D.C. Teachers Divided on Merit Pay Plan

September, 2008 issue of Labor Notes

The Washington Teachers Union is on a collision course with D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee over her plan to kill job security for teachers in exchange for merit pay—up to $20,000 a year in bonuses—and higher salaries.

D.C. is home to the second-highest number of charter schools in the country and a slowly declining school-age population. Mayor Adrian Fenty, who took control of the school system last year, believes the plan will get rid of bad teachers, motivate the rest, up student achievement, and raise the profile of a district that has lost 22,000 students and 1,500 teachers in 10 years.

But merit pay has been taboo in teachers unions because it pits teachers against each other, and because awards are often tied to students’ scores on the dreaded standardized tests. Teachers say the tests, loved by administrators looking for quick ways to measure student progress, are not only an unreliable gauge of learning but also a route to deadly dull classrooms.

In many districts, teachers already receive performance pay for attaining board certification, mentoring, or teaching in low-performing schools. Since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind law, however, standardized tests have become the key measure of teacher performance and student achievement.

During 10 months of negotiations, Rhee’s proposals have created fault lines both within the union leadership and among its members. “This will attract teachers for the wrong reason,” said a veteran teacher and member of the WTU executive board. “Are they going to come for the pay or to make a difference for students?”

“I don’t consider this merit pay, because everyone would get a base pay raise,” said President George Parker. “This is incentive pay, which is a bonus for performance.”

When contract talks stalled in mid-July, Parker was criticized for convening meetings where the chancellor pitched her two-tier scheme to the local’s 4,200 teachers.

SEEING GREEN

Rhee is proposing that current teachers choose one of two tracks, Red or Green. Both include $5,000 “transition” stipends for two years, and better benefits.

Red track teachers would get a 31 percent raise over five years. Green teachers would get a smaller raise, but they’d be eligible for merit pay—as much as $20,000 a year if they met performance standards.

Many teachers left the meetings seeing green. “I’m looking at a 73 percent raise in one year,” said first-grade teacher Steve Oberly. “If we did this program for five years, I would have a retirement nest egg.”

To get on the merit-based pay plan, Oberly, a ten-year veteran, would undergo a year of probation, after which he could be dismissed for under-performance. Though fired teachers can appeal to an elected body of teachers and administrators, the school principal has the final say. Teachers say favoritism would rule the day.

“This could lead to mass terminations,” said Candi Peterson, a WTU trustee and building representative. “And they could get rid of a position, when they really want to get rid of a person.”

All new teachers would join the Green tier as at-will, probationary employees for four years. Over that period, they would see a 20 percent raise and up their total salary from $50,000 to $75,000—if they survived.

Teachers who chose the Red program and got fired would receive a salaried one-year leave or, for teachers with 20 years’ experience, an early retirement package. Green teachers would get nothing.

The union would be giving up job security across the board, as both plans do away with seniority for the hiring, firing, or placement of teachers. “There is no such thing as a safe tier,” said Peterson.

WTU’s parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, recently elected Randi Weingarten to the union’s top spot. As head of the New York City teachers union, Weingarten negotiated merit pay last fall, and her elevation signals AFT’s openness to such pay plans.

As early as 2002, the AFT endorsed what it calls “professional compensation,” but highlighted the pitfalls: “questionable or difficult-to-understand assessment procedures” and “teacher morale problems stemming from the creation of unfair competition.”

Opponents say D.C.’s merit plan contains the same dangers.

“They’re going to ask teachers to vote on this plan before determining how we’re going to be evaluated for performance pay,” Peterson said.

Solvency has been the biggest issue for merit schemes. “Numerous plans have begun in the last 40 years but they flat run out of money,” said Rob Weil, of AFT’s Educational Issues Department. “They’re often programs that we love, but when they require new money, they lose their luster.”

Rhee claims her pay plan has private backing from the Gates Foundation, among others, but only for five years. When this money runs out, she promises to free up resources by streamlining bureaucracy and ending the outsourcing of special education.

Her 20-year early-retirement plan, however, relies on a squeezed district budget. The city already rejected proposals for a 25-year plan last year.

LEADERSHIP SPLITS

The contract talks have exacerbated the rift between Parker and WTU’s Vice President, Nathan Saunders. After Parker barred him from speaking on behalf of the union, Saunders sued Parker, members of the executive board, and Rhee, charging them with conspiracy.

Saunders’ litigious streak has served the union well. A 2002 suit he filed uncovered a $5 million embezzlement scandal that sent then-WTU president Barbara Bullock to jail for nine years.

Now, Saunders and others are filing an unfair labor practice charge against Parker and Rhee after revelations that two nonprofits close to Rhee hired several teachers for $1,000 a week to lobby their colleagues to accept merit pay.

Despite internal divisions, the WTU is opposing any proposal that attacks tenure, a legal right shared by all D.C. employees. Tenure rights ensure due process and recognition of years of service in staffing decisions.

Meanwhile, Rhee has closed 23 schools in the last year, leaving 600 teachers awaiting re-assignment just weeks before school begins. According to Peterson, 78 instructors were fired in June. “Even though we have due process under the old contract, we’ve had people illegally terminated,” she said. “Imagine what it would be like with a weaker contract.”

New teachers can’t be hired, nor can negotiations move forward, until teachers are placed. Rhee’s push for a mid-July vote before the AFT national convention fizzled, heightening scrutiny of her proposals, and making an agreement unlikely before school begins in late August.

Black and White

1937 sit-down at the Fisher Body plant; Detroit, MI

Aerial View of Detroit; 1930

Wayne State has digitized portions of the Detroit News Collection dating from the late 19th century. More recently, they've added about 400 newsreels from the 1920's to their Virtual Motor City archive. A few favorites: unharnessed steelworkers putting up the Penobscot; and some bonnie lassies at Bob-Lo's Scottish fest. Better than your grand ma ma's scrapbook.

Barns for Obama

In June I received an email from "Obama for America". Barack had an important video announcement-news that he wanted me to hear first-about foregoing public funding (if it's broken, continue to break it!).

In the coming months, I (and millions more) have received several "personalized" messages from Barack telling me "this campaign is in your hands like no other time before." A recent one, entitled “Backstage," informed me that ten regular folks will be fist-bumping with Barack at the DNC.

Ten days ago, David Plouffe was proud to say I could hear Barack's choice for VP via text message: "Barack wants you to be the first to know who will join him in leading our movement for change."

Finding that out won't be difficult, in fact it was all over the news this morning (how do you best “make up” for being young and black?)

This overzealous, high-tech populism warrants our suspicion and betrays insecurity within Obama’s war room about accusations of elitism (look at all them Barns for Obama!). But few things are more elitist than making a novelty of the “regular” American.

We're offered a glowing blue form of access by email, twitter, and facebook, that doesn't alter the inaccessible corporate electioneering machine that keeps Obama centrist when not vague.

No faux-populism would be complete without inspiring faux-music. I couldn’t make it much past two and a half minutes.

Beep Beep Yeah

Take your shoes off.

Cultivate a point guard’s court vision. See your path a half-mile ahead (and behind), look for brake lights, disappearing lanes, detours, exits, and police. Position yourself accordingly.

Seek open space, take measured risks and seize openings.
Ex: The far-right lane is a vastly underused channel. The conventional “pass on the left rule” loses weight when you are in the center lane.

Traffic slowdowns aren't always bad. Turn the air off and open the window. Make phone calls. Fix your underwear or a snack.

When in traffic, resist the un-original temptation to jump in the lane that seems to be moving. Cars ahead of you are hastily doing the same thing, meanwhile freeing up the one you're in.

When you happen upon a jam due to lane closure, use the free lane to drive as far as possible before merging. But don't get caught at the end waiting to get in. The "No butts, no cuts, no coconuts" still holds currency.

Many off ramps are right next to on ramps. If you find yourself in traffic and near an exit, you can get off and then right back on, often bypassing some of the congestion. This has worked and backfired.

Cars are karaoke capsules. You’ll also be surprised at the range of dance moves available to the driver.

You can often attain your desired speed in the “slow lane” while letting the left-laners shoulder the risk.

Train yourself to recognize police forms: bumper guards, excessive reflective material, orb-spotlights, rooftop sirens, and buzz cuts, but also oddly spare cars like all-black or all-white unmarked Crown Vics).

Foster good will with the cars around you. Let people in and out of lanes when possible. The courtesy wave can be used as a sign of gratitude, but also a tool for initiating a bold move.

Maintain momentum and smoothness like a downhill skier. To this end, use the brakes as little as possible.

Steak and Shake's shoestring fries are worth the stop. Burger King will consistently disappoint.

In a tight spot, you might find yourself wondering, "What would Hasselhoff do?" Lean towards the 80's Hoff, and away from the post-Bay Watch Hassle.

On Hold

I dutifully dialed in five minutes ahead of yesterday's conference call with John Sweeney and the AFL-CIO's recently endorsed presidential candidate, Barack Obama. The muzak was terrible, failing even to effectively stylize a familiar tune. Every two minutes a calm, computer-like woman came on to thank us for joining her in patience.

“We are still waiting for Senator Obama to join us…please continue to hold."
I held for over 30 minutes. I know Barack is very busy these days, but I couldn't get past the feeling of recurring abandonment. (Clinton's NAFTA, and welfare "reform". And the failed '06 Congressional rush to end the war.) Working people once again kept in the waiting room, their co-pay registered, their political support taken for granted. But labor leaders still kissing ass and making appointments.

At 3:47, Obama arrived for a speech that was too short to contain anything more than platitudes. Broadly, he would champion the cause of working people, and restore the middle class dream with universal health care, and fair(er?) trade deals. Seven minutes later he was gone, the stench of lip service in the air, diffused only by the sycophantic applause from Sweeney's crowded DC boardroom.

The transparent display was insulting, leading me to wonder, (less and less):
Is Obama not only not working in the interest of working people but against them? (either we are in for a disappointment or Goldman Sachs).

Or; Are the Democrats well-intentioned, aiming to help working class people, but consistently wrong in their strategy? This is what they would have us believe. ("we were fed misinformation!" on Iraq) Or this hedge by Hillary, on NAFTA.


Obama signed off with the consistently empty; "god bless you, god bless america," and hung up. There was a pause for about ten seconds, then more muzak.

The computer woman returned: "The conference call is not concluded. Senator Obama’s line has been lost, and we are trying to re-establish." Negotiations commenced behind the scenes.

Two minutes of muzak. Then: "The call is over. You may now disconnect."
I waited for a few seconds just in case. Then a piercing beep came over the line and I hung up quickly.

University of California Service Workers Lead Five Day Strike

In August 2008 print edition of Labor Notes

After months of fruitless negotiations with the University of California, AFSCME Local 3299 members escalated their contract fight with a five-day strike in mid-July. Demanding a living wage of $15 an hour, custodians, groundskeepers, and bus drivers rallied at UC campuses and five medical centers from Sacramento to San Diego. They oppose a contract without guaranteed pay raises for most workers and bumps to $12 an hour for only a few.

Of the 8,500 service workers, about 8,200 are eligible for food stamps and other public assistance. The same jobs at UC state and community colleges pay 25 percent more.

The local also represents 11,000 patient care workers at university medical centers, who likewise have yet to agree on a contract. Though the patient care workers have been offered a raise of 26 percent over five years, it won’t help the service workers who lead the strike.

DON’T CROSS THE LINE

Medical centers threatened to revoke licenses from patient care workers who honored the picket lines outside hospitals. Still, entire departments stopped work for a day or two in support. Seven hundred strikers from both units rallied at UC Davis on day four to demand better pay and seniority.

“Service workers have no step system for pay,” said Secretary Treasurer Gail Price. “New people make the same as someone working here for 20 years.”

The action, which caused delays to bus routes, cafeteria service, and garbage collection, went on despite a court-ordered temporary restraining order. Workers in building trades unions refused to cross picket lines, temporarily halting campus construction projects.

Accused of leading an illegal strike that endangered patients, Local 3299 officials said they gave sufficient notice to employers about the stoppage. The strikers are challenging the injunction in court, accusing administrators of using illegal forms of intimidation.

“The university first argued this would cripple our medical centers,” said Kathryn Lybarger, a gardener at Berkeley, who sits on the bargaining committee. “After the strike they said it didn’t affect them at all.”

In a July 15 letter to the school president, 34 state legislators decried reports that “managers are advising picketers they will lose their jobs short of immediately returning to work.” If workers have exhausted mediation and negotiations, California law allows workers in higher education to strike once their contract has expired.

The university blames its belt-tightening on the state’s budget gap, but only 8.6% of the union’s members receive their wages from state funds. While UC claimed to have its hands tied, new president Mark Yudof was hired this spring into an $828,000 position. On day five, the strike culminated outside his Oakland office. Workers are infuriated by the meager offer of poverty wages. A year of bargaining, however, has hardened their resolve. “A lot of people are saying ‘let’s strike again,’” said Lybarger.

Labor Board Becomes Government’s ‘Rip Van Winkle’

In August 2008 Print Edition of Labor Notes and Monthly Review

Returning to school after winter break, Austin Garrido found that ULoop, an online marketplace for college students, had cut his hourly pay. Elsewhere on the University of California-Polytechnic’s campus in Pomona, his co-worker Sarah Doolittle also discovered a light paycheck.

Unhappy about $8 an hour and shrunken bonuses from the Craigslist-type outfit, the two posted their grievances at Uloop’s online message board for workers. “It’s the only way for employees on different campuses to communicate with each other,” Garrido said.

They started a thread that raised the prospect of unionizing, but management was reading, too. ULoop removed the post five minutes later, and 20 minutes after that the company fired Garrido and Doolittle over the phone.

Their new manager, hired to oversee the wage cuts, cited under-performance, but it was clear that Garrido and Doolittle were singled out for their online organizing via the message board. “They didn’t have a stated usage policy,” said Garrido. “There were a number of non-work-related posts on there.”

Claiming violations of their right to self-organize, the two filed a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint, seeking back pay and their jobs.

Much to their surprise, the grievance quickly rose to the NLRB's Office of Advice in Washington, D.C, where it entered into a contentious national debate over workers’ rights to online communication.

ON GUARD

Just before Garrido and Doolittle's complaint against ULoop, the Labor Board had laid out its first major ruling on electronic communications, in December 2007.

The controversial 3 to 2 Register-Guard decision stemmed from an incident in 2001, when management at the Eugene, Oregon, newspaper disciplined a copy editor, the Communications Workers (CWA) local president, for sending three union-related messages to the workforce on the company email system.

The Board majority said that the newspaper’s property rights allowed it to decide how the email system would be used—and that employees have no right to use the company email for “concerted activity.”

As long as the ban on concerted activity is not wholesale, the three argued, employers are not compelled to facilitate the most convenient method for worker communication about union matters.

CWA argued that the company’s policy banning “non-work” emails was illegal because it effectively banned union talk. On top of that, the company was selectively enforcing the policy by allowing solicitations about birthday parties and charity donations while punishing union use.

The Board majority broke NLRB precedent and gave employers the right to decide what types of “non-work” communication they wanted to allow.

THE RIGHT TO TALK UNION

The two dissenting members cited precedents dating to 1945 that said the employer’s property rights must yield to the rights of employees to self-organize and take action on the job.

Arguments for employer restrictions don’t hold up in the digital age, says West Virginia University law professor Anne Lofaso. “The Board talks about telephones and bulletin boards as having cost or space concerns,” she said. “Neither of these concerns apply to email."

Because electronic communications are the primary tool for workers to maintain connection in virtual and remote workplaces, Lofaso called the Board decision disingenuous. “Everyone knows that people rely on email at work, so why did the majority decide to ignore that?” she asked. “Because it weakens their case.”

The two dissenters called the decision hopelessly out of touch with workplace realities, and accused the majority of making the NLRB the “Rip Van Winkle of administrative agencies.”

UNENFORCEABLE?

The Register-Guard decision appears devastating for workers' rights, but its effect will depend on how or whether it is enforced.

In Eugene, CWA Local 37194 President Randi Bjornstad noted that the new company policy against mass emails bars the union from sending the types of message that led to the original conflict.

Still, Bjornstad says that union-related emails remain common, without reprisals from the paper.

“Through our entire bargaining process, we have sent emails back and forth to company reps and to each other,” she said. “It has been a rather nebulous kind of ruling in terms of how it has been put into practice.”

Meanwhile, the Register-Guard case is in the Washington, D.C., appeals court, where CWA is challenging the new employer powers to single out union speech for punishment.

In the wake of Register-Guard, the Los Angeles office of the NLRB saw test case written all over the ULoop complaint. However, the Mountain View, California, company is inching toward a settlement, in order to avoid litigation.

The Register-Guard precedent continues to restrict workers’ rights to electronic communications, but Lofaso is confident that the ULoop case exposes its fragility. “Even a McCain-appointed NLRB could overturn this ruling,” she said.

Dark Shades of Green

On the origins of Toyota's Prius in this month's In These Times.

I'll Remember Remembering You Fondly

I saw a Ford Escort parked at Michigan and Trumbull with a magnetic "security" sign on its roof last week. Tiger Stadium will be falling soon, demolition began June 30. I went back to see the stadium today, now with a gaping hole in the left field wall. All the backhoes and bulldozers seemed like a whole lot of wasted energy, precisely because it's fallen into disuse since '99.


I'm not exactly kicking myself for failing to get a pocket full of dirt from the infield, and I've never grappled in the stands for a home run ball. I don't even much enjoy baseball.

But as I walked over the pedestrian bridge and back to my car, I felt an uncontrollable reverence, near mourning, for the passing of a great Detroit ruin. I hear it all the time in reference to assorted buildings that have long since lost their initial purpose: "knock it down," and in reference to the city itself "just flatten the thing."

There's a value, sometimes tragic, to these relics when they gain new life by conversion. But they also serve a purpose by merely sitting dormant. Nostalgia fills many yawning voids throughout the city. Why should we destroy the markers of bygone greatness? Detroit, the old man on the examining table, proud and naked, exhibits its estrangement from vitality like no other.

I wish the marble floors of Michigan Central Station still clapped with traffic. But I'd prefer a slow crumbling to the wrecking ball. After all, there's no shortage of space around here.

Most fans have memories of games with Pops, but I mostly remember craning from the backseat to catch a glimpse of the orange Tiger growling through the big blue D on our drive along 75 to the east side. The stadium hovered close to the highway, like a white aluminum battleship merging into traffic.

I had no choice but to cheer for the Tigers after their prime, despite an auspicious beginning. The week after I was born, they won the '84 series. I watched and waited through the nineties for it to happen again, but the Tigers brought up the rear for the bulk of my youth, showing an uncanny knack for failure.


So I set about memorizing the happy days and the entertaining 1984 roster as if it were my own Detroit squad. At the helm, Sparky Anderson, directing an all-star cast including Kirk Gibson, Trammell, Chet Lemon, "Sweet Lou" Whitaker, and Rusty Kuntz.



I only went inside once when I was nine (I took my glove to catch foul balls more often at Toledo's Ned Skeldon stadium, former home of the scrappy AAA-feeder Mud Hens). My aunt Shelly took me and my cousins for "run the bases" night in Detroit, where everyone under four foot five got to trot around the diamond, basking in their moment under the big lights. I slid into home, it was great. Let the kids in again.

Thirty-year-old Palestinian Hossam Dwayat turned his Caterpillar bulldozer into a lethal weapon last week in West Jerusalem, killing three Israelis and injuring many more. It's not easy (in America) to contextualize this terrifying act without being accused of excusing it. I certainly don’t support the forms of resistance that kill innocents. It is impossible, though, to separate Dwayat’s attack from his daily experience under colonial rule.

Dwayat left his family in East Jerusalem, where 250,000 Palestinians have lived with military occupation since 1967. Juan Cole points out that most of the international coverage of the July 2 attacks omitted a key detail: Dwayat was working construction on the major thoroughfare of Jaffa Road, building a causeway for Israel’s light rail system.

If completed, the light rail line would join the western part of the city with Pisgat Ze'ev, the largest settlement in “Greater Jerusalem,” a euphemism for the city plus its illegal settlements (often softened to Israeli “neighborhoods”) on the West Bank. These colonies are connected by exclusive roads for Jewish Israelis, and tap into Palestinian aquifers. They are also the breeding ground for a violently anti-Arab culture. The line is one more attempt to normalize the settlements and integrate them into an expansive Israeli capitol while the "peace process" drags on.
It is not difficult to imagine Dwayat going mad with the realization that he had become an agent of his own colonization, literally laying the tracks for the Israeli colonial project.

Late for School in Los Angeles

Appearing in print edition of July 2008 issue of Labor Notes

Forty thousand Los Angeles teachers delayed the start of classes for one hour on June 6 to protest threatened cuts to education funding. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed cutbacks are part of an attempt to close an estimated $17 billion statewide budget gap. The reductions would create a $560 million shortfall in the next two years within Los Angeles schools, the state’s largest district. Cuts to education across the state could well top $4 billion in total.

The teachers union, United Teachers-Los Angeles, said the funding drop would equal an 8 percent pay cut for all district employees. Despite a no-strike clause in their contract and a loss of pay, more than three-quarters of UTLA members joined the hour-long “late-in” outside their schools. “It is fair to say this may have been the largest job action for teachers ever in California,” said UTLA Vice President Joshua Pechthalt. “It was definitely the right thing to do given the statewide response to the budget cuts.”

The turnout was built with community support. Across the district, members of California’s largest teacher local held weekly meetings with chapter chairs and parents’ councils. Robin Potash teaches at Wadsworth Elementary, where parent-teacher solidarity has grown for several years, and especially since April, when they fought a charter school’s attempt to use Wadsworth classroom space. When June 6 arrived, more than 15,000 parents, students, and community members closed ranks with the teachers.

“This was really a statement from parents and the community that we will protect public education,” Potash said. The Los Angeles school board went to court to prevent the widely publicized protest, but failed. Superintendent David Brewer dispatched recorded calls to 48,000 teachers and 700,000 parents the night before the action, accusing UTLA leaders of jeopardizing student safety.

Union president A.J. Duffy argues that the proposed cuts go beyond just schools. “There could be cuts to aid to the blind and disabled, food programs for low-income kids, and health clinics,” he said.

At the state level, the California Teachers Association (the state’s NEA affiliate) launched a “Cuts Hurt” spring bus tour and a “Day of the Teacher” action in May, which brought out thousands of teachers against the governor’s crippling proposals.

“We’re offering a broader strategy, fighting not just for public education but for all social services,” said Pechthalt.

The California Federation of Teachers (the AFT affiliate) has joined in the challenge with a progressive tax campaign which calls for boosting income taxes for those who make more than $400,000 a year. The 1.7 percent bump would create $5 billion in new revenue.

Duffy also points to a potential $1.3 billion windfall from taxing oil production. “We are the only state in the country, the only governmental entity in the world, that does not tax oil companies for taking oil out of the ground,” Duffy said.

UTLA has also had to fight just to get its members paid. The union filed a lawsuit last June against the school board over a faulty payroll system, another factor in teachers’ mounting
frustration that peaked with the late-in.

STATEWIDE STRIKE?

UTLA teachers are considering another one-hour work stoppage in the fall in conjunction with the CTA.“The idea of a statewide teachers strike needs to be on the table,” said Pechthalt.

While pushing their big-picture strategy, UTLA teachers continue a protracted contract fight. After winning a 6 percent pay raise in early 2007, the latest round of contract talks produced an offer with no salary increase. Despite reports of a $700 million budget surplus last year, the school board has stonewalled teachers in negotiations for nine months.

After the June 6 action, the school board’s revised budget proposal removed the threat of teacher layoffs. But the board also unilaterally imposed furlough days for teachers, while capping health care spending without accounting for rising costs.

Teachers across California expect a long fight. “Students didn’t create this budget
crisis,” said CTA president David Sanchez. “And their education shouldn’t be ransomed to solve it.”

Bye George

I missed much of George Carlin’s early career, so first came to his comedy by the time he was a dirty old man- a wise, wise-ass grandpa. At the end, Carlin appeared in all black, a belligerent mime. After forced trips to church in high school, I made him (a recovering Catholic too) my personal anti-catechist.

Whether his target was religion, class hierarchy, empire, over-consumption, language use and censorship, bankers, sexual custom, or the general failings of human nature, Carlin told polite society and euphemized conventional wisdom to fuck off. He was a master of wordplay, lewd sound effects, and a pacing physical comedy that drove it home.

And he was versatile: (He raised a generation as the out of place narrator for the pre-school hit show "Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends," which could only have been part of some community service stint for swearing in front of a class of Kindergarteners.)

Carlin’s bullshit detector was devastating, but he used simple means of inquiry to dissect authority and ideology. And drawing simple questions about “the way things worked” all the way out to their illogical end, he was able to lay bare the absurdity of so many bankrupt American mythologies.

Carlin on "the greatest bullshit story ever told":


On "the american dream:"




Here's what they're calling Carlin's last interview (in Psychology Today). Originally slated for a back page, they published it nearly in full on the web.

Ralph Nader Takes on the Big Market

Ralph Nader is the tireless advocate for fairness, but also an uncanny prophet. He was on Democracy Now today decrying Obama as "a corporate candidate from A to Z." However reviled by the Democratic Party, which wants to rope reluctant progressive left votes into their coalition without earning them, Nader continues his crusade (see interview in the WSJ) against a corporate establishment that wants to convince us of its inevitability.

This time, Nader's delving into the world of sports, turning a critical eye towards NBA corruption stemming from favoritism given to "big market" teams that can draw larger viewership, sell more tickets, and bring in more revenue for the league. And all politics aside, he's got a pretty mean set shot from 4 feet.



Nader was out front on the latest scandal surrounding unsavory officiating and alleged game fixing by the league. He wrote a letter to NBA commissioner Daniel Stern in 2002, after sitting in the stands at game 6 of that year's Western Conference conference finals. The prime-time darling LA Lakers came back to beat the Sacramento Kings, a scrappy small market team featuring a post-40 year old Vlade Divac at center (not stellar for ratings).

Now former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who was discovered last summer to have gambled on games he officiated, is verifying Nader's allegations of foul-play, claiming that "company men" wanted to lengthen the series, and had referees do all in their power to give the Lakers a chance to come back. The league has dismissed his claims, arguing that Donaghy has little credibility given his own misdeeds.

But watch the tape below for pretty clear evidence of foul play. After scoring 27 from free throws in the final quarter, the Lakers prevailed, ended up winning the series, and moving onto the NBA Finals, where they added another ring to the illustrious, highly commercialized "Showtime" legacy.

Wayne State Part Time Faculty Victorious

The Union of Part-Time Faculty (affiliated with the AFT) at Wayne State won their first tentative contract agreement this spring after years of organizing and months of negotiations. School administrations have relied more heavily on adjuncts in cost-saving efforts, and part-timers now compose a majority of the teaching workforce in higher ed nationwide- a workforce largely without union representation, benefits, or job security.

Their victory follows in the tradition of strong teachers' contracts at University of Michigan schools in Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint among lecturers and graduate students. The part-time faculty, who often teach at several schools in any given semester, are gaining steam in the area, including Henry Ford Community College which formed a bargaining unit on May 7th.

Faculty members at Wayne vote this first week of June on the contract, and ballots come in for a count on the 9th.

See Joe Berry's book "Reclaiming the Ivory Tower" a one of a kind, concise history of the rise of adjuncts, and an organizing strategy guide.

UNC Students Stage 16 Day Sweat Free Sit-In

Found in June 2008 issue of Labor Notes

Finals week was fast approaching when 15 University of North Carolina students occupied the administration building in Chapel Hill on April 17. For years, Student Action with Workers (SAW) has been pushing their chancellor, James Moeser, to pledge not to buy university apparel from sweatshops.

Nine years earlier, UNC adopted a labor code of conduct for its apparel suppliers—after a four-day student sit-in. But this spring students spent 16 days occupying the same building in an effort to enforce that code. “We have been forced to take action because of the failure of the UNC to live up to its supposed commitment to workers’ rights,” said senior Salma Mirza.

SAW activists transformed the administration building into a communications center, launching an online petition, organizing a call-in campaign to Moeser’s office, and broadcasting video feeds from inside the sit-in as well as endorsements from student groups, faculty, unions, and elected officials.

Their blog connected the action to a history of student-worker solidarity at UNC, including two 1969 food service strikes, during which strikers established alternative “food stands” outside the dining halls. “We are talking about sweatshops, but also housekeepers, grad students, and adjuncts,” said Mirza.

Junior Anthony Maglione, discussed strategy with one of the housekeepers on the night shift, whose aunt took part in the 1969 dining hall strikes. “We want to build this with campus workers who get up at 2 am to clean our classrooms,” he said.

Duke Students Against Sweatshops came from Durham to fill shifts at the sit-in and organize a solidarity camp-out and breakfast. After winning support from their own administration, students like Andrew Zonderman made the 8-mile trip to Chapel Hill more frequently, to build state-wide support for the program. “The DSP won't be completely effective until a majority of the collegiate apparel market is signed on. It's going to be the UNC's and other universities with successful Division I athletics with large support bases that are going to tip the scales,” he said.

In the last dozen years anti-sweatshop organizers have built an impressive network across campuses. When Chancellor Moeser went to Washington, D.C. for a conference on global development, United Students Against Sweatshops activists from the area met him outside and brought the protest inside, too.

“We knew people working in the hotel, cleaning rooms, and asked them to leaflet each room about the sit-in,” said SAW protester Linda Gomaa.

DESIGNATED SUPPLIERS

The UNC sit-in is the latest round in a nationwide campaign led by USAS to pressure universities to adopt its Designated Suppliers Program. When schools sign the DSP, they agree to source their licensed apparel from factories where workers receive a living wage and have the right to organize. After a six-month grace period, participating schools would begin sourcing 25 percent of each licensee’s apparel from designated factories, and after three years, the proportion would rise to 75 percent.

The program compels licensees like Nike and Adidas to pay more for apparel so that factory owners can pay their workers a living wage—which would be set in negotiations led by the workers’ organizations.

Forty-five schools have signed on, and await support from other colleges before forming a list of designated suppliers and implementing the program.

The idea for the DSP grew from another project USAS helped conceive, the Worker Rights Consortium, a factory monitoring organization composed of student representatives, college administrators, and labor experts.

The WRC’s factory inspections keep schools and licensees up to speed about labor abuses in their supply chains, but the WRC lacks the ability to alter sourcing decisions as the DSP proposes to do.

WEAK ENFORCEMENT

“With the WRC monitoring, it’s more like saying to companies, ‘it would be nice if you complied,’” said Claudia Ebel, a University of Colorado student on the WRC’s governing board. Without an enforcement plan, factories like BJ&B in the Dominican Republic, where workers organized for higher wages, have lost business from licensees and subsequently shut down.

The other major sweatshop monitoring organization on campuses is the Fair Labor Association (FLA), directed by a mix of officials from major corporations, nonprofits, and universities. Student activists see the FLA as hopelessly compromised.

In late 2007, for example, the WRC received reports of racial discrimination and anti-union intimidation at a New Era hat factory in Mobile, Alabama, which produces Tar Heel apparel for UNC.



Against the wishes of UNC’s licensing committee and SAW students, Moeser upheld New Era’s decision to keep WRC monitors from entering the plant, and approved a factory audit by an FLA-accredited monitoring firm instead.

Students saw a glaring conflict of interest. New Era Vice President Tim Freer not only sits on the FLA board of directors, but SAW reports that he conducted captive audience meetings with workers during the plant’s eventually successful union organizing drive.



Moeser and other college presidents, who have the final say on university apparel and licensing decisions, still harbor doubts about the DSP’s anti-trust implications.

The WRC rescinded its request for a Business Review Letter, sensing that a Bush-heavy Department of Justice would return an unfavorable interpretation of the DSP. Supporters point to the 2006 legal opinion of former Assistant Attorney General and anti-trust expert at the Department of Justice Donald Baker. As long as the designated list of suppliers is formed on humanitarian grounds, argued Baker, “the probability of a Licensee or Factory mounting a successful legal challenge to the program remains low.”

If this past spring is any indication, the campaign to push beyond these weaker programs is reaching critical mass. In April, dozens of students at Penn State, University of Montana, and Appalachian State launched office occupations to confront administrators about the unfulfilled labor codes of their universities.



The UNC sit-in, for its part, made real gains before five students were led out in handcuffs on May 2. Last August, Moeser had rejected the possibility of signing on to the DSP. He reversed that decision on the 12th day of the sit-in, calling an emergency meeting of the licensing committee in hopes of appeasing students.

“It was getting close to commencement,” Mirza said, “and donors were coming through campus.”

Though the licensing committee voted 7-5 against endorsing the DSP, it did move unanimously to put the issue before UNC’s new chancellor next fall.

Students have spent years fighting for codes of conduct and factory monitoring groups and the road to implementing the DSP appears long, but is getting shorter, and the arrests at UNC are more a sign of progress than defeat. “This wasn’t just about the sit-in; we’ll come back to meetings next year with more support,” said Gomaa. “I’m optimistic about our position.”