randomWalks: labor

Labor Day 2003 finds unemployment hovering near a nine-year high and people thankful to have work nevertheless feeling anxious because of the jobless recovery.

I was going to start here in making a long post-Labor Day post with stats and links illustrating how we're getting the shaft. But I soon discovered that drublood beat me to it. Instead I've rounded up links for Joe Hill and Phil Ochs.

Why does a company on track to make about $4 billion in profits need layoffs? Why does it need to raise health care costs for its workers? Why is it trying to get rid of sick days?

Within days up about 70,000 Verizon workers could be going out on strike when the current contract expires 12:00 AM Sunday morning. Here's some basic information about what's at stake in the fight.

News

• News coverage via Google.
• A good New York Times piece covering the basics.

Analysis

• A good New York Times analysis from labor reporter Steven Greenhouse.
• An SW piece by a former laid-off Verizon worker and CWA shop steward.
• Labor Notes' take.

Workers

• A page full of Verizon workers grievances called Verizon Eats Poop.
• CWA 1101 and CWA 1109 for the latest on the contract talks.

Myron Krocek, one of the laid-off miners, takes the floor. He has 23 years of service in the salt mine. A big, bearded guy in tattered blue jeans, Krocek looks like an Old Testament prophet. "Cargill's a power-hungry ogre," Krocek says. "We've been illegally replaced by scabs, and Cargill's getting away with it. Mayor Jane sold us out. We've got to stick together and vote this contract down 100 percent. Sometimes you have to draw the line. It's a matter of principle."

"I never would have believed it in my wildest dreams," said Jerry Green, a union leader who worked for 27 years in the plant here as a cement-gun sprayer. "I thought Bethlehem was a giant and steel was king."

When you're gathered around the table with your relatives, some new stories are mixed in with the old familiars. This year, we found out that my grandmother went to high school with the daughter of a woman who was thrown from a burning ship as a baby. That story alone captures the imagination. How bad would that fire have been for a mother to throw her baby? Then I read some more about the burning ship.

The final toll of the General Slocum fire has never been fixed: 1,021 dead at least, perhaps 1,031, perhaps 30 more than that, and that number counts only those who were roasted or drowned in 30 awful minutes. Later, dozens of survivors committed suicide in their desolation; more yet were led vacant-eyed to mental wards. In the end, an entire neighborhood — a lively, laughing, gracious, prosperous, bustling lower East Side community called Weiss Garten — disappeared forever.

Other links:

New York History

Long Island History

A blog archive which linked to this NYTimes article.

A website for researchers and survivors descendants.

The Department of Justice has given the union representing 10,500 West Coast dockworkers until noon today to present "a substantive response" to allegations by shipping lines of an illegal worker slowdown.
...
The Justice Department is the plaintiff in an action in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, representing President Bush.

New Jersey Teachers Jailed for Continuing to Strike.

Students at Princeton, Harvard, Brown and other schools have staged protests this spring to rally support for better treatment of workers. But in contrast to years past, the workers they have in mind are not in South Africa or third-world sweatshops — they are right on campus.

• Economic Scene: At Colleges Prosperity Lifts Expectations. (some randomWalks readers will recognize the far left protester in the photo)
• Disparities at Harvard. (no photo)