Home, Labor Studies

DC37 Reaches Out About WTC Health Program

By Liam Lynch

In true labor-community partnership fashion, the DC 37 Safety and Health Department is using a federal grant to get the word out about the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program established by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010. This bill is designed to improve health services and provide financial compensation for 9/11 first responders and survivors. DC 37 is partnering with local businesses and organizations to make the city healthier for the many union members and New Yorkers affected. The poster outreach effort is led by New York Union Semester alum and current Murphy MA student Liam Lynch. Union Semester students will take part in a day of outreach during their orientation at the end of the August. If interested in joining us, stay tuned to the Facebook page.

DC 37’s Safety and Health Department is part of a federal initiative to conduct outreach for the WTC Health Program. When the federal government took over the program after the passage of the James L. Zadroga 9/11 Health & Compensation Act of 2010, the Safety & Health Department received a federal grant to specifically conduct outreach about the existence of the program to their membership and AFSCME affiliates.

Thirteen years after the attacks of September 11th, the aftermath remains a major public health concern for responders and survivors. AFSCME members, who were among the first responders, are now experiencing illnesses related to their response work and are in need of quality healthcare for their 9/11-related health conditions. In the years after the attack, DC 37 — together with AFSCME’s Federal Government Affairs Department in Washington, DC — helped craft and lobby for the federal health program as part of its efforts to get Congress to approve the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010. DC 37 received a federal grant to inform responders and survivors of the health program, and created a website and Facebook page about it. Continue reading DC37 Reaches Out About WTC Health Program →

Home, Labor Studies

Justices Deliver Latest Blow to Labor in Wisconsin

Yesterday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a 5-2 decision that the much-reviled Act 10 does not violate the constitution. This law strips most public sector employees of their collective bargaining rights by “limit[ing] bargaining rights to issues only involving base wages, ban[ning] some government employers from automatically taking union fees from employee paychecks, and requir[ing] yearly recertification standards,” among other restrictions.

This decision came alongside a ruling requiring photo identification at the voting booth.

Photo by Gateway Technical College via flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND).

Home, Labor Studies

NLRB Rules McDonalds Jointly Liable for Franchisees

What’s the relationship between corporations and their franchisees? That’s the question at hand in the latest ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

In a decision first reported by the Associated Press on Tuesday, General Counsel for the NLRB ruled that McDonald’s is jointly responsible for the actions of its franchise restaurants — creating a precedent that could have far-reaching implications for fast-food workers and national labor organizing in general.

According to an article by Steven Greenhouse in Portside:

If upheld, the general counsel’s move would give the fast-food workers and the main labor group backing them, the Service Employees International Union, more leverage in their effort to unionize McDonald’s restaurants and to increase hourly wages. The average fast-food wage is about $8.90 an hour.

Read more at Portside

Photo by Fibonacci Blue via flickr (CC-BY).

Arts and Culture, Films, Home, Student Work, Urban Studies

Pushing Through Doors: Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”

By Zenzile Greene

On the heels of the Spike Lee Retrospective being shown at BAM Cinematek through July 11th, I would like to present a piece I wrote up on assignment for my “Culture Through Film” class taken this past fall at the School of Professional studies. The course, taught by Professor Kelley Kawano, was developed brilliantly not only for the purpose of traditional Film History survey, but also towards the goal of turning a critical lens on the pervasive and myriad ways in which culture influences film and vice versa.

Over the course of the fall semester, we viewed and deconstructed a range of films from the Silent Era to the Hollywood Studio Era, to the groundbreaking independent films made by such pioneers as Irving Penn and Spike Lee. For several of our weekly assignments, we were asked to take one scene from a movie and analyze its use of one in a list of primary technical film elements, including editing, sound effects and direction.

For inspiration, I drew on the use of symbolism in Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” from a paper I wrote in the class “Mass Media in Black America” taught by Professor Arthur Lewin at Baruch in 2010. I was very excited to write up a brief analysis of the symbolic use of editing in one particular scene of this, one of my favorite films in Lee’s “Brooklyn Trilogy” series.
Continue reading Pushing Through Doors: Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” →

Home, Urban Studies

Politics, Progressivism and the Future of the Democratic Party

By Basil Anthony Smikle Jr. 

Earlier this year, Gallup reported that a record number of Americans identify as Independents. Forty-two percent of the country shed traditional political party labels: Republican Party identification fell to 25% while 31% identified with Democrats – down from 36% in 2008 when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled for the nomination. Attempts to recalibrate each national party’s internal political compass before 2016 will likely prove more vexing for Republicans, but recent activity among major Democratic figures signals a far more aggressive push for realignment than previously thought. A high-profile campaign 10 years ago and recent developments among education policy-leaders may foreshadow a dramatic shift in the Party’s forthcoming platform.

Howard Dean’s rapid ascension among Democratic presidential contenders in 2004 was fueled in part by an strong anti-war stance, a unabashed liberal ideology during the neo-conservative Bush-Cheney years, and a pre-Facebook internet strategy that was groundbreaking for its fundraising and community-building activities. Dean famously lost in Iowa and New Hampshire as voters chose John Kerry, who was presumed to be a better general election candidate. While Dean’s loss was not wholly unwelcomed by certain corners of the Democratic Party, his most ardent supporters were without a champion until early 2007, when President Obama kicked off his seemingly quixotic campaign for the White House.   Continue reading Politics, Progressivism and the Future of the Democratic Party →

Home, Labor Studies

Another Look at Labor in Dark Times – Part 3: Glimpses To Make One Less Forlorn

This is the final installment in a three-part series by Nick Unger on union structures, labor consciousness and the possibilities of organized labor moving forward. Read Part I: Thoughts on Union Structures, Labor History And Union Member Consciousness and Part II: Hello & Goodbye with Far Too Little In Between for the full picture.

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“Once the Voting Rights Act was passed and people got the right to vote, they stopped sitting in and started voting and that turned out to be much more effective.” -Former Rep. Barney Frank on the CNN series “The 60s”

Much more effective? The millions facing new barriers to the right to vote might question that. Replacing sit-ins with legally protected (a little) voting was a bad idea strategically, tactically and ideologically — and not just in retrospect. We were making progress so we stopped using the tools that worked. When has that ever worked?

But this is a blog about labor, not the civil rights movement. Same point. Replacing sit-down strikes with legally protected (a little) collective bargaining turned out to be effective for a little while. I know capital promptly moved to outlaw sit-down strikes to make a point, but they had never exactly been “legal” to begin with.

The big change was unions now had something to lose: their formal recognition and political acceptance, their institutional structures and treasuries. Before then, they just risked jail. Dylan was right: “When you ain’t got nothing you got nothing to lose.” Modern unions thought they had something to lose. Continue reading Another Look at Labor in Dark Times – Part 3: Glimpses To Make One Less Forlorn →

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