| May 1st: A Workers' Holiday
By Wobbly City 
April 27, 2009
Happy International Workers’ Day!
This Friday, May 1st, is YOUR day, a day to celebrate all working people. Please take a moment to thank your co-workers, friends, and family members for all the hard work they do every day.
Many people don’t know about the history of May 1st as a workers’ holiday. Here is some information on the roots of May 1st, also called May Day.
ORIGINS
The origins of International Workers’ Day go back to 1886, when hundreds of thousands workers across the United States went on strike. Workers demanded that their 10- and 12-hour workdays be shortened to an 8-hour day with no reduction in pay. Over the next few years, thousands of workers won the 8-hour workday that many of us still enjoy today.
REMEMBERING THE HAYMARKET MARTYRS
We also celebrate in memory of the Haymarket massacre, in which eight labor activists were framed and put on trial by the government. On May 4, 1886, there was a rally at Chicago’s Haymarket Square in support of striking workers from a nearby factory.
The rally at Haymarket was peaceful until a person threw a bomb into the crowd. Although the identity of the person was, and still is, unknown, the government arrested eight local labor activists, of which only two were actually in attendance at the rally. All eight were labor agitators who were well-known by the government and despised for their political views.
In a trial riddled with falsities and contradictions, all eight were found guilty of the bomb-throwing. Four were hanged, one committed suicide in prison, two were sentenced to life imprisonment, and one was sentenced to fifteen years. The Haymarket trial is regarded as one of the most grossly unjust trials in US history.
On May 1st we honor the Haymarket martyrs' legacy as fighters for social justice.
THE IWW CONTINUES THE STRUGGLE
The Industrial Workers of the World is a rank-and-file labor union open to all workers. Today, we continue to organize workers and work together to build a better future. In honor of May 1st, we’d like to wish you a Happy International Workers’ Day and say THANK YOU for all the hard work that you do!
– JOIN US THIS MAY DAY! –
2:00pm – March from Chinatown to Union Square with Chinese Staff & other orgs – Wobblies meet at corner of Grand & Chrystie
4:00pm – Rally at Starbucks 15th St & Union Sq East, then join larger Union Sq rally
8:00pm – Party at IWW office
(These are NYC plans. For other cities' activities, go to http://www.iww.org/en/event/2009/05/01/month/all/all/1)
IWW CONTACT INFO
4461 11th St 3rd Floor, Long Island City, NY 11101
Stephanie – 201-787-6035 / Liberte – 917-693-7742
www.iww.org / www.wobblycity.org / wobblycity@yahoo.com
WSA CONTACT INFO
The Workers Solidarity Alliance is an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian organization that marches with the IWW on May Day.
Workers Solidarity Alliance- NYC
339 Lafayette St — Room 202 / New York, NY 10012
212-979-8353 / wsany@hotmail.com
|
Workers at AT&T Poised to Strike
By x359209 
April 14, 2009
Job action would be biggest U.S. strike in recent years, and first under Obama
by x359209 - IU 560 Job Shop (dual card CWA)
IWW/CWA dual-carders in the heart of the struggle At midnight April 5, 2009 contracts for most of the component groups represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) at the telecom giant AT&T have expired. After weeks of mobilizing, around 90,000 workers are poised to strike one of the largest and most profitable multinational corporations. A job action by CWA would be the largest and among the most significant labor action in the United States since the UPS strike in 1997. It would also be the first major strike under the Obama regime. The brewing confrontation could set the tone for class struggle in the U.S. for the near future.
Attack on Healthcare
AT&T has been pressing hard for major concessions from its call center, billing & ordering, and technical workers, especially in the area of health care. The company is demanding harsh cost shifting in the form of premiums and huge deductables for current employees and even steeper cuts for “second tier” workers hired going forward. AT&T is also demanding concessions in areas of seniority, over-time, and discipline. Raises would be replaced for the first two years by one-time lump payments.
Billions in Profit
AT&T corporate PR hacks have been spinning that healthcare must be reduced to avoid a repeat of what has happened to the U.S. auto industry. But AT&T is not General Motors. It is in a growing, innovative industry - one where AT&T bosses made $12.9 Billion in profits in 2008 alone. Besides, the U.S. healthcare crisis and its skyrocketing costs are not the fault of workers and their families and we should not be made to shoulder its burden. Workers at AT&T are furious that such a rich company would attack their families’ access to healthcare.
The company has also sought to pit the different component parts of “the new AT&T” against each other (the old Ameritech, SBC, Pac Bell, Cingular, etc) by taking advantage of real wage and benefit gaps and separate contract expiration dates. CWA has only partially resisted these efforts. A new contract at the fastest growing (and least compensated) component AT&T Wireless was approved just as negotiations were hitting the wall for 5 of the other major groups. The Union has given up on negotiating the old Bell South component contract, which doesn’t expire until August 2009. By agreeing to postpone these negotiations until summer, the union has given away more of all the workers’ leverage.
Time for Action
In the first few days after the contracts expired CWA leaders announced that workers should report to work for now, while still expressing exasperation at the “Final offers” being pushed by AT&T. It is clear that AT&T is advancing the same attack that has drastically reduced the wages, benefits and power of all the core unionized sections of the working-class (auto, steel, airlines, etc.) AT&T bosses are confident that telecom workers can also be tamed for the international capitalist economy, and are hardly fearful of the business unions, which have no real experience or desire to wage militant struggle.
But there are factors that favor us, the workers, too. There is a growing mood among workers at AT&T and throughout the class in general that workers should not have to shoulder the bosses’ economic crisis that the rich must pay. The issue of Healthcare is one that is on everyone’s mind, and a group of workers seen as struggling to defend their healthcare has the possibility of striking a chord deep and wide across the working class. Finally, Obama was elected in no small part because workers wanted “change”, and it will not be easy for his administration to openly attack any emerging struggle without damaging his standing and costing him room to maneuver.
The View from the Floor
Over the last few weeks in the Midwest call center where we work it has been interesting to join the union mobilizations and watch the attitude of our co-workers move quickly towards a determination to take action. A month ago any talk of a strike brought either yawns or fear from most people. As the deadline neared, however, the reality of AT&T’s demands hit home. At the top of the hour, union employees stand up in their cubicles and press loud “clickers”, shake noise makers, or tap pens on their desk in a show of solidarity. The effect is like a massive cloud of locust sweeping over the office and adds to the tense atmosphere. Groups of people discuss the latest news and share opinions about a strike. Red Union T-shirts are everywhere, and cubicles are decorated in union flyers. Petty discipline and rule enforcement from management have sparked a much stronger and organized reaction than usual turning “team meetings” into heated debates.
Now there is a wide group of workers who are not only willing to strike, but WANT to strike.
Strike to Win
If we are forced to go on strike it is important that we win. We have little confidence that the business union approach can beat such a committed and powerful adversary. It is likely that the withdrawal of our labor alone will not be sufficient. It is clear that AT&T is prepared to
force us to strike and has calculated the short-term losses and chaos it is prepared to endure in order to implement the long-term cuts to workers’ healthcare and implement a second-class tier for newly hired workers. Certainly workers with greater skill and specialization than those of us in a call center have been replaced in strikes.
Direct action tactics like those most recently employed by the Republic Windows workers in Chicago, who successfully blocked the sell-off of their factory by staging an occupation/sit-in are ones we need to look at and advocate.
The IWW @ AT&T
Among the active core of union workers in our call center is a group of dual card I.W.W. members. The group grew out of a major struggle for greater union democracy in our CWA local about 4 years ago. We do not try and get workers to leave or dismiss the Communication Workers, but instead to participate in the CWA as “solidarity unionists”, fighting for greater militancy, democracy and revolutionary analysis of the system we are up against. We have built support for other local struggles including in the airlines, at the University, and for active IWW organizing campaigns in our area. We try and create a social scene with our co-workers built on solidarity. We do not ignore the CWA or let it exclusively define our activity. It is this mix of independent IWW organizing and dual-card organizing that really defines our GMB and points toward a successful model for bringing the IWW back to the cutting edge of the struggle for emancipation from capitalism and the state.
|
Aaron "Archie" Green, Folklorist of Labor, Dies
By John Coté of the SF Chronicle 
April 06, 2009
From The San Francisco Chronicle:
Aaron "Archie" Green, the former San Francisco shipwright who became an author, folklorist, university professor and labor historian credited with creating the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, has died of renal failure.
Dr. Green was 91 when he died March 22 in the upper Castro house he and his wife bought in 1950, when the neighborhood was filled with blue-collar families.
He had a kind of folksy energy that was impossible to ignore, whether it was at a union hall, a San Francisco Port Commission meeting or in the corridors of Congress.
Hailed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Congressional Record and awarded the Library of Congress' Living Legend Award, Dr. Green leaves behind a coast-to-coast legacy of chronicling the lives of workers and the term he coined to describe it: "laborlore."
He was a pioneer who inspired others to do the same.
"I never in my life dreamed I would write a book," said Michael Munoz, a retired Oakland pile driver and union archivist who met Dr. Green in 1982. His prodding compelled Munoz to write the book "Pilebutt" on the efforts of the laborers who did the tough work of anchoring bridges, dams and skyscrapers.
"All I was doing was collecting the material in the union hall and putting it in a cabinet," Munoz said. "Archie decided I needed to write a book."
And when Dr. Green decided something needed to happen, it usually did, such as when he lobbied Congress to support the American Folklife Preservation Act, which passed unanimously and was signed by President Ford in 1976.
The act created American Folklife Center, an archive of more than 4,000 collections of photos, documents and recordings ranging from American Indian song and dance to tales of "Bruh Rabbit," told in the Gullah dialect of the Georgia Sea Islands.
Born in 1917 in Winnipeg, Canada, to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, he moved to Boyle Heights in Los Angeles with his parents in 1922.
He graduated in 1939 from UC Berkeley with a degree in philosophy and began working on the San Francisco waterfront in 1940. He served in the Navy's legendary Seabees Construction Battalion during World War II and then returned to the shipwright's trade and carpentry while raising a family in San Francisco.
"When he wasn't working on the job, he was working around the house," building a den, fixing up the back porch, adding another room, recalled his son, Derek Green.
In 1958, Archie Green returned to academia, earning a master's degree from the University of Illinois in 1960. He went on to earn a doctorate in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania. His first book, "Only a Miner," published in 1971, combined his support for labor and love of country music. He would go on to publish at least eight books, including "The Big Red Songbook" in 2007, featuring lyrics from editions of the Industrial Workers of the World's "Little Red Songbooks" dating back to 1909.
In 1975 he was hired as a folklore professor at the University of Texas. He retired from the university in 1982 and donated his collected materials to the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He returned to San Francisco, wrote and delved into labor issues, most recently the ongoing effort to preserve the five-story Islais Creek Copra Crane at Pier 84. Laborers used the crane, built in the early '70s, to unload dried coconut.
Dr. Green is survived by his wife Louanne, sons David Green of San Francisco and Derek Green of Montara, daughter Debra Morrisof Boone, Iowa, four grandchildren and sister Mitzi Zeman.
A public memorial service is being planned.
The family suggests memorial contributions go to an educational institution of the donor's choice or to the Fund for Labor Culture & History in San Francisco ( www.laborculture.org).
E-mail John Coté at jcote AT sfchronicle DOT com.
|
Deal to Cut Costs Is Close For Builders and Unions
By Charles V. Bagli of the NY Times 
Photo from www.cfmeuwa.com
April 01, 2009
From The New York Times:
Reeling from the real estate downturn in the city, construction unions and builders are edging closer to an agreement that they say will reduce labor costs and enable at least some of their projects in Manhattan to proceed despite the weak economy.
The stakes are high for both sides. Developers, who paid record-breaking prices for land during the boom years, are now desperately seeking ways to cut their costs and keep projects alive.
The unions, in turn, are eager to keep their members employed and to retain their traditional dominance over large-scale projects in New York. Yet many are reluctant to give up hard-won wages and benefits.
Some construction managers and union officials involved in the negotiations say that the pending agreement on work rules, wages and benefits would cut labor costs by 15 to 20 percent, but not the 25 percent originally sought by builders. Many involved are loath to discuss it publicly for fear of blowing up the fragile talks with the union construction trades, all of which are covered by contracts. The carpenters and the electricians have been much more willing to bend, union officials and contractors say, than the steamfitters and the operating engineers, the highly paid operators of cranes, bulldozers and other heavy equipment.
Some developers, however, are skeptical that any agreement will translate into substantial savings. Some doubt whether even a 25 percent reduction would be enough to salvage a residential project when rents have dropped by a third or more.
“A lot of my developers are concerned that it doesn’t go far enough,” Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said of the proposed agreement. “But we’re grateful discussions are taking place.”
Among the developers pushing for a deal are Larry Silverstein, who is building at ground zero, Stephen M. Ross, who has a slow-moving project on 42nd Street at 10th Avenue, and the Milstein family, which has a project under way at Battery Park City.
The three people at the center of the negotiations — Raymond G. McGuire, president of the Contractors Association of New York, Louis J. Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers Association, and Gary La Barbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, an alliance of unions — did not return calls requesting comment.
“Industry leaders,” said James A. Parrott, chief economist at the union-supported Fiscal Policy Institute, “should be seeking help from Washington to retain construction jobs and maintain wages, benefits and safety standards.”
“Our national economic recovery depends on labor and management working together to expand and not weaken the middle class,” he said.
Construction employment in New York City climbed to roughly 130,000 during the boom years. But a report by the New York Building Congress predicts that that number could fall by 23 percent to 100,000 next year.
Nonunion projects are showing up in what has been a union bastion: Manhattan. The Atlantic Development Group is putting up an 89-unit apartment house at 10th Avenue and 23rd Street in Chelsea with nonunion contractors. And at a union job on the Upper West Side, the Chetrit Group and Stellar Management took the highly unusual step of asking contractors for new bids on three 15-story buildings already under construction on Columbus Avenue, between 97th and 100th Streets. Developers and union officials expect nonunion contractors to take over the project.
“Our main goal was to continue with the project and keep as many people working as possible,” said Jeff Gdanski, a vice president at the Chetrit Group.
Bruce Ratner, a developer who traditionally builds with union contractors, recently stopped at the 38th floor of his planned 76-story Beekman Tower in Lower Manhattan, threatening to cap the building at 40 stories if construction unions did not accept concessions on wages and work rules.
Mr. Ratner, who is not involved in the current negotiations, stopped work for three months early last year while he scrambled to obtain $680 million in construction financing. At that time, he decided to switch from condominiums to rentals. In another cost-cutting move, he modified the design by the architect Frank Gehry, using a standard curtain wall instead of one that would seem to be undulating, on one of the tower’s eight sides.
It was not so long ago that major Manhattan developers and their lenders worried little about these things, figuring that rents and sale prices would gallop well ahead of the surging cost of land, concrete and steel.
But the cityscape is now littered with half-finished towers that have run into financial problems. Construction managers say that developers are stuck with land costs of $400 a square foot or more, up from $200 five years ago.
In January, developers and construction managers who often use union contractors began talking about a citywide agreement on wages, work rules and benefits. Developers and managers say they prefer union contractors, despite their higher wages, because they provide highly skilled workers.
“This year is not too bad,” said one union official who insisted on anonymity because he was not supposed to discuss the talks. “But 2010 is looking like we’re going off the ledge.”
But many unions have balked at wage cuts, particularly those who have not suffered layoffs, like cement workers and operating engineers. Some contractors have also questioned the value of the concessions that some unions have agreed upon, even ones that have been verified by consultants. There was talk of a compromise for a select group of six projects, including those owned by Mr. Ross, Mr. Silverstein and the Milstein family.
Executives and labor officials who have been briefed on the latest discussions say the unions may agree to consider projects on a “case-by-case” basis for a special “project labor agreement” that would save developers whose projects are otherwise not viable up to 20 percent on the current labor contracts.
|
|
