Con Ed Wants To Turn The Lights Out On Worker Power

With
Harry Farrell, President
and Members of Local 1-2 Utility Workers Union


We’ll bring you exclusive, from the picket-line interviews with workers and the latest on negotiations with Local 1-2 leadership in the New York City’s Con Edison lockout. Con Edison illegally, more than a week ago, without notice, in the midst of bargaining over pensions, health care and wages locked out its 8,500 workers, after the union refused to surrender its ability to strike. While the sides have returned to the bargaining table tensions run high with injuries to the scab management, thinking it can do the workers jobs and service cuts to our neighborhoods.

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Central Park Boathouse Strikers Swimming For Their Lives
with
Julia Rybak, lead organizer, New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council
andBoathouse strikers Alejandra Betancur and Chrissy Makris

The landmark Boathouse Restaurant in Central Park has become almost as
famous for its long history of ugly labor disputes as for its fine dining and
views. Now, the Boathouse workers are on strike to protest management's
firing of workers who exercised their right to join the Union. Since the
organizing effort began in January, nearly 70% of the regular 100-member
workforce have signed authorization cards to join the union and 38 workers
have been illegally fired for union activities. Thefirings and more than 20
charges of unfair labor practice have been filed with the N.L.R.B. by the
union. Last June, six women - current and former employees - filed sexual harassment complaints with federal and state agencies. An audit of the
Boathouse found that management unlawfully confiscated over $3 million
in banquet gratuities from its employees. The Boathouse is operated by
restaurateur Dean Poll under a contract with the city, which owns the iconic
eatery but has not taken any responsibility for the illegal and reprehensible
actions of Boathouse management.

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What Is To Be Done?

In this period of intensified class warfare against the working class and the
poor, what will it take to mobilize the people for the mass movement it will
surely take to win? Many have been heartened by the fightback in Wisconsin
and many of the frontline states. But is the predominately electoral strategy
that is currently being followed sufficient to win? What is the role direct action,
strikes, including general strikes, and cross union and community solidarity?
We talk with:

General Baker has been called the most important 21st century American
revolutionary. He was a leader of the Detroit wildcat strikes in the 1960s, a
founder of the legendary League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), & the first American to refuse
induction to fight in Vietnam. The book, "Detroit: I Do Mind Dying" (about the
worker revolts of that era) calls Baker the "soul of the Dodge Revolutionary
Union Movement (DRUM)." An autoworker for 30 years, he remains a
champion of the unemployed and unorganized workers.

Stanley Aronowitz is a Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York, where he studies labor, social movements,
science and technology, education, social theory and cultural studies. He is
author or editor of 25 books including: Left Turn: Forging a New Political
Future; How Class Works; The Jobless Future (with William DiFazio); and
False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness.

Staughton Lynd has dedicated his life to activism & social change as a
historian, lawyer, and labor activist. He helped direct the Mississippi
Freedom Schools. In April 1965 he spoke at the first march on Washington
against the Vietnam War and became an early leader of the anti-war
movement. Subsequent to becoming an attorney he spent years focusing
on labor and prison issues. He wrote the definitive history of the 1993 Ohio
prison uprising at Lucasville as well as the ever popular “Labor Law for the
Rank and Filer” and “Rank and File” oral histories of the 1930’s .

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The New Class War on Unions Spreads to Ohio
with
Joseph Rugola, Exec. Dir., Ohio Assn. of Public School Employees, AFSCME

Following Gov. Walker’s union busting lead, Ohio Gov. Kasich proposes to nullify public employee unionization rights by taking away impartial arbitration of disputes, the right to strike of “non-emergency public employees” and protections against privatization of government jobs. Despite the demonstration by over 20,000, it was politics at its worst, Republican leaders rammed this bill through by kicking opposing members of their own party off key committees.
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NYC Union Rally Blasts Bloomberg and Cuomo Attacks

District Council 37 Locals 375,154, 768 & 1549 demonstrated at City Hall Park in support of the resistance of workers & their unions under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states. On the NYC front, they railed against proposed layoffs by Mayor Bloomberg, despite projections of a multibillion dollar budget surplus and a plethora of costly and often corrupt outside contracts. Both the Bloomberg and Cuomo Administrations oppose continuing the millionaires’ tax to enhance revenue rather than cutting public services and layoffs.

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The New Class War in Wisconsin
with
Frank Emspak, Dir.Emeritus, School For Workers, University Of Wisconsin and Exec. Dir. Workers Independent News

In the face of massive protests, Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker’s “budget repair bill” proposes limiting collective
bargaining powers of public employees only to base pay
tearing the guts out of the union.The bill also mandates
increases in workers' pension & health care contributions.
And next come the layoffs. We’ll explore Walker’s capital
supported initiative to break the back of organized labor.
What are the politics behind it and forces pushing this
Republican juggernaut? Is this a blueprint for union
busting in other states? And, oh yes, we’ll discuss what is
to be done?
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See You On the Picket Line
With
Harry Belafonte, the Great Actor, Singer and Social Justice Activist

In his recent speech at City College in NYC, Belafonte
decries what has been the passivity in the U.S. in face of
massive attacks on civil rights and workers rights but
welcomes the recent protests against tyranny in Tunisia
and Egypt and extending to Madison Wisconsin to protect
workers rights.

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Union Buster Rite Aid, Wrongs Workers
wth
Angel Warner, Rite Aid Union Activist, ILWU

Real Health Care Reforms Or More Band Aids?
with
Dr. David Himmelstein, primary care physician, Associate
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, & Co-Founder
Physicians for a National Health Program

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Union Buster Rite Aid, Wrongs Workers
wth
Angel Warner, Rite Aid Union Activist, ILWU

For more than a year, over 500 Rite Aid warehouse workers in
Lancaster, CA have been attempting to negotiate their first union
agreement with management. Rite Aid's massive interference in
the workers efforts to form a union and its failure to bargain in good
faith with employees are prime examples of why efforts to pass the
Employee Free Choice Act are so important. NYC unions held a
rally at Times Square recently to protest Rite Aid union busting and
carried their protest to the company’s shareholder meeting held
nearby.
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Real Health Care Reforms Or More Band Aids?
with
Dr. David Himmelstein, primary care physician, Associate
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, & Co-Founder
Physicians for a National Health Program

House Democrats unveiled a draft bill that they said will bring down
spiraling costs and provide health insurance for most Americans. But
the draft has few details on how to pay for offering expanded insurance,
except by including billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
And in the Senate, the public health care option is in big trouble while
threats continue to the present tax-exempt status of employer health
care contributions. Is Obama’s plan viable? Is single payer the only
solution?

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