Very good report on #occupywallstreet reposted from Facebook http://www.facebook.com/notes/john-halle/wall-street-protest-sept-24-2011/10150384437470050
Hi Everyone,
The following is a report from the Wall Street Occupation protest march which I am now on the train returning home from.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Wednesday Orgdown 9/21/11
Brandworkers International is an interesting organization, they specialize in business-to-business boycott tactics, such as persuading restaurants to drop suppliers with bad labor practices. I was reminded of them today because they are publicizing an international day of action against Tnuva, a NYC distributor with a truly horrible record of wage theft, intimidation of workers, and illegal firing.
The action against Tnuva is part of the "Focus on the Food Chain" campaign, which, according to its facebook page is "a joint effort of the non-profit organization Brandworkers and the Industrial Workers of the World (NYC) labor union" to "[organize] recent immigrant workers in New York City's food processing and distribution sector to challenge and overcome sweatshop conditions."A recent article in Crain's New York talks about Brandworkers, FFC, and the Tnuva campaign: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20110821/SMALLBIZ/308219981
Bill Fletcher on Black Power at Work
Book Review republished from Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 15 July 2011
Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative
Action, and the Construction Industry.
Edited by David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010,
265 pp. ISBN 978-0-8014-7431-6, $24.95
(paper).
I did not actually meet and speak with Leo Fletcher (no relation) until the 1980s, but in the fall of 1972 as a freshman at Harvard, and as a student radical, I quickly discovered who he was. Leo was the chief leader of an organization known as the United Community Construction Workers (UCCW). This group of Black and Latino workers was on the frontline in the struggle to desegregate the racist building trades industry of Boston. Leo and his colleagues were at one and the same time worker-leaders at the tail-end of the Black Power phase of the Black Freedom Movement while also serving as champions of a radical vision of labor unionism.
The UCCW was not an isolated initiative. It was part of a national phenomenon that has been largely ignored by both labor historians and historians of the Black Freedom Movement. Black worker organizing, whether from the early 1950s and the National Negro Labor Council or much later in the 1960s/early 1970s with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, has been marginalized by historians as almost being an enigma. The reality is that such efforts, along with many others—including the famous 1968 Memphis, TN sanitation workers organizing and strike where Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered—were essential components of the Black Freedom movement as well as attempts to construct a different vision of labor unionism in the United States.
In this light, David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey’s edited volume Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry is an invaluable resource.
Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative
Action, and the Construction Industry.
Edited by David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010,
265 pp. ISBN 978-0-8014-7431-6, $24.95
(paper).
I did not actually meet and speak with Leo Fletcher (no relation) until the 1980s, but in the fall of 1972 as a freshman at Harvard, and as a student radical, I quickly discovered who he was. Leo was the chief leader of an organization known as the United Community Construction Workers (UCCW). This group of Black and Latino workers was on the frontline in the struggle to desegregate the racist building trades industry of Boston. Leo and his colleagues were at one and the same time worker-leaders at the tail-end of the Black Power phase of the Black Freedom Movement while also serving as champions of a radical vision of labor unionism.
The UCCW was not an isolated initiative. It was part of a national phenomenon that has been largely ignored by both labor historians and historians of the Black Freedom Movement. Black worker organizing, whether from the early 1950s and the National Negro Labor Council or much later in the 1960s/early 1970s with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, has been marginalized by historians as almost being an enigma. The reality is that such efforts, along with many others—including the famous 1968 Memphis, TN sanitation workers organizing and strike where Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered—were essential components of the Black Freedom movement as well as attempts to construct a different vision of labor unionism in the United States.
In this light, David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey’s edited volume Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry is an invaluable resource.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Conversation with Gregory Butler re: associate membership programs
Sam CalvinNew Union Approach in New Zealand (2 articles) "undertaking...to build a modern union movement capable of offering easy, low threshold membership to any worker that wants to participate, including having plans and capacity to support unions to change and organize in new sectors."
LISTSERV 16.0 - PORTSIDELABOR Archives
https://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=ind1109A&L=PORTSIDELABOR&F&S&P=92
LikeUnlike • • Share • Sunday at 4:37pm
Sam Calvin Also: "Together is a values based organization - by its nature and by the nature of the workplaces of its members, bargaining is not an option at this stage for most members but participation and organization is."Sunday at 4:38pm • LikeUnlike
Gregory A. ButlerThis sounds a LOT like the various "associate membership" schemes that the AFL-CIO have tried over the last 30 years.
Those schemes have to date been a resounding failure.
Bottom line, if a unoin can't get workers more money in their paycheck and protect them from abuses on the job, its useless to them.
Workers aren't stupid. They aren't going to join some amorphous labor social club and pay their hard earned money in dues unless it does something concrete for them.See More
Sunday at 5:10pm • UnlikeLike • 1 person
Friday, September 2, 2011
Arguing in terms of Virtue
David Brooks - The Vigorous Virtues (New York Times)
This article is interesting because of the comments it generates. Moving the debate onto the terrain of virtue produces more profound, more populist responses than are typically seen in "policy" centered debates, where many of the moral issues are submerged. Union supporters take note, this shift is very effective, and something that needs to be understood by folks who want to move popular opinion...
It's tempting for those who have seen the effects of the moral style of argumentation used by the right so effectively since the time of Regan to conclude it is demogogic, but in fact it would be more accurate to call it persuasive persuasive...
This article is interesting because of the comments it generates. Moving the debate onto the terrain of virtue produces more profound, more populist responses than are typically seen in "policy" centered debates, where many of the moral issues are submerged. Union supporters take note, this shift is very effective, and something that needs to be understood by folks who want to move popular opinion...
It's tempting for those who have seen the effects of the moral style of argumentation used by the right so effectively since the time of Regan to conclude it is demogogic, but in fact it would be more accurate to call it persuasive persuasive...
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