Another flyer for Mayday

Great Resource

Look for the Union Label: A Celebration of Union Logos and Emblems



Hat tip to John at Social Design Notes

Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe on Lamb Castration, PETA, and American Labor

Next time you have 20 minutes, listen to a man who has spent two years with working people and learned a lesson or two about it.

Half sheet flyer with all the bands in place

New Poster

This one took a lot of work, in part because I'm not a good artist. I'm a good assembler. Making the truck image was not an easy task. It started out looking like a really bad cartoon. I think I managed to avoid that and to make it a big more abstract. You'll let me know if I failed, I'm sure.

Fundraiser this weekend at Mayday Books

Backside of the Truckers Strike flyer

We decided to add some introductory information to the back side of the Truckers Strike Picnic flyer for this weekend's Mayday march:

One Day in July

First draft of flyer for the street festival we're planning:

Workers win!

How long has it been since you've read those two words, eh?

The UE workers at Republic Windows got their demands met:

The settlement totals $1.75 million. It will provide the workers with:
Eight weeks of pay they are owed under the federal WARN Act,
Two months of continued health coverage and,
Pay for all accrued and unused vacation.
JPMorgan Chase will provide $400,000 of the settlement, with the balance coming from Bank of America.

Workers Take Over!

Please take a moment and lend your support to the workers at a factory in Chicago who were given two days notice of their plant closing. In order to prevent the owners from selling off inventory and equipment without paying the workers, the workers have taken over the plant. Even Obama is backing them:

The Sun-Times quotes Obama as saying, “When it comes to the situation here in Chicago with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned, I think they are absolutely right ...what's happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy."

What you can do:

Read more and send a donation via paypal:

http://www.ueunion.org/ue_republic.html

Send a message of support:

http://www.ueunion.org/republic_main.html

Petition Bank of America

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/bankofamerica

Ha Ha Ha!

This image was posted on reddit, apparently because it is hilarious:



I suppose it is funny in a self-referential way. Generally, I love self-reference. Here is one of my favorite self-referential limericks (from Scientific American magazine years ago):

There was a young man from Japan,
Whose limericks never would scan.
When someone asked why,
He said with a sigh,
"It's because I always try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can."

Ba dum bum.

So, this silly little image got me thinking. The vast majority of workers deal with inanimate machines every day. The only folks who think they may some day have a career that does not involve dealing with one inanimate machine or another, are those folks who plan to become bosses, capitalist, exploiters, etc. The rest of us are going to be slogging away at one thing or another, facing idiotic machines and unreasonable requests and doing the best that we can to get by.

Recently, I got involved in a heated discussion in which I called someone out on their classism. The person I called out said she couldn't possibly be classist because she had no money. She completely missed the point. Classism is the idea that your work life would involve doing something other than working with inanimate machines. Classism is when you tell somebody that everybody else understands and agrees on something and that if you don't, you are fundamentally flawed. Classism is when you can seriously look someone in the face and say that being smart is more important than getting a degree or degrees from a university.

Classism is a lot of other things, too. Which I've written about before. To pretend that classism is solely about how many digits are in your bank account is ignorant. I am happy that we are learning more about how to respond when being called on our racism, our homophobia, our anti-trans assumptions, our anti-crip assumptions.

I am unhappy that this knowledge does not apply to classism. So back to the work of an activist. More on this to come.

Minnesota Daily Supports Teach-In

Awesome. The student newspaper for the Zooniversity encourages students to attend the teach in!

Teach-in for AFSCME

Faculty and students should support striking workers Sept. 11 and 12.

as the University workers' strike continues into its second week, the University's academic community needs to stand with AFSCME employees. This Tuesday and Wednesday from 10:00 a.m. to noon and 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., University faculty, students and AFSCME workers are asked to meet at the Oak Street Cinema near the corner of Washington Avenue and Oak Street in Stadium Village in support of the current workers' strike. The Teach-in, as the event is called, is intended to take the place of regularly scheduled classes in protest of both President Bob Bruininks and the University administration's wage increase offer to University workers, and as a learning opportunity in labor history.

The morning session will include AFSCME members, faculty, graduate students, labor educators and student activists discussing the importance of labor movements and the purpose of unions. A film and panel discussion of the 2003 AFSCME strike will take place in the afternoon. Following the morning session at noon on both days, students and faculty are encouraged to join striking workers on the picket line to show solidarity - the University administration must see they represent only the interests of the minority on campus and are supported by few.

Some faculty and students have already taken steps to oppose the University administration. professors and graduate students have moved classes off campus and students, this past Friday, protested a Board of Regents meeting. To those weary of politics, the University workers strike is not a political issue. The state Legislature already approved a 3.25 percent plus wage increase to state workers. It is the University administration that intentionally lowered the pay increase to 2.25 percent for technical and clerical workers and 2.5 percent for health-care workers. Bob Bruininks has devalued the worth of these women and men.

"The students are a bulwark of liberty," the writer José Martí said near the turn of the 20th century, "and its strongest army." University students and their teachers have an opportunity on Sept. 11 and 12 to amplify the voices of the striking technical, clerical and health-care workers. Please support the University workers on Tuesday and Wednesday and show them their worth.

Teach In flyer

The teachers of the U of M who support the AFSCME strike decided to put together a teach in. I worked on the flyer(s) this weekend. This should be a great chance for people to catch up on strike doings and to learn more about the labor movement.



Here's a 4-up version to hand on the picket lines.



This morning, Ravenhub and I got up before dawn to meet on the picket lines from 6 to 7 a.m. This was to stop the delivery trucks that come in with food and materials at the dorms. We turned back one truck, but we also got to meet three women strikers who were just awesome.

The awesome power of a strike

AFSCME workers at the University of Minnesota went on strike Wednesday, and it has been awesome to behold. The University has been steadily moving away from the mission of educating the populace and into a role as leader in research and elitist training of the twit children of the middle class. Oops. That's not exactly the language used in the recruiting material.

So, along with the elitist goals, it should come as no suprise that the U of M feels it can treat its lowest paid workers, the clerics, the techs, the dental assistants, the parking lot workers, the sign language interpreters, the child care workers -- like the peons they wish for in their fuedlistic dreams.

Given that, it is just awesome when the workers say, "No!".

I've had the opportunity to participate in the Labor and Community Strike Support Committee and the events of the last few days have simply rocked my world.

On Wednesday, more than 1,500 workers and their supporters rallied on the U of M mall and I was totally fired up by so many of the speeches. Elizabeth Edwards, stopped by during a campaign swing through the state to say she and her husband were walking the picket lines in spirit. Union leaders from the UTU Transit Workers Union and the Northwest Airlines Mechanics Unions, whose strikes received support from AFSCME workers and the community, were there to pay back the support and more.

Today, about 150 of us marched into the Board of Regents meeting to demand the workers' be given a fair wage increase.

This was followed by a rally of 500 plus people who have been walking the picket lines for three days now and who are still standing strong and backing each other up.

It is impossible to be cynical or demoralized when days like today occur.

We Support U of M Workers

Yesterday about 50 of us showed up at one of the major intersections of the University of Minnesota campus to hold up signs in support of the clerical and technical workers who will be going out on strike next week.

It was a lovely sunny day and traffic was extremely heavy. With the 35W bridge collapse, much of the downtown traffic is diverted to the Washington Avenue bridge over the Mississippi which leads right through the middle of the West Bank and East Bank campuses of the Uni.

I've done a lot of "bannering" -- holding up signs for a particular cause -- on street corners over the years, and this one was fairly successful. I hold the sign up high and try to make contact with people driving by. Some are confused, many wave, honk or give a thumbs up. Only two shook their heads negatively. They were white men in fancy cars. Fuck 'em.

There is an on-line petition I urge you to sign here.

We call on the University Administration to avert a strike by the clerical, technical and healthcare workers, represented by AFSCME. The University can stop a strike by offering a wage increase that puts real money on the table, and stops the downward slide in standard of living for the University's lowest-paid workers.

Money was allocated from the state legislature to pay for staff and employee wage increases. Other employee groups have gotten their raises, all of them bigger than what has been offered to AFSCME workers. Now is the time to extend a real wage offer to these workers, before a strike leaves the University to start the new school year understaffed and in a climate of labor unrest.

Moreover, we urge the University to stop attempts to eliminate the value of annual step increases by giving smaller and smaller across-the-board increases. Step increases are compensation for accumulated skills and long-term commitment to University jobs. Employees wait years to reach the tops of their pay scales, which represent the true value of their work. Given turnover among employees, and the number of employees at the top of their step ranges, there is no significant cost to the University for step increases.

Leave steps out of the discussion, and offer University AFSCME employees a general wage increase that maintains a quality standard of living, catching up and keeping up with inflation.

Again, if you care about low-wage workers, please sign the petition.

For information about the community strike support group, read more here.