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By Charlene Obernauer, on April 30th, 2010 The Long Island Jobs with Justice Workers’ Rights Board, in collaboration with and the student group the Social Justice Alliance and the Research Assistants Union at Stony Brook University, organized a Hearing yesterday to investigate the negotiating strategies of the Stony Brook Research Foundation, the employer of 740 Research Assistants at Stony Brook University who are members of CWA Local 1104. Initially, the Workers’ Rights Board extended an invitation to the Research Foundation to present their case, but the RF declined, stating that they would rather not negotiate in public.
A day before the Hearing was scheduled to take place, Stony Brook Administration informed the student group that their Room Request, which was approved a month earlier, was revoked. Outraged, one of the students, along with members of the union, met with Associate Dean Dr. Susan DiMonda to demand that they have access to the space. Armed with fallacious excuses and weak rationale, Dr. DiMonda claimed that it was clear that this was a “labor event” and it had to be approved through Human Resources, not student activities.
“As a social justice student group, this Hearing is obviously a concern to us, and we have proof that we are co-sponsoring event. Not
Continue reading Research Assistants at Stony Brook Speak Up Despite Repression
By Denise Diaz, on February 11th, 2010 As President Obama announced in Tampa that High Speed rail jobs were coming to Orlando, local community and labor activists came together to understand the uphill battle for workers accessing these jobs. Central Florida Jobs with Justice along with the Central Florida AFL-CIO hosted a townhall to discuss how this economic crisis will impact the city’s outlook for jobs.
With over 40 people in attendance, people heard passages from the study Battered by the Storm: How the Safety Net is failing Americans and How to fix it which shows the severity of families quickly falling into poverty. We also heard from the report Beyond the Quick Fix: ARRA Contracting, Jobs and building a fair recovery that highlighted the lack or transparency and impact of Stimulus dollars on communities of color and low income.
A diverse panel of speakers responded to these reports based on their experiences throughout this economic recession. Paul Wilson, President of Amaglated Transit Union local 1596 representing Lynx, MV and Grant bus operators, spoke on how local counties use the stimulus dollars on things besides operating costs, resulting in no wages increases for bus drivers. David Fernandez, an undergraduate senior at the University of Central
Continue reading Central Florida Townhall and Call to Action on the Economic Crisis
By rand wilson, on October 26th, 2009 By Steve Early and Rand Wilson
Twenty years ago, 60,000 workers from New York City to Maine rallied against healthcare cost-shifting at the telecom giant then known as NYNEX (since “rebranded” as Verizon).
NYNEX was a very profitable, multinational company seeking to capitalize on a demoralizing decade of lost strikes, contract givebacks and widespread unionbusting. At a time when many workers were forced to make concessions, NYNEX strikers held the line for four months and emerged victorious. They successfully resisted the company’s demand that they pay hundreds and eventually thousands of dollars a year for medical benefits. But this singular union win didn’t come cheap. Customer service was disrupted by the work stoppage, resulting in tens of millions of dollars worth of lost wages. Hundreds of strikers were arrested, fired or suspended–and one, Gerry Horgan, was killed on a picket line in Westchester County.
In every other advanced industrial nation, the contentious issue of who pays for medical care was taken off the bargaining table long ago. And no worker would ever lose his or her life defending job-based private health insurance.
To this day, members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) who work at
Continue reading Why the Health Insurance Excise Tax Is a Bad Idea
By Allison Fletcher Acosta, on August 25th, 2009 Today, Speed Matters released the third annual report on Internet Speeds in America – and U.S. connection speeds have not improved significantly in the past year. The results of the report are based on the last-mile connection speed of over 413,000 Internet users who took the online test between May 2008 and May 2009.
The state of broadband adoption and deployment in the United States is poor, according to the report:
Only 20 percent of those who took the test have Internet speeds in the range of the top-ranked countries – South Korea, Japan and Sweden. 18 percent do not even meet the FCC definition for current-generation broadband: an always-on Internet connection of at least 768 kbps downstream.
Not only does the United States rank 15th in the industrialized world in Internet speed, it is virtually the only industrialized country without a national high-speed Internet policy. CWA says the government invests relatively less on telecommunications than most other major countries. Consumers are charged more for slower speeds, and current high-speed networks don’t even reach millions of American households.
Job creation, rural development, telemedicine, distance learning, even solutions to global warming all rely on truly high-speed universal networks. This year, the Internet Connection Slow? Speed Matters.
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