Tag Archives: labor

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To those of you sent here when you googled…

aclu supports internment camps
Sorry, but no. Zinn argues that in the 50s the ACLU “withered” and muffled its criticism of McCarthyism to remain politically viable – heavy charges that I don’t have the background to support or refute. But the ACLU was one of the few groups to visibly and stridently condemn the Japanese interment – raising the contemporary ire of Ann Coulter, who argues that it’s hypocritical for a left organization to support J. Edgar Hoover’s left stances (opposition to internment) and not his right ones (opposition to privacy and democratic oversight). I should apologize for already having given her argument too much ink back in July when she wrote it – as well as her equally silly one that since Democratic FDR shamefully caved to conservative animus towards Japanese-Americans in supporting internment, Conservative Republicans must be the real defenders of civil liberties. For anyone who still believes Coulter that FDR and the ACLU (and, for that matter, everyone from Bill Clinton to Cynthia McKinney) get their marching orders from the same playbook (care of Karl Marx), I should perhaps also clarify that the ACLU also opposes HOLC red-lining and the racial segregation of blood donations.

Kissinger the war crimminal

That about says it right there. That, and lemme know if you want to take a trip with me to look through his archives after his death for some tidbits about the full depravity of the man.

IBEW chatroom

Is there one? Hot. Sign me up.

Ed Rendell hoagie photo

Populism is not about eating a hoagie better than John Kerry (although I don’t know who eats a hoagie worse than John Kerry). Populism is about wanting to see the Democratic Leadership Council go the way of the AFL-CIO’s CIA-tool the AIFLD. Populism is most certainly not having the DLC choose Philadelphia for its annual celebration of prostitution to big business and scorn towards the American people to celebrate you as the kind of Democratic candidate that will reassure the bosses that they have nothing to worry about from the Democrats. Oh yeah – and the Philly soft pretzel is the real icon, not the hoagie or the cheesesteak.

Matt Naclerio

Should run for Mayor of New Haven.

Katie Krauss

Should’ve gone for Ari Fleischer’s job while it was still open.

Schwarzengger and antisemitism

The most thorough and judicious article-length discussion of Schwarzenegger’s relationship with Kurt Waldheim I’d say is Timothy Noah’s here. Schwarzenegger’s refusal to condemn a member of the Wehrmacht “honor list” for the Kozara massacre – or even his actions – raises troubling questions about his political courage and his sense of justice. Although on the question of how he’d govern the state of California, this is more disturbing.

auth cartoon philadelphia inquirer israel, auth antisemitism, etc.

I think I spilled enough (virtual) ink on this here. Josh Cherniss’ thoughts to which I was responding (a response to my original piece here), are here. If he posts a response to mine, it’ll be posted here – I suspect we’ve both exhausted the topic for now however. If you’re one of the several who entered one of the searches above and you want to talk more about it, lemme know.

Al Franken and Arianna Huffington’s political show in bed

It’s been too long. Bring it back. Maybe we could get Arianna Huffington, Cruz Bustamante, Peter Camoje, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Simon, and Gary Coleman in bed together on TV – who says the American people don’t have the patience for substantive political coverage?

verizon cwa strike

Read about smart tactics, support from Senators, and what you can do to help.

arianna huffington verizon

Know something I don’t?

Lynda-Obst Bitch

Now I don’t know the woman personally, but that’s just not nice.

Interfaith religious symbol

I have been known on occasion to refer to James Baldwin as God…But I have to say Jim Lawson really wowed me this weekend. So he may be my nominee. Unless you found this site thinking it was an interfaith religious symbol, in which case sorry to disappoint…

And for all of you who came here searching for

wild bouquet

If you’re looking for a gift, get something here. Trust me – it’ll make him/her swoon. Or buy me something and make me swoon…

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Back from an amazing couple days hearing from and meeting with the Reverend Jim Lawson – and others involved in Yale’s intensifying labor fight – in New Haven. As Lawson preached, “President Levin, it’s time to grow up and become a human being.” Meanwhile, Yale is touting it’s new contract offer, two major highlights of which are offers to partially undo decisions to worsen their proposals since the beginning of negotiations – in other words, when Helaine Klasky says that Yale has “improved our already generous offer in the hopes that this will be the foundation for a settlement,” she must mean that Yale’s new “generous offer” is an improvement on its “already generous offer” insofar as it is more like Yale’s original “generous offer” than Yale’s recent “already generous offer.” Confusing? By design more than by accident I think. The unions have been calling from the beginning for a 4-year contract, and Yale was calling for a 6-year contract until March, when Levin, after the week-long strike, decided that the best compromise between 4 year and 6 years would be 10 years (must be Yale math…). Yale’s new-and-improved offer as of this week? An 8 year contract. In a similar vein, Yale came into negotiations nearly two years ago with a commitment to retroactive pay – annual raises for the period during which the contract was expired and was being renegotiated – after signing. After a year, Yale revoked its agreement to retroactive pay. When confronted about that decision by students, President Levin responded in top form that he doesn’t “believe in rewarding bad behavior.” Yale’s new and improved offer? A “signing bonus” that would represent the equivalent of at most 40% of retroactivity for some workers, and much less for others. The last major pieces of Yale’s new offer – and the only ones that represents an improvement over Yale’s paltry offer of nearly two years back – were a slight increase in its second year wage proposal and an increase in its pension offer, which the unions matched in their counter-proposal by reducing their proposed pension multiplier from 2.1 to 1.95%, a decrease in their pension offer seven times the increase in Yale’s. These three components, together, represent the additional $9 million which Yale announced in June it had budgeted for the contracts and was going to be offering – at that time, Yale’s negotiators also said that as far as they were concerned, that was the sum for the contracts and they weren’t prepared to negotiate beyond there. FHUE has a more extensive brekdown here. It’s good to see Yale making movement at the table. But if the administration wants to avert a strike ten days from now, they have much more work ahead of them – and not in the form of glossy ads or Orwellian pickets.

Thanks to YaleInsider for the intrepid blogging, and for the new link to this “Little Wild Fair and Balanced Bouquet” on the revamped site.

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Negotiators from Yale and from HERE Locals 34 and 35 came back to the table again yesterday, over a week after the unions had been hoping Yale would be willing to restart negotiations. As the unions report, Yale showed little change of heart:

Negotiations with Yale resumed Tuesday afternoon at the Omni Hotel. Despite headlines about Yale’s “new faces” at the bargaining table (after the recent departure of several key administrators), there were no new faces to be seen on Yale’s team. Neither were there any major new proposals from Yale. This was not unexpected for our first session back at the bargaining table but, on behalf of our negotiating committees, Local 35 President Bob Proto made our intentions clear: we are ready to meet all day, every day of the week and all night, if necessary to achieve a fair contract. To make that work, however, Yale must be prepared to engage in the real give-and-take of actual negotiation and compromise on wages, pensions, job security and training and advancement.

While Yale had no serious new proposals for us yesterday, Chief Negotiator Brian Tunney reiterated his assertion that Yale is “prepared to move on pensions, wages and retroactivity.” While that may sound promising, we have heard those words too often before without any actual results. As Local 34 President Laura Smith responded, “It’s time to stop preparing to move and start actually moving.”

…Despite the reference to retroactivity, Tunney was quick to say that what he meant by retroactivity was actually a discussion of a “signing bonus”–a far cry from the full retroactivity that Yale should agree to after we accepted their first-year wage proposal. Tunney also confirmed that when the newly-renovated Sprague Hall reopens next week, the building will be cleaned and serviced by low-wage subcontracted workers, not by Local 35…Yale’s one “new proposal” was a suggestion that Local 34 workers who are laid off due to subcontracting to a Yale affiliate (like YNHH) be given an “extra” three months in the Interim Employment Pool–hardly reassuring in light of the enormous potential, particularly in the Medical Area, for shifting University to Hospital work…

As the AP reports:

Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said it is impossible to know whether a deal would be reached. “We’re always hopeful, but certainly we’re far apart and they have some unrealistic proposals,” Conroy said.

Union spokeswoman Deborah Chernoff said the unions are waiting for Yale to come forward with new proposals for wages and pensions. “We’re prepared to meet every day. We’re prepared to meet all day, and we’re prepared to meet on the weekends, but we have to have something to talk about,” she said.

Meanwhile, as the Register reports, Mayor DeStefano is also keen to the irony of Bruce Alexander serving, in the wake of Bob Culver’s departure, as Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs and for Finance and Administration at once:

DeStefano said Alexander “potentially is going to be serving the community agenda at the same time they are presiding over the biggest walkout and longest walkout of Yale workers in over a decade.” He feels this presents an “inherent conflict. Why run the risk of confusing the agendas?”

Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky responded that the assignment is a temporary one for Alexander who was named to the post because “Bruce is the officer with business and financial expertise.”

As YaleInsider observes, “If there were ever any doubt about the ultimate reason for Yale’s VP position for community relations, created in the wake of the 1996 strike, let that doubt be dispelled.”

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Thom Hartmann has an interesting piece on the potential and prospects for talk radio on the left, and the role that organized labor can play in such projects:

KKBJ-AM Talk Radio 1360 discovered the union-owned network’s liberal programming on a stormy night back in June when one of the Minnesota talk station’s satellite receivers died. To avoid dead air, the station flipped to the program stream coming down on a second satellite receiver, tuned in to i.e. America Radio Network’s 9 pm-midnight host, Mike Malloy. Malloy was in fine form, ranting about the “Bush crime family.”

The next day, KKBJ’s Chuck Sebastian got some feedback from listeners who had just heard their first bit of liberal programming on a station that otherwise carries mostly right-wingers. “One guy said that it was a breath of fresh air to finally get somebody who knows what he’s talking about,” Sebastian said. He added, “Another said it was ‘nice to hear somebody with an opinion the opposite of Michael Savage’s ranting and raving.'”

We have two union radio shows broadcasting weekly in Philadelphia: Talking Unions on WHAT 1340 AM from 10 to 12 AM Saturdays, and Labor to Neighbor on WURD 900 AM from 1 to 4 PM Mondays. Both shows are focusing this month on immigration, building momentum for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride this fall. I was lucky to be in the booth when the National Chairperson for the rides, Maria Elena Durazo was on last month; the Reverend James Lawson will be on Talking Unions in a few weeks. The Labor Heritage Center has a useful, though slightly out of date, table of union shows nationally.

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When I first talked to Bob in 2001 about his leaving the corporate sector to come to Yale, he expressed the concern that if his family preferred to remain in Boston, the weekly commute might take its toll, and, unfortunately, this has proven to be the case. In Bob’s two years here, we have benefited from his attention to improving our business practices and his warm and genuine embrace of the institution and its values.

President Levin’s previously-discussed letter announcing the abrupt end of Bob Culver’s time as Yale Vice President for Administration and Finance is here. It’s an open question whether the reference to “embrace of the institution and its values” includes telling workers that money for training them for more advanced jobs was “money down the drain.” What “improving our business practices” has wrought will – barring an administative change of heart – be dramatically proven yet again on August 27

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YaleInsider takes a critical look at the New Haven Advocate’s annual round-up of salaries for non-profit employees in the area. Among several interesting statistics – like Yale’s Chief Investment Officer making two and half times as much as its Provost, and President Levin making over one and half times as much as President Bush (that’s over twenty times as much as the average union worker at Yale) – is a gem from Yale – New Haven Hospital Spokesperson Katie Krauss, trying to explain why the Hospital’s CEO, Joe Zaccagnino (who Yale U. named Alum of the Year last month after he and his hospital were caught defrauding the poor and sick to save money), had taken a $70,000 pay cut:

Hospital spokeswoman Katie Krauss says executive pay fluctuates because it’s based on a complex formula of “variable” components … “This is a big place. It’s not a community hospital,” she says. Zaccagnino heads not just Yale-New Haven Hospital, but a network that includes Bridgeport and Greenwich hospitals–a group with a combined budget of more than $1.1 billion and 10,000 employees.

As YaleInsider says:

OK, good to know they don’t consider Yale-New Haven Hospital to be “a community hospital”. Perhaps this means they’ll simplify and shorten their name to “Yale Hospital”?

Given that Levin sits on and appoints a third of the Hospital’s Board, that a quarter of Yale’s income is funnelled through the Hospital and that Local 34 and GESO employees work side by side with (as yet ununionized) Hospital Employees doing the same work, might not be a bad idea.

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A brief round of updates:

Verizon negotiations continued last night, with the company reporting major progress taking place towards a settlement, the unions reporting little substantive movement, and both sides committing themselves to continued talks. Work is continuing as usual in the interim.

Arianna Huffington has a press conference scheduled for today, and has confirmed to members of the press wide speculation that she plans to announce her candidacy for the Governorship. Meanwhile Arnold will announce tonight whether he’ll run, and the national AFL-CIO has come out in support of Davis and against Democrats running to replace him. You can see who’s filed a statement of intention to run for Governor here.

Finally, Bob Culver’s termination as Yale Vice President of Finance and Administration was apparently announced to Yale managers in a letter from President Levin chalking it up to the a sudden exasperation with the “long commute.” No official announcement has yet been made to the press or to anyone else in the Yale community, including the workers whose negotiations Culver was supposedly orchestrating.

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The CWA and the IBEW are still in negotiations with Verizon as of this afternoon, after passing a strike deadline at midnight last night.

From the CWA:

Shortly before the midnight contract expiration, the unions said members would remain on the job until further notice while the talks are underway. Union leaders determined that enough progress had been made at the bargaining table to continue working toward a contract settlement, however key issues remain unresolved.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The issue of job security loomed over contract talks at Verizon as labor unions bargained Sunday past a strike deadline with the largest provider of local and wireless telephone service in the United States.

Telephone operators and technicians from Virginia to Maine reported to work as scheduled, despite the expiration of a three-year contract at midnight Saturday.

Verizon Communications spokesman Eric Rabe said the company’s negotiators want to reach an agreement as soon as possible.

“Making progress and having an agreement are two different things,” Rabe said. “We need to get an agreement. We’re going to stay with it and keep working on it.”

Major questions are how future layoffs will be handled and whether workers laid off can take jobs in other parts of the company.

Verizon’s local phone service business is shrinking, while growth areas are in wireless and high-speed Internet, separate divisions of the company that are not highly unionized.

Job security is the issue that has been “focused on for a good part” of the discussions at the negotiating table, Jim Spellane, spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents 18,000 Verizon workers, said Sunday.

The other key issue at the talks has been health care. Verizon, like other companies facing soaring health costs, wants employees to assume more of the burden.

The importance of job protection was driven home for Verizon workers just three weeks ago when an arbitrator ordered the company to rehire 2,300 people in New York state who had been laid off in December.

After the ruling, a happy union official joked that “my life will be in jeopardy” if he were ever to give away contract language on job security.

The arbitrator’s decision ratcheted up tension at the labor negotiations and undermined the company’s cost-cutting efforts.

Verizon had argued that the layoffs were justified because of a weak economy and tougher competition from rival companies and new technologies. The arbitrator said that those trends did not justify the layoffs.

The bulk of the 78,000 union employees seeking a new contract are with the Communications Workers of America, whose vice president called the recent decision giving back the New York workers their jobs “the greatest victory in my lifetime” for phone company employees.

Verizon cut 18,000 jobs in 2002 — mainly through attrition and voluntary buyouts.

If the unions strike, some local telephone service for Verizon customers in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic region could be affected. The company has insisted that customers making regular long-distance and local calls should not have trouble.

The company says disruptions of phone service should be avoided with about 30,000 managers and outside contract workers prepared to take over.

But delays or disruptions could occur for repairs and new installations of phone and Internet service, and for calls to customer service centers.

A strike in 2000, which lasted 18 days, caused a backlog of about 250,000 repair requests and new orders for Verizon.

Meanwhile, Verizon is taking the gloves off, as LaborNotes reports:

While Verizon has reportedly maintained a “poker face” when presented with union demands, they are preparing an all-out public relations blitz.

In a company memorandum describing Verizon’s strategy, PR strategist Jerry Manheim suggests that Verizon compose a narrative for public consumption that “establishes the moral high ground and the company’s claim to it.” The point is to shape “the ‘reality’ to which journalists, political leaders and the union itself must respond.”

Verizon’s sample narrative reads in part:

“There was a time not long ago-in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks-when CWA members were genuine heroes, and when Verizon was proud to support their endeavors. But the spirit of cooperation born of that tragic time has dissipated…because of the failure of leadership within the CWA.”

This is not the only way Verizon plans to make use of the September 11 attacks. Looking back to the 2000 strike, when rank-and-file workers used militant tactics such as cutting telephone wires and cables to wreak havoc with the company, Verizon is preparing to “educate police/public about the effect of sabotage on…terrorism [and the] critical infrastructure of [the] nation.”

In the event of a strike, Verizon also plans to “greatly enhance security force and efforts,” pushing for “aggressive policing at picket sites.”

On another front of the PR war, Verizon has been training its lower-level managers in the art of spin. Kramer reports that at one New Jersey call center, “[Verizon] had all the managers come in and gave them a three-hour course on how to justify management’s pay to the employees.”

Kramer believes that the educational work unions are doing may be an effective counter to Verizon’s spin. “The members understand how wealthy the company is,” says Kramer. “Last year Verizon made $4.9 billion in profits…they’re making the lion’s share and keeping it for themselves.”

Jacob Remes has some very solid coverage and extensive links on the issue. As he says:

I’ll just continue my drumbeat that Democratic presidential candidates really need to show their support this weekend in order to be taken seriously by organized labor, particularly in New Hampshire. Yesterday, John Edwards was featured in the CWA strike bulletin for supporting Verizon workers already on strike in North Carolina, and the homepage of CWA local 1400 has pictures up of Gephardt’s visit. And at yesterday’s rally in Boston, the president of the IBEW local read a letter from John Kerry introducing it as from the next president, although frankly the fact that he couldn’t manage to show up (unlike three congressmen) doesn’t speak well for him in my book.

…really this strike is about health care for everyone in the country. The slogan they’re using is “Health care for all, not health cuts at Verizon,” and the emphasis is on preventing backsliding on health insurance premiums for those already covered. Ed Hill, IBEW’s international president, explained in his speech last night: “If we had a government that really cared enough about the issue, they would get off their backside and do something about the health care crisis in this country, instead of leaving it to labor and management to fight it out at every contract negotiation. If Verizon is serious about health insurance, we’ll stand with them to fight for decent health benefits for all. But I don’t see their corporate leaders or any other corporate leaders leading the charge on Capitol Hill on that issue.” The aim is to force companies to go with their unions to government and say “health care is too expensive, we need a governmental solution.” But this will only happen if companies are prevented from shifting health care costs to their employees.

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In this week’s New Haven Advocate, Paul Bass brings home the irony of Yale’s ONHSA- (Office of New Haven and State Affairs)sponsored picket of the Board of Aldermen against Naclerio’s (triumphant) resolution calling on Yale to pay its share in taxes to the city:

Yale’s managers were fired up. They couldn’t take no more. They sent a message to their compadres at the Chamber of Commerce calling for help. Dozens took to the streets. They brought signs. They massed in front of New Haven’s City Hall last week. And they marched.
What brought them out to protest?

New Haven’s high poverty?

The state of the schools?

A broken criminal justice system?

Nope. The managers and their comrades picketed on the evening of July 7 to protest New Haven government for being unfair to … Yale.

Another highlight of the article:

Last week’s events signaled “a cultural shift” at that office, observes Julio Gonzalez, executive assistant to Mayor John DeStefano and a Yale alum. “This has nothing to do with their mission. This is definitely different from what they’ve done in the past. Now it’s a lobbying arm.”

Bruce Alexander, a Yale vice president who heads the Office of New Haven & State Affairs, responds that the demonstration fits into the office’s mission: “to inform the community, out of a sense of respect for their opinion, of the facts, and not let those who seek to discredit us for their own narrow agenda define us in the community.”

Anyone who wants to check out Yale’s spin on the facts first-hand, visit Yale’s Office of Public Affairs here. Among their latest work: an ad “congratulating a list of employees who’d reached 25, 30, 35, 40, or 45 years of service at Yale and trumpeting Yale’s record as an employer. 47 of the employees honored on the list wrote back to the papers that had printed it:

We are proud to have been honored recently for our many years of service working at Yale University, but we were surprised to see our names in the Yale advertisement published by the Register claiming that Yale provides “strong job security, good wages, and excellent benefits.” We do not believe this to be true.

Throughout our years of working at Yale, we have fought and struggled with Yale’s administration to force them to provide what little they do give us. Nevertheless, our wages are still too low, we still face retirement into poverty, and Yale is still threatening the future security of our jobs.

A constant stream of misleading ads isn’t going to change this. It’s only going to change when Yale decides to treat us, and all its employees, with respect.

The most telling part of Bruce Alexander’s quote, however, would have to be the accusation that the unions have a “narrow agenda” – meaning perhaps that they value their workers’ wages over, say, Bruce Alexander’s. See less than a year ago, President Richard Levin wrote me and the rest of a student body a letter about his fear that the unions had “a broader agenda” – meaning that those thugs not only wanted good wages and benefits, but also wanted their neighbors in Fair Haven to be able to get jobs at Yale, their children to be able to attend adequately-funded schools, and their fellow workers to be able to organize. Maybe the polite thing would be for Yale’s leadership just to dictate to Union leadership at the negotiating table the precise acceptable breadth of their agenda, so as to avoid this Goldilock’s problem we seem to be having. But first they would have to come to the negotiating table…

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Researchers with Yale’s unions have just completed a new report on systematic insider trading at the University. It’ll be interesting to see what Public Affairs comes up with as this story develops…I’m betting on “The Unions need to focus more on the bargaining table,” and “Yale is a non-profit institution, so how can we be accused of trying to make money?” Here’s how Conroy handled the San Jose Mercury News:

Thomas Conroy, Yale’s deputy director of public affairs, confirmed Baker’s involvement. However, he said Baker’s role was disclosed to the other members of the investment committee at the time and dismissed the report as contract-time politics. “This is how they negotiate,” he said.

Conroy, Levin, Culver and others might be better positioned to know how the unions negotiate had they shown up at the negotiating table…

From the report:

The IRS Form 990, a public document that must be filed by Yale University, asks:

Schedule A, Part III
2. During the year, has the organization, either directly or indirectly, engaged in any of the following acts with any of its trustees, directors, officers, creators, key employees, or members of their families, or with any taxable organization with which any such person is affiliated as an officer, director, trustee, majority owner, or principal beneficiary?
(a) Sale, exchange, or leasing of property?
(c) Furnishing of goods, services, or facilities?
(e) Transfer of any part of its income or assets?
If the answer to any question is “Yes”, attach a detailed statement explaining the transactions

Yale has opted not to answer the question, marking neither “yes” nor “no” on its IRS Form 990 filed for every fiscal year from 1990 to 2000 (the most recent submitted). Instead, Yale has attached the following statement in lieu of answering the questions:

Other than the payment of reasonable and not excessive compensation and/or reimbursement of expenses for principal officers and trustees, this institution knows of no significant transaction between it and any such person or any corporation with which any such person is affiliated other than transactions in the normal conduct of its activities. All such transactions are conducted at arm’s length and for good and sufficient consideration. (Yale University, IRS 990, Year 2000 Schedule A, Part III, Line 2, Statement 16)

Yale’s statement fails to offer reassurance that individual transactions are legal and have not provided trustees with excess benefit. As one tax law training manual explains about this section of the Form 990:

While the lines covering the particular transaction in question in such cases would be answered “yes,” their “innocent” nature would be explained in the attachment that, as noted, is to be made for any question answered “yes.” … Indeed, if the filer answers any of the lines 2a through 2e “yes” and does not attach a statement explaining the transaction, a reader might suppose that the filer was not disclosing aspects of the transaction that it believed would embarrass it.[6]

Putting aside all other considerations, full disclosure is always the best and strongest defense against the charge of inappropriate self-dealing.

Yale’s refusal to disclose the interested transactions outlined in this report presents cause for concern.