Category Archives: Labor Issues

Malloy’s Office Tells Rick Green – Oh, Yeah, About that Anti-union rally – He can’t make it.

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

Reblogged from Wait, What?:

Moments ago Rick Green posted the following to his blog; http://courantblogs.com/rick-green/gov-malloy-the-norwalk-stiff-arm-and-michelle-rhee/ “Gov. Malloy will not appear at a March education rally being organized by a coalition of parent groups. The parents hope to have Michelle Rhee, the former Washington D.C. Schools chancellor who enrages teacher unions with her reform ideas, at the event. Although the Connecticut Parents Union announced that Malloy had committed to the event, the governor’s office …

To alienate the ed reformers or to not alienate the ed reformers, that is the question…

Harassment in the Workplace

Posted on by ninjanurse

Just a random post on the one week anniversary of Katie Roiphe’s NYT essay on sexual harassment. Thank you, Katie, I got more hits refuting you than on any single thing I’ve ever written. Send me more.

I want to take a stand in defense of good humor and fun at work. It’s great to be part of a crew when you’re all pulling in the same direction. Letting bullies pick on a few people who are low on the totem pole is divisive and not fun.

A friend told me about her office and what they did to a guy I’ll call Bob. When Bob went on vacation, his co-workers taped down his stapler and everything else on his desk with double-stick, even the pens. The next time Bob went on vacation they made little paper rings, so all his office supplies appeared to be levitating.

This is creative. If you must harass, avoid cliches and think up something original.

I’m Getting Too Old for This

Posted on by ninjanurse

Don't Do This

Katie Roiphe is a writer who made her reputation fresh out of college as a maverick with ‘The Morning After’, a book that argued that date-rape was a largely imagined problem. This put her on a fast track to success and won her praise from critics who saw her book as a repudiation of her mother, Ann Roiphe, a feminist.

Katie dredges up arguments I haven’t heard in ages in today’s New York Times op-ed ‘In Favor of Dirty Jokes and Risque Remarks’. Roiphe uses Herman Cain as a point of departure, but doesn’t let the facts slow down her rush to resume her rewarding career of telling women to stop whining and accept that you have to take some hits and pinches if you want to succeed in a man’s world.

‘After all these years we are again debating the definition of unwanted sexual advances and parsing the question of whether a dirty joke in the office is a crime.’

Sez who?

Roiphe may specialize in nostalgia for the MadMen era, but the allegations against Herman Cain are of a pattern of behavior resulting in payoffs and lost jobs. Sharon Bialek, one of five women alleging sexual harassment by Herman Cain, says that when they were alone in his car he grabbed her in a way that meets the legal definition of sexual assault, and when she objected, said, “You want a job, right?”

You can’t get a more clear example of sexual harassment– making sex a condition of employment, but Roiphe isn’t interested in looking at the actual news story. It doesn’t fit her well-worn riff that it’s all about dirty jokes at the office and women who have no sense of humor.

She calls American culture ‘Puritan’ and cites ‘Orwellian’ attempts to regulate behavior when she was at Princeton.

Well, okay. The most recent references to American Puritanism I’ve seen in the press were from French critics asking why it was possible that an important man could be arrested on the word of a mere maid, or why a very important film director has to languish in Europe. If I remember my Orwell correctly, abuse of power on a personal level was one of the most harrowing chapters of ’1984′, when Winston Smith is being tortured by interrogator O’Brien at the Ministry of Love. But then, I’ve actually read the book. I’ve read some history too.

‘We don’t legislate against meanness, or power struggles, or political maneuvering, or manipulation in offices, and how could we?’

This is an echo of that old line from the opponents of the Civil Rights movement, ‘you can’t legislate morality’. Actually, you can legislate morality. You can arrest people who steal things, you can name, shame and prosecute discrimination, call out workplace bullies and make it less safe to bait people over their race or religion. This very imperfect world is a little less hostile for many because of the much-despised, ‘political correctness’ that makes it risky to throw slurs at co-workers.

Roiphe suggests that it is a soft bigotry of low expectations to think that women might need protection from slurs and worse, ‘when women are yet more powerful and ascendent in the workplace.’

I don’t want to get all ‘class-warfare’, but I have to wonder how many workplaces Roiphe has ever seen. From Princeton to a successful writing career is a happy circumstance– and good for her, but maybe she missed some things along the way. Roiphe imagines that ordinary working women might need some horndog men to to bring sunshine to their empty, dreary little lives…

‘Is the anodyne drone typing away in her silent cubicle free from the risk of comment on her clothes, the terror of a joke, the unsettlement of an unwanted or even wanted sexual advance truly our ideal?’

Jeeze, Katie, thanks for looking out for us drones. ‘Our ideal’? You and who else. You don’t sound like you’ve worked in many offices, or talked to many women for that matter. And F.Y.I., most women don’t work in offices.

Herman Cain, if the allegations are true, demanded sex in exchange for a job. If the allegations are true, he caused two women to lose their jobs.

Imagine, in this terrible economy, getting a job you desperately want and need. Imagine discovering that the price of keeping that job is to placate a workplace bully or try to evade them, to appease them with sex or to make a complaint that will likely go nowhere and get you labelled a complainer. Being caught between dread of going to work and dread of losing your job sounds pretty Orwellian to me.

Laws that are intended to give workers some recourse when they are discriminated against or extorted for sex are partial and imperfect, but have given a little power to workers who have been wronged.

More often than not, workers get along by using some common sense about what their co-workers consider to be okay, and by respecting their feelings.

My first job as a nurse was in a public health clinic at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Candy dishes full of condoms sat on doctor’s desks. Some of the safe-sex literature had photos I wouldn’t show my mother. I did pre and post-test counseling for HIV with many people, in confidence, answering questions about relative risk of various acts. The clinic had a diverse staff and a high-pressure work environment where gallows-humor got us through.

Two of the doctors, one a Seventh Day Adventist, one a Hindu, did not like any kind of profane or risque humor. So we watched our mouths around them, because what’s funny to one person is offensive to another. If you have a grain of social sense, you consider who you’re talking to.

I wish Katie Roiphe and her editors at the New York Times had not rushed to replay that old line about how men can’t have any fun without being accused of sexual harassment. And worse, conflate overreaction to a ‘dirty joke’ with the claims against Herman Cain.

Herman Cain is accused of using his power in the National Restaurant Association to extort sex. If these allegations are true there’s a character flaw that would likely affect how he would use his power as president. A very big deal.

Workplace relations go much better if people remember to practice civility and respect. It’s better to save your wild side for when you’re among friends, not in a group of people who have to spend time with you because it’s their job. At least pick your times and save your jokes for people who think they’re funny, not people who are afraid not to go along. Why is it even necessary to keep on pointing out the obvious?

I’m getting too old for this.

AND ANOTHER THING: No More Mister Nice Blog has more.

FURTHERMORE: I have a long resume. I’ve cleaned toilets and counseled people through health decisions and retouched high school portraits. I’ve wiped up blood in the ER and hung wallpaper and visited the sick and supervised nurses aides and have been a nurses aide. Now for the first time in my life I’m working in a cubicle. Strangely enough I think the work I’m doing is useful and interesting. Some guy draping himself over my desk and breathing in my face would not improve my day. I like the guys I work with, but not in that way.

PART II: I’m waiting for Roiphe to follow up with an op ed about workplace Napoleons and how much fun they are– and why their unlucky targets should try to enjoy being picked on.
The movie, ‘Office Space’ has some wonderful send ups of petty office tyrants. Workplace bullies are disruptive–good managers should step on their heads when they start with that.

High Stakes Gambling, Anyone?

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

I would be okay with state retirees making over a certain amount being forced to give up their COLA’s, at least until the economy picks up, but when you look at these numbers for people at the lower end, you can see why state workers are scared. The state is about the roll the dice and, if the numbers at the state house come up right, retired workers will begin to see their incomes erode at an alarming rate over the next two decades. From Ted Nesi, God Bless his young heart for doing some actual reporting.

The average Rhode Island state worker’s retirement income would drop from $52,000 to roughly $39,000 over the course of a 19-year freeze on cost-of-living adjustments, estimates by the state’s actuary show.

While the dollar amount of a retiree’s pension check would not change over the course of the 19 years, the continuing rise in the cost of living would slowly erode how much the benefit can buy. That reduces its value in practice, though not in nominal dollars.

The Occupy movement is giving us a hint about what needs to happen with this situation: the wealthy need to do their part. They are not sharing adequately in the “shared sacrifice” and until they do, nothing should happen with regard to reducing benefits or COLAs.

Labor Day Sermon

Posted on by ninjanurse

Dear Kmareka friends,
I’m cutting back on writing to spend more time with my family, who need me now, so I’ll be posting more good words from other people.

Rev. James Ford delivered this sermon at First Unitarian in Providence. Inspiring and exhorting words for Labor Day, the Reverend always wishes us peace with a little unease…

We need to organize and restore the dignity and authority of our communal responsibilities. William Cohen, Unitarian Universalist, former Republican senator from Maine and Bill Clinton’s longest serving Secretary of Defense said it eloquently. “Government is the enemy until you need a friend.” Today we desperately need a friend. We need to organize and reclaim our social connections and to see how they come together within our social organization, within our governments.

To do this we need to reframe. We need to reclaim the title citizen over the title taxpayer. And we need to challenge the idea that taxes are a necessary evil or worse that they are theft. Taxes are not theft; they are the mother’s milk of society. We need to advocate for a fair and progressive tax system, and to fund what needs doing. To do this we need to organize.

You can read the rest at MonkeyMindOnline, Hanging Separately–Hanging Together.

Jobs Not Cuts

Posted on by ninjanurse

Thunderclouds at Sunset

Standing for Workers

So we’re standing on the State House lawn once again, this time for the working and unemployed Americans who are left out of the budget decisions– except as targets for austerity.

I came more to talk to people and not feel so alone with despair over what the past two weeks have brought us to. It’s a pleasant surprise that so many people in passing cars honk and wave and some give us the fist pump. Not one heckler– this is a record.

One speaker is opposing RIPTA cuts to public transit, a cause supported by Progressive Democrats of American and the Sierra Club. I took the bus to the demonstration– if I didn’t I’d still be looking for a place to park. It was a long wait in Kennedy Plaza for the number 42, but I was rewarded with a great view of the sky.

Today’s Providence Journal has great coverage-- I’m glad they were there.

A Modest Proposal for Wal-Mart

Posted on by ninjanurse

I wrote a post last year called Savers v. Wal-Mart. Since the ‘pre-worn’ look seems to be here to stay, you can get it at a fraction of the price at Sal’s or Savers. And it’s authentic worker’s garb.

Being an authentic worker is getting harder. Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision makes it easier for large corporations to nickle and dime their workers without accountability.

From today’s New York Times…

Wal-Mart Stores asked the Supreme Court to make a million or more of the company’s current and former female employees fend for themselves in individual lawsuits instead of seeking billions of dollars for discrimination in a class-action lawsuit. Wal-Mart got what it wanted from the court — unanimous dismissal of the suit as the plaintiffs presented it — and more from the five conservative justices, who went further in restricting class actions in general.

When you are working, everything is an equation of time vs money. All the big department stores have abandoned downtown Providence, except for the PPMall. The nearest convenient place is Wal-Mart. Time, gas, parking, overhead all figure in.

Buying small and local sometimes seems like too much work after a day of work, but there are ways to resist the Borg.

Shop mindfully. All stores strive to hustle you into buying more than you planned. Cutting one impulse purchase from your trip is only a fleabite, but a thousand fleas are no joke. What will happen if we keep our nickles and dimes in our pockets?

Via Politics Plus, we haven’t heard the last of the discrimination suit…

The women who sought to sue Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) for gender bias on behalf of 1.5 million co-workers said they will press their fight against the nation’s largest private employer in smaller lawsuits in lower courts and claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Weak government and strong corporations has been the trend for decades, confirmed by the Supremes this week. If you would rather be a citizen than a consumer or a human resource, this is a time to turn it around.

UPDATE: Wal-Mart stock is up following the Supreme Court ruling. A good day for corporations.

Hillbilly Report explains a court ruling that may ease some of the obstacles to workers wanting to form a union. Individuals are at a big disadvantage vs a multinational corporation, collective bargaining helps workers have a fair chance.

SHOP RHODE ISLAND: Here’s a link to Mi Vida Local with some unique, local small businesses that have what you need without the big box.

The Maid

Posted on by ninjanurse

News is leaking about the identity of the woman who reported that IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn assaulted her.

I had already formed a mental picture of a petite woman with a humble manner, [later reports-- she is a tall woman] an immigrant, a woman of color [legal resident from West Africa, possibly a refugee from political violence].

Bits of news stories– Fox saying sources were surprised ‘she wasn’t a seductive-looking woman’, a neighbor saying she was shy and frightened of the crime in her building, a report she was originally from Senegal [or Guinea, they are adjacent].

I think she appeared to be physically unassuming and unassertive, and looked like an easy mark to a man accustomed to success in bullying. She was stronger than she looked, clearly. The economist made a costly error in judgment.

Strauss-Kahn already has the best lawyers in the world lined up against New York prosecutors. It’s the free market vs the government. One blog commenter speculated that the maid is an operative of the darker races vs the European hold on the IMF. Others that it’s a right-wing smear campaign. I think it will emerge that this guy is a perp who has been enabled for too long.

I would love it if readers shared stories they might have about jobs and how they are treated when they wear a uniform– cleaner, food server, security guard, health care. We want to be a classless society, but we’re not there yet. Still, it is high drama to see a working woman stand up to a millionaire and claim justice.

UPDATE: From the Houston Chronicle…

The woman’s lawyer, Shapiro, said there was no truth to suggestions that she had fabricated her account, describing her as an honest woman with “no agenda.”

“Her life has now been turned upside down. She can’t go home. She can’t go back to work. She has no idea what her future will be, what she will be able to do to support herself and her daughter. This has been nothing short of a cataclysmic event in her life,” Shapiro said. He said she “feels alone in the world.”

The woman, he said, came to the U.S. seven years ago under “very difficult circumstances” and is raising her daughter by herself now that the girl’s father is dead. The family was granted asylum in the U.S., and she is a legal resident. She has worked at the hotel for three years, according to Shapiro.

Bernard-Henry Levi, important French guy, has found the fatal flaw in the victim’s story here…

I do not know—but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, and without delay—how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a “cleaning brigade” of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.

So, you see, it’s all her fault for thinking she could walk into a hotel room alone just because it was her job to clean it. [ A normal person, when a maid knocks, would say, 'come back later'. But we're in Levi Land, an alternate world where jumping out and assaulting someone is the lesser crime.]

It will be fun if there’s a reaction from the hospitality industry, where employers are not eager to pay two people to do a job if it can be done by one. When I worked in motels near Green Airport and at the Marriott we seldom worked in pairs, but what do I know, I’m only a former maid.

I was staying in a motel just this weekend, and the room cleaners, male and female, were pushing carts down long hallways just as I remember it. But what do I know? I don’t stay in the $3,000 a night suite.

MORE UPDATE: This is via Echidne of the Snakes. Ben Stein, noted Creation Scientist and entertainer, wrote a post in American Spectator. He loves hotel maids, when they are not the thieving incompetents he is so often unfortunate enough to endure. Economists, on the other hand, are not the type of person you imagine committing violent crime, so Strauss-Kahn’s word should be bond enough to let him go back to France. Bad Habits blog takes this argument apart.

Rhode Island’s Nuclear Fatality–Part I

Posted on by ninjanurse

This is in memory of Robert Peabody, a husband and father working a second job to support his family, assigned to a dangerous task in an unsafe workplace, poisoned by a nuclear reaction. There are lessons to learn, may we not forget them.

It’s been almost thirty years since the Three Mile Island disaster put a halt to the expansion of nuclear power in the US. Public opinion was already turning against the industry. Once promising cheap, clean electricity, the power plants in fact required massive taxpayer subsidies to build and a special exemption from liability in case the worst happened.

The worst almost happened at Three Mile Island …

Although the TMI-2 plant suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, it did not produce the worst-case consequences that reactor experts had long feared. In a worst-case accident, the melting of nuclear fuel would lead to a breach of the walls of the containment building and release massive quantities of radiation to the environment. But this did not occur as a result of the Three Mile Island accident.

The worst-case accident occurred in 1986 at Chernobyl.

Today, a generation after the gas lines and bitter winters of the 1970′s, we’re again caught unprepared. We still depend on foreign oil and large, centralized power plants. Investment in alternative energy has been cut to a trickle since Ronald Reagan. The nuclear industry is portraying itself as a clean, green savior. Safety concerns are dismissed as a superstitious fear of radioactivity…

In more than 500 reactor years of service in the United States, there has never been a death or a serious injury to plant employees or to the public caused by a commercial reactor accident or radiation exposure. Says Philip Handler, president of the National Academy of Sciences: “Nuclear power is the safest major technology ever introduced into the United States.” link

In fact, a Rhode Island man was killed on the job by radiation exposure. In 1964 in Charlestown, Rhode Island, Robert Peabody was working the second shift at the United Nuclear waste processing plant. The training was minimal, supervision lax and written policies inadequate. Peabody, a Navy vet and mechanic, had picked up a second job to support his large family. When he came on the evening shift, no one warned him that a container full of radioactive water was more concentrated than what he usually handled. When he emptied it into a larger tank the highly concentrated sludge set off a fission reaction…

A blue glow filled the small room as the radiation charged the air with electricity. Peabody was blown flat on his back. The force of the blast also sprayed radioactive solution onto the tower ceiling, 12 feet above. Some of the volatile fluid gushed over the tank lip and onto the floor. The entire plant was instantly filled with the sound of screaming sirens.(Providence Journal, Sunday Journal Magazine ‘Chain Reaction’ 3/11/90)

[ 'Chain Reaction' is not available online free of charge. Yankee Magazine has an online article that covers the same incident, with more technical detail. This is some buried history that the Journal should re-publish.]

Two other workers who responded to the accident were exposed to a second, smaller fission reaction.

Robert Peabody was doomed in an instant, but it took him 49 hours to die. Turned away from Westerly Hospital, he was driven at top speed to Rhode Island Hospital by ambulance driver John Shibilio and placed in an isolation room. His widow attributes her cancer to the minutes she held her dying husband’s hand. Everything he touched had to be decontaminated or burned. His remains were cremated. He left nine children.

His death, and the corporate denial afterward, is an example of the weak regulation and lack of accountability that leaves workers unprotected. The danger to the public is not imaginary.

The nuclear industry likes to compare its safety record to coal. But much of the danger of coal mining is a matter of priorities. Worker safety is balanced against profit. A mine accident is a disaster for the miners and their community. A nuclear accident such as Chernobyl sends radioactive particles across national borders. Millions are unaware that they are exposed. These particles contain elements that do not degrade for many thousands of years, that accumulate in our bodies and concentrate up the food chain, capable of causing cancer and birth defects many generations after the accident.

The Peabody family was left bereft and in poverty. Robert Peabody was blamed for the accident that killed him.

EVEN AS PEABODY was admitted to the hospital, United Nuclear was working to discredit him, blaming “human error” and “ineptitude” in newspaper accounts of the accident. In addition to assuring the public that any radiation released into the atmosphere was insignificant, company officials said that Peabody had violated plant safety procedures by pouring the contents of the 11-liter “safe” bottle into the “unsafe” chemical tank. (Providence Journal 3/11/90)

No danger to the public. No blame to the corporation. They say it’s different now. Trust them.

For the aftermath of the accident, see Part II.

We Can’t Fire Poverty….

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

This quote from Diane Ravitch helps frame the issues we are facing in Rhode Island as we all await the announcements of school closures in Providence, and hopefully start repairing the damage done by the mass firing letters. This comes from a statement Ravitch made about the firings of the teachers in Central Falls last year:

It would be good if our nation’s education leaders recognized that teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter, including the students’ effort, the family’s encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of poverty. A blogger called “Mrs. Mimi” wrote the other day that we fire teachers because “we can’t fire poverty.” Since we can’t fire poverty, we can’t fire students, and we can’t fire families, all that is left is to fire teachers.

This strategy of closing schools and firing the teachers is mean and punitive. And it is ultimately pointless. It solves no problem. It opens up a host of new problems. It satisfies the urge to purge. But it does nothing at all for the students.