Category: Labor

Power Drunk Psychopath Control Freak Principal Bans Tag

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In this case, I’m referring to Robyn Hooker, principal of Kent Gardens Elementary School in McLean, VA, who issued the edict because tag had become a game, “of intense aggression.”

One of the peculiarities of being a principal in the US, at least at public schools, is that you cannot work your way up through the ranks. You have to get a certification specific to being a principal.

Generally, this means that either you went in with the goal of being a principal, i.e. that you wanted to be “in education” but you did not want to teach, or you decided that you really didn’t like teaching that much.

So you get profoundly dysfunctional people like this, who think that any problem, and it appears that the tag was getting a bit rough can be solved with a mindless punitive over-reaction.

What’s more, they lack adult supervision, which is why teachers’ unions are the way they are. Would you want to work for someone like her?

Red Sox Stand Up For the Guys Who Stand Behind Them

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I’m not a great Baseball fan, but to the degree I am, I’m a member of Red Sox Nation, and the players just did the right thing when they briefly struck to ensure that the coaches and other support personnel for the team actually got paid for the exhibition games in Japan.

The net result was an hour delay in one game, and the coaches got paid.

I could insert a Yankees slam here, but it would spoil the moment.

Adventures in Innovative Labor Organizing

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The SEIU-UHW has, over the past 10 years, negociated contracts with nearly 200 hospitals and nursing homes in california so that they expire all at the same time.

This means that they can negotiate with all the institutions at once, and that if any one of them cut a contract, they can use it for pattern bargaining, and that in the event of a strike, the institutions in question cannot simply shift resources to institutions that are not struck.

This is a very savvy move.

Full press release follows:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 11, 2007
CONTACT:
Melanie Myers
mmyers@seiu-uhw.org

WORKERS PREPARE FOR LARGEST COORDINATED HEALTHCARE BARGAINING CAMPAIGN IN HISTORY

Event Bringing Together Caregivers from Several States to be Covered by Blogger

OAKLAND — A delegation of 700 healthcare workers from six states will gather in Oakland on Saturday to plan for a coordinated bargaining campaign in 2008, when contracts at more than 200 hospitals and nursing homes will expire, creating an opportunity for caregivers to achieve unprecedented victories for working people across the United States.

The convention in California, to be hosted by SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, represents the first time that healthcare workers will coordinate their bargaining campaigns on such a massive scale. Caregivers from California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Minnesota and Connecticut will participate in the event.

“This meeting represents an unprecedented opportunity for healthcare workers from around the country to work together for improved standards such as the right to stand up for our patients and residents,” said Sal Rosselli, president of SEIU UHW. “Healthcare workers do the same work everywhere in the country, and it only makes sense that we come together to work toward our common goal.”

Healthcare workers at several SEIU local unions plan to coordinate their bargaining campaigns next year, in order to maximize their ability to improve quality care for their patients, raise industry standards and win a voice on the job. More than 150,000 caregivers will benefit from this coordination by achieving the ability to advocate for improved patient care through their union.

Adding a unique twist to the proceedings will be the presence of netroots blogger Elliott Petty of the progressive online California group Courage Campaign, who plans to post live updates to his site, http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/blog/elliottpetty, as the meeting progresses through the day. He will also post at MyDD and Open Left, two major national political blogs.

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to observe, participate, and interact with UHW’s members at this meeting,” Petty said. “The best way to build bridges between labor and the online communities is to engage in actions with each other. Progressives win when we are united, which this effort will help us to be.”

Petty’s participation is an outgrowth of UHW’s involvement with the YearlyKos convention earlier this month, in which UHW leaders met with numerous members of the progressive blogosphere to discuss ways that their online activism can dovetail with the grassroots worker and political organizing of labor unions. The union plans to hold a retreat for progressive bloggers in the fall.

“Our values of member democracy, openness, and dialogue and debate are mirrored by those of the netroots community,” Rosselli said. “We look forward to continuing to work with online activists who share our goals and values.”

Rosselli and several healthcare workers will be available for interview throughout the week and on Saturday.

The 140,000-member SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West is the largest hospital and healthcare union in the western United States and represents every type of healthcare worker, including nurses, professional, technical and service classifications. Our mission is to achieve high-quality healthcare for all.
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SEIU United Healthcare Workers—West, with more than 152,000 members, is the largest and most powerful hospital and healthcare union in the Western U.S. We represent every type of healthcare worker, including nursing, professional, technical and service classifications. Our mission is to achieve high quality healthcare for all.

People Who Should Have Their Asses Kicked, IBM Edition

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This might also be titled, “Management victims who really need to join a union”.

You know, after 10 years of thinking of IBM as the antiChrist, I had finally replaced them with Microsoft, but this story has me reevaluating.

If they are not the antiChrist, they are at least a minor minion of Chtulhu.

As often happens, companies sometimes get spanked for not paying overtime to its workers, usually for being stupid. It happened to IBM, and they had to pay $65 million in back pay, and they reclassified about 7600 workers as “non-exempt”, meaning qualifying for overtime pay.

IBM took another step too, they cut the base pay of these workers by 15%.

If you do the math, they have to work 45 hours to earn what they previously made at 40.

And economists wonder why the average American is not satisfied with our “wonderful” economy.

BTW, I think you could make an argument that this is illegal retaliation. Talk to a class action lawyer.

Orwell Moment of the Day: MLK Memorial Outsourced to Paragon of Human Rights, China

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While I understand that the protests of the Vermont congressional delegation (see also here) is largely an issue of local pride and economics for them, the idea that we are outsourcing this to a government that routinely imprisons dissidents, suppresses free speech, and aggressively uses the death penalty boggles the mind.

This isn’t from The Onion. This is a real story.

Happy Martin Luther King Birthday Holiday everyone.

Director’s Guild Has Contract

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The theory has been that the DGA contract would form the basis of pattern bargaining (uniform terms across the industry), bringing an end to the writers guild strike.

However, the DGA is also known as being a soft touch, and the contract has not be approved by the members, many of whom are also in the WGA, and so the quality of the contract and its meaning to the writers is unclear.

More pros and cons at the Group News Blog.

CBS News and Writers End Labor Dispute

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Best of luck to the members of WGAon their new contract. It had been two½ years since the last contract expired.

My guess is that when the threatened picket line shut down the CBS debate, management started negotiating in good faith.

I, for one, would like to thank the WGA for stopping a debate moderated by Katie Couric, arguably the most useless big media name ever.

Murrow is spinning in his grave.

Bear Stearns Says Studios are Full of It on Writers Strike

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Of course, given their track record recently, I have put them in my investment bank dead pool because of their missteps on the credit crisis, but they have issued a report explicitly stating that the writers demands would have a negligible impact on the industry (Original is sub reqd, excerpt is from Hollywood United):

“From Wall Street’s perspective, we estimate the impact of accepting the [writers’] proposal is largely negligible,” Bear Stearns wrote in a report last week.
The firm estimates that the $120 million figure would carry an average impact of less than 1% on annual earnings per share for the media companies. That does not factor in any concessions by the writers’ side (the WGA), where the principal issue is a desire for a piece of ad dollars from new-media distribution.
The potentially small financial impact suggests that studios (Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers) are more concerned about setting a precedent in new-media revenue sharing. However, Bear Stearns wrote that the writers’ forecast for that market “strikes us as fairly aggressive.” The firm hinted that studios are looking to the future. They are concerned that a favorable settlement would embolden directors and actors in their coming renegotiations.

From the reports that I’ve read, it appears that the chief negotiator is the same guy who suckered the writers on DVDs many years back, and he’s operating on his own need for legacy, and some of the studios, particularly those heavily into TV production, are not happy with him.

World Wide Pants Makes Deal With Striking Writers, Letterman Back on the Air

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So will Craig Ferguson’s show, which is also produced by Letterman’s sartorially named production company.

The details of the deal have not yet been released, but this should create a significant advantage for both Letterman and Ferguson, not just because they will have writers, those monologues typically take a dozen writers to hammer out, but because there are a lot of guests who won’t cross a picket line, and with World Wide Pants productions, they are not.

As to whether this will lead to Letterman taking back the ratings lead from Leno, only time will tell.

As for me, I may watch Letterman, but I won’t be watching Stewart or Colbert, who will be airing shows without a deal with writers.

Scabs

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It looks like a number of the talk show hosts are going to cross the picket lines in addition to Carson Daley, Jimmy Kimmel and Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien will all be returning to air shortly.

Leno and O’Brien are actually members of the Writers Guild, which makes it worse.

Don’t watch them, boycott their advertisers.

I think that this is very different from David Letterman’s efforts, where, as opposed to breaking the strike, he is attempting to cut a limited deal (the same is rumored of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show).

The Old Negro Space Program

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If you are wondering what screenwriters are doing while on strike, some of it is private online projects that are pretty damn good, like The Old Negro Space Program (10:22).

It’s a very funny send up of Ken Burns documentaries (full disclosure, I went to Hampshire College for 2 years, and he graduated from there, though we never met, IIRC, he was up for an Oscar for his Brooklyn Bridge documentary my freshman year).

The movie studios are saying that they don’t need the writers, but it appears that a number of striking writers are in talks to launch Web start-ups, so I’m not sure if it’s not the other way around.

Pilot Retirement Age Raised to 65

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Normally, this sets up a battle with the younger pilots and airlines (they like replacing expensive senior pilots with cheaper junior ones) on one side, and older pilots on the other, but given given the fact that there is a severe pilot shortage as a result of airlines engaging in a 30 year war to pay pilots less and screw them out of their retirement packages, it is unsurprising that this made it into law.

The older pilots need the money to account for their bankruptcy reduced pensions, and the younger pilots have plenty of openings anyway, and the airlines, having succeeded in making the job of pilot suck, just need the additional years.