2011 December | Talking Readers

December, 2011

Throw the bankers in jail !

December 23, 2011 by admin

Duane Campbell

I have a a dilemma with the Nation Broad and the WaMU settlements.
We have to take into account the externalities of the fraud. While a $ 337 million dollar fine may be sufficient for the individuals defrauded by Nation Wide, the price to the nation and the state was much greater. These could be referred to as externalities or collateral damage. And the charges are truly astronomic.
Keep in mind what brought on this crisis – it wasn’t the government. First came the housing bubble and the offering of close to fraudulent residence mortgages by companies this kind of as Nation Wide and WaMU– as a result the settlements. To make a profit major banks and companies looted the economic climate making an international meltdown.
Now we have cuts in parks, in universities, in nurses, libraries. School children did not create this crisis.  The significant bankers, finance capitalists in the U.S. robbed the bank final year – and the federal treasury. They took hundreds of billions of dollars – Goldman Sachs alone took $ ten Billion.

Picture by Getty Pictures by way of @daylife

For example, Ken Lewis of Bank of America received an $ 81 million dollar pension. They have not even been punished. One particular thing we must do is arrest the best a hundred executives and CEO’s of these firms, give them a fair trial, and throw them in jail. Till we arrest some individuals there will be no genuine modifications.

Note: Home Concurrent Resolution 85. Dec. 2011.

Resolved by the Property of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that any action taken by the Department of Justice must be consistent with the following ambitions:

(1) The mortgage loan servicers who engaged in fraudulent behavior ought to not be granted criminal or civil immunity for potential wrongdoing related to illegal mortgage loan and foreclosure practices.

(2) The Federal Government and State attorneys basic ought to proceed with full investigations into claims of fraudulent behavior by mortgage loan servicers.

(3) Any financial settlement reached with mortgage servicers must appropriately compensate for, and accurately reflect, the extent of harm to all victims, which includes house owners and State pension beneficiaries, brought on by the home loan servicers’ fraudulent behavior.

For more see:

http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/12/21/7753/bank-america-pay out-record-settlement-above-countrywide-abuses

Individuals who committed the fraud really should spend for the external charges of the Excellent Recession.  Our fiscal system as a entire crashed not since of a single bank. Goldman Sachs undoubtedly played a key role as did JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and CitiCorp, along with the several corporate finance institutions like Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, WaMu.
Although millions of working people have continued to lose their jobs, their households, their health care, and their futures, it is return to enterprise as normal for Wall street companies, return to casino capitalism.
We had a systemic breakdown simply because virtually all of our policy makers, academics, politicians, and pundits promoted a failed, self serving ideology of self-correcting monetary markets. Finance profiteers walked off with big bucks while contributing to the crash of the technique.

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Category eBook Readers | Tags: bankers,jail,Throw | No Comments
Technology council discusses social media

December 20, 2011 by admin

Check out these Technologies photos:

Technological innovation council discusses social media

Picture by RDECOM
Social media, intelligent phones and new technology have been on the agenda March 11 at the month-to-month meeting of the Northeastern Maryland Engineering Council in Aberdeen, Md.

Science and Mathematics Academy at Aberdeen Substantial School students David Bowman (appropriate) and Kristofer Castro gave the council an overview of their existing investigation project in the region of Voice more than Net Protocol. The team is functioning with Dr. Lisa Marvel, a mentor from the Army Research Laboratory as portion of an Army outreach system created to promote education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Technological innovation Use, Southampton City College

Picture by jisc_infonet
The performance of mobile engineering is currently being demonstrated by college students in a classroom setting with supervision from a tutor.

Category Technology | Tags: council,discusses,media,Social,Technology | No Comments
Cool Talking Readers images

December 20, 2011 by admin

A couple of great Talking Readers images I discovered:

Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival

Image by katclay
A single of my favourite panels from the festival (or at least the most entertaining), Brilliant Voices. From left: Pippa Masson, Jon Bauer, Chris Womersley and Gregory Day.

Check out my photography and writing website www.katclay.com or stick to me on www.twitter.com/kat_clay

Humanware

Image by George
This thingy plays speaking books in Daisy format.

www.daisy.org/

Category Talking Readers | Tags: Cool,images,Readers,Talking | 2 Comments
A Coalition of the Ascendant

December 20, 2011 by admin

U-Cubed, the IAM’s project to organize the unemployed is a single of the a lot more exciting endeavors of the labor motion. We felt that a latest e-mail from U-Cubed to its supporters deserved wider circulation. Right here it is.–Talking Union.

by Rick Sloan

Each and every of these letters ends with “In Unity – Strength” and that is the philosophy of the Union of Unemployed. So, as I read about a new and extremely divisive strategy for winning the White Property next year, I became angrier and angrier.

Issued by the Center for American Progress, The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Elections argues that President Barack Obama really should create a “coalition of the ascendant” created up of minorities, Millennials, single women and college-educated whites.

If you’re not in portion of that Coalition of the Ascendant, you should be “rooted in the declining sector of whites,” or so says Ray Teixeira and John Halpin, the authors of this 64-page document.

Since when do Democrats discriminate on the basis of race, age, gender and education?

When did the Democrats turn into the party of the fashionably and upwardly mobile? When did the party adopt a platform so openly dismissive of these forced onto the down escalator of life by tough occasions? Or area candidates that turned their backs on Americans mired in poverty … retired and living on Social Safety … or married with young children?

When, exactly, did the Democrats abandon individuals who make a decision not to go to school? Who function with their brains and brawn? Who develop their skills as apprentices and then use them as journeymen? Who wait tables, run drop presses, dig coal, weld pipes, stock groceries, paint bridges or empty bed pans?

Apparently I missed the media advisory announcing that the Democrats had been striking their huge tent and replacing it with an encampment of pup tents – 1 for each of the demographic groups selected for the Coalition of the Ascendant.

But it would be tough to miss the divisive and un-Democratic method taken by The Path to 270. Its exclusivity pits demographic group against demographic group. And its elitism invites traditional Democratic voters to pack up their issues, go home and stay residence.

For instance, The Path to 270 is extremely dismissive of white working-class voters. So significantly so that, the eminence grise of American political reporters, Tom Edsall, opens his New York Occasions blog post with this observation:

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly significant losses amongst white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the 1st time that the celebration will explicitly abandon the white operating class.”

The emphasis is mine. But the technique harms all little “d” democrats. And right here’s why:

Teixeira and Halpin argue that the white operating class voted for McCain in 2008 by a 17 point margin, then voted for the GOP in 2010 by a 30 point margin and, therefore, have been irretrievably lost to Obama. They blithely overlook the math behind individuals numbers.

With a 17 % spread, over 41 percent of the white working class voted for Obama. Take individuals 41 points off the board and John McCain wins in a walk! Even with a 30 point spread, 35 percent of the white operating class voted for Democratic congressional candidates in 2010. Shift those 35 factors to the GOP and Republicans would now manage the United States Senate.

Teixeira and Halpin also argue that demographics trump economics. Whilst conceding substantial unemployment exists in battleground states and may possibly make winning more problematic, their approach overlooks the fact that jobless households – what they deem a “declining sector of whites” — also incorporates Blacks, Latinos, Millennials, the college educated and single women. In reality, numerous in their Coalition of the Ascendant skilled far greater rates of joblessness than some in “declining sector.”

Voters from jobless households – defined as having an unemployed person living with them in the final two years – constituted 30 percent of all voters, according to 2010 exit polls. They split 50 to 46 percent nationally. So dismissing up to 40 million voters – half of whom are your voters – seems like the path to a landslide.

Frankly, as essential as communities of color are to a Democratic victory, they do not have ample voting strength to deliver 270 electoral votes outright. And neither do the other demographic groups singled out for the Coalition of the Ascendant.

For the Coalition of the Ascendant does not just exclude the jobless and the white working class. By inference, the older generations – 30 to 49, 50 to 64 and 65 plus – which Obama won by 9, 11 and eight factors respectively, are also excluded from the in-crowd. Presumably, so are white Catholics (Obama +eight), white mainline Protestants (Obama – Even), Some School (Obama +10) and Substantial School or Significantly less (Obama +16).

By being so exclusive and elitist, The Path to 270 could generate a Mondale- or McGovern-sized landslide as the jobless and the other individuals in the declining sector boycott the party that once was their champion.

Teixeira and Halpin must assume that “those rooted in the declining sector” – once more their words, not mine – have nowhere else to go. But that is by no means the situation. These excluded from their Coalition of the Ascendant will always have someplace else to go, or something else to do, on Election Day.

Here, at the Union of Unemployed, we’d hate for that to take place. In truth, our goal is to unify the jobless and get them out to vote on November 6, 2012.

For we look for an AMERICA that lifts up all of its peoples, a UNITED AMERICA that supplies jobs for all who want to perform and a UNITED STATES OF AMERICA that is ascendant.

That is only achievable if we, as a Nation, see the inherent value of each person contributing to America’s progress and believe in the power of an whole folks pulling in a single route.

Rick Sloan is the Executive Director of U-cubed,Ur Union of Unemployed, a community service project of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Employees (IAM).

TALKINGREADER.COM

Category eBook Readers | Tags: Ascendant,Coalition | No Comments
Durban Outcome: No Guarantees for the Climate as Governments Again Delay

December 17, 2011 by admin

ITUC On the internet

International Trade Union Confederation

The international trade union movement expressed its disappointment as climate negotiators in Durban had agreed a platform to carry on negotiations, but with out any guarantees that will make the cuts to emissions demanded by science to stop a climate disaster.

Trade Unions in Durban demanded the extension of the Kyoto Agreement, a globally negotiated legally binding agreement and a strategy to operationalise and fill the Green Climate Fund.

“The Kyoto Protocol, a vital piece in the climate agreement, survived the talks but without having key nations, without commitments on emission reductions and with key loopholes. A Green Climate fund was agreed, but with no commitments to fill the fund. And a new negotiating round was launched aimed at becoming implemented in 2020,” mentioned Sharan Burrow.

Scientists, environmental groups have warned the delay to 2020 puts the planet, and people at fantastic threat of irreversible injury from rising temperatures.

“Governments should not abandon the principals of equity, social justice and historical responsibilities, as they start off the new round of negotiations.

“This delay should not distract from the instant action governments want to take to invest in a lower-carbon economic system and create green jobs and a Just Transition,” stated Sharan Burrow.

“Unions will not wait right up until 2020 for action to decrease emissions and reshape economies. In Rio in 2012 and beyond, employees will call for a renewed, a lot more ambitious mandates from our governments, for green and greener jobs, and for social justice to prevail more than the latest financial order, that as soon as yet again won in Durban.

“One trillion dollars of investment is now staying directed in the direction of the green economy, but too a lot of nations are left out, As a substitute of waiting for an agreement to be negotiated and implemented in 2020, nations require to act now to provide green jobs for the future,” mentioned Sharan Burrow.

The international trade union movement will be taking the call for climate action to the G20 Summit in Mexico and the Rio+20 Earth Summit next June as nicely as mobilising employees in each and every country.

“We have been vocal in calling for a Just Transition wherever employees are involved and form the social and economic transformation to tackle climate modify. Now our voice will only get louder as the urgency for government action becomes higher,” stated Sharan Burrow.

The ITUC (International Trade Union Confderation) represents 175 million workers in 153 nations and territories and has 308 national affiliates.

Website: http://www.ituc-csi.org and http://www.youtube.com/ITUCCSI

TALKINGREADER.COM

Category Technology | Tags: Again,Climate,Delay,Durban,Governments,Guarantees,Outcome | No Comments
Union-Buster to Managers: Fear the New Election Rules—and Hold 5 Meetings

December 17, 2011 by admin

By Josh Eidelson

Anti-union firm warns proposed NLRB guidelines could make it more difficult to use supervisors to shut down organizing.

Josh Eidelson

Days after the National Labor Relations Board voted to proceed with revised union election rules, the anti-union Labor Relations Institute held a “webinar” for human resources experts to discuss how to remain “union cost-free.”&nbsp “Now is the time,” mentioned LRI’s Philip Wilson, who ran the webinar/ conference call.&nbsp “If you really don’t have a approach for a fast election environment…you’ve got to get it now.&nbsp You have ninety days. The clock is ticking as we speak.”

Founded in 1978, LRI supplies firms with anti-union attorneys, movies, and campaign templates.&nbsp It claims that its items are employed by employers in one particular out of 5 union recognition elections in the United States.

As Mike Elk has reported right here, the NLRB’s proposed guidelines are a modest adjust with the likely to reduce management’s potential to use frivolous legal challenges to get time for anti-union campaigning. Such stalling is a single of a number of problems that has led some unions to abandon NLRB elections completely.

But in Wilson’s telling, the likely changes are “terrible… It shows that they’re in the pocket of labor unions.” Wilson told his audience that it was a “bombshell” that GOP NLRB member Brian Hayes made the decision&nbspnot to stick to through with a threat to paralyze the board by resigning. He warned them to assume unions to file far more election petitions under the new guidelines, and that “if they have a lot more achievement, then they’ll possibly be encouraged.”

On the contact, held December 6, Wilson predicted that the typical below the new guidelines would be 24 days from when a union files for an election to the day it requires location.&nbsp For the duration of that time period, he urged employers to hold five anti-union meetings with workers. In a 5-day-a-week workplace, that would regular a lot more than one particular captive audience meeting each four days of perform. The new election rules wouldn’t restrict such meetings who attends, for how lengthy, and who can speak stay entirely up to management.

LRI’s subsequent webinar will be devoted completely to showcasing its suite of anti-union items, such as sample campaign presentations and supervisory trainings. Wilson also urged all the HR professionals on the call to use the risk of “ambush elections” to wring a greater budget out of their own bosses. “This is a fantastic chance for those of you that are in HR and labor,” he stated, “to go to company leaders and get sources.”

Wilson expressed particular concern that the new rule would make it harder for management to enlist supervisors in acquiring the workers they supervise to vote down a union. Due to the fact the new guidelines would postpone most challenges regarding whether certain employees would be element of the new union’s bargaining unit, Wilson warned that employers could go into an election with no certainty about no matter whether or not to involve some supervisors in busting the union.

You “cannot rely on that supervisor to, for example, campaign on your behalf,” stated Wilson. “You would not want to consist of them in conversations about the campaign,” even although that supervisor “might be the only person you can depend on in your communications.”

Left unsaid: Supervisors’ usefulness as union-busters does not just rest on very good will from personnel – it rests on the authority they command over them, as people empowered to assist get an employee fired, or make their task miserable, with or with no a union.

Wilson stated that an unidentified webinar participant had asked whether or not a firm (presumably like his/her own) could refuse to provide the union a checklist of staff out of “concern of employee privacy.” Wilson responded that that would be illegal, and could get the employer slapped with a bargaining order from the NLRB, forcing them to go directly into contract negotiations with the union.

Wilson stated that even though legal challenges to the new guidelines have been inevitable, he expects the rule modify to be passed this month and to go into impact in March: “The bar is pretty higher for obtaining an injunction against a regulation…You’ve got to strategy for the rule going into effect.”

He talked about that the Republican Residence could use its “power of the purse” to pass legislation denying the NLRB all funding for holding union elections, though it wouldn’t pass the Senate. He complained that the NLRB Inspector General’s investigation into attempts to bribe Hayes to resign was itself a bid to “intimidate him from resigning,” and stated Republicans may possibly retaliate by requesting documentation of the two Democratic NLRB members’ communications with labor unions. He also expressed confidence that congressional Republicans, by refusing to recess Congress ahead of the 2012 elections, will be capable to avert any recess appointments by Obama to the NLRB, and as a result the Board “will not be capable to achieve anything.”

Although it’s always tempting for unions to crow above the warnings of anti-union consultants, their assessment of the threat of increased union victories must be taken in the same vein as alarm companies’ warnings about threats of increased burglary.&nbsp Any labor development – unions merging, unions splitting, proposed laws – is an opportunity for consultants to hawk their wares.&nbsp As Columbia Professor Dorian Warren told In These Occasions in September, the reality is that organizations don’t wait for a union election filing to begin anti-union campaigning. But with LRI promoting a package of 5 captive audience meetings, some will no doubt buy it anyway.

Wilson declared himself sympathetic to Hayes’ selection not to resign, on the grounds that “if the board is going to survive as a political entity, far more and far more video games played by the events isn’t going to help…the board’s credibility is at an all-time very low.”

At a time when Republicans like Mitt Romney are calling for the NLRB to be transformed or abolished, Wilson’s comment could be noticed as an attempt to position himself over the fray—or as a tacit acknowledgement that the latest labor law regime isn’t genuinely so bad for anti-union employers.&nbsp It’s undoubtedly profitable for “union avoidance” specialists.

Josh Eidelson is a freelance author and a contributor at In These Instances, The American Prospect, Dissent, and Alternet.&nbsp Soon after getting his MA in Political Science, he worked as a union organizer for 5 a long time.&nbsp His site is http://www.josheidelson.com. This post originally appeared on the Working In These Instances blog.

TALKINGREADER.COM

Category Talking Readers | Tags: Election,Fear,Hold,Managers,Meetings,Rules—and,UnionBuster | No Comments
Cool EBook Readers images

December 17, 2011 by admin

Examine out these eBook Readers photos:

Kobo eBook Reader

Image by Morpheus_uk
Lets see if this eBook reader holds up.

eBook Reader

Image by uncafelitoalasonce
Me gusta la sensaciónd e tranquilidad que muestra y la luz
Usé esta foto para un artículo sobre el futuro de los libros:
www.uncafelitoalasonce.com/el-negro-futuro-de-los-libros-…

Stanza eBook reader for iPhone

Image by Sigalakos
Deciding on chapters

Sent from my iPod Touch

Category eBook Readers | Tags: Cool,EBook,images,Readers | 2 Comments
Union Supporters Still Fired With Impunity

December 14, 2011 by admin

by David Bacon

A pro-Employee Cost-free Option Act (EFCA) march in San Francisco functions workers fired for union help. (Photo: David Bacon)

When a personal employer, like the Los Angeles Film College (LAFS), decides to fight the efforts of its workers to kind a union, there is quite little holding it back, regardless of the rights written into US labor law virtually three quarters of a century ago.The National Labor Relations Act says employees not only have the correct to kind unions, but that the government encourages them to do so, to degree the energy imbalance with their employers. The law sets up an election method, in which workers supposedly can freely decide on a union. And it says that it’s illegal for an employer to fire or punish any worker who uses these rights.

Then there’s the reality, as practiced by the LAFS.That business, set up in 1999 by the former lawyer for Occidental Petroleum, was bought by Florida-based mostly Full Sail Film School in 2003. The film and recording enterprise in Los Angeles has sturdy, effectively-respected unions. The studios that are the hoped-for employers for film college graduates negotiate with unions all the time. But the LAFS and Complete Sail are not normal film colleges. They are diploma mills that feed off federal loans taken out by students.A lawsuit filed last year against LAFS says that college students, who pay $ 18,000 to $ 23,000 per year tuition for a two-year AS degree, receive significantly less than promised. The college hands out present cards to Target and Very best Get, the suit says, to college students who list jobs at Apple and Guitar Center retailers as “creative positions” on types submitted to get the school accreditation. That makes it possible for the colleges to enroll its students in federal loan applications.Brandii Grace, a digital game designer, moved from Seattle in 2009 when she was provided a contract to educate her skill at LAFS. She took a $ 2,000 per year cut from her earlier job, and was promised $ 70,000 per year. Her fiancée had to remain behind, but still in their 20s, they decided the prospect of producing a daily life with each other in the heart of the entertainment planet created the sacrifice worth it.

No sooner had she commenced to teach, nevertheless, than the school began making radical adjustments in the ailments for all its teachers. It cut classes, developed new online parts, and reassigned teachers to classes exactly where they had no knowledge. “At first, they promised additional compensation,” she remembers. “Then they stated we had been staying transformed from salaried staff to hourly, but that we’d get overtime for the additional operate.”

Then, the college announced teachers would only be paid the hours spent in class, cutting most to 8-16 a week. “They weren’t going to pay out anything at all for the three hrs grading, advising and planning curriculum for each and every hour we spend in class,” she says. With their earnings about to plunge, the faculty rebelled. Grace began attempting to support men and women fully grasp what was happening, at very first just by distributing the school’s own memos. Lastly, the college demanded that teachers sign agreements to the new arrangements. In a meeting of instructors, she not only urged them not to do it, but also mentioned they ought to appear for a union.

That was a huge step for her. She’d grown up suspicious of unions simply because of earlier family members experiences, but every single government agency she contacted told her there was no legal way to cease the new guidelines if the teachers had no union contract. “We discovered Peter Nguyen and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), and he was prepared to support us move appropriate away,” Grace recalls. Above the next month they collected union cards, and filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with 70 % of the faculty signed up. Grace was selected head of the union steering committee.

That was when hell broke loose. The film school hired IRI Consultants, a union-busting firm from Michigan. With their assistance, school managers set Grace up to be fired, and prepared a traditional campaign of psychological warfare against its very own faculty.

“We have been instantly told we had been all supervisors, and that our salaried standing would be restored,” she recalls. Her boss named her in, told her they knew she was the union leader, and threatened her. All of a sudden they accused her of not turning in operate, of insubordination and even of becoming violent. “They handed me a memo complete of lies that were dramatic and intense,” Grace charges.

She was suspended for three days, and when she came back, she was fired. It was her 30th birthday, and her apartment lease had just expired.She didn’t give up, even though. Other workers would contact her at evening, telling her how scared they had been. The firm was holding mandatory meetings to make its union hatred clear, and every single teacher was known as in for a personal chat with her or his supervisor. “Managers would run down the hall screaming at an individual, ‘you signed the card!’” Grace says she was told.The union filed charges in March, appropriate following she was fired, and held a protest rally. But six months later on, the NLRB even now hadn’t finished its investigation. The union withdrew its petition for the election due to the fact the level of worry was so extreme that the right to vote freely had turn out to be a joke. The NLRB regional office issued a complaint shortly afterward, charging the school with firing Grace illegally, but it was also late. A hearing was held in January, and in April the hearing officer ruled that the LAFS had violated the law. He ordered Grace reinstated with back pay out. The school, nevertheless, is interesting the selection to the labor board in Washington, DC, a method that will most likely last at least a year. If they have the dollars and the will, they can then appeal into the court system.Grace’s ordeal is a direct merchandise of this nation’s weak labor laws, a dilemma the Employee Cost-free Choice Act (EFCA) was written to right. That’s why large employers, Republicans, and even conservative Democrats have fought the bill in Congress. EFCA would go a long way toward solving the problems Grace knowledgeable.If the bill had been passed when Democrats had the presidency and a majority in the two homes amongst 2008 and 2010, it would have been in effect whilst individuals meetings were going on in the film school. Grace and the other union committee members could have presented their signed cards to the NLRB, and the school would then have been obligated to recognize the union.

Fear of firing is probably the single greatest cause employees don’t organize unions. According to a modern report from the Center for Economic and Policy Study, “Dropping the Ax: Illegal Firings For the duration of Union Election Campaigns, 1951-2007,” by John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer, workers have been fired for union activity in 30 percent of all union campaigns, so concern isn’t unreasonable. “Aggressive actions by employers – frequently such as illegal firings – have significantly undermined the capability of US workers to unionize their workplaces,” according to report co-writer Schmitt. “The monetary penalties for illegal actions, like firing pro-union workers, are minimal, so it tends to make excellent sense for employers to break the law to derail union-organizing efforts.” That percentage has gone up from 16 percent in the final 1990s, to 26 % in the early 2000s, to 30 percent in 2007.

If EFCA had been in impact in the course of the film school campaign, the company would have had to pay triple back wages for its illegal firings. But with no fines and no card-examine recognition process, each supporter recruited to the union result in had to weigh the chance that he or she may well eliminate his or her job. Union supporters say it felt like operating in a war zone.

But EFCA didn’t pass. In truth, it was by no means even brought up for a vote.

So for Grace,, even if the college is found guilty, there’s no fine or actual punishment. The school will have to spend back pay for her time out of perform, but can deduct any revenue from another job, or even any unemployment advantages she collects. “My advantages just ran out, even though,” she laughs.

Being out of function although continuing to help the union has been an ordeal. Following their funds ran out, Grace moved in with her mom, and her fiancée had to go reside with his family for months in Texas. In addition, Grace had brought her grandmother from Seattle to live with her. “She took care of me expanding up, so I take care of her now,” she explains. But she had to place her in a senior residence, and then, when she couldn’t sleep on her mom’s couch any longer, she even slept in her grandmother’s area.

Finally, her fiancée came back to Los Angeles, identified a task and they got another apartment. “But we almost didn’t make it,” Grace says.So, why must she have to go through this ordeal simply because a film college, extensively known as a scam on the Internet, decides to bust a union? “Because the Federal law is broken” Grace concludes. “There’s no effective deterrent, no balance sheet they have to be concerned about. It’s no surprise why people are reluctant to do this.”Maybe she’ll get the back spend someday. “But you know, the cash’s not crucial to me, genuinely,” she says. “This is about justice. That’s what I’m fighting for.”

TALKINGREADER.COM

Category Technology | Tags: Fired,Impunity,Still,Supporters,Union | No Comments
Worker Cooperatives Can Revitalize Our Economy

December 14, 2011 by admin

by Joe Marraffino and Gay Nicholson

Leaders in the sustainability motion feel that the most promising economic development method obtainable may possibly be a focus on economic justice. This would decrease poverty and improve tax revenues, strengthen democracy and the sense of a shared future, minimize the tax burden for social services, and boost assistance for investments in education and public infrastructure. All of these are part of a viable and sustainable local economic system.

Worker cooperatives can be an critical tool in this strategy. According to the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, cooperatives can create a green and just financial system by constructing neighborhood wealth “in which ownership is broadly shared, locally rooted, and directed toward the frequent good. Employee cooperatives are organizations owned and democratically controlled by their employees. They have been organized considering that the dawn of the industrial revolution and have been profitable in virtually every single business – from mining firms, to robotics firms, taxi drivers, well being care providers, food processors, to innovative and technology companies – anywhere exactly where the workers and their neighborhood would advantage from acquiring a stake in their workplace and the incentive of receiving an equitable share of the fruits of their labor.

While employee cooperatives have been a steady presence in modern history, they have surged during occasions of financial dislocation, and fast cultural and technological alter. In the course of the enormous movement of capital and jobs out of the upstate area in the 1970s and 1980s, a wave of efforts to generate and preserve jobs via cooperatives and employee ownership rose up in Jamestown, Herkimer, Saratoga, the Mohawk Valley, Ithaca and elsewhere.

The wave was given technical support by the NYS College of Industrial and Labor Relations and supported by government loans. State employees, researchers and organizers in Central New York had been regarded authorities during the nation, structuring buyouts and education employees. In the mid-1980s the New York State Legislature formalized their assistance by writing a new article into State Firms law recognizing the positive aspects of the worker cooperative model.

Employee cooperatives can have profound social advantages in terms of occupation satisfaction and empowerment of citizens via the daily practice of democratic participation. They have also been shown to have substantial financial benefits, both at an individual and regional degree. Participation in determination-generating and an equitable share of earnings increases worker productivity and creativity, and decreases the need to have for supervision. A broad base of employee ownership increases economic stability by growing the incentive for firms and employees to remain in the area and via the multiplier effect of worker/resident’s local investing. Employee cooperatives also develop and retain locally-rooted assets for employees who may have no other path to wealth creation or entry to the middle class.

In our existing economic climate, employee cooperatives are increasingly being observed by governments, neighborhood groups, and workers as a precious tactic to stabilize regional economies, produce and retain neighborhood jobs, and produce assets for residents, including these that may possibly have no other path to enter the middle class. For illustration, Cooperative House Care Associates, a NYC house wellness care business, has more than one,500 worker-owners and annual revenue of over $ 40 million. The cooperative has assisted raise the base spend for the whole sector of workers in the area, and has produced full-time work and profession paths in an market notorious for its instability and reduced pay. South of Rochester, one of the oldest worker cooperatives in the nation, the 35-year-old, and $ 18 million per year meals processor As soon as Yet again Nut Butter has grown and created jobs in spite of regional closures and layoffs.

The Finger Lakes and Southern Tier regions need a program to mobilize the creation of regional worker cooperatives. Worker cooperatives need technical help to get started. They need to have incubation services, connections with investments, and organizational development that is not available through present company improvement agencies. This need to have exists in part simply because of the relative lack of familiarity that banks, attorneys, and employees have with the model, and also because of some exclusive facets of the model itself.

Sustainable Tompkins is proposing a pilot project of an incubator and technical assistance center for employee coops. Let’s make certain that financial justice is at the heart of our economic advancement technique. It’s good for business. Contact us at data@sustainabletompkins.org to discover far more and get involved.

Joe Marraffino is a Cooperative Organizer with Democracy at Operate Network
Gay Nicholson is President of Sustainable Tompkins

Tompkins Weekly ten/three/11

TALKINGREADER.COM

Category Talking Readers | Tags: Cooperatives,Economy,Revitalize,Worker | No Comments
Solidarity Divided: Occupy Protesters Shut Down Ports Without Union’s Support

December 14, 2011 by admin

By Mike Elk

Mike Elk

Yesterday, Occupy protesters attempted to shut down ports along the West Coast. In particular, the protesters targeted SSA Marine, a organization owned in huge portion by Goldman Sachs, as a way of protesting the two corporate greed and the working conditions of port truck drivers who are denied basic workers appropriate by staying classified as “independent contractors.”

But while the Occupy motion declared solidarity with the port employees, like the truck drivers and members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the Longshoreman’s union did not vote to shut down the port.

In the end, protesters have been profitable in shutting down some terminals at ports in Oakland, Portland, and Longview, Wash. Employees in Portland and Longview were sent home with pay out, but in Oakland, 150 workers had been sent property without having any pay out, according to ILWU spokesman Craig Mierelles.

But the choice by an outside group to shut down the ports and trigger workers to lose a day’s pay without having them first getting their consent raises critical inquiries about the Occupy movement willingness to bypass a labor union’s own democractic decisionmaking approach.

In the previous, the ILWU shut down West Coast ports to protest South African apartheid, stand up for farm workers’ rights and other causes. On May possibly 1, 2008, the ILWU shut down ports for one particular day in order to protest the War in Iraq. Most recently, employees illegally shut down the all the ports in Longview, Wash., for 15 minutes, as I previously wrote about for In These Instances.

But this week, the ILWU was against Occupy protesters’ efforts to shut down the port, in spite of protesters claiming they had been engaged in the struggle in element to display solidarity with ILWU members in Longview resisting the use of nonunion labor at the Port of Longview. In a statement to union members and affiliates on December 6, ILWU President Robert McEllarth mentioned,

The ILWU has a long history of democracy. Element of that historic democracy is the challenging-won correct to chart our own program to victory. As the Occupy motion, which began in September 2011, sweeps this country, there is a real danger that forces will try to adopt our struggle as their very own. Support is a single factor, organization from outside groups, trying to co-opt our struggle in order to advance a broader agenda is really another and one that is destructive to our democratic approach and jeopardizes our more than two year struggle in Longview.

Outside groups claimed that the ILWU did not want to formally assistance the work to shut down the port in component because they have been afraid of a lawsuit for illegaly shutting down the port. Earlier this year, as my colleague Josh Eidelson reported for Working in These Times, the Pacific Maritime Association sued the ILWU when longshore employees in San Francisco and Oakland shut down their respective ports as port of a national day “We Are One” actions in support of collective bargaining on April 4.

A lot of supporters of Occupy movement claimed that help amongst ILWU rank-and-file members was there, but that top leadership did not want to endorse in component since of legal problems and for other causes. In a Salon write-up entitled “Occupy vs. Big Labor,” writer Emily Loftis criticized the union’s decisions to support the port shutdown saying, “Just as the one % now has to listen to the 99 %, Large Labor has to listen to the rank and file. Dec. 12 marks a step in the evolution of the motion from a collection of improvised tent-villages to a national network of empowered, community-conscious issue-solvers.”

Stan Woods, an activist involved with the Transport Employees Solidarity Committee, told The Guardian that most rank-and-file employees support yesterday’s action, regardless of their leadership not endorsing it. Woods stated, “the ones I’ve spokes, the 1 I’ve spoken to are strongly in support of the Occupy Motion.”

Leaders within the ILWU, nonetheless, claim the portrayal of ILWU as a bureaucratic union representing labor’s 1% are overblown. The ILWU have a long historical past of taking dramatic action to assistance their very own union members even when they break the law and threat the financial nicely-staying of the union. (At present, the union is facing $ 315,000 in fines for breaking a federal injunction by blocking grain trains from getting into a non-union terminal at the Port of Longview. Employees in Vancouver, Canada and Tacoma, Wash., went on illegal wildcat strikes to protest police brutality that union members and supporters faced from police when they blocked the tracks.)

“I am proud to say that I am in a union wherever my President is out getting beat up by cops on the railroad tracks in Longview as a substitute of sitting behind some desk like most union bureaucrats,” says ILWU Communications Director Craig Mierrelles.

Multiple ILWU labor leaders who spoke with In These Times claimed there was little awareness or help from rank and file for a shutdown of the ports on December 12th.

“Frankly, a lot of members are quite baffled about what’s going on, press is screwed up in methods of reporting stuff – most of these guys just get their news from television,” says Fred Pecker, president of ILWU Neighborhood 6 in San Francisco. “There are some members here that are supportive, but I doubt enough to be capable to place it up for a vote. I got a regional of five,000 guys here. If these guys truly want a port shutdown, they would have to work hard to build support among guys that range from left wingers to some very conservative Republicans.”

According to Pecker, when ILWU shut down the ports in 2008 in order to make a political statement about the War in Iraq, they had to operate for months in order to build adequate assistance amongst members to shut down the ports. Some Occupy protesters say that by taking their actions to shut down the ports without direct union consent, they are educating union members about the chance of taking direct action. They claim that in the previous, radical actions like factory sit-downs at 1st did not have help from several members, but were in a position to inspire much more employees to support them as soon as the actions have been underneath way.

“The Occupy motion is basically taking from labor historical past,” stated Robbie Donohoe, an IBEW member told Labor Notes. “We’re creating it safer for employees to challenge the boundaries of laws that had been produced to secure the reins of power firmly in the hands of the one%.”

Nonetheless, Cal Winslow, author of Labor’s Civil War in California: The NUHW Healthcare Workers’ Rebellion, about the struggle of rank and file well being care employees to resist efforts by SEIU leadership to force them to take concessions, says that the work by Occupiers to force employees to take action with no workers wanting to do it reminds him of the hefty-handed techniques of union leaders like Andy Stern.

“Both Stern and Occupy demand that employees sacrifice their appropriate and requirements for the greater good—but neither provides them a option nor an viewpoint on what exactly is the greater great. And the query of ‘who decides’ … is irrelevant or possibly entails simply an “inconvenience” says Winslow. “In both circumstances there are actual troubles. If we are going to see a rebirth of the labor motion, it is going to have to come workers carrying out things for themselves. It’s not some thing that can be imposed.”

As the Occupy Movement, which has prided itself on its internal horizontal democratic decision-generating procedure, seeks to broaden and enlist new allies, it will have to weigh how its actions affect other workers’ ability of those employees to take democratic action for themselves.

Mike Elk is an In These Instances Staff Author and a normal contributor to the labor weblog Working In These Times. He can be reached at mike@inthesetimes.com.

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