From jipson_art@msmail.muohio.edu Fri Nov 1 12:23:31 1996 Date: 1 Nov 1996 14:23:35 -0500 From: "Jipson Art" Subject: RE: Help Carey Beat the Mob !! To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Does anyone know the current status of the Teamster election? I am curious about when the election carried out and when will the votes be counted. I know that Amy Gladstein is no longer the election officer. Does anyone know why she was replaced and by whom? Thanks. -Art Art Jipson Department of Sociology, Gerontology, and Anthropology Upham Hall Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45056 513-529-2637 (o) 513-529-2628 (d) 513-529-8525 (f) jipsonaj@muohio.edu jipsonaj@casmail.muohio.edu Me: http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~ajjipson NCSA: http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~ajjipson/NCSA.htmlx Connells: http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~ajjipson/connells.htmlx "What goes wrong, your causing it." - J. Farrar _______________________________________________________________________________ One point Brother Kramer failed to mention concerning Carey's role and what his defeat would mean is the contribution the Teamsters have made under his leadership toward the transformation of the AFL-CIO and election of Sweeney. It is highly doubtful that Sweeney would have run or could have won if the Teamsters had lined up with Donahue and Kirkland. There is little doubt that Hoffa will be unlikely to continue playing the role that Carey has in the General Executive Council of the AFL-CIO. Carey's defeat would dramatically affect the pace and prospects for further revitalization given the number of votes the Teamsters cast (based on per capita payments) in GEC meetings. At 09:26 AM 10/31/96 -0800, William Kramer wrote: >We need you help, and Ron Carey needs your help. > >Ron Carey, the current president of the Teamsters who won in the first rank >and file election in 1991, is facing an election challenge from Jimmy Hoffa, >Jr the son of the original Hoffa. The election, which will be held in the >middle of November, is quite close, mostly because Hoffa has tons of money >that he is spending to send written materials and videos to members homes. >Hoffa is planning to spend $2-3 million in the last several weeks of the >election alone! >A victory by Hoffa would be a real setback for the Teamsters ( who are the >largest union in the US) and for the whole labor movement. If Hoffa wins it >means a return to the corrupt old days of the Teamsters. It also means an >end to all of the great things that Ron Carey has done over the last five >years including: > cleaning up corruption > creating an organizing department > reversing membership declines fo the first times in decades > focusing on organizing women and people of color > taking progressive positions on political issues > partnerships with the United Farm Workers to organize strawberry and >apple workers > >In short, Ron Carey has turned the Teamsters into one of the most >progressive unions in the AFL-CIO. We cannot let those gains be reversed. > >So here is how you can help. Over the next several weeks I will be >organizing trips to visit plants at shifts changes to hand out Carey materials. > >The first trip is scheduled for Friday November 1. We will go out bright and >early in the morning (from 5-8 AM) to talk to workers in the downtown/ East >LA area when they arrive at their plants. WE ESPECIALLY NEED SPANISH >SPEAKING VOLUNTEERS SINCE SOME OF THE WORKERS AT THE PRODUCE MARKET AND >OTHER DOWNTOWN LOCATIONS WE ARE TARGETTING ARE MONOLINGUAL SPANISH SPEAKERS. > >Transportation is available. > >We will also be doing another early morning run on Monday November 4 and on >Friday November 8 from 5-8. > >Please let me know if you can make either of these times, or if you can't >make these time but could help next time. > >I know the times seem dreadfully early but Ron Carey does not have the big >bucks that Junior Hoffa has... he needs the support of grassroots activists !!!! > > >XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX >X William Kramer X >X UCLA LAMAP Coordinator X >X 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor X >X Los Angeles, CA 90024 X >X 310-794-0698 X >X 310-794-8017 fax X >X wkramer@ucla.edu X >XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX > > Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program Univ. of MA-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org From shostaka@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu Sat Nov 2 16:34:16 1996 Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 20:00:14 -0500 To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: shostaka@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu (Art Shostak) Subject: Worth Pondering Knowledge-Worker Job Drain by Timothy A. Chichester timchi@taconic.net (Tim Chichester) Most of the job losses due to foreign competition are thought to be manufacturing jobs. But evidence shows that much of the downsized white-collar job loss may be actually going overseas. The Internet, modern high speed data transmission facilities and PC based computing are creating a historical cusp as momentous as that created by the introduction of powered equipment. Just as the creation of power sourced manufacturing moved work from the cottage to the factory, the modern shift is a decentralization from the nation to the world at large. The use of the computer network to transfer U.S. based work overseas, overtly and covertly, create the need to protect U.S. jobs, technology and military integrity through the provision of regulations that bring labor, customs and export law in accordance with the new realities of data exchange. The Enabling Factors The use of English as the international language of commerce, engineering, computing and finance; the widespread use of common software, such as AutoCAD, Microsoft Word, Excel; the relative knowledge-worker cost between the US and the third word, such as India or former Soviet states; the low cost of computing and data transmission via the Internet or more dedicated links; and the low cost and ease of military grade encryption via publicly available programs, combine to produce conditions that beg to be exploited. How Might It Work? An example of how American knowledge-work jobs can be lost due to off-shore transmission can be easily constructed: Consider that an American engineering company is asked to bid on modernizing the hand-drawn design and manufacturing drawings for an American manufacturer. Such projects can easily entail thousands of drawings originally done in pen and pencil. The engineering firm can bid $45 per hour to redraw the work in a standard 3D solid model CAD format or find a way of lowing his cost and ensuring success in getting the job. $35 per hour will ensure that he wins the bid. Russian engineers are fairly well trained but living in an economy undergoing enormous transition pains. Four ($4) an hour for steady work using AutoCAD to update paper-based American drawings into standard 3D solid model electronic files would be a windfall. A $4000 capital investment in a medium level computer system would allow the American company to ship or wire copies to Moscow, retrieve files for checking, re-transmit the files to Moscow and receive the completed files for delivery to the manufacturer. Occasional supervisory trips to Russia would ensure quality control. Even the hard copy check and final plots could be generated in Moscow and transmitted to an American based file server feeding large-format plotters in America. The manufacturer would receive a final product while unaware that virtually all the work had been done out of the country. The manufacturer would have had proprietary design file handed to foreign firms that could exploit the knowledge, either commercially or militarily. The bottom line would be the loss of American jobs and the economic pressure to lower American wages toward third world levels. Knowledge-based companies can reap enormous profits by exploiting offshore knowledge-workers at the expense of American workers. American Examples * In one of its downsizing operations, Travelers Insurance outplaced the claims processing department key-punch operation and much of the associated supervision. The data-entry part of the job is now being data-piped to a Caribbean island, where non-American English-speaking data-entry clerks are sitting at terminals and entering the customer data of Americans, whose phone calls are re-routed to the island. * India is now becoming the offshore contract programming mecca for such companies as AT&T, IBM, Intel, Novell, and Tandem Computers. Indians are brought into the U.S. by such companies as IBM, stay for six months of training and return to India to work on U.S. programming projects at $4 per hour. * Tandem Computers, Inc. is a company that makes fault tolerant servers for financial, telephone systems, stock markets and large scale databases. Data indicate that 1,000 jobs (of total workforce is only 8,000 or 12.5% of the company) were shipped to Wipro, in Bangladore, India. As one employee said "All of our software support (sustaining engineering) is being done in India." Tandem first tried to have a Korean company do sustaining engineering ( the debugging and or problem solving for existing software) on Tandems software, but after that ended in a fiasco, they found a company in India (reportedly named Wipro). They now perform sustaining engineering for some of Tandem software. By sustaining engineering, I mean that if a problem is discovered, they would change the code, ensure that it works and then release the code back to us. * The State of New Mexico has a programming contract which has been in force for at least three years. This contract calls for programming and testing state computers. The company that won the contract has subcontracted the execution of this contract to Pakistan. The programming is done in Pakistan. There is a 56KB link which is most active during the nighttime hours. Over this link is transmitted code to Santa Fe and interactive testing occurs and the results are sent back to Pakistan. Most of the actual programming is accomplished locally in Pakistan. * Johnson Control Inc. A Milwaukee, is a Wisconsin based electronics control company that manufactures and services everything from controls for high volume air conditioning equipment to manufacture of industrial batteries. They had a huge staff of software engineers a number of years ago, however that staff has dwindled considerably. Reason? A local observer says "They can pay college graduate software engineers in India $400.00 a month, a very good living wage in India, and, by Internet data transfer, get everything they need." * According to an article in ComputerWorld (2/26/96) Caterpillar Tractor, of Peoria, IL, dumped many jobs when it contracted out most of it's tech support to Satyam Computer Services in India. A direct link enables callers to be served immediately. What Is At Stake? Jobs are obviously at stake, high tech, high pay jobs. Assuming a commonly used economic multiplier, every job shipped overseas reduces the money pumped into the local economy by a factor of 2.5. Simply put, the 1000 jobs lost at Tandem have a real effect of 2500 jobs lost in the local economy. Value-added services cross back into the United States untaxed, either by the federal or local governments. Also at stake is the Social Security System, because the foreign based workers do not contribute while at the same time, American workers receiving a lower pay are taxed at increasingly higher rates to even maintain the current Social Security obligations. As more and more white collar jobs are made to compete with off-shore white-collar labor, our ability to sustain the Social Security System will radically decrease even beyond current projections. What America can lose is the ability to exercise sovereignty over transnational corporations. Transnational corporations, which are inherently amoral, have the ability of quickly exporting work to overseas facilities. This can create enormous incentives for companies to hold local jobs hostage, and pressures on local governments to ransom jobs by granting tax breaks far beyond what could be negotiated on a level playing field. This activity threatens to thwart the ability of the local or federal governments to maintain reasonable pension, labor and other standards that the electorate wishes. The location of the work-site changes, along with the power of the state to tax and regulate. The ability to ship work to the lower-cost international site acts as an economic hammer against American knowledge-workers. After all, why can't an architect living grandly at $8 an hour in Singapore revamp the New York HQ plans for AT&T? NY. State simply requires is that a registered NY architect supervise, approve of and signs off on the plans. What is at stake is the huge lower-to-upper middle class job base focused on the emerging spaceless electronic frontier. Democracy itself is at stake in that a two tier economy is emerging, a stratification of haves and have-nots similar to what we see in the pseudo-democracies of the third world. The nature of the American people is such that this country cannot peacefully endure such a stratification. Security is an Issue Tandem Computers produces high systems noted for their fail-safe operation, and thus are used in such time-dependent vital operations as stock-market and other applications where failure cannot be tolerated. When a foreign company works on code for such systems, especially in a world where "people have friendsSnations have only interests", we can justifiably ask whether we have jeopardized our national interests. We can justifiably ask whether we are transferring technology to a potential enemy or competitor. We can justifiably ask whether a design client has had his product compromised because the work is done in a country without the protection of US law. Can Or Should It Be Controlled? The low cost and ease of military grade encryption via publicly available programs, such as Pretty-Good-Privacy, make it virtually impossible to see what is being transmitted from point to point. A company could easily evade most restrictions. However, employee loyalty has been virtually destroyed by the adversarial attitude exhibited by modern corporations toward their employees. This makes whistle-blowing more likely and detection easier. A failure to recognize the exploitation of the spaceless electronic frontier is tantamount to reliving the nineteenth century, when our ignorance and unwillingness to confront the evil of laissez-faire capitalism helped jump-start the two major socialist philosophies that brought about the horrors of W.W.I and II, and the aftermath of the Communist empire. The spaceless electronic frontier is a genuine paradigm shift in the way business and social relationships will function in the future. As the commercial aspect of it develops we are seeing the re-emergence of laissez-faire capitalism manifested in the anti-family ruthlessness of the transnational corporations. If we, as a society, allow transnationals to develop a defacto operational work flow mode it will mean that we have lost control of an important aspect of how we ensure economic justice. We will find our democracy a sham and our political structures unable to either properly protect the people from exploitation or provide for the common welfare when that welfare comes into conflict with the desire to make money at any cost. It took years of pain to develop the responsible form of capitalism that made this nation great. We must not delude our selves into thinking that what is best for our people and our country will automatically emerge as we shift from site based work to the spaceless electronic frontier. The evolving network must be harnessed for our benefit, not our impoverishment What Should We Do? We should think in terms of "site-based" transactions. If the object is to design a building for NY City, than all the design, drafting and associated work should be performed within the US Territorial boundaries. If a programming job is for US based operation then the job should be done within the confines of the US. If its for a foreign client, and not to be re-imported to the US, then it could be shipped offshore. If it's a credit-card transaction or verification for a US site, than the work must be US based. It would be impermissible to set up a computer center in Mexico, linked by high-speed fiber-optic cable, to verify, record or effect a financial transaction within the US. We must address whether the exportation of any knowledge-based work which has the purpose of performing a service or good that is U.S. territorially based. We must address whether the exportation of any knowledge-based work constitutes a security issue. These are the first steps we must explore so as to build national protocols that will enable a peaceful, none exploitive and none disruptive transition to the environment of the spaceless electronic frontier. ********* Biographical: Mr. Chichester, educated as a nuclear physicist and engineer, owns a computer business and has twenty years prior experience as an engineering and systems manager, and economist, for a large corporation. - - - - - - - - - - end- - - - - - - - - - - - - Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Drexel University Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax 610-668-2727. "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 fhcastrillon@ucdavis.edu Sun Nov 3 18:07:47 1996 Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 17:11:38 -0800 To: psn-cafe@csf.colorado.edu From: fhcastrillon@ucdavis.edu (Fernando =?iso-8859-1?Q?Castrill=F3n?= ) Subject: Rethinking Marxism Conference marxism-international@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU, ipe@csf.colorado.edu Companeras/os, Sorry for yet another message, but I was wondering if anybody else who was planning to attend the Rethinking Marxism conference in December would like to share a double room at one of the hotels listed in the registration packet. It would be cheaper for both of us. If you are interested, please contact me privately at fhcastrillon@ucdavis.edu Thanks, Fernando Castrillon ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fernando Castrillon (916) 758-6470 Department of Sociology (916) 752-6772 University of California (916) 753-5678 Davis, CA. 95616 fhcastrillon@ucdavis.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------ "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Gandhi From clawson@sadri.umass.edu Sun Nov 3 21:02:06 1996 03 Nov 1996 23:00:49 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 03 Nov 1996 23:00:49 -0500 (EST) From: Dan Clawson Subject: Jobs-Strawberry campaign To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu The Organizing Institute is recruiting people to begin work on the Strawberry campaign. This is probably the most important national campaign at this time. The job announcement follows; people need to be able to begin work in January; 25 Spanish speaking organizers are needed, and an additional 25 organizers who would not have to speak Spanish. October 30, 1996 Dear Friend of Labor: You are undoubtedly aware of the exciting changes happening within the labor movement as a consequence of grassroots democratic action and new leadership at the top committed to mobilizing the membership and organizing the unorganized. One of the most inspiring signs of a revitalized labor movement is the campaign of the United Farm Workers to organize 20,000 strawberry pickers along the central coast of California. We are writing you today to enlist your help in a central task of this campaign: recruiting the organizers that will carry the message of justice for strawberry workers in the fields and in the cities. The UFW is looking to add over 25 Spanish-speaking organizers to its team in Watsonville, California and an additional 25 public action organizers to build support for the campaign in cities around the country. The AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute is assisting in this important effort by adapting its recruitment and training to meet the specific needs of this campaign. We are recruiting now for a 3-day Training conducted in Spanish, to be held in Watsonville, California December 6-8, 1996. To qualify, applicants for these positions must be bilingual, willing to relocate to Watsonville, and have completed school by January 1997. Students who are willing to defer a year of college will also be considered. For a more detailed description of the program, please see the attached flier. We believe this campaign is one of the most challenging and courageous for the labor movement and for immigrant workers. We need your help in spreading the word about this incredible opportunity to your current and former students. Please contact the Organizing Institute’s Oakland office at (510) 832-8765 for more information or an application packet. Sí Se Puede, Allison Porter Arturo Rodriquez Director President AFL-CIO Organizing Institute United Farm Workers of America ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ORGANIZE WITH THE UFW! PROGRAM DESCRIPTION As you read this, over twenty-five organizers are already building the strawberry workers' campaign in the fields of Watsonville. Yet dozens more are needed to make this historic organizing push a reality. Given the cyclical nature of the strawberry season, new organizers need to hit the fields immediately. If you are available on a full-time basis as of early 1997, read on... RESPONSIBILITIES: Assist farmworkers in forming an industry-wide union. This requires developing leadership, educating people about their rights, explaining the union organizing process, and running a campaign for union recognition. QUALIFICATIONS: Commitment and dedication to fighting for workers' rights; energy and enthusiasm; leadership qualities; communication skills; willingness to relocate to Watsonville, CA; union, community, or student organizing experience preferred. People of color, and women strongly encouraged to apply. Spanish proficiency a must. STAGES OF THE TRAINING PROGRAM: The Program includes a step by step process whereby trainees gain increasing amounts of experience and responsibility. The steps are the following: 3-Day Training An intensive weekend course in Watsonville that teaches the basics of campaign strategy to potential organizers. Housing and food provided. Internship Selected applicants go on to a two to four-week field internship in Watsonville , where they learn the skills of union-building first hand. Includes stipend, housing, and transportation. Apprenticeship/ Job Placement Apprentices are given greater responsibilities in campaigns, and ongoing training. Paid $1000/month plus housing, transportation. TO RECEIVE AN APPLICATION OR FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: AFL-CIO ORGANIZING INSTITUTE 519 17th St. Suite 111 Oakland, CA 94612 510.832.8765 510.832.8769 fax 800.690.0666 (CA only) organizers@igc.apc.org TO MAKE HISTORY APPLY IMMEDIATELY - THE TIME FOR CHANGE IS NOW! *****IMPORTANT!!!***** The first (and possibly only) 3-day training for this campaign will be held DEC 6-8 in Watsonville, CA. Interested applicants should contact us soon. Travel scholarships to the training will be available for strong candidates from othe parts of the country. Be A Force For Change ORGANIZE _______________________________ AFL-CIO Organizing Institute Oakland, CA 510.832.8735 510.832.8769 (f) organizers@igc.apc.org _______________________________ PUBLIC ACTION ORGANIZER JOB DESCRIPTION The United Farm Workers of America is organizing 20,000 Strawberry workers along the central coast of California. The strawberry pickers, largely Mexican immigrants, call their work "stoop labor." That means bending for 10 to 12 hours a day. Few stay in the fields past 30 because of back injuries. Many workers are children. The fields are treated with pesticides in which workers are regularly exposed to toxic materials. Women suffer from sexually harassment. The campaign is a fight for basic human rights for strawberry farm workers: · A LIVING WAGE · CLEAN DRINKING WATER AND BATHROOMS IN THE FIELDS · JOB SECURITY AND HEALTH INSURANCE · AN END TO SEXUAL HARASSMENT As a member of the Public Action Organizer team you will be an active participant in struggle for justice in the strawberry fields of California. Full time and volunteer internship positions are available on a summer, six-month, and 1-year basis. RESPONSIBILITIES: Mobilizing urban support for the strawberry campaign through community outreach and education; organizing rallies, demonstrations, store delegations, fundraising and other informative events; coalition building and networking with members of the labor, religious, campus and non-profit organization community. POSITIONS AVAILABLE IN: Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Washington/Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Houston. Public Action offices are currently located in: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Florida, Toronto, Chicago, and New York. QUALIFICATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS: · Desire to work for social change · Ability to communicate effectively with diverse groups · Willingness to work as part of a team and follow structured program · High degree of organization and motivation · Commitment to non-violence SALARY AND BENEFITS: Please contact Irv Hershenbaum at the phone number below for current information. TO APPLY: Send a resume to the UFW Headquarters, P.O Box 62, Keene, CA 93531 Telephone: (805) 822-5571 Fax: (805) 822-6103 c/o Irv Hershenbaum -- 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 wkramer@ucla.edu Mon Nov 4 00:05:59 1996 Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 22:44:50 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: UFW Jobs-Strawberry campaign >>From Organizers@aol.com Thu Oct 31 11:25:03 1996 > >October 30, 1996 > >Dear Friend of Labor: > >You are undoubtedly aware of the exciting changes happening within the= labor >movement as a consequence of grassroots democratic action and new= leadership >at the top committed to mobilizing the membership and organizing the >unorganized. One of the most inspiring signs of a revitalized labor= movement >is the campaign of the United Farm Workers to organize 20,000 strawberry >pickers along the central coast of California. =20 > >We are writing you today to enlist your help in a central task of this >campaign: recruiting the organizers that will carry the message of justice >for strawberry workers in the fields and in the cities. The UFW is looking >to add over 25 Spanish-speaking organizers to its team in Watsonville, >California and an additional 25 public action organizers to build support= for >the campaign in cities around the country. The AFL-CIO=92s Organizing >Institute is assisting in this important effort by adapting its recruitment >and training to meet the specific needs of this campaign. > >We are recruiting now for a 3-day Training conducted in Spanish, to be held >in Watsonville, California December 6-8, 1996. To qualify, applicants for >these positions must be bilingual, willing to relocate to Watsonville, and >have completed school by January 1997. Students who are willing to defer a >year of college will also be considered. For a more detailed description= of >the program, please see the attached flier. > >We believe this campaign is one of the most challenging and courageous for >the labor movement and for immigrant workers. We need your help in= spreading >the word about this incredible opportunity to your current and former >students. Please contact the Organizing Institute=92s Oakland office at= (510) >832-8765 for more information or an application packet. > >S=ED Se Puede, > >Allison Porter Arturo Rodriquez >Director President >AFL-CIO Organizing Institute United Farm Workers of America > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------= --- > >ORGANIZE WITH THE UFW! >PROGRAM DESCRIPTION > >As you read this, over twenty-five organizers are already building the >strawberry workers' campaign in the fields of Watsonville. Yet dozens more >are needed to make this historic organizing push a reality. Given the >cyclical nature of the strawberry season, new organizers need to hit the >fields immediately. If you are available on a full-time basis as of early >1997, read on... > >RESPONSIBILITIES: Assist farmworkers in forming an industry-wide union. >This requires developing leadership, educating people about their rights, >explaining the union organizing process, and running a campaign for union >recognition. > >QUALIFICATIONS: Commitment and dedication to fighting for workers' rights; >energy and enthusiasm; leadership qualities; communication skills; >willingness to relocate to Watsonville, CA; union, community, or student >organizing experience preferred. People of color, and women strongly >encouraged to apply. Spanish proficiency a must. > >STAGES OF THE TRAINING PROGRAM: The Program includes a step by step process >whereby trainees gain increasing amounts of experience and responsibility. >The steps are the following: > >3-Day Training >An intensive weekend course in Watsonville that >teaches the basics of campaign strategy to potential organizers. Housing= and >food provided. > >Internship >Selected applicants go on to a two to four-week field internship in >Watsonville , where they learn the skills of union-building first hand. >Includes stipend, housing, and >transportation. =20 > >Apprenticeship/ Job Placement >Apprentices are given greater responsibilities in campaigns, and ongoing >training. Paid $1000/month plus housing, transportation. > >TO RECEIVE AN APPLICATION OR FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: > >AFL-CIO ORGANIZING INSTITUTE >519 17th St. Suite 111 >Oakland, CA 94612 >510.832.8765 >510.832.8769 fax >800.690.0666 (CA only) >organizers@igc.apc.org > >TO MAKE HISTORY APPLY IMMEDIATELY - THE TIME FOR CHANGE IS NOW! >*****IMPORTANT!!!***** The first (and possibly only) 3-day training for >this campaign will be held DEC 6-8 in Watsonville, CA. Interested >applicants should contact us soon. Travel scholarships to the training= will >be available for strong candidates from othe parts of the country. > > Be A Force For Change > ORGANIZE >_______________________________ > > AFL-CIO Organizing Institute > Oakland, CA >510.832.8735 510.832.8769 (f) > organizers@igc.apc.org >_______________________________ > >PUBLIC ACTION ORGANIZER >JOB DESCRIPTION > >The United Farm Workers of America is organizing 20,000 Strawberry workers >along the central coast of California. The strawberry pickers, largely >Mexican immigrants, call their work "stoop labor." That means bending for= 10 >to 12 hours a day. Few stay in the fields past 30 because of back= injuries. > Many workers are children. The fields are treated with pesticides in= which >workers are regularly exposed to toxic materials. Women suffer from= sexually >harassment. > >The campaign is a fight for basic human rights for strawberry farm workers: >=B7 A LIVING WAGE >=B7 CLEAN DRINKING WATER AND BATHROOMS IN THE FIELDS >=B7 JOB SECURITY AND HEALTH INSURANCE >=B7 AN END TO SEXUAL HARASSMENT > >As a member of the Public Action Organizer team you will be an active >participant in struggle for justice in the strawberry fields of California. > Full time and volunteer internship positions are available on a summer, >six-month, and 1-year basis. > >RESPONSIBILITIES: >Mobilizing urban support for the strawberry campaign through community >outreach and education; organizing rallies, demonstrations, store >delegations, fundraising and other informative events; coalition building= and >networking with members of the labor, religious, campus and non-profit >organization community. > >POSITIONS AVAILABLE IN: >Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Washington/Baltimore, Chicago, San= Francisco, >San Jose, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Houston. > >Public Action offices are currently located in: Los Angeles, San= Francisco, >Florida, Toronto, Chicago, and New York. > >QUALIFICATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS: >=B7 Desire to work for social change >=B7 Ability to communicate effectively with diverse groups >=B7 Willingness to work as part of a team and follow structured program >=B7 High degree of organization and motivation >=B7 Commitment to non-violence > >SALARY AND BENEFITS: =20 >Please contact Irv Hershenbaum at the phone number below for current >information. > >TO APPLY: >Send a resume to the UFW Headquarters, P.O Box 62, Keene, CA 93531 >Telephone: (805) 822-5571 Fax: (805) 822-6103 >c/o Irv Hershenbaum > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X William Kramer X X UCLA LAMAP Coordinator X X 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor X X Los Angeles, CA 90024 X X 310-794-0698 X X 310-794-8017 fax X X wkramer@ucla.edu X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From wkramer@ucla.edu Wed Nov 6 19:17:55 1996 Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 18:03:13 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: HERE Job announcements >*HOTEL WORKERS UNION SEEKS RESEARCHERS >FOR EXCITING CAMPAIGNS NATIONWIDE* > >The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) has >several positions open for "comprehensive campaign" research staff with its >groundbreaking Nevada organizing program. Positions are also available in >California, Connecticut, and Washington, DC. > >Using creative research strategies, HERE's Research Department has helped the >Union double its Nevada membership in less than 10 years (from 20,000 to >40,000) making it one of the fastest growing private sector local unions in >the U.S. To build on this success, HERE and the Service Employees >International Union (SEIU) in Nevada have now teamed up for an exciting >multi-union organizing campaign involving the health care and non-union >hotel/casino sectors -- a project which the AFL-CIO has identified as one of >its top priorities for financial support. > >HERE research staff are responsible for profiling organizing targets and >developing strategies to complement worker organizing. Ideal researcher >candidates will have activist experience; demonstrated research skills; >excellent writing and speaking ability; familiarity with basic financial >concepts; and ability to work with organizers to develop winning strategies. > Salary is negotiable on the basis of experience; excellent benefits. Women >and people of color are encouraged to apply. > >Send cover letter and resume to: >Recruitment, HERE Research Department >1219 28th St., NW >Washington, DC 20007-3389 >Fax: 202-333-6049 >E-mail: strieb@aol.com > >No phone calls, please. Please circulate this notice to >others who might be interested. Thank you. > > > > > > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X William Kramer X X UCLA LAMAP Coordinator X X 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor X X Los Angeles, CA 90024 X X 310-794-0698 X X 310-794-8017 fax X X wkramer@ucla.edu X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From wkramer@ucla.edu Wed Nov 6 19:35:22 1996 Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 18:14:13 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: UPCOMING GUESS ACTIONS THIS THURSDAY -November 7- We will be at the Century City mall). We will be protesting a benefit which Bloomingdales is hosting for the UCLA School of Medicine. They have invited 1,500 L.A. power types (we assume that the Marcianos will be in attendance!). We'll be there at 6:00 pm for a few hours, as people enter the black-tie event. Would be great if people could come out, but we know that it is very short notice. THIS FRIDAY-- To confirm that everyone knows -- we are having a >Common Threads general meeting this Friday night at the union hall (1209 E. >14th Street). The dinner is at 6:00, meeting at 7:00 pm. >THIS SATURDAY--November 9--Action at Century City mall to 2:30 - 4:30 pm. Meet in front of the mall on Santa Monica Boulevard (near "Dive" Restaurant). The >reason for being at the Century City mall is because Bloomingdale's is >opening its first West Coast store here. GUESS has had a long-term >relationship with Bloomies (GUESS sold its first jeans at Bloomie's New York >store). Saturday is the public "Grand Opening." > >Also - for anyone who has a little more time that day -- it looks like we >are going to go to other GUESS stores earlier in the day, and end up at the >Century City mall. Call 213-239-6520 if you are interested. > >FUNDRAISING DANCE FOR GUESS WORKERS ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22. >We have planned a fund-raiser for the protesting GUESS sewing factory >workers on Nov. 22. The dance will be $10 cover ($5 for low-income). It is >to be held at Regeneracion, an artists collective in Highland Park (106 S. >Avenue 58). There will be a workers program from 8:00 - 9:00 pm and the >deejay will be doing his thing from 9:00 to 12:00 midnight. We'll hand out >flyers about this event on Friday night. > >HOPE PEOPLE CAN GET INVOLVED!! Please excuse the late notice of most of >these events. We do feel like GUESS is feeling the pressure. Workers are >going out to 5-8 malls where GUESS retail stores are in L.A. every Tuesday >through Saturday. Common Threads has re-committed to coming out to the >Beverly Center on a few Saturdays in November and December (Nov 16 & 30, Dec >14 & 21). Let's win this before the new year rings in!! > > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X William Kramer X X UCLA LAMAP Coordinator X X 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor X X Los Angeles, CA 90024 X X 310-794-0698 X X 310-794-8017 fax X X wkramer@ucla.edu X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From wkramer@ucla.edu Wed Nov 6 19:41:12 1996 Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 18:28:20 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: Teamsters Rally The Ron Carey Campaign is organizing a rally on Thursday at 2:30 at the Anheuser Busch Brewery in Van Nuys. This is an important "get out the vote" event for the upcoming election for the Teamsters presidency. A number of simultaneous events will held in cities around the country Please come out and help re-elect Ron Carey so that he can continue the process of progressive reform that can help strengthen the Teamsters and the entire labor movement. The event is located at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery at 15800 Roscoe Avenue in Van Nuys (405 North to Roscoe exit, go west on Roscoe, then south on Woodley and turn left into parking lot). Rides are available from Westwood leaving at 1:30 PM. Email if you want to go and need a ride. From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Wed Nov 6 20:42:35 1996 Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 16:26:35 -0800 (PST) To: H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu, can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu, LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu, labr.party@conf.igc.apc.org, united@cougar.com, irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu, carre@radmail.harvard.edu, jrfine@MIT.EDU, preeve@igc.org, greenj@umbsky.cc.umb.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: HERE Job Announcement Sender: meisenscher@igc.org Pat Lamborn of HERE has asked me to broadcast this notice of employment opportunity for researchers. Feel free to repost and distribute as appropriate. Grad students take note. >From: "Pat Lamborn" >Organization: H.E.R.E.2850 >To: herejobs@igc.apc.org >Date sent: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 15:59:00 +0000 >Subject: HOTEL WORKERS UNION SEEKS RESEARCHERS >Send reply to: herejobs@igc.apc.org >Priority: normal > >*HOTEL WORKERS UNION SEEKS RESEARCHERS >FOR EXCITING CAMPAIGNS NATIONWIDE* > >The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) has >several positions open for "comprehensive campaign" research staff with its >groundbreaking Nevada organizing program. Positions are also available in >California, Connecticut, and Washington, DC. > >Using creative research strategies, HERE's Research Department has helped the >Union double its Nevada membership in less than 10 years (from 20,000 to >40,000) making it one of the fastest growing private sector local unions in >the U.S. To build on this success, HERE and the Service Employees >International Union (SEIU) in Nevada have now teamed up for an exciting >multi-union organizing campaign involving the health care and non-union >hotel/casino sectors -- a project which the AFL-CIO has identified as one of >its top priorities for financial support. > >HERE research staff are responsible for profiling organizing targets and >developing strategies to complement worker organizing. Ideal researcher >candidates will have activist experience; demonstrated research skills; >excellent writing and speaking ability; familiarity with basic financial >concepts; and ability to work with organizers to develop winning strategies. > Salary is negotiable on the basis of experience; excellent benefits. Women >and people of color are encouraged to apply. > >Send cover letter and resume to: >Recruitment, HERE Research Department >1219 28th St., NW >Washington, DC 20007-3389 >Fax: 202-333-6049 >E-mail: strieb@aol.com > >No phone calls, please. Please circulate this notice to >others who might be interested. Thank you. > > > Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program Univ. of MA-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Fri Nov 8 01:17:48 1996 Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 22:54:21 -0800 (PST) To: pwillett@igc.org, preeve@igc.org, can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu, H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu, egt@igc.org, joe-berry@uiowa.edu, LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Prop. 209 Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu >Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 15:21:30 -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: Prop. 209 >X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0b -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas > >THIS IS THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF >CALIFORNIA TO PASSAGE OF PROP 209, "THE CALIF. CIVIL RIGHTS >INITIATIVE", WHICH ABOLISHED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR STATE >PROGRAMS. IT MIGHT BE NOTED THAT AS A FEDERAL CONTRACTOR, >UC STILL IS COVERED BY THE PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE ORDER >REGARDING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN HIRING. > >FOR YOUR INFO. ---DAN MITCHELL, UCLA > > > >> >> On Wed, 6 Nov 1996 14:36:38 PST Campus Human Resources wrote: >> >> > The following is a letter from President Richard Atkinson to the >> > university community and a letter from Provost Jud King to >> > chancellors regarding the implementation of Proposition 209. >> > >> > Mike Lassiter >> > Director, News & Communications >> > ------------------------------------------------------ >> > >> > November 6, 1996 >> > >> > Dear Colleagues: >> > >> > The voters have approved Proposition 209 and the University of >> > California will comply with the law. At my request, Provost C. >> > Judson King has written to the University's Chancellors today to give >> > them specific guidance about implementing the language of Proposition >> > 209. We are well along in this process as a result of The Regents' >> > action last year eliminating race, gender, and ethnicity as factors >> > in admission, hiring, and contracting. We have also worked hard during >> > the past year to make it clear that the University continues to >> > welcome students, faculty, and staff from throughout California's >> > increasingly diverse society. >> > >> > Now we must also look to the broader issue of how, in light of >> > Proposition 209, we can best fulfill our responsibilities as a public >> > university in the nation's most ethnically and culturally diverse >> > state. >> > >> > One idea has tended to unite people on all sides of this >> > extraordinarily divisive and passionate debate. It is that diversity >> > is an asset to California and can only be achieved by extending >> > educational opportunity to disadvantaged young people. The question >> > facing education is clear: How do we establish new paths to diversity >> > consistent with the law? >> > >> > I intend to take the following steps: >> > >> > I. We will accelerate our efforts to strengthen and expand our >> > outreach programs. The University of California was one of the first >> > to establish such programs over thirty years ago, and ours have been >> > among the most successful in the nation. Today we spend more than >> > $100 million a year on campus and systemwide programs that serve >> > students and the K-12 schools. But the need far outstrips our >> > resources. We need to reach more students and to coordinate our >> > programs across the system to make the best possible use of the >> > University's wealth of talent and expertise. >> > >> > II. We will reinvigorate our partnership with California's K-12 >> > schools. UC already has over 800 programs that offer tutoring and >> > counseling for students, professional development for teachers, >> > applied and collaborative research for the improvement of schools. >> > Now we need to involve the University more broadly than ever before >> > in schools and community colleges that serve large numbers of >> > disadvantaged and minority students. We will give special attention >> > to the ways in which the new learning technologies can magnify the >> > impact of our efforts. >> > >> > III. The report of the UC Outreach Task Force, due in February of >> > 1997, will be key to these efforts. It is reviewing the scope and >> > success of our current outreach programs and will recommend specific >> > strategies the University can use, in cooperation with the schools >> > and the other higher education segments, to strengthen our programs >> > and seek new sources of funding for them. The Task Force consists of >> > leaders from the business world, education, and government. Together >> > this distinguished team can do much more than any one of them could do >> > separately. >> > >> > IV. We have already set aside an additional $3 million in the >> > University's budget to assist the campuses in launching new programs >> > to help prepare more disadvantaged and low-income students for study >> > at the University. We will seek further funding from the State to >> > help us accomplish the steps I have just outlined, which must be >> > taken if we are going to preserve the diversity essential to >> > California's future. >> > >> > V. Finally, a word about our hiring and contracting activities. >> > I want to emphasize that the University continues to seek a diverse >> > pool of applicants for jobs and contracts, consistent with Federal >> > law, the Regents' resolution on hiring and contracting, and >> > Proposition 209. >> > >> > California is changing and so must we. What cannot change, however, >> > is the University's historic responsibility to serve Californians of >> > every background and condition, including greater numbers of >> > disadvantaged young people. I am confident we have the individual and >> > institutional resolve to keep the commitment to diversity alive for >> > the next generation of Californians. >> > >> > Sincerely, >> > >> > Richard C. Atkinson >> > President >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> > November 6, 1996 >> > >> > CHANCELLORS >> > >> > Dear Colleagues: >> > >> > In light of yesterday's passage of Proposition 209, and the fact >> > that it becomes law today, I am writing to provide you with specific >> > guidance about how to implement the Proposition. I wish to reiterate >> > that the University of California strongly is committed to the goal of >> > a diverse faculty, staff and student body and will do all it can, >> > under the law and within Regental policy, to achieve that goal. >> > >> > The following specific steps that should be taken are based >> > primarily on General Counsel Holst's October 4, 1996 letter regarding >> > the potential impact on the University of Proposition 209. As >> > pointed out in that letter, it is possible that there could be a court >> > order prohibiting immediate implementation of Proposition 209; >> > however, absent such an order, we should proceed with the steps >> > indicated below: >> > >> > 1. Hiring and contracting programs: >> > >> > Since Regents' resolution SP-2 went into effect on January 1, 1996, >> > and contains the same prohibitions regarding preferences as does >> > Proposition 209, there is no need to take any further action in >> > these areas at this time. >> > >> > 2. Admissions programs: >> > >> > Admissions decisions made after the date of this letter should not >> > include consideration of race, sex, color, ethnicity or natural >> > origin. >> > >> > a. Graduate and Professional school admissions: >> > >> > Regents' resolution SP-1 is in effect for graduate and professional >> > students currently applying to the University, for admission to the >> > Fall 1997 class. Under SP-1 race, sex, color, ethnicity and national >> > origin are eliminated as selection criteria and, therefore, no further >> > action need be taken. >> > >> > b. Undergraduate admissions: >> > >> > Implementation of SP-1 for undergraduate admissions was to take >> > effect for students applying for enrollment for Spring 1998. >> > However, in light of the passage of Proposition 209, effective >> > immediately, campuses may no longer use race, ethnicity, sex or >> > national origin as one of the supplemental criteria used to select >> > admitted students from the pool of eligible students. Students are >> > applying this month to enroll in Fall 1997. These applicants were >> > notified of the possibility of such a change (see page 5 of the >> > Application for Undergraduate Admission and Scholarship, 1997-98). >> > >> > 3. Financial aid: >> > >> > The General Counsel has recommended the suspension of all future >> > financial paid awards under which any recipient is advantaged or >> > disadvantaged because of race, ethnicity, gender or national origin. >> > Financial aid commitments to individual students made prior to the >> > passage of the Proposition should continue to be honored. >> > Students receiving financial aid awards under Federal financial >> > programs in which race, ethnicity or gender is a condition of the aid, >> > or must be a factor in distributing the aid, may continue to receive >> > these awards. Under Proposition 209, the University can continue to >> > accept and administer such Federal funds. >> > >> > For financial aid programs funded through University or State >> > funds, the University no longer may utilize race, ethnicity, >> > national origin or gender as factors taken into account to select >> > recipients for disbursement of these funds. Campuses may continue >> > administering University financial support recruitment programs (i.e., >> > the graduate level Academic Career Development Program, and various >> > campus recruitment programs such as the Chancellor's Scholarships) as >> > long as race, ethnicity and gender no longer are used as criteria for >> > selecting aid recipients. >> > >> > The University has received numerous gifts and endowment funds that >> > contain specific requirements for distribution by race, ethnicity, >> > gender or national origin. Policies and procedures for distribution >> > of these funds are being reviewed by General Counsel and my office >> > with regard to how to make appropriate uses of these funds. >> > >> > 4. Outreach programs: >> > >> > The University has made commitments for the 1996-97 academic year to >> > schools, students, counselors and employees affected by a variety of >> > existing outreach programs. These programs are expected to continue >> > and remain open to all students regardless of race, ethnicity and >> > gender. Proposition 209 may ultimately be interpreted to require >> > further action, but any action should be deferred pending review of >> > the Outreach Task Force recommendations. >> > >> > 5. Other UC race, ethnic, or gender attentive programs: >> > >> > There may be campus-based programs that utilize race, ethnicity, or >> > gender as factors in determining eligibility to participate, even >> > though such programs are not exclusionary. No immediate action >> > should be required if membership for such programs for this year >> > already has been determined. The Chancellors should assure that race, >> > ethnicity, gender, national origin, or religion, are not considered in >> > future eligibility determinations. My office, along with the General >> > Counsel's office, will be available to work with the campuses in order >> > to identify such programs and to develop appropriate changes that >> > need to occur. >> > >> > Please feel free to contact me or Assistant Vice President Galligani at >> > (510) 987-9518 regarding clarification of these implementation >> > procedures. >> > >> > Sincerely, >> > >> > C. Judson King >> > Provost and Senior Vice President >> > Academic Affairs >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > Campus Human Resources >> > CHR@CHR.UCLA.EDU >> >> ---------------------- >> Andrea Stein >> andrea.stein@anderson.ucla.edu >> >> > >---------------------- >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 _____________________________________ | "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 meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sat Nov 9 13:45:33 1996 Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 11:14:23 -0800 (PST) To: irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu, H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu, united@cougar.com, can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu, preeve@igc.org, carre@radmail.harvard.edu, joe-berry@uiowa.edu, knicks@igc.org, pcolombaro@igc.org, tcostello@igc.org, delgado@uci.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Unions and the Internet wkramer@pop.ben2.ucla.edu, jkurz@igc.org, LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu, luethje@soz.uni-frankfurt.d400.de, tsampson@sfsu.edu, kjsciacc@facstaff.wisc.edu, margy@uclink.berkeley.edu, wilson#u#rand@ibt#u#po#u#1.ccmail.compuserve.com, gwolff@ucla.edu, Zeitlin@soc.sscnet.ucla.edu Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: abudak@alumni.ysu.edu >Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 11:09:01 -0500 >From: Tony Budak >Subject: Unions and the Internet >To: Tony Budak > >FOR YOUR INFORMATION - > Cheers, Peace, > and Fondest Regards, > Tony Budak > > ><---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> >Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 12:09:52 GMT >Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy >From: LabourNet >Subject: Unions and the Internet > >The November issue of the online magazine "Computer Mediated Communications" >is a special issue devoted to "Labor Online". It contains a number of >articles from around the world concerning use of the Internet by the labour >movement. > >Its URL is: > >http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/nov/toc.html > >Also, the European Labour Studies course at South Bank University, London, >England have placed online a study project on "The Trade Union Movement and >the Internet" by one of their students, Marie Dancsok. Marie was an activist >in the United Nurses of Alberta before signing up for the ELS course. > >Her project can be found on URL: > >http://www.gn.apc.org/labournet/sbu/internet.html > > ><---- End Forwarded Message ----> > > 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 _____________________________________ | "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 meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sun Nov 10 11:59:15 1996 Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 09:51:24 -0800 (PST) To: can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu, LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu, preeve@igc.org, tsampson@sfsu.edu, carre@radmail.harvard.edu, jrfine@mit.edu, gcross@aol.com, LEMBCKE@hcacad.holycross.edu, jkurz@igc.org, levy@umbsky.cc.umb.edu, david.montgomery@yale.edu, bnissen@indiana.edu, sscipe1@icarus.cc.uic.edu, mstone@umbsky.cc.umb.edu, Zeitlin@soc.sscnet.ucla.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Universities as a Space of Resistance Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: crossrm@binghamton.edu >Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 21:27:28 -0500 (EST) >From: "Robert P. Marzec, Editor Crossings" >X-Sender: crossrm@bingsun3 >To: aseauw@igc.apc.org, smoon@college.antioch.edu, ckile@bgnet.bgsu.edu, > dmc@columbia.edu, cegeorge@silver.ucs.indiana.edu, farnum@lawrence.edu, > ald6@lehich.edu, HALFMANN@SOCGATE.SOC.NYU.EDU, > fishe@rookery.acns.nwu.edu, ktaylor@acs.wooster.edu, > tiffany.n.west@dartmouth.edu, mari.bonfant%goucher@wb3ffv.ampr.org, > j.a.collett@massey.ac.nz, galilee@student.umass.edu, > wirtzmd@cmsvax.uwec.edu, mhiggins@wscgate.wsc.edu, > pip@uclink4.berkeley.edu, Meisenscher@igc.apc.org >Subject: Universities as a Space of Resistance > >To All Recipients: > >A number of disturbing conservative trends and events have coalesced in >the academic arena in campuses across the nation over the past few years: >the eradication of affirmative action at UC, the erasure of diversity >representation and diversity course requirements at SUNY Binghamton, the >rush to privatize university systems in a number of states, the State's >attempts to reduce large percentages of students loans, the failure of >many disciplines to address the problem of the job market, the lack of >student coalitions and activism on many campuses, the dismissal of what >student-professor protests in the sixties accomplished, the >pedagogical trend to teach radical ideas as commodifiable knowledge, and >more. > >These issues need to be thematized at length--and now. To this end, I'd >like to invite concerned graduate students in all humanities disciplines >to submit full-length articles to a new counter-disciplinary journal of >philosophical, cultural, and literary resistance called _Crossings_. >_Crossings_, an international journal published twice a year, is edited >and managed by an interdepartmental collective of >graduate students at SUNY Binghamton and supported by an advisory panel of >progressive faculty members. > >We're still looking for a few more articles for our first issue, which >focuses specifically on the topic of "Universities as a Space of >Resistance." How can university communities influence sites of cultural >production and the future of education in order to offer alternatives to >apparatuses of the State and to the dominant culture's prohibitive modes >of knowledge production: economic struggles, philosophical issues, >political agendas, literary theories, etc? What is at stake in the move >to privatize education? How might different disciplinary fields form >communities with other disciplines: postcolonial studies with gender >studies, neo-Marxists with Heideggerians, gay/lesbian/bisexual studies >with rhetoric programs, medieval studies with twentieth-century studies? >What would be the philosophical and historical character of these >communities? Ultimately, upon what "ground" would a counter-disciplinary >community of resistance be based and how would it differ from communities >grounded in "identity politics"? And what would be the role of these >communities as set against the background of contemporary economies of >meaning and reality? > >_Crossings_ invites submissions from both graduate students and >professors. > >The deadline for our first issue is Dec. 20. > >All correspondence should be sent to the English Dept. at Binghamton >University, Binghamton NY 13902-6000. > >Web Site: "http://english.adm.binghamton.edu/crossings/crossngs.htm" > > >Sincerely, > >Robert P. Marzec, Editor Crossings >English Department >Binghamton University > >crossrm@binghamton.edu > > 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 _____________________________________ | "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 adamwolf@cats.ucsc.edu Mon Nov 11 01:26:02 1996 Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 00:32:05 -0800 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Adam Jay Wolfson Subject: Passenger and Cruise Ship Workers Dear Labor-Rappers, I am seeking information and/or resources on passenger and cruise ship workers, both past and present. I am doing a Senior History Thesis at the University of California, Santa Cruz and I am planning to discuss this occupation from a number of different angles. Topics I would like to touch on are: the different nationalities over the years who have worked in this occupation, the interaction between the workers and passengers, the work, wages and hours of these these workers, and succesful and unsuccesful attempts to organize cruise ship crew. I would like to concentrate on crew who interact with passengers on a limited basis, such as room and dining room stewards, and crew who are always out of the public eye. Any information or resouces that are known of out there would be extremely helpful. In Solidarity, Adam Wolfson UCSC, Merrill College #747 200 McLaughlin Drive Santa Cruz, CA 95064 adamwolf@cats.ucsc.edu From wkramer@ucla.edu Mon Nov 11 11:22:17 1996 Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 10:08:35 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Interested in helping form a permanent labor support organization at UCLA which can help connect faculty and staff at UCLA to labor campaigns to organize tortilla workers, garment workers, and strawberry workers? The first of a series of planning meeting will be held on Wednesday November 13 from 8:30--10:00 AM at the UCLA Labor Center. Representatives from LAMAP, Common Threads (a community organization that supports garment worker organizing), the UCLA Labor Center, and the United Farm Workers will be there to discuss upcoming campaigns, and talk about how to build a campus organization at UCLA to help link students and faculty to these campaigns. Please let me know if you can attend this meeting. If you cannot attend this meeting, but would like to be kept informed of upcoming meetings, please let me know. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X William Kramer X X UCLA LAMAP Coordinator X X 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor X X Los Angeles, CA 90024 X X 310-794-0698 X X 310-794-8017 fax X X wkramer@ucla.edu X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From wkramer@ucla.edu Tue Nov 12 10:20:55 1996 Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 09:06:47 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: SAGE Strike at UCLA: Nov 18-22 I am forwarding a call for support of the upcoming strike by academic student employees at UCLA who are members of SAGE/ UAW To: Friends of SAGE/UAW in the labor movement From: Susan Conrad, John Medearis Re: Our upcoming strike and SAGE/UAW support letters As you may already know, the SAGE/UAW executive board has now set the dates for our upcoming five-day strike for November 18 to November 22. We would appreciate any support you can lend us before and during our strike. Of course, we understand that many unionized UCLA employees are limited by their contracts from taking sympathy actions. 1) One powerful way you could help us is by communicating your support of our campaign to Chancellor Young. Attached please find the suggested text of a letter we hope you will edit to your satisfaction and send on your letterhead to Chancellor Young in support of SAGE/UAW's campaign for recognition. Please do feel free to edit the letter to suit your needs. It would be very helpful if you could send your letter to Chancellor Young as soon as possible. We would appreciate your faxing us a copy of your letter when you send it. The SAGE/UAW fax number is (310) 824-0439. 2) During the strike week, our picket lines will be up by 7 a.m. each morning. It would be great to have some of your members or staff join us on the picket lines for half an hour or an hour on their way in to work or during their lunch breaks. We would appreciate the loan of bullhorns or other amplification equipment for use on the picket lines during the strike week. 3) On Wednesday, November 20, we will be having a Labor and Community Solidarity day. This would be a particularly good day to have members join us on the picket line. The main focus of the day will be a rally, to begin at 3:30 at Murphy Hall on the UCLA campus. We would appreciate having your members and staff join us for the rally. Please contact John Medearis or Mike Miller with any questions about coordinating your support with our strike plans. Either can be reached at SAGE/UAW's office, but you can also reach John at (310) 572-7971 or Mike at (310) 396-4624. Thank you very much for your help! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx Chancellor Charles Young 2147 Murphy Hall University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 90095 (310) 825-2151 Dear Chancellor Young: I am writing you to express strong support for the Student Association of Graduate Employees (SAGE/UAW) and its campaign for recognition. SAGE/UAW's members--teaching assistants, research assistants, readers and tutors--provide essential services to the university, and deserve the same rights all workers should enjoy in a democratic society. They have deserved recognition ever since their card drive in 1994. Recent events only underscore the justice of their position. As you know, a Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) judge ruled in September that teaching assistants, readers and tutors--but not research assistants--are employees of the university and have collective bargaining rights under state law. Following this decision, SAGE/UAW took a very reasonable position. The union decided, despite its disagreement with the part of the ruling concerning research assistants, to accept it as a valid interpretation of the current law. SAGE/UAW then called on you to implement the decision by granting recognition for teaching assistants, readers, and tutors. We urge you to accept this offer and stop using the legal system to deny workers their democratic rights. Fighting SAGE/UAW and its sister-unions has already cost millions in public funds. It has not been money well spent. A majority of your own academic student employees want to begin collective bargaining. A PERB judge supports collective bargaining for these workers. Universities across the country--from Rutgers to the University of Michigan, to the University of Oregon--now engage in collective bargaining with their academic student employees. If you refuse to grant recognition, you will inflict a painful strike on the UCLA campus. And while we recognize that such a job action will disrupt the educational routine in the short run, we fully support these academic student employees' decision to strike for one week this fall to gain recognition. Not only is a one-week strike fully warranted, in view of your continued refusal to grant recognition, it also shows respect for the invaluable services that SAGE/UAW's members provide to the university community. My union would also stand firmly behind SAGE/UAW if the union were forced to strike for a longer period of time at some later date. [Suggested language, for campus locals only:] A strike will place a special burden on the members of [union/local]. Many of our members have, as individuals, deep moral objections to crossing a picket line. [Alternative 1, for locals not bound by no-strike clauses:] I expect that many will refuse to cross SAGE/UAW's lines. [Alternative 2, for other locals:] I trust that there will be no reprisals against those who choose to follow the dictates of their consciences and not cross. Chancellor Young, we urge you to accept SAGE/UAW's offer, and grant recognition for teaching assistants, readers and tutors. Sincerely yours, etc. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X William Kramer X UCLA LAMAP Coordinator X 1001 Gayley--2nd Floor X Los Angeles, CA 90024 X 310-794-0698 X 310-794-8017 fax X wkramer@ucla.edu XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX From wkramer@ucla.edu Wed Nov 13 16:19:03 1996 Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 14:55:20 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: justice for janitors march 11/14 >URGENT!!!!! Janitors at USC/Norris are fighting for their lives! > >What: March for janitors of USC/Norris >When: this Thursday, Nov. 14, at 12noon >Where: meet at the main entrance to County General Hospital, 1200 N. State >St., in East L.A. >Why: The federal government has filed a complaint against ServiceMaster for >intimidating and harassing the janitors at USC/Norris, who are speaking up >about their lack of affordable healthcare, liveable wages, and respect. Even >janitors who have been cleaning the hospital for 7 years are still making >less than $6 per hour. > >Please come out and support the janitors! There are folks coming out from >UCLA, so, if you need a ride, or have any questions, call Joah Lee at 213/ >680-9567, ext. 412. > > 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 Thu Nov 14 09:07:59 1996 Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 07:50:09 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: Citizenship Classes LAMAP is starting a new series of citizenship/ know your rights classes on Tuesday nights at 6 PM at our office in Huntington Park (3114 Gage Avenue). We need people to help teach the classes, which would mean working with small groups of people who are learning the 100 questions that are on the citizenship exam. Volunteers could also help with presentations on worker and civil rights. Let me know if you are interested in helping out, or contact Joaquin Meneses, LAMAP Community Organizer at 213-585-4596. 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 abudak@alumni.ysu.edu Fri Nov 15 18:14:47 1996 Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 20:09:26 -0500 From: Tony Budak Subject: Re: Nov 21, 22 Global Conference **Scholarships available To: COMM-ORG@uicvm.uic.edu, H-Labor@h-net.msu.edu, LABOR@SHSU.EDU, LABNEWS@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, oneunion@lever.lever.com FOR YOUR INFORMATION - please excuse, any cross posting Cheers, Peace, and Fondest Regards, Tony Budak <---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 08:56:12 -0800 Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy From: Kirsten Snow Spalding Subject: Re: Nov 21, 22 Global Conference **Scholarships available The Center for Labor Research and Education presents a two-day conference LABOR AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, WORKING IN THE AMERICAS NOVEMBER 21-22, 1996 / Hs LORDSHIPS, BERKELEY MARINA JOHN "JACK" HENNING Executive Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus, California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO Conference Honorary Chair RICHARD TRUMKA Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO Keynote Speaker How do workers and their Unions survive in a rapidly changing global economy? What are the challenges labor faces and what are the solutions, tools and strategies to deal with the challenges? Labor in the Global Economy, Working in the Americas will address these pivotal questions in a conference that will open a dialogue between labor leaders in the United States with labor leaders from other countries in the Americas. Labor in the Global Economy, Working in the America is a joint effort between the University and Labor to explore and respond to new forms of cooperation and link the latest academic research with labor activities. OTHER CONFERENCE PRESENTERS Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Congressman, Mexico Morton Bahr, President, Communication Workers of America Andy Banks, Director of International Affairs, Teamsters Ron Blackwell, Director of Corporate Affairs, AFL-CIO Stanley Gacek, Associate Director of International and Foreign Affairs, UFCW Teresa Ghilarducci, Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame; Assistant Director, Department of Employee Benefits, AFL-CIO Dolores Huerta, Secretary-Treasurer, United Farm Workers Charles Kernaghan, National Labor Committee Bob King, Regional Director, United Auto Workers, Michigan Bertha Luján, Executive Member, Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), Mexico Rafael Marino,* Executive Member, Telephone Workers Union, Mexico Dick Martin, Secretary-Treasurer, Canadian Labour Council Eliseo Medino,* Vice-President, Service Employees International Union Louis Moore,* Director of International Affairs, Communication Workers of America Karen Nussbaum, Director, Working Women's Department, AFL-CIO Art Pulaski, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO Harley Shaiken, Professor, University of California at Berkeley Altemir Tortelli, Vice-President, Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (CUT), Brazil Miguel Vega, President, CONTEVECH (Textile Union); Vice-President, International Textile Federation Union; Executive Member, CUT Chile * Not Confirmed as of date of printing CO-SPONSORED AND/OR ENDORSED BY t AFL-CIO Region Six t Alameda Central Labor Council t California Federation of Teachers t California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO t Center for Latin American Studies, UCB t Communication Workers of America t Contra Costa Labor Council t Institute of International Studies, UCB t International and Area Studies, UCB t International Union of Electrical Workers t Operating Engineers Local 3 t San Francisco Labor Council t San Mateo Labor Council t Service Employees International Union Local 790 t Teamsters (IBT) t UNITE t United Auto Workers t United Farm Workers t United Food and Commercial Workers Labor in the Global Economy, Working in the Americas is an opportunity for the Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California at Berkeley and the labor movement to address global issues that affect working people. The main issues to be addressed at this conference include organizing, bargaining, trade, labor migration, and gender issues. Rich Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO will be our Keynote Speaker Thursday night at dinner. Rich will discuss his personal experience and tactics in bringing international labor pressure on multinational conglomerates. He will also discuss the new global coalition of unions. Dick Martin from Canada and Morty Bahr, President of the CWA will follow up with their personal experiences with global cooperation and how it relates to local labor. One of the highlights of the conference will be remarks from our Honorary Chair, Jack Henning. Jack has been in the forefront of global cooperation for many years. The seminars and plenary sessions will include discussions on bargaining, organizing and trade. Bob King, Regional Director of the United Auto Workers will offer inspiring remarks on economic justice and organizing. Dolores Huerta, Secretary-Treasurer of the United Farm Workers will discuss the strawberry workers joint campaign with Mexico. Karen Nussbaum, AFL-CIO, and Bertha Lujan, FAT Mexico will address women's issues as well as organizing issues in the global economy. Harley Shaiken, Professor of Education, UCB, will discuss NAFTA in the trade sessions along with Altemir Tortelli from Brazil and Miguel Vega from Chile. It will be interesting to hear perspectives of trade unionists from other countries. Teresa Ghilarducci, Andy Banks and Ron Blackwell will offer provocative sessions on strategic campaigns using union capital. The ability to use union pension funds to influence policy is pivotal in the global economy. Art Pulaski will address labor's political agenda and other seminars will address issues dealing with labor migration in the Americas. Charlie Kernaghan promises to spice up our lunch with his presentation on the plight of workers in Central America. He will discuss the Kathie Lee Gifford campaign and the campaign with Disney. A pre-conference session will be held on campus and will feature Adolfo Aguilar Zinser. As a Mexican Congressman, he is one of Mexico's finest speakers. His remarks will include the political and economic situation in Mexico today and its effect on Labor in all of the Americas. The other seminars will include academic research with perspectives from trade unionists in other countries and faculty members on labor, organizing and migration. It is our intention to have a lively, social and educational conference with interaction from the participants. There are receptions planned Wednesday and Thursday night and time built in for socializing and discussions. We have also tried to balance our plenary sessions with smaller seminars. Some of the seminars will be repeated to allow access by all the participants. Please select the seminars in advance so we can adjust our schedule and room size. CONFERENCE REGISTRATION must be accompanied by a check or purchase order for the full amount ($125 per person). Registration fee includes breakfast, lunch and breaks Thursday and Friday. Registration is limited, so please mail in form by November 8, 1996. The Thursday DINNER RECEPTION is an additional $65 per person. A set number of scholarships will be available for participants who may need assistance. Please contact Bob Redlo at 643-7213 for more information. CANCELLATIONS AND REFUNDS: A $50 administrative fee will be charged for cancellations. No refunds will be given for cancelations made after November 15,1996. Hs LORDSHIPS is located at 199 Seawall Drive on the Berkeley Marina. Directions to Hs Lordships will be included in the registration packet. Free parking is available. Out of town participants can book rooms at the HOLIDAY INN EMERYVILLE, 1800 Powell Street, by calling 510/658-9300. Special conference room rates of $82.00 will be available for reservations made before October 20, 1996. Please request the group rate for "Labor in the Global Economy." A shuttle bus from Holiday Inn to Hs Lordships will be arranged. Special thanks to SEIU Local 790 for donating the mailing of this brochure and to the California Teachers Association for their assistance in printing. Special Pre-Conference Roundtable Discussion ORGANIZING, LABOR, AND AND IMMIGRATION IN THE AMERICAS Moses Hall, University of California at Berkeley Wednesday, November 20, 1996 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. The Economic and Political Crisis in Mexico and the Americas 2:15 - 3:45 P.M. Labor and Immigration 4:00 - 6:00 P.M. Challenges for Labor in the Americas 6:00 - 7:00 P.M. RECEPTION Please call for more information and parking. P R O G R A M THURSDAY November 21, 1996 8:00 - 8:45 Registration and CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST 8:45 - 9:00 Welcoming Remarks 9:00 - 10:30 Plenary Session Challenges for Labor in the Americas 10:30 - 10:45 BREAK 10:45 - 12:15 Seminars A-D (Select One) 12:30 - 1:30 LUNCH 1:45 - 3:15 Seminars A-C, E (Select One) 3:15 - 3:30 BREAK 3:30 - 5:00 Plenary Session Challenges to Organizing in the Americas 5:00 - 6:30 COCKTAIL HOUR 6:30 - 9:30 DINNER FRIDAY November 22, 1996 8:00 - 9:00 CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST 9:00 - 10:30 Plenary Session Trade, Labor, and the Americas 10:30 - 10:45 BREAK 10:45 -12:15 Seminars D-G (Select One) 12:30 - 3:00 LUNCH and Plenary Session Strategies, Solutions, and Tools for Labor Cooperation in the Americas SEMINARS A. International Cooperation and Labor Solidarity, Joint Bargaining and Cooperative Campaigns B. Women in the Global Economy C. Labor's Agenda and Politics D. Labor Migration Issues in the Americas E. Strategic Campaigns Using Union Capital F. The Maquiladoras G. Alternatives for Development Registration Form LABOR IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, WORKING IN THE AMERICAS November 21-22, 1996 - Hs Lordships, Berkeley Marina q $125 Conference Registration Fee is enclosed. q $190 Conference, Reception and Dinner Registration Fee is enclosed. q $65 to attend Thursday Reception and Dinner only is enclosed. q $1,000 to co-sponsor the conference is enclosed. Co-sponsorship includes 10 Thursday Reception and Dinner seats. Checks should be made payable to "U.C. Regents." All registrations must be accompanied by check or purchase order for the full amount. Name Title Phone Organization Address City, State, ZIP Clip and mail by November 8, 1996 to: Center for Labor Research and Education / Institute of Industrial Relations 2521 Channing Way #5555 / Berkeley, CA 94720-5555 / 510 642 0323 Seminar Preference (please list letter in order of preference) THU a.m. THU p.m. FRI a.m. Dinner Choice: q Chicken q Seafood Ma. Teresa Ojeda Publications & Programs INSTUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 2521 Channing Way #5555 Berkeley, CA 94720-5555 510 643 2355 vox 510 642 6432 fax ojeda@uclink.berkeley.edu <---- End Forwarded Message ----> From wkramer@ucla.edu Fri Nov 15 18:53:53 1996 Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 17:48:01 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: Calling all Labor activists >Thanks for your interest in setting up a permanent labor support >organization at UCLA. As you know, such an organization can help connect >students, faculty and staff at UCLA to current campaigns around the city and >create a stable structure which encourages even more strategic activism. >There has been great response to the general idea of a campus labor >solidarity group and we are excited about its potential. If you are at >another campus and are interested in developing a similar organization >there, please join us in exploring new ground. > >Currently, we are still at the outreach stage to include everyone who may be >interested in being part of the group and influencing the direction of such >an organization/network. If you know anyone who should be informed about >this please pass on this message to them. We will continue to have a few >initial planning meetings and encourage you to attend (or contact William >Kramer, Anibel Comelo or Rebecca Mead). We will try to post minutes of the >meetings when possible. We would also appreciate your enthusiastic comments, >suggestions and ideas via cyberspace or the old-fashioned method - the >phone. You may reach any of us at the Labor Center at (310) 794-0385. > >The next meeting will be on: > >Wednesday, November 20 >6:30 - 8:00 pm >at the UCLA Labor Center > >BE THERE! > > 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 meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sat Nov 16 11:08:43 1996 Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 09:26:54 -0800 (PST) To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: The Labour Movement & the Internet: The Website Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >> ><---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> >Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 13:49:22 -0800 >Reply-To: teldor@teldor.com >From: Eric Lee >Subject: The Labour Movement & the Internet: The Website > >This month, Pluto Press in Britain is publishing "The Labour Movement >and the Internet: The New Internationalism," a book which I have >authored. To accompany the book, I have just now launched the Labor & >the Internet website, which includes the following: > >* The Labour Web Site of the Week. Each week, we'll be selecting one >from among the hundreds (maybe thousands) of Web sites put up by trade unions >around the world. Our goal is to find good examples of Web design and content. >(Please send in your suggestions!) > >* The Table of Contents of "The Labour Movement and the Internet", as >well as selections from the text. We're not putting the whole book >online (yet) -- but you can get a taste from these generous tidbits. > >* Updates and corrections to the book -- including new labour resources >on the net. The Internet is changing all the time. This site keeps the >printed book always up to date. > >* A chance to interact with the author -- you can ask questions and make >comments. We'll even be posting a selection of online questions and >answers. > >* Information on additional Pluto Press books about the labour >movement. Pluto Press (in case you don't know) is probably the foremost >publisher in the English language of books for the Left. > >* A convenient -- and secure -- way to order this and other books on >the labour movement. You can't get more secure than this: we won't even ask you >for credit card number! > >The site is located at the following address: > >http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2808/labour01.html > >I look forward to reading your comments and hearing from you. Thanks. > >Eric Lee >-- >Eric Lee >Kibbutz Ein Dor, D.N. Yezreel 19335, Israel >URL: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2808/ > > ><---- End Forwarded Message ----> > > 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 _____________________________________ | "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 meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sat Nov 16 11:15:10 1996 Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 09:26:47 -0800 (PST) To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Latest Nike action packet Sender: meisenscher@igc.org > >Dear supporter of the Nike campaign: > >Please accept my apologies for taking so long in sending you this >updated Nike action packet. The volume of interest in the Nike >campaign has made it difficult for me to keep up with your email. >Also, we just sent our latest Campaign for Labor Rights >newsletter off to the printer. ("See below, under further >resources.") But, at last, I am getting this off to you! > >We are thrilled so that many of you want to help win justice for >Nike's production workers. A victory in this campaign can make a >great difference in the lives of Nike's workers in Asia and other >parts of the world. > >This is our most recent NIKE ACTION PACKET. We hope that you >will find it a useful tool. It features two types of action: > >1) Letters to Nike > >2) Leafleting at Nike outlets: Nike Town, Foot Locker or some >other store featuring Nike shoes and apparel in your community. > >Please let us know if you are planning a leafleting event at a >Nike outlet in your community. We may be able to help you link >up with other interested people in your area. And we want to >know what is happening in the growing Nike campaign. > >You will find the following materials in this packet: > >* a letter to Nike CEO Phil Knight > >* a sample press release NOTE: You will need to add the > particulars for your community. > >* answers to frequently asked questions > >* further resources for information on Nike > >* suggestions for leafleting event organizers > >There are two additional items which we have available: > >1) the master for a leaflet focused on Nike's labor abuses in >VIETNAM. Please send us your postal address if you would like to >have this (free) item sent to you. > >2) the master for a leaflet focused on Nike's labor abuses in >INDONESIA. Please send us your postal address if you would like >to have this (free) item sent to you. Some of you already have >received this with earlier mailings of our action packet. > >NOTE: The Vietnam-oriented leaflet calls for a Nike boycott. >The Indonesian-oriented leaflet implies a boycott. Some groups >have called for a boycott. Other groups which are part of the >Nike campaign have not called for a boycott or may have a policy >against supporting any boycotts.. Campaign for Labor Rights has >not taken a position on this question. We provide these leaflets >as a resource for you to use or not, depending on the needs and >the policies of your own organization. > >Don't hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance. >Thanks for your support. Stay in touch. > >In solidarity, > > >Trim Bissell, Coordinator >Campaign for Labor Rights >clr@igc.apc.org >(541) 344-5410 >web site: http://www.compugraph.com/clr > > > > > > >1) LETTER TO NIKE CEO PHIL KNIGHT: > >Please print out and sign the following letter to Nike CEO Phil >Knight. It is helpful to the Nike campaign to know how many >letters are sent and who is sending them. We ask you to return >this letter to: Campaign for Labor Rights, 1247 "E" Street SE, >Washington, DC 20003. We will bundle the letters together, with >a cover letter, and send them to Phil Knight. Thank you for >taking the time to make your voice heard. > > > >Philip H. Knight >Chairman and CEO >Nike Inc. >One Bowerman Drive >Beaverton, OR 97005 > >Dear Mr. Knight: > >On November 3, an article by Australian labor scholar Anita Chan >was published in the Washington Post. She described Chinese shoe >factories -- producing for Nike and other companies -- where >supervisors submit workers to a military boot camp style of >control. > >On October 17, the CBS program 48 Hours had a segment on Nike's >labor rights abuses in Vietnam, including: beatings, sexual >harassment and forcing workers to kneel for extended periods with >their arms held in the air. > >In June, Life magazine carried a story by Sydney Schanberg >(author of The Killing Fields), depicting children sewing soccer >balls for Nike in Pakistan for 60 cents a day. > >On March 16, the New York Times reported an incident in which a >worker was locked in a room at a Nike shoe factory in Indonesia >and interrogated for seven days by the military, which demanded >to know more about his labor activities. > >These are but a tiny portion of the carefully documented news >stories which demonstrate a systematic pattern of abuse in your >overseas production facilities. > >How have Nike senior management reacted to these horrifying >revelations? Nike spokespeople attack those who have revealed >the truth and they try to pass off this pattern of abuse as >merely isolated incidents. Nike spokepeople shrug their >shoulders and say: "We've already dealt with that." In fact, >Nike deals with such incidents ONLY when Nike's critics take >these incidents to the media -- the very critics whose >reputations Nike tries to taint. > >And you, Mr. Knight, seemed very interested in announcing a two- >for-one stock split at the annual stockholders meeting this year, >but you only reluctantly addressed the issue of workers' rights >-- as a public relations problem! In your remarks, you >misrepresented an incident in which 15 Vietnamese Nike shoe >workers were struck on the face, head and neck by a supervisor; >you minimized the incident, stating that ONE worker was struck on >the ARM. Is it possible that you would not take the trouble to >find out the truth? Do you have such a hunger for multiplying >your multi-billion dollar fortune that you have no concern at all >for those who have enriched you through their labors? > >The international campaign to win justice for Nike's production >workers asks Nike to: > >* allow truly independent monitoring of its factories >* respect the right of workers to form unions >* pay a living wage >* stop using child labor > >Recently, Nike has made vague promises of instituting independent >monitoring sometime in the future. Nike claims to be studying >the issue. Four Indonesian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) >have offered to provide truly independent monitoring of Nike shoe >factories in Indonesia. These NGOs already have a solid >reputation for doing worker interviews. And yet, Nike HAS NOT >EVEN BOTHERED TO ANSWER LETTERS from the NGOs!!! > >While Nike has made a number of public relations moves in the >past few months in attempt to improve its image, Nike is not >dealing at all with the issues. Mr. Knight, Nike has a problem >which your public relations department cannot solve. Nike has a >human rights problem. > >As a consumer and a concerned citizen, I am appalled that Nike so >callously puts profits over people. Until I hear from reputable >human rights organizations that Nike is willing to clean up its >act, count me as one more supporter of the Nike campaign. > >Sincerely, > > >_____________________________________________ >name signed > > >_____________________________________________ >name printed > > >_____________________________________________ >street address > > >_____________________________________________ >city state/province zip/postal code > > > > > > >2) SAMPLE PRESS RELASE: > >FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE > >DATE: > >PRESS CONTACTS: > > Local: > National: Trim Bissell (541) 344-5410 > Campaign for Labor Rights > Jeff Ballinger (201) 768-8120 > Press for Change > > > LOCAL ACTIVISTS SEEK JUSTICE FOR NIKE WORKERS > >Store to be leafleted: >Location: >Date and time: >Organized locally by: > >Local activists will distribute leaflets at a Nike outlet as part >of an international campaign. The goal of this campaign is to >ensure that Nike will: > >* permit truly independent monitoring of its factories > >* respect the right of free association (union activity) without >interference and repression by military and governments (see >reference to NY Times story below) > >* pay a living wage > >* stop using child labor (see Life Magazine reference below) > > >NEWS STORIES: > >* In the June '96 issue of Life Magazine, Sydney Schanberg > (author of The Killing Fields) documented child labor being > used in Pakistan in the production of Nike soccer balls -- > for 60 cents a day. > >* The March 16 edition of the New York Times carried a story > on union busting by Nike shoe contractors in Indonesia. One > worker was "locked in a room at the plant and interrogated > for seven days by the military, which demanded to know more > about his labor activities." > >* The October 17 edition of the CBS program 48 Hours had a > segment on Nike's labor rights abuses in Vietnam, including: > beatings, sexual harassment and forcing workers to kneel for > extended periods with their arms held in the air. > >* On November 3, an article by Australian labor scholar Anita > Chan was published in the Washington Post. She described > Chinese shoe factories -- producing for Nike and other > companies -- where supervisors submit workers to a military > boot camp style of control. > > >CALLS FOR INDEPENDENT MONITORING: > >* Among the many mainstream publications which have called for > Nike to allow truly independent monitoring of its factories > is The Oregonian newspaper, published in Nike's hometown, > Portland, Oregon: "It is fair to ask, as some human rights > groups have, whether Nike's performance lives up to the > standards it professes. The only way to determine that is > for Nike -- and other companies -- to allow for greater > independent monitoring of their operations in the developing > world... Nike's response -- that it has conducted audits > along these lines for five years -- is inadequate. Nike > could, and should, take the lead by helping create an > independent international standard-setting and monitoring > system. Other groups of businesses and industries have > successfully -- and voluntarily -- developed and enforced > standards in this manner." > >* A Canadian human rights group, Development and Peace, asked > to monitor conditions to verify NIKE's own "Code of Conduct" > at Nike-contracted factories. Nike refused. The group then > collected 86,500 signatures on a petition to Nike. > >* An unprecedented shareholder resolution asking for > independent monitoring of Nike-contracted factories was > presented at the Nike stockholder meeting on September 16. > The resolution was sponsored by a member of the Interfaith > Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of 275 > Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish institutional > investors. > > > > > > >3) ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: > >Question: In spite of the low wages they offer, aren't Nike jobs >a good option for workers in desperately poor countries like >Indonesia? > >Nike takes advantage of desperate situations. Even in Indonesia, >Nike jobs are considered low-wage. Nike can afford to do >better -- much better -- by its workers. > > >Question: Are consumers willing to pay more for their shoes if >Nike raises the wages of its workers? > >Nike makes record profits by gouging both the worker and the >consumer. Nike easily could pay its workers a living wage, >without raising prices by even one penny. > > >Question: What about Nike's claim that they pay more than the >minimum wage in Indonesia? > >Only through forced overtime do Nike workers make more than the >minimum wage -- and then they often aren't paid for all of the >overtime hours they have been forced to work. Nike has refused >to allow independent monitors into its factories to verify pay >levels, benefits and working conditions. > > >Question: Hasn't Nike promised to start using independent >monitors? > >Nike makes many claims. Meanwhile, they refuse even to talk with >the Indonesian nongovernmental organizations which are highly >qualified to provide truly independent monitoring. > > >Question: Don't photographs prove Nike factories to be clean and >well lit? > >You don't produce clean, white sneakers in a grungy basement. >Nike treats its shoes much better than its workers. Working >conditions include: forced overtime, physical abuse, sexual >harassment, oppressive heat, denial of bathroom access, exposure >to dangerous fumes and intimidation by the military. > > >Question: Hasn't Nike denied using child labor? > >A Life Magazine article documented the use of child labor in the >production of soccer balls for Nike in Pakistan. Only after the >article appeared did Nike decide to do something about this >problem -- and then Nike criticized the author of the article for >exposing the problem. Recent evidence also suggests that Nike >employs child labor in its Indonesian shoe factories. > > >Question: Are you asking Nike to leave Indonesia? > >No, we're asking Nike to stop its cut-and-run policy of prowling >the world in search of new lowpoints in wages and repression to >which it can shift operations. > > >Question: Hasn't Nike joined a business-and-labor coaliton >brought together by the U.S. Labor Department to create a "no >sweat" label? > >Nike acts as a reactionary force in that coalition, trying to >keep the standards for the "no sweat" label so low as to be >meaningless -- while hypocritically using their presence in the >coalition to depict themselves as concerned and progressive. > > >Question: Where do you get your information? > >Nike's Indonesian workers. Respected human rights organizations. >Nike's own public statements and documents. The Washington Post, >CBS News, Life Magazine, the New York Times, Ms. Magazine, and >many other mainstream news sources. > > >Question: Who is conducting this campaign? > >A number of U.S. and Canadian organizations coordinate their work >as the Working Group on Nike. Currently they are: Campaign for >Labor Rights, Global Exchange, Development and Peace, Press for >Change, U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project, the pension board >of the United Methodist Church, Informed Investors, Progressive >Asset Management, Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, >Justice Do it Nike, the National Organization for Women (NOW) and >Amnesty International/USA. The North American campaign is part >of a global effort, involving dozens of organizations which are >cooperating to win justice for Nike's production workers. > > > > > > >4) FURTHER RESOURCES FOR INFORMATION ON NIKE: > >The Campaign for Labor Rights newsletter reports in depth on the >Nike campaign and other important labor rights struggles around >the world. Send an email with your postal address to >clr@igc.apc.org if you would like to receive a sample copy. To >subscribe, write a check for $35.00 made out to Campaign for >Labor Rights and mail it to Campaign for Labor Rights, 1247 "E" >Street SE, Washington, DC 20003. > >If you have access to Internet, you can check out the Campaign >for Labor Rights web site: http://www.compugraph.com/clr > >The following are newsgroups where we post Nike alerts. Some are >Peacenet newsgroups, some Internet. All our alerts are posted by >clr2: > > labr.announcements > labr.general > labr.garment > labor.global > labr.int.left > labr.newsline > alt.society.labor-unions > misc.activism.progressive > reg.seasia > reg.sasia > alt.activism > reg.indonesia > soc.culture.vietnamese > alt.news-media > alt.journalism > >Justice Do It Nike, an organization in Portland, Oregon (Nike's >hometown), has put together a thick booklet with reprints of >media stories on Nike and with essential documents of the Nike >campaign. They recently updated the booklet and have sent it off >to the printer for another edition. Copies should be available >in one to two weeks. This useful resource can be purchased >through Campaign for Labor Rights. The cost is $8.00 for >destinations within the United States and $10.00 for destinations >outside the United States. To order a copy, write a check made >out to Campaign for Labor Rights and mail it to Campaign for >Labor Rights, Nike Production Primer, 477 E 32nd Avenue, Eugene, >OR 97405. Be sure to include your postal address. > >CBS "48 Hours" segment on Nike labor abuses in Vietnam, broadcast >on October 17. Video includes entire one-hour show, minus >commercials. $29.95 plus $3.95 shipping (taxes depend on state), >Master Card or Visa. CBS News, 1-(800) 338-4847. > >Vietnam-Nike Fact Sheet, carefully researched by Thuyen Nguyen, >answers Nike's charge that the CBS "48 Hours" report was not >accurate. Available on the CLR web site (see above) or contact >clr@igc.apc.org and ask to have this fact sheet sent to you by >email. > >Nike boycott web site, maintained by Thuyen Nguyen, has a variety >of Nike-related information, with an emphasis on Nike labor >abuses in Vietnam: http://www.saigon.com/~nike > >November 3 article in the Washington Post, written by Australian >labor scholar Anita Chan, describes shoe factories -- producing >for Nike and other companies -- which utilize a military boot >camp type of worker control. Contact clr@igc.apc.org and ask to >have this article sent to you by email. > >Probably the North American best informed on Nike's labor >practices in Indonesia is Jeff Ballinger: Press for Change, P.O. >Box 161, Alpine, NJ 07620, USA ph: (201) 768-8120 fax: (201) >768-5812. He has a newsletter, Nike in Indonesia, which comes >out irregularly. He just published a new edition. Same address. >Six issues: $20.00. Free to teachers. > >Video: "Indonesia: Islands on Fire" documents human rights >abuses in Indonesia and East Timor and exposes how Nike and other >US corporations exploit Indonesian labor. Runs 25 minutes. $50 >for individuals, $100 for institutions. Global Exchange, 1-(800) >497-1994, 2017 Mission Street, Room 303, San Francisco CA 94110, >gx-info@globalexchange.org > > > > > >5) SUGGESTONS FOR EVENT ORGANIZERS: > >Send out press releases about three days before the event. Make >follow-up calls the morning of the event. > >Picket signs increase visibility. Noisemakers (bullhorns, soda >cans partially filled with stones) also help to make your >presence known. > >Before leafleting, explain to the store manager why you are >leafleting. Many store employees welcome our actions although >they may not be able to show their support. > >As participants arrive, give them a copy of: the leaflet and >"answers to frequently asked questions." Let participants know >who the designated media spokespeople are. > >Keep leafleting short: 1-2 hours is fine. If the outlet is in a >mall, you could start on the premises. If asked to leave, you >could then move to the most visible entrance. You might even try >entering the Nike outlet until asked to leave. > > > 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 _____________________________________ | "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 aaron@burn.ucsd.edu Sun Nov 17 04:23:48 1996 Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 03:23:41 -0700 To: "E.M. Durflinger" From: aaron@burn.ucsd.edu (Aaron) Subject: Radical Academics an oxymoron? seac+announce@ecosys.drdr.virginia.edu, Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu, UBUUP-L@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu Comrades, friends, and others, For those who haven't seen the post that I'm responding to, I've included the whole thing as I received it (less useless header lines). Even if you are not in one of the categories of persons for whom it is intended, you may find it interesting for the light it sheds on left academia. My comments are interspersed with the original post. --Aaron --aaron@burn.ucsd.edu >From: "E.M. Durflinger" >Organization: Reunite Pangea Colaition >To: "Alternative BUSI 411" >Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 08:48:24 +0000 >Subject: (Fwd) Universities as a Space of Resistance (fwd) > >------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- >Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 00:33:20 -0500 (EST) >From: "J.C. Garcia Ellin" >To: "Alternative BUSI 411 (TAZ)" >Subject: Universities as a Space of Resistance (fwd) > >Hi Connor. I received this post and thought some people on the list might >like to hear about it. Could you post it in the TAZ. Thank you. > >JC > >*****************STOP THE EXECUTION, FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL***************** >********************VIVA PUERTO RICO LIBRE Y SOCIALISTA******************* Right on! > >To All Recipients: > >A number of disturbing conservative trends and events have coalesced in >the academic arena in campuses across the nation over the past few years: >the eradication of affirmative action at UC, the erasure of diversity >representation and diversity course requirements at SUNY Binghamton, the >rush to privatize university systems in a number of states, the State's >attempts to reduce large percentages of students loans, the failure of >many disciplines to address the problem of the job market, the lack of >student coalitions and activism on many campuses, the dismissal of what >student-professor protests in the sixties accomplished, the pedagogical >trend to teach radical ideas as commodifiable knowledge, and more. > >These issues need to be thematized at length--and now. So far so good, even if a bit of the language is unnecessarily stilted. >To this end, I'd >like to invite concerned graduate students in all humanities disciplines >to submit full-length articles to a new counter-disciplinary journal of >philosophical, cultural, and literary resistance called _Crossings_. Only concerned GRADUATE STUDENTS? Not even an UNDERgraduate student qualifies? You may want Mumia Abu-Jamal to get out of jail, but he can't write for your magazine unless some ruling-class university admits him as a Graduate Student! >_Crossings_, an international journal published twice a year, is edited >and managed by an interdepartmental collective of graduate students at >SUNY Binghamton and supported by an advisory panel of progressive faculty >members. Are there property qualifications for members of the advisory panel? {;->} >We're still looking for a few more articles for our first issue, which >focuses specifically on the topic of "Universities as a Space of >Resistance." How can university communities influence sites of cultural >production and the future of education in order to offer alternatives to >apparatuses of the State and to the dominant culture's prohibitive modes >of knowledge production: economic struggles, philosophical issues, >political agendas, literary theories, etc? What is at stake in the move >to privatize education? How might different disciplinary fields form >communities with other disciplines: postcolonial studies with gender >studies, neo-Marxists with Heideggerians, gay/lesbian/bisexual studies >with rhetoric programs, medieval studies with twentieth-century studies? >What would be the philosophical and historical character of these >communities? Ultimately, upon what "ground" would a counter-disciplinary >community of resistance be based and how would it differ from communities >grounded in "identity politics"? And what would be the role of these >communities as set against the background of contemporary economies of >meaning and reality? One of the things you're apparently resisting is the breakdown of the separation between academic and working-class intellectuals. >_Crossings_ invites submissions from both graduate students and >professors. Professors, too! That's white of you! But I don't think Mumia will qualify that way, either! >The deadline for our first issue is Dec. 20. > >All correspondence should be sent to the English Dept. at Binghamton >University, Binghamton NY 13902-6000. > >Web Site: "http://english.adm.binghamton.edu/crossings/crossngs.htm" > > >Sincerely, > >Robert P. Marzec, Editor Crossings >English Department >Binghamton University > >crossrm@binghamton.edu > Maybe J.C. Garcia Ellin and Connor Durflinger, the forwarders of the above letter, didn't read it carefully or give it much thought before sending it out. If so, I sympathize with their present embarrassment. >Alternative Binghamton University Student Information >Temporary Autonomous Zone at Binghamton University >http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/2680/ > >* To join mailing list: >email bc05319@binghamton.edu with subject: SUBSCRIBE TAZ From emf0551@is.nyu.edu Sun Nov 17 07:42:50 1996 Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 09:42:47 -0500 (EST) From: "Eric M. Fink" To: Labor Research & Action Project Subject: Worker's Rights Board hearing on Workfare (fwd) Information on an upcoming event that should be of interest to Labor-Rappers in New York. For further information about this event, call Dominic Chan at (212) 344-2515. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 09:00:01 -0500 (EST) From: Joseph W Burns Reply-To: lawyers-guild@lists.nyu.edu To: lawyers-guild@NOC.NYU.EDU Subject: Worker's Rights Board hearing on Workfare Jobs with Justice has organized a Workers' Rights Board to hear from people engaged in various struggles and to help organize responses.. Anyway, they are holding a hearing right next to the NYU Law school this Wednesday. Workfare participants will tesstify about their working conditions to the Workers' Rights board panel. Judson Memorial Church 55 Washington Square South Wednesday, November 20, 6-8 PM Panelists Include: Brian McLauglin (Chair) -- President, NYC CLC Angela Falcon -- Inst. for Puerto Rican Policy Megan McLaughlin -- Fed'n of Protestant Welfare Agencies Msgr. Howard Basler -- Diocese of Brooklyn Joseph Murphy -- Former CUNY Chancellor It should be interesting. If you haven't heard any workfare workers speak, you should check it out.. And even if you have, come and show support as they are trying to get a big crowd there. In Solidarity, Joe From wkramer@ucla.edu Mon Nov 18 01:01:08 1996 Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 23:56:30 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: SAGE/UAW Update >To: Friends in the Community and in the Labor Movement >From: SAGE/UAW >Date: November 14, 1996 > > > Thank you for your support of our upcoming strike for recognition, November >18-22! This memo is to provide final details about our strike and about our >planned Labor and Community Solidarity Day, November 20. PLEASE NOTE THAT >WE HAVE ELIMINATED THE PREVIOUSLY-MENTIONED MARCH FROM OUR PLANS FOR >NOVEMBER 20! THE RALLY IS SET TO BEGIN AT 3:30 P.M. > > > LETTER. If you have sent a letter to Chancellor Charles Young, please fax >a copy to us at (310) 824-0439. > > > PICKETING. Our picket lines will be up from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., from >November 18 through November 22 (with the exception of the duration of the >rally). If your staff or members can join us on the picket line, please >have them come to the intersection of Le Conte and Westwood (see map). They >can either stay at this site or be sent on to sites that need support. > > > RALLY. Our Labor and Community Solidary Day rally is to begin at 3:30 p.m. >on November 20 at Murphy Hall on the UCLA campus (see map). Invited >speakers include Miguel Contreras, Secretary-Treasurer of the County >Federation of Labor; Karen Nussbaum, Director of Working Women's Department >of the AFL-CIO; and Kent Wong, Director of the UCLA Labor Center and >President of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. The speaker program >should end by 4:30. > > 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 Wed Nov 20 07:06:57 1996 Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 11:52:54 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: Price Pfister Workers Launch Hunger Strike Nov 21 On Thursday November 21 at 3 PM six laid off employees of Price Pfister will begin a hunger strike to protest the company's cruel treatment of it's largely Latino workforce in the San Fernando Valley community of Pacoima. The company continues to lay off workers, and to date the company has not offered a just severance package. The hunger strike will go on until Thanksgiving eve when the employees will present Price Pfister with the "Turkey of the Year Award" to call attention to corporate mistreatment of its workforce. Workers will be joined on Thursday November 21 by religious and community leaders. RIDES ARE AVAILABLE FOR ANYONE IN THE UCLA/ WEST LA AREA, LEAVING AT 2:00 FROM THE UCLA LABOR CENTER. CALL ME AT 310-794-0698 IF YOU WANT TO GO. Price Pfister is located at 13500 Paxton Street in Pacoima. Background: Price Pfister, a faucet manufacturer located in Pacoima, has layed off workers over 300 workers in the last year in order to shift production to Mexico as a way to increase their profits. The approximately 1000 mostly Latino workers, who are members of the Teamsters Union, have been fighting back for justice and fair treatment. They have organized a number of rallies at the plant and a bus load recently caravaned to LA where they spoke before the City Council. Their demands are simple: an end to the layoff and shifting of jobs to Mexico fair severance for those already layed off, and the right to participate in the talks that have been taking place between the company and the city to try to keep production in California Price Pfister management has responded by holding captive audience meetings with workers where they threaten that the rate of layoffs will accelerate if the protests continue. They have also been videotaping the rallies to identify participants. THESE THREATS OF LAYOFFS AND ACTS OF SURVEILLANCE ARE ILLEGAL. 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 timd@LAGUNA.EPCC.EDU Wed Nov 20 11:19:37 1996 20 Nov 1996 11:19:17 -0600 (MDT) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 11:19:17 -0600 (MDT) From: timd@LAGUNA.EPCC.EDU Subject: Banned by Borders- Michael Moore (fwd) To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 18:11:22 -0600 From: Talmadge Wright To: PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK Subject: Banned by Borders- Michael Moore (fwd) I apologize to those who may have seen this elsewhere. I thought PSN members would find this interesting. Talmadge Forwarded message: > > >From The Nation: > > Banned by Borders > by Michael Moore > > On November 9, as I write this, I was supposed to have > been at the Borders bookstore in Fort Lauderdale, > Florida, speaking and signing copies of my book > Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed > American. It was to have been the final stop of my > forty-seven-city tour. But on October 30 I was told that > the book-signing had been canceled. The Fort > Lauderdale Borders had received a memo from its > corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, > banning me from speaking or signing at any Borders > store in the country. > > When I was growing up in Michigan, the original > Borders was a store that actively championed free > expression. In fact, when I was publishing the > Michigan Voice, Borders would carry my paper when > other establishments would not. Now, Borders is a > huge nationwide chain, and its "liberal" views have > earned it the reputation as the "Ben & Jerry's of the > book chains." > > So why was I banned from Borders? My book was > doing well. It has been on the New York Times > best-seller list for a month and was the number two > best-selling Random House book for the entire Borders > chain.. I've been banned, I found out, because I made > the mistake of uttering a five-letter word, the dirtiest > word in all of corporate America -- "union." > > Back in September, on the second day of my tour, > when I arrived at the Borders store in downtown > Philadelphia, I found nearly 100 people picketing the > place because Borders had fired a woman named > Miriam Fried. She had led a drive to organize workers > at the store into a union. The effort failed, and, a few > weeks later, Miriam was given the boot. > > When I found this out I told the Borders people that I > have never crossed a picket line and would not cross > this one. I asked the demonstrators if they wanted to > take the protest inside. They thought it was a good idea. > I had no desire to cause a ruckus, so I asked Borders > management if it was O.K. to allow the protesters in. > They said yes. So we all came into the store, I gave my > talk, I gave Miriam the microphone so she could talk, > everyone behaved themselves and it was a good day all > around -- including for Borders, which ended up selling > a lot of books, breaking the record for a noontime > author at that location. (The record had been held by > George Foreman, and I now like to tell people only Ali > and I have beaten Foreman.) I also announced that I > would donate all my royalties for the day to help Miriam > out. > > Although Anne Kubek, Borders' corporate V.P. in > charge of labor relations, had approved my bringing the > protesters inside, upper management decided that she > had made a mistake -- and they were going to take it out > on me. On the following Tuesday I was scheduled to > speak at the new Borders store in New York's World > Trade Center. When I arrived, I was met by two > Borders executives. They had flown in from Michigan > just to stop me from speaking. The executives, flanked > by two security guards, explained that I could come into > the store and sign books, but I would not be allowed to > talk to the people who had come to hear me. They said > that the "commotion" I had caused in Philly raised > "security concerns." I couldn't believe I was being > censored in a bookstore. > > The Borders manager told the assembled crowd that I > would not be speaking because "Port Authority police > and fire marshals have banned all daytime gatherings at > Borders." When I heard this, I stepped forward and told > the people this was a lie, that I was forbidden to speak > because of my support for the workers in Philly. Under > protest, I signed the books of those who stayed -- > beneath a big banner celebrating "Banned Books > Week." > > On October 13, I spoke to a large crowd in a Des > Moines auditorium. After the speech I went out front > and started signing books. "What store are these from?" > I innocently asked. "Oh, these are from the local > Borders," I was told. Well, I thought, they don't mind > if I make them some money -- as long as it's not on > their premises! Then someone slipped me an > anonymous note. It read: "We are employees of the Des > Moines Borders. We were told that we could not work > the book table tonight, that only management was > working the table, because they said they wanted to > 'protect us' from you." > > An hour later, I went out to the parking lot and saw > some people standing there in the dark -- the employees > from the Des Moines Borders! They said they were > hiding out there because they had spotted Borders' > regional director with another man inside. "He flew in > to spy on you, or us, or both," they told me. "He saw > us so we may not have jobs on Monday." (Bookstore > employees afraid they might be fired for attending a > public speech at the Herbert Hoover High School > auditorium!) The executive had not introduced himself > to me -- or his colleague, who employees believe is a > unionbusting "consultant" hired by Borders. > > I wished the workers well, and the next night they held > their first union meeting. The previous week, the > Borders store in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago > had become the first Borders in the country to vote in a > union (United Food and Commercial Workers). > Recently, workers in Des Moines signed enough cards > to hold a union election. It is a victory that should > inspire not only Borders workers but underpaid > employees everywhere. That's why I am not in Fort > Lauderdale as I write this. Borders is "protecting" its > workers from me. > > Well, they're really going to need protection now. First, > I am donating my royalties from the next 1,000 sales of > Downsize This! to the organizing drive at Borders. > Second, I am asking each of you to support the Borders > workers in your city. Bring up the union when you're > in the store and thank that kid with the nose ring and > green hair for helping to revive the labor movement in > America. > > Note to Borders Executives: If, after this column is > published, you retaliate by removing my book from > your shelves, or hiding it in the "humor" section or > underreporting its sales to the New York Times list, I > will come at you with everything I've got. You > sandbagged me in Philly, and the only decent way for > you to resolve this is to give Miriam Fried her job back > and let the workers form their union without > intimidation or harassment. > -- ********************************************************************** Talmadge Wright (312)508-3451 * Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology FAX:(312)508-3646 * Loyola University Chicago twright@orion.it.luc.edu * 6525 N. Sheridan Rd. * Chicago, Illinois 60626 * ********************************************************************** From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Thu Nov 21 01:25:01 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 22:28:47 -0800 (PST) To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Yale Workers' Victory Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >From: Michael Eisenscher >Subject: (fwd) Michael Moore banned at Borders >Sender: meisenscher@igc.org > >With apologies for those who subscribe to multiple lists for the >cross-posting, this letter from Michael Moore is both worth reading and >circulating (especially to students and faculty give their penchant for >book-buying). Moore does not call for a boycott of Borders, but rather a >concerted effort by customers to encourage store employees to join the >organizing drive. It might be helpful if we had a list of those Borders >that are under organization and which union is involved. Anybody know? > > >From: meglo01@moravian.edu (Olson, Gary L) >Subject: (fwd) Michael Moore banned at Borders ( > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >FORWARDED FROM: Olson, Gary L >In case you didn't see this in the Nation... > > _________________________________________________________________________ > >>From The Nation: > > Banned by Borders > by Michael Moore > > > On November 9, as I write this, I was supposed to have > been at the Borders bookstore in Fort Lauderdale, > Florida, speaking and signing copies of my book > Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed > American. It was to have been the final stop of my > forty-seven-city tour. But on October 30 I was told that > the book-signing had been canceled. The Fort > Lauderdale Borders had received a memo from its > corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, > banning me from speaking or signing at any Borders > store in the country. > > When I was growing up in Michigan, the original > Borders was a store that actively championed free > expression. In fact, when I was publishing the > Michigan Voice, Borders would carry my paper when > other establishments would not. Now, Borders is a > huge nationwide chain, and its "liberal" views have > earned it the reputation as the "Ben & Jerry's of the > book chains." > > So why was I banned from Borders? My book was > doing well. It has been on the New York Times > best-seller list for a month and was the number two > best-selling Random House book for the entire Borders > chain. I've been banned, I found out, because I made > the mistake of uttering a five-letter word, the dirtiest > word in all of corporate America -- "union." > > Back in September, on the second day of my tour, > when I arrived at the Borders store in downtown > Philadelphia, I found nearly 100 people picketing the > place because Borders had fired a woman named > Miriam Fried. She had led a drive to organize workers > at the store into a union. The effort failed, and, a few > weeks later, Miriam was given the boot. > > When I found this out I told the Borders people that I > have never crossed a picket line and would not cross > this one. I asked the demonstrators if they wanted to > take the protest inside. They thought it was a good idea. > I had no desire to cause a ruckus, so I asked Borders > management if it was O.K. to allow the protesters in. > They said yes. So we all came into the store, I gave my > talk, I gave Miriam the microphone so she could talk, > everyone behaved themselves and it was a good day all > around -- including for Borders, which ended up selling > a lot of books, breaking the record for a noontime > author at that location. (The record had been held by > George Foreman, and I now like to tell people only Ali > and I have beaten Foreman.) I also announced that I > would donate all my royalties for the day to help Miriam > out. > > Although Anne Kubek, Borders' corporate V.P. in > charge of labor relations, had approved my bringing the > protesters inside, upper management decided that she > had made a mistake -- and they were going to take it out > on me. On the following Tuesday I was scheduled to > speak at the new Borders store in New York's World > Trade Center. When I arrived, I was met by two > Borders executives. They had flown in from Michigan > just to stop me from speaking. The executives, flanked > by two security guards, explained that I could come into > the store and sign books, but I would not be allowed to > talk to the people who had come to hear me. They said > that the "commotion" I had caused in Philly raised > "security concerns." I couldn't believe I was being > censored in a bookstore. > > The Borders manager told the assembled crowd that I > would not be speaking because "Port Authority police > and fire marshals have banned all daytime gatherings at > Borders." When I heard this, I stepped forward and told > the people this was a lie, that I was forbidden to speak > because of my support for the workers in Philly. Under > protest, I signed the books of those who stayed -- > beneath a big banner celebrating "Banned Books > Week." > > On October 13, I spoke to a large crowd in a Des > Moines auditorium. After the speech I went out front > and started signing books. "What store are these from?" > I innocently asked. "Oh, these are from the local > Borders," I was told. Well, I thought, they don't mind > if I make them some money -- as long as it's not on > their premises! Then someone slipped me an > anonymous note. It read: "We are employees of the Des > Moines Borders. We were told that we could not work > the book table tonight, that only management was > working the table, because they said they wanted to > 'protect us' from you." > > An hour later, I went out to the parking lot and saw > some people standing there in the dark -- the employees > from the Des Moines Borders! They said they were > hiding out there because they had spotted Borders' > regional director with another man inside. "He flew in > to spy on you, or us, or both," they told me. "He saw > us so we may not have jobs on Monday." (Bookstore > employees afraid they might be fired for attending a > public speech at the Herbert Hoover High School > auditorium!) The executive had not introduced himself > to me -- or his colleague, who employees believe is a > unionbusting "consultant" hired by Borders. > > I wished the workers well, and the next night they held > their first union meeting. The previous week, the > Borders store in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago > had become the first Borders in the country to vote in a > union (United Food and Commercial Workers). > Recently, workers in Des Moines signed enough cards > to hold a union election. It is a victory that should > inspire not only Borders workers but underpaid > employees everywhere. That's why I am not in Fort > Lauderdale as I write this. Borders is "protecting" its > workers from me. > > Well, they're really going to need protection now. First, > I am donating my royalties from the next 1,000 sales of > Downsize This! to the organizing drive at Borders. > Second, I am asking each of you to support the Borders > workers in your city. Bring up the union when you're > in the store and thank that kid with the nose ring and > green hair for helping to revive the labor movement in > America. > > Note to Borders Executives: If, after this column is > published, you retaliate by removing my book from > your shelves, or hiding it in the "humor" section or > underreporting its sales to the New York Times list, I > will come at you with everything I've got. You > sandbagged me in Philly, and the only decent way for > you to resolve this is to give Miriam Fried her job back > and let the workers form their union without > intimidation or harassment. >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 > _____________________________________ > | "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.....__________| > > > 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 _____________________________________ | "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 meisenscher@igc.apc.org Thu Nov 21 02:23:42 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 23:35:15 -0800 (PST) To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Grad Student Victory at Yale Sender: meisenscher@igc.org > >>Return-Path: can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu >>Date: Wed, 20 Nov 96 08:57:33 CST >>Reply-To: can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu >>Originator: can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu >>Sender: can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu >>From: cvance@lesley.edu (Chris Vance) >>Subject: Yale TAs Win Federal Govt Support (fwd) >>X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas >> >>---------- Forwarded message ---------- >>Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 21:28:27 -0500 >>From: Glafer@aol.com >>Subject: Yale TAs Win Federal Govt Support >> >>To all supporters of the Yale TA strike: >> >>I am thrilled to report that we have been informed by the National Labor >>Relations Board that the General Counsel of the Board has decided to issue a >>complaint charging Yale with violating federal labor law for the threats made >>against participants in last winter's grade strike. In the course of making >>this decision, the General Counsel first had to decide that Yale TAs are >>legally defined as employees under federal labor law. This is obviously a >>tremendous vindication for everyone who stuck it out during those long dark >>winter days of threats and fear, and it is great to think that future TA's >>will never have to face that type of repression again. Beyond this, this >>decision reverses 20 years of ambiguity in federal labor law, establishing >>the right to organize for TA's at private universities across the country. >> Even if the grade strike had not accomplished anything else, to have >>achieved this right as a national precedent is a victory I think we all will >> always cherish. >> >>We are still waiting to hear whether Yale will settle this complaint >>voluntarily -- which will probably mean paying back pay to TAs who were >>fired, writing supportive letters for anyone who was blacklisted, and posting >>"Notices to Employees" throughout the campus acknowledging that it is illegal >>to threaten to expel, suspend, discipline, blacklist, demote, fire or in any >>other way threaten TAs for participating in a strike. We hope, but don't >>expect, that the administration will voluntarily settle this case and accept >>the General Counsel's decision to accord full employee rights to TAs. If >>Yale chooses instead to fight this, we may have another couple of years of >>litigation. Although this litigation could go in either direction, we are >>extremely encouraged by the fact that this decision comes from the General >>Counsel of the NLRB, the highest advisory expert on labor law in the country. >> >>I want to take this opportunity to once again thank everyone who offered >>their support to the TAs on strike here. I know that we would never have >>gotten this decision without TA's having the courage to remain on strike in >>the face of escalating threats, and I know that the ability to persevere on >>that path was tremendously strengthened by the outpouring of support we >>received from academics across the globe. >> >>Again, thanks very much to all of you -- >>Gordon Lafer, >>Research Director, Federation of University Employees at Yale >> >>Following is the text of today's press release: >> >> >>GOVERNMENT TO CHARGE YALE WITH ILLEGAL INTIMIDATION OF GRADUATE TEACHERS >> >>LANDMARK DECISION POINTS TO FULL EMPLOYEE RIGHTS FOR TEACHING ASSISTANTS >> >>PAVES THE WAY FOR NATIONWIDE UNIONIZATION DRIVE ON PRIVATE CAMPUSES >> >>The National Labor Relations Board has notified Yale University of its >>intention to issue a complaint charging the University with violating federal >>labor law in its treatment of Yale graduate teachers engaged in a strike for >>union recognition. During last winter's strike, Yale administrators >>threatened strike participants with reprisals including a ban on future >>teaching, academic discipline, negative letters of recommendation, and >>expulsion. After nearly a year of investigation, the General Counsel of the >>NLRB has concluded that these actions constituted illegal acts of >>intimidation and coercion. >> >>As part of this finding, the General Counsel has determined that Yale >>teaching assistants are employees under federal law and have full rights to >>collective bargaining. For years, administrators at Yale and elsewhere have >>argued that graduate teachers are primarily students and therefore have no >>right to unionize. The General Counsel's decision definitively rejects this >>argument. In so doing, the decision opens the way for an increase in union >>organizing activities among teaching assistants at universities across the >>nation. >> >>Both Yale officials and the Graduate Employees and Students Organization >>(GESO) were notified of the General Counsel's intention to issue a complaint >>late last week. Yale has a short period in which to comply voluntarily -- >>paying back pay to teachers who lost their jobs, and posting "Notices to >>Employees" acknowledging that it is illegal for the university to fire, >>demote, expel, blacklist, or threaten graduate teachers engaged in strike >>actions -- in order to avoid facing formal proceedings. >> >>At a press conference held at 12:30 this afternoon in the First and >>Summerfield United Methodist Church in New Haven, the decision was hailed as >>a turning point in the unionization efforts of graduate teachers around the >>country, and as a critical defense of academic freedom for both professors >>and graduate students facing anti-union administrators. >> >>"We are witnessing labor history in the making," stated Yale labor historian >>Prof. David Montgomery. "Universities across the country have come to rely >>more and more on both teaching assistants and adjunct professors as part-time >>workers carrying out more and more of the teaching responsibilities. This >>decision puts the protection of the law securely behind their efforts to >>improve their conditions, and that should improve the security of everyone in >>the academy." >> >>New York University graduate student Dan Bender suggested that the Board's >>announcement might open the way for a new wave of unionization drives at >>other schools. "Graduate students at many other universities have in the >>past been discouraged by the lack of legal protection. All of that is >>changed now. Everyone has been watching Yale. Graduate students at NYU and >>elsewhere have been very concerned about work conditions in the academy. >> This decision opens the way for us to consider unionization as a real >>option." >> >>"We're elated," said GESO Chair Robin Brown. "This is a tremendous >>vindication for our members who stood up to unprecedented threats in order to >>demand the most basic of democratic rights. Even more, we are thrilled that >>this decision clears the way for TAs around the country to pursue organizing >>drives of their own. The General Counsel's decision reflects what we >>ourselves have known all along -- that the work of graduate instructors is >>the same as that of any other teacher, and the fact that we're also enrolled >>in PhD programs is no excuse to deny us the rights which all other employees >>enjoy. If nothing else came out of the grade strike, to have won this right >>is an achievement we will always be proud of." >> >>Buju Dasgupta, a Psychology graduate student and one of three elected leaders >>of the union who were singled out for special punishment last winter, was >>threatened with expulsion for participating in the strike. "I think this >>shows that Yale is not above the law," she stated. "With this decision, I >>hope that no graduate teacher at any school will ever again have to go >>through what we went through last year." >> >>Chris Cobb, a graduate instructor in the English department, was fired for >>participating in the strike. "Yale's threats scared many teachers last year. >> Now, whatever individual graduate students feel about unionization, they >>will be able to make this decision based on their personal conviction rather >>than their fear of coercion." >> >>Labor Law Professor Karl Klare of the Northeastern University Law School was >>one of twelve law faculty who issued a statement during the strike warning >>that Yale's tactics may be illegal. "I am very pleased that the NLRB's >>General Counsel has determined to proceed in this case to establish, once and >>for all, the basic right of the graduate teaching staff to bargaining >>collectively." >> >>Harvard Law Professor Duncan Kennedy called on Yale to avoid further conflict >>with its graduate teaching staff. "After all the conflict that Yale has been >>through, I believe that this is a time for the University to reach an >>amicable agreement with its graduate students, rather than continue a costly >>and probably futile fight against them. The nation's highest expert on labor >>law has reviewed the facts of this case and reached the conclusion that Yale >>TA's are entitled to the full rights all employees enjoy under the law -- >>including the right to collective bargaining. Both morally and legally, the >>Levin Administration has a golden opportunity to turn over a new leaf by >>voluntarily settling this case, and by accepting in good faith the rights of >>its graduate teaching employees. I sincerely hope that Yale will seize this >>opportunity." >> >> >> >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 > _____________________________________ > | "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.....__________| > > > 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 _____________________________________ | "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 meisenscher@igc.apc.org Thu Nov 21 03:20:11 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 23:35:19 -0800 (PST) To: irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu, H-UCLEA@MSU.EDU, can-labor@pencil.math.missour.edu, LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu, H-LABOR@h-net.msu.edu, united@cougar.com From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Re: Yale TAs Win Legal Victory Sender: meisenscher@igc.org Here's a followup to the Yale NLRB decision. Would it be imprudent to suggest that this is the time for students, faculty members, faculty unions, academic associations, and others with an interest to communicate with Yale urging it to accept this ALJ's determination and act like a civilized institution within the framework of the ILO's accepted standards for workers' rights? Additionally, it might be useful for those prepared to offer professional opinions to prepare short briefs to Bill Gould; others may simply want to send him letters expressing their support for the ALJ's determination and urging the Board to affirm it. This may have no legal effect, but will act as a counterweight to the predictable reaction from the employer side and their willing promoters. And once again to those subscribed to multiple lists, apologies for cross-posting. >Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 19:11:13 EST >Reply-To: H-Net Labor History Discussion List >From: "Seth Wigderson, U Maine Augusta" >Subject: Re: Yale TAs Win Legal Victory > >Here are two responses to the Yale TA report. Thanx to Mel Dubofsky >and Mark Santow. SW >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > >From: Melvyn Dubofsky >According to the story as reported in the NY Times of Monday, Nov. 18, the >full board has not met on the matter. The ruling was made by a regional >officer in Connecticut and then approved by the general counsel in >Washington. I assume, along with Forsberger, that Yale will now do what >most employers do today--proceed first through the NLRB internal processes >and, if unsuccessful there, go to circuit court of appeals, and also, if >need be, the SC. All in all a long-drawn out process, and where will the >current generation of Yale TAs be when it ends. > > >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > > >An addition to my earlier note. Now, we have the acid test--Yale has been >arraigned and indicted, not convicted! Will it confess its sins and crimes >as charged, or do, as most private employers do, dispute the indictment, >go to court, and perhaps prevail. We have no binding precedent established >here yet--if Yale chooses to concede, at best, a partial precedent will >have been set. Another institution in the same circumstances, however, may >continue to fight TA unionism and seek a "final" and different resolution >in court. The Yale situation is why employers and their allies fought so >hard against labor law reform in 1977-78--the reforms would have put some >bite in NLRB rulings. > >Melvyn Dubofsky >Department of History >Binghamton University, SUNY >Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 >Phone: (607) 777-4416, FAX: (607) 777-2896 >E-mail: dubof@binghamton.edu > > > >+++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++ >From: msantow@sas.upenn.edu (Mark Santow) >hi folks: > > I'm a graduate student in history at the University of >Pennsylvania, and found myself jumping for joy in front of my computer >late last night upon reading the news about the NLRB and the Yale TA >strike. I forgot my good lefty discipline -- that when one shoe drops, >another is soon to follow, and usually dropped on those trying to bring >about change. now that I/we have been properly chastened on this, I have >some questions which maybe someone out there can answer. > > While I presume that the NLRB and its various administrative >levels and branches are supposed to be beyond the reach of lobbying, I >have little doubt that even as you read this university presidents are >descending on Washington to lean on the eminently pliable Bill Clinton on >this subject. is there anyone -- the Labor Department, an NLRB >administrator, etc, that concerned grad students and their allies can >write letters and emails to here? This of course has always been my >frustration with the industrial relations regime in this country -- that >the fate of 1000's of workers around the country now rests essentially in >the legal arena, where powerful and wealthy employers (and Yale, all its >dishonest protests to the contrary, is one) have a distinct advantage. >especially in the case of grad student unions, which face a contant >turnover of personnel and an acute problem of financial and institutional >stability as a result -- such employers can almost always afford to >simply to draw out an appeals process for years. I sense that by the >time something finally comes down on this, most of the graduate students >who were around for and led the Yale TA strike will have moved on, with >some of them having made rather severe and unjust career sacrifices as a >result. One lesson this taught us up at the University of Massachusetts >a few years ago, when we went on strike, was the importance of NOT >waiting for legal sanction. build the union, find ways of building and >sustaining an institutional culture and identity, and try to deal with >the 'free-rider' problem by organizing, organizing, organizing. thus, >when/if the NLRB rubberstamp comes down, it will come as legitimation, >not liberation. > >just a few thoughts. >mark santow >university of pennsylvania > > ><---- End Forwarded Message ----> > > 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 _____________________________________ | "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 nkrhodes@mailbox.syr.edu Thu Nov 21 06:14:35 1996 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 08:14:31 -0500 (EST) From: "Nancy K. Rhodes" To: Labor Research and Action Project Subject: Re: Yale Workers' Victory In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19961120221920.45d7a882@pop.igc.org> I can't remember ever seeing a single item on so many lists, so many times. I am only forwarding this now to individuals whom I've first asked if they have it yet. I would say "wildfire" describes the spread of this item. Borders probably had no idea. One for democratic comunication! Nancy Rhodes From knowware@mindlink.bc.ca Thu Nov 21 21:41:01 1996 by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 1.58 #1) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 20:38:46 -0800 To: popup@vcn.bc.ca From: knowware@mindlink.bc.ca (Tom Walker) Subject: $1 billion found in rubbish heap! ================================================================ "Perhaps a rubbish heap is, after all, the best image for the rough jumble of jurisdictions, laws, budgets, regulations, evasions, habits, agencies and officials that together make up the policy apparatus of the state. Certainly, nothing could be more fanciful than those austere, pyramidal 'organization charts' that purport to describe the official structures, priorities or procedures of government. The state is not a hierarchical, hieroglyphic tree; it is a stinking, rotting, seething heap. And this description is not meant to be derogatory..." "...the treasure I have found in the rubbish heap is a tiny, perfect policy proposal for creating an estimated 30,000 new full-time, well-paying jobs in Canada at no cost to the government, to employers, to the environment -- at no cost to anybody. Thirty thousand jobs at an average salary of $35,000 a year would be worth a total of over a billion dollars." ================================================================ For the full text of this presentation to the discussion session on "Coping with Daily Life in an Era of Unrelenting Technical Change" at the Southern California Conference on Technology, Employment and Community, go directly to: http://mindlink.net/knowware/dustbin.htm The session will take place at the conference in Los Angeles on Saturday, November 23, 1996 at 10:15 a.m. 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 wkramer@ucla.edu Fri Nov 22 18:02:03 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 16:45:23 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: Guess? Update and Call for Support Below is an article on the campaign to organize Guess? Interested in getting involved? Here is what you can do: Call Guess at 1-800-22-Guess (xt 0) and tell them that you are not buying their clothes until they recognize the union. Complain via the Guess? web site (www.guess.com) Participate in actions. There are actions against Guess being organized all around the country (confirmed in NYC, L.A., Iowa City, Philadelphia and D.C. but hopefully there will be more in other cities). In LA, a big action is planned at the Beverly Center on Saturday December 14 from 12 noon to 3 PM. (Meet at the NW corner of Third Street and La Cienega). For more info on these actions contact: Derek Dorn, Cornell Organization for Labor Action Unite in LA at unitela@igc.apc.org The Stop Sweatshops Campaign at 212-819-0959 Common Threads at 310-572-7971. Thanks for your support. ----------------------------------------- L.A. TIMES Friday, November 22, 1996 NLRB Prepares Complaint Against Apparel Firm Guess Labor: Accusations include firing pro-union workers. Guess disputes all allegations. By STUART SILVERSTEIN, Times Staff Writer Federal officials have prepared a complaint accusing beleaguered Guess Inc. of a host of unfair labor practices, among them illegally firing nearly 20 workers to thwart a union-organizing campaign. The case by the National Labor Relations Board against Los Angeles-based Guess, which could be issued as soon as today, marks a major victory for the garment industry union UNITE. The union brought the alleged unfair labor practices to the NLRB's attention in connection with a drive it launched last summer to organize Guess' estimated 600 production workers, along with laborers at its local subcontractors'sewing shops, in Los Angeles. A lawyer for Guess, Allen Gross, said the company disputes all of the allegations. He also said that the company will try to settle the case with the NLRB today to stop the agency from formally issuing the complaint, but other sources said such a settlement is unlikely. In the complaint prepared by the NLRB, Guess is accused of violating a variety of federal statutes intended to protect workers'rights to join unions. The most serious charge by federal officials is that the company illegally fired 17 or 18 union supporters who were on the company's payroll. The complaint also accuses Guess President Paul Marciano of delivering an address to employees in which he threatened to fire anyone who signed a union card and to move the company's production abroad if the union campaign succeeded. Guess in addition is being accused of conducting illegal surveillance of union meetings to intimidate workers from participating in the labor campaign. The NLRB, as is its standard practice in such cases, is seeking to reinstate the fired employees and to recover back pay for them. The case would be brought by the NLRB to an administrative law judge for a decision if no settlement is reached. Sources said the NLRB is also considering seeking an injunction requiring Guess to immediately reinstate the workers, a legal maneuver for unfair labor practices that are considered "egregious." In a separate lawsuit, UNITE has accused the company and its contractors of cheating workers out of wages and condoning illegal child labor. In addition, the Department of Labor is reviewing Guess' status on the government's list of "good guy" apparel manufacturers judged to be taking extra steps to avoid doing business with sweatshops. Copyright Los Angeles Times 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 abudak@alumni.ysu.edu Fri Nov 22 23:11:28 1996 Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 01:05:59 -0500 From: Tony Budak Subject: shorter work time speech To: Tony Budak labor-l@yorku.ca, LABOR@SHSU.EDU, LABNEWS@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, oneunion@lever.lever.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- COMMUNITY/LABOR Mail Filter List brings this message to you. For information about COMM/LABOR, send an email to Tony Budak with COMM/LABOR INFO REQUEST, in the Subject Header, nothing in the message body. Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You may forward the message but please do not use the "redirect" command. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Thanks to Elly Leary for this insightful contribution to the Boston forum on shorter work time. _____________________________________________________________ SHORTER WORK TIME 11/21/96 eleary@bu.edu (Elly Leary) Thanks for inviting me to address you tonight. I've been asked to speak about labor's point of view on the need for shorter work time and how to get it. Any working person, whether they work the back of the house at a five star hotel, in an underground economy sweatshop stitching shirts, or as a high-flying lawyer in a top corporate law firm, is confronted with the question: "Do I live to work or work to live." For many reasons -- social, cultural, political and economic -- this has not been an easy question to answer; nor has it been one that people have even asked for nearly 60 years. There were other times in US history when this question was the talk of the town. The first was in the 1886 when on May 1st about 10% of the US population peacefully marched through America's cities and towns for the 8 hour day (that by the way is the equivalent of more than 26 million-man marches). The second was in 1938 when the FLSA was passed establishing the 40 hour work week (which itself was a compromise on a 30 hours work week congressional bill). And now nearly 60 later the question is again before us. Each time the issue has emerged similar events and trends were taking place in society. First, each time the economy was undergoing a profound and deep structural change which caused the wholesale destruction of many kinds of jobs and massive un and underemployment. But, and this is important, at the particular moment when progress was made on shortening work time, the economy had stabilized, at least for the moment. The second similarity is that in all three times, wages had been on a downward spiral for at least a decade -- 20% in 1886, much more than that during the depression and currently about 20% since 1973. (Bet you didn't know that today, according to the Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, that even the wages of college educated white men is falling!). But here too, in all three times there was a temporary stabilization. Third, there was a dramatic change in work hours. In 1886 it was a 6 day work week, 10, 12, or even 16 hours a day. The depression of course was a case of no work although by 1938 there was a brief recovery (the sustained recovery would only come with war production) and some people were working every day, all day. The fourth similarity, was that in these earlier periods there was the mobilization of a broad based movement of labor, intellectuals and what we would today call community people behind a shortened work time agenda. Two things are important about this movement: 1) While this movement spoke to the needs and desires of working people and had spontaneous outbursts of activity, it was a movement that had a conscious, committed, and sustained leadership. In both cases organized labor played a decisive role. 2) This broad based movement managed, at least temporarily, to offer a competing view to the one that poverty was simply an indication of "indolence and vice" or some inherent inferiority. Clearly we have not built such a movement today. One of the reasons is that labor does not speak with one voice on the issue of shortened work time. In fact today the labor movement seem to be stricken by a kind of schizophrenia. On one hand, unions have been scrambling to stem the tide of wage erosion by condoning massive overtime. So much so that like their counterparts who don't come under the FLSA (salaried employees in finance, legal, and insurance), covered employees are now working 10, 12 hour days 6 or 7 days week. Many many people are not working all these hours at one work site. Increasingly they are working a series of part-time, low-paid, benefitless jobs. It is estimated that between 1/4 and 1/3rd of work now is of this "contingent" type. Indeed, the new benchmark in health care and manufacturing (those "stable" full-time jobs) is the 12 hour day rotating shifts. This is absolutely true in the unionized shops as well. American workers average more hours on the job per year than any other industrialized country -- including Japan. In many ways we're right back to the days of robber baron capitalism. Also, the AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization of US unions, has also gone on record as opposing changes in the FLSA that would make it possible to substitute comp time for overtime. On the other hand, labor realizes that this massive overtime has cheapened wages even further, led to downsized unions, meant trading the prospects of the next generation to take care of the present one, and created members too busy working to build the internal life of their union, the very community groups that have been labor's historical allies, or participate in political life which has become the sport of the wealthy, no what their party affiliation. Participation in these 3 areas is critical if we are to build a successful shortened work week movement. It's an entire discussion about how and why this split personality in labor came about, but the very very short story is that after WWII organized labor made a "devil's pact" with capital. The deal involved labor getting a piece of the growing economic pie in exchange for dumping their own independent political and economic agenda and buying into capital's cold war politics while jumping on its economic growth/consumer bandwagon. By 1957 the newly-merged AFL-CIO dropped the long-held 30 hours work week demand and said, "We do not welcome shorter work hours if they reflect the fact that the nation's total level of production is not keeping up the pace..." This pact has meant that today there is no single important US union that is committed to reducing work time as its primary bargaining or public policy objective. As I see it, for labor to once again be a vital partner in a shorter work week movement we need to grapple with four dilemmas. If we can successfully accomplish this we will also make significant progress on revitalizing the union movement, the only organized force that stands between ordinary people and complete corporate domination. The four dilemmas are, and I say dilemmas because they are a package of contradictions and competing interests: Dilemma 1. The economics of work time. Behind today's drive for the lengthened work day is capital's free-market, global competitive agenda. That's the current form of the fifty year old devil's pact. Until labor confronts this pact, works with others willing to question this free-market "imperative," and develops an alternative agenda that places community needs rather than bottom line considerations at its center, no progress can be made. In Canada the CAW has done just this, and consequently has made work time their central bargaining issue. The UAW and CAW both just completed contract negotiations with the Big 3 (F,C, & GM). The CAW contracts gives workers between 8.7 and 10.2 weeks each year paid time off the job, or the equivalent of a 32 hour work week. The UAW auto agreements cement the 10 hour work day. For the vast majority of workers though real reduction of work time can not be accomplished unless they can make a reasonable standard of living in 30 hours a week. Even at $6/hour, 30 hours a week, a person only grosses $9360. The entire welfare "reform" debate needs to be framed in this way. One practical suggestion is for labor to put resources into community-driven "living wage" campaigns that tie getting public money (tax subsidies, abatements, etc.) to jobs that with benefits pay 125% above the poverty line (roughly $7.50/hr). Dilemma 2. Job Improvement: While many people in our country have jobs they love to go to, find meaningful and rewarding, the vast majority are not so fortunate. As we tumble back to robber baron days all our workplaces (be they factory, office or hospital) are looking more and more like those -- more routinized and deskilled work, speed-ups, production quotas, fired for speaking up, closely monitored (now by high-tech equipment), and employing child labor. Even if we were to improve working conditions to the best possible degree, some jobs will always lack inherent meaning-- flipping hamburgers, building cars, word processing come immediately to mind. For many real job improvement simply comes from doing less of it. Much is made of work participation and partnership schemes. Even where implemented, these schemes only touch on narrow operational issues. Also because they are framed on the corporate competitive agenda, they have become part of the problem not the solution. Take the issue of flexibility. Some employers have encouraged employees to "work at home". Stay in touch via beepers, modems, and phones. While this may be help parents struggling with child care, there is a dark side. Not only are you always at work, permanently on-call, but you are removed from the social interaction that takes place at work, a necessity for building collective action needed to drive a movement for change. Dilemma 3. Job creation: To my mind our movement for shorter work time has to be more than just cutting work time for all those reasons we'll hear about tonight-- the future, the family, the community, our health. To be successful, the shorter work time movement must also lead the debate to reevaluate what counts as "work." As the recent welfare reform debates reveals, our society has a very narrow view of what it values as work. Parenting, for example, does not count, nor does most community service (like PTA). Jobs that have no meaning, are hazardous, repetitive, have no health insurance, vacation or sick, time, and don't allow for even a minimal standard of living do. Dilemma 4. Leisure: Unless it is connected to consumption, leisure today has become a dirty word. In this arena labor has a special responsibility to open the debate in the workplace about the necessity for leisure time and to make it a bargaining priority. Leisure doesn't mean just vegging out, but that' s okay too. It also means volunteering to organize other work places, being teacher's aides, giving guest lectures that present our movement's point of view on "core" values, community cleanups, assisting sports teams for kids. Obviously, you can see its ties to what we as a society consider "valued" work. I know I've exceeded my time limit, but I hope my remarks will spark a lively debate. Thanks for your attention. <---- End Forwarded Message ----> From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Sat Nov 23 14:21:54 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 23:06:56 -0800 (PST) To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu, H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: What price fashion? Sender: meisenscher@igc.org FYI: LA Times Report on Imminent NLRB action against GUESS? >From: William Kramer > >Interested in getting involved? Here is what you can do: > >Call Guess at 1-800-22-Guess (xt 0) and tell them that you are not buying >their clothes until they recognize the union. > >Complain via the Guess? web site (www.guess.com) > >Participate in actions. There are actions against Guess being organized all >around the country (confirmed in NYC, L.A., Iowa City, Philadelphia and D.C. >but hopefully there will be more in other cities). > >In LA, a big action is planned at the Beverly Center on Saturday December 14 >from 12 noon to 3 PM. (Meet at the NW corner of Third Street and La Cienega). > >For more info on these actions contact: > Derek Dorn, Cornell Organization for Labor Action > Unite in LA at unitela@igc.apc.org > The Stop Sweatshops Campaign at 212-819-0959 > Common Threads at 310-572-7971. > >Thanks for your support. > >----------------------------------------- >L.A. TIMES Friday, November 22, 1996 >NLRB Prepares Complaint Against Apparel Firm Guess >Labor: Accusations include firing pro-union workers. Guess disputes all >allegations. > >By STUART SILVERSTEIN, Times Staff Writer > >Federal officials have prepared a complaint accusing beleaguered Guess Inc. >of a host of unfair labor practices, among them illegally firing nearly 20 >workers to thwart a union-organizing campaign. > >The case by the National Labor Relations Board against Los Angeles-based >Guess, which >could be issued as soon as today, marks a major victory for the garment >industry union UNITE. > >The union brought the alleged unfair labor practices to the NLRB's attention >in connection with a drive it launched last summer to organize Guess' >estimated 600 production workers, along with laborers at its local >subcontractors'sewing shops, in Los Angeles. > >A lawyer for Guess, Allen Gross, said the company disputes all of the >allegations. He also said that the company will try to settle the case with >the NLRB today to stop the agency from formally issuing the complaint, but >other sources said such a settlement is unlikely. > >In the complaint prepared by the NLRB, Guess is accused of violating a >variety of federal statutes intended to protect workers'rights to join unions. > >The most serious charge by federal officials is that the company illegally >fired 17 or 18 union supporters who were on the company's payroll. The >complaint also accuses Guess President Paul Marciano of delivering an >address to employees in which he threatened to fire anyone who signed a >union card and to move the company's production abroad if the union campaign >succeeded. > >Guess in addition is being accused of conducting illegal surveillance of >union meetings to intimidate workers from participating in the labor campaign. > >The NLRB, as is its standard practice in such cases, is seeking to reinstate >the fired >employees and to recover back pay for them. The case would be brought by the >NLRB to an >administrative law judge for a decision if no settlement is reached. > >Sources said the NLRB is also considering seeking an injunction requiring >Guess to >immediately reinstate the workers, a legal maneuver for unfair labor >practices that are considered "egregious." > >In a separate lawsuit, UNITE has accused the company and its contractors of >cheating >workers out of wages and condoning illegal child labor. In addition, the >Department of Labor is reviewing Guess' status on the government's list of >"good guy" apparel manufacturers judged to be taking extra steps to avoid >doing business with sweatshops. > > >Copyright Los Angeles Times > >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 > > 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 _____________________________________ | "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 shostaka@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu Sun Nov 24 11:09:22 1996 Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 14:36:02 -0500 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: shostaka@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu (Art Shostak) Subject: SSSP Meeting, Toronto, August 1996 Brothers and Sisters: 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 Sun Nov 24 13:01:56 1996 by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 1.58 #1) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 12:01:38 -0800 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: knowware@mindlink.bc.ca (Tom Walker) Subject: Re: SSSP Meeting, Toronto, August 1996 Presumably you mean _1997_, not 1996. >Brothers and Sisters: 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. > > > 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 wkramer@ucla.edu Mon Nov 25 09:53:10 1996 Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 08:44:19 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: Price Pfister Update and Call for Support BACKGROUND Price Pfister, a faucet manufacturer located in Pacoima, CA has layed off workers over 300 workers in the last year in order to shift production to Mexico as a way to increase their profits. While the company has attempted at various times to blame environmental restrictions or the Los Angeles "business" climate for it's decision to downsize in Pacoima, the September 23, 1996 profile of Black and Decker in Forbes Magazine indicates that the reasons have far more to do with Wall Street greed and debt service that any local factors. The approximately 1000 mostly Latino workers, who are members of the Teamsters Union, have been fighting back for justice and fair treatment. They have organized a number of rallies at the plant and a bus load recently caravaned to LA where they spoke before the City Council. Their demands are simple: an end to the layoff and shifting of jobs to Mexico fair severance for those already layed off, and the right to participate in the talks that have been taking place between the company and the city to try to keep production in California Price Pfister management has responded by allegedly holding captive audience meetings with workers where they threaten that the rate of layoffs will accelerate if the protests continue. They have also allegedly been videotaping the rallies to identify participants. THESE THREATS OF LAYOFFS AND ACTS OF SURVEILLANCE ARE ILLEGAL. On Thursday November 21 at 3 PM six laid off employees of Price Pfister began a hunger strike to protest the company's cruel treatment of it's largely Latino workforce in the San Fernando Valley community of Pacoima, CA. The company continues to lay off workers, and to date the company has not offered a just severance package. The hunger strike will go on until Thanksgiving eve (November 27 at 3 P.M.) when the employees will present Price Pfister with the "Turkey of the Year Award" to call attention to corporate mistreatment of its workforce. CALLS/ EMAIL TO BLACK AND DECKER You can let Black and Decker (which owns Price Pfister) know that you are upset about the way they are treating the workers and that you support the workers demands listed above. The web adddress is http://www.blackanddecker.com. Also their toll free household products complaint # is 1-800-231-9786. 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 meisenscher@igc.apc.org Mon Nov 25 17:25:28 1996 Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 15:48:07 -0800 (PST) To: irra@relay.doit.wisc.edu, H-UCLEA@h-net.msu.edu, LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu, can-labor@pencil.math.missouri.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: SFSU Labor Alert (fwd) Sender: meisenscher@igc.org At the request of Tim Sampson, a leader of the faculty union at San Francisco State University, I am posting this report. He asks that it be circulated widely; feel free to repost/distribute. He requests that solidarity messages be sent (see end of article). > Michael Eisenscher > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Mon, 25 Nov 96 11:40:59 CST >From: MICHAEL JOHN MARTIN >Reply-To: can-fac@pencil.math.missouri.edu >Subject: SFSU Labor Alert > >Cutbacks at San Francisco State University > >In a small step in the continuing restriction of access, reduc- >tion of public support, and a general backing away from public >responsibility for quality public education in California, the >English Department at San Francisco State University (a Califor- >nia State University campus) in November announced the mid-year >layoff of 14 lecturers. These non-tenure line teachers have >taught composition and ESL courses as part of a pool of experi- >enced instructors, as well as conducted research, produced >written work, given presentations, and designed curricula. They >teach "service" courses essential to the development of critical >literacy skills in a university with one of the most ethnically >diverse campuses in the United States. > Without the protection of tenure or multi-year contracts, >the entire group of instructors at SFSU is subject to the whim of >administrative decision. A new "auditing procedure," implemented >by the CSU's administration, will, in theory, reduce the number >of junior-level transfer students from California two-year >colleges, thereby theoretically reducing the number of those >students required to take first and second year composition >courses. This is one rationale for the layoffs. It ignores the >fact that literally hundreds of students, every semester, pack >classrooms and line hallways, struggling to add the required >composition, ESL, and basic writing courses. Many of our students >take seven years or more to complete baccalaureate degrees, and >access to required courses is one of the reasons. > A constant tension simmers between the rights and needs of >tenure line faculty and lecturers, whose rights and needs often >compete. Both are represented by the same union, though they work >under dramatically different circumstances. The work of composi- >tion lecturers, which is highly labor intensive with each class >demanding the thoughtful reading and grading of on the order of >175 essays (times 3 to 5 sections), revisions, and journals, >along with extensive use of conferences and other duties, is not >generally coveted, to put it mildly, by tenure line teachers, >although it is work that is highly valued by their students. To >some, the cost of providing such education would be better spent >on "program" courses, upper division and graduate classes in >literature and other "substantive" canonical endeavors. Composi- >tion classes at SFSU are generally courses in critical literacy >which, through often painfully achieved effort on the part of >both students and teachers, strive to ensure a level of critical >consciousness and literate ability demanded for full access to >the complex social and political contexts the students will live, >work, and create within. Lecturers at SFSU do not work at the >fringes of students' intellectual development, but often provide >essential experiences in cognitive development for their stu- >dents. > They are nonetheless seen as disposable, and with the ending of >affirmative action in the state, the rise in tuition levels, the decreased >numbers of courses, and more subtle restrictions of access, the good work >that they have for many years accomplished becomes more and more >endangered. > The fourteen faculty members laid off in the current crisis >will face the prospect of finding teaching posts in the middle of >the academic year, part-time community college jobs or other, >even more tenuous positions in other far-flung places, when they >thought they had firm academic year commitments from their >university. Many of them may not find them, but instead be forced >to abandon the art to which they have dedicated their lives, >their educations, and their utmost commitment. Working outside of >education, these intelligent and talented people will undoubtedly >fare well--no doubt better economically--but at great cost to the >students they would have touched, often profoundly, in the >future. > > Messages of support and concern can be sent to: > >Melanie Wise (melanie@sfsu.edu) >Michael Martin (mmartin@sfsu.edu) >CC to California Faculty Association (cfa@igc.org) > > > > > From global@uk.pi.net Tue Nov 26 05:13:20 1996 Date: Tue, 26 Nov 96 11:33:42 From: LCMRCI Subject: Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi To: marxchat@stud.unit.no The civil war in Zaire. The current civil war in Zaire is not a product of native barbarism but it is a consequence of imperialist domination. The barbarism in central Africa is a result of both backward capitalism penetration and its inability to develop the economy, linked to the previous social relations. In the nineteenth century the western powers divided Africa into colonies to exploit their raw materials and people. They carved up territories and divided ethnic groups, creating in the process a legacy of rivalry, division and suspicion. To facilitate their rule, the colonial powers promoted ruling classes out of various tribal elites, and elevated traditional chiefs into local warlords. In order to boost their power, these rulers appealed to tribal loyalties rewarded by patronage and corruption which favoured one tribe against another. So it is not only ancient tribal hostility which is the cause of today's conflicts. Modern tribalism is the creation of imperialism as part of its indirect method of ruling its former colonies. The lakes area in central Africa is one of the most fertile and populated zones in the continent. It was also one of th last parts to be colonised. Imperialist dominance come only around one century ago. In that region the pre-capitalist social relations were based on a division between those who had more than 10 cows - the Tutsi (riches), and those that cultivated the land -the Hutus. Germany, colonised Rwanda and Burundi until the first world war, and Belgium colonised Zaire since the last century and Rwanda and Burundi after the first world war. They both promoted a deeper division between these two social layers. A modern racist ideology was developed in support of Tutsi supremacy by administrators and anthropologists. It accentuated the "whitish" character of the Tutsi because they had originated from shepherd tribes in the horn of Africa and are more mediterranean-looking compared with the Hutus were based in mainly the old `African' Bantu population. When the imperialists pulled out during the de-colonisation of Africa after WW2, these new ruling classes were left in charge, administering the semi-colonies on behalf of the former colonial rulers. The legacy of colonial rule was not only the arbitrary geographical groupings of tribes, but economies that had been turned into sources of cheap exports for the world economy.These new states were firmly locked into an international division of labour in which they would produce raw material and agricultural exports, and import machines or finished consumer goods from the West. In Rwanda, for example, coffee was the main crop, accounting for 70% of the farms, and 80% of the foreign exchange earnings. In Zaire, it was the hugely rich supplies of minerals which were eagerly sought by the world economy. Rubber, the main crop in the 19th century, was replaced by cobalt [2/3rds of the worlds production] industrial diamonds [world leader] zinc, tin, manganese, gold, silver, iron ore and uranium etc. But Imperialism is an unstable system and prone to world crises caused by a tendency for profits to fall. Crises mean that capitalism is constantly on the lookout for cheaper raw materials and labour power. During the last period of world crisis from the early 1970's, world prices for products from the semi-colonies in Central Africa fell dramatically. Coffee fell by half in 1987 causing the fragile Rwandan and Burundi economy to almost collapse. Unemployment and starvation set in. This in turn brought old and new rivalries to the surface as the masses looked for ways to solve the problems of imperlialism. The latest events in central Africa are therefore the product of this long imperialist history. Imperialism today washes its hands of its rotten past, and pretends that the tribal warfare it created is the produ ct of `African tribalism'. It blames the racially selected `political' classes which it created, and continues to arm to rule on its behalf, for the `genocide' of Tutsis and Hutus. It claims that these tribal forces are so destructive that imperialism cannot intervene except to pickup the pieces with humanitarian aid. As soon as the aid organisations come under threat, the democratic imperialist swash the in hands of the problem. Therefore it was colonisation and the the de-colonisation process in central Africa that created the conditions which led to civil wars. In Burundi the Tutsi monarchy remained in power while in Rwanda it was overthrown in th eraly 1960s by a peasant Hutu uprising which established a new republic. These two countries are geographically very small but have the highest population density in Africa. Their population speaks the same language (french and Rwandese dialects) and were divided between around 85% Hutu and 14% Tutsi. In Burundi the Hutus are still second class citizens and the army is still monopolised by the Tutsi. In Rwanda many Tutsi and former rulers left to live in neighbouring countries where they became discriminated against. The 35 years of formal independence saw constant genocides against the Hutu in Burundi and against the Tutsi in Rwanda. On 21 October 1993 the first Hutu elected president of Burundi was killed after less than 100 days in office. This led to more ethnic violence. Meanwhile, in Rwanda the civil war between the Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front [RPF] and the Habyramina's Hutu dominant regime provoked the massacre of more than half a million people (mostly Tutsi and Hutu oppositionists). In neighbouring Uganda the massacres were even more massive. A very heterogenous country, Uganda is divided into around 40 nationalities which have very different languages and religions. Idi Amin, Milton Obote and Museveni, between them killed more than one million people during their dictatorships. The RPF was created by the the Museveni dictatorship. Museveni has been in power since 1986. He has Tutsi origins and his new army and government was reinforced by the Tutsi emmigres. When in July 1994 the RPF took power, more than two million Rwandese (one quarter of the population) left the country. Many Tutsi and Ugandese repopulated former Hutu properties. The RPF had little popular support in Rwanda but its superiority was based on better equipment and logistic support in Uganda. Behind this conflict there is some inter-imperialist rivalry. The RPF was very well promoted in the US and UK media. France backed its former ally Habyarimana, the Rwandese dictator, because it wanted to defend its franco-phone African region. It was opppose to the RPF led by anglo-speaking Tutsi and Ugandese. Zaire breaking up? In Zaire Mobutu has been in power for the last 31 years overseeing the superexploitation of Zaire by imperialist multinationals. His personal reward is equivalent of around 1/4 of the foreign debt. In the last six years Zaire has faced a very deep crisis. Mobutu tried to buy off the leader of the radical opposition, Tshikeidi, by making him prime minister. After a period of cooperation, Mobutu sacked him. Zaire as a united country is almost ceasing to exist. The biggest country in Black Africa is divided between 4 countries which have a lot of communication difficulties and which are much more integrated with their neighbouring economies than with the rest of the country. The empoverishment and regional division of Zaire is creating ethnic conflicts. The Rwandese emmigree were attacked. The Tutsi communities which lived in eastern Zaire before the European arrival suffered discrimination and expulsions. Imperialism is afraid that the crisis in Zaire could deepen and lead to an unstable situation. Their response is to form a UN force to oversee stability in Zaire. On the one hand they favour a`democratic' regime over Mobutu's dictatorship. On the other hand they fear a popular movement for democracy turning into a radical movement. The rebel army which occupied eastern Zaire is led by Tutsi fighters. The Rwandese regime openly supports this movement. The enemies of the rebels accussed them to trying to create a single Tutsi-led state which would unite Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and eastern Zaire. On the other hand there are some reports which says that the rebels are not exclusively or even mainly Tutsi. They are made up of several currents including that of Laurent Kabila [who is not Tutsi] who fought with Lumumba in the 1960's and formed Partidi la Revolution Populaire (PRP) in 1967. Other groups include the Mouvement Revolutionaraire pur la Liberation du Zaire based in the Bakuvu region; L'Alliance democratique des peuples created in 1995 of Andre Kissasse [not a Tutsi] in the province ofKasai. Refugee Solutions? The more than one million Rwandese Hutu which survived in eastern Zaire are now returning to Rwanda. In the last two years they were forced to leave their homes and live in the most inhuman conditions in disease-plagued refugees camps. Today they are returning to their homes and lands which are occupied by Tutsi or other people, and accept to live under the Tutsi regime. Is this the solution to the problem? Living under one or other military dictatorship? Some of the left see the Zaire civil war as merely an extension of the Rwandan/Burundi conflict where the Tutsi are now dominant and backed by the US to introduce a more `democratic' regime in Zaire. They are believers in the liberal ideology that the West can help to `democratise' Africa. For example, our current was created in a fight against the LRCI leaders who called for the military victory of the US-UK backed Tutsi RPF who produced the biggest refugees exodus in Africa. The West's liberal goals are the IMF/World Bank policies of structural adjustment along with"good governance", a codeword for "multiparty" democracy which also means inter-ethnic harmony! But imperialism even in its most pious humane guise, - the church-based UN sanctioned aid agency - is the cause not the solution to the problem! Workers' Solution. The workers and poor peasants of central Africa have the solution in their hands. They should critically participate in mass demonstrations and uprisings against Mobutu regime in Zaire and the Rwandan and Ugandan regimes. But they need to organise themselves against the leaders of the rebel movements who are trying to became the new bourgeois dictators. This new rulers would maintain the right of imperialism to continue to super-exploit the region, and continue the historic pattern of poverty, starvation and new massacres against the toilers or other ethnic communities. The tragedy in central Africa is that dictators based on one ethnic group can be replaced by another elite. The main social problems caused by imperialism's dominance and super- exploitation arises from the forms of backward semi-colonial economies, intermingled with old pre-capitalist social relations. What is needed ito overcome these backward pressures is the independent activity of the working class. The multi-ethnic wage workers from the mines, rural states and urban industries should unite in powerful rank and file controlled unions and councils which should have their own self-defense committees. Only such united and independent workers organisations can lead the masses of small, impoverished farmers in the struggle for democracy and on the road towards socialism. The workers need to win the battle for democracy: for the release of all political prisoners; for workers and popular tribunals to judge paramilitary and massacre; for freedoms to all parties; for democratic elections controlled by workers and people's committees; for self-determination to all the nations; for the replacement of corrupt armies thorough workers and peasant militias and for a constituent assembly. The central African proletariat should fight for a Workers and Peasants Governments that can give the land to the peasants, expropriate the big capitalists and imperialist corporations and cancel the foreign debt to the banks and IMF! Article from Class Struggle (LCMRCI) From wkramer@ucla.edu Tue Nov 26 15:33:46 1996 Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 14:21:16 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: UCLA Spring Field Study Class !! LAMAP Field Study 199 First Meeting*: Friday, January 10 10 AM -12 noon UCLA Labor Center Conference Room 1001 Gayley, 2nd Floor (Next to the Coffee Bean) The Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project (LAMAP) is a labor-community organization which brings unions, churches and community organizations together to fight for better conditions for immigrants who work in manufacturing jobs that pay low wages (minimum or below!) and offer minimal benefits. LAMAP's strategy is to apply the industry-wide organizing model used by Justice for Janitors to manufacturing industries in Southern California. Last summer, LAMAP helped Mission-Guerrero tortilla delivery drivers win a strong new contract that increased wages by 22% and improved job security. This field study class will give you the chance to receive course credit for working with LAMAP. Credit is available from one of several departments including Chicano Studies, Asian-American Studies, History, Political Science, Sociology, and several others. The class will be conducted as a workshop. Students will meet weekly to learn about research methods and report on findings. We will bring in experienced researchers and visit public agencies for hands-on learning. Students can work on projects in one of several areas, including: (1) worker/ industry research (2) community research (3) public and media relations (4) arts and culture. * worker/industry research: students will work with researchers and organizers to help investigate companies and assist with worker outreach. * community research: students will work with LAMAP Community Organizer Joaquin Meneses on projects including research and outreach to Mexican regional federations, hometown associations, soccer clubs, high schools and parents groups. * public and media relations: students will help work on media and public outreach projects, including assistance with video projects, newsletters, press releases, Web site, email network, and other projects. * arts and culture: students can help create drama, murals, photography, music, paintings, etc that focus on working conditions and workers struggles in Southern California. Contact UCLA-LAMAP Coordinator William Kramer at 310-794-0698 or wkramer@ucla.edu for more information. (* at this time we will pick a weekly a meeting time. If you cannot meet at this time but would still like to take the class, please contact me during the first week of class). 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 global@uk.pi.net Tue Nov 26 17:00:28 1996 Date: Tue, 26 Nov 96 23:51:16 From: LCMRCI Subject: Big demonstrations in Canada To: marxism-general@jefferson.village.virginia.edu, marxism-international@jefferson.village.virginia.edu Arturo Mundigo (LTG) Friday October 25 and Saturday October 26 were history making days in Toronto. On the Friday the city was brought to a halt and on Saturday the biggest demonstration in recent Canadian history took place (300,000) against the Tory government's attacks on workers and the poor. While Toronto's unionised force is only 30% or so, all the targets set by the organisers to shut down were met: the transit system, the postal services, government offices, train station, city hall, construction sites, etc. While many intended to paralise the financial district and target the puppeteers behind the Tory puppets, this took place only in a more symbolic and indirect way. Nevertheless, the disruption in Transit caused a lot of people to simply take the day off to avoid inconvenience. About a million people did not show up for work on Oct 25. The most important points of struggle were the Transit system and the post offices. There was an injunction to limit picketing at the Transit sites. But it was very clear that it would be defied. At the postal stations the management was filming picket and threatened to fire anyone who picketed that day. Pickets were actually from other workplaces who wore sky masks, so that service was effectively shut down too. With our small forces we managed to intervene in both the Transit and the Postal shutdown, through both the organisations in which we play a leading role: the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and the Unemployed Workers Council. Chris and I went to the Transit yard at three in the morning of the 25th to join the UWC and public sector unionists and other militants who were determined to shut it down that day. Since the Transit union had voted for the shutdown, the majority of workers stayed away or went to picket other sites that day. So we basically had to stop a small number of scabs (between 60 and 80 at most), the majority of whom were administrative, supervisory and security staff (and some non-union maintenance). We allowed no cars in. The picket captain (union staff) went on TV asking us not to stop people (it was supposed to be an 'informational picket') which he had to do to save his ass. But the militants who had no sleep in order to be there were not about to play the game and began chanting 'stuff the injunction, transit won't function!'. The UWC people, particularly Chris and I, played an important role as the de facto picket captains, organizing effective pickets to prevent scabs from walking in by linking arms in a way that it would be impossible to sneak in, and to prevent the use of our hands which could have got us charged with assault. By 8:30 it was clear that transit would not function that day. The News were there reporting on the 'illegal pickets' preventing workers form coming in (at most 40 drivers gathered across the str et for about an hour but made no attempt of even crossing the street. We declared victory, as it was key to shutting down the city. Our other comrades were at the main postal plant with OCAP. Some people got arrested and there was physical confrontation with some scabs. But we won there too. The Tories have not moved one bit from their agenda yet. It looks like the only thing that will begin to turn things around will be a province wide shutdown for which we have agitated since the start. The idea is spreading and union leaders are beginning to use it as a threat in their speeches. Unfortunately, there was no date announced in th ir speeches at the rally and the struggle now is to force them to do so. From global@uk.pi.net Tue Nov 26 17:01:23 1996 Date: Tue, 26 Nov 96 23:39:20 From: LCMRCI Subject: Support Liverpool dockers! To: marxism-general@jefferson.village.virginia.edu, marxism-international@jefferson.village.virginia.edu ’SUPPORT LIVERPOOL DOCKERS FIGHT FOR JOBS AND TRADE UNION RIGHTS! ’For over twelve months now 500 Liverpool dockworkers have effectively been locked out of their jobs for adhering to the basic trade union principle of refusing to cross a picket line.At the end of September 1995 the dockers employer,the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC) attempted to bring in scab labour on a casual or temporary basis.However,even the strikebreakers have protested against the poor working conditions they have been expected to endure! n among all of this,where magnificent international solidarity has been organised by dockworkers at ports around the world via a boycott of MDHC's biggest customer ACL Containers,the MDHC management has intermittantly offered between 60 and 100 dockworkers their jobs back.But this is only a buy off ruse which would lead to these workers replacing the casuals the management intend laying off anyway!The dockworkers themselves have rightly rejected this and other insulting sops from management. ince the British Tory government abolished the National Dock Labour Scheme in 1989,British ports have been decimated--and so too have the jobs,livelihoods and trade union rights of thousands of dockworkers.Indeed,the port of Liverpool,or what is left of it,is the only port in Britain not to be completely thrown to the less than tender mercies of overall casualisation and a total anti-union culture.In fact,active rank and file dockworkers and shop stewards from the docker's union,the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU),have not just been up and down several countries speaking at around 5,000 labour movement meetings to raise the profile of their struggle and also much needed monies so they and their families can eat,but they have been involved in two delegate based international dockworkers conferences,the second of which set up the Dockers Alliance. So in among all of this excellent activity,what of the leadership of the TGWU?The supposedly left-wing dominated General Executive Committee of the T&G has steadfastly refused to give the dispute official backing.In fact,when 200 sacked dockworkers lobbied the recent TUC conference in Blackpool,T&G general secretary Bill Morris argued that it would not be worth a sacked docker addressing a conference of over 1,000 trade union delegates because "there probably won't be anybody there from Liverpool!".This outrageous piece of bureaucratic evasiveness is almost certainly at one with the overwhelming desire of the vast majority of national trade union tops to keep the path clear for the election of a Blairite,right-wing Labour government already pledged to keep in place the arsenal of Tory imposed anti-trade union laws. As magnificently and determinedly as the Liverpool dockworkers have struggled to defend their jobs and as equally magnificently as they have forged good international links with other dockers around the world (their real allies!),twelve months of hard class struggle and tremendous sacrifice have not won the day.With the treacherous T&G officials cowering behind the law and defending not the union membership but their own fat salaries and many other perks,nothing short of an organised mass trade union and local community blockade of the port of Liverpool will force the hard-nosed MDHC management to budge.Of necessity this will have to involve a mass portside meeting to elect picket/blockade organisers who can act as the overseers of a much needed workers defence guard.This is no pipedream as in the Wapping (London)printworkers lockout of 1986,the old Society of Graphical and Allied Trades printworkers union in London voted to supply its pickets with baseball bats in the face of some particularly brutal police intimidation. *Support the Liverpool dockworkers! No victimisations! No to casualisation! For a mass blockade and workers defence guard to shut down the entire port of Liverpool! Smash the anti-union laws! Victory to the Liverpool dockworker"’s. "’Also send messages of support and financial donations to:J.Davies,Secretary-Merseyside Port Shop Stewards,19 Scorton Street,Liverpool,L6 4AS. From global@uk.pi.net Tue Nov 26 17:13:27 1996 Date: Tue, 26 Nov 96 23:44:42 From: LCMRCI Subject: Stop the Blairite modernisers To: marxism-general@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU, marxism-international@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Stop the Blairite modernisers Blair's plans for the Labour Party are clear. His New Labour, New Life for Britain manifesto has been pushed through with absolute contempt for party democracy. It was put together by Blair's team without any consultation. Conference was not even allowed to amend the document, only to vote on it. The National Executive Committee (NEC) was prevented from seeing it until an hour before its vote. Though Blair can claim 95% support this was on a 61% turnout on what was presented to members as a referendum on whether they wanted a Labour Government! Instead of democracy we have blackmail. Each vote is turned into a loyalty statement. Those who are unhappy are vilified and accused of rocking the boat and disrupting Labour's election chances. Labour's new media centre at Millbank Tower disseminates New Labour propaganda, whilst party hacks at Labour conference observe the way delegates are voting and behaving. As Blair's post-Modernisers churn out empty rhetoric to the middle classes, the party apparatus assumes the role of Big Brother. The events at the TUC and Labour Party conferences have highlighted the huge significance of the coming months for the labour movement. The frontbench Labour MP Steven Byers was sent to the TUC conference by Tony Blair. He told journalists what the left has been warning for some time - that the Blairites plan to smash up the Labour Party once it comes to office by breaking the link with the trade unions. The plan is for Blair to introduce state funding for political parties and then to cut the unions out of all decision making. The Labour Co-ordinating Committee has spelled out its proposals for radical constitutional change to the Labour Party in its pamphlet: New Labour, a Stakeholders' Party and the left MP Ken Livingstone believes that they will attempt to push these through the Labour Party Conference after winning the election and that in this euphoria the left may be caught napping. He says in an article in the Morning Star: 'The proposals include abolishing GCs (General Committees - constituency wide committees with delegates from wards and local TUs) (and replacing them) with local council leaders and 'key' workers leading local policy forums. Coupled with the elimination of a TU role from CLPs (Constituency Labour Parties) and the widespread use of internal referendum ballots this will destroy the only real mechanism by which the working class can organise for policy change. The proposals, if carried through, would remove any remaining function of the Labour Party Conference. ... This is the biggest threat to the trade union movement we have seen in our lifetime. In one sense it is more damaging than the anti-union laws because these proposals seek to prevent the trade union movement from having a political wing from which it can organise and help to defeat those laws.' Combined with the proposal to abolish the policy-making function of the NEC (National Executive Committee - elected from Conference contains many TU bureaucrats) and pre-selection vetting of all candidates these proposals in fact break the trade union link without the necessity for open conflict on the issue because there would then be no way the TUs could directly influence party policy. If these proposals go through it will be a massive defeat for the working class. This raises a number of speculations about what will happen to the labour movement in terms of splits and re-compositions. But whatever happens, our loyalties lie not with the Labour Party but with the working class who still look to it to defend it from the worst ravages of capitalism when it is elected. The Labour Party is already well on the way to being transformed into a US style Democratic Party, merged with the Liberal Democrats into a glossy, sound-bitten, socially conservative, jamboree based monstrosity. Blair's 'New Labour' government will be a Tory one in its political intentions. It will build on the destruction unleashed by the hated Tories, encouraging the selfish values and cynicism of Middle England, attacking the working class through state legislation and the hated anti-union laws. Arch-moderniser Peter Mandelson has stated in his book that the first thing a Labour government will do is attack the public sector trade unions. And Blunkett and Blair have already scabbed on the postal workers and tube drivers by ordering them to re-ballot and by threatening to make public sector strikes illegal. And because of their support for the Maastricht convergence criteria, further attacks on the working class, public services and the NHS will be necessary. This is one reason why Blair will not set a minimum wage without the agreement of the bosses. Blair's sickening new moral crusade goes hand in hand with this. Whilst the fabric of society crumbles, those who will be scape-goated are the poor, the unemployed, immigrants and young people. In fact poor young people will be left with three options - either get a McJob with a fast food chain on a zero hours contract for 3 hours a day, be forced onto a workfare slave labour scheme, or turn to crime and suffer 'fast-track' punishment. It is little wonder that labour movement activists are having enough. There is a developing suspicion, even hatred, of Blair and his evil friends who, Clare Short says, 'live in the dark'. These people don't come from the labour movement. Blair has said himself that he wasn't born Labour. Many of his advisors are still not even members of the party. They have contempt for the working class. Even right wing bureaucrats like ASLEF boss Lew Adams are now accusing Labour of 'pandering to fair weather friends'. The TUC conference marked a significant turn in the relation between Labour and the union movement. We need to build on this shift of feeling. But we should do so not by pandering to the bureaucrats but by organising the rank-and-file and by placing demands on a Labour government. The fight to defend the union link should be combined with a fight against the kind of policies that the modernisers represent. This should combine the fight against the anti-union laws with a fight against the Immigration Act, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the Job Seekers Allowance, for full employment and a decent minimum wage, for the defence of education and the NHS and for the renationalisation of the privatised industries and utilities. The anger felt by many trade unionists must be mobilised now if the Labour Party is to survive. The initiative taken by the Socialist Campaign Group (Supporters Network) to launch a campaign around minimum socialist demands was scuppered because of the abject cowardice of the MPs. Alan Simpson MP declared: 'The Group will not be putting out an alternative manifesto to the one put out by the Party. Nor would we be intending to launch campaigns with anyone who might be opposing the Party in this or other election'. Furthermore, centrists like the AWL go along with this line on the basis that they don't want the MPs to damage their chances of getting elected. So it seems that the left has also adopted the 'don't rock the boat' arguement. Meanwhile we are all being cut adrift! At stake is how we view the Campaign Group Supporters Network. For the likes of the AWL, Labour Briefing and Socialist Action, it plays the role of uncritical cheerleader for left MPs. We have always argued that it should be a fighting activist body that can draw on the MPs' support. Ultimately the modernisers will be defeated, not by parliamentary speaches, but by class action. To this end we support building the Campaign Group as an activists' network, raising radical demands, and fighting to defend the trade union link. Then, on day, we might just find that the working class has an important role to play after all! The SCG (SN) is at c/o 3 Blades House, Kennington Oval, London SE11 5TW. p From knowware@mindlink.bc.ca Tue Nov 26 19:25:07 1996 by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 1.58 #1) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 18:24:33 -0800 To: popup@vcn.bc.ca From: knowware@mindlink.bc.ca (Tom Walker) Subject: The Long Term >From a speech by British Columbia Premier Glen Clark to the Convention of the B.C. Federation of Labour, November 26, 1996... The Long Term "These are important initiatives -- creating jobs in the forest sector, rebuilding our coastal communities, working to save Canadian Airlines -- but I want to challenge you today to consider even more fundamental measures. "There's a best-selling book in the stores these days called The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin. "Rifkin warns us that the economic shift we're undergoing now is different from the economic revolutions of the past. "The Industrial Revolution first moved workers from the fields to the factories. Then they moved from factories to the service sector. Each time technology displaced workers from one area, it opened up jobs in another. "The difference now, Rifkin suggests, is new technology is creating far fewer jobs than it destroys. "As Rifkin says, we may well have thousands of new products being made. But 'they are likely to be manufactured in near-workerless factories and marketed by near-virtual companies requiring an ever-smaller, more highly skilled workforce.' "There are high-paying jobs for an elite few and underemployment or unemployment for the many. "Rifkin suggests we may have to take the existing work and spread it around. He says we have to look once more at the question of reduced work time. "I don't agree with all of Rifkin's analysis or his proposed solutions. "But here's the paradox. We see around us today an economy in which corporations are reaping record profits. "The stock exchange is booming. Interest rates are low. "Yet unemployment remains high -- too high. "And at a time when thousands of workers can't find a job at all, those who are employed are working longer and longer hours. "There's strong evidence that the changes he's describing are occurring right now, right here in B.C. "While unemployment remains stubbornly high, the workweek is actually getting longer. "In the forest sector in our province, the average work week increased from 35 hours in 1985 to 38.2 in 1995. "In the mining sector, it increased from 38.9 to 40.7 "Overtime hours are rising, too. "Total overtime hours rose 12.2 percent across Canada in 1994. "I certainly don't want to leave the impression I am critical in any way of workers who do overtime. Many have no choice and many others are simply doing whatever they can to provide the best possible for their families. "But on average, every worker in B.C. did an hour of overtime during the month of September. "In primary industries, like forestry and mining, the average number of overtime hours per week was four hours. In manufacturing it was two hours. "I am convinced we must look for ways to redistribute the work available so that more British Columbians can be employed. "And I am convinced that we can make these changes while actually maintaining or improving productivity. Here's the challenge: can we reduce overtime and maintain world-class, competitive industries. "Of course, we can't assume that overtime hours or shorter work weeks could be converted into jobs on a one-to-one basis. "Some analysts believe that we'd be doing well if we acheived half that goal. "But the potential is impressive. Consider our pulp and paper sector, a key driver of our economy. "Our pulp workers hae seen a steady increase in overtime work -- up 27 per cent in the first half of this decade. The average worker puts in almost one out of every 10 hours as overtime. "One industry estimate suggests that converting those overtime hours to jobs would create as many as 600 new full-time positions in the pulp and paper industry. "Would that make sense? Could we do it without penalizing people unfairly? Obviously these are huge questions -- but they need to be asked with all the parties at the table committed to achieving clear gains in job creation. "I know many of the unions here are already tackling these issues. The CAW has made some promising progress in their settlement with the big three auto manufacturers in Ontario. "The news media focused on the outsourcing issue. But what may be at least as important is the expansion of special time-off provisions. "These give top-seniority workers as much as one week off for every four weeks worked. The CAW estimates this provision will create 300 positions in Windsor alone... and 1,000 new jobs at union rates across the auto sector. "An equally impressive effort has been made by the Steelworkers at Algoma Steel, where they've engaged in far-reaching agreements with management to protect jobs that are the lifeblood of their community. "We've already seen some promising results from work-time strategies here in the public sector in B.C., with the Health Labour Accord. "A shorter work week helped us reduce costs and free up resources for front-line services... and averted layoffs to as many as 600 full-time positions. "I want to be clear: these aren't easy problems to solve. "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there are no quick fixes. there are no simple answers. There's no magic wand to wave. "This will require business, government and labour to work together. There is common ground to be found here, creativity to be applied, and partnerships to be forged. 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 Tue Nov 26 22:04:08 1996 Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 20:41:57 -0800 (PST) To: preeve@igc.org, pwillett@igc.org, margy@uclink.berkeley.edu, jkurz@igc.org, LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: LA Times/What UC Means About Business (11/24) (fwd) Sender: meisenscher@igc.org >Return-Path: abudak@alumni.ysu.edu >Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 21:58:45 -0500 >From: Tony Budak >Subject: LA Times/What UC Means About Business (11/24) (fwd) >To: Tony Budak > >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >COMMUNITY/LABOR Mail Filter List brings this message to you. For info >about COMM/LABOR, send an email to Tony Budak with >COMM/LABOR INFO REQUEST, in the Subject Header, nothing in the message body. >Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. >You may forward the message but please do not use the "redirect" command. >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > > > ><---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> >Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 12:35:44 -0800 >Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy >From: D Shniad >Subject: LA Times/What UC Means About Business (11/24) (fwd) > >> L.A. TIMES >> Sunday, November 24, 1996 >> CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY >> What UC Means About Business >> [IMAGE] [IMAGE] If administrators want CEO pay, they'll have to deal >> with all aspects of the marketplace, like unions for TA's. >> >> By JESS BRAVIN >> >> When UC lobbyists and fundraisers hit the pavement earlier this >> year, they sported fancy buttons with the university's new public >> relations slogan, "UC Means Business." The slogan was in pointed >> contrast with the university's official motto, the lofty if not >> particularly value conscious "Let There Be Light." In the argot of >> advertising, the new slogan tried to indicate to politicians, >> corporations and wealthy benefactors that the sprawling university >> system was no profligate, pie-in-sky social benefit agency, but an >> enterprise that both served the business community and acted like a >> responsible part of it. >> Indeed, the buttons reflected a remarkable transformation of an >> institution that once proudly called itself a public university. >> Taking cues from Gov. Pete Wilson, UC administrators have been >> refashioning the university into a quasi-private enterprise that no >> longer seeks state funding to accomplish its historic missions--or >> considers those missions, such as offering tuition-free education to >> every qualified California youngster, sacrosanct. Instead, >> administrators see the university's future as a free market player >> that can wheel and deal with the leanest and meanest corporate powers. >> >> To executives at Kaiser Center, the glass and concrete Oakland >> skyscraper that houses the UC administration, privatization was, as >> they say in business productivity manuals, a "win-win scenario." UC >> could market itself to private interests willing to pay. This >> phenomenon can be seen at UC's medical centers. Hundreds of nurses and >> other low-level employees have been laid off at the UC Irvine and UC >> San Diego medical centers, which are being shopped around to >> for-profit HMO chains. Earlier this month, the Board of Regents voted >> to transfer the UC San Francisco Medical Center to a new private, >> nonprofit corporation in which UC will hold a minority stake. A major >> benefit of the proposal, administrators explained, was that the new >> corporation's governing board would not be subject to open records >> laws. >> And, by the way, if UC operates like a business, shouldn't its >> executives be paid accordingly? The same administrators who proposed a >> 10% fee increase this fall--and total increases of nearly 50% in the >> past four years--also persuaded the regents to raise salaries of UC's >> highest officials: the 68 administrators who already earn an average >> of $173,000 and as much as $394,800 per year took raises averaging >> $9,400 and ranging up to $52,000. >> Unfortunately, UC administrators have overlooked the new >> obligations that come with joining the marketplace. At graduate >> professional schools, where fees have quadrupled in recent years to >> approach those at private institutions, students are demanding better >> and more services. Long lines and inadequate facilities, which were >> accepted as part of attending a public school, no longer seem quaint. >> Students will not pay Nordstrom prices for DMV service. >> Even more telling is the strike called last week by the lowest >> paid and most vulnerable of UC's academic employees. Demanding >> collective bargaining rights, graduate students who work as teaching >> assistants at UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego walked off the job in >> a symbolic rolling strike, supported by students at other UC campuses >> and by the United Auto Workers. >> UC's graduate students teach most discussion sections for 160,000 >> undergraduates, grade papers and conduct basic research, freeing >> tenured professors from such unpopular chores. These men and women, >> many of whom are starting families of their own, make about $12,000 >> per year, carry substantial educational debt and face a withering job >> market upon completing their degrees. Under the fiction that graduate >> students are employees for "educational benefit," UC has refused to >> grant them collective bargaining rights. In September, UCLA graduate >> students won a state ruling requiring the university to recognize >> their union or to hold an organizing election. Administrators refused; >> the same week they extracted their raise from the regents, >> administrators began a campaign to reverse that small victory for >> teaching assistants. According to an administration statement, >> "collective bargaining would strain academic relationships" between >> graduate students and the faculty members who are their mentors. >> Informally, administrators accuse graduate students of being >> ungrateful troublemakers who fail to understand that poverty and job >> insecurity are essential parts of their apprenticeship for the >> selfless life of academe. >> The university can't have it both ways. If UC intends to stake >> its future on the corporate model--and, accordingly, pay its >> executives 10 or 20 times the salary of its front-line teachers--it is >> going to have to accept responsibility when those on the bottom react >> like their counterparts in the private sector. If UC means business, >> it had better understand what that means for its academic environment. >> - - - >> Jess Bravin, a Law Student at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall, Is a Student >> Member of the UC Board of Regents > > ><---- End Forwarded Message ----> > > ************************************************** 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 goodwork@igc.org Wed Nov 27 10:34:07 1996 Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 09:09:50 -0800 (PST) From: Goodwork To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: The Long Term Shall we call this address instead "The Not-quite Long Enough Term"? The B.C. minister brings up important challenges, and urges common efforts, and that seems good. Yet as with many attempts at social solutions, this one, explicitly including as it did a call for more jobs in the forest sector in B.C., runs us even faster into the finite earth context. I'll continue demonstrating with Rainforest Action Network here in Los Angeles in opposition to General Telephone using Clayoquot (sp?) sound trees for phone books! How do we put these issues together? Joe Maizlish Los Angeles From rsaute@email.gc.cuny.edu Wed Nov 27 16:02:41 1996 27 Nov 1996 18:02:35 -0400 (EDT) ; Wed, 27 Nov 1996 18:02:33 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 18:02:33 -0500 (EST) From: "Robert Saute, CUNY Grad Center" Subject: Socialist Scholars Conference To: Labor-Rap ========================================================================== **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 saw spirited debates on the "end of work" vs. jobs for all, identity politics and the Left's universalism, the Million Man March, Cuban economists on market reform, 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. 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 From ebonacic@wizard.ucr.edu Thu Nov 28 09:20:26 1996 From: Edna Bonacich Subject: GUESS Campaign To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 08:13:54 -0800 (PST) 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 aaron@burn.ucsd.edu Thu Nov 28 15:03:32 1996 Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 14:03:44 -0800 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: aaron@burn.ucsd.edu (Aaron) Subject: Re: The Long Term (fwd) When something is posted to more than one list, the various responses usually aren't. Here's one. --For international solidarity against capital, --Aaron ---------- Begin Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 00:25:05 -0800 Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Re: The Long Term (fwd) On Tue, 26 Nov 1996, Tom Walker wrote: > From a speech by British Columbia Premier Glen Clark to the Convention of > the B.C. Federation of Labour, November 26, 1996... > > "I am convinced we must look for ways to redistribute the work available so > that more British Columbians can be employed. > What a swell guy. When he instituted BC Benefits (i.e. Workfare/Learnfare), he did not consult with the poor. There is much expertise at "The Long Haul"Newspaper office which could be deployed in that program. This week a 17 page draft went out to ask "experts" to contract with the ministry to explain the RIGHTS and OBLIGATIONS of welfare recipients, specifically "BC Benefits" recipients. Ask Jean Swanson and the ELP people who have put out volumes of newsprint on this how much employment they will get out of these contracts. I will bet dollars to donuts Clark will hire professional liars now to arbitrarily redefine welfare rights and obligations in violation of the laws (e.g. criminal code-see section 215). Just watch! 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 *** ---------- End Forwarded message ---------- From aaron@burn.ucsd.edu Thu Nov 28 19:29:42 1996 Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 18:25:30 -0800 To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy From: aaron@burn.ucsd.edu (Aaron) Subject: Re: Discontent in Lotus Land Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu, union-d@wolfnet.com, UBUUP-L@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu Excuse my laziness in replying to and forwarding this item at the same time. It has my comments interspersed, naturally not quoted with '>'. >Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 11:08:08 -0800 >From: D Shniad >Subject: Discontent in Lotus Land > >The labour movement in British Columbia was delighted when the NDP >government was re-elected here in BC last May. Since then, however, >relations have become tense as the government slashes public spending >in order to balance the provincial budget. Things came to a head at >this week's federation of labour convention in Vancouver when the >government announced sharp cuts to municipal spending. 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. >===================================================== > >The Vancouver Sun November 28, 1996 > >CUPE ATTACKS CUTS BY VICTORIA > > Mike Crawley, The Vancouver Sun > >Fearing that they'll bear the brunt of the $113-million reduction in >transfer payments to municipalities, members of the Canadian Union of >Public Employees led the condemnation of the cuts Wednesday at the >B.C. Federation of Labor annual convention. > >Delegates to the convention blasted the provincial government for >announcing earlier this week that grants to local governments will be >reduced by 28 per cent. > >Their angry mood continued a theme of the week-long convention: the >current tension in B.C. between the labor movement and the usually >union-friendly New Democratic Party as a result of plans to cut 3,500 >jobs in the provincial civil service. > >"I am angry at the government and I am starting to question their >commitment to workers," said Bernice Kirk, CUPE's B.C. president. Just starting to??? >For most municipalities, the cut in grants from Victoria represents >about three per cent of their total revenues and Municipal Affairs >Minister Dan Miller says local governments should be able to absorb >the drop in funding without raising taxes or cutting services. But >throughout the province, municipalities are already making plans to >trim services. And that means job cuts, delegates to the federation >convention warned. > >They debated and unanimously approved a resolution condemning the >federal Liberals for their cuts in transfer payments to the provinces >and the provincial NDP for cutting grants to local governments. The >resolution also calls on the municipalities not to lay off workers or >contract out services in response to the funding cut. Judging by the following paragraph, I'd say that their 'resolution' should be called an 'irressolution'. >But, acknowledging that job losses are likely, delegates said the >province and municipalities must consult with workers on the shape >that layoffs will take. They want early-retirement packages, severance >deals and an over-all labor adjustment strategy. CUPE predicts 1,000 to >1,500 of its members could lose their jobs as a result of the cuts, >delegate Shane Simpson said. So, rather than fight the ruling class as the workers in France and, to some extent, in Ontario have been doing, the BC unions are going to plead for kinder cuts! It seems that the unions, and the pro-capitalist idology they embody, are as much an enemy of the workers as are the capitalists and their politicians. >"The bottom line is it's the province that made the decision to make >this cut," he said. "The province has to accept responsibility for >that decision." But the unions won't take responsibility for preventing the implementation of that decision! >Simpson said CUPE is concerned the Union of B.C. Municipalities is >seeking changes that will allow its members to privatize or contract >out more services. They can seek anything they want, but they can only do it if CUPE and its members allow it. --In the struggle against capital, --Aaron --Free Radio Berkeley (California) --Peace and Freedom Party Alameda County Central Ctte. From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Thu Nov 28 23:33:31 1996 Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 22:33:23 -0800 (PST) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Re: Discontent in Lotus Land To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu In-Reply-To: On Thu, 28 Nov 1996, Aaron wrote: > >Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 11:08:08 -0800 > >From: D Shniad > >Subject: Discontent in Lotus Land > > > >The labour movement in British Columbia was delighted when the NDP > >government was re-elected here in BC last May. Since then, however, > >relations have become tense as the government slashes public spending > >in order to balance the provincial budget. Things came to a head at > >this week's federation of labour convention in Vancouver when the > >government announced sharp cuts to municipal spending. > > 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. Lotus Land is on the threshold of a political transformation. When it is completed some will, jokingly or otherwise say that it has become the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Bill 36, 1995, is the Referendum/Recall Bill. It will become very workable to the extent that Internet is available to all and that will take one 5 year plan or two at most. At that stage folks it is a whole new ballgame! 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 wkramer@ucla.edu Fri Nov 29 16:29:57 1996 Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 15:29:47 -0800 To: wkramer@ucla.edu From: William Kramer Subject: GUESS Campaign Update >Here is an update on UNITE's Campaign against Guess? > >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 Edna Bonancich at ebonacic@wizard.ucr.edu or UNITE at unitela@igc.apc.org. > > > > > 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 Fri Nov 29 17:56:17 1996 Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 16:55:19 -0800 (PST) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Re: a call for unity to save the welfare state To: united@cougar.com mail@bc.ndp.ca, workingtv@cyberstore.ca In-Reply-To: I will repond to this informative posting by referring readers to the newly registered Labour Welfare Party of British Columbia. Its President, William Kay can be reached at . William led a slate of nine candidates in the recent Vancouver election and they did rather well for a new party. What I particularly want to draw your attention to is LWP platform with respect to the Welfare State. The NDP which masqueraded as the friend of labour does not stand for the protection of the "CAP (Canada Assistance Plan) Rights" as End Legislated Poverty called them in its newspaper. These rights were paid for , literally, by the blood of the labour movement during the dirty thirties. The NDP is at the front of the pack in destroying them. LWP platform is 100% unequivocal that there is a duty by the state to provide the basic amenities of life for those in its care...ALL citizens. Amenities and dignity. If you do not recognize that duty of care explicitly then you allow the state to put conditions on the lives of citizens. In Ontario for example the state can force people to do its bidding or have the necessities of life discontinued. Isn't that just a subtle way of reinstituting capital punishment? And the "crime"? Poverty! 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 aaron@burn.ucsd.edu Sat Nov 30 00:29:01 1996 Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 23:25:16 -0800 To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy From: aaron@burn.ucsd.edu (Aaron) Subject: Re: Discontent in Lotus Land Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu, union-d@wolfnet.com Friends, If you are receiving this without having seen the previous posts in this thread, please see . >The fact is that this particular group of social democratic politicians >ran AGAINST the neoliberal agenda in the last provincial election and WON >on that basis. > >Sid Shniad 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 >Subject: Re: Discontent in Lotus Land > >The fact is that this particular group of social democratic politicians >ran AGAINST the neoliberal agenda in the last provincial election and WON >on that basis. > >Sid Shniad > >> >> Excuse my laziness in replying to and forwarding this item at the same >> time. It has my comments interspersed, naturally not quoted with '>'. >> >> >Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 11:08:08 -0800 >> >From: D Shniad >> >Subject: Discontent in Lotus Land >> > >> >The labour movement in British Columbia was delighted when the NDP >> >government was re-elected here in BC last May. Since then, however, >> >relations have become tense as the government slashes public spending >> >in order to balance the provincial budget. Things came to a head at >> >this week's federation of labour convention in Vancouver when the >> >government announced sharp cuts to municipal spending. >> [In case you're confused by all the arrows, the following two paragraphs were mine. -- Aaron] >> 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. [The entirety of my original post which is quoted by Sid Shniad here is available as .--Aaron]