Communicate or Die

Finally, Communicate or Die is getting some love! First thing you'll notice is the new look. We hope you like it. We still need to smooth over some obvious flaws and there are a lot of improvements coming. But in the tradition of free/open source software development, we thought we'd let our users play with this "beta" version and tell us what needs fixing.

Of course, technology and a flashier design can only get you so far, you need real live flesh and blood to breath life into an online community. So, I decided to hire Jason Pramas to actively reach out to individuals and organizations and encourage their participation in the CoD community. Jason not only has a long history of labor activism, he thinks deeply about the web and all of its implications. I bumped into Jason last month when he gave a presentation about his exciting Open Media Boston project, which aims to help promote quality community and labor journalism. The CoD community is very fortunate to have such an eminently qualified person working to help it grow and thrive again.

We'll set up a feedback form shortly. In the meantime, any and all comments about the site are appreciated below.

We're excited to get folks posting here again; so we thought it would be good form to give everyone an idea of some of the tech we think is worth talking about on Communicate or Die.

In a nutshell, we're looking for posts about Web 2.0 - its promise and pitfalls - in relation to the labor movement.

Yesterday I attended a webinar run by AFL-CIO Online Mobilization Manager Chris Kenngot on the national fed's new LaborWeb content management system - now running in open beta and available for all interested AFL union leadership to try for free.

Greetings, Communicate or Die viewers.

Just a quick note to introduce myself ... and let you all know that your favorite online community dedicated to the notion that the labor movement can (and must) effectively make use of all available internet technology is back.

I stumbled across Communicate or Die, though it's possible that my preoccupation with reaching my members -- and by that I really mean reaching and moving them -- might have led me here.

Lack of member participation, lack of member interest, lack of member understanding about their own union as well as the Labor Movement in general, are serious frustrations for me. We have a monthly newsletter, a website, and monthly meetings, and still have difficulty moving members to act in their own interests.

Despite our tools and efforts, we still miss the mark more often than not. People are busy with second jobs, raising children, school, and whatnot, and they can't be bothered with a single additional drain on their time or attention.

Given all that we know about the unequal American economy, the Wal-Mart wage structure, outsourcing, and a tax structure that favors the wealthy, it's kind of remarkable to me that many union members are so passive. Working people should be outraged at the wholesale theft that has been going on for a generation.

Over the last few weeks I have fielded a few calls, emails and blog comments from union workers that seem to sound a little defeated.

Tonight I posted a piece to Union Review called What's the use? with the hope I could outline some of what the chorus is all singing about and provide some ideas. If anything, perhaps it will get people to talk a little.

I came over to Communicate or Die to share a little about this because I know many of you are deeply entrenched with technology that assists unions. I also know some of you are organizers and have a great deal more union-business experience than me and some of the readers/chorus singing their frustrations. I thought to reach out with some very broad questions:

Why is there such a huge gap in communications between the unions and their members ... and what can be done about that?

What is being done about educating union members of their rights? As we campaign endlessly to organize the nonunion worker, what is being done to strengthen the membership we have?

What do we tell an online community of concerned active workers so they stay encouraged in these times of doubt?

If anyone has any thoughts, please let me know ... I have a few people asking :)

All the best to you all,
-Richard

Reposted from the AFL-CIO blogs, thought to share.

When President Bush vetoed legislation setting timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq yesterday, he also vetoed the first increase in the minimum wage in a decade.

That means Republicans for 112 days have held hostage a minimum wage increase. While minimum wage workers have not had a pay raise since 1997, Congress gave itself nine pay hikes, totally more than $36,000.

Here's how it got to this point:

The U.S. House passed a bill Jan. 10 that would have boosted the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25, without another round of tax breaks for business. Senate Republicans filibustered the House bill for a week in January, using Senate rules to force minimum wage backers to win 60 votes instead of a simple 51 majority and then killing the House bill on Jan. 24. By killing the House bill, Senate Republicans forced Senate Democrats to add $8.3 billion in business tax breaks. They then refused to allow the combined minimum wage and tax package to move to a conference with the House until the House produced its own package of tax cuts for business. Members of the House and Senate announced April 20 that they had reached agreement on $4.8 billion in tax relief for small businesses that will be paired with a minimum wage increase. They then added the minimum wage increase to the supplemental spending bill (H.R. 1591) conference report, which both houses passed and Bush vetoed yesterday.

Supporters of the minimum wage increase are disappointed, but undaunted. They vow to continue to send the package of tax breaks and a minimum wage increase back to the president until it is signed.

By Peter A. Cockshaw

3/12/2007

The declining state of union construction is a critical issue that must be forcefully addressed. The sobering reality is that this sector is either treading water or close to drowning in many areas of the country.

One of many ominous signs is unions' failure to win back market share even during economically robust periods. Unsettling also is organized construction's desperate struggle to avoid losing current jobs, including traditionally "reliable" public work. This is an alarming assessment to make about an industry that offers project owners such vital strengths as a highly trained, highly skilled and productive work force.

The prime reason for construction unions' failing fortunes is the competitive bind signatories face when competing against increasingly stiff open-shop competition. The question, then, is what specific measures do labor and management need most to get back in the competitive ball game?

There are several issues that top the "wish list" of contractors in all organized sectors. A key one is worker portability. In these times when many contractors have to travel to find work, it becomes even more critical to have the ability to take some valued people with them.

"Contractors spend a lot of time and money training their workers and our bidding price is based on past productivity, which is a function of our craftspeople," says one employer. "When union locals prevent an employer from taking a few key people with [it] to man a job, this often kills the deal."

Another competitive disadvantage is the inability of signatories to use coordinated or composite work forces, especially on smaller projects. Most union employers can do a task in the same manhours as their open shop competitors, but they have a harder time keeping workers performing productive work for a full shift due to jurisdictional issues. It is clear that if union signatories could employ coordinated or composite work forces to eliminate such wasted time, they would become more cost-effective.

No Fluff

For that matter, any contract condition that hinders an employer's ability to compete deserves to be slashed. That includes productivity-inhibiting jobs or positions. In today's fierce competitive environment, contractors must not be forced to put extra people on a job because an agreement mandates them. If a person is not needed to perform a function, an employer cannot afford to add him to its bid price. And every time contractors are forced to absorb unnecessary manpower costs, nonunion employers gain the upper hand.

Ask construction users to name the main obstacles union contractors face in getting their work and most will cite "costs" as the prime factor. Others add "attitude" and "performance" to the list. One user sums up the opinions of many when he states:

"We're not going to give contractors work based on the union philosophy or how skillfully they run their training programs. All our company cares about is fair cost and quality performance—period. Anything less in this cold, cruel economic world is not acceptable. Moreover, unless union craftsmen show up on time, look presentable, have the right attitude and truly put in eight hours work for eight hours pay, we'll settle for nonunion people with lesser skills."

The vast majority of industry insiders I talk to offer similar views, including a growing number of union leaders who now are actively urging their locals to make positive changes. One is Ed Hill, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

"All we have to do is listen to what too many customers or potential customers say about us," Hill says. "They stress that poor attitude by many craftsmen is a root cause of our union's problems. It is the contractor who risks his business and his livelihood on the work we do. He needs us. We need him. And it is that combined productivity that determines a project's financial success. That's why the sooner our members realize that we're all in this together, the better off we will be."

It is crystal clear that cost-effective contract changes and changes in worker attitudes represent a winning strategy—a strategy that is desperately needed for the union sector to regain market share and ensure a promising future. But that strategy must be adopted today. "Tomorrow" will be way too late.
_________________________________________________________________________

Peter A. Cockshaw is a veteran labor analyst living in Pennsylvania. He can be reached at 610-436-7553

UMass GEO UAW fights for a fair contract
GEO Contract Rally videos

Graduate student employees rally for a fair contract at UMass Amherst. February 8, 2007

I'm at the National Conference on Media Reform where I attended a panel called "Strike Out: Dropping the Ball on Labor." President of the Newspaper Guild, Linda Foley, was one of the panelists. She has a great deal to say about the battles currently facing labor when it comes to breaking the corporate media blockade. Sadly, there was little said about how labor doesn't necessarily need the major media to get their message out and about how they can chart their own course via the World Wide Web. While the panel was well attended there is a serious lack of labor leadership at this conference.

Video is on the Workers Independent News site. All together it is roughly 15 minutes.

This coming February will mark 5 years of my running IBEW Forums websites. I started out knowing nothing about the internet and even less about the mechanics of forums programs and thought I knew everything about the IBEW. I now know more than I could ever have thought possible about building websites and modding forums programs but...I've come to realize that I know nothing about the 'new' IBEW and its members. It's not the same IBEW anymore that I spent 35 years working under its umbrella.

I'm a salmon...swimming upstream to spawn...and die...dodging the fish hooks thrown in the water by all who would drag me ashore and eat me...or worse, and now, I've run into a dam without fish ladders. But, I'm too dumb to know it and I swim in circles day after day looking for the falls to leap and swim over the top of...but, they're just not there. And, all the while, the very life is draining from my body in this apparently futile effort. I've just come to the realization that the spawn of all my brothers and sisters from bygone days have thrown up this dam to block my journey. I think I'm doomed...I'm part of something that I don't recognize, I don't know, don't understand and probably never will. Can you spell 'white flag?'.

"Faculty and grad workers demonstrated against the University of Florida's plan to "reallign" (i.e. gut) most of it's humanities programs in favor of other "more productive" programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS)...."

This message was in my inbox. One of the exciting things about the creativity of this group of folks is that they are using YouTube to publicize their rally. And most exciting for me ;-) is that they have started a wiki (of the peanut butter variety). Unfortunately it is locked down, no open edit here. I was going to hyperlink CLAS - because it means something and I want it to link to what it means! For the open edit wiki!

Let's what how they use these tools.

also see earlier weblog post Google Video.

And those new to this website, welcome, this website is called a "weblog" and new entries stack on top of each other. Here are the links that are embedded in the text above:

* Click here for CLAS Unite wiki

* Click here for the YouTube:ClAS rally video

Organize or Die
Book Preface – The Management SOB

I am a management SOB.

I have been threatened, picketed, spit at, defamed, sued, harassed and generally made to feel unloved. I represent employers in terminations, sexual harassment, strikes, lock-outs, jurisdictional disputes and other sudden death games. My winning arbitration record is Cy Young quality. My Italian and Irish bloodlines cause occasional loud and unruly outbursts. I have broken phones but never promises. When provoked I can laugh or froth like a junkyard dog.

I have taken an eye for an eye, gone nose to nose and matched drink for drink. I have no formal legal training but I can find the obscure contract loophole. I have no guilt about using the mangiest choke-chain lawyers to bare fangs at a labor dinosaur. And I confess to have just recently given up the amusing pastime of “taunt the first year business agent.”

I am, by trade or situation, a negotiator, mediator, father-confessor and sympathetic arm twister. Yes, I am a management SOB. But at the same time, I have been honored by local and international unions. I have made conducted seminars for thousands of business managers, agents and organizers across the United States. I was even the recipient of one of the highest honors granted by an International Union. As a result, I now own more plaques, shirts, watches, pins, jackets and pens with union logos than I will ever need or use.

You see, despite my obvious lack of charm and my abundance of serious character flaws, I am a very effective and successful union organizer. I am a wolf in wolf’s clothing. It’s just that I alternately promote and eat the sheep.

Results speak louder than words. One local District Council used the ideas contained in this booklet and signed up 300 new companies on a “top-down” basis in three years; no salting or campaigns or votes required. I have personally brokered relationships and contracts between more than 100 non-union companies and various unions in the last five years. We should all have such productive hobbies.

Now before you finger me as a college “suit” or heartless corporate kill-shot type, without an understanding of an honest day’s work, a little history is in order. I started working when I was 12. To put myself through high school and college I would do about anything for money. I’ve been a paperboy, busboy, waiter, fry-cook, housepainter, drywaller, janitor, bar-back, retail clerk, pump jockey, laborer, carpenter, gardener, foreman, production manager, and on and on. Been paid union, non-union and cash under the table. I’ve had dirt on my jeans. Mud on my boots. Dust up my nose. Paint in my hair. Whatever it took. A man apart from “an honest day’s work?” Hardly. Been there and done that.

I come from three generations of contracting in my family. Great grandfather, grandfather and step-dad. By age 26 1 had put myself through college, and become the chief executive of a contractor’s trade association in California. And also become, without knowing it, the youngest SOB in the nation with this job.

I knew nothing, acted like it and didn’t know that either.

It was then, with a lot of help from some class-act labor leaders and innovative employers, that I began to formulate a different way of conducting labor-management relations.

Since that time, the association has tripled in size. It has become a leading multi-employer bargaining unit and an innovator in labor-management relations in California. The unit currently represents more than two hundred major companies. These companies employs tens of thousands of union workers, for millions of man-hours each year with billions of dollars in secured contracts.

So why now, at the pinnacle of management SOB success, might I compromise my notoriety? What could I possibly gain by promoting relationships between nonunion firms and organized labor? Is there any balance to this risk-reward formula?

My motives are not noble. I am not engaged in a fight for the heart and soul of the American worker. The simple fact is that I represent unionized employers and it is easier to teach you, my opponents, to even the playing field, than it is to get you to take your medicine; the wage, fringe or work rule concessions your members will scream about.

Thus I am using non-traditional strategies to aggressively expand my market share. In fact, I am using labor to bring the market to me and even the playing field for my employers at the same time. Is this a marketing innovation? Maybe. Is this the new labor-management dynamic at work? Perhaps. But the blunt truth is that it is a survival technique for existing union employers. This market is governed by a harsh economic and political environment that does not measure itself by its ideology. Its dog-eat-dog determined by performance and results. It is the American Way.

I have no time to debate the moral merits or deficiencies of this system. But I have invested nearly a decade devising very specific marketing and business development strategies to thrive within it. This book and my presentations are designed to address top-down organizing; marketing and business development strategies up to and including closing the sale on non-union employers. They are about how to conduct yourself as a real professional labor representative in the business world.

I do not address bottom up techniques such as salting, arm-twisting or ass-chewing. Someone else will teach you those strategies; essential for some campaigns but not my style. To me, most business relationships that starts that way will probably lack the trust, loyalty and mutual benefit that is the foundation for any long-term relationship. I know that sometimes you-gotta-do-what-you-gotta-do; but what if you didn’t have to go that far to begin with?

So as we move on, keep an open mind. My messages may not always be easy to accept or digest. I hope you find them provoking and interesting. And you may find in their raw and vulgar nature some compelling in-your-face truths; like a serious car accident you just can’t look away from. One guarantee; if you are willing to try something different, there is at least one thing in my strategies and tactics that will change the way you do business.

Mark Breslin
WebSite @ http://www.breslin.biz/Scripts/default.asp

In this space I’ve written a lot about organization and how the internal values and culture of Labor conflict with modern computer technologies. If you believe, as I do, that our structures need to change, the very next question is how, and that is a very difficult question to answer.

Mixing technologies, weblog posts to email back to a weblog post, for the rss fanatics!

Opening Labor's Minds to Internet Communication
by Wayne Langley
http://www.communicateordie.com/node/257

Cleveland AFL-CIO President's Blog Provides Stage for Union Bashing
by Steve Dondley
http://www.communicateordie.com/node/253

New Web Site Brought to You by Union Busters, Inc.
by Steve Dondley
http://www.communicateordie.com/node/243

Using internet-driven tech for more than just publishing/publicity?
by Franciso Cendejas
http://www.communicateordie.com/node/213

Rank-and-file website defends free speech
by Matt Noyes
http://www.communicateordie.com/node/211

CBC Lockout, Worker Use of the Internet
by Mark Dilley
http://www.communicateordie.com/node/199

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