Blog - From the Ground Up
 IEA Organizer, Dan Chambers talks about organizing a union. Without a union, the employer has the exclusive authority to hire, fire, set wages, hours, and benefits and to make other decisions related to your employment. Unorganized employees have very few rights or protections unless they have obtained collective bargaining recognition.
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Friday, May 02, 2008
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I haven't written anything in a
while, but in my defense, I was working on an election that ended last
Wednesday night with a victory for
adjunct faculty at Joliet Junior College. What have I missed in the past
month?
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008
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Last October, I wrote about a push to make LA-area ports more environmentally and worker friendly. By forcing shippers to purchase newer and more gas-efficient trucks, southern California environmentalists were hoping to clean up the smog produced from shipping goods shipped in from overseas. At the same time, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is pushing to make each of the truck drivers employees of the ports and shipping companies, rather than independent contractors (who receive no benefits, no workman's compensation, and are not eligible to unionize). It looks like the good guys are winning, because the LA Harbor Commission unanimously approved this blue-green plan to improve shipping conditions. This is great news for community activists, labor folks, and people who want to pass on a nicer planet to their kids. LA's mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told a crowd of 300 truckers that "When 1,200 lives are cut short every year by a barrage of diseases,
ranging from emphysema to cancer of the mouth, we have a moral
obligation to act fast."
Opponents of the plan include the Port of Long Beach, CA, and the American Trucking Association decried the improvements as "scheme to unionize port drivers." They've also vowed to sue if the plan ever goes through.
You can find out more about this worthy cause at the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports homepage.
By the way, congratulations to the Hardin County EA strikers on their settlements. Their solidarity paid off, and they have prevailed in their cause to secure a fair and just contract.
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Friday, March 14, 2008
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Rick Berman is someone I have written about before
(skip to the bottom of the linked post). Now
he has a new, headline-grabbing scheme for highlighting what he calls 'teacher union
protection of poor teachers.' He's asking people to forward the names of
the worst 'union-protected' teachers around and he'll give the lowest of the
low a $10,000 inducement to get out of the profession.
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Monday, March 10, 2008
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This story is interesting for two reasons.
The first is that a Cal State East Bay math teacher named Marianne Kearney Brown was fired from her job for not signing a loyalty oath administered by the College. A practicing Quaker, Ms. Kearney's religious doctrine compels her practice nonviolence as well as swearing oaths. She was willing to affirm her nonviolent support of the defense of our nation, but her religion led to her to believe that swearing to defend it might constitute violence. So she didn't sign. And Cal State East Bay fired her as a result.
The second part of the story that's interesting is that she got her job back, with full pay through the assistance of her union--the United Auto Workers represents graduate students like Ms. Kearney in all Cal State Campuses. Ms. Kearney actually exercised her contractual rights and filed a grievance through the UAW which resulted in her victory. The UAW grad students have 'just cause' which means the CSU cannot fire them unless they have demonstrated causes for doing so. Instead of hiring a lawyer and making it a first amendment issue, I find it rather interesting that Ms. Kearney simply went to her union for help to defend her rights--and she won.
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Friday, March 07, 2008
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I want you to read this, not because I want you to vote for or support Barack Obama, but because this article is the best insider's look at the nuts and bolts of how you inspire people, and (once inspired) how you move them to action. That is the essence of the potential of organizing. It is not enough, and it has never been enough, to merely lay out a plan for what you want to do. To be a successful leader, you have to rally supporters to your cause, and engage them to move the levers in the machinery of government. To that end, the Obama 'machine' does this in very innovative ways that supercede all past attempts to use technology to engage the electorate.
In other news, hotel wokers in the San Francisco Bay Area got nice pay increases along with a decrease in their work loads.
North Carolina (my home state) is considering legislation that would guarantee workers
some paid sick leave. Currently over 40% of all North Carolina workers have no sick leave of any kind. North Carolina is last among states in numbers of unionized workers. These two facts are probably not coincidences.
New York state is cracking down on construction contractors that misclassify construction workers as independent contractors, thus denying them access to workman's compensation, as well as union-scale wages.
Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) has excoriated the owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine (where 6 miners died last year in a cave-in) for 'callous disregard of the law'. Kennedy believes that instead of holding Bob Murray, the owner of the Crandall Canyon mine, to the law, the Mine Safety Health Administration (MSHA) allowed him to do as he please, violating mine safety and enviromental laws.
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Friday, February 15, 2008
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I am far from qualified to comment on the deal that the writers got as a result of their 3-month strike. What I can say, is they voted to end the strike overwhelmingly, and that people who do appear to know what they're talking about are saying that they wouldn't have gotten any more significant movement if they had stayed out. Also important is the fact that they would have gotten nothing from the studios had they not struck for their cause:
"They successfully faced down six multinational media conglomerates and
established a beachhead on the Internet," said Jonathan Handel, former
associate counsel for the Writers Guild of America, West and an
attorney at TroyGould. "When you consider what they were initially
offered and the enormous odds they faced, that's quite an achievement."
That is what it always comes down to when you think about going out on strike, and when you think about coming back in--how much more will we get, and at what cost to whom? The writers have made the win through democratic, grassroots militancy that took on the largest, most entrenched interests and they--by most accounts--beat them. It's a pretty remarkable thing.
In other news, General Motors is looking to buy out up to 20% of their workforce to replace them lower-paid employees, New York state is trying to crack down on employers who misclassify their workers as 'independent contractors' to avoid paying benefits and higher wages, and the AFL-CIO has sent a delegation to Colombia to highlight the perils that face union activists from anti-union vigilantes. They are trying to stop a trade agreement with Colombia until this issue is resolved and the human right to organize is preserved in that country.
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Sunday, January 27, 2008
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This is, as they say, a true story.
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Friday, January 25, 2008
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It's especially good news, since this is the biggest increase since 1979 in union membership. In total more than 300,000 people joined unions across the country.
It also interesting to note that most of the members who did join did so outside of the NLRB election process, through majority sign-up processes. This development goes to the heart of the support for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and explains why so many business interests are so bitterly opposed to its being signed into law.
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