Tag Archives: labor

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For those who believe that the conditions which precipitated the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and the movement which gained power in response, are historical anachronisms, check out this piece in the Times on Wal-Mart’s policy of locking its workers inside the store:

It was 3 a.m., Mr. Rodriguez recalled, some heavy machinery had just smashed into his ankle, and he had no idea how he would get to the hospital.

The Sam’s Club, a Wal-Mart subsidiary, had locked its overnight workers in, as it always did, to keep robbers out and, as some managers say, to prevent employee theft. As usual, there was no manager with a key to let Mr. Rodriguez out. The fire exit, he said, was hardly an option — management had drummed into the overnight workers that if they ever used that exit for anything but a fire, they would lose their jobs.

“My ankle was crushed,” Mr. Rodriguez said, explaining he had been struck by an electronic cart driven by an employee moving stacks of merchandise. “I was yelling and running around like a hurt dog that had been hit by a car. Another worker made some phone calls to reach a manager, and it took an hour for someone to get there and unlock the door.”

Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world. Their explanation? It’s for the workers’ own protection. Strange then that none of the workers get keys.

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SEIU Local 1199 is bringing a class action law-suit against against Yale – New Haven and Bridgeport Hospitals for aggressively dogging low-income sick people for medical bills while failing to inform them of their right to access to the state-funded free-bed fund designed to help ensure access to healthcare for the unemployed and working poor. The YDN headline calls the suit the “latest indicator of ongoing tension.” The source of tension, of course, is Yale – New Haven’s continued refusal to deal justly with the New Haven Community, be it its unionized workers still laboring without a contract, its non-union workers struggling to organize in an environment which spawned multiple NLRB settlements, or the working-class patients it aims to serve.

The leadership of Yale – New Haven Hospital is also the driving force behind the New Haven Savings Bank conversion plot, and the main beneficiary should their get-rich-quick scheme succeed. This week depositors also filed a class action lawsuit against the conversion, which would rob New Haven of its communal bank without a vote by its depositor-owners. As 1199 spokesman Bill Meyerson told the YDN:

The same group of individuals that are denying depositors a vote on what happens to their bank — denying them a right of the profits and surpluses of the bank through this conversion plan — sit on the hospital board of trustees, and are making the decisions about suing patients with inadequate insurance for the so-called crime of being sick and uninsured…it’s about the accountability of a select powerful group who run vital institutions in this community.

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The company which owns the Hartford Hilton on property leased from the city decided to sell it to a company that planned to close it for renovations and fire its entire union workforce. So the mayor took a stand and exercised the city’s right, as the property owner, to beat the offer, bought the hotel, and is selling it to a more progressive employer.

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Meanwhile, here in Philadelphia, the teachers at a local charter school voted to unionize and the board responded by rescinding their Christmas bonuses, cancelling the holiday dinner, and changing the locks. The teachers have filed ULP (Unfair Labor Practice) charges against the school. More power to them.

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Good news from Britain, with headway on extending the minimum wage to 16 and 17 year olds. A victory for the minors who work hard and deserve full compensation, and for working adults whose bosses will have a harder time undercutting them by pitting them against a pool of lower-paid kids. What’s the opposition argument?

Matthew Knowles, of the British Chamber of Commerce, criticised the move, saying: “We are worried about business having their hands further tied by red tape when they should be looking after their customers.”

Damn that government red tape, standing (sometimes) in the way of sweatshop labor, child labor exploitation, indentured servitude, and other entrepeneurial pursuits.

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Jacob highlights (first here, then here) a deeply troubling and shamefully unreported story: US troops being used to destroy and dismantle Iraqi trade union headquarters and arrest their leaders – this in the context of continued US maintenance of Ba’athist labor laws. Of course, it’s easy to become numb to this kind of rank hypocrisy from this administration – but vital not to. Enforcing Saddam’s Pinkerton policies ranks up there with appealing to Cuban sovereignty to justify abusing POWs in Camp X-Ray and co-operating with the “evildoers” at the UN to hamstring global access to contraception. Let’s not forget the Bush Doctrine:

If you can make something that others value, you should be able to sell it to them. If others make something that you value, you should be able to buy it. This is real freedom…

Those other freedoms are just to be trotted out when the situation calls for a moral fig leaf.

Lodge your protest here.

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The Yale Corporation met this weekend and agreed, in response to a sustained mobilization by community members, and a broad coalition of students, to extend its Homebuyer Program to all of Fair Haven, prompting an official announcement yesterday of the policy shift VP Bruce Alexander promised last month. This is a real victory for light and truth at Yale.

The Corporation also appointed its Senior Fellow, John Pepper of Proctor and Gamble, to replace the Vice President for Finance and Administration seat Bob Culver left over the summer. Let’s hope he makes a better effort to respond constructively to the demands of working people than his predecessor. Replacing Culver as Senior Fellow will be long-time GWB friend Roland Betts.

Meanwhile, tonight at 6:30 PM members of Local 34 and GESO will march out of their membership meetings and converge on Cross Campus for a powerful Human Rights Day action demanding change in the University’s policy towards its female workers. Be there. Barbara Ehrenreich will be.

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Linda Mason, who sits on the Yale Corporation and its sub-committee specifically responsible for the perpetuation of labor policies threatening the economic security and family life of working mothers’ families, received some deserved criticism last year when she wrote a book calling “A Working Mother’s Guide to Life” with chapters on topics like “Making Your Nanny Your Friend.” Her hypocrisy was dramatized last year when working class working mothers from Yale’s Local 34 and GESO showed up uninvited at her book reception with the rest of the Corporation. Yesterday, moms and kids showed up to a public talk Mason was giving and challenged her, as head of a lucrative child care business, to pursue workable child care opportunities for Yale employees. Let’s hope this time she takes the message to heart.

Meanwhile, GESO has released a new report on the state of diversity among Yale’s graduate students and faculty, and the YDN considers the progress yet to be made on Yale’s commitment in the strike settlement to expanding job access to Latinos.

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Teenagers with bats seriously beat one of the striking clerks in LA yesterday. He was sent to the Hospital; they were questioned and sent home. As Nathan Newman observes:

Anti-union propaganda always harp on “union violence” but they rarely talk about the violence employer-related thugs regularly inflict on peaceful picketers…Like the hyping of “union corruption”- rarely more than pissant embezzling by a few isolated officials, a pale reflection of the mass looting by Enron and other corporate officials, the hype of “union violence” while ignoring employer and government violence is one of the Big Lies by the Lying Liars of the rightwing to undermine public support for unionism.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for conservatives to condemn the “cultural explanation” and “media influence” behind this particular crime, or to explore how it is that we convince sixteen-year old boys that standing up for a living wage is a provocation worthy of violent retribution.

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This YDN piece sets forth the common – and accurate – wisdom that Tuesday’s election and September’s primary, in which the New Haven Democrats captured one seat each from the Greens and the Republicans, for a total of 28 out of 30 on the Board of Aldermen, and in which several critics of Mayor DeStefano were replaced with allies, represents a significant shift in the power on the board, and a consolidation of control behind DeStefano and his team. This has tremendous positive potential, as evidenced in DeStefano’s victory speech Tuesday night, in which he identified as his first two priorities domestic partnership and campaign finance reform – both areas in a which New Haven has the potential to pass progressive legislation matched by only perhaps a dozen other cities in the country. DeStefano’s shift to the left, however, has not happened in a vacuum – besides his growing commitment to running for Governor in 2006, DeStefano has been pushed by his critics from the left, including, as Paul Bass argued a couple weeks back, the Greens.

The one Green left on the Board, however – Joyce Chen – has gotten the most headlines of her term by vocally and visibly opposing domestic partnership. That stance, and her rhetoric in defending it, cost her the support of many of her constituents – myself and many progressive undergraduates included. The unions’ work in support of Joyce, who has a record of support for the social contract that labor and community movements have been pushing in this city, and the Democratic party’s work in support of Democrat Andre Nicole Baker, created an ugly scene between members of both camps at the polls, despite the co-operation of both in winning several wards for pro-labor progressive Democrats, among them Drew King in Ward 22, where most undergrads who aren’t in Ward 1 or 2 live. Drew beat Office of New Haven and State Affairs-supported incumbent Mae Ola Riddick’s write-in campaign, after having defeated her in the September primary and this summer at the Ward nominating committee.

Meanwhile, the YDN editorial board, which instituted an annual tradition of calling on Ward 28 Alderman Brian Jenkins to resign his post as leader of the Black and Latino Caucus after his minority address, is now worried that without him there’ll be fewer voices to keep DeStefano in check.

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Last night Yale President Richard Levin hosted the Yale undergraduate community at the second house the University provides him for such a event. Here’s the “trick or treat” of which several copies showed up:

Mr. Richard C. Levin
43 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06520

NOTICE OF CLAIM OF LIEN

The undersigned claimant hereby claims a lien under State Senate Bill No. 568 of the Civil Code of the State of Connecticut and hereby declares the following:

1. That a statement of claimant`s demand, after
deducting all just credits and offsets, in the sum of
$42,000 per month, for the remainder of Mr. Richard C. Levin’s life.

2. That the name of the owner[s], or reputed owner[s]
of the property is [are]: Mr. Richard C. Levin, President of Yale University. Although he doesn’t really own it, but he might as well.

3. A general statement of the kind of work done or
materials furnished by claimant, or both is:

Fostering an environment of mutual respect and charitable relations. Payment is long past due by the claimant.

[insert]

4. That the name[s] of the person[s] by whom claimant was employed or to whom claimant furnished the materials is [are]:

Yale University, Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, Yale School of Medicine.

5. A description of the property sought to be charged
with the lien is: The official residence of the President of Yale University, 43 Hillhouse Avenue, in compensation for the houses of working people in New Haven put under lien by Yale Psychiatric Institute. At least Mr. Levin has someplace else to go.

DATED: __October 31, 2003______________

Sincerely,

The Future of New Haven