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Lesson for Vanderbilt Students: Solidarity Scares U.S. Employers |
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Warning to college students: Joining in solidarity with low-wage workers on your campus can be hazardous to your freedom of speech.
At Vanderbilt University, members of Vanderbilt Students of Nonviolence recently met with campus workers to talk about working conditions for the lowest-paid employees and hammer out concrete actions all could take to make Vanderbilt a safer and more just place to work and learn.
Instead, they found out what life can really be like outside the campus green and inside the U.S. workplace. In a letter to the editor signed by seven members of the student nonviolence group and those in the Living Income for Vanderbilt Employees organization, they described how university management attempted to intimidate them.
The meeting was intended to be a safe place for workers and students to meet—we had heard rumors that due to a dictatorial contract and management hostility, it’s challenging for employees to claim that space. Despite being warned, we were shocked when we got our own taste of the intimidation that workers apparently experience when they try to talk and organize among themselves.
Throughout the meeting, university management stationed people to watch who went in and out of the doors, taking notes; after the meeting, they searched the trash cans for anything we might have thrown away and talked about whether they had gotten any photos of the meeting (“no luck,” they sighed).
The eerie feeling of our own administration’s surveillance was matched by the surreally conspicuous way in which they conducted it. Marta Stinson (a Human Resources manager who removed her name tag and refused to tell us who she was, but put her ID back on as soon as our meeting ended) stood just outside the room in the space behind an open door and the wall, putting one eye up against the crack to peer through. She came into our meeting room and stood in the corner, watching us, eventually marching up to the table (interrupting a worker explaining the attitude of management toward workers) and demanded that we stop handing out fliers and surveys. In a bizarre twist, she denounced our meeting, and not her intrusion, as “inappropriate,” before storming back out of the room to make a phone call.
Generally, this type of management intimidation occurs when workers are seeking to form a union—64 percent of private-sector employers interrogate workers about union activity—and worse. The campus employees are looking for a voice at work—they’re already represented by the Laborers—but if this account is accurate, it points out the extent to which university management fears campus-wide solidarity. A lesson for us all.
Read the full letter here.
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Typical Management even at Vanderbilt University
Alabama Bus Drivers Win Union Contract!
Statement from the Network to Fight for Economic Justice (NFEJ)
http://www.wesayfightback.com
Union bus drivers at the University of Alabama are celebrating today! They voted to accept their first union contract late last night, March 8, 2010. All the members and supporters of the Network to Fight for Economic Justice are rejoicing with them!
Organizing a union and winning a first contract are difficult enough. To organize in the South where racism and intimidation are strong factors, is spectacular! The union workers and leaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1208 are to be congratulated for their grit and determination. They stood up and sent a message across the country, “We’re NOT going to take it anymore!”
Most of the bus drivers are African-American, and many are women. The key to victory was uniting the workers and having solid allies in the fight–especially the University of Alabama Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). SDS organized the campus support that shifted the balance in favor of the union. The students stayed up past midnight making poster board signs and showed up at the bus depot by 4:30 AM to walk the strike picket. While the bus drivers held the picket lines, SDS rallied students to actively support the strikers in ending their poverty wages. Public opinion overwhelmingly supported the bus drivers. It was powerful!
SDS also brought in the Network to Fight for Economic Justice to organize national call in days targeting UA President Witt. The first call in day demanded Witt make a statement in support of the hard working bus drivers. The second one, during the one-day strike, demanded President Witt stop university “scab vans”. Union leaders and activists, welfare rights organizers, community organizers, and students called from at least thirty cities and towns—including Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, LA, Tucson, Boston, Birmingham, Asheville, Gainesville, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Milwaukee, Olympia, Chapel Hill, and New York City. Mario Harmon, the ATU Local 1208 Secretary Treasurer, could not be more thankful for the solidarity shown.
The gains made by establishing the union contract are important and will benefit every worker. The First Transit management, part of British corporation FirstGroup, will no longer be able to fire workers at a whim. The union provides fairness to everyone. The wage increases negotiated at the table will raise most drivers out of poverty. The drivers won one more personal day for a total of three. When a bus is unsafe, management will have to listen to the driver.
The rank and file bus drivers will have to prepare for the next contract struggle down the road. The union will need to make gains around affordable health care, sick days, and wage increases to match other union bus drivers. Today however, the victory is won! The workers now have a contract to build upon and they are setting an example to other workers to stand up and take back what belongs to them!
Congrats ATU: I ride the bus here in Kansas City and somehow missed the fact that there’s a large union label on the side of every bus here until recently. I’m proud to utilise a union operation every morning to get to my workplace.
And on that note, if your kids go to the KC MO school district, they are now riding buses driven by members of Teamsters Local 838! Congratulations to them on their recent election victory. now, it’s time to fight for a fair contract.
Reminds me of an old quote: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” Guess that holds true even in the ivy halls.