[Educationforall] spam con huevos, labor news, views and concerns, 11.28.11‏‏-I‏I

Tue Nov 29 07:48:38 UTC 2011

LongshoreWorkers Fightback in WA!
Broward Teachers Union (FLA) at it Again (the last boss of BTW was
dealing child porn went to jail) 

UAW Returns to Attacking its Own Work Force-the fake Union as Boss

SEIU's Gangster Union Joins NEA Quislings to Ram OWS into the Voting
Booths:* now SEIU’s effort to convert and degrade the Occupy
movement into what SEIU’s national leadership is — a loyal arm of
the DNC and the Obama White House — has become even more overt, as
Greg Sargent reports today
South Africa's Quisling ANC and SACP Decertify SA Military Union

union supporters still fired with impunity‏

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LongshoreWorkers Fightback in WA! 

A federal judge ordered union protesters to stop using illegal tactics Thursday as they battle
for the right to work at a new grain terminal in Washington state. 
U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton issued a preliminary injunction to
restrict union activity, saying there was no defense for the
aggressive tactics used in recent days. Protesters twice blocked the
pathway of a train carrying grain to the terminal at the Port of
Longview on Wednesday, and early Thursday morning hundreds of them
stormed the facility, overwhelmed guards, dumped grain and broke
windows, police said. 
The dispute halted work at four other Washington ports, including
Seattle, on Thursday as hundreds of longshoremen refused to show up or
walked off the job. ...Leighton said he felt like a paper tiger
because the International Longshore and Warehouse Union clearly
ignored a temporary restraining order he issued last week with similar
limits. He scheduled a hearing for next Thursday to determine whether
the union should be held in civil contempt.

"The regard for the law is absent here," the judge said. "Somebody is
going to be hurt seriously."

Six guards were trapped for a couple of hours after at least 500
Longshoremen broke down gates about 4:30 a.m. and smashed windows in
the guard shack, Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha said. He initially
referred to the guards as "hostages," but later retracted that after
the guards clarified no one had threatened them.

"The guards absolutely could not get out," Duscha said. "They feared
for their lives because of the size of the crowd and the hostility of
the crowd."   http://www.komonews.com/news/local/129457903.html [9]

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Broward Teachers Union (FLA) at it Again (the last boss of BTW was
dealing child porn went to jail) 

As Broward public schoolteachers faced layoffs and furloughs over the past two years, their local union
boss charged $128,600 in unexplained expenses to union credit cards
and signed off on $25,000 in union checks made out to cash, according
to an audit obtained Wednesday by The Miami Herald. 
On top of his $155,000 salary, Broward Teachers Union President Pat
Santeramo, now the focus of two state investigations, had access to a
$300 monthly expense account, a $600 auto allowance, and the use of a
gas card with charges ranging from $175 to $250 a month, according to
the audit.
 http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/mh-santeramo-expenses-20111116,0,2781412.story

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UAW Returns to Attacking its Own Work Force-the fake Union as Boss

The United Auto Workers is locked in a bitter labor dispute, but this
time the union is not fighting for the workers. It's fighting with
them. 
Members of the Office Professional Employees International Union,
which represents clerical and janitorial workers at Solidarity House
and other UAW offices around the country, say the UAW has pushed them
to take major concessions during the past couple of years and is now
insisting on layoffs. 
But the workers are fighting back. They have picketed Solidarity
House. On Thursday, they held a meeting to decide what to do next. 
"Bob King always talks about creative problem-solving, but the only
creative problem solution he's offering is more layoffs," said Audrey
McKenna, vice president of OPEIU Local 494, which represents UAW
office employees in Detroit. "We know times are tough, but they're
spending like the 'Housewives of Beverly Hills.'"
 http://detnews.com/article/20111111/BIZ/111110365/#.Tr0bbhmK9Jw.mailto

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SEIU's Gangster Union Joins NEA Quislings to Ram OWS into the Voting
Booths:* now SEIU’s effort to convert and degrade the Occupy
movement into what SEIU’s national leadership is — a loyal arm of
the DNC and the Obama White House — has become even more overt, as
Greg Sargent reports today

One of the enduring questions about Occupy Wall Street has been this:
Can the energy unleashed by the movement be leveraged behind a
concrete political agenda and push for change that will constitute a
meaningful challenge to the inequality and excessive Wall Street
influence highlighted by the protests? 
A coalition of labor and progressive groups is about to unveil its
answer to that question. Get ready for “Occupy Congress.” 
The coalition — which includes unions like SEIU and CWA and groups
like the Center for Community Change — is currently working on a
plan to bus thousands of protesters from across the country to
Washington, where they will congregate around the Capitol from
December 5-9  
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/19/heres_what_attempted_co_option_of_ows_looks_like/singleton/
[22]

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South Africa's Quisling ANC and SACP Decertify SA Military Union

owing its failure to comply with the basic requirements of operating
as a union, the South African Security Forces Union (SASFU) has been
deregistered as a union operating in the Department of Defence. 
Attempts by SASFU to stop the deregistration of the union failed on
Friday as the Pretoria High Court agreed with the Registrar of trade
union, an independent office located in the Department of Labour, to
deregister SASFU.  http://www.buanews.gov.za/rss/11/11032713251001

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Union Supporters Still Fired With Impunity
by: David Bacon, Truthout   11/21/11
http://www.truth-out.org/print/9203 

Los Angeles, California - When a private employer, like the Los Angeles Film School (LAFS), decides to fight the efforts of its workers to form a union, there is very little holding it back, despite the rights written into US labor law almost three quarters of a century ago.

The National Labor Relations Act says workers not only have the right to form unions, but that the government encourages them to do so, to level the power imbalance with their employers. The law sets up an election process, in which workers supposedly can freely choose a union. And it says that it's illegal for an employer to fire or punish any worker who uses these rights.

Then there's the reality, as practiced by the LAFS.

That company, set up in 1999 by the former lawyer for Occidental Petroleum, was bought by Florida-based Full Sail Film School in 2003. The film and recording business in Los Angeles has strong, well-respected unions. The studios that are the hoped-for employers for film school graduates negotiate with unions all the time. But the LAFS and Full Sail are not ordinary film schools. They are diploma mills that feed off federal loans taken out by students.

A lawsuit filed last year against LAFS says that students, who pay $18,000 to $23,000 per year tuition for a two-year AS degree, receive much less than promised. The school hands out gift cards to Target and Best Buy, the suit says, to students who list jobs at Apple and Guitar Center stores as "creative positions" on forms submitted to get the college accreditation. That allows the schools to enroll its students in federal loan programs.

Brandii Grace, a digital game designer, moved from Seattle in 2009 when she was offered a contract to teach her skill at LAFS. She took a $2,000 per year cut from her previous job, and was promised $70,000 per year. Her fiancée had to stay behind, but still in their 20s, they decided the prospect of making a life together in the heart of the entertainment world made the sacrifice worth it.

No sooner had she started to teach, however, than the school began making radical changes in the conditions for all its teachers. It cut classes, created new online components, and reassigned teachers to classes where they had no experience. "At first, they promised extra compensation," she remembers. "Then they said we were being changed from salaried employees to hourly, but that we'd get overtime for the additional work."

Then, the school announced teachers would only be paid the hours spent in class, cutting most to 8-16 a week. "They weren't going to pay anything for the three hours grading, advising and planning curriculum for every hour we spend in class," she says. With their income about to plunge, the faculty rebelled. Grace started trying to help people understand what was happening, at first just by distributing the school's own memos. Finally, the school demanded that teachers sign agreements to the new arrangements. In a meeting of instructors, she not only urged them not to do it, but also said they should look for a union.

That was a big step for her. She'd grown up suspicious of unions because of earlier family experiences, but every government agency she contacted told her there was no legal way to stop the new rules if the teachers had no union contract. "We found Peter Nguyen and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), and he was ready to help us move right away," Grace recalls. Over the next month they collected union cards, and filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with 70 percent of the faculty signed up. Grace was chosen head of the union steering committee.

That was when hell broke loose. The film school hired IRI Consultants, a union-busting firm from Michigan. With their advice, school managers set Grace up to be fired, and prepared a classic campaign of psychological warfare against its own faculty.

"We were immediately told we were all supervisors, and that our salaried status would be restored," she recalls. Her boss called her in, told her they knew she was the union leader, and threatened her. Suddenly they accused her of not turning in work, of insubordination and even of becoming violent. "They handed me a memo full of lies that were dramatic and extreme," Grace charges.

She was suspended for three days, and when she came back, she was fired.  It was her 30th birthday, and her apartment lease had just expired.

She didn't give up, though. Other workers would call her at night, telling her how scared they were. The company was holding mandatory meetings to make its union hatred clear, and each teacher was called in for a private chat with her or his supervisor. "Managers would run down the hall screaming at someone, 'you signed the card!'" Grace says she was told.

The union filed charges in March, right after she was fired, and held a protest rally. But six months later, the NLRB still hadn't finished its investigation. The union withdrew its petition for the election because the level of fear was so intense that the right to vote freely had become a joke. The NLRB regional office issued a complaint shortly afterward, charging the school with firing Grace illegally, but it was too late. A hearing was held in January, and in April the hearing officer ruled that the LAFS had violated the law. He ordered Grace reinstated with back pay. The school, however, is appealing the decision to the labor board in Washington, DC, a process that will probably last at least a year. If they have the money and the will, they can then appeal into the court system.

Grace's ordeal is a direct product of this country's weak labor laws, a problem the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was written to correct. That's why large employers, Republicans, and even conservative Democrats have fought the bill in Congress. EFCA would go a long way toward solving the problems Grace experienced.

If the bill had been passed when Democrats had the presidency and a majority in both houses between 2008 and 2010, it would have been in effect while those meetings were going on in the film school. Grace and the other union committee members could have presented their signed cards to the NLRB, and the school would then have been obligated to recognize the union.

Fear of firing is probably the single biggest reason workers don't organize unions. According to a recent report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, "Dropping the Ax: Illegal Firings During Union Election Campaigns, 1951-2007," by John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer, workers were fired for union activity in 30 percent of all union campaigns, so fear isn't unreasonable. "Aggressive actions by employers - often including illegal firings - have significantly undermined the ability of US workers to unionize their workplaces," according to report co-author Schmitt. "The financial penalties for illegal actions, including firing pro-union workers, are minimal, so it makes perfect sense for employers to break the law to derail union-organizing efforts." That percentage has gone up from 16 percent in the last 1990s, to 26 percent in the early 2000s, to 30 percent in 2007.

If EFCA had been in effect during the film school campaign, the company would have had to pay triple back wages for its illegal firings. But with no fines and no card-check recognition process, every supporter recruited to the union cause had to weigh the possibility that he or she might lose his or her job. Union supporters say it felt like working in a war zone.

But EFCA didn't pass. In fact, it was never even brought up for a vote.

So for Grace,, even if the school is found guilty, there's no fine or actual punishment. The school will have to pay back pay for her time out of work, but can deduct any income from another job, or even any unemployment benefits she collects. "My benefits just ran out, though," she laughs.

Being out of work while continuing to support the union has been an ordeal. After their money ran out, Grace moved in with her mom, and her fiancée had to go live with his family for months in Texas. In addition, Grace had brought her grandmother from Seattle to live with her. "She took care of me growing up, so I take care of her now," she explains. But she had to put her in a senior home, and then, when she couldn't sleep on her mom's couch anymore, she even slept in her grandmother's room.

Finally, her fiancée came back to Los Angeles, found a job and they got another apartment. "But we almost didn't make it," Grace says.

So, why should she have to go through this ordeal because a film school, widely called a scam on the Internet, decides to bust a union? "Because the Federal law is broken" Grace concludes. "There's no effective deterrent, no balance sheet they have to worry about. It's no surprise why people are reluctant to do this."

Maybe she'll get the back pay someday. "But you know, the money's not important to me, really," she says. "This is about justice. That's what I'm fighting for."

For more articles and images, see  http://dbacon.igc.org 

See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants  (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 

See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- 

__________________________________

David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org 

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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

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