Current News

Hoffa Jr. Selling Out IBT UPS Worker On Healthcare Costs & Protection Against Bullying/Harassment On The Job
UPS: Largest Private-Sector Contract, Profitable Employer, Flat Beer

http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/05/ups-largest-private-sector-contract-profitable-employer-flat-beer

May 20, 2013 / Tim Hillenlarge or shrink textlogin or register to comment
 1195 71 
The new contract won't lessen UPS supervisors' ability to harass drivers and assign overtime. In February rallies across the country, chief negotiator Ken Hall made health care premiums the main issue. Photo: Teamsters.

The Teamsters and UPS reached agreement on a five-year contract April 25. After that, it was all rumors till May 7, when the IBT revealed the changes at its “two-man” meeting (two reps from each UPS local).

Chief negotiator Ken Hall said that he’d preserved our “excellent health care benefits” while “protecting them into the future.” The Teamsters website touted “substantial pay raises,” a “significant increase in the starting wage rate for part-time employees,” and “creation of more than 2,000 full-time jobs from the ranks of part-time workers.”

In fact, the agreement will greatly increase out-of-pocket health care costs for 140,000 Teamsters (60 percent of the bargaining unit), let the company continue with harassment, and maintain a permanent underclass of part-timers, at a company that is hauling in nearly $5 billion in profits a year.

What happened?

As a negotiator on our local rider, I knew that our international leadership had gone into bargaining saying they had specific goals on ending bullying, harassment, and retaliation, and reducing mandatory overtime, while also protecting health care and pensions. I heard over and over about bullying being mentioned at the table and how Ken Hall bothered UPS negotiators with every utterance of the word “bullying.”

Game Changer

Then UPS put health care on the table. Instantly, the union set up rallies all over the nation to change the subject from “bullying” to “no way we pay.” The problem was that our rallying cry was defensive, rather than offensive. The goal now was to maintain.

Hall told the 1,000-plus Teamsters at a rally in Washington state, where I live, that “if the company doesn’t take health care off the table, we’ll see them in July!” (when the contract was set to expire). Hall also hollered, “Teamsters won’t pay $90, $9, or 9 cents!” UPS had proposed that everyone, including part-timers, pay $90 a week of their premium.

These February rallies continued from Seattle to Oakland, then Los Angeles, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Toledo, and more. One word was never mentioned by Brother Hall: “strike.” It was never an option for him.

All I heard after that was how stubborn UPS was being on health care. I then knew that Ken Hall didn’t stand behind his main rallying cry at our meeting in Seattle. Teamster headquarters came out with updates thanking members for coming to the rallies and talking about the company’s position on health care. An April 18 memo called health care “the major issue.”

When the agreement was reached April 25, members I spoke with were relieved. “This means we’re not going to strike,” an Oregon driver told me.

Finally, on May 7, specifics were given. Raises were a total of $3.90 over five years. That’s down from $5 in the 2001-2005 contract and $4 over five years in the last contract. In 2011 Bloomberg Business Week quoted UPS CFO Kurt Kuehn bragging about “a very reasonable contract in place that will show modest, below-inflation increases in wages.” The “below-inflation” bar has now been lowered even more. UPS and Hall are hoping that no one pays attention.

Underclass

What is really being maintained is a near-permanent underclass of Teamsters, the part-timers who sort and load the packages. Management is very candid about who they’ll hire: they want students. Students stick around till they graduate, with no goals of staying at UPS. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a new-hire over 30.

Details, Anger

As the union agreed to essentially a stand-pat contract on other issues, including harassment and overtime,Teamsters for a Democratic Union is finding widespread anger about the health care givebacks enshrined in the new plan.

TDU members and other UPS Teamsters are distributing popular FAQs that break down the complicated health care changes and rising costs.

In Philadelphia, air hub workers have printed up “Vote No” T-shirts that Teamsters are wearing to work and in contract meetings.

A “Vote No on the UPS Contract” Facebook page is drawing a crowd.

Chief negotiator (and James Hoffa heir apparent) Ken Hall had fiercely proclaimed that members would pay nothing for health care. So instead of premiums, 140,000 of the 240,000 UPS Teamsters will pay $400 deductibles and higher co-pays and be shifted to unfamiliar networks.

Retirees now in the UPS plan will pay $300 a month for health coverage for themselves and spouses, up from $50.

Some pensions are frozen and some increased slightly. There are no new penalties for supervisor harassment. UPS will continue to be able to use information from GPS and other surveillance technology to fire drivers on what TDU calls “trumped-up charges” of dishonesty.

For TDU’s analysis of contract changes and non-changes, go here.

Ballots will be counted approximately June 20.

The part-time starting rate in the current contract is $8.50, which is $.69 under the Washington state minimum wage. Now a part-timer’s pay, after 90 days, will be $10, just 50 cents higher than before. Many new hires are on call for a few months, getting called in a few times a week. If you’re lucky enough to get work all five days, your guarantee is only 3.5 hours a day, so a part-timer’s paycheck is very small.

Their health care deductible will now be $400 per year, and it was $0. Providers are now limited, and lab tests, prescriptions, and ER visits will cost more.

Yes, new harassment language has been added, but it doesn’t appear to add any teeth to what was there, and in some cases, it’s worse. As a driver, if you have more than four years’ seniority, to get a 9.5-hour day you have to demand to be on a “9.5 list” (never mind the eight-hour day the labor movement fought and died for). Once you’re on the 9.5 list, a supervisor will assign himself to a three-day ride-along with you, to bully drivers into staying off the list.

In my building, most drivers already avoid the list because of harassment, but for the few on the 9.5 list, the company pays the small penalty and the driver still never gets the 9.5-hour day. They can run drivers 12+ hours, and all the contract language is more hoops to jump through. Without real penalties, this language isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

There is little hope of the promised new full-time inside jobs either (where two part-time jobs are combined), since our previous contract language on maintaining such jobs is not enforced.

Honestly, I get paid very well. I make $33.22 per hour, which sounds nice. But I make that wage after working seven years as a poor part-timer before getting a promotion, and then starting my progression to that wage, which was 30 months then but will be four years under the new contract, while calling in at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. to see if there’s work for me, and usually working three days a week—only getting a consistent five-day work week after 12 years.

And even those standards are ones that many upcoming Teamsters will never experience the luxury of. We have a 10-12-year wait to go full-time now, in my region. Adding four years to get to top scale, our members are half-way into their careers before they make the best pay.

All the while, our company made record profits in 2012, on our backs, with record pay and benefits for our CEO.

Tim Hill is a UPS road driver in Spokane, Washington, and a member of Teamsters Local 690. He serves on the negotiating committee for the Washington State Rider to the national UPS contract and on the Teamsters for a Democratic Union steering committee.

UPS: Largest Private-Sector Contract, Profitable Employer, Flat Beer
http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/05/ups-largest-private-sector-contr...

May 20, 2013 / Tim Hillenlarge or shrink textlogin or register to comment
 1195 71 

The new contract won't lessen UPS supervisors' ability to harass drivers and assign overtime. In February rallies across the country, chief negotiator Ken Hall made health care premiums the main issue. Photo: Teamsters.

The Teamsters and UPS reached agreement on a five-year contract April 25. After that, it was all rumors till May 7, when the IBT revealed the changes at its “two-man” meeting (two reps from each UPS local).

Chief negotiator Ken Hall said that he’d preserved our “excellent health care benefits” while “protecting them into the future.” The Teamsters website touted “substantial pay raises,” a “significant increase in the starting wage rate for part-time employees,” and “creation of more than 2,000 full-time jobs from the ranks of part-time workers.”

In fact, the agreement will greatly increase out-of-pocket health care costs for 140,000 Teamsters (60 percent of the bargaining unit), let the company continue with harassment, and maintain a permanent underclass of part-timers, at a company that is hauling in nearly $5 billion in profits a year.

What happened?

As a negotiator on our local rider, I knew that our international leadership had gone into bargaining saying they had specific goals on ending bullying, harassment, and retaliation, and reducing mandatory overtime, while also protecting health care and pensions. I heard over and over about bullying being mentioned at the table and how Ken Hall bothered UPS negotiators with every utterance of the word “bullying.”

Game Changer

Then UPS put health care on the table. Instantly, the union set up rallies all over the nation to change the subject from “bullying” to “no way we pay.” The problem was that our rallying cry was defensive, rather than offensive. The goal now was to maintain.

Hall told the 1,000-plus Teamsters at a rally in Washington state, where I live, that “if the company doesn’t take health care off the table, we’ll see them in July!” (when the contract was set to expire). Hall also hollered, “Teamsters won’t pay $90, $9, or 9 cents!” UPS had proposed that everyone, including part-timers, pay $90 a week of their premium.

These February rallies continued from Seattle to Oakland, then Los Angeles, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Toledo, and more. One word was never mentioned by Brother Hall: “strike.” It was never an option for him.

All I heard after that was how stubborn UPS was being on health care. I then knew that Ken Hall didn’t stand behind his main rallying cry at our meeting in Seattle. Teamster headquarters came out with updates thanking members for coming to the rallies and talking about the company’s position on health care. An April 18 memo called health care “the major issue.”

When the agreement was reached April 25, members I spoke with were relieved. “This means we’re not going to strike,” an Oregon driver told me.

Finally, on May 7, specifics were given. Raises were a total of $3.90 over five years. That’s down from $5 in the 2001-2005 contract and $4 over five years in the last contract. In 2011 Bloomberg Business Week quoted UPS CFO Kurt Kuehn bragging about “a very reasonable contract in place that will show modest, below-inflation increases in wages.” The “below-inflation” bar has now been lowered even more. UPS and Hall are hoping that no one pays attention.

Underclass

What is really being maintained is a near-permanent underclass of Teamsters, the part-timers who sort and load the packages. Management is very candid about who they’ll hire: they want students. Students stick around till they graduate, with no goals of staying at UPS. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a new-hire over 30.

Details, Anger

As the union agreed to essentially a stand-pat contract on other issues, including harassment and overtime,Teamsters for a Democratic Union is finding widespread anger about the health care givebacks enshrined in the new plan.

TDU members and other UPS Teamsters are distributing popular FAQs that break down the complicated health care changes and rising costs.

In Philadelphia, air hub workers have printed up “Vote No” T-shirts that Teamsters are wearing to work and in contract meetings.

A “Vote No on the UPS Contract” Facebook page is drawing a crowd.

Chief negotiator (and James Hoffa heir apparent) Ken Hall had fiercely proclaimed that members would pay nothing for health care. So instead of premiums, 140,000 of the 240,000 UPS Teamsters will pay $400 deductibles and higher co-pays and be shifted to unfamiliar networks.

Retirees now in the UPS plan will pay $300 a month for health coverage for themselves and spouses, up from $50.

Some pensions are frozen and some increased slightly. There are no new penalties for supervisor harassment. UPS will continue to be able to use information from GPS and other surveillance technology to fire drivers on what TDU calls “trumped-up charges” of dishonesty.

For TDU’s analysis of contract changes and non-changes, go here.

Ballots will be counted approximately June 20.

The part-time starting rate in the current contract is $8.50, which is $.69 under the Washington state minimum wage. Now a part-timer’s pay, after 90 days, will be $10, just 50 cents higher than before. Many new hires are on call for a few months, getting called in a few times a week. If you’re lucky enough to get work all five days, your guarantee is only 3.5 hours a day, so a part-timer’s paycheck is very small.

Their health care deductible will now be $400 per year, and it was $0. Providers are now limited, and lab tests, prescriptions, and ER visits will cost more.

Yes, new harassment language has been added, but it doesn’t appear to add any teeth to what was there, and in some cases, it’s worse. As a driver, if you have more than four years’ seniority, to get a 9.5-hour day you have to demand to be on a “9.5 list” (never mind the eight-hour day the labor movement fought and died for). Once you’re on the 9.5 list, a supervisor will assign himself to a three-day ride-along with you, to bully drivers into staying off the list.

In my building, most drivers already avoid the list because of harassment, but for the few on the 9.5 list, the company pays the small penalty and the driver still never gets the 9.5-hour day. They can run drivers 12+ hours, and all the contract language is more hoops to jump through. Without real penalties, this language isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

There is little hope of the promised new full-time inside jobs either (where two part-time jobs are combined), since our previous contract language on maintaining such jobs is not enforced.

Honestly, I get paid very well. I make $33.22 per hour, which sounds nice. But I make that wage after working seven years as a poor part-timer before getting a promotion, and then starting my progression to that wage, which was 30 months then but will be four years under the new contract, while calling in at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. to see if there’s work for me, and usually working three days a week—only getting a consistent five-day work week after 12 years.

And even those standards are ones that many upcoming Teamsters will never experience the luxury of. We have a 10-12-year wait to go full-time now, in my region. Adding four years to get to top scale, our members are half-way into their careers before they make the best pay.

All the while, our company made record profits in 2012, on our backs, with record pay and benefits for our CEO.

Tim Hill is a UPS road driver in Spokane, Washington, and a member of Teamsters Local 690. He serves on the negotiating committee for the Washington State Rider to the national UPS contract and on the Teamsters for a Democratic Union steering committee.

Hoffa Jr. Selling Out IBT UPS Worker On Healthcare Costs & Protection Against Bullying/Harassment On The Job
UPS: Largest Private-Sector Contract, Profitable Employer, Flat Beer

http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/05/ups-largest-private-sector-contract-profitable-employer-flat-beer

May 20, 2013 / Tim Hillenlarge or shrink textlogin or register to comment
 1195 71 
The new contract won't lessen UPS supervisors' ability to harass drivers and assign overtime. In February rallies across the country, chief negotiator Ken Hall made health care premiums the main issue. Photo: Teamsters.

The Teamsters and UPS reached agreement on a five-year contract April 25. After that, it was all rumors till May 7, when the IBT revealed the changes at its “two-man” meeting (two reps from each UPS local).

Chief negotiator Ken Hall said that he’d preserved our “excellent health care benefits” while “protecting them into the future.” The Teamsters website touted “substantial pay raises,” a “significant increase in the starting wage rate for part-time employees,” and “creation of more than 2,000 full-time jobs from the ranks of part-time workers.”

In fact, the agreement will greatly increase out-of-pocket health care costs for 140,000 Teamsters (60 percent of the bargaining unit), let the company continue with harassment, and maintain a permanent underclass of part-timers, at a company that is hauling in nearly $5 billion in profits a year.

What happened?

As a negotiator on our local rider, I knew that our international leadership had gone into bargaining saying they had specific goals on ending bullying, harassment, and retaliation, and reducing mandatory overtime, while also protecting health care and pensions. I heard over and over about bullying being mentioned at the table and how Ken Hall bothered UPS negotiators with every utterance of the word “bullying.”

Game Changer

Then UPS put health care on the table. Instantly, the union set up rallies all over the nation to change the subject from “bullying” to “no way we pay.” The problem was that our rallying cry was defensive, rather than offensive. The goal now was to maintain.

Hall told the 1,000-plus Teamsters at a rally in Washington state, where I live, that “if the company doesn’t take health care off the table, we’ll see them in July!” (when the contract was set to expire). Hall also hollered, “Teamsters won’t pay $90, $9, or 9 cents!” UPS had proposed that everyone, including part-timers, pay $90 a week of their premium.

These February rallies continued from Seattle to Oakland, then Los Angeles, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Toledo, and more. One word was never mentioned by Brother Hall: “strike.” It was never an option for him.

All I heard after that was how stubborn UPS was being on health care. I then knew that Ken Hall didn’t stand behind his main rallying cry at our meeting in Seattle. Teamster headquarters came out with updates thanking members for coming to the rallies and talking about the company’s position on health care. An April 18 memo called health care “the major issue.”

When the agreement was reached April 25, members I spoke with were relieved. “This means we’re not going to strike,” an Oregon driver told me.

Finally, on May 7, specifics were given. Raises were a total of $3.90 over five years. That’s down from $5 in the 2001-2005 contract and $4 over five years in the last contract. In 2011 Bloomberg Business Week quoted UPS CFO Kurt Kuehn bragging about “a very reasonable contract in place that will show modest, below-inflation increases in wages.” The “below-inflation” bar has now been lowered even more. UPS and Hall are hoping that no one pays attention.

Underclass

What is really being maintained is a near-permanent underclass of Teamsters, the part-timers who sort and load the packages. Management is very candid about who they’ll hire: they want students. Students stick around till they graduate, with no goals of staying at UPS. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a new-hire over 30.

Details, Anger

As the union agreed to essentially a stand-pat contract on other issues, including harassment and overtime,Teamsters for a Democratic Union is finding widespread anger about the health care givebacks enshrined in the new plan.

TDU members and other UPS Teamsters are distributing popular FAQs that break down the complicated health care changes and rising costs.

In Philadelphia, air hub workers have printed up “Vote No” T-shirts that Teamsters are wearing to work and in contract meetings.

A “Vote No on the UPS Contract” Facebook page is drawing a crowd.

Chief negotiator (and James Hoffa heir apparent) Ken Hall had fiercely proclaimed that members would pay nothing for health care. So instead of premiums, 140,000 of the 240,000 UPS Teamsters will pay $400 deductibles and higher co-pays and be shifted to unfamiliar networks.

Retirees now in the UPS plan will pay $300 a month for health coverage for themselves and spouses, up from $50.

Some pensions are frozen and some increased slightly. There are no new penalties for supervisor harassment. UPS will continue to be able to use information from GPS and other surveillance technology to fire drivers on what TDU calls “trumped-up charges” of dishonesty.

For TDU’s analysis of contract changes and non-changes, go here.

Ballots will be counted approximately June 20.

The part-time starting rate in the current contract is $8.50, which is $.69 under the Washington state minimum wage. Now a part-timer’s pay, after 90 days, will be $10, just 50 cents higher than before. Many new hires are on call for a few months, getting called in a few times a week. If you’re lucky enough to get work all five days, your guarantee is only 3.5 hours a day, so a part-timer’s paycheck is very small.

Their health care deductible will now be $400 per year, and it was $0. Providers are now limited, and lab tests, prescriptions, and ER visits will cost more.

Yes, new harassment language has been added, but it doesn’t appear to add any teeth to what was there, and in some cases, it’s worse. As a driver, if you have more than four years’ seniority, to get a 9.5-hour day you have to demand to be on a “9.5 list” (never mind the eight-hour day the labor movement fought and died for). Once you’re on the 9.5 list, a supervisor will assign himself to a three-day ride-along with you, to bully drivers into staying off the list.

In my building, most drivers already avoid the list because of harassment, but for the few on the 9.5 list, the company pays the small penalty and the driver still never gets the 9.5-hour day. They can run drivers 12+ hours, and all the contract language is more hoops to jump through. Without real penalties, this language isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

There is little hope of the promised new full-time inside jobs either (where two part-time jobs are combined), since our previous contract language on maintaining such jobs is not enforced.

Honestly, I get paid very well. I make $33.22 per hour, which sounds nice. But I make that wage after working seven years as a poor part-timer before getting a promotion, and then starting my progression to that wage, which was 30 months then but will be four years under the new contract, while calling in at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. to see if there’s work for me, and usually working three days a week—only getting a consistent five-day work week after 12 years.

And even those standards are ones that many upcoming Teamsters will never experience the luxury of. We have a 10-12-year wait to go full-time now, in my region. Adding four years to get to top scale, our members are half-way into their careers before they make the best pay.

All the while, our company made record profits in 2012, on our backs, with record pay and benefits for our CEO.

Tim Hill is a UPS road driver in Spokane, Washington, and a member of Teamsters Local 690. He serves on the negotiating committee for the Washington State Rider to the national UPS contract and on the Teamsters for a Democratic Union steering committee.

UPS: Largest Private-Sector Contract, Profitable Employer, Flat Beer
http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/05/ups-largest-private-sector-contr...

May 20, 2013 / Tim Hillenlarge or shrink textlogin or register to comment
 1195 71 

The new contract won't lessen UPS supervisors' ability to harass drivers and assign overtime. In February rallies across the country, chief negotiator Ken Hall made health care premiums the main issue. Photo: Teamsters.

The Teamsters and UPS reached agreement on a five-year contract April 25. After that, it was all rumors till May 7, when the IBT revealed the changes at its “two-man” meeting (two reps from each UPS local).

Chief negotiator Ken Hall said that he’d preserved our “excellent health care benefits” while “protecting them into the future.” The Teamsters website touted “substantial pay raises,” a “significant increase in the starting wage rate for part-time employees,” and “creation of more than 2,000 full-time jobs from the ranks of part-time workers.”

In fact, the agreement will greatly increase out-of-pocket health care costs for 140,000 Teamsters (60 percent of the bargaining unit), let the company continue with harassment, and maintain a permanent underclass of part-timers, at a company that is hauling in nearly $5 billion in profits a year.

What happened?

As a negotiator on our local rider, I knew that our international leadership had gone into bargaining saying they had specific goals on ending bullying, harassment, and retaliation, and reducing mandatory overtime, while also protecting health care and pensions. I heard over and over about bullying being mentioned at the table and how Ken Hall bothered UPS negotiators with every utterance of the word “bullying.”

Game Changer

Then UPS put health care on the table. Instantly, the union set up rallies all over the nation to change the subject from “bullying” to “no way we pay.” The problem was that our rallying cry was defensive, rather than offensive. The goal now was to maintain.

Hall told the 1,000-plus Teamsters at a rally in Washington state, where I live, that “if the company doesn’t take health care off the table, we’ll see them in July!” (when the contract was set to expire). Hall also hollered, “Teamsters won’t pay $90, $9, or 9 cents!” UPS had proposed that everyone, including part-timers, pay $90 a week of their premium.

These February rallies continued from Seattle to Oakland, then Los Angeles, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Toledo, and more. One word was never mentioned by Brother Hall: “strike.” It was never an option for him.

All I heard after that was how stubborn UPS was being on health care. I then knew that Ken Hall didn’t stand behind his main rallying cry at our meeting in Seattle. Teamster headquarters came out with updates thanking members for coming to the rallies and talking about the company’s position on health care. An April 18 memo called health care “the major issue.”

When the agreement was reached April 25, members I spoke with were relieved. “This means we’re not going to strike,” an Oregon driver told me.

Finally, on May 7, specifics were given. Raises were a total of $3.90 over five years. That’s down from $5 in the 2001-2005 contract and $4 over five years in the last contract. In 2011 Bloomberg Business Week quoted UPS CFO Kurt Kuehn bragging about “a very reasonable contract in place that will show modest, below-inflation increases in wages.” The “below-inflation” bar has now been lowered even more. UPS and Hall are hoping that no one pays attention.

Underclass

What is really being maintained is a near-permanent underclass of Teamsters, the part-timers who sort and load the packages. Management is very candid about who they’ll hire: they want students. Students stick around till they graduate, with no goals of staying at UPS. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a new-hire over 30.

Details, Anger

As the union agreed to essentially a stand-pat contract on other issues, including harassment and overtime,Teamsters for a Democratic Union is finding widespread anger about the health care givebacks enshrined in the new plan.

TDU members and other UPS Teamsters are distributing popular FAQs that break down the complicated health care changes and rising costs.

In Philadelphia, air hub workers have printed up “Vote No” T-shirts that Teamsters are wearing to work and in contract meetings.

A “Vote No on the UPS Contract” Facebook page is drawing a crowd.

Chief negotiator (and James Hoffa heir apparent) Ken Hall had fiercely proclaimed that members would pay nothing for health care. So instead of premiums, 140,000 of the 240,000 UPS Teamsters will pay $400 deductibles and higher co-pays and be shifted to unfamiliar networks.

Retirees now in the UPS plan will pay $300 a month for health coverage for themselves and spouses, up from $50.

Some pensions are frozen and some increased slightly. There are no new penalties for supervisor harassment. UPS will continue to be able to use information from GPS and other surveillance technology to fire drivers on what TDU calls “trumped-up charges” of dishonesty.

For TDU’s analysis of contract changes and non-changes, go here.

Ballots will be counted approximately June 20.

The part-time starting rate in the current contract is $8.50, which is $.69 under the Washington state minimum wage. Now a part-timer’s pay, after 90 days, will be $10, just 50 cents higher than before. Many new hires are on call for a few months, getting called in a few times a week. If you’re lucky enough to get work all five days, your guarantee is only 3.5 hours a day, so a part-timer’s paycheck is very small.

Their health care deductible will now be $400 per year, and it was $0. Providers are now limited, and lab tests, prescriptions, and ER visits will cost more.

Yes, new harassment language has been added, but it doesn’t appear to add any teeth to what was there, and in some cases, it’s worse. As a driver, if you have more than four years’ seniority, to get a 9.5-hour day you have to demand to be on a “9.5 list” (never mind the eight-hour day the labor movement fought and died for). Once you’re on the 9.5 list, a supervisor will assign himself to a three-day ride-along with you, to bully drivers into staying off the list.

In my building, most drivers already avoid the list because of harassment, but for the few on the 9.5 list, the company pays the small penalty and the driver still never gets the 9.5-hour day. They can run drivers 12+ hours, and all the contract language is more hoops to jump through. Without real penalties, this language isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

There is little hope of the promised new full-time inside jobs either (where two part-time jobs are combined), since our previous contract language on maintaining such jobs is not enforced.

Honestly, I get paid very well. I make $33.22 per hour, which sounds nice. But I make that wage after working seven years as a poor part-timer before getting a promotion, and then starting my progression to that wage, which was 30 months then but will be four years under the new contract, while calling in at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. to see if there’s work for me, and usually working three days a week—only getting a consistent five-day work week after 12 years.

And even those standards are ones that many upcoming Teamsters will never experience the luxury of. We have a 10-12-year wait to go full-time now, in my region. Adding four years to get to top scale, our members are half-way into their careers before they make the best pay.

All the while, our company made record profits in 2012, on our backs, with record pay and benefits for our CEO.

Tim Hill is a UPS road driver in Spokane, Washington, and a member of Teamsters Local 690. He serves on the negotiating committee for the Washington State Rider to the national UPS contract and on the Teamsters for a Democratic Union steering committee.

IBT 570 Baltimore School bus drivers protest working, safety conditions

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-school-bus-speakout-20130523,0,5050907.story
Drivers part of class-action lawsuit against Durham transportation

Bus drivers with Durham School Services, which has a contract with Baltimore, "speak-out" about conditions which include not being paid for work and unsafe conditions. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun video)

By Erica L. Green, The Baltimore Sun
10:00 p.m. EDT, May 23, 2013

Bus drivers and aides employed by a Baltimore schools contractor say that unsafe conditions such as fires and mold spores are endangering lives and unfair wages are threatening their livelihoods.

The grievances were aired Thursday at a rally of employees of Durham School Services, a national company that transports children in more than 350 school districts. Since 2002, the city has contracted with Durham, which earned an estimated $15.5 million over the last three school years. The company's buses transport about 928 students.

The company is facing a collective-action lawsuit, representing 85 drivers and aides who work for the Rosedale-based affiliate of the company.
The federal suit, filed in U.S. District Court on March 12, says the company has not paid workers for the hours they earned carrying out responsibilities required for transporting students, such as pre- and post-trip inspections, fueling and cleaning buses. The suit also says the company didn't pay the workers overtime they earned or pay it on a timely basis.

"We believe that the workers are performing a variety of tasks that are integral to bus driving that they're not being paid for," said Brooke Lierman, who is representing the workers in the federal suit. "They're performing work for free."

In a statement, Durham officials said: "Our company strives to ensure employees are correctly paid for the work they perform," but declined to comment on the lawsuit because it is pending litigation.

Stephanie Urosa, a bus attendant who is a complainant in the lawsuit, said there is mold in her bus that affects the special-needs students, some of whom have tracheotomies. She's expected to clean the bus herself, she said, but would not be paid for it.

"No one should be breathing in mold spores," said Urosa, who added that she had her left lung removed as a result of cancer. "And I know my bus is not the only bus with mold on it. These buses need to be safer than what they are to carry our precious cargo."

Renee Davis, whose 7-year-old son, Jaylin Jones, rides Urosa's bus, showed up to support the bus drivers and aides. Her son has learning disabilities and has chronic lung disease, and she said Urosa has been a trustworthy aide.

"I worry about both of them," Davis said. "It doesn't matter if she gets sick, or he gets sick, my whole day is messed up. And if she doesn't have what she needs, my son won't."

Durham said in the statement that it "takes the safety of our passengers and employees very seriously."

"In contrast to the union's anecdotes shared today," the statement said, "the facts are that school buses are the safest way for students to get to school and Durham is a leader in safe transportation."

City school officials said that contractors are responsible for the maintenance and cleaning of their buses and that the district conducts inspections in the spring, summer and fall. All of the district's school buses were inspected this spring.

Durham buses were rated in the good category with minimal defects, and spot checks are performed randomly at schools, officials said. They added that contractors are required to report any safety-related issues to the district.

But workers said the safety risks reported to Durham often go unaddressed.

For example, on March 13, a Durham bus was on fire as it pulled up to a school, Teamsters Local 570 officials said, with the driver and aide barely escaping. There were no students on the bus. The union said it was the second school bus to catch on fire in less than three years.

Durham and school officials declined to comment on the reports of fires.

The group of workers are planning to formally join the Teamsters, with a vote scheduled May 31.

Sean Cedenio, secretary and treasurer of Local 570, said that the measure is long overdue. "We hear all kinds of issues … but they do not have a voice on the job," Cedenio said. "The company ignores their pain, their plight."

Durham officials said: "We have multiple reporting channels in place for employees to share concerns whether related to safety, services, working conditions or payroll."

"There have been shortages in everyone's paycheck … and the minutes, eventually they add up," said bus driver Mildred Israel.

Flipping through his detailed log, Martin Fox said his April paycheck was 7.25 hours short. The bus driver of roughly six years said that he's lucky because not all of his co-workers are as organized.

"I just want what I earned," said Fox, who transports special-needs students. "At $16.40 [an hour], that's not chump change to me. And I keep records. Some of the others are being cheated on a regular basis."

erica.green@baltsun.com

twitter.com/EricaLG

Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-school-bus-speakout-20130523,0,5050907.story#ixzz2UDpRq8hX

BART, unions tussling over missed work “It’s not our fault that mismanagement has put BART in a position where they’re forced to pay overtime,” 

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/transportation/2013/05/bart-unions-tussling-over-missed-work
By: Will Reisman | 05/22/13 6:48 PM
SF Examiner Staff Writer
CINDY CHEW/2010 S.F. EXAMINER FILE PHOTO
With employees logging an average of 40 unscheduled absences annually, reforming work rules will be a key focus for BART during ongoing labor negotiations.

BART management and its five unions, which collectively represent 3,200 workers, are engaged in contentious contract talks, with the current pact expiring June 30. However, talks so far have yielded little progress, and union groups say they are further apart now than in 2009, when a strike nearly occurred.

A focus of this year’s talks has been work rules. BART management wants to crack down on overtime and unscheduled absenteeism. According to Paul Oversier, director of operations, each worker racks up an average of 40 unscheduled absences annually. That includes sick leave, jury duty, family obligations, disability and industrial injuries.

Those absences must be filled with replacement workers collecting overtime.

BART spent $30 million on overtime last fiscal year, a 15 percent increase from the year prior. Currently, employees can miss a scheduled workday while sick, then fill in for a colleague and collect overtime on a Saturday or Sunday.

$399,000 BART deal angers union groups
04/30/13 7:21 PM
BART’s hiring of an outside consultant for nearly $400,000 to lead its latest set of contract negotiations has its two biggest unions decrying the move as being disruptive and carried out in bad faith. Read More
Oversier said a small number of workers routinely exploit that policy. As a result, BART wants to ensure that workers log 40 hours before collecting overtime.

Antonette Bryant, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, which represents station agents and train operators, said she found it “a bit difficult to believe” that BART employees missed that much time per year, adding that the unscheduled absences category is overbroad considering it includes military leave and jury duty.

Bryant said BART’s hiring freeze over the past four years has led to the gaudy overtime numbers.

“It’s not our fault that mismanagement has put BART in a position where they’re forced to pay overtime,” she said.

General Manager Grace Crunican praised BART’s workforce, saying 10 percent of the workforce generates 50 percent of the unscheduled absences. 

wreisman@sfexaminer.com

Turkish Airlines strike gains momentum

http://www.sendika.org/2013/05/turkish-airlines-strike-gains-momentum/
22 Mayıs 2013
Six days into the strike Turkish Airlines gives in. The effect and support grows for the workers as the airline changes its position not to negotiate and calls the union to start negotiations.

When the workers of the corporation started the strike Turkish Airlines (THY) tried to portray it as having failed.  Having the mainstream media on their side, THY appeared is as many news programs as possible and enjoyed the sympathetic support it received from the corporate TC stations and daily papers.

However, the left and peoples’ organizations stood behind the THY workers and their solidarity added to this first step in forcing the company to negotiate. With growing solidarity, the workers action spread as flight crews and pilots too have started to join the strike.

The union representing the workers, Hava-Is emphasized that the THY was not calling to resume negotiations. The corporation had breached tens of items on their agreement when the agreement was still in effect, even prior to the strike vote. When the union called for negotiations, the THY bosses refused, later explaining that they had not seen the union’s call for negotiations.

The union representative said the Turkish Airlines’ goal was to have a corporation without any labor negotiation, union or labor-management agreement. Hava-Is also emphasized their call on the THY administration for mutual respect and continuation of negotiations to end the ongoing strike.

Sendika.Org News

Israeli Govt plans to use army to break any port strike
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000844741
Haifa and Ashdod port workers are expected to strike in protest against the intention to build a new port.
19 May 13 10:05, Globes correspondent

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Finance Yair Lapid, Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett, and Minister of Transport Yisrael Katz, do not hide their desire "to break the monopoly" and to create competition between Israel's seaports, and today, Hebrew daily "Yediot Ahronot" exposes the secret plan for the fight with the strong port unions.
The plan is codenamed "1981", after the year in which US President Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers at America's airports and brought in military controllers in their stead. The government believes that the Ashdod and Haifa port workers are likely to strike in protest against the intention to construct a new port. The government has prepared several responses: bringing the army and foreign companies in to operate the ports; outlawing of strikes in vital services; warning manufacturers to stock up with materials; and opening up the Port of Eilat and Israel Shipyards for loading and unloading of goods.
Katz plans to have a new port open within five years, and to publish a tender for its construction in the next two months.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 19, 2013
 

Scab Grain Ship Accosted by Watery Picket In Vancouver, WA
http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/05/scab-grain-ship-accosted-watery-picket
Scab Grain Ship Accosted by Watery Picket

May 16, 2013 / Mark Brennerenlarge or shrink textlogin or register to comment
 312 69
Picketing boats in Kalama surrounded the Mary H, which was carrying grain loaded by scabs in nearby Vancouver.

A flotilla of nine fishing boats—their passengers wielding picket signs instead of fishing poles—blocked the grain shipMary H from docking in Kalama, Washington, May 7.

At the same time, a community picket onshore turned workers away from the grain terminal. The action by longshore workers and supporters was part of the escalating conflict between the region’s grain shippers and the West Coast longshore union, ILWU.

The Mary H was carrying grain loaded by scabs in nearby Vancouver, Washington, where members of ILWU Local 4 have been locked out by their employer, United Grain, since late February. Three days before the protest, a second company, Columbia Grain, had locked out Portland grain workers, members of ILWU Local 8.

“Our rank and file were compelled to remind these greedy companies that they can’t simply load a ship with scab labor and expect it not to be marked and protested wherever it goes throughout the world,” said one member.

PITCHED BATTLE

The floating protest included members of ILWU Local 21 in Longview, Washington, whose pitched battle two years ago with grain giant EGT captured national attention. Members’ picketing and direct action included occupation of a grain terminal, a blockaded train, and scores of arrests.

Nonetheless, Local 21 accepted inferior terms at EGT that set the tenor for negotiations on the union’s master contract for 3,000 longshore workers who handle grain exports along the Puget Sound and Columbia River. (EGT is not a party.) Those talks broke down at the end of 2012.

United Grain and Columbia Grain, two of the four employers in the master contract, took a hard line after talks faltered, imposing their final offers before locking workers out.

The union has pinned its hopes on a temporary agreement reached in February with a third employer, TEMCO, a joint venture between agribusiness giants CHS and Cargill.

It’s not clear, however, how the ILWU plans to force Columbia Grain and United Grain to accept the terms it reached with TEMCO. The day after the flotilla’s successful blockade, the ship docked, and Local 21 members agreed to continue loading it rather than risk taking more aggressive measures.

They vowed to segregate the scab grain from Vancouver with plastic tarps so that dock workers in Japan and other Asian destinations would be able to identify—and potentially refuse—cargo that was loaded non-union.

ILWU locals in the area are now focused on organizing a rally in Portland, which they hope will be a springboard to mass picketing at the port. Other area unions are pledging to mobilize members in support.

Mark Brenner is the Director of Labor Notes. He can be reached at 
mark@labornotes.org
 

UK TUBE UNION RMT confirmed today that driver members at a range of depots serving the Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and Circle Lines will be taking industrial action in a dispute arising from the introduction of the new S Stock fleet. Challenging "management bullying"
May 17 2013
http://www.rmt.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=173990&int1stParentN...

TUBE UNION RMT confirmed today that driver members at a range of depots serving the Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and Circle Lines will be taking industrial action in a dispute arising from the introduction of the new S Stock fleet.

The announcement comes after a ballot for industrial action short of a strike concluded last week with an overwhelming vote in favour of action. Talks have since taken place with London Underground, regarding the serious problems concerning the introduction of the S Stock. Whilst some progress has been achieved at these talks, one issue remains outstanding and unresolved, which is the company’s attempt to compel Circle and Hammersmith & City Line drivers to pick up and drop off trains from Metropolitan line platforms at Baker Street Station.
 
As a result of this continuing dispute, RMT’s executive has decided to call the following industrial action short of strike action:-
 
With effect from 00:01 hours on Wednesday 22nd May 2013 until further notice all RMT Instructor Operators and Train Operators members at Barking (H&C), Edgware Road and Hammersmith Train Crew Depots are instructed as follows:-
 
• Only to pick up trains from the agreed pick-up points on the line – Hammersmith, Edgware Road and Barking depots, Farringdon Sidings, and Moorgate and Aldgate bay roads; and will not drive trains from or to Baker Street Metropolitan line platforms 2 and 3.
 
RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:
 
“RMT will not allow the introduction of the new S Stock to be used as a cover for bulldozing through fundamental changes to working conditions and practices that we believe will seriously impact on passenger and staff safety.
 
“London Underground’s attempt to pursue the principle of Train Operators driving outside normal arrangements and off normal line of working does not comply with our agreed practice. Our action is designed to fight London Undergrounds determination to pursue ‘cross – line working’ which we believe is an attempt to undermine jobs and conditions.
 
“RMT remains available for talks aimed at resolving this outstanding issue.”

rom: Geoff Martin
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 09:36 AM
Subject: RMT to protest as key London rail staff are locked out in bullying dispute

FROM RMT PRESS OFFICE

Sunday 19 May 2013

RMT mobilises protest tomorrow as rail security and safety staff are locked out

Rail union RMT will be mobilising a major protest tomorrow in support of a group of safety staff employed on a TFL funded contract for London Overground.

Agency STM has 'locked out' its workers, without pay, for taking industrial action against management bullying. RMT has called for full union support for our members and to join an urgent protest about this outrageous persecution.

RMT WILL DEMONSTRATE outside the headquarters of London Overground Rail Operations Ltd (just outside Swiss Cottage tube station) on Monday 20 May at 0900hrs.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said;

"These TravelSafe Officers (TSOs) work on London Overground on a contract funded by Boris Johnson's TFL.

" RMT called 'action short of strike' in a dispute over bullying, and their employer, the agency STM, has issued letters to them all stating that unless they work normally then they will be paid nothing, and has removed them all from the work schedule until further notice.

"This is the most vicious anti union brutality that we have seen in London's transport services for years and we will be mobilising full support for this brave group of workers. "

Ends

Geoff martin
07831 465 103
 

Japan Rail Union Doro-Chiba  Denounces Osaka Mayor's Justification of Imperialist War Crimes

We denounce Abe administration and Osaka Mayor Hashimoto for their attempt of justifying Japanese imperialist war of aggression and the war-time system of “comfort women”.
Stop the plan of Abe and Hashimoto to force reactionary revision of the Constitution and war drive!
Let’s raise angry voice of working class and crush Abe administration!
Stop Japanese export of nuclear plant to pave the way to war!

May 19th 2013
International Labor Solidarity Committee of Doro-Chiba

Abe administration is giving impetus to the far-right political trend and driving a desperate move to reactionary constitutional revision and war of aggression.
Recently in the debate in the Diet, Prime Minister ABE Shinzo declared in regard to the past Japanese war of aggression on Asian countries and colonial domination “it might not be defined as invasion or aggression”. To back this outrageous statement of Abe, Osaka Mayor HASHIMOTO Toru made a shameless speech to the press: “The war-time system of comfort women was necessary to maintain discipline in the Japanese army, which was engaged in warfare”. Soon after that he recommended US commander in Japan to make use of “adult entertainment facilities” for US soldiers staying in Okinawa. These remarks are not simply the matters concerning the past war of aggression and its justification. It discloses the actual intention of Japanese imperialism to pave the way for a fresh war under the circumstances of intensified military confrontation against China and North Korea under the “New Military Strategy” of US president Obama.

Whatever Abe and his ultra-right followers propagate, it is an undeniable historical fact that Japan invaded in Asian countries through the past imperialist war of aggression. All through the process of war, Japanese army exploited, plundered, suppressed, humiliated and slaughtered Korean, Chinese and other Asian people with all possible cruelty, while mobilizing Japanese working people into the bloody war of aggression. We Japanese working class, including people in Okinawa, together with all the people of the entire world, shall never pardon Abe and Hashimoto for uttering such outrageous words and behaving in a shameless way.

Confronted with the global economic crisis and threatened to death as imperialism, Japanese bourgeoisie represented by Abe administration is pouring a huge amount of fiscal money for the bankrupt state budget and driving Japanese finance and economy into a catastrophe by a desperate policy, named absurdly “Abenomics”. In a frantic effort for survival, Japanese ruling class has been developing a policy of nuclear power plant export to Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and very recently closed a deal with Turkish government over nuclear power plant construction. While the catastrophic result of Fukushima Nuclear plant accident has not at all settled, Abe administration is intent to make people of these countries suffer from distress as Fukushima people is now experiencing for the dirty interests of the Nuclear Mafia.

The strategy of Abe administration is to carry out so-called “package export”, which means a wholesale delivery of all the related know-how and facilities for nuclear plant construction. It is planned to export not only technical know-how but also the way of controlling nuclear plant workers, most of which are of irregular employment, of suppressing labor and anti-nuke movement, and of exposing those workers to nuclear contamination and throwing them onto the street. At the same time, it is intended to widen Japanese strategic influence over those developing countries which are eager to establish solid bases for nuclear armament. It inevitably accelerates war drives everywhere. We Japanese workers must not overlook these attempts of Japanese ruling class.

 Osaka Mayor Hashimoto is a glib enemy of Japanese working class in that he is developing the policy of overall privatization of Osaka public service, casualization of public service workers and union busting. He is thus spearheading Abe’s agenda of attacking public service workers through massive wage cut of 7.8%.

 These politicians like Abe and Hashimoto are intent not only to destroy the whole life of working class and sacrificing people of Fukushima and Okinawa but also to dismantle the whole social structure established after World War II and to drive world into a fresh war. It is the deepest motivation that lies at the bottom of the recent justification of the past Japanese war of aggression in Asia and attempt of reactionary constitutional revision of Abe administration.

The most effective and fundamental power is offered by the following; One is appearance of class struggle labor movement that squarely confronts neoliberal offensives of Abe administration, represented by constitutional revision and war drive, and the other is promoting of international solidarity of working class of the whole world against sever exploitation and war drive of neoliberalism.

Outrageous offensive of Abe administration is flaring up indignation of working class all over Japan. Yong workers and students are rising up for a fresh struggle with firm unity and fighting spirit. We are determined to organize these new and enormous waves into the June 9th Rally of Nationwide Campaign of National Railway Struggle to crush Abe administration.

Let’s march forward for the progress of class struggle labor movement and strengthening international labor solidarity against all forces of war drive and overthrow capitalist rule definitively.
http://www.doro-chiba.org/english/english2.htm

Dear friends all over the world,

We fiercely denounce that Prime Minister ABE and Osaka mayor HASHIMOTO are repeating shameless verbal abuses in regard to the past Japanese war of aggression, and Japanese ruling class is intensifying a policy of nuclear power plant export, disguisedly and shamelessly declaring “Japan makes much progress on safety technique of nuclear power plant construction from experiences of Fukushima catastrophe”.

We are determined to give an answer to these reactionary offensives by smashing success of the June 9th Rally of Nationwide Campaign of National Railway Struggle.

International Labor Solidarity Committee of Doro-Chiba
H. Yamamoto
http://www.doro-chiba.org/english/english2.htm
 

Union Busting Veolia Company In Finland Facing Strike Action Over Shift System Threatening Fatigue And Health And Safety
http://yle.fi/uutiset/vantaa_bus_strike_continues/6644125
News 16.5.2013 8:01 | updated 16.5.2013 12:21
Vantaa bus strike continues

The Vantaa bus strike continued on Thursday, with 400 drivers at the Veolia company still off the job after they walked out in the early hours of Tuesday.
Most buses in Vantaa remained parked at a depot on Thursday. Image: Yle
The action is having the greatest impact on internal and cross-town services and also affecting some services in Kerava.

Talks on ending the wildcat strike were held on Wednesday, but no settlement to the dispute was reached. The action is in protest at a new shift system that drivers say risks causing fatigue and endangering passengers.  

The ATU 1181 School Bus Strike That Didn’t Change New York

http://jacobinmag.com/2013/04/the-strike-that-didnt-change-new-york/

by Megan Erickson
The Chicago teachers’ strike was a victory for workers around the country. But how do we move from homegrown resistance to a national movement that could ignite a shift in public policy?

I never liked riding the bus as a kid. With its limited possibilities for adult supervision, the school bus was the venue of choice for kicking someone’s ass or exploring the more psychological expressions of adolescent torment. One day a boy my age looked at me defiantly across the aisle and set his jeans on fire. The first time I heard the word “cunt” yelled with real conviction? On a school bus. But had it not come, I would have been stranded without a ride. Which is, of course, exactly what happened to New York City’s 1.1 million public school children this January, when eight thousand bus drivers walked off the job, sparking a month-long standoff between Local Amalgamated Transit Union 1181 and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The Daily News accused drivers of “leaving kids … and forcing their angry parents to drag them to school in taxis or the subway.” Brooklyn Ink assertedthat the strike could damage the development of children with autism by interrupting the delivery of therapeutic services received at school. In an interview with the New York Times, a parent employed at a Starbucks in Midtown Manhattan vented: “I had to take a leave just for this. It’s ridiculous.” For weeks, overwhelmed families shouldered the burden of trucking their kids to school. Then five Democratic mayoral candidates wrote a letter to union members urging them to return to work. Not one of the candidates addressed Bloomberg or Education Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who had stripped a job-security provision from the unions’ contract, inciting the conflict in the first place. Both Bloomberg and Walcott had shrewdly taken to referring to the protests as “a strike against our children.”

The next day, the strike was off — another in a long line of Bloomberg’s victories against organized labor. “In the city’s entire history, the special interests have never had less power than they do today,” he commented, “and the end of this strike reflects the fact that when we say we put children first, we mean it.”

The walkout left nine out of ten bus routes inoperational, effectively shutting down a critical service overnight. It should have been politically devastating for the mayor. But instead of strengthening the union’s bargaining power, the unavoidable impact of the strike on children, particularly those with special needs, was used as a cover by the union’s actual targets: public officials and private business interests. As one Staten Island driver pointed out, the union was not asking for a pay raise or benefits; they were simply protesting for the right to return to their jobs next school year.

But ultimately it was the bus drivers, not the politicians, who were seen as selfish. That the drivers had been picketing around the clock in freezing weather and losing wages to uphold employee protections guaranteed to them since the 1970s was immaterial to parents surrendering their own time and money to transport children to and from school.

It’s inevitable. Like all of the world’s financial capitals, New York is stunningly stratified by race and class. The city’s elites live parallel to rather than among the general public, with separate social networks and institutions that insulate them from the consequences of the disastrous policies they advocate, complicating the antagonism between labor and capital. As children, Bloomberg’s own daughters attended the private K-12 Spence School on East Ninety-First Street between Fifth and Madison, in the same neighborhood where they resided. In contrast, New York City’s school choice policy of matching students to schools based on preference rather than assigning them to local districts means that some public school students travel more than 90 minutes a day to and from school. Last year, the city finally allowed students to transfer if their commute was over 75 minutes — still twice the average time spent commuting by a New York adult. The problem with the school bus drivers’ strike was that it affected the working- and middle-class families who rely on public services much more than it cost the managerial class.

It’s a conflict faced by everyone whose job it is to look after children. Local government (in the case of the New York City bus drivers, in partnership with private employers) has power over the teachers, cafeteria workers, paraprofessionals, drivers, mechanics, and janitors it employs, but each of these care workers has power over the vulnerable population that depends on them for the fulfillment of basic needs. When care workers strike, their actions don’t stop production or result in profit losses for managers; they stop the provision of essential services for their students or patients. In highly segregated urban societies, the wealthiest people don’t even use public services, making it difficult to earnestly direct a refusal to work at the city’s elites.

The backlash against the bus drivers’ union strike was heightened by the fact that their case failed to move New York City parents. k-12 teachers have always had higher salaries and garnered more public respect than other school workers. Though their once unassailable status as “heroes” in the way of police officers and firefighters is increasingly under attack, even Americans who believe the school system is failing say they are happy with their local teachers. New York City bus drivers don’t have the same clout. In any case, their strike was too rhetorically narrow. Union members protested that the mayor was heartless, but their call for empathy meant little to parents who are themselves unemployed, underemployed, or, if they’re “lucky” enough to have a full-time job, severely overworked.

Since the 2008 recession, even job security — the singular premise on which the last surviving scraps of an American social safety net rest — is no longer seen as a right. The unemployment rate is 7.7%; the effective unemployment rate that counts part-time workers and those who have stopped looking for work is 20%. And while 92% of union workers have health coverage, only 68% of non-unionized workers do. Today only 12% of American workers even have a union in their workplace.

In The Future of Our Schools, union organizer Lois Weiner describes the choice made by American unions in the 1960s to use their political power exclusively to obtain health care coverage for members without fighting for universal health care. “It’s not common knowledge,” she writes, “but several decades ago the most powerful industrial unions in the United States had internal debates about how labor should deal with members’ need for health care and pensions. Advocates of business unionism argued the union should bargain for health care and pensions as part of the contract, making employers pay.” Others argued for an all-encompassing social justice orientation similar to that adopted by European unions, in which the unions would have used their (at the time) formidable power to lobby for universal healthcare and pensions. Had American unions secured tangible benefits for the public at large, it’s possible that they would still be a force to reckon with. Instead, the dramatic difference between the job security and livable wages of union members and non-unionized employees is now a significant obstacle to uniting workers in the struggle against punitive austerity measures. “In retrospect, the ‘practical’ stance of business unionism was shortsighted and it’s a mistake we ought not repeat,” concludes Weiner.

But the bus drivers’ strike was not merely a reaction to the removal of the job security clause from workers’ contracts. By fighting against budget cuts and the negotiation of cheaper contracts, the bus drivers were implicitly standing in opposition to the broader neoliberal ideology of privatization, competition, “lean” production, and relentless expropriation of workers’ personal time as a cure for society’s ills. That connection was willfully obscured by Bloomberg and Walcott — fluent in anti-labor language — and never clearly articulated by the union.

Compare this to the strategy of rank-and-file workers from the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Amalgamated Transit Union who, in conjunction with Occupy Wall Street activists, opened gates at four subway stations around the city during a March 2012 morning rush hour. The union members posted signs around the city apologizing to subway riders for service cuts and fare hikes which, they explained, were the result of the MTA’s determination to make the highest profit off of commuters.

The signs were formatted in the font used for MTA service announcements and urged riders to enter the station for free through the service entrance, making the public collaborators in a collective action against austerity measures. That service cuts meant layoffs for transit workers wasn’t even mentioned. “Be prepared for expanded free service until the resolution of contract negotiations in favor of TWU Local 100,” they advertised. A press release located the wildcat action in the context of the global political climate, connecting it to the interests of the class as a whole in a time of mass austerity. The tactic had international precedent — the Spanish indignadoshad been running their own fare strike, Yo No Pago, since January of that year.

The failure of the bus drivers’ union strike underscores the necessity of building national and international coalitions between unionized and non-unionized labor, workers and non-workers of all kinds, with the explicit aim of transforming the structure of institutions. After the surprise success of the September 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike — the first in the city since 1987 — the question was: what city’s next?

It’s the wrong question. Located in one of only eleven states in the US where public sector employees have the right to strike, Chicago is exceptional. America’s dogged adherence to local politics means that each district, city, and state is subject to its own labor law regimes. Anti-austerity strategy, in turn, will differ in different regions. What we should be asking is: how do we transition from a localized and evanescent series of collective actions to a national movement with a unified agenda that could ignite a shift in public policy? How do we move from home-grown resistance to victory?

The same month as the bus drivers’ union strike, teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School voted unanimously to refuse to administer the standardized Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test — purchased by a superintendent who sat on the board of the company that marketed it. In their statement to the public, the teachers stressed that the test was “not good for students” because it wasted valuable instructional time. In a move that mirrored the actions of the rank-and-file transit union members, the school’s parent-teacher association took immediate steps to notify parents of their right to excuse children from taking the exam, giving parents a chance to join the boycott. They did. Diane Ravitch and Jonathan Kozol sent letters of encouragement. On March 22, district leaders began reducing the number of students required to take the test.

Former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee went on the defensive, warning in an op-ed in the Seattle Times, “Seattle public school students should pay attention. They’re getting a front-row, real-world lesson in how the actions of adults can distract from what’s best for students.” Rhee, of the “grassroots” education reform organization Students First, insists on referring to the Garfield High teachers as local teachers union members — and unions, she argues, prioritize the protection of educators’ jobs over the need for an objective assessment to evaluate schools’ performance.

Her well-worn assertion that teachers are nothing more than self-interested actors is flatly untrue, but it is rooted in a real shift that occurred mid-century. Under the influence of the AFL-CIO, teachers’ advocacy organizations changed in structure and tone from radical groups fighting for a voice in curriculum to groups negotiating higher pay and benefits for teachers.

From 1970 to 1971, Steve Golin interviewed fifty-two teachers who taught in Newark public schools during the strikes of 1970 and 1971. In The Newark Teachers Strikes, he tells the story of two teachers with opposing understandings of the role of urban unions:

In the 1960s as in the 1930s, Lowenstein wanted the Union to fight not only for teachers but for all the oppressed, including the children of Newark. Ficcio wanted the Union to focus on issues it could directly confront, at the bargaining table…. Everyone active in the Union during the 1960s was aware of a conflict between the new strand of bread-and-butter unionism and the older strand of socially committed unionism.

The debate was replayed in city after city, with people like Ficcio winning the day.

Throughout the 1980s, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — the more urban of the two national teachers unions — maintained an educational philosophy indistinguishable from the neoliberal agenda being pushed through schools today. In 2008, Randi Weingarten addressed the AFT National Convention with: “Tests, if they are fair and accurate, and aligned with a rich curriculum, can play an important role in holding teachers, administrators and schools accountable for much of student achievement.” It wasn’t until 2012 that the AFT approved a resolution on standardized testing that called for “balance” in the use of assessments, and even then the language was weak, and the action behind the language was nonexistent. Only the Chicago CORE caucus pressed the AFT to pressure states to monitor the time and money spent on testing.

Either consciously or intuitively, Rhee and other corporate reformers have spent their careers invoking the bitter divisions at the heart of the twentieth-century urban education wars, which pitted unions and their middle-class white allies against low-income black families, left intellectuals like Paul Goodman, and the corporate reformers who supported local control of schools against teachers.

As slogans go, “Students first” is a descendent of the controversial “community control” experiments of the late 1960s and early 1970s supported by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations — the granddaddy of the more insidious present-day Broad, Walton, and Gates Foundations. Both are vaguely populist suggestions that the answer to education reform can be found in individuals and local groups of students, teachers, and community members rather than through a well-funded, systematic program of desegregation and redistribution.

Ocean Hill-Brownsville is a New York City neighborhood adjacent to Bedford-Stuyvesant, where the median household income in Brownsville has fallen every year for the past four years. In 2009, it was $24,659 — $20,871 less than the starting salary for a New York City public school teacher. In 2013, the Citizen’s Committee for Children released a report ranking Brownsville as the third “worst places for children” to grow up in New York City. Seventy-five of every 1000 children living in the neighborhood were reported neglected or abused, with 52% living below the poverty line, and only 1/3 reading at grade level. According to census data, as of 2010, the demographics for the 11233 zip code were: 87% black, 5% white, .7% American Indian, .9% Asian, and about 3% mixed race.

At the turn of the century, Brownsville was a largely middle-class Jewish neighborhood. Northern migration of Southern black families changed its demographics more dramatically than any other neighborhood in New York City, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that there was massive white flight from the neighborhood. The postwar years saw an unprecedented increase in economic opportunity for the city’s once-ostracized European immigrant population thanks to a general increase in social spending (which disproportionately benefited whites), free education subsidized by the GI Bill, and the replacement of industrial jobs with white-collar jobs in New York City.

It was feasible that in one or two generations, children of working-class Italian, Irish, and Eastern European immigrants could rise to ranks of the middle class. As Catholics and Jews, they continued to be shut out from the lucrative WASP-controlled business sector, but many of them became public school teachers, marrying their parents’ positive views of organized labor to a fierce personal conviction in the ethos of meritocracy and the value of elbow grease.

Black parents and educators around the country had an altogether different relationship to unions. Labor historian John F. Lyons has argued that teachers unions’ right to collective bargaining was secured by politicians, particularly Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, seeking to remove union opposition to the Democratic machine, which was under pressure from civil rights organizations to desegregate schools. As Dorothy Shipps points out in School Reform, Corporate Style: Chicago, 1880–2000, Daley’s offer of collective bargaining was a double-edged sword, at least in Chicago: the raises did not apply to most black teachers, who comprised a third of Chicago’s teaching force at the time and were usually hired as full-time substitutes or temps.

In contrast to the socialist Teachers’ Union (TU) it had replaced, New York City’s 90% white, majority-Jewish United Federation of Teachers (UFT) had never come out strongly for integration of the public schools. As soon as they’d completed their requisite five years of service, white teachers frequently transferred from predominantly black districts to “better schools” — i.e. white districts — leaving children in neighborhoods like Ocean Hill-Brownsville with a perpetually-shifting group of inexperienced teachers. The UFT successfully blocked the city’s efforts to put an end to this practice. In 1967, under the acrimonious leadership of Albert Shanker, the union again backed a controversial provision opposed by black educators and black community leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr. The “disruptive child” provision would have given teachers unilateral power to expel students who acted out in their classrooms, shuttling them into separate schools. During the UFT’s 1967 strike, Ocean Hill-Brownsville schools remained open.

As Jerald Podair observes in The Strike That Changed New York, “White teachers viewed the educational system as one that, while flawed, had helped them, and would help anyone wishing to work hard. Black parents saw the system as a failure.” By 1967, “it was time, as one parent would put it, ‘to make our own rules for our own schools.’” Fearful that the city was about to erupt in the same riots that had gripped Boston, Chicago, and Detroit, New York City’s business community eagerly supported community control as an ameliorative but largely symbolic gesture.

In 1968, the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school board — run by black parents and educators — sent a letter to high school teacher and chapter chairman of the UFT Fred Nauman informing him that he, along with nearly all white and Jewish educators in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school system, had been dismissed. In response, the UFT launched three citywide teachers’ strikes aimed at restoring the teachers’ jobs and challenging the community’s authority over organized labor. The conflict went on for two months, affecting nearly one million students and bringing out the worst in everyone involved, including racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. It left lasting political and social divisions that prevented whites and blacks from uniting in opposition to austerity measures during the financial crisis of the 1970s — when 10,000 teachers were laid off — and which continue to influence the city’s politics today.

The legacy of the community control experiment — which was tried at various points in New York City, Chicago, Newark, and other cities around the country — was twofold. It gave parents a say over what their children learned in school, while requiring little in the way of a financial commitment from either corporate leaders or the government. Its proponents successfully called into question the legitimacy of the competitive promotion-by-exam system for both students and teachers (according to Podair, black candidates were frequently eliminated from consideration for teaching job on the basis of “poor pronunciation”). They challenged the system of tracking, or separating students into groups based on assumptions about their abilities, which most white parents believed in and which the UFT never questioned. They rejected standardized testing and designed a curriculum that balanced study of Western history and philosophy with the works of Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey.

But ultimately, the power that was redistributed through community control was social power, not economic power.

In Chicago and New York, the business community was happy to hand over control of schools to parents since it meant that more expensive (and unpopular among whites) tactics like busing or finance reform would be abandoned. Decentral­ization became the sanctioned alternative to a coordinated, mandatory effort at integration. Participation became a replacement for a redistributive strategy that would attempt to offset the consequences of common discriminatory practices such as redlining — charging residents in predominantly black neighborhoods more for services — and blockbusting. Reactionary organizations of whites soon co-opted the language of community control to avoid integration, a developmentanticipated from the start by socialist Michael Harrington.

When Chicago teachers struck in the 1980s, a Chicago Tribuneeditorial indicted the teachers for their selfishness: “The teachers intend to grab up every possible dollar the school board can raise. And they shouldn’t be surprised that no one believes them the next time they say that they really care about the children or the city.” On the same page in July of 2012, the paper warned, “A strike could start as early as Aug. 18, a week into classes for a third of the district’s students. Both sides know who would lose the most: Chicago’s school kids.”

In fact, the 2012 strike was a seminal victory not only for Chicago’s kids, but for parents, teachers, and workers around the country. When the Chicago teachers struck, the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators — an openly anti-neoliberal movement that took power from the AFT-backed CTU in a landslide victory in 2010 — didn’t just shrug and ask us to believe that what’s good for labor is good for students.

Instead, CORE indicted business reformers and politicians for their role in bringing about a punishing wave of high-stakes standardized testing and school closures, connecting the struggle against market-based reforms and austerity to a social justice movement that encompasses all community members. Significantly, instead of working in tandem with corporations as the AFT and CTU have done, Karen Lewis publicly reprimanded business leaders for their overreach: “The business people
do not have a clue, but they are the ones calling the shots.”

CORE’s stance echoes the oppositional behavior of pre-1960s unions, who routinely called out business tycoons for tax evasion. At the turn of the century, when the Chicago Commercial Club — a group of wealthy businessmen still active today — argued for budget cuts in schools as a response to an economic shortfall, the teachers’ union responded by filing a lawsuit charging the club members’ corporations with failure to pay their taxes. The corporations were defeated in the state supreme court.

It’s undemocratic and unfair for America’s mainly local and state-funded schools to bear the burden of being the singular means through which the social welfare of an entire country is either protected or destroyed. But if schools are to be the chosen battlegrounds where corporate “reformers” seek to teach American labor the value of productivity, efficiency, and free markets, it’s a challenge that should be met. If, as Maryland-based defense firm Lockheed Martin claims, “Industry has an important role to play in building the workforce pipeline — and the classroom is the place to begin,” then they should be required to provide jobs for students who’ve graduated from their programs. And before they enter into partnerships with schools, putting their employees in K-12 classrooms in Maryland to “develop talent,” businesses must show their commitment to American children by paying their taxes instead of pushing to receive retroactive exemptions. On March 19, the Maryland Senate passed a bill that would exempt Lockheed Martin from paying $450,000 a year in county taxes.

Corporate reformers from Bloomberg to Rahm Emanuel to former CEO of Chicago Public Schools Arne Duncan have made a critical strategic mistake in closing “under-resourced” schools. Never before have parents, teachers, and students been so united in defending their local schools. In New York City, UFT chapter leader Julie Cavanagh — who participated in a lawsuit against Bloomberg for the right to protest school closings and charter schools—seeks to replicate the success of CORE with MORE, the Movement of Rank-and-File Educators, an explicitly social justice caucus. She’s currently campaigning for UFT President. This April, United Opt Out (UOO), a national organization that seeks to end corporate education reform, will demonstrate at the Department of Education in Washington, DC.

Building a lasting opposition to the neoliberal consensus on education “reform” will require teachers unions to form broad, international alliances with the general public, instead of bargaining for seniority provisions and miniscule pay raises that never come as promised.

Teachers must focus their advocacy on actions that clearly benefit students as much as they benefit teachers. That means speaking up when it comes to issues that affects the lives of their students — high-stakes testing, yes, but also the deepening of segregation in our schools; police brutality in schools and out; the lack of access for low-income families to healthcare; and the US prison state, which disproportionately affects low-income and black students. That’s what it means to put students first.

BART labor talks start amid heated discussions of pay, benefits “We want a fair and equitable contract,”
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/transportation/2013/05/bart-labor-talks-start-amid-heated-discussions-pay-benefits
By: Will Reisman | 05/15/13 8:42 PM
SF Examiner Staff Writer
CINDY CHEW/2009 S.F. EXAMINER FILE PHOTO
BART is proposing a wage freeze and health care concessions from workers.
Four years after agreeing to a wage freeze and reduced contributions to their health and retirement plans, BART workers are back at the table for contract talks that appear as though they could be more toxic than in 2009, when there were repeated threats of work stoppages and strikes.

The biggest issues in the contract talks are wages and compensation, including health care and pension contributions.

The unions are asking for an unspecified raise — likely a cost-of-living increase — while maintaining their benefits packages. BART management has balked at these items so far, according to Peter Saltzman, attorney for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, the agency’s second-biggest workers group.

Saltzman said that BART is asking for a wage freeze and for workers to contribute about 12 percent more to their annual retirement and medical plans. Saltzman said that amounts to roughly $40 million a year in savings — more than what BART asked of its workers back in 2009, when the unions agreed to concessions of about $25 million a year. 
$399,000 BART deal angers union groups
04/30/13 7:21 PM
BART’s hiring of an outside consultant for nearly $400,000 to lead its latest set of contract negotiations has its two biggest unions decrying the move as being disruptive and carried out in bad faith. Read More
“We’re farther apart now than we were in 2009,” Saltzman said of this year’s contract talks.

BART officials declined to talk about specifics of the contract negotiations, but Carter Mau, the agency’s chief financial officer, said the agency’s projections for balancing its budget do not factor in any wage increases for employees.

The agency has also set up a website — bartlabornews.com — that lists a set of talking points regarding the discussions.

Because of rising health care costs, total compensation for BART workers has increased by 190 percent over the past 13 years, with the average employee now making more than $130,000 a year in total compensation, according to the website. The site notes that workers pay less than $100 a month toward medical costs.

The agency boasts a surplus in its operating budget, but BART management has a capital budget shortfall of $6 billion over 10 years. BART has begun allocating operating funds to cover this hole, a move decried as a scare tactic by the union but defended by BART.

“We’re carrying 400,000 passengers a day,” said Paul Oversier, the operations manager at BART. “We’re bursting at the gills, and we need to address our operations and capacity issues.”

Tom Radulovich, president of BART’s board of directors, said the newfound fiscal responsibility under General Manager Grace Crunican is not a negotiation ploy.

“Management is finally telling the truth about capital needs, so I understand the union’s wariness,” Radulovich said. “I’m nervous that things could get ugly, because they have in the past.”

Union members said they wouldn’t discuss a possibility of work stoppages, but they were adamant about being proactive.

“We want a fair and equitable contract,” said Antonette Bryant, president of ATU Local 1555. “We’re doing this so our members can continue to live in the Bay Area.”

Oversier had a more pragmatic way of assessing the negotiations.

“I think, in the end, both sides are going to be equally unhappy,” Oversier said. “And that’s the sign of good negotiations.”

wreisman@sfexaminer.com

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/transportation/2013/05/bart-labor-talks-start-amid-heated-discussions-pay-benefits#ixzz2TTDsJv8l

Dockers’ unions show international solidarity runs both ways
http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/8992
 
Dockers’ unions show international solidarity runs both ways
15 May 2013

view larger image
HK dockers have been showing their support for workers in the US
Dockers in Hong Kong who have recently returned to work following a long running dispute over pay and working conditions, have been showing their solidarity with locked out colleagues in the US.

Workers at the Port of Vancouver, Washington have now been locked out for over two months by United Grain, owned by Japanese conglomerate Mitsui. Meanwhile a lockout began a week ago in Portland, Oregon where the employer is Columbia Grain owned by a second large Japanese company Marubeni. Both companies are part of a bargaining group pushing ITF-affiliate the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), to accept a substandard agreement for workers in the Pacific Northwest after their existing contract expired last year.

Members of the Union of Hong Kong Dockers (UHKD) have held protests outside the offices of Mitsui and Marubeni and sent letters to the management of the companies.

Meanwhile as the dispute involving the Hong Kong dockers came to an end last week when a new pay deal was reached, an ILWU delegation was on the ground in Hong Kong. UHKD is still calling for further negotiation over issues of health and safety and dignity at work.
 

Motion in Defense of Portland  ILWU Local 8 "AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL – NO SCABS IN PORTLAND!".

From: Chris Faatz <chris.faatz@powells.com>
Date: May 14, 2013 3:57:39 PM PDT
Resolution in solidarity with locked out ILWU local 8

Friends and fellow workers:

Please consider putting this up on your websites, bringing it up in union locals and
other organizational contexts, and use it in whatever other ways that you think
might help build solidarity.

Thanks very much.

In solidarity,

Chris Faatz
ILWU Local 5
Portland OR

Motion in Defense of ILWU Local 8

WHEREAS, on Saturday, May 4 Columbia Grain locked out members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), Local 8 in Portland; and

WHEREAS, this lockout is part of a union-busting offensive by the grain shippers cartel against the ILWU, beginning with erecting the scab EGT terminal threatening the jobs of ILWU Local 21 members in Longview, WA; and

WHEREAS, on February 27, United Grain locked out ILWU Local 4 members in Vancouver, WA and hired scabs and armed security guards from the professional union-busting firm J.R. Gettier; and

WHEREAS, across the river in Portland Columbia Grain has now escalated the attack on ILWU by doing the same thing to Local 8; and

WHEREAS, the grain monopolies act in collusion to lower standards for workers by locking out workers and busting unions; and

WHEREAS, ILWU's history has shown that solidarity is labor’s most effective means of defeating the bosses’ offensive; and

WHEREAS, members of the Japan Seamen’s Union (JSU) refused to open their hatches and allow scabs to load grain onto their ship in Vancouver; and

WHEREAS, on March 15 the Japanese rail workers union Doro-Chiba picketed the Mitsui Corporation, owners of United Grain, in solidarity with locked-out longshore workers in Vancouver, WA; and

WHEREAS, on May 1 longshore workers of ILWU Local 10 respected picket lines of longshore retirees at the Mitsui terminal in Port of Oakland protesting PMA's stealing of medical benefits and in solidarity with
locked-out ILWU members in Vancouver; and

WHEREAS, Portland is a union town, and PICKET LINES MEAN DO NOT CROSS;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that [union local xxx] will aid our sisters and brothers of ILWU Local 8 in building mass pickets at Columbia Grain at the Port of Portland, as well as rallies and other solidarity actions; and be it further

RESOLVED, that [union local xxx] will mobilize our membership to participate in the mass rally called by Local 8 to be held at Kelly Point Park at 12:00pm on June 1st to support ILWU Local 8 under the banner "AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL – NO SCABS IN PORTLAND!".
 

Interview with Hong Kong Dockworkers Leader
09.05.13

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/philion090513.html

Interview with Hong Kong Dockworkers Leader
by Stephen Philion

The battle of the Hong Kong dockers, as Union of Hong Kong Dock Workers (UHKDW) Secretary Wong Yu Loy reveals, was important not only because of the rarity of strikes in Hong Kong, or because it was a pitched battle with Hong Kong's wealthiest corporate magnate, but also because of the way corporate globalization set up the terms of the battle and the importance unions around the globe attached to it.
As Wong suggests in the interview, the Hong Kong International Terminal (HIT) dockworkers' strike was followed closely and supported by labor activists and sympathizers in mainland China.  The strike thus has potentially powerful implications for a global labor movement much in need of a sign that resistance to global capital remains not only relevant but possible.

Click here for more information and updates on the strike.

Q: To start with, what are the key issues that have brought about the Hong Kong International Terminal dockworkers' strike?

Wong Yu Loy: Wages and workplace conditions.  From 1995 to 2011 wages for stevedores had been constantly cut to the point where the wages were less than in 1995.  In 2011 the union finally succeeded in securing a HK$200/day (US$26) wage increase, which still meant daily wages were HK$150 less per 24-hour shift than in 1995.  As for crane drivers, they are paid much less if they are hired by subcontractors than by HIT directly.

This current conflict started brewing around March of last year.  We attempted collective bargaining, sending a letter to all the terminals demanding a salary adjustment for workers across the industry, but this was met with rejection.  We were basically ignored by the dock owner (Hong Kong International Terminals), a unit of multibillionaire and Asia's wealthiest person Li Ka-shing' s Hutchison Port Holdings Trust.

Subcontractors used various measures to repress the union, most notably insisting on direct negotiations with individual groups of workers.  But from the outset dockworkers had insisted that negotiations be conducted with union representatives.  These negotiations met with no success.  Now, for the 10 years prior to 2011 there had been no wage adjustments, and it's in the last year that the conflict reached a boiling point.  Workers had waited a long time for changes and were frustrated with attempts by subcontractors' strategy of negotiating with groups of 100, 200 workers.  How do you conduct such negotiations?

Q: But isn't the union the representative of the workers?

Wong: Sure, but the subcontractors wouldn't acknowledge this.  Instead, they just regard workers as their hired help and repress the union where possible.

Q: How many dockworkers does HKCTU represent?

Wong: About 700 altogether who are our members.  HIT employs about 3,000 and total dockworkers comes to about 5,000.

Q: And other unions represent them?

Wong: Yes, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, which historically is close to the Chinese government.  Now, of course, they've been around much longer than us (HKCTU was only established in 2006).  However, many of its leaders have become "small bosses," i.e., subcontractors.  There is a subcontractor who is an FTU dockworkers union executive council member.  So their approach is often to put forth what seem to be very appealing demands, but the results are always far less.  So the mass of workers don't have much faith in FTU.

Our union is only seven years old, organizationally growing step by step.

Q: Are there members of HKCTU that have left HKFTU?

Wong: Yes.  A fair number of our members have worked on the docks for 10 to 20 years, or even longer.  Mind you, at that time, HKFTU was the only union they could join.  Some workers began to lose faith in FTU, not believing they represented dockworkers' interests.

Q: What is the difference between how HKCTU and HKFTU approach organizing?

Wong: I think the biggest difference is that we organize from bottom up.  As many of their cadres have been promoted to management level, they have considerable power to get dockworkers to join the FTU.  A worker might feel they have little choice in the matter.  But such union cadre can't really represent the interests of dockworkers.  Our union works from below persuading worker by worker to join and get organized, with the effect of enabling rank-and-file workers to make their voices heard.

Q: Have dockworkers who are not in the HKCTU shown support for this strike?

Wong: Yes, there have been examples of that in the form of dockworkers working to rule (slowdowns), and refusing overtime, having an impact on dock productivity.  From what we've heard, roughly 80 percent of crane drivers are carrying out such actions, in all perhaps 500.

Q: Is the fact that perhaps only about a fifth of the dockworker workforce is on strike a challenge or barrier to this strike's success?

Wong: The members involved in this strike occupy key skilled positions on the docks, as crane drivers or stevedores.  This kind of skilled worker is hard to replace.  Of those still working are truck drivers, who are all subcontracted out.  You can imagine how easy it is to divide and conquer them.  Interestingly, in 1990s this was the most advanced group of workers in terms of organizational power.  HIT took note of this significance and broke them up via subcontracting.

Q: Yet there remain crane drivers at HIT working who are not members of HKCTU and not engaging in work to rule, right?

Wong: Yes, but keep in mind it's not a sustainable situation since they have to work overtime, in some instances up to 48 and even 72 hours straight.  The pressure on them is great!

Q: Work hours is also an issue in this strike, right?  Which is tied to workplace injuries?

Wong: Yes.

Q: How do you explain that these issues have become so serious over the past decade?  Main factors?

Wong: For one, the unemployment rate in Hong Kong has been pretty low, hovering around 3.1 percent, combined with a very high rate of inflation.  Dockworkers look around and compare their situation with other workers in Hong Kong and in other countries.  For example, in construction, bar benders, whose level of work intensity is roughly equivalent to dockworkers and who also are members of one of the more strongly organized HKCTU unions, recently reached a collectively bargained agreement that won them 50 percent pay increases that in three years will give them HK$1,800 (US$230) per day.  That's for workers who work only eight hours a day, with one hour for meal breaks and an additional half hour regular break.  That is, they are only working 6.5 hours!  So the dockers compare, "How come I work for 24 hours straight?"

Q: I have not worked on docks before -- how do they last for 24 hours straight?

Wong: Well, they don't work straight through, there are periods where they are not working for 5, 10 minutes.  But during peak season, I've heard of extreme cases of workers working for one straight week.  And they are working for 24 hours straight for HK$1,300 (US$169).  It's terrible.  This of course makes them unhappy, thinking, what was the point of exhausting myself so and getting so little in return?

Q: Is this kind of work-hours arrangement common in other countries?

Wong: No, I've seen the collectively bargained agreement of the ILWU [the West Coast Longshore union in the U.S.].  They work three shifts and have overtime pay.  Medical care, pension, and children's educational benefits are included.  But in Hong Kong, we don't see any of these.

Q: These workers are hired through subcontractors, right?

Wong: Yes, crane operators' jobs in the 1990s were subcontracted out.  Stevedores have been subcontracted out for even longer.  The terminal owner (HIT) claims that they are not the direct employers of these workers, instead the ship owners are.  The terminal operators hire dockworkers through the contract agent to work for the ship owners!  For the stevedore workers, there are two main hiring subcontractors and three for the crane operators.

Q: Originally, were there more subcontractors?  What about the role of subcontracting as a factor in pushing down dockworkers' wages?  We see competition between subcontractors as having this race-to-the-bottom effect in many industrial sectors in the U.S. and throughout the world.

Wong: Oh, this is one of the more amazing features of this industry.  Why do I say so?  In Hong Kong, though these subcontractors have a contract with the terminal operator, actually the terminal operators control the whole hiring system.  The biggest difference of daily pay among subcontractors is all of HK$10-20 (US$1.30-$2.60), very minimal.  Something funny is going on here -- why is the difference so small?  Isn't there some preexisting agreement reached behind closed doors?

Q: So the purpose is not so much to push down wages as to enable the terminal operator to avoid responsibility for the low wages and work conditions?

Wong: Exactly.  We researched the background of these "subcontractors" and it turns out they are nearly all registered shareholders in British Isles offshore tax havens.  We suspect that they are controlled by the terminal operators who have worked out kickback arrangements with these contractors.

Q: How is globalization a factor in this strike's occurrence?

Wong: Oh, I think it's a big one.  Globalization intensifies the degree that workers from different parts of the world need to compete with each other in a race to the bottom.  Just a few decades ago Hong Kong was an important manufacturing center.  As China underwent market-based restructuring, Hong Kong's textile and electronics companies all relocated to China because workers there are cheaper.  Now even Mainland China faces such problems, as manufacturers move to Cambodia, Burma, and Laos.

You know, dockworkers are a vital cog in the corporate supply chain.  Any knots that emerge in that chain block movement to the next link.  If the dockworkers were all to go on strike, this would cause many factories in China's Pearl River Delta region to experience stoppages.  If the containers can't move, their commodities have nowhere to go.  Major shippers might need to skip Hong Kong, going to Taiwan or Singapore instead.  The effects will be felt around the globe.  It is a very real form of resistance to globalization.

Cross-national solidarity during this strike is very important, therefore.  For example, the Maritime Union of Australia has sent representatives here to express support.  The ILWU has raised funds for the strikers and might also send a representative to the strike line.  Even though they are not themselves on strike, their donations are greatly appreciated.  These donations let Hong Kong's dockworkers know they are not alone.  We are brothers and sisters across the globe.  This leaves a big impression on Hong Kong's working class.

Q: What do you see as the significance of this strike for Hong Kong's working class?

Wong: I think Hong Kong's workers are very happy to see this group of some 500 ordinary workers coming together in solidarity as a formidable force able to stand up to the wealthiest man in Hong Kong and eighth richest man in the world.  This is very encouraging to Hong Kong's working class.  Of course, we don't have a tradition of socialism or social democracy in Hong Kong.

Q: So seeing so many ordinary Hong Kong citizens donating so much to the strike fund is really quite remarkable.

Wong: Yes it is.  I believe that Hong Kong's people see Li Ka-shin as up to too many nasty tricks.  He's got hands in everything, retail, shipping, manufacturing . . . so many businesses.  Many are just worn down by his accumulation of power via monopolistic ownership.  Concretely, we can see this from the strike fundraising results, which to date have approached US$1 million.  We've never seen a strike receive so much in the way of financial donations from the general public.

Q: So how much was your strike fund before the strike started?

Wong: Wow, this is shameful!  You know, union dues are very cheap, all of HK$10 per month.  Almost nothing!  Before the strike we had barely HK$30,000 (US$3,900), an evening meal for Li Ka-shin!

Q: So then the support from the general public in Hong Kong has been very critical.

Wong: Hugely important.  I think their support is absolute crucial in enabling us to sustain the victory and achieving a victory.  I hope that we don't let them down.

Q: Your success would mean what to Hong Kong's workers?

Wong: It would mean a great deal in terms of collective memory.  Every donor will have a memory that they donated to the strike fund and a victory, and this would contribute to the gradual development of a new collective consciousness in Hong Kong.

Q: Likewise what is the significance of this strike for China's working class?

Wong: Wow, it's massive.  And why?  On the second day of the strike, I asked a friend who was more familiar with China's internet discussions if there was much information about our strike.  He responded that the strike has already become a "hot topic" in internet chat rooms.  Mainlander students and visitors have come to our strike line and donated to our strike fund.

Q: Has the strike received any media coverage in China?

Wong: Actually, Xinhuanet, China's official media station, reported on it and it was pretty fair in its coverage.  I've been pleasantly surprised by the level of support from within China.  It's partly a reflection of the hopes that Chinese labor supporters or activists have for our strike.  They're paying attention to the developments in the strike.  They've sent several thousand $HK to our strike.  They might not have a great amount of money, but it's a way of expressing their belief in us.

A Chinese labor activist has also written up an analysis of the significance of the strike for Chinese workers.  It's quite well written, from a class struggle perspective.  He argues that the Chinese working class movement also needs to develop similar types of strikes through an organizing process in lieu of the present trend of spontaneous short-lived strikes that don't develop organizational power.

I also know that we have friends in Taiwan who have sent donations, along with Korea and Japan.  In fact, the All Japan Dockworkers Unionwas the first to publicly show support for our strike with a public letter of solidarity.  The ILWU has also sent a donation to the strike fund.  Around the world Hutchison is known as a major terminal operator, so dockworkers internationally understand the significance of this strike.

Q: What is the likelihood of a success for this strike?

Wong: Well, to begin, in any negotiations, you know you're not going to get everything you originally demanded.  At this time (April 26) I can't say with any certainty what the final result of the strike will be in terms of who will gain the most.  But at the very least, the strike will show to the world that Hong Kong's dockworkers have the ability to carry out a strike and are able to secure from the terminal operators fairer wages and work conditions.

Q: One of the subcontractors that is an employer of the striking workers has announced it is closing up shop.  Will that affect the strikers' ability to retrieve their jobs?

Wong: It shouldn't.  I am confident that the other subcontractors will look to hire them since in this industry there is a shortage of labor.  It's very hard labor and not many people are willing to do it.  So I'm not worried about getting their jobs back.

Q: So far the negotiations have broken down several times.  Do you anticipate that HIT and the subcontractors will finally negotiate seriously with you?

Wong: I think that they will get to a point where they have no choice but to seriously negotiate.  As ports remain unable to get back to normal due to lack of enough skilled dockworkers, the need for more serious negotiations will be apparent.

Q: Do you anticipate the strike lasting through to (winter, pre-Christmas) peak season?

Wong: I think the striking dockworkers would like to settle this issue as soon as possible.  It's my own hope that after May 1, we could resume work.  The terminal operators will also want to get this over with and get back to normal operations.

Q: For this strike you've chosen the non-peak season.  Why not the peak season?

Wong: Hong Kong's workers are very disciplined.  They want to show the terminal operators that they are sincere and have integrity.  And if the strike went for too long, that's not something that would benefit us.  But I also believe that after this strike we will reconsider our tactics and look at pursuing strikes in the future during peak season, as that would result in a greater likelihood that the terminal operators would respond to and meet our demands more quickly.

We would have the support of the public too.  We can say that we already tried a softer approach to the strike by choosing the non-peak season and that wasn't effective.  We can gradually win over a Hong Kong public, which is not accustomed to accept future strikes, to a strike during peak season.

Q: What about the reaction of the Hong Kong government?

Wong: Really, it's a handicapped government, impotent.  They can't do anything about Li Ka-shin.  Only deep into the process did the Labor Bureau Secretary finally call for mediation, but that went nowhere.  Of course he's the richest man in Hong Kong and the government doesn't have a mandate.  It puts the government in a weak position.  It has no popularly elected leaders.

I'm not saying U.S. elections are the ideal; they are contests between different wings of capital.  But even the bare minimum of free elections in Hong Kong we don't enjoy.  The executive is chosen by 1,200 representatives.  As a result, it's a government with no real power to confine or restrict the power of capital.  So I always say Hong Kong is a capitalist heaven!

Q: HIT has been placing quite expensive ads in many of Hong Kong's newspapers attacking the union for this strike.  How do you respond to those quite public broadsides?

Wong: Yes, it's quite something.  On the one hand we are not having any effect, according to HIT, but they are spending a fortune to buy up full-page ads in Hong Kong's newspapers to smear us for "class struggle" (!).  And it's a real shame they're willing to spend all this money on ads, but won't put out for a fair wage increase.  This is really ridiculous.

We respond with facts about the wage system, the fact that we are just seeking a reasonable pay, showing how our wages lag behind where they were in 1995.  They say our demands will hurt the Hong Kong economy.  We say the real economic predators in Hong Kong are the real estate speculators constantly causing the price of housing to increase.  They claim that working 24 straight hours is something we volunteer to do.  We ask whether HIT management is willing to work for 24 hours straight.  In fact workers don't have that freedom to reject such work hours.

Q: Actually, it's understandable why they're willing to put out money for ads instead of a fair wage settlement.  If their strategy is long-term-oriented, it is to prevent future strikes and organization from below via breaking this dockworkers union.

Wong: Well, true, but Hong Kong's citizenry feels the impact at the everyday level of corporate control and exploitation.  So, the more ads they place in the newspapers, the more we respond with the truth and the public sees that we're in the right.

Q: What means do you have to rebut them since you don't have the resources of this global corporate giant?

Wong: We only bought a one-day ad in two newspapers, whereas they placed their ads in every newspaper for three separate days.  But I think that the mass media in Hong Kong, with the exception of a handful who have sided with HIT, have shown their sympathy for us.  That is a reflection of just how serious the level of inequality that exists in Hong Kong's society is.  In most countries, usually the mass media is pro-corporation.  So this is a pretty exceptional situation.

Stephen Philion is Associate Professor of Sociology at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.  He conducted this interview with the dockworkers union Secretary Wong Yu Loy last week in Hong Kong.  Philion also translated.  This interview was first published in Labor Notes (7 May 2013).  Cf. "A 40-day strike of more than 500 dockworkers at the Port of Hong Kong ended yesterday with a settlement that included a 9.8 percent wage increase, non-retaliation against strikers, and a written agreement, all of which had been fiercely resisted by the four contractors targeted in the strike.  Strikers accepted the offer by a 90 percent vote" (Ellen David Friedman, "Hong Kong Dockers Claim Victory" Labor Notes, 7 May 2013).

ILUW Local 8 Portland Longshoremen locked out at Columbian Grain elevator 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYIaqHo5I6w

UK RMT members picket Transport for London demanding permanent employment
http://www.wrp.org.uk/news/8676
Saturday, 11 May 2013
RMT STRIKE ACTION VOTE
RMT members picket Transport for London demanding permanent employment
TUBE drivers, cleaners and TFL electricians and engineers have voted overwhelmingly for strike action in a series of disputes over attacks on agreements and working conditions, pay and threatened redundancies.

The RMT yesterday confirmed a massive nine to one vote in favour of strike action by Train Operators and Instructor Operators on the Piccadilly Line, ‘in response to London Underground riding roughshod over agreements and abusing a range of agreed policies and procedures’. 

Driver members at a range of depots serving the Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and Circle Lines have voted for industrial action by massive majorities in disputes arising from the introduction of the new S Stock fleet.

The disputes centre on the following issues: Inadequate time allowance for train preparation; the removal of a train maintenance depot; the length of time between drivers being trained and actually driving new trains; and the absence of Defective in Service Instructions (DISIS) for the S Stock.
Tube cleaners working for Danish multi-national ISS on the London Underground Tube Lines contract have also voted 100% for strike action in a dispute over failure to pay the London Living Wage from day one, abuse of sickness and attendance procedures, and the extending of unpaid breaks.

Electricians and engineers working for contractors Mitie on the TFL contract have voted by around nine to one for action in a dispute over redundancies and unilateral changes to working conditions.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said: ‘Drivers across a whole swathe of the underground network have voted by massive majorities for industrial action in separate disputes which represent unilateral attacks by the company on working conditions, agreements and procedures.

‘ISS staff doing some of the dirtiest jobs for some of the lowest wages in the London transport sector, have recorded a unanimous strike vote.

‘And in the last of these four important disputes, the Mitie engineers and electricians have voted by around nine to one to strike over redundancies and the threat to working conditions.’

• A US-based multinational computer firm previously mired in controversy over a troubled NHS IT programme, is accused by the PCS trade union of stoking up a dispute on its new defence contract.

PCS members who work for CSC on a key MoD contract have voted overwhelmingly to strike over a derisory 0.5% pay offer and the firm’s refusal to allow some staff to be properly represented by their union.

In a ballot of the union’s 300 SPVA members, 92.5% voted for a strike and almost 98% voted for other forms of industrial action, on a 58% turnout.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: ‘This overwhelming vote is a clear call to CSC to come back to the negotiating table with a sensible offer or face damaging industrial action.’

$399,000 BART deal to hire union buster from Veolia Transportation Services angers ATU 1555/SEIU 1021 union groups
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/transportation/2013/04/399000-bart-deal-angers-union-groups
By: Will Reisman | 04/30/13 7:21 PM
SF Examiner Staff Writer
Looking forward: BART will use a new consultant to hash out contracts with two of its unions.
BART’s hiring of an outside consultant for nearly $400,000 to lead its latest set of contract negotiations has its two biggest unions decrying the move as being disruptive and carried out in bad faith.

In October, BART approved a $99,000 pact with Thomas Hock of Veolia Transportation Services to engage in labor talks with its five unions, whose contracts are set to expire June 30. The contract was just below the $100,000 threshold that would have required approval by the BART board of directors.

On April 11, the agency recommended amending the contract with an extra $300,000 for a total of $399,000. The increase was quietly passed by the board. Antonette Bryant, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 — a group that represents station agents and train operators, and is in talks with BART — said the contract was deliberately held below $100,000 to stymie oversight of the plan.

“Splitting the contract helped BART evade public review,” Bryant said. “We feel this was clearly designed to mislead the public of these excessive costs.”

BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said the contract was amended because Hock was originally only supposed to be a consultant, but as the talks began to take shape, it became clear that he would need to be the chief negotiator with

ATU Local 1555 and the Service Employees International Union 1021, another large group that represents electricians and maintenance workers, among other employees. BART’s own labor relations teams will head talks with the other three unions.

Hock took part in the 2001 negotiations between BART and its unions, and over the past five years he has helped oversee the ratification of 50 collective bargaining agreements, Trost said.

“Mr. Hock is a very experienced professional and it’s common for agencies to hire outside consultants for major labor negotiations,” Trost said. “We think of this hire as an investment, given all that is at stake financially.”

Leah Berlanga, a spokeswoman for SEIU 1021, said Hock has a reputation for taking a union-busting approach to contract talks.

“We really seemed to be on the same page with management on solving this issue in a timely fashion, but they’ve hired an individual who is known for doing the opposite,” Berlanga said.

Berlanga also said that SEIU offered its headquarters to stage the contract talks, a move that would save BART hundreds of thousands of dollars in hotel and convention fees.

“They’re telling us how poor they are and then they go out and spend $400,000 on a consultant,” Berlanga said. “That’s completely excessive and could be better spent by investing in resources for BART customers.”

In 2009, the last time BART negotiated with its unions, the talks deteriorated to the point where strikes and work stoppages were consistently threatened. BART management eventually secured $100 million in labor 
concessions.

The unions and BART have until June 30 to come up with a new pact. After establishing the framework for talks in April, bargaining will officially start this month.
wreisman@sfexaminer.com

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/transportation/2013/04/399000-bart-deal-angers-union-groups#ixzz2SwqAx8Du

Chinese Railroad Workers Project Web Launch
http://www.stanford.edu/group/chineserailroad/cgi-bin/wordpress/
Dear Colleagues and Friends, 

We are pleased to announce that the web site for the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project has been launched - on May10th, the 144th anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah, that linked the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. Simply enter ChineseRailroadWorkers.Stanford.edu. 

We are excited and we hope you will be too. We've been working on the site a long time, dealing with many difficult technical, translation, copyright and other issues, and we're very pleased at the outcome. The web site is still a work in progress, and much needs to be added - more photos and documents, videos from the initial oral histories, the completion of more oral history interviews, and more news as all of our work continues. The Primary Documents, for example, only holds a selected bibliography of periodicals from the 19th century, and we expect to post a bibliography of books and pamphlets. All of this material will eventually become part of the digital archive, and we have begun to work on the many additional issues involved in developing that archive. 

So, the web site offers only a taste of what's to come - and a way to stimulate more interest. Please send all of us your responses - and let other friends and colleagues know too. Please send us your suggestions for corrections and additions. Note also that we are officially launching the Program's email: ChineseRailroadWorkers@Stanford.edu - and please add that to your cc line in all your messages. If you want to send something to contribute and the file is particularly large, send us advance notice to see which would be the best way to receive it. Also, of course, make sure to include the proper copyright or permission for whatever you want to send. And we hope to add a rich body of materials in Chinese.

The web site (and the digital archive) will grow with your contributions. We've driven the "digital spike," so to speak, to connect the past and the present, and to bring fully to light the experience of the Chinese workers in building the transcontinental railroad and the United States. We hope that our effort honors their labor.

All the Best,

Gordon H. Chang

Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities; Professor of History, and Director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University

Co-Director, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University 

Shelley Fisher Fishkin 

Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities; Professor of English, and Director of American Studies, Stanford University

Co-Director, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University

Evelyn Hu-DeHart

Professor of History and Ethnic Studies, and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Brown University

Dongfang Shao

Chief, Asian Division, Library of Congress, USA; Member of Advisory Council of Stanford University Libraries

Hilton Obenzinger, Lecturer, American Studies and Department of English, Associate Director, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University

Denise Khor

Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity

Director of Research, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project

• HOME
• PEOPLE
• DIGITAL ARCHIVE»»
• TIMELINE
• CONTACT US WITH YOUR STORY OR LEAD
• NEWS
• SUPPORT THE PROJECT
• 简体中文
• 繁體中文

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (1852-1922) gave America a taste of the West with woodcuts depicting railroads. In the foreground of this image are Chinese laborers.
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library // University of California, Berkeley // BANC PIC 1963.002:0504–C
About Our Project
Between 1865 and 1869, thousands of Chinese migrants toiled at a grueling pace and in perilous working conditions to help construct America’s First Transcontinental Railroad.  The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project seeks to give a voice to the Chinese migrants whose labor on the Transcontinental Railroad helped to shape the physical and social landscape of the American West. The Project coordinates research in the United States and Asia in order to create an on-line digital archive available to all. The Project is also organizing major conferences and public events at Stanford and in China in 2015 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of large numbers of Chinese to work on the railroad. Read More >>
诚征有兴趣的学者、机构参与本研究项目，帮助完成在中国当地档案馆、博物馆、图书馆的相关资料搜集工作，以及联络那些祖辈曾为华人劳工参与修筑铁路的当地家庭，这些家庭可能仍保存有祖辈们的书信和其他相关文件。同时，亦寻求与中国及其他各地博物馆、档案馆合作使用电子技术，以分享保存这些无价之宝。您是否有意成为该研究项目的合作人？您在博物馆、档案馆、图书馆相关资料搜集，以及个人家藏资料方面，是否有具体的建议？您或您所在机构的其他同事，是否有意发掘这些材料，并与我们共同合作参与北美中国铁路工人项目？ 阅读全文 Read More >>
誠徵有興趣的學者、機構參與本研究項目，幫助完成在中國當地檔案館、博物館的相關資料搜集工作，以及聯絡那些祖輩曾為華人勞工參與修築鐵路的當地家庭，這些家庭可能仍保存有祖輩們的書信和其他相關文件。同時，亦尋求與中國及其他各地博物館、檔案館、圖書館合作使用電子技術，以分享保存這些無價之寶。您是否有意成為該研究項目的合作人？您在博物館、檔案館、圖書館相關資料搜集，以及個人家藏資料方面，是否有具體的建議？您或您所在機構的其他同事，是否有意發掘這些材料，並與在此項目中與我們共同合作？ 閱讀全文 Read More >>
• 
 

Chinese Railroad Workers Project Web Launch
http://www.stanford.edu/group/chineserailroad/cgi-bin/wordpress/
Dear Colleagues and Friends, 

We are pleased to announce that the web site for the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project has been launched - on May10th, the 144th anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah, that linked the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. Simply enter ChineseRailroadWorkers.Stanford.edu. 

We are excited and we hope you will be too. We've been working on the site a long time, dealing with many difficult technical, translation, copyright and other issues, and we're very pleased at the outcome. The web site is still a work in progress, and much needs to be added - more photos and documents, videos from the initial oral histories, the completion of more oral history interviews, and more news as all of our work continues. The Primary Documents, for example, only holds a selected bibliography of periodicals from the 19th century, and we expect to post a bibliography of books and pamphlets. All of this material will eventually become part of the digital archive, and we have begun to work on the many additional issues involved in developing that archive. 

So, the web site offers only a taste of what's to come - and a way to stimulate more interest. Please send all of us your responses - and let other friends and colleagues know too. Please send us your suggestions for corrections and additions. Note also that we are officially launching the Program's email: ChineseRailroadWorkers@Stanford.edu - and please add that to your cc line in all your messages. If you want to send something to contribute and the file is particularly large, send us advance notice to see which would be the best way to receive it. Also, of course, make sure to include the proper copyright or permission for whatever you want to send. And we hope to add a rich body of materials in Chinese.

The web site (and the digital archive) will grow with your contributions. We've driven the "digital spike," so to speak, to connect the past and the present, and to bring fully to light the experience of the Chinese workers in building the transcontinental railroad and the United States. We hope that our effort honors their labor.

All the Best,

Gordon H. Chang

Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities; Professor of History, and Director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University

Co-Director, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University 

Shelley Fisher Fishkin 

Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities; Professor of English, and Director of American Studies, Stanford University

Co-Director, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University

Evelyn Hu-DeHart

Professor of History and Ethnic Studies, and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Brown University

Dongfang Shao

Chief, Asian Division, Library of Congress, USA; Member of Advisory Council of Stanford University Libraries

Hilton Obenzinger, Lecturer, American Studies and Department of English, Associate Director, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University

Denise Khor

Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity

Director of Research, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project

• HOME
• PEOPLE
• DIGITAL ARCHIVE»»
• TIMELINE
• CONTACT US WITH YOUR STORY OR LEAD
• NEWS
• SUPPORT THE PROJECT
• 简体中文
• 繁體中文

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (1852-1922) gave America a taste of the West with woodcuts depicting railroads. In the foreground of this image are Chinese laborers.
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library // University of California, Berkeley // BANC PIC 1963.002:0504–C
About Our Project
Between 1865 and 1869, thousands of Chinese migrants toiled at a grueling pace and in perilous working conditions to help construct America’s First Transcontinental Railroad.  The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project seeks to give a voice to the Chinese migrants whose labor on the Transcontinental Railroad helped to shape the physical and social landscape of the American West. The Project coordinates research in the United States and Asia in order to create an on-line digital archive available to all. The Project is also organizing major conferences and public events at Stanford and in China in 2015 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of large numbers of Chinese to work on the railroad. Read More >>
诚征有兴趣的学者、机构参与本研究项目，帮助完成在中国当地档案馆、博物馆、图书馆的相关资料搜集工作，以及联络那些祖辈曾为华人劳工参与修筑铁路的当地家庭，这些家庭可能仍保存有祖辈们的书信和其他相关文件。同时，亦寻求与中国及其他各地博物馆、档案馆合作使用电子技术，以分享保存这些无价之宝。您是否有意成为该研究项目的合作人？您在博物馆、档案馆、图书馆相关资料搜集，以及个人家藏资料方面，是否有具体的建议？您或您所在机构的其他同事，是否有意发掘这些材料，并与我们共同合作参与北美中国铁路工人项目？ 阅读全文 Read More >>
誠徵有興趣的學者、機構參與本研究項目，幫助完成在中國當地檔案館、博物館的相關資料搜集工作，以及聯絡那些祖輩曾為華人勞工參與修築鐵路的當地家庭，這些家庭可能仍保存有祖輩們的書信和其他相關文件。同時，亦尋求與中國及其他各地博物館、檔案館、圖書館合作使用電子技術，以分享保存這些無價之寶。您是否有意成為該研究項目的合作人？您在博物館、檔案館、圖書館相關資料搜集，以及個人家藏資料方面，是否有具體的建議？您或您所在機構的其他同事，是否有意發掘這些材料，並與在此項目中與我們共同合作？ 閱讀全文 Read More >>
• 

http://www.stanford.edu/group/chineserailroad/cgi-bin/wordpress/
Dear Colleagues and Friends, 

We are pleased to announce that the web site for the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project has been launched - on May10th, the 144th anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah, that linked the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. Simply enter ChineseRailroadWorkers.Stanford.edu. 

We are excited and we hope you will be too. We've been working on the site a long time, dealing with many difficult technical, translation, copyright and other issues, and we're very pleased at the outcome. The web site is still a work in progress, and much needs to be added - more photos and documents, videos from the initial oral histories, the completion of more oral history interviews, and more news as all of our work continues. The Primary Documents, for example, only holds a selected bibliography of periodicals from the 19th century, and we expect to post a bibliography of books and pamphlets. All of this material will eventually become part of the digital archive, and we have begun to work on the many additional issues involved in developing that archive. 

So, the web site offers only a taste of what's to come - and a way to stimulate more interest. Please send all of us your responses - and let other friends and colleagues know too. Please send us your suggestions for corrections and additions. Note also that we are officially launching the Program's email: ChineseRailroadWorkers@Stanford.edu - and please add that to your cc line in all your messages. If you want to send something to contribute and the file is particularly large, send us advance notice to see which would be the best way to receive it. Also, of course, make sure to include the proper copyright or permission for whatever you want to send. And we hope to add a rich body of materials in Chinese.

The web site (and the digital archive) will grow with your contributions. We've driven the "digital spike," so to speak, to connect the past and the present, and to bring fully to light the experience of the Chinese workers in building the transcontinental railroad and the United States. We hope that our effort honors their labor.

All the Best,

Gordon H. Chang

Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities; Professor of History, and Director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University

Co-Director, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University 

Shelley Fisher Fishkin 

Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities; Professor of English, and Director of American Studies, Stanford University

Co-Director, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University

Evelyn Hu-DeHart

Professor of History and Ethnic Studies, and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Brown University

Dongfang Shao

Chief, Asian Division, Library of Congress, USA; Member of Advisory Council of Stanford University Libraries

Hilton Obenzinger, Lecturer, American Studies and Department of English, Associate Director, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University

Denise Khor

Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity

Director of Research, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project

• HOME
• PEOPLE
• DIGITAL ARCHIVE»»
• TIMELINE
• CONTACT US WITH YOUR STORY OR LEAD
• NEWS
• SUPPORT THE PROJECT
• 简体中文
• 繁體中文

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (1852-1922) gave America a taste of the West with woodcuts depicting railroads. In the foreground of this image are Chinese laborers.
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library // University of California, Berkeley // BANC PIC 1963.002:0504–C
About Our Project
Between 1865 and 1869, thousands of Chinese migrants toiled at a grueling pace and in perilous working conditions to help construct America’s First Transcontinental Railroad.  The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project seeks to give a voice to the Chinese migrants whose labor on the Transcontinental Railroad helped to shape the physical and social landscape of the American West. The Project coordinates research in the United States and Asia in order to create an on-line digital archive available to all. The Project is also organizing major conferences and public events at Stanford and in China in 2015 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of large numbers of Chinese to work on the railroad. Read More >>
诚征有兴趣的学者、机构参与本研究项目，帮助完成在中国当地档案馆、博物馆、图书馆的相关资料搜集工作，以及联络那些祖辈曾为华人劳工参与修筑铁路的当地家庭，这些家庭可能仍保存有祖辈们的书信和其他相关文件。同时，亦寻求与中国及其他各地博物馆、档案馆合作使用电子技术，以分享保存这些无价之宝。您是否有意成为该研究项目的合作人？您在博物馆、档案馆、图书馆相关资料搜集，以及个人家藏资料方面，是否有具体的建议？您或您所在机构的其他同事，是否有意发掘这些材料，并与我们共同合作参与北美中国铁路工人项目？ 阅读全文 Read More >>
誠徵有興趣的學者、機構參與本研究項目，幫助完成在中國當地檔案館、博物館的相關資料搜集工作，以及聯絡那些祖輩曾為華人勞工參與修築鐵路的當地家庭，這些家庭可能仍保存有祖輩們的書信和其他相關文件。同時，亦尋求與中國及其他各地博物館、檔案館、圖書館合作使用電子技術，以分享保存這些無價之寶。您是否有意成為該研究項目的合作人？您在博物館、檔案館、圖書館相關資料搜集，以及個人家藏資料方面，是否有具體的建議？您或您所在機構的其他同事，是否有意發掘這些材料，並與在此項目中與我們共同合作？ 閱讀全文 Read More >>
•