April 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Stony Brook Administration informed the student group that their Room Request, which was approved a month earlier, was revoked.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 only do we have minutes of the meeting, but we have the room request approval form," Nazma Niles, Social Justice Alliance secretary, explained to Dr. DiMonda.

It's hard to believe! Two years after the big banks crashed our economy and took trillions in bailouts (much more than just the TARP), they're giving themselves record bonuses and going back to business as usual: telling Congress what to do.

Even after Goldman-Sachs was finally charged with fraud by the SEC, none of the rules for the banks has changed - and many of the "too big to fail" bailout bandits used our money to become bigger than ever.

Tell your Senators: Break up the banks; give us real reform, now!

People across the country are taking action to demand bank reform this week.  Jobs with Justice activists joined allies in at the Wells Fargo shareholder meeting yesterday in San Francisco, at Bank of America in Kansas City, and today at Goldman Sachs in Chicago. Tomorrow in New York City, JwJ activists will join the AFL-CIO, NPA, and others to mobilize thousands in a march on Wall Street.

The past two months have been unprecedented, filled with victories and actions that have proven to be successful in bringing real change to our communities.

The first victory for working class people was the passage of the Student Aid reform.  This bill will take away subsidies given to loan companies and invest them into programs such as the Pell grant and community colleges.  "Students across the country were able to see their amazing direct-action organizing payoff with comprehensive student aid reform becoming the law of the land," said USSA President Gregory Cendana.  "This is especially critical for working class students and families who have struggled the most in affording their education."

The second victory was the agreement reached between for the Coalition of Immokalee workers, the Student Farmworker Alliance, and  giant food service provider Aramark.  Marc Rodriguez of the Student Farmworker Alliance said:

The debate over measures to fix America’s broken labor laws took a back seat during the long debate on health care.  Now that the focus has shifted to efforts to stimulate economic growth and job creation, it’s time to put workers’ rights front and center.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce along with right-wing noise groups with shady sources of funding put out numerous talking points and videos painting unions as the problem as citing union intimidation as the biggest threat to the rights of working people to decide whether to unionize or not.  They even went so far as to hire an actor from The Sopranos (union actors by the way) to create a cartoonish vision of this imagined reality.

Supervalu, the parent company of New England grocery store chain Shaw's, is behaving badly.  The 310 workers from Shaw's Supermarkets Distribution Center in Methuen, MA, members of UFCW Local 791, have been on strike for almost 7 weeks.  Although Supervalu is the driving force behind negotiations, they refuse to take responsibility and come back to the bargaining table to negotiate in good faith.  They claim that they are not responsible for their subsidiary Shaw's.

Call and write Supervalu today to tell them to be good parents and settle the strike now!