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Just When You Think It Can’t Get Any Worse…

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ross53	Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 4:26 pm
Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: california	loonietunes, Sorry but this time you are wrong. The UFCW Local135 president Mickey Kasparian aka SCLICK MICKEY. "the avarage grocery workers in his local earn about $12 an hour and put in 28 hour a week if you add it up those are poverty wages nobody's getting rich these days working in a supermarket" Source: San Diego Union Tribune Set 25, 2005 Slick Mickey will always look for the best interets of the union members, after 20 weeks of strike we got "NOTHING" but SLICK MICKEY got a $29,000.00 dollar pay increase. My union rep comes to my store and ask the members if they would like a pen and a work schedule booklet. I need a better medical benefit better working conditions more hours per week and a leadership who listen to union members questions and works with the rank n file to give all of us a better future. I don't care to see SCLICK MICKEY picture on the newspaper recieving the Labor Leader of the Year Award. (he purchase with the union members money the title of Labor Leader of the Year with a donation of nearly $26,000 dollars to the San Diego Imperial Labor Counsil) our union members are one step away from becaming eligible to recieve welfare benefits. LT, You see Slick MIckey really care about the union members. "union officials earn their paychecks by betraying the union members"Ross53
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loonietunes	Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 4:30 pm
Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 1210	Catbear-955 The problen is ---who gets to choose what is "Petty Crap" and what the real importanted cases are? This is exactly what the problem has been with the UFCW--- Some of these Local Unions set up their own little tribunals ---and they choose which cases are thrown out and which cases go forward- --and you and I know that many times it is not based on the merit of the case but the politics of the case-- --I challange any UFCW Insider to say this ain't so! So "Sour Grapes" has nothing to do with anything--- If a UFCW union member gets sold down the river---the ones doing the selling out---have got to be brought to justice--and have got to pay for their actions. It's that simple. LT
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wm pasz	Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 8:32 pm
Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 1219 Location: Toronto	One way of understanding what's going on with all these sell-outs of members' interests and the biz-friendly speeches of guys like Andy Stern (and he is business-friendly - there are very few times the guy opens his mouth without yapping about the inevitability of the corporatizing of the planet Earth) is that union like the SEIU and UFCW have basically become appendages of the corporatists. They're sort of like the HR department but they're external to the company rather than being an in-house department. Their role is to do what HR departments were supposed to do way back when human resources management evolved as "function" within the corporate structure: Keep workers obedient and submissive, feed them a lot of corporate propaganda and keep them distracted from each other so that they don't start to identify their own interests and act collectively to achieve them. The UFCW is a particularly advanced example of this kind of HR-appendage. Up here in Canada they're known among employers as the union you call in when your employees are talking about joining the USWA or the CAW. In exchange for their HR-management services, the UFCW gets union dues and payments to its various slush funds and it does a job for the employer. Someone, a few posts back, mentioned ratification votes and how these are manipulated or avoided altogether by tactics like re-opening contracts in mid-term. That kind of crap has been going on up here for quite a while. A recent example was the spectacular Secret Deal that three UFCW locals did in 2003, totally behind members' backs and without ratification. As it turned out the three locals and the Canadian UFCW office got a total of $3 million in payola for their efforts at contract-gouging. When a member challenged the deal at the LRB, the UFCW's explanation was that the secrecy and the autocracy were needed to help make the company more profitable. The $3 million? Oh well, companies give generously to union communcation and education funds all the time don't they? It actually seems that as its ability to represent the members gets shoddier and shoddier and its efforts to organize new workplaces continue to fall flat, the UFCW tries harder and harder to please the employers who give generously to its special funds and make use of its worker-control services. This I think is what it's all about. It's a business. That's how Bill Wynn envisioned the UFCW back in 1979 and that's the vision that guided Doug Dority's disastrous decisions and will now guide Joe Hansen's. Andy Stern's comments about the death of employer-funded health care are another glimpse at the vision of the biz-unionist chieftains: It's about the money - not in the members' pockets but in the union-businessmen's. From Stern's speech I do not get the impression that he is lamenting the death of employer-funded health care in the US. There's a sort of excitement in the way he discusses the subject. I can sort of see him salivating at the opportunity to become one of those "multiple payers" whom he believes will come out of the bushes to pick up where the employers left off. I think Andy already has Andy's Benefit Administration and Health Insurance Co. ready for business. Again, he's shilling for the business guys who are his partners. They're tired of paying the tab for their workers' health care. Andy's out making the case for them. It's too much of a burden, to expensive, to much off the bottom line. Come on, these guys have to compete in the global economy ya know. Watch for Andy and the rest of the "Change to Earn" coalition to start lobbying for system that involves the government paying Andy and Joe's insurance company to provide health insurance to millions of workers in conjunction with their employers who will also pay Andy and Joe's insurance company to administer those benefits. I know it may seem ridiculous but then a lot of ridiculous thoughts have been known to float around in Andy's head. _________________ Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else. - Malcolm X
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SFway	Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 3:45 am
Joined: 26 May 2006 Posts: 573	Laboryes ! Thanks for attending the BAC negotiating sessions That is precisely the type of thing we all need to do with one another and for one another. The "Good Friday Action" was a piece of excellent work, a collective decision, doubtless, based upon that particular clause in our contract. [For those not conversant with it, the BAC contract allows 3 hours off of work during Good Friday, noon to 3 PM, for "bona fide" religious services. So, the BAC organized "bona fide" religious services in multiple locations around the Bay Area for grocery clerks to attend. A most spiritually satisfying outcome for all - except the companies, which were annoyed.] This was just one of many, many "actions" the BAC undertook. LT..a quick question: I know rank and file members have the right under LMRDA to inspect a Local's Executive Board minutes but I was unaware of the right to obtain xerox copies of those Minutes (except Executive Sessions). Is/was there a ruling or citation on this you know of? Appreciate the help!! You are quite correct in your comment regarding the "moral authoority to lead". Having said that, many of the BAC leaders, in my view, do have and have demonstrated precisely that type of authority - and still the members' participation and voting turnout was disappointing. What this indicates to me is just how far we have to go in the education and empowerment of the members, how much the values and goals of the UFCW, Local and IU, need be changed and resources redirected to their proper course. I can be done - it must be done -and it will be done - if not by current officers, then by our own happy selves, one way or the other.
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loonietunes	Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 5:11 am
Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 1210	Sf-Way-- copies--of the minutes from "regular" Local union executive Board meetings have always been available to every "Rank and File" union member. Ironically--years ago when--things were a little less corrupt and we had UFCW leaders with a little more honesty-and morals-- -the "E-Board minutes" would be even passed out at membership meetings--imagine that--- Things have only become "real secret" during the past 15 years or so! LT
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Pearson	Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 2:10 pm
Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 1417 Location: Sun City AZ	This entire discussion can be boiled down to the difference in a bottom up structure vs a top down (biz union model) agenda. As wm p pointed out, the UFCW under Bill Wynn became the consumate biz union operation. I'm sure some of you remember the pre-merger days in the 70's. Locals tended to be more membership friendly. Meat cutter locals were usually better than clerks, and both at least had good attendance and very often bad leadership resulted in them getting the boots. Nope, not romantizing the "good old days," even back then it wasn't what it should or could be. The merger of the clerks and the cutters was the beginning of the end for democracy in the ufcw. While the international touts local union autonomy, the end product is one where the goal of bigger locals was always on their radar screen. When you look around the ufcw you tend to see the smaller locals as the ones where there is still some effort to empower the membership. The large locals are the worst in that the huge salaries and vast numbers of staff tend to make them dynasty-like in how they operate. For the ufcw to evolve to a more member friendly organization, we need an absolute paradigm shift. They would have to culturally change their entire framework. I drafted a long proposal to Jay Foreman in the early 90's that would have begun that shift, and said it was a ten year rebuilding proposal. Funny, i never even got a response. The fact is, the boys have it pretty good. It's the members who are and will be paying the price. I see nothing on the horizon to suggest that Joe or the CTW crowd has anything remotely close to a plan or a strategy to break the mold and become something other than what they are. In fact, what concerns me most is the thought they will buy into Sterns idea of dumping employer health care. While having a national health care plan is the solution, the country is moving away from collective ideologies. His grand plan is doomed to fail without a massive shift back to a more socialized society. CB's resposnses are typical. Her local is one of the better ones. The BAC efforts have been awesome. Unfortunately, you see nothing from the international to help make their agenda the predominant theme of where we are going. In fact, just the opposite. The ufcw is run by a couple of folks entrenched in a failed system. The large locals are supporting the international: It's great job protection and as you can see from the LM2's, the bigger locals tend to get pretty good financial assistance from them. Doomed archaic structures; no new ideas or strategies; predictable behaviors and self-serving leadership intent on keeping theirs will only continue the charade of some kind of rebuilding process under the "new leadership." I wish i had CB's optimism, but reality is always about what they are doing, not what they are saying. _________________ If we don't do it, who will?
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SharynS	Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 3:32 pm
Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 2941 Location: the 'puter	Merging smaller locals and massive concessions have pretty much come hand in hand, it seems like an obvious strategy on the part of biz-u and big box biz partners . Disempower the small locals by merging and where once there was localized negotiating there's industry standard crap. That removes the 'competitive' negotiating edge from one bargaining table to the next doesn't it? Of course it does. The next question is why? Why are union memberships being led down the un-winding path? What's at the end of the path and for whom? _________________ Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. - Salman Rushdie
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Plutodog	Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 7:20 pm
Joined: 06 Feb 2006 Posts: 300 Location: Oregon	Good Question and I suspect I know the answer but what answers to Biz Unions give -- is it the same boilerplate or do they mix and match lies and half-truths? Arf Arf _________________ "I'm not a humanitarian,I'm a hell-raiser" -- Mother Jones
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loonietunes	Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 7:47 pm
Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 1210	WM-Pasz-- I love your statement that the UFCW is nothing more than an advanced form of an "HR Appendage" for the Grocery Companies. You are Quite-right--my friend! I recall even in my younger days, I would hear some of the UFCW old-time leaders complain about how the UFCW had been reduced to doing the Company's dirty work- -like making sure union members stayed fired that the company wanted them out of their stores. Hell this was in the late 70's---- LT
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