[Educationforall] spam con huevos, labor news, views and concerns, 12.01.11‏‏-I‏I

Fri Dec 2 07:38:55 UTC 2011

Outsourcing Giant Finds It Must Be Client, Too

A 'Stewards Army' Uprising Brings Regime Change to CWA‏
Talks in the UK, 12/12/11&12/13/11‏
ALEC in Arizona, Democracy in Peril
Britons Strike as Government Extends Austerity Measures
On the News With Thom Hartmann: For the Past Five Years, Major Banks Have Contributed More Than $300 Billion to the Coal Industry, and More
Attack on the Middle Class: First They Came for Your Paycheck. Then Your House. What's Next? 

Discussion with author Gabriel Thompson: Working in the Shadows, December 7‏

High Unemployment and Poverty Means Longer Free School Lunch Lines

Real Target of Attacks on NLRB: Working People‏

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

India's Way
Outsourcing Giant Finds It Must Be Client, Too
By VIKAS BAJAJ 
India's new private sector is increasingly powering the economy, but it chafes at what many companies say are labor laws that blunt hiring and stifle growth.

 Previous Articles in the Series 
 Video: In India, a Temp Workforce 
• NYTimes.com Home Page »

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

A 'Stewards Army' Uprising Brings Regime Change to CWA
Local 1101
STEVE EARLY
TUESDAY NOV 29, 2011 2:18 PM
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12341/a_stewards_army_uprising_brings_regime_change_to_cwa_local_1101/

'Rebuild' slate takes over in NYC, after years of
corrupt mismanagement

My first contact with union reformers in New York City
was nearly 35 years ago. Like many rank-and-file
dissidents, before and since, these critics of corrupt
labor officials were prophets without honor in their own
local.

IBT Local 282 was, at the time, one of the most
mobbed-up affiliates of a national union notorious for
its organized crime ties. My friends in 282, who drove
trucks full of cement to building sites around the city,
displayed enormous, almost reckless, courage. They were,
after all, tangling with some of the best friends a
"wise guy" ever had inside a big city construction
local--and in real life, not on The Sopranos.

Understandably, most "ready mix" drivers were too
afraid to go anywhere near foes of the Teamster
leadership, much less join their opposition group. In
fact, well-connected 282 members actually looked down on
those who challenged IBT associates of the Gambino
Family. To them, would-be reformers were just a bunch of
"Boy Scouts" or "enemies of the union" working for "the
feds."

The culture of Big Apple unionism has become slightly
more dissident-friendly in recent years. (For more on
election victories by reform-minded NYC teamsters,
transit workers and registered nurses, see here and
here.)

But institutional loyalty, where it still exists, tends
to run deep. When grifters, gangsters and autocrats hold
union office in the five boroughs, they're usually smart
enough to deflect any membership criticism of themselves
by re-casting it as an "attack" on the union itself.
Plus, there's a deep well of local cynicism, for
incumbents to tap, about the inevitability of corruption
in politics, business, and labor.

After all, this is the city where Brian McLaughlin, a
big player at the intersection of all three fields,
managed to steal more than $3 million while serving
simultaneously as a N.Y. State Assemblyman and leader of
the nation's largest Central Labor Council (CLC). The
victims of his shakedowns or thievery included the state
of New York, the CLC, various IBEW contractors, his own
re-election committee and a union-sponsored Little
League team in Queens!

In a revealing display of outer-borough solidarity (of
the wrong kind), Bronx-born John Sweeney, then national
president of the AFL-CIO, urged the federal judge
sentencing McLaughlin's to be lenient. He cited his
friend Brian's "long record of service to the working
men and women of New York City." The judge demurred,
sending the defendant away for 10 years because his
"brazen" misconduct and "abuse of trust" lent credence
to "the harshest critics of organize labor who accuse
the leadership of corruption."

The 'rebel rank and file' rises again

On the job in lower Manhattan, Verizon technicians like
Kevin Condy and Al Russo often encountered members of
IBEW Local 3, whose Little League team lost $95,000,
thanks to McLaughlin. While Brother Brian awaited
sentencing three years ago, Condy and Russo were more
concerned about official misbehavior in the
Communications Workers of America (CWA), their own
union.

The 7,000-member Local 1101 is the largest telecom local
in the northeast. In its youth as a CWA affiliate, 1101
exemplified labor insurgency in the 1970s. As Aaron
Brenner reports in Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy
and Revolt from Below (Verso Books, 2010) telephone
workers in New York battled management and, at times,
their own national union during a seven month work
stoppage:

"The 1971-2 strike experience unified one of the most
important CWA locals in the country, making it much more
effective in protecting workers' rights and improving
their wages and benefits. A few rank-and-file activists
maintained their organization and continued to push the
union toward more militancy, but over time they either
integrated into the union apparatus or joined the ranks
of the apathetic."

Four decades later, the entrenched political clique
running 1101 had been around so long that 11 out of 13
executive board members were now retired from Verizon.
This meant they were collecting their pensions from the
company, plus six-figure union salaries. In some cases,
they were also enjoying additional forms of personal
enrichment, at company and/or union expense--a matter now
under active investigation by the U.S. Department of
Labor.

In 2008, Condy and Russo decided to rally "the ranks of
the apathetic" and overthrow the "old guard" in 1101.
Both were chief stewards and Condy was a "member
organizer." In fact, they considered themselves to be
charter members of the CWA "stewards army" that new
national union president Larry Cohen tried to summon
into being after taking office in 2005. In contrast,
most Local 1101 officials only paid lip-service to the
idea of "member mobilization," preferring instead to run
the union in calcified, top-down fashion.

Condy and Russo started out with a full slate in
2008--but ended up running just by themselves. Everyone
else, among the fellow stewards that Kevin and Al
originally recruited to run with them, decided to drop
out. The threats of retaliation and/or patronage
promises made by incumbent officials were simply too
persuasive.

Both opposition candidates lost by about 400 votes out
of 1,800 cast. They were up against a well-financed
political machine, which controlled the local union
election process, from start to finish. As additional
job protection, the incumbents had managed to implant
two Local 1101 alumni in the top CWA national union
positions in New York City. These District 1 officials
had friends or relatives in the 1101 hierarchy.

All of these "friends of 1101" could be counted on to do
very little when rank-and-filers complained about unfair
election practices, inadequate representation of newly
organized AT&T wireless workers, or, more recently, the
abuse of membership dues money.

Building a broader caucus

After their election defeat three years ago, Condy and
Russo didn't just lay low and lick their wounds. They
left their campaign website up, stayed in touch with
outside helpers like Labor Notes and the Association for
Union Democracy, and steadily expanded their network of
rank-and-file contacts.

None of this was easy to juggle with a full-time phone
company job, family and community responsibilities,
labor education classes at night, and a spot high on the
"shit-list" of Verizon managers and 1101 business
agents. But, over time, Condy and Russo were able to
involve more stewards and chief stewards in a broader
reform grouping called "Rebuild 1101."

By late 2010, the rebuilders had enough political juice
to turn out more than 800 fellow workers, two days
before Thanksgiving, to challenge the 1101 leadership
about by-laws reform. Three months after that rare
membership meeting quorum, some dissenters in the local
leadership blew the whistle on their sticky-fingered
(and now estranged) colleagues.

They asked CWA President Cohen to put the local under
trusteeship, a request that triggered an investigation,
conducted by an upstate NY CWA official and an auditor
from CWA headquarters. In March, it was disclosed that
1101 leaders had granted themselves unapproved perks
like un-receipted weekly expense allowances that were
costing the treasury $156,000 a year.

These and other financial abuses led some in 1101 to
call for a national union take-over of the local. But
the trusteeship record of CWA District 1 was not
confidence inspiring. Just three years ago, District 1
removed the leader of a CWA-affiliated newspaper union
who embezzled $375,000 in dues money; the staffer
appointed by D-1 to run the local, under trusteeship,
proceeded to steal another $60,000, leading to two
embarrassing scandals (and jail sentences) instead of
one.

Some rebuilders also realized that a trusteeship would
just postpone the 1101 election, scheduled for this
month--instead of giving members the chance to clean up
the local themselves. Cohen and the CWA executive board
decided to install a "monitor" in the local, a retired
national union staffer, not connected with District 1.
His mandate was financial oversight and insuring the
fair vote that Condy and Russo didn't get last time.

In the monitor-supervised mail ballot that ended
November 21, turnout was very high--more 3,000 members
participated. After an expensive and exhausting
campaign, the entire 12-member Rebuild 1101 slate,
headed by Keith Purce, was elected, most by a two-to-one
margin. Condy is the local's new secretary-treasurer and
Russo will serve as one of 1101's three vice-presidents.

Rebuilder supporter Pam Galpern told Labor Notes that
the vote vindicated "the principle that an educated
mobilized membership is the backbone of a strong union."

Another member of the local, a hard-bitten veteran of
CWA's seven-month strike against N.Y. Tel 40 years ago,
saw the results this way: "It was a reaffirmation for
all of us that, if you rob the members and try to stock
the leadership with relatives and friends, the members
will turn against you."

But as Kevin Condy, Al Russo, and Rebuild 1101 learned,
a rank-and-file revolt against deeply entrenched,
self-serving officials doesn't occur spontaneously, no
matter how egregious their abuse of power. Mobilizing
members to restore union democracy and lost workplace
power requires one-on-one organizing by people who
really believe in CWA's "steward's army."

Steve Early was a CWA national staff member for 27
years. He has been a strong supporter of the Local 1101
Rebuilders and other CWA reform campaigns. He is the
author, most recently, of The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor
(Haymarket Books, 2011).

____________________________________________

PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to
people on the left that will help them to interpret the
world and to change it.

Submit via email: labor at portside.org

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

PS Labor Archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

2 attachments (total 1047.9 KB)

FredLiv.docView online 
Download(950.5 KB)

Download

View slide show (1)
|
Download all as zip

Colleagues, Comrades,

If you know anyone who might be interested in my talks, please forward.

Thanks,

Fred

Monday 12th December
7.30pm Public lecture, University of Liverpool

Tuesday 13th December
3.30 - 5.30pm At the Workface; a seminar at the University of Westminster

7.30pm  Fred Lonidier; international arts and trade unions activist, a public lecture Gasworks Gallery London.
http://www.gasworks.org.uk/events/detail.php?id=718

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

ALEC in Arizona, Democracy in Peril
Nikki Willoughby, CommonBlog: "What do you get for the corporation that has everything? More of the same - money, power, and influence. That's the mission and main goal of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-financed association that has secretly and increasingly had a major voice in legislation around the country for forty years. This week, corporate honchos headed to the Arizona desert for four days of strategizing with elected officials on behalf of a business-friendly agenda that attacks the public interest on all fronts ..." 
Read the Article 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Britons Strike as Government Extends Austerity Measures
Julia Werdigier and Alan Cowell, The New York Times News Service: "Public sector workers on Wednesday began Britain's biggest strike in a generation to protest austerity measures, a day after the British government said that it was falling behind with its deficit-reduction plan and that the measures would drag on for two more years. Courts, schools, hospitals, airports and government offices could all be hit by the strike, which has come to be seen as an emblem of resistance to government plans to squeeze public-sector pensions and cut government spending to reduce debt ... The stoppage was billed as the most extensive in decades, mirroring the turmoil in the debt-plagued euro zone across the English Channel and offering a reminder of the potential social and political impact of the financial crisis seizing much of Europe."
Read the Article 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

On the News With Thom Hartmann: For the Past Five Years, Major Banks Have Contributed More Than $300 Billion to the Coal Industry, and More
In today's On the News segment: Occupy groups in Los Angeles and Philadelphia have been evicted, Republicans want millionaires and billionaires to pay the same Social Security tax rate as janitors, massive labor strikes rock the UK today, and more. 
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Attack on the Middle Class: First They Came for Your Paycheck. Then Your House. What's Next? 
Read the Article at Mother Jones

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Leadership Schools · Workshops · Research Reports · Publications

A discussion with Gabriel Thompson, author of Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do 
Wednesday, December 7, 2011, 12:00-1:30 pm
UC Berkeley Labor Center, 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley

What is it like doing the back-breaking work of immigrants? To find out, Gabriel Thompson spent a year working alongside Latino immigrants, who initially thought he was either crazy or an undercover immigration agent. Combining personal narrative with investigative reporting, Thompson shines a bright light on the underside of the American economy, exposing harsh working conditions, union busting, and lax government enforcement—while telling the stories of workers, undocumented immigrants and desperate US citizens alike, forced to live with chronic pain in the pursuit of $8 an hour.

Thompson continues to report on immigration and Occupy actions for The Nation. Recent articles can be found here http://www.thenation.com/authors/gabriel-thompson. 

Bring your lunch! Please RSVP to rgraham at berkeley.edu.

For more information, please visit the Labor Center events page. 

Stay connected to the Labor Center

Donate 

Join our mailing list

Follow us 

Become a fan

Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California, Berkeley
 2521 Channing Way # 5555 · Berkeley, CA 94720-5555 · TEL (510) 642-0323 · FAX (510) 642-6432

If you do not wish to receive occasional emails from the UC Berkeley Labor Center, please reply to clre_unsubscribe at berkeley.edu and place UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

High Unemployment and Poverty Means Longer Free School Lunch Lines
By Loop 21 Staff | The Loop 21

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Nov. 30, 2011

In just 12 days, more than 300,000 Wisconsin voters signed petitions to hold a recall election of Gov. Scott Walker.
The unprecedented attacks on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are aimed at workers’ rights and putting the nation’s labor laws “into cold storage,” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) told a special AFL-CIO forum this morning examining the assault on the key workers’ rights agency.

Got comments? Post them at blog.aflcio.org.
 N.H. House Sustains Veto of So-Called Right to Work
 300,000 Sign ‘Recall Walker’ in Petition Drive’s First 12 Days
 Republican Jobs Plan? Gut Workers’ Rights, Safety and Health Laws 
 Steelworkers Tell Congress: We Need Safe Refineries
 Texas DREAMER’s Suicide Linked to Fears of Deportation
 Tell Congress: Extend UI Lifeline for 6 Million Now
 New Tool Helps Jobless Workers Start a New Chapter
 Flu Season’s Here: Are You Vaccinated?
 Cast Your Vote ‘Brotherhood Outdoors’ in Sportsman Choice Awards
Read more important news of the day on the issues working families care about. 

Follow the AFL-CIO:

Take the next step. Become a mobile activist
by joining the AFL-CIO Rapid Action Text Team.
Text NEWS to AFLCIO (235246) to receive action alerts and more.
(Message and data rates may apply.)

To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monitory gain to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the material for research and educational purposes. This is in accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. section 107..
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html 
Listen to Native Voice One http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/nv1/ppr/index.shtml

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.aktivix.org/pipermail/educationforall/attachments/20111201/da98dfe6/attachment-0001.htm>