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PREVIOUS CALLS TO BOYCOTT

Riki Hing asked what the status was on previous calls for boycotts against Whole Foods and Starbucks. So we did a few emails/ a little googling and this is what we have.

STARBUCKS... back in 2005 or so there were some claims that Starbucks was firing people for being pro-union. These seem to have died down and unionization continues to grow. The latest issue in 2007 was about managers taking a cut of worker's tips. This was brought to court and found in favor of the workers. So as far as I can see, we do not have an active boycott of Starbucks...if any knows differently, let us know.

WHOLE FOODS -- the big issue with Whole Foods was with the Chairman of the Board using his influence to try and kill public healthcare in this country. The pressure of the boycott caused him to resign as Chairman but he is still the CEO of Whole Foods. The ancillary issues are that Whole Foods is non-union and is one of the big box stores that comes in with the look of local produce but it's not, undercuts the local grocery stores and pushes them out of business.... lesson is know where the owners of your stores live and then buy local, buy local, buy local.

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We're in the process of completing a look at the Union districts and Steward/District Contact assignments. We're hoping to have a new Stewards page up and running by the beginning of September.

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"People at Bear Stearns get tens of millions for doing a terrible job at manipulating financial markets. And people get minimum wage for taking care of our grandparents." Barry Blueston

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News Tidbits

Listserve Changes

Some of you may be aware that the Union has two listserves. They are the Voice listserve and the Unitmember listserve. Most of you are most familiar with the Unitmember listserve. It is the one that you subscribe to and can post emails to yourself. TheVoice listserve was originally adopted to send out notifications of the Union Voice, the union electronic newsletter. The Voice listserve has the most complete list of member emails.

We have decided that we will now use the Voice listserve for all formal union communications, i.e. Union announcements, the Union Voice, other formal union communications. This is not a listserve that the membership can post to themselves. If there is an announcement that a member wants to post to the Voice listserve because of its importance and needs a wide readership, they can send the email in question to Donna Johnson for consideration.

The unitmember listserve will continue to run the way it always has with the same guidelines. Members can now decide whether they want to receive these emails or not without worrying that they will not receive important Union communications.

We also want to remind people that they can decide to use their home email addresses for either or both of these listserves.

We hope people will find this change in process to be a beneficial one for all. If you have any questions, please email usa@external.umass.edu.

Donna Johnson
President

Union Voice Archive

Old Union Voice Editions

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LABOR HEROES

Dan Clawson

Local Labor Hero

Review of Prof. Clawson's 2003 book "The Next Upsurge":

"The U.S. labor movement may be on the verge of massive growth, according to Dan Clawson. He argues that unions don't grow slowly and incrementally, but rather in bursts. Even if the AFL-CIO could organize twice as many members per year as it now does, it would take thirty years to return to the levels of union membership that existed when Ronald Reagan was elected president. In contrast, labor membership more than quadrupled in the years from 1934 to 1945. For there to be a new upsurge, Clawson asserts, labor must fuse with social movements concerned with race, gender, and global justice. The new forms may create a labor movement that breaks down the boundaries between "union" and "community" or between work and family issues. Clawson finds that this is already happening in some parts of the labor movement: labor has endorsed global justice and opposed war in Iraq, student activists combat sweatshops, unions struggle for immigrant rights. Innovative campaigns of this sort, Clawson shows, create new strategies—determined by workers rather than union organizers—that redefine the very meaning of the labor movement. The Next Upsurge presents a range of examples from attempts to replace "macho" unions with more feminist models to campaigns linking labor and community issues and attempts to establish cross-border solidarity and a living wage."

Eugene V. Debs

Eugene V. Debs began working in the railroad shops in his hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana, as a young man. Debs served as a national union officer, an elected city official and an Indiana legislator before 1893 when he launched the American Railway Union, an industrial union of railroad workers. After serving time in prison for his participation in the Pullman Strike of 1894, Debs emerged with two unbendable beliefs: industrial u

nions rather than trade unions gave the workers the power needed to combat America's corporati

ons, and for him, Socialism was the best political choice for workers.

Debs fought tirelessly for then "radical" workers' rights now considered standard, workmen's compensation, pensions and social security, and for social causes including women's suffrage. He helped found the Industrial Workers of the World along with Big Bill Haywood and Mother Mary Harris Jones in 1905, but soon withdrew from that movement. Debs ran five times as a Socialist Party presidential candidate, from 1900-1920. His last campaign was run from a federal prison in Atlanta, where he served 32 months of a 10-year sentence for violating The Espionage Act, by publicly opposing America's involvement in World War I. Even so, Debs received nearly a million votes.

(Note: the Debs portrait photo was taken outside of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.)www.anchoreducationfoundation.org/images/Heroes.pdf

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Cesar Chavez, 1927-1993

United Farm Workers

"It's ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables and other foods that fill your tables with abundance have nothing left for themselves."

Born in 1927 to Mexican immigrant parents in Yuma, Arizona, Cesar Chavez began toiling in the fields as a young boy. In 1939, his family moved to California and like migrant workers throughout the country, followed the harvests up and down the state. In 1952, Cesar Chavez began working for the Community Service Organization, conducting voter registration drives and battling racial and economic discrimination against Chicanos. However, his passion and commitment belonged to those working in the fields, and in 1962, Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association, which became the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFW) within the AFL-CIO in 1965.

Building upon his Catholic upbringing and his adherence to the teachings of Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Chavez successfully brought together religious organizations, labor unions, students, minority organizations, and consumers in a fiveyear grape boycott. His efforts turned the nation's attention to the dismal working conditions of the farm workers. In 1975, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, a collective bargaining law for farm workers. By the early 1980s, tens of thousands of farm workers were under UFW contracts, and realized higher pay, family health coverage, pension benefits, and other protections.

www.anchoreducationfoundation.org/images/Heroes.pdf

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Monday

Mar222010

Letter to the Membership....

Posted on

Monday, March 22, 2010 at 9:45AM

I admit to being a procrastinator, especially when it comes to doing my taxes. While I’m always curious to know if I’ll get anything back and if so how much, it’s a chore that makes my head hurt. I don’t make a ton of money ($34,000) so I don’t usually have to pay more than is taken out of my paycheck; I usually get a little back on both state and federal tax returns.

For several months my union, the University Staff Association, an affiliate of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, has been trying to figure out how we can convince people of the dire emergency the commonwealth’s revenue system finds itself in. The deficit we face is largely because so many people have lost their jobs, and so many small businesses have gone bust, but it's also due to 43 tax cuts to corporations over the past several years. Massachusetts can no longer call itself Taxachusetts. In fact we’re down around the mid-twenties in tax revenues by state nationally. Revenues have been taking a nosedive and the current poor economy is making it dramatically worse. I’ve learned that about 60% of revenue comes from income tax. In 2012 Massachusetts will be looking at a $2.5 billion deficit if things keep going the way they are.

This is a huge topic, I know, but the point I want to make is that we need to raise revenues and I found a way to personally do just that. When I finally got around to putting together my tax forms, I discovered that we have the option to pay 5.8% tax instead of 5.3%. I was so excited to find that I could actually DO something about the tanking revenues! I’m doing it! I’m paying more required this year because I feel so strongly that we all need to do what we can to get back on track. It’s costing me about $150 more to pay half a percent more on my taxes. That’s about $41 cents a day over one year. I think I can afford that. In fact, tax me more. Please! Tax me more so we don’t lose funding for local aid and roads and bridges and universities and colleges and schools and fire police stations and libraries. I could go on. I’m sure you could too. Please join me in voluntarily paying an additional 1⁄2% for your state taxes this year. I'm only sorry I made the discovery so late that many of you have already done your taxes and missed the opportunity.

There will be a couple of issues around lowering certain taxes on the ballot this fall: sales tax and alcohol tax. It won't hurt us to keep them just the way they are. Please, vote no on repealing these taxes. We can do it later when we get our financial feet back under us.

Sincerely,

Sylvia Snape

1 Comment

Reader Comments (1)

Sylvia, you rock!

Melinda

March 25, 2010 |

Melinda Nielsen

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