy and independence from political parties. That >independence will be hard tested in the process in which the economies of >European countries are becoming unified. On the one hand, it is trying to >protect Italian workers from the harsh austerity measures adopted elsewhere >on the continent. But the federation is also moving towards the formation >of a common front with other European labor federations. > "In the long term, we must have one European trade union movement," >Epifani explains. "We can't defend workers any longer country by country. >We're dealing with Europe-wide policies. If we're going to have a common >European currency, we must also have a common wage policy, along with >policies on unemployment and investment." > European unions proposed a social charter, during the negotiations >of the Maastricht Treaty, which more conservative governments have been >loath to accept. They have also begun to coordinate their bargaining with >large European corporations, trying to achieve the same working conditions >from country to country. During the French general strike last year, >Italian unions gave money and political support. > "But we're actually very late," Epifani says, "behind what's >already happening between governments and companies. We're still talking >as though we're still dealing with separate countries, while economic >unification has moved well beyond this." > > - 30 - > >--------------------------------------------------------------- >david bacon - labornet email david bacon >internet: dbacon@igc.apc.org 1631 channing way >phone: 510.549.0291 berkeley, ca 94703 >--------------------------------------------------------------- > > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* =20 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =20 Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.=20 --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =20 From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Tue Dec 17 21:59:25 1996 Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 20:32:10 -0800 (PST) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, united@cougar.com, H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu, can-labor@pencil.math.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Struggle at Price-Pfister Sender: meisenscher@igc.org Sender: meisenscher@igc.org This is one of two articles by labor reporter David Bacon on the labor struggles in California, posted at his request. He documents the struggles of immigrant workers for dignity and justice in the U.S. and the role that organized labor plays in that struggle. Much can be learned from this accounts. (BTW, Bacon is also an exceptional photojournalist, whose photos of workers are featured periodically in California galleries and other= venues.) >PRICE PFISTER WORKERS GO HUNGRY TO SAVE JOBS >By David Bacon >=A91996 by David Bacon, 510-549-0291 > > PACOIMA (11/30/96) - While most people in Los Angeles celebrated >Thanksgiving by eating too much, three women and two men in San Fernando >Valley marked the occasion by not eating at all. They didn't have a lot to >be thankful for. > In a small group of tents erected in a barren corner of Pacoima, >near the intersection of Paxton and San Fernando, the five began a hunger >strike November 21, a week before the holiday. They've been living there >ever since. Behind their planton rises a old established piece of the San >Fernando Valley industrial landscape - the big Price Pfister plant. > For decades, the factory has turned out the bathroom and kitchen >faucets which are fixtures in millions of southland homes. In the process >it's employed thousands of working-class residents of Pacoima and >surrounding municipalities. > Price Pfister, however, or at least a good part of it, is leaving >Los Angeles after many years. Hundreds of its workers, including the five >hunger strikers, have already lost their jobs. More layoffs have yet to >come. > Workers at Price Pfister are mostly immigrants, and their protest >has found an ally in the Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project, a >growing nerve center for the struggles of southern California's immigrant >workforce. Their alliance is helping to generate the same kind of support >in the Latino community the tortilla strikers won just a few months ago. > Hunger striker Victoria Sevilla began working in the packing >department in 1989. Although the work was heavy, at $11.03/hour it was the >best job she'd had since arriving in LA from Altamira, Guerrero in 1977. >At 40 years old, with two children and four grandchildren, she doubts she >will find another job at a similar wage. "There are plenty of jobs for >immigrants in LA," she explains, "but almost all pay the minimum." > Emilio Servin, another hunger striker, bought a house four years >ago, for which he pays $1370 a month. "I thought the company respected me, >since I'd been there over seven years," he says. "But on October 10 they >called in about 30 of us, and told us there just wasn't any more work. No >reason. And no severance. Some of us had spent our lives in that plant." > > If Servin doesn't find a job very soon, he fears he will lose the >house. At 42 years old, with three kids, that's a scary prospect. > After layoffs started earlier this year, Price Pfister workers >formed a committee in October to try to get severance benefits. Although >U.S. law only requires a 60-day notice of a plant closure, Mexican workers >often have higher expectations, since Mexican law requires a week's >severance pay for every year of service for any laidoff worker. The Price >Pfister workers approached their union, Teamsters Local 986. They felt the >union had not made a strong enough effort to fight the job reductions, and >demanded to be included in negotiations over layoffs, and over any benefits >offered by local authorities to keep production in Pacoima. The local >union eventually included the committee in negotiations, and has helped pay >for the planton and many protest demonstrations. > In negotiations, the company has offered to pay one-half week's pay >per year of service, up to 26 years, but only for those still employed at >the time an agreement is signed. The three hundred workers already on the >streets, including the hunger strikers, get nothing under that propposal. >As layoffs continue, even fewer qualify. > Nevertheless, on October 23 Price Pfister vice-president Sam >Wheeler told workers that the company would stop negotiating if protests >continued, and might even speed up the layoffs. He announced that future >demonstrations would be videotaped. The union filed legal charges over the >threats. > Price Pfister workers are also affected by the bitterly-fought >election for national union president, pitting incumbent reformer Ron Carey >against the union's old guard, who support Jimmy Hoffa Jr. (that's right, >son of that Hoffa). Ballots will be counted December 12. Local 986 >secretary-treasurer Mike Riley supports the old guard, but Ron Carey came >to Pacoima in mid-October at the workers' request. He assigned national >organizer Felix Hernandez to help mobilize support. > The national union also called on LAMAP for help. > The project's involvement in the fight at Price Pfister comes on >the heels of its success in the Teamster's tortilla strike at Mission >Foods. There LAMAP used connections developed over two years of research >and coalition-building to make the strike a community issue. "LAMAP jumped >out of the pages of research books, and into the streets," remarks Miguel >Contreras, the first Latino leader of the Los Angeles County Federation of >Labor, who won office just a few months ago. > LAMAP was organized to put those connections to work, not just in >the tortilla strike, but in a long-term strategy to organize Los Angeles' >immigrant industrial workforce. LA lives on immigrant labor. It is the >largest manufacturing center in the U.S. by far, with 717,000 workers >pouring into its factories every day. Most of them come here from Mexico, >Central America, and Asian countries around the Pacific Rim. > The southland's immigrant workforce has been the backbone of >strikes and union organizing drives for almost a decade, producing more >labor activity than any other area of the country. LAMAP, a project >initiated by unions, academic researchers and community activists, is >welding together an alliance based on that ferment, in order to unionize a >big chunk of that industrial workforce. If it succeeds, it will change, >not just the wages and working condiitons of immigrants, but the political >balance of power throughout southern California. > At Price Pfister, LAMAP is confronting the classic threat used by >employers against union drives - the threat of closure. "We can't run away >from it," explains Joel Ochoa, LAMAP community coordinator. "That means >that we have to talk about the real reasons why plants close, and what we >can do about it." > Price Pfister originally claimed in the press that its closure in >Pacoima was forced by Proposition 65's regulations against environmental >pollution. The company used to use a production process in which it melted >metal, including lead, in a foundry, and poured it into molds for faucet >parts. Lead is extremely toxic, causing brain damage and learning >dissability especially among children. > Proposition 65's regulations against lead contamination, the >company said, forced the foundry's closure. Faucet parts are now produced >by machining, which has replaced foundry operations and eliminated lead >contamination. > But the five hunger strikers in Pacoima, like most of the other >laidoff workers, never worked in the foundry. Their jobs were eliminated >when the company transferred the assembly of faucet parts, and some packing >operations, to a maquiladora factory just over the border in Mexicali. >Employment in the Mexicali plant has grown to over 800, and the number of >jobs in Pacoima has fallen from 1300 to below 1000. > "This is obviously another sad episode in the history of NAFTA," >Ochoa says. "The company is moving because labor costs less in Mexicali, >and in the process it's eliminating well-paying, stable jobs here in LA." > Price Pfister, originally founded by Emil Price and William >Pfister, was bought out by its own management in 1983 for $35 million. >Five years later, they sold the company to Emhart Corporation for $215 >million. Then Emhart was bought by Black and Decker Corp. According to >LAMAP researcher Goetz Wolff, B&D's profits in 1995 soared to $224 million, >almost double the year before. But the Price Pfister plant not only has to >make a normal profit, but enough extra to pay off the high-interest junk >bonds used to finance its sale in the 1980s. > To keep the plant open, local elected officials, led by city >councilperson Richard Alarcon, have offered the company a package of >incentives, including tax breaks and loans for businesses located in >economic enterprise zones. The hunger strikers, however, are demanding >that any incentive given to Price Pfister be accompanied by employment >guarantees for the existing workforce, as well as fair severance and >extended health benefits for those who have already lost their jobs. > "This company is not moving because of environmental regulations, >or because its workers tried to organize a union, but because of greed," >Ochoa declares. "And our community is committed to fighting it." > In the meantime, as trucks continuously leave the plant, ferrying >machines to Mexicali, 2-300 Price Pfister workers meet every Sunday in a >Pacoima park. There they plan marches, like that held the day after >Thanksgiving, and a leafletting campaign in front of Home Depot. > "How can Price Pfister dump us out of our jobs, and then turn >around and expect Latinos to continue buying their faucets?" asks hunger >striker Alejandra Torres. "What they are doing is a kind of discrimination >against our whole community." > > - 30 - > >For more information, call the Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project, >213-585-4596. > >--------------------------------------------------------------- >david bacon - labornet email david bacon >internet: dbacon@igc.apc.org 1631 channing way >phone: 510.549.0291 berkeley, ca 94703 >--------------------------------------------------------------- > > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* =20 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =20 Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.=20 --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =20 From shostaka@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu Wed Dec 18 13:59:26 1996 Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 17:26:56 -0500 To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: shostaka@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu (Art Shostak) Subject: Worth sharing From: Ted Goertzel Subject: Holiday Memo To: The North Pole Family From: Santa Subj: North Pole Downsizing The recent announcement that Donner and Blitzen have elected to take the early reindeer retirement package has triggered a good deal of concern about whether they will be replaced, and about other restructuring decisisions at the North Pole. Streamlining was appropiate as the North Pole no longer dominates the season's gift distribution business. Home shopping channels and mail order catalogues have diminished our market share and we can not sit idly by and permit further erosion of the profit picture. The reindeer downsizing was made possible through the purchase of a late model Japanese sled for my annual trip. Improved productivity from Dasher and Dancer, who summered at the Harvard Business School, is anticipated and should take up the slack, with no discernible loss of service. Reduction in reindeer will also lessen airborne environmental emissions for which the North has been cited and received unfavorable press. I am pleased to inform you and yours that Rudolph's role will not be disturbed. Tradition still counts here at the North Pole. Management denies, in the strongest possible language, the earlier leak that Rudolph's nose got that way due to substance abuse. Calling Rudolph "a lush who was into the sauce and never did pull his share of the load" was an unfortunate comment, made by one of Santa's helpers and taken out of context at a time of the when helpers are known to be under executive stress. Today's global challenges require the North Pole continually to look for better, more competitive measures. Effective immediately, the following economy measures are to take place in the "Twelve Days of Christmas" program: The partridge will be retained, but the pear tree never turned out to be the cash crop forecasted. It will be replaced by a plastic hanging plant, providing consideraable savings in maintenance. The two Turtle Doves represent a redundancy that is simply not cost effective. In addition, their romance during working hours could not be condoned. The positions are therefore eliminated. The three French hens will remain intact. After all, everyone loves the French. The four calling birds were replaced by an automated voice mail system, with a call-waitung option. An analysis is underway to determine who the birds have been calling, and how often and how long they talked. The five golden rings have been put on hold by the Board of Directors. Maintaining a portfolio based on one commodity could have negative implications for institutional investors. Diversification into other precious metals as well as a mix of T-Bills and high technology stocks appears to be in order. The six geese-a-laying constitutes a luxury which can no longer be afforded. It has long been felt that the production rate of one egg per goose per day is an example of decline in productivity.Three geese will be let go, and an upgrading in the selection procedure by personnel will assure management that from now on every goose it gets will be a good one. The seven swans-a-swimming is obviously a number chosen in better times. The function is primarily decorative. Mechanical swans are on order. The current swans will be retrained to learn some new strokes, and thereby enhance their outplacement opportunities. As you know, the eight maids-a-milking concept has been under heavy scrutiny by the EEOC. A male/female balance in the work force is being sought.The more militant maids consider this a dead-end job with no upward mobility. Automation of the process may permit the maids to try a-mending, a-mentoring, or a-mulching. Nine ladies dancing has always been an odd number.This function will be phased out as these individuals grow older and can no longer execute the steps. Ten Lords-a-leaping is overkill. The high cost of Lords plus the expense of international air travel prompted the Compensation Committee to suggest replacing this group with ten out-of-work congressmen. While leaping ability may be somewhat compromised, the savings would be significant, as we expect an oversupply of unemployed congressmen this year. Eleven pipers piping and twelve drummers drumming is a simple case of the band's getting too big. The substitution of a string quartet, with a cutback on new music and no uniforms, will produce savings which will drop right down to the bottom line. We can expect a substantial reduction in assorted people, fowl, animals, and other expenses. Though incomplete, studies indicate that stretching deliveries over twelve days is not cost-efficient. Service levels would be considerably improved by drop-shipping in one day. Regarding the lawsuit filed by the Attorney's Association seeking expansion to include the legal profession ("thirteen lawyers-a-suing"), action is pending. Lastly it is not beyond consideration that deeper cuts may be necessary in the future to stay competetive. Should that occur, the Board will request management to investigate the Snow White program to see if seven dwarfs are really required. Happy Holidays ! ! ! Santa  Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of Psych/Soc/Anthro, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax 610-668-2727. email: SHOSTAKAt@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu http://duvm.ocs.drexel.edu/~shostak/ "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking [and feeling] we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein. From knowware@mindlink.bc.ca Thu Dec 19 09:47:44 1996 by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 1.58 #2) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 08:47:34 -0800 To: eh.disc@cs.muohio.edu From: knowware@mindlink.bc.ca (Tom Walker) Subject: deja vu: a trip in the (over)time machine At a little past noon on October 7, 1978, Frank Schiff of the Committee for Economic Development addressed a conference on Work Time and Employment convened by the U.S. National Commission for Manpower Policy. Assembled at the Capitol Hill Quality Inn in Washington, D.C., the conference attendees were indeed a quality collection of noted academics, high level civil servants, and influential spokespersons for business and labor. Schiff was responding to a paper on "Policies to Reduce Fixed Costs of Employment" that had just been presented by Robert Eisner. Speaking of the goal of accomodating individual preferences for worktime and leisure, Schiff remarked, "To achieve this goal, Professor Eisner places major stress on employment subsidies and tax credits, essentially to offset the effect of public policy and institutional work arrangements that create a bias against flexible work arrangements. This is clearly one possible approach, but it should be emphasized that it is by no means the only way to deal with the problem. Other possible options include direct efforts to reduce the existing institutional biases against flexible work time patterns -- for example, by relating the cost of particular fringes more to hours worked than to the number or employees, or by relevant changes in the computation of experience ratings." Schiff's remarks were, admittedly, not delivered in scintillating prose and the topic may seem somewhat obscure and technical. One slight amendment would clarify what Schiff was saying: instead of referring to the "biases against flexible work time patterns", Schiff could have better identified the problem as "public policy and institutional biases *in favour of* overtime and unemployment." In spite of that small point of obfuscation, Schiff's comment stands out from the 445 page conference report as such profound good sense that it no doubt was quickly and profoundly forgotten by all and sundry in attendence. Perhaps even by Schiff. In the 18 years since that prestigious Washington, D.C. conference, much has changed but the institutional bias in favour of overtime has remained. Perhaps the best known effort to redress the imbalance was a bill to increase the overtime penalty of the FLSA from time and a half to double time, introduced by Democratic congressman John Conyers in the late 1970s. The logic against Conyers bill, however, was impeccable: it was countered that the measure would increase labour costs and therefore wouldn't achieve its intended job creation effects. Conyers' bill went nowhere. But to give a bit more context on the timing of the Work Time and Employment conference, it should be remembered that in July 1978, the Bonn Summit of the G-7 had taken place at which President Jimmy Carter affirmed the U.S government's top priority of fighting inflation. The next year, 1979, Paul Volcker was appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The fight against inflation uber alles had begun in earnest. Because unemployment was seen as an indispensible tool for fighting inflation (NAIRU), the idea of removing institutional biases in favour of unemployment never caught on. Let us return for a moment to that October day in 1978 and indulge in a bit of economic science fiction. Imagine that Frank Schiff's comment about *removing the institutional biases* had seized the imagination of the conferees. Imagine that reporters from the major news media were in attendance at the conference and Schiff's offhand suggestion became the subject of front page feature stories and soul-searching editorials. Imagine that a national debate broke out in the United States about the nature of work and the illegitimacy of government regulations that prolonged work beyond the desires of individuals. Imagine the emergence of a mass labor/civil rights movement demanding the freedom to work for as many or few hours as one desired and insisting on the repeal of all legislation that enforced excessive work. Imagine the victory of this labor/civil rights movement. What would our social, economic and political landscape be like today -- 18 years later -- if Frank Schiff's spark of common sense had fallen on the dry tinder of citizenship rather than on the damp soil of econometocracy? Regards, Tom Walker ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ knoW Ware Communications | Vancouver, B.C., CANADA | "Only in mediocre art knowware@mindlink.bc.ca | does life unfold as fate." (604) 669-3286 | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm From ebonacic@wizard.ucr.edu Fri Dec 20 06:57:04 1996 From: Edna Bonacich Subject: GUESS campaign To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 05:49:45 -0800 (PST) Hi Labor Rappers, In LA we have a community support group called Common Threads. This is a women's group that supports garment workers and especially their efforts to organize and fight for a union. We've done art projects, street theaters, made presentations to community groups about conditions in the apparel industry, etc. Anyway, we are being sued by GUESS for defamation. The suit has fixated on one of our events--a literary reading at the Midnight Special bookstore. They are throwing tons of legal money into this (money that would be much better spent on raising wages). The purpose is clearly to INTIMIDATE us into silence, since they have millions to spend and we have nothing. There is a law against this kind of "SLAPP" suit in California. We're holding a press conference on Monday, Dec 23, 12:30 in front of the Santa Monica Courthouse. It's the same court where the OJ trial is being held. Our motion to dismiss will be heard there at 1:30. We feel that freedom of speech issues are on the line here, as well as freedom of artistic expression. The Lawyers Guild, PEN's Freedom to Write Committee, and the National Coalition of Freedom of Expression are supporting us. If you are in LA, please join us. We're hoping that the flea will make the elephant look ridiculous! Edna Bonacich From goodwork@igc.org Fri Dec 20 10:52:57 1996 by igc2.igc.apc.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id JAA02905 for Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu; Fri, 20 Dec 1996 09:31:36 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 09:31:36 -0800 (PST) From: Goodwork To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: GUESS campaign I'll be there, but perhaps others will be more likely to be there if you post the location more exactly. Joe Maizlish From wkramer@ucla.edu Fri Dec 20 11:58:18 1996 Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 10:53:03 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: GUESS tries to silence writers Friends of LAMAP-- >Here's an update on GUESS, Inc. vs. UNITE (the Needletrades,Industrial and >Textile Employees Union) and Common Threads (an L.A. area women's group >supporting garment workers). GUESS sued UNITE and Common Threads on October >1st. Common Thread's main crime was organizing and carrying out a literary >reading in support of illegally fired GUESS workers at Midnight Special >Bookstore in Santa Monica on September 8th. Poet Julia Stein and writer Mary >Helen Ponce read their work and one of the fired garment workers spoke. This >lawsuit is part of a campaign of intimidation against artists, community >groups and garment workers who are opposing sweatshop conditions found in >contracting shops sewing for GUESS. > >Lawyers for UNITE and Common Threads have asked the court to dismiss the >GUESS lawsuit, seen as a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public >Participation) suit meant to silence critics of GUESS. The California >legislature has authorized a special expedited proceeding for dismissal of >cases such as this one, which interfere with the rights of free speech. > >Common Threads will join UNITE in requesting a dismissal of the suit at a >hearing at the Santa Monica Courthouse. COMMON THREADS WILL HOLD A PRESS >CONFERENCE AT 12:30 PM, JUST PRIOR TO THE HEARING, ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 23 IN >FRONT OF THE COURTHOUSE AT 1725 MAIN STREET. Please join us if you can. > >Common Threads has to date received support from the National Lawyers Guild, >National Coalition for Freedom of Expression, and PEN's Freedom to Write >Committee. >**If your organization would like to write a letter of support or if you >would like more information please e-mail to jbranfman@loop.com or call >310/392-2076 or 310/391-2505** > >GUESS has also launched a campaign to intimidate workers who express support >for unionization. The National Labor Realtions Board has accused GUESS of >illegally firing nearly 20 employees for supporting the UNITE organizing >drive (LA Times, 11/22/96). GUESS has recently been taken off the Department >of Labor's "Trendsetter List" after an October review found numerous minimum >wage and overtime violations. Companies placed on the list have agreed to >make extra efforts to monitor the contracting firms that make their clothes >for sweatshop conditions. >GUESS' number is 800-39GUESS and their website is www.guess.com - please let >them know what you think. > > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX William Kramer UCLA LAMAP Coordinator 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90024 310-794-0698 310-794-8017 fax wkramer@ucla.edu XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From clawson@sadri.umass.edu Sun Dec 22 10:54:41 1996 22 Dec 1996 12:54:22 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 12:54:22 -0500 (EST) From: Dan Clawson Subject: ASA labor session To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu To: LABOR-RAP subscribers and interested others From: Dan Clawson (clawson@sadri.umass.edu) Re: ASA convention session on labor The Collective Behavior and Social Movements section, in association with the Sociology Labor Network [network, not movement -- the ASA program has it wrong], is sponsoring a session on LABOR AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT. I am the session organizer. Most submissions for all sections come at the last minute (that is, January 10), and in the end there may be dozens of great papers to consider, but as of this moment (December 22) I have very few submissions and would love to get more good papers. With luck and effort, this could be a great session, a chance to contribute both to social theory and to furthering the labor movement. Papers can be sent to: Dan Clawson Department of Sociology Machmer Hall W-36 University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 I'm also happy to talk, try to answer questions, etc., and can be reached at my office (413-545-5974), the Contemporary Sociology office (413-545- 4064), home (413-586-6235), by fax (413-545-1994), or by email (clawson@sadri.umass.edu). -- Dan Clawson work = 413-545-5974 home 413-586-6235 Contemp. Sociology = 413-545-4064 fax 413-545-1994 email = clawson@sadri.umass.edu consoc@sadri.umass.edu From abudak@alumni.ysu.edu Sun Dec 22 18:25:59 1996 Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 20:12:08 -0500 From: Tony Budak Subject: Niagara Hospitals on the Chopping Block To: Tony Budak ######################################################################### COMMUNITY/LABOR Filter and Mail brings YOU this message. For information about COMM/LABOR, send email to, Tony Budak with COMM/LABOR REQUEST INFO, in Subject Header, nothing in Message Body. Send replies to the original author, listed below in the, From: Field. You may forward this message, but please do not use the "redirect" command. Thanx ######################################################################### This is copyrighted material. It may be copied for personal use only. When quoted, correct attribution must be made to the author. For full reproduction of this material, you must obtain permission from the author. Niagara Hospitals on the Chopping Block December 21, 1996 Greetings, This is to report on a hastily organized meeting held this morning at the CAW Local 199 hall in response to the report of the Steering Committee of the Niagara District Health Council. The report has targeted three hospitals for closure; one in St. Catharines, one in Niagara on the Lake and another in Port Colborne and, predictably, alot of people are very upset about it. There are also fears that the provincial government's long term goal is to have one "super hospital" for the entire Niagara Region with one governing body to administer it. There were about 40 people at the meeting including the Mayors of St. Catharines and Port Colborne and, quite predictably, St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley. Most of the speakers were politicians and they largely dominated the meeting. A local CUPE leader was the only person associated with labour who was a guest speaker. People associated with all three parties were also present. Consequently, the political content of the meeting was pretty tame and the principal complaints expressed were modest. They were: - the public hearings to be held on the report will be inadequate and need to be extended - health care in the Niagara Region is already seriously underfunded and we are not getting our fair share; ie. less per capita funding than most of the rest of the province at a time when we are faced with an aging population; the Niagara Region is faced with an additional $44 million cut in health care funding - these funding cuts are being used to pay for the Tory tax cut It is very clear that there is a groundswell of opposition to the report's recommendations and this groundswell is evident throughout the Niagara Region. It represents a big opportunity for activists who have been opposing the Harris government's policies to dramatically broaden the fightback here. There are even Tory MPPs who have expressed reservations about the report. Several public hearings are set for locations across the Niagara Region in January starting Monday, January 13, 1997 at the Beacon Motor Inn alongside the QEW, just west of St. Catharines. These hearings will be the initial focus of opposition to the report. A follow-up meeting will also be held before the hearings start and it will probably be scheduled for Saturday January 4 in the morning. I will be on vacation from December 26 to January 5. If you want further information during that time contact the CAW Local 199 hall at (905) 682-2611. It will re-open for business on January 2, 1997. Feel free to contact me at any other time. In Solidarity, Bruce Allen 36 Snuggle Dr. St. Catharines 934-6233 e-mail Praxis1871@aol.com From johnston@cruzio.com Tue Dec 24 04:50:18 1996 Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 04:50:16 -0700 (MST) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Paul Johnston Subject: Re: ASA labor session Dan: Hi, stranger & friend. Got your posting on the ASA session on "labor as a social movement." I've been away from Yale for a year & a half now. My leave runs out this fall, but I'm not going back. I like what I'm doing now (& used to do before academe) better. I'm finally settled back home in California, where we've bought a house. Fran visited us recently, and I thought about you. I work in the citizenship movement and on welfare reform, with a little research on the side. I'm the organizer/director for a labor-based citizenship movement organization called =A1Vote!, also doing a lot of= policy work & community organizing around welfare reform, & working with social service workers & farmworkers & cannery workers' unions. Also, I'm gonna teach a seminar on social movements at the labor program at Amherst, January 5-15. =20 Your session is the first thing I've seen in ages that's made me want to go to the ASA. I know I'd find it interesting and I suppose I ought to have something useful to say on the subject by now. I'd planned to write a paper in the context of the course at Amherst, though I'd planned to develop it in the seminar and write it afterwords. I'm not certain I can get something worth looking at done by the January 10 deadline, but I suspect if I do it'll either be very grandiose & ambitious, or it'll be a more focused look at Latino & immigration reform and/or publabor & welfare reform... I've got a few other things on my plate, and I'm sure that if I do get something together it'll be very rough. But if I can do it, I'll send it to you.=20 for citizenship-- Paul Johnston From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Wed Dec 25 11:01:07 1996 Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1996 09:47:32 -0800 (PST) To: united@cougar.com, labr.party@conf.igc, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Re: Bosses Like Clinton's Pro-NAFTA Labr Secretary dbacon@igc.org, rom@igc.org Sender: meisenscher@igc.org Sender: meisenscher@igc.org I am posting a message from Peter Donohue (at his request) regarding the recent appointment of Alexis Herman as Secretary of Labor. Donohue was previously director of Labor Studies at San Francisco State University. He is an economist who received his degree at the University of Texas, under the direction of Ray Marshall, former Secretary of Labor. Donohue is founder and principal in PBI Associates in Portland, Oregon, a consulting firm that works exclusively with labor unions. His observations may be of interest as the nomination wends its way through the Senate confirmation process. You can share your responses on the list or contact Donohue directly. >From: peter donohue > >I know Alexis - through Marshall. She's an ambitious black woman with a >strong grasp of the 'how' of things. She's curious too, knowing that any >institution, including unions like the metal trades she worked with in Mobile, >has its own local knowledge that she needs to grasp. Ask AFGE folks at DoL's >Women's Bureau - they'll say the same. She's an opportunist, not unlike the >union apparatchik's choice Wofford, who has the dubious distinction of being >a CIA line on MLK even as he was laundering federal dollars via THOSE >foundations to the SCLC (see Taylor Branch's PARTING THE WATERS.) >There's more about both but not for on-line. > >And, oh yeah, the last 'labor guy' at DoL was the Plumbers' Peter Brennan, >rewarded for organizing the 1970 building trades' assault on antiwar >protesters on Wall Street. Before that, it was another Plumbers >international president for Eisenhower. > >If you're with workers, stop bullshitting yourself about 'labor' and 'labor >parties' especially those which themselves failed to oppose GATT - you know who you >are. The work's organizing workers - its up to unions to demonstrate their >relevance to the project. Not whining about who's going to be straw boss for >the man. > > >Send this to whomever you want. > Since there is little doubt that she will be confirmed, it would be helpful and enlightening for any who have knowledge about or experience with Secretary-designate Herman to share their insights with others on these lists. Bob Reich was well-published and his views were generally accessible. The same cannot be said for Herman. Does anyone have access to things she has written or said? What about her history with the labor movement? How about her stand in issues she is likely to oversee at DOL? In solidarity, Michael ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Thu Dec 26 11:48:34 1996 id KAA08367; Thu, 26 Dec 1996 10:43:49 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 26 Dec 1996 10:43:49 -0800 (PST) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu, united@cougar.com From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Yale Unions Win Contract (fwd) Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: notes >Date: 26 Dec 1996 07:56:35 >Reply-To: Conference "labr.party" >From: aenglish@crl.com >Subject: Yale Unions Win Contract (fwd) >To: Recipients of conference >X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org >Lines: 194 > >From: "Andrew J. English" > > > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1996 18:08:15 -0800 >From: Nathan Newman >Subject: Yale Unions Win Contract (fwd) > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 12:11:32 -0800 >From: NAGPS >To: nagps-interest@nagps.org >Subject: Yale Unions Win Contract > >To All Those Following the Yale Strikes: > >For anyone who has not yet heard the news, I am delighted to report that the >unions representing Yale University's nearly 4,000 white- and blue-collar >employees have finally won contracts from the University administration. > After nearly a full year of working without a contract -- a year filled with >months of strikes, mass demonstrations, mass arrests, illegal firings and >private "security" forces -- it is a tremendous relief to have finally won an >agreement. Attached below is the press release which went out last Thursday, >describing the terms of settlement. > >The agreement came directly on the heels of a rally led by AFL-CIO President >John Sweeney. Sweeney was arrested in a mass civil disobedience action, in >which the President of the New Haven Clergy Association, the New Haven NAACP, >the Secretary of the State of Connecticut, and over 300 other union members >and community residents went to jail to protest Yale's intransigence. The >connection between this action and the final result seems indisputable. Less >than two weeks ago, the local press reported Yale President Richard Levin as >declaring his unwavering commitment to subcontracting Yale dining hall jobs. > Several days after this statement, Yale had agreed to an agreement >containing a complete and total ban on dining hall subcontracting. > >For those who don't want to read through the details -- in summary, Yale >settled more or less on terms we proposed last spring. While the agreement >contains some financial concessions, it provides extraordinary job security >for current employees and preserves decent jobs at Yale as a source of >opportunity for future New Haven workers. Several hours after this press >release went out, the contract was approved by the memberships of Local 34 >and 35 by a combined margin of roughly 900-25. > >We are still waiting to hear whether Yale will voluntarily settle the federal >government's charge concerning illegal intimidation of graduate teachers. If >there is no settlement, we expect that there will be a trial in March or >April, including senior Yale administrators and faculty members being >subpoenaed to testify on reprisals taken against participants in last year's >grade strike. > >Until then, I want to thank everyone again for your support. > >With best wishes for the new year, > >Gordon Lafer >Research Director, Federation of University Employees at Yale > > >For Release Thursday, December 19, 1996 > >YALE UNIONS WIN CONTRACT VICTORY >PACT FEATURES EXTRAORDINARY JOB SECURITY, PENSION IMPROVEMENTS >PART-TIME WORKERS PROTECTED; MORE WILL GET BENEFITS > >New Haven, CT. Locals 34 and 35 of the Federation of University Employees >announced today that they have reached tentative agreements for new contracts >with Yale University. The pacts were unanimously recommended by the >negotiating committees for the two campus unions, bringing to an end a full >year of contentious negotiations at the Ivy League institution, which has >been rocked by two strikes, massive protest rallies and civil disobedience >resulting in hundreds of arrests. > >At a press conference at New Haven's historic Center Church on the Green, >Local 35 President Bob Proto was enthusiastic about the new six-year pacts. >"These contracts guarantee the preservation of good jobs at Yale. We, as a >community, feel very proud we have achieved an extraordinary victory, despite >enormous odds, for working families throughout Greater New Haven. We have >filled in all the loopholes in Yale's original ten-year job security >guarantee so that it actually means real security for all current and future >Yale employee. By coming together as a community, we have been able to stop >Yale's plan to destroy decent jobs." > >Local 34 President Laura Smith added, "We all have cause to celebrate today, >thanks to the courage and determination of our membership and the heroic >efforts of the clergy, elected officials and community activists throughout >this region. When you add up all the elements, these contracts offer the best >job security provisions in the country. I'm particularly thrilled that, over >the life of these contracts, hundreds of part-time Yale workers will now be >able to earn medical insurance." > >Third District Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro stated "[This] is a great holiday >gift to working families in the community." Among those celebrating the >union's victory at the press conference were many members of the clergy, >including President of the New Haven Clergy Assoc. Rev. Bosie Kimber; elected >officials including Secretary of the State Miles Rappaport, State Senator >Martin Looney, State Representative Cam Staples, Hamden Mayor Lillian >Clayman; members of the New Haven Board of Aldermen Robin Kroogman, Esther >Armmand, Josh Civin and David Moakley; community activists including Roger >Vann, NAACP; Joyce Poole, African-American Women's Agenda; Al Marder, Greater >New Haven Peace Council; and labor leaders John Olsen, Connecticut AFL-CIO; >Ray Pompano, UE; Robin Brown, GESO; Lois O'Connor, AFSCME; George Sincavage, >AFGE; and Carmen Reyes, OPEIU. > > >Details of the new contracts include: > >* Extraordinary job security provisions. No current or future employee in >Local 35 can be laid off during the next ten years. Neither current nor >future employees can have their hours, labor grades, or classifications >reduced because of subcontracting. Local 34 employees in two departments >where there may be future layoffs get extra notice, training opportunities >and additional time in an interim employment pool while they bid on other >permanent jobs at the University. > >* No subcontracting permitted in Yale Dining Halls. Dining Hall work will >continue to be performed only by Yale employees. New employees in up to four >fast food snack units will be covered by the union contract and have full >bidding rights for other positions as they open up on campus. > >* No subcontracting of "extra" Custodial work, emergency call backs or >standby work. Yale had proposed subcontracting "extra straight time" to >outside custodial firms, cutting deeply into the income and future >benefit-level job opportunities for the part-time workers who make up 75% of >the Custodial Service department. Under the tentative agreements, all of >these additional hours are protected from subcontracting. Emergency call-back >and standby work in all departments is also preserved for union employees > >* "Pipeline" for under-benefit-level workers. Currently, hundreds of >permanent Yale employees officially scheduled for fewer than 20 hours per >week do not get full benefits, principally health insurance, even though many >actually average far more than 20 hours per week. Under the new contracts, >workers averaging 20 hours per week over a 26-week period will get benefits >and a 20 hour per week (or greater) schedule. 20 dining hall employees will >immediately become benefit level upon the signing of the contract. With the >preservation of extra straight time hours, hundreds of other >below-benefit-level workers will be able to take advantage of this pipeline >to full employment and medical benefits. > >* Casual employees unionize. Casual employees voted to join Local 35 by an >overwhelming 61 2 majority last spring, but were denied representation when >Yale filed objections to their vote. Casuals (employees without permanent >schedules) immediately become part of Local 35. After 390 hours they win >bidding rights and protection from unfair discipline; after 780 hours they >will be assigned permanent schedules. > >* Minimum wage for subcontractors. Any subcontract employees who do work at >Yale will receive a minimum of $7 per hour; this minimum increases by 3% per >year during the life of the contract. > >* Retiree health care preserved; significant pension improvements. During >negotiations, Yale tried to slash pension benefits by forcing retirees to pay >more medical costs out of pocket, a change which would have driven more >employees, particularly women, into poverty. These cuts would have been >especially devastating to Yale clerical workers, 85% of whom are women, and >therefore more likely to serve in lower-paying jobs, accrue fewer years of >service, and live longer. The new agreements retain full health care coverage >at no cost for retirees and their dependents, significantly improve the >existing pension plan and add an additional new "matching contribution" >option. Employees retiring in the next four years will receive large >increases in the benefit provided by the traditional pension. Yale will also >improve the supplemental retirement program by matching employee >contributions dollar-for-dollar up to 4% of an employee's annual salary. > >* Excellent wage increases over six years. Local 34 members will receive >increases averaging 4.7% for six years. Local 35 members, whose salary base >is higher, receive across-the-board increases of 2% the first four years and >2.5% the next two years and in additonl will receive full cost-of-living >adjustments from the fourth year on. All union members also get immediate >signing bonuses of $500 except below-benefit-level employees, who get $250. > >FORWARDED BY >*========================================================================* >| >>>> The National Association of Graduate - Professional Students <<<< | >| 825 Green Bay Road, Suite 270 PHONE: 847-256-1562 | >| Wilmette, IL 60091 FAX: 847-256-8954 | >| Toll Free 1-888-88-NAGPS * Email to: NAGPS@NETCOM.COM | >*------------------------------------------------------------------------* >| NAGPS 12th National Conference - New Orleans, Louisiana | >| October 30 - November 2, 1997 | >+-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+ >| To access the NAGPS Internet Job Bank, send email to nagps@netcom.com | >*-----------------------------------+------------------------------------* >| #### WWW Site > http://www.nagps.org/NAGPS/ #### | >*========================================================================* > >_____________________________________________________________________________ > This message | *** *** *** Stop the Raid on Student Aid! *** *** *** > sent using the | Call 1-800-574-4AID > NAGPS E-mail | Send your letter to SAVE-STUDENT-AID@NETCOM.COM and NAGPS > Server | will print it and hand-deliver it to your Congress people > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From clawson@sadri.umass.edu Fri Dec 27 12:27:37 1996 27 Dec 1996 14:26:48 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 14:26:48 -0500 (EST) From: Dan Clawson Subject: Re: ASA labor session In-reply-to: <9612240344.aa05199@bbs.cruzio.com> To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Paul -- If you get something done I'd be interested in looking at it whether or not you make the January 10 deadline. I'm only supposed to consider completed papers, and will obviously give them heavy preference, but at any time I'm interested in keeping up with what's happening. Tom Juravich had recently told me you'd be teaching in the labor center program. Best, Dan > > Dan: > > Hi, stranger & friend. Got your posting on the ASA session on "labor as a > social movement." I've been away from Yale for a year & a half now. My > leave runs out this fall, but I'm not going back. I like what I'm doing now > (& used to do before academe) better. I'm finally settled back home in > California, where we've bought a house. Fran visited us recently, and I > thought about you. > > I work in the citizenship movement and on welfare reform, with a little > research on the side. I'm the organizer/director for a labor-based > citizenship movement organization called =A1Vote!, also doing a lot of= > policy > work & community organizing around welfare reform, & working with social > service workers & farmworkers & cannery workers' unions. Also, I'm gonna > teach a seminar on social movements at the labor program at Amherst, January > 5-15. =20 > > Your session is the first thing I've seen in ages that's made me want to go > to the ASA. I know I'd find it interesting and I suppose I ought to have > something useful to say on the subject by now. I'd planned to write a paper > in the context of the course at Amherst, though I'd planned to develop it in > the seminar and write it afterwords. I'm not certain I can get something > worth looking at done by the January 10 deadline, but I suspect if I do > it'll either be very grandiose & ambitious, or it'll be a more focused look > at Latino & immigration reform and/or publabor & welfare reform... I've got > a few other things on my plate, and I'm sure that if I do get something > together it'll be very rough. But if I can do it, I'll send it to you.=20 > > for citizenship-- > > Paul Johnston > -- Dan Clawson work = 413-545-5974 home 413-586-6235 Contemp. Sociology = 413-545-4064 fax 413-545-1994 email = clawson@sadri.umass.edu consoc@sadri.umass.edu From abudak@alumni.ysu.edu Fri Dec 27 17:51:54 1996 Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 19:41:18 -0500 From: Tony Budak Subject: Subsidy recapture To: Tony Budak ######################################################################### COMMUNITY/LABOR Filter and Mail brings YOU this message. For information about COMM/LABOR, send email to, Tony Budak with COMM/LABOR REQUEST INFO, in Subject Header, nothing in Message Body. Send replies to the original author, listed below in the, From: Field. You may forward this message, please do not use the "redirect" command. This copyrighted material may be copied for personal use only. If quoted, correct attribution must be made to the author. Before publishing in printed form, or redistributing for profit obtain permission from author. ######################################################################### <---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> From: John Little Date: Sun, 22 Dec 96 21:08:27 -0500 To: New.Hampshire.Coll.CED.Alumni.&.Faculty@anshar.shadow.net Subject: Subsidy recapture I am a practicing CED attorney in Miami and I am a former faculty member of the New Hampshire College CED program. I plan to periodically assemble and distribute interesting and informative materials on relevant CED legal issues. Here is the first installment (delete this message is the topic does not interest you) SUBSIDY RECAPTURE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING Nonprofit developers typically use significant amounts of public subsidy in order to make their housing units affordable. The idea, however, is to provide long term housing solutions for low-income families and not to provide "get rich quick" scheme for shrewd home buyers. For this reason, such developers are often interested in putting in place some kind subsidy recapture mechanism to discourage speculation. To be practical the subsidy recapture mechanism should be relatively straightforward and understandable to the buyer. It should also be relatively easy to administer. Here are four ideas: "SILENT" SECOND MORTGAGE The buyer signs a promissory note for the value of the subsidy, which may include the value of public benefits like fee waivers, density bonuses, staff time, etc., as well as any cash subsidy. A lien is recorded against the property to secure this note and to ensure that the property is not sold without your knowledge and repayment of the loan. The note carries a below market interest rate and requires no monthly payments. It just sits there earning interest. The interest and original loan amount are due and payable upon sale or transfer of the home or if the home buyer fails to use the property as their primary residence. Optionally, repayment can be required if the property is refinanced. Another option could be a provision for waiving some or all of the interest in order to protect the home owner's equity if there is little or no appreciation during their term of ownership. The silent second mortgage mechanism maintains the affordability of the property to the initial owner while discouraging that owner from immediately selling the property and obtaining a windfall. This type of mortgage can be structured so that the principal balance is forgiven if the homeowner remained in the home for a set period of time (for example, ten years). Or it could be structured so that a certain percentage of the principal (for example, 10%) would be forgiven each year that the homeowner remained in the home until the entire principal was forgiven. It's very easy for the owner and the administrating agency to forget about these loans. For that reason it may be a good idea to make an annual statement to the borrowers advising them of their loan balance every January. One problem with this approach is that in an inflationary market you doesn't earn enough interest to subsidize a new unit when the loan is repaid. EQUITY SHARING With equity sharing -- usually it's really a shared appreciation mortgage or SAM -- the local agency receives a share of the sales price when the home is sold. The SAM essentially indexes the value of the subsidy to the local housing market. A $20,000 subsidy that represents 20% of a typical $100,000 home today is always worth 20% of that home's value. If the home's value inflates to $300,000, the value of the subsidy grows to $60,000. This hopefully enables the local agency to help another home buyer buy into the market in the future. SAMs tend to work well in strong real estate markets and during inflationary periods. They do not perform very well in deflationary periods -- no recapture mechanism does. SAMS are complex to explain and administer. There are lots of potential pitfalls, including the handling of deferred maintenance, credit for improvements and sham (below market) sales. And if the local market goes wild, your share of the appreciation will probably be insufficient to help a new household become a home owner. "RECORDABLE REGULATORY AGREEMENT" The "recorded regulatory agreement" operates differently than a silent second mortgage. Essentially, it is a recorded agreement that provides that the initial owner and all subsequent owners, in return for a highly subsidized initial purchase price, are required to resell the property only to a qualified low income buyer at an artificially low price (usually the original purchase price plus some small yearly percentage increase and any capital improvements). Often such regulatory agreements will also grant the subsidizing governmental entity an option to purchase the property at the preset resale price if the owner claims that they cannot find a qualified buyer. The major advantage of the regulatory agreement is that it provides a continuing subsidy to future generations. However, it has several serious drawbacks. Primarily, it imposes a significant ongoing administrative responsibility on the enforcing governmental entity. Owners, including second and third owners, will constantly need to know the price at which they can sell their property and the income limits of potential buyers. The enforcing governmental entity must be constantly monitoring so that it can respond to such inquiries. There is also a continuing educational requirement as second and third owners are often largely unaware of the purpose of the original affordability program. Additionally, while an affordable home with a forgivable second mortgage can be resold by any real estate agent, most real estate agents will not handle transactions involving regulatory agreements due to the restrictions on the sales price and the potential buyers. Finally, the artificially low resale prices can have a depressing affect on market rate resale prices in the subdivision which can make the subsidy program unpopular. The Community Land Trust is better approach when you want to create permanently affordable housing stock rather than simply recapturing subsidy. A Community Land Trust is an organization that buys property in the community and then leases it back on long term basis (e.g. 99 years) to low income residents. The leaseholds can be bought and sold but the price is based their value as housing and not upon speculative considerations. The reason for this is that the persons occupying the housing it do not own the underlying "fee" ownership interest. Leaseholds can also be inherited. It is a tool that can be used to fight gentrification since the residents would pay taxes based only the assessed value of their leasehold interest and not on the constantly escalating value of underlying "fee" ownership interest. --------------------------------------------------- John Little (johnl@shadow.net) --------------------------------------------------- SOUTH FLORIDA COALITION FOR COMMUNITY & ECONOMIC DEV. the "Hyper-Text Resource Center" http://www.shadow.net/~johnl/ --------------------------------------------------- <---- End Forwarded Message ----> From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sat Dec 28 02:03:06 1996 Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 00:56:45 -0800 (PST) To: united@cougar.com, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: UN-Subscribe to SJMN: Support Detroit Strikers Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: notes >Date: 27 Dec 1996 15:12:12 >Reply-To: Conference "labr.party" >From: jfp@sprynet.com >Subject: UN-Subscribe to SJMN: Support Detroit Strikers >To: Recipients of conference >X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org >Lines: 31 > >From: Jack Petith >Subject: UN-Subscribe to SJMN: Support Detroit Strikers >Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 18:11:36 -0500 > >--PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY-- >To the Editor of San Jose Mercury News: > Shortly after the appearance of your "Dark Alliance" series I >subscribed to the electronic Mercury News as a gesture of appreciation >and support. I also posted to Internet's Usenet suggesting that >everyone subscribe to show financial support for your courage in >printing that excellent series. > I have just *canceled* my subscription because Knight-Ridder is the >owner of the Mercury News. Knight-Ridder also owns the "Detroit Free >Press" which has been struck by union workers in a bitter struggle with >this billionaire corporation. Because of Knight-Ridder's ruthless >determination to crush the union and workers' rights, this struggle has >already lasted for almost a year and a half. I cannot support a company >which is showing itself to be a leader in the world-wide attack on >unions and the living conditions of working people. My subscription is >canceled. > I would also point out that I am posting a copy of this letter on the >Internet so all people of good conscience will do the same. The number >to call to UN-SUBSCRIBE is: 1-800-818-6397. Hopefully this letter will >be widely circulated on the Net. Those receiving copies, please >circulate. > Thank you for your good work at the Mercury News. I hope to >re-subscribe after Knight-Ridder ceases its union-busting crusade and >yields to the just demands of its employees, without whom it would be >nothing. >Sincerely, >Jack Petith, member NWU, local 1981 UAW, AFL-CIO > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From nkrhodes@mailbox.syr.edu Sat Dec 28 07:13:51 1996 Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 09:13:48 -0500 (EST) From: "Nancy K. Rhodes" To: Labor Research and Action Project Subject: Re: UN-Subscribe to SJMN: Support Detroit Strikers In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19961228004529.19a7e484@pop.igc.org> Might someone have a list of the papers owned by Knight-Rider so that we might get some traction out of this idea in a more wide-spread way? Nancy Rhodes Syracuse, NY On Sat, 28 Dec 1996, Michael Eisenscher wrote: > >Return-Path: notes > >Date: 27 Dec 1996 15:12:12 > >Reply-To: Conference "labr.party" > >From: jfp@sprynet.com > >Subject: UN-Subscribe to SJMN: Support Detroit Strikers > >To: Recipients of conference > >X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org > >Lines: 31 > > > >From: Jack Petith > >Subject: UN-Subscribe to SJMN: Support Detroit Strikers > >Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 18:11:36 -0500 > > > >--PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY-- > >To the Editor of San Jose Mercury News: > > Shortly after the appearance of your "Dark Alliance" series I > >subscribed to the electronic Mercury News as a gesture of appreciation > >and support. I also posted to Internet's Usenet suggesting that > >everyone subscribe to show financial support for your courage in > >printing that excellent series. > > I have just *canceled* my subscription because Knight-Ridder is the > >owner of the Mercury News. Knight-Ridder also owns the "Detroit Free > >Press" which has been struck by union workers in a bitter struggle with > >this billionaire corporation. Because of Knight-Ridder's ruthless > >determination to crush the union and workers' rights, this struggle has > >already lasted for almost a year and a half. I cannot support a company > >which is showing itself to be a leader in the world-wide attack on > >unions and the living conditions of working people. My subscription is > >canceled. > > I would also point out that I am posting a copy of this letter on the > >Internet so all people of good conscience will do the same. The number > >to call to UN-SUBSCRIBE is: 1-800-818-6397. Hopefully this letter will > >be widely circulated on the Net. Those receiving copies, please > >circulate. > > Thank you for your good work at the Mercury News. I hope to > >re-subscribe after Knight-Ridder ceases its union-busting crusade and > >yields to the just demands of its employees, without whom it would be > >nothing. > >Sincerely, > >Jack Petith, member NWU, local 1981 UAW, AFL-CIO > > > > > ************************************************** > Michael Eisenscher > Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program > University of Massachusetts-Boston > 391 Adams Street > Oakland, CA 94610-3131 > ------------------------------------------------------------- > Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) > E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org > ************************************************* > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole > history of the progress of human liberty shows that all > concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of > earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and > you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will > be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are > resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of > tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they > oppress. > --Frederick Douglass > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > From abudak@alumni.ysu.edu Sat Dec 28 20:14:26 1996 Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 22:08:39 -0500 From: Tony Budak Subject: No Surrender! To: Tony Budak ######################################################################### COMMUNITY/LABOR Filter and Mail brings YOU this message. For information about COMM/LABOR, send email to, Tony Budak with COMM/LABOR REQUEST INFO, in Subject Header, nothing in Message Body. Send replies to the original author, listed below in the, From: Field. You may forward this message, please do not use the "redirect" command. This copyrighted material may be copied for personal use only. If quoted, correct attribution must be made to the author. Before publishing in printed form, or redistributing for profit obtain permission from author. ######################################################################### <---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 11:08:42 -0800 (PST) From: Flora Tristan To: oneunion@list.uncanny.net Subject: No Surrender! (fwd) Reply-To: oneunion@list.uncanny.net ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 26 Dec 1996 11:29:02 From: Daymon2001@aol.com To: Recipients of conference Subject: No Surrender! Dear Sisters and Brothers: Could you please pass along this appeal to as broad an audience as possible? Maybe link the info to your web page etc. Thanking you in advance, In Solidarity, daymon j. Hartley striking detroit newspaper photographer Newspaper Guild of Detroit Local 22 of The Newspaper Guild-AFL/CIO 3300 Book Building Detroit, Michigan 48226 Telephone: 313-963-4254 Fax: 313-963-6944 Newspaper Strikers' Appeal for a National Labor March on Detroit We are newspaper workers who have been on strike since July 13, 1995 against the Detroit News, owned by Gannett, and the Detroit Free Press, owned by Knight-Ridder. We were . forced to strike by these greedy billionaire newspaper chains who are out to bust our unions and deny us and our families a decent livelihood. Gannett and Knight-Ridder are demanding the elimination of hundreds of our jobs as well as takeaways that would gut our contracts. In a public statement made a month after the strike began, Robert Giles, Editor and Publisher of the Detroit News, said: "We're going to hire a whole new workforce and go on without unions, or they can surrender unconditionally and salvage what they can. " That has been the publishers' position from the beginning and it has not chanaed in all these months. They are taking heavy financial losses in Detroit as a result of the strike but they are prepared to absorb such losses to achieve their main objective: bust the unions. We believe the labor movement can stop them, that the Detroit newspaper strike can be won through labor solidarity and strength demonstrated in a massive national mobilization of the entire labor movement. At its August 1996 meeting, the AFL-CIO Executive Council considered a proposal for a National Labor March on Detroit. Although the proposal was endorsed by the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO and the Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions (made up of all striking Detroit newspaper unions), the An-CIO Executive Council did not issue a call. Now that the national election campaigns are over, we are appealing to unions around the country and supporters of our strike to join us in urging AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and the Executive Council to reconsider. A national labor march on Detroit will show Gannett and Knight-Ridder that all of labor supports this struggle -- physically as well as financially. And it can help spur united labor actions in cities around the country directed against Gannett and Knight-Ridder facilities, including USA Today. We believe we rr@.ust act now because the future of the labor movement will be critically affected by the outcome of this strike. A ' fterall, if corporations like Gannett and Knight- Ridder can break unions in a labor stronghold like Detroit, what union anywhere is safe from similar union-busting? It's time for Solidarity Day 111, this time in Detroit. Please send a message to AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., urging a national labor march on Detroit in support of striking newspaper workers. And please send a copy to us. We deeply appreciate your continuing support. Write, fax, call or E-mail: John Sweeney President, AFL-CIO 815 16th St. NW Washington D.C. 20006 Fax: 202-508-6946 Phone:202-637-5000 E-mail:71112.53@compuserve.com Internet:http://www.aficio.org Hard Copy to: Dia Pearce Newspaper Guild of Detroit 3300 Book Bldg. Detroit, Mi 48226 E-Mail to: Daymon2001@AOL.COM ----------------------------------------------------------------- COUNCIL OF NEWSPAPER UNIONS 1249 WASHINGTON BOULEVARD, SUITE 3300 DETROIT,MICHIGAN 48226 John Sweeney President AFL-CIO Washington,D.C.20006 Dear President Sweeney, Enclosed is an appeal for a national labor march on Detroit that has been signed,to date,by more than 900 of our rank-and-file strikers,and endorsed by the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO Executive Board, the Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues, and our council composed of the elected leaders of the six striking newspaper unions. We are urging you to call this national labor march on Detroit in support of our strike, now in its 18th month,the same struggle you have referred to as the most important strike in America. But this march stands for much more than our spirited battle here. It would mobilize labor in a place known as the most pro-union city in the country. It would spark actions against the nation's two largest newspaper chains in cities across the United States, as well as educate all who attend about other labor struggles being waged in such industries as farm work, poultry, garment, and service work. We expect such a march -- connected with actions we will plan leading up to and occurring afterwards -- will also re-energize labor throughout southeastern Michigan to continue this historic strike through to the bargaining of fair contracts and a high profile, much needed victory for labor. It would also draw attention of the national media to a strike that has directly involved the goal of media owners: to destroy union rights for its workers. As some of our strikers have said to us in support of the march: If not now, when? If not Detroit, where? We share their passion and concern, and we hope you will call for Solidarity Day III so we can march on Detroit together showing the nation's corporate bosses that labor can win when it puts its foot down -- this time on the union streets of Detroit. And thank you for all the support you have already given us -- we are deeply grateful, In solidarity, Ed Scribner,President of Metropolitan Detroit AFL/CIO Al Derey,Chair of council and Secretary-Treasurer IBT Local 372 Sam Attard,President of Detroit Typographical Union #18/CWA Jack Howe,President GCIU local 13N Lou Mleczko,President Newspaper Guild Local 22 Wilfred Strole,President GCIU local 289M Alex Young,President IBT Local 2040 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Union Busting in the 1990's - What We Can Learn From the Past to Fight It. It is an often repeated statement in the labor movement that strike-breaking and union busting began with PATCO and the Reagan presidency in 1980. This is not really correct. Resigning from the top-level Labor-Management Group in 1978, UAW International President Douglas Fraser issued a remarkable statement giving his reasons for refusing to sit across from the CEOs of the biggest corporations. Before PATCO; before Phelps-Dodge; before Hormel, Caterpillar or the Detroit Newspaper Strike, Fraser wrote: "leaders of the business community ... have chosen to wage a one sided class war today in this country - a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old .... The leaders of industry, commerce and finance ... have broken and discarded the fragile, unwritten compact previously existing during a past period of growth and progress .... Where industry once yearned for subservient unions, it now wants no unions at all .... I cannot sit there seeking unity with the leaders of American industry, while they try to destroy us and rain the lives of the people I represent .... We ... intend to reforge the links with those who believe in struggle: the kind of people who sat down in the factories in the 1930's and who marched in Selma in the 1960's.... Already by 1978 it was becoming quite clear that there was a change occurring among the corporate bosses, so much so that for the first time in a long time a top labor leader was talking about class war! What is it about the 1930's that attracts so much attention? There have been many big strikes both before and after. From the growth of industry after the Civil War until the 1930's American workers made heroic efforts to organize into unions. There were some successes, but most of those decades were strewn with the blood and bodies of labor's martyrs. In 1877 a nationwide railroad strike turned into a mass labor uprising that was crushed by the National Guard in many states. Remember the Homestead Steel strike, the Pullman railroad strike and the hanging of four leaders who fought for the 8 hour day. The great Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW, had a militant 15 year history of strikes in mass industries. It ended in jailings and mass deportations. Racism, lynchings and segregation kept the labor movement divided along racial lines for generations. And the tremendous 1919 steel strike ended in defeat. The 1929 crash of the stock market and the Depression drove the living standards of all workers down. Millions of unemployed, desperate for work, were used by the bosses as a threat against those still working. Yet the driving force behind the great struggles of the 1930's was not the leadership of the established unions. The old AF of L was very conservative, based on the skilled trades. The battles that we all remember today were organized and led by militant rank and file workers along with radicals, socialists and communists. This came together in a new formation the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the CIO, that succeeded in building the industrial unions we know today. The Toledo Auto-Lite strike of 1934 was a milestone in the organizing of auto workers. Confronted with scabs, police and injunctions, the picket line was saved when thousands of unemployed workers, organized into the Lucas County Unemployed League joined the strikers. Together they defied injunctions and battled cops and national guard, until victory was won. The Minneapolis Teamster strike of 1934 saw the workers, at times, virtually in control of the city. They had a daily strike newspaper, food kitchens, unemployed committees. When police violence threatened the strike, the Teamsters organized a workers' militia that battled hand to hand with the cops, guarded strike headquarters and protected union leaders. The dock workers in San Francisco in 1935 saw two of their members shot dead on the picket line by the police. The entire labor movement of San Francisco rose up in rebellion by holding a two day general strike, almost unprecedented in U.S. labor history. The greatest battle of all, the Flint sit-down strike of 1937, again, was one that came from below. The top leadership of the UAW and the CIO did not make the plans. If anything, they were fearful of so great a challenge to the bosses and the government. But the seizure and occupation of the GM plant electrified workers across the country. They Came from everywhere to help out. Women organized their Emergency Brigade which started with cooking meals and ended with women carrying two by fours battling the cops. With the victory at GM there immediately followed hundreds and hundreds of sit-downs in factories and offices. The tide had turned. When the Steel Workers Organizing Committee threatened to lead a national strike, the steel bosses, undefeated in union busting for 60 years, gave up without a fight and recognized the union! The workers of the 30's knew that the laws had all been written by the bosses. They knew the cops, the judges, the politicians and the military were all working for the bosses. To win a measure of justice they said to hell with the cops! To hell with the judges and injunctions! To hell with the national guard! And to hell with unjust laws! Many went to jail; many were beaten and gassed; many were injured; and many workers were killed. But their iron determination, their unity and their creative energy created a political crisis for the entire ruling class of this country. In the end the bosses decided they would rather live with unions then face a full scale civil war, a class war. For forty years there was, as Doug Fraser called it, "a fragile, unwritten compact." Sure, there were still strikes, sometimes long ones. There were still struggles and contention. But outright union busting, with scabs, injunctions and mass police attacks, were rare. Starting with the 1971 Nixon wage-freeze has come the steady decline in the living standard for the average American. It has taken various forms. Contract concessions was one. Inflation, another. Co-pays and benefit reductions. Unfortunately, even though Doug Fraser saw it coming in 1978, the unions soon caved in to the pressure and bought into concessions, labor- management cooperation and supporting the Big Three's downsizing plans. This led to the disaster of the loss of half a million auto workers'jobs over the past 15 years. But this is a different era than the 1930's when mass industries were expanding. We are in the era of the scientific-technological revolution. We are witnessing the restructuring and downsizing of American industry. Profits rise to record levels while wages decline and millions of union jobs have been lost. Work can be shifted from one plant to another. Entire factories can be shipped overseas. American labor cannot simply look to the past to reclaim its power. We must come to grips with the issues of international competition, multi-national corporations and restructuring. Are we, the hundred million workers of America any less capable or intelligent than the workers of the 1930's? Do we lack their resolve? Their determination? Their courage or inventiveness? No. If anything, we, the workers of today, are more numerous, more educated, more organized than those of generations past. African American, Latino, other nationalities and women constitute a great and progressive force in today's labor movement. Yes, there are millions of unemployed, desperate for work especially with the latest round of welfare cuts approved by both the Democrats and Republicans. Sure, we face hostile judges, injunctions and bought off cops. And, yes, we have too many labor leaders who are timid and fearful of any great confrontation. But we have no choice. We cannot, and we will not, surrender all that has been gained in the past sixty years. The solution is simple and terrifying. Instead of one-sided class war, where we get beaten up and crushed down, labor must be willing to fight a TWO-SIDED CLASS WAR, where the labor movement unleashes the entire strength of our forces into the battle. This means a broad program to Organize the unorganized, including work-fare workers and even prison labor, into unions. This means fighting all forms of racism, bigotry and anti-immigrant hysteria. This means real international solidarity among workers of all countries. Just as in the 1930's, not every strike today can become an historic test of wills, a critical political confrontation. But the Detroit Newspaper Strike can. We are in tabor's stronghold with 350,000 union members in the southeast Michigan area. The unions here have enormous resources of personnel, funds, equipment, lawyers, media. Iast year, in the week following Labor Day, the newspaper strike stood at the edge of such a great confrontation. All eyes were on the struggle. Thousands of strikers and supporters stood shoulder to shoulder, unafraid of hundreds of riot cops, spitting in the face of injunctions, ready to do whatever it took to win the strike. Behind these thousands stood tens of thousands more workers ready to come forward. Ten union locals, some of the biggest in the UAW, as well as locals on strike, even voted to support the call for a general strike to back the newspaper strike. A real workers' militia was forming in combat operations every Saturday night. Labor was in a position to declare that union busting was going to be stopped here and now. Does anyone really think that the banks, the corporate bosses or the politicians would have allowed this strike to escalate any further? Do you think they could afford to let things in Detroit get out of hand, setting an example for the many millions of frustrated workers and unemployed around the country? It isn't likely. And if things had escalated it would have meant the re-emergence of a real fighting labor movement. Labor is not best prepared for long, drawn out strikes. Trying to out-wait the bosses "one day longer" ignores the multi-billion dollar nature of today's corporate giants. That's not a winning strategy that can reverse labor's decline. Today's leaders were not brought up in the fire of the 1930's. Most had no part in the civil rights battles of the 50's or 60's or in the militant anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's. They are holding back from the edge of the great unknown of class war. But the militant spirit of the rank and file is being felt at the highest levels of organized labor. Just last year the old Kirkland-Donahue leadership of the AFL-CIO was voted out and Sweeney, Trumka and Chavez-Thompson were put in office. This is only a reflection of what is happening below. It will not be leaders who show the way, just as in the 1930's it wasn't the leaders. It is the mass of rank and file, in alliance with community organizations who can and must break through all the barriers that stand in our way. An idea has been circulating for many months now. The idea for a massive, national labor solidarity march to be held in Detroit to support the newspaper workers and say NO! to union busting. 850 strikers began a new appeal for this march. The Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions has now put its support behind it. Workers around the country are always asking - "When will the call go out for us to come to Detroit?" Now we can say the campaign is on to get that call issued soon. We must all get behind this effort and build it from below. But we need to let our leaders know that we cannot continue as before, that masses of Detroit newspaper strikers ought to be listened to and they are demanding action NOW! And who is to say what could happen if hundreds of thousands of workers start out in a march? Who is to say what inventive new or OLD tactics wouldn't arise from such a massive mobilization? The newspaper strike is not dead. The strikers continue to show that they will not disappear. Support continues to pour in from around the nation. What is needed is a clarion call for ACTION that unties labors hands to give the enemies of labor a taste of our own brand of class warfare. (Remarks by David Sole, President of UAW Local 2334, opening the Dec. 7, 1996 Conference supporting the Detroit newspaper strikers at Wayne State University, Detroit) ------------------------------------------------------------------ <---- End Forwarded Message ----> From abudak@alumni.ysu.edu Sun Dec 29 18:02:04 1996 Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 19:54:37 -0500 From: Tony Budak Subject: CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS To: Tony Budak ######################################################################### COMMUNITY/LABOR Filter and Mail brings YOU this message. For information about COMM/LABOR, send email to, Tony Budak with COMM/LABOR REQUEST INFO, in Subject Header, nothing in Message Body. Send replies to the original author, listed below in the, From: Field. You may forward this message, please do not use the "redirect" command. This copyrighted material may be copied for personal use only. If quoted, correct attribution must be made to the author. Before publishing in printed form, or redistributing for profit obtain permission from author. ######################################################################### CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS - Art Shostak Brothers and Sisters: From August 8 to the 10th the Society for the Study of Social Problems, an international organization of action-oriented sociologists, will be meeting in Toronto (preceding the annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association). I will be chairing a panel on "Leadership Issues confronting the American and Canadian Labor Movements." Can you recommend any pro-labor sociologists in Canada who work with organized labor, and might be available pro bono for my Toronto hour-and-a-half long panel? Would you yourself - as a union activist - be interested in participating on my panel? Please let me know a.s.a.p. Fraternally, Art Shostak, Labor Educator (CWA Local 189; author, Robust Unionism; editor, For Labor's Sake: Gains and Pains as Told by 28 Creative Inside Reformers). Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of Psych/Soc/Anthro, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax 610-668-2727. email: SHOSTAKAt@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu http://duvm.ocs.drexel.edu/~shostak/ "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking [and feeling] we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein. <---- End Forwarded Message ----> From abudak@alumni.ysu.edu Sun Dec 29 22:34:57 1996 Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 00:29:09 -0500 From: Tony Budak Subject: STOP Corporate Welfare To: Tony Budak ######################################################################### COMMUNITY/LABOR Filter and Mail brings YOU this message. For information about COMM/LABOR, send email to, Tony Budak with COMM/LABOR REQUEST INFO, in Subject Header, nothing in Message Body. Send replies to the original author, listed below in the, From: Field. You may forward this message, please do not use the "redirect" command. This copyrighted material may be copied for personal use only. If quoted, correct attribution must be made to the author. Before publishing in printed form, or redistributing for profit obtain permission from author. ######################################################################### STOP CORPORATE WELFARE! What are poverty welfare programmes (e.g. a $300 monthly cheque given a welfare mother), says well-known consumer advocate Ralph Nader, compared to the corporate welfare programmes that shovel huge amounts of taxpayer money to corporations through inflated government contracts, subsidies, loan guarantees, etc? By Ralph Nader The issue of concentration of power and the growing conflict between the civil society and the corporate society is not a conflict that you read about or see on television. So unfortunately, most of us grow up corporate; we don't grow up civic. If I utter the following words, what images come to mind: crime, violence, welfare and addictors? What comes to mind is street crime; people lining up to get their welfare cheques; violence in the streets; and drug dealers - the addictors. And yet, by any yardstick, there is far more crime, and far more violence, and far more welfare disbursement (and there are far more addictors) in the corporate world than in the impoverished street arena. The federal government's corporate welfare programmes number over 120. They are so varied and embedded that we actually grow up thinking that the government interferes with the free enterprise system, rather than subsidising it. It's hard to find a major industry today whose principal investments were not first made by the government - in aerospace, telecommunications, biotechnology and agribusiness. Government research and development money funds the drug and pharmaceutical industry. Government research and development funds are given freely to corporations, but they don't announce it in ads the next day. Corporate welfare has never been viewed as debilitating. Nobody talks about imposing workfare requirements on corporate welfare recipients or putting them on a programme of 'two years and you're out'. Nobody talks about aid to dependent corporations. It's all talked about in terms of 'incentives'. At the local community level, in cities that can't even refurbish their crumbling schools - where children are without enough desks or books - local governments are anteing up three, four, five hundred million dollars to lure very profitable baseball, football and basketball sports moguls who don't want to share the profits. Corporate sports are being subsidised by cities. Corporations have perfected socialising their losses while they capitalise on their profits. There was the savings-and-loan debacle - and you'll be paying for that until the year 2020. In terms of principal and interest, it was a half-trillion-dollar bailout of 1,000 savings-and-loans banks. Their executives looted, speculated and defrauded people of their savings - and then turned to Washington for a bailout. Foreign and domestic corporations can go on our land out West. If they discover gold, they can buy the acreage over the gold for no more than $5 an acre. That's been the going rate since the Mining Act of 1872 was enacted. That is taking inflation-fighting too far. There's a new drug called Taxol to fight ovarian cancer. That drug was produced by a grant of $31 million of taxpayer money through the National Institutes of Health, right through the clinical testing process. The formula was then given away to the Bristol-Myers Squibb company. No royalties were paid to the taxpayer. There was no restraint on the price. Charges now run $10,000 to $15,000 per patient for a series of treatments. If the patients can't pay, they go on Medicaid, and the taxpayer pays at the other end of the cycle, too. Yet what is the big issue in this country and in Washington when the word 'welfare' is spoken? It is the $300 monthly cheque given a welfare mother, most of which is spent immediately in the consumer economy. But federal corporate welfare is far bigger in dollars. At the federal, state and local levels there is no comparison between the corporate welfare and poverty welfare programmes. We have 179 law schools and probably only 15 of them (and only recently) offer a single course or seminar on corporate crime. You think that's an accident? Law school curricula are pretty much shaped by the job market, and if the job market has slots in commercial law, bankruptcy law, securities and exchange law, tax law or estate planning law, the law schools will oblige with courses and seminars. One professor studying corporate crime believes that it costs the country $200 billion a year. And yet you don't see many congressional hearings on corporate crime. You see very few newspapers focusing on corporate crime. Yet 50,000 lives a year are lost due to air pollution, 100,000 are lost due to toxics and trauma in the workplace, and 420,000 lives are lost due to tobacco smoking. The corporate addictor has a very important role here, since it has been shown in recent months that the tobacco companies try to hook youngsters into a lifetime of smoking from age 10 to 15. When you grow up corporate, you don't learn about the reality of corporate welfare. The programmes that shovel huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to corporations through inflated government contracts via the Pentagon, or through subsidies, loan guarantees, giveaways and a variety of clever transfers of taxpayer assets get very little attention. Knowing What's Ours We grow up never learning what we own together, as a commonwealth. If somebody asks you what you and your parents own, you'd say homes, cars and artifacts. Most of you would not say that you are owners of the one-third of America that is public land or that you are part-owners of the public airwaves. When you ask students today who owns the public airwaves you get the same reply - 'the networks', or maybe 'the government'. We own the public airwaves and the Federal Communications Commission is our real estate agent. The radio and TV stations are the tenants who are given licences to dominate their part of the spectrum 24 hours a day, and for four hours a day they decide who says what. You pay more for your auto licence than the biggest TV station pays for its broadcast licence. But if you, the landlord, want in on its property, the radio and TV stations say, 'Sorry, you're not going to come in.' These companies say they've got to air trash TV - sensual TV, home shopping and rerun movies. We have the greatest communications system in the world and we have the most demeaning subject matter and the most curtailed airing of public voices (known in the trade as 'sound bite'). The sound bite is down to about five seconds now. You and your parents also may be part-owners of $4 trillion in pension funds invested in corporations. The reason this doesn't get much attention is that although we own it, corporations control it. Corporations, banks and insurance companies invest our pension money. Workers have no voting mechanism regarding this money. If they did, they'd have a tremendous influence over corporations that have major pension trust investments. Not controlling what we own should be a public issue, because if we begin to develop control of what we own, we will marshal vast vexisting assets that are legally ours for the betterment of our society. That will not happen unless we talk about why people don't control what they own. All of the reforms require a rearrangement of how we spend our time. The women who launched the women's right-to-vote movement decided to spend time - in the face of incredible opposition. The people who fought to abolish slavery also decided to spend time. The workers who formed the unions gave time. The Power of Civic Action Historically, how have we curbed corporate power? By child labour prohibition, by occupational health and safety rules, by motor vehicle standards and food and drug safety standards. But the regulatory agencies in these areas are now on their knees. Their budgets are very small - far less than 1% of the federal budget. Their job is to put the federal cop on the corporate beat against the illegal dumping of toxics. But these laws do not get high compliance by corporations, and the application of regulatory law and order against corporate crime, fraud, abuse and violence is at its lowest ebb. I've never seen some of these agencies as weak as they are now. President Ronald Reagan started it and President George Bush extended it. And now we have 'George Ronald Clinton' making the transition very easy. The dismantling of democracy is perhaps now the most urgent aspect of the corporatisation of our society. And notice, if you will, two pillars of our legal system - tort law and contract law. The principle of tort law is that if you are wrongfully injured, you have a remedy against the perpetrator. That's well over 200 years old. And now, in state legislatures and in Congress, laws have been passed, or are about to be passed, that protect the perpetrators, the harm-doers - that immunise them from their liability. When the physicians at the Harvard School of Public Health testify that about 80,000 people die in hospitals every year from medical malpractice - a total larger than the combined fatalities in motor vehicle accidents, homicides and death by fire each year in the US - it raises the issue of why our elected representatives are vigorously trying to make it more difficult for victims of medical malpractice to have their day in court. [Note:President Clinton vetoed one such far-reaching tort reform bill.] As in the Middle Ages, 1% of the richest people in this country own 90% of the wealth. The unemployment rate doesn't take into account the people who looked for a job for six months and gave up, and it doesn't take into account the underemployed who work 20 hours a week. Part of growing up corporate is that we let corporations develop the yardsticks by which we measure the economy's progress. Democracy is the best mechanism ever devised to solve problems. That means the more we refine it - the more people practise it, the more people use its tools - the more likely it is we will not only solve our problems or at least diminish them, we also will foresee and forestall risk levels. When you see corporations dismantling democracy, you have to to take it very seriously and turn it into a public political issue. Among the five roles that we play, one is voter-citizen, another is taxpayer, another is worker, another is consumer and another is shareholder through worker pension trusts. These are critical roles in our political economy. Yet they have become weaker and weaker as the concentration of corporate power over our political and cultural and economic institutions has increased year by year. We're supposed to have a government of, by and for the people. Instead we have a government of the Exxons, by the General Motors and for the DuPonts. We have a government that recognises the rights and liabilities and privileges of corporations, which are artificial entities created by state charters, against the rights and privileges of ordinary people. Jefferson warned us that the purpose of representative government is to counteract 'the excesses of the monied interests' - then the merchant class; now the corporations. Beware of the government that doesn't do that. - Third World Network Features -ends- About the writer: Ralph Nader, a pioneering consumer advocate who calls himself 'a small "d" democrat', is the US Green Party candidate for president. This essay is excerpted from a speech Nader delivered at Pennsylvania's Haverford College. This article, which first appeared in Earth Island Journal ('It's Time to End Corporate Welfare As We Know It', Fall 1996), was adapted from a longer version published by The Washington Spectator [The Public Concern Foundation, Inc, London Terrace Station, PO Box 20065, New York, NY 10011]. When reproducing this feature, please credit Third World Network Features and (if applicable) the cooperating magazine or agency involved in the article, and give the byline. Please send us cuttings. 1536/96 <---- End Forwarded Message ----> From abudak@alumni.ysu.edu Sun Dec 29 22:37:15 1996 Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 00:28:44 -0500 From: Tony Budak Subject: THE INDUSTRIAL RELIGION To: Tony Budak ######################################################################### COMMUNITY/LABOR Filter and Mail brings YOU this message. For information about COMM/LABOR, send email to, Tony Budak with COMM/LABOR REQUEST INFO, in Subject Header, nothing in Message Body. Send replies to the original author, listed below in the, From: Field. You may forward this message, please do not use the "redirect" command. This copyrighted material may be copied for personal use only. If quoted, correct attribution must be made to the author. Before publishing in printed form, or redistributing for profit obtain permission from author. ######################################################################### THE INDUSTRIAL RELIGION revised 12/29/95 by Jay Hanson To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory. -- Frederick Turner . . . As the new century rises like a wave on the horizon, we sense that we are not going to be able to ride this one out, that uncontrollable currents will pull us to the bottom and tear us apart. We have good reason to be frightened because we are in the midst of a "paradigm shift"; a tidal wave of change that threatens to overwhelm and annihilate us. This new century brings with it dangers and challenges that we can scarcely imagine. Human society has experienced paradigm shifts in the past, but nothing compared to what is yet to come. For 14 centuries, Ptolemy's astronomical theory (that everything in the universe revolved around the Earth) was taught as religious dogma throughout Western Christendom. But, Copernicus changed all that and caused tremendous controversy in religion, philosophy, and social theory by proving mathematically that the Earth moves around the Sun. The implications of Copernicus' ideas were devastating for the Catholic Church. No longer was the Earth the center of the universe. In fact, man might not have a special place in creation at all! This was heresy on a grand scale. The medieval churchmen even refused to peer into a telescope to "see for themselves" because doing so meant defeat for their current religious dogma. Before Copernicus' time, knowledge was based on "authority" (reading scriptures or philosophical tracts). In contrast, the new knowledge was "empirical" (by scientific observation and experiment). Ultimately of course, science defeated religious dogma. The Copernican revolution successfully challenged ancient authority and caused a paradigm shift in our entire conception of the universe. If we substitute "Industrial Religion" for Catholicism, "ecology" for Copernicus' astronomy, and "Growthmen" for churchmen, we can see that a parallel situation exists today. In the 16th century, Martin Luther established a new form of Christianity that ultimately came to regard work as the only way to obtain love and approval. But behind the Christian face arose a new secret religion that actually directs the character of modern society. At the center of Industrial Religion is fear of powerful male authorities, cultivation of the sense of guilt for disobedience, and dissolution of community by promoting hyperindividuality and mutual antagonism. The "sacred" in Industrial Religion is work, property, profit and power. Industrial Religion is incompatible with genuine Christianity in that it reduces people to servants of the economy. The most aggressive and ruthless are rewarded with even more power and riches. Industrial Religion was destined to fail from the very beginning because it actively destroys its own premises (both morally and physically) by encouraging its members to dominate and exploit each other and nature. Evidence that Industrial Religion is failing, ipso facto, is everywhere: desertification, topsoil loss, falling water tables, filling garbage dumps, ozone depletion, global warming, human sperm decline, rising cancer rates, loss of biodiversity, collapsing ocean fisheries, depletion of oil, nuclear waste, 300,000 to 400,000 polluted ground water sites, pesticide- resistant pests, antibiotic-resistant disease, billions of people in the Third World planning to industrialize; social problems such as jobless futures, the national debt, crack babies, declining SAT scores, skyrocketing teenage pregnancy, violence and suicide . . . Growthmen are today's equivalent of the medieval churchmen. They refuse to look at the scientific evidence and "see for themselves", because once again, it means the defeat of their current religious dogma; it means that they must give up their faith that the problems caused by growth can be cured by more of the cause. There is however, one big difference between yesterday's churchmen and today's Growthmen. Growthmen carry the collective responsibility for the deaths of billions of lives as once-civil societies gradually disintegrate into insurrection, chaos, and oblivion. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References at: http://csf.Colorado.EDU/authors/hanson/page2.htm Recommended further reading: Berger & Luckmann, THE SOCIAL CONSCTRUCTION OF REALITY; Anchor Books, 1966, ISBN 0-385-05898-5 "Reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human terms. Another way of saying this is that reification is the apprehension of the products as if they something else than human products -- such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world, and further, that the dialectic between man, the producer, and his products is lost to consciousness. The reified world is, by definition, a dehumanized world. It is experienced by man as a strange facticity, an opus alienum over which he has no control rather than as the opus proprium of his own productive activity." [p. 89] This book takes you step by step through the process of constructing "social reality" and complete with institutions to "legitimize" that reality. WARNING: If you read this book, you will never look at another human in the same light. This is one of those books, like BEYOND OIL, that will forever alter your world view. ************************************************************* Please copy and reprint or crosspost this article as much as you can. Be sure to include the BRAIN FOOD invitation in the article. This article and others are archived at: http://csf.Colorado.EDU/authors/hanson/ Please join my BRAIN FOOD mailing list. The purpose of this list is to distribute my essays and news. I expect that there will be no more than six mailings each year. My work is dedicated to the Common Good. My essays may be freely reprinted and my ideas may be incorporated into other works without credit. The major themes on this list are "systems" and "philosophy". Subtopics may relate to specific disciplines such as politics, economics, theology, and ecology. This is not the type of list where subscribers can enter into a dialog with other list members. This is a manual list that I am running from my home. To join this free list, send : "subscribe BRAIN FOOD" to jhanson@ilhawaii.net [You will get no acknowledgement. If you are already on my list, there is no need to re-subscribe.] Jay <---- End Forwarded Message ----> From sscipe1@icarus.cc.uic.edu Mon Dec 30 01:35:31 1996 Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 02:36:41 -0600 (CST) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu From: sscipe1@icarus.cc.uic.edu (Kim Scipes) Subject: FWD: Report from Serbia >= == = == = == = == = == = == = == = == = == = == = >Date: Thu, 26 Dec 96 17:44:47 CST >From: Ed Agro >Subject: (Fwd) urgent from Beograd > >] From: "Ivo Skoric" >] Organization: Anti-War Campaign >] Subject: (Fwd) urgent from Beograd > >As a group of professionals working in the field of social conflict >analysis and resolution we turn to all similar organizations, groups >and individuals who believe in the possibility of nonviolent >resolution of social conflicts with great concern and request for >help. > >In Belgrade and in many other cities in Serbia, citizens' and >students' protest walks have been taking place every day for more >than a month, initiated by their dissatisfaction caused by the >annulment of the election results by the ruling party. We assess >these protest walks as being completely nonviolent. They show a >true Gandhian manner of action, and their basic message is "Give >back our votes". > >What worries us the most in addition to the information blockade >in the Yugoslav public media regarding these protests are the latest >reactions of the regime, which we consider as moves leading to an >extremely dangerous and irreversible escalation of the conflict: > >a) a renewed spreading of nationalism, xenophobia, and theories of >conspiracy through the state-owned media which, while commenting on >the students' and citizens' protest walks, label them as a plot >against the Serbian nation, (i.e., as a "connection" between >domestic "traitors", Western powers "who were for centuries enemies >of Serbia", Albanian "separatists", "Ustashas" from Vojvodina, >etc.), which we consider a dangerous provocation of fear. > >b) the organizations of "counterprotests", i.e., meetings of support >for the president and the regime, with the announcement that on >December 24th such a counterprotest will take place in Belgrade at >the same site and at the same time as the citizens' protest >gathering. This we consider a clear incitement of aggression and a >possibility for the outbreak of civil war. > >c) instead of offering information and displaying a range of >opinions, using the "common people" image in the major information >programs of the state-owned media to label and spread prejudice and >misinformation about the behavior of the protesters without any >objective facts can be seen as a model of stupidity and even >brainwashing. > >Especially worrying is the fact that we recognize in these three >above-mentioned tactics of the regime and its media the main >mechanisms that brought on the war in former Yugoslavia, and that >we analyzed in 1991-1995. We consider the revival of the same >apparatus by the regime to be a dangerous escalation, especially >since there is no institutional counterbalance except the protest >walks in the streets. Also, we fear that such moves which incite >fear, hatred, and stupidity have very long-lasting and far-reaching >consequences that we still have not completely succeeded to remedy. > >Therefore we ask you to please use your influence to turn the >attention of the public toward this moment in the Yugoslav crisis, >and do whatever is in your power to help realize the fastest >possible democratic transformation in Serbia. With the fact in our >minds that we did not prevent the civil war in former Yugoslavia, >let us try at least to prevent a civil war in Serbia. > >For Group MOST, >Dr. Tr. TUNDE KOVACS-CEROVIC > >Belgrade >Dec. 23, 1996 > From yfuruhas@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu Mon Dec 30 11:45:14 1996 From: Yoshie Furuhashi Subject: Support Liverpool Dockers To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 13:45:12 -0500 (EST) Is anybody on this list taking part in the international solidarity action for the Liverpool dockers? yoshie furuhashi yfuruhas@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 09:10:33 +0000 (GMT) > From: wdrb@siva.bris.ac.uk > Please copy the following to all relevant lists and interested parties: > > Will Brown Bristol > > > Liverpool dockers reject "ultimate offer" > > A packed mass meeting of Liverpool dockers on Friday 20 December voted > overwhelmingly to reject the "ultimate offer" from Mersey Docks and > continue their fight for reinstatement. All eyes are now on the world > strike, just one month away. > > Dockers had spent all week reading and considering the details, > negotiated in a 6 hour meeting last Monday between the company, union > officials, and shop stewards. The package, restricted to the 329 men > formerly employed by MDHC or Coastal Containers, entailed: > > * "in the region of 40 jobs (which) might be provided" in ancillary > areas: Grain Terminal, Floating Plant, Boatmen, Docks & Stages, > Seaboard Environmental Services. > > * No cargo handling vacancies are currently on offer but a register of > former dockers could be created which would guarantee an interview for > any future vacancy arising. > > * a fixed term UKp3,000 contract for all 329 men, giving 12 weeks > reinstatement without reporting for work, to allow recruitment for the > 40 jobs and a joint company-union approach to pension fund trustees re > continuity. > > * Men who do not seek or gain re-employment will then be made > redundant and given UKp25,000 severance. > > * The severance payment to constitute "full and final settlement of > all claims" except industrial injury. > > * The offer to be conditional on a secret ballot to be conducted by > 31st December. > > * "If the offer is rejected, no further offer will be made and the > opportunities for jobs and severance payments will be lost for good." > > * UKp2,000 ex-gratia payment for former employees of Nelson Stevedoring. > > * No reference to former Torside employees. > > To encourage the freest possible debate, supporters and the media were > excluded from the mass meeting while TGWU Deputy General Secretary > Jack Adams and Regional Secretary Dave McCall attended as invited > guests. All were urged to speak their minds, whether for or against. > > In a 90 minute discussion, docker after docker rose to attack the > offer and the union's refusal to come out fighting while scabs > continue to do the work of TGWU members. They spoke of issues of > principle - respect for a picket line, solidarity with Torside and > each other, their children's future, what their fathers had fought > for, how they will be remembered - and the tide of public opinion now > willing them to win. > > Jimmy Davies reported that donations were pouring in after the Ken > Loach documentary "The Flickering Flame" was televised Wednesday > night. A highly placed businessman who warned last year the dockers > had no chance, rang Davies after the programme to say his contacts in > the shipping industry reckon Mersey Docks have no idea what they're > doing and the dockers should stay solid! > > In the end, there were two votes, both overwhelming with less than 15 > opposed. First the offer was rejected. Then the men voted to dispense > with a postal ballot. > > The stewards asked Jack Adams to report these decisions to TGWU > General Secretary Bill Morris and urge him to respect the dockers' > views. They further call on Morris to endorse the International > Transportworkers Federation (ITF) call for support for the > international Day of Action next month. > > Speaking after the mass meeting, the leader of Liverpool Chamber of > Commerce told the BBC he deplored the dispute's high profile and urged > both sides to seek a realistic settlement. So much for the "ultimate > offer"! > > LabourNet report by Greg Dropkin > http://www.labournet.org.uk > > More info: chrisbailey@gn.apc.org > > > > > --- from list marxism-international@lists.village.virginia.edu --- > From yfuruhas@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu Mon Dec 30 12:00:51 1996 From: Yoshie Furuhashi Subject: UK Dockers Appeal For Inter Action (fwd) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 14:00:49 -0500 (EST) > From: Labor Video Project > > /* Written 7:50 PM Dec 24, 1996 by lvpsf in igc:labr.maritime */ > /* ---------- "UK Dockers Appeal For Inter Action" ---------- */ > APPEAL FOR WORLDWIDE SOLIDARITY ACTION > > Merceyside Port Shop Stewards > J.Nolan:Chairman J.Davies:Secretary > c/o T.G.W.U. > Transport House, Islington, > Liverpool, ,L3 8EQ > > TO: ALL LABOUR ORGANIZATIONS Telephone: 0151 207 3388 > TO: ALL WORKERS WORLDWIDE Fax: 0151 298 1044 > Email Address GCOYNE@cix.compuli nk.co.uk > > Dear Comrades, Sisters And Brothers, > > We urgently request continued support for 500 sacked Liverpool Dockers > who lost their jobs when they refused to cross a picket line established > by young dockers in September 1995. > > Dockers worldwide have given moral, financial and physical support to > the Liverpool dockers struggle against casual labour, de-regulation and > privatization. > > The Liverpool dockers, with the support of the ITF, all calling for an > international day of action on January 20th 1997. We are appealing to > all labour organizations, all union, all workers to support the > international day of action on 20th January 1997 f or the re-instatement > of the Liverpool dockers. > > Your support, the support of all comrades globally is vital to our > struggle and the development of collective opposition against the growth > of causal employment, de-regulation and privatization. > > In this historic campaign, the role of our European Sisters and Brothers > is primary. The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) has > extended its support for the Liverpool dockers. The Families of the > Liverpool dockers extend their solidarity and gratitude to all workers > throughout the world. > > Yours In Solidarity, > J Nolan > Chairman > > SUPPORT THE 500 LIVERPOOL DOCKERS > Please Repost And Circulate This Statement Worldwide > > Also to support this international day of action please send all reports > of planned actions to the Merceyside Port Shop Stewards and post > solidarity statements and proposed actions in solidarity to > labr.maritime@conf.igc.apc.org > > In the United States since January 20, 1996 falls on Martin Luther > King's Birthday, some are planning to have support actions at the > British Consulates around the US January 17, 1996. The British > government is one of the owners of the Merceyside Docks an d Harbour > Company and they are intent on breaking this important strike. > > If you want more information about actions in the United States please contac t > lvpsf@labornet.org >