Binghamton Education Workers Union

Direct Action Against Israeli Occupation: Joseph Dana of Anarchists Against the Wall

joe112 — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 00:16:48 +0000

You are invited to attend a talk on the Israel/Palestine conflict by an activist in the Israeli peace movement, Joseph Dana.

Joseph Dana is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker living in Jerusalem. His coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict focuses on the Palestinian unarmed resistance movements throughout the West Bank and the impact of Israel’s occupation on Palestinian life. With two Master’s degrees in Jewish History, one from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one from the Central European University in Budapest, he often draws on his knowledge of Jewish history to analyze Israel’s current political/social situation and relationship to the Palestinians. A contributing editor of the Israeli web magazine +972 and member of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, Dana’s writing has been featured in the Nation, Electronic Intifada, Le Monde, New York Times, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Alternet, Pulse, and Haaretz. Dana is active in Israeli direct action groups such as Taayush and the Anarchists Against the Wall.

Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW) is a direct action group that was established in 2003 in response to the construction of the wall Israel is building on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank. The group works in cooperation with Palestinians in a joint popular struggle against the occupation.

Since its formation, the group has participated in hundreds of demonstrations and direct actions against the wall specifically, and the occupation generally, all over the West Bank. All of AATW’s work in Palestine is coordinated through villages’ local popular committees and is essentially Palestinian led.

Time: 7pm October 20th, 2010
Location: uu202 (second floor of the old union), Binghamton University

josephdana.com
awalls.org

I.W.W. Organizer Training

joe112 — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:00:56 +0000

Dear Friends and Fellow Workers,

We are hosting a labor organizer training weekend here in Binghamton on October 23rd-24th, and you are invited to join us.

This is an intensive two day training that includes an introduction to what a union is, what makes the IWW unique, stages of a campaign, the nuts and bolts of how to organize your workplace, labor law in a nutshell, and more. This training will also introduce you to the IWW’s style of unionism (solidarity unionism), a model of organizing that relies on worker-organizers, direct action, fighting for better conditions, and worker solidarity. We will be bringing in two veteran IWW organizers with experience organizing in timber, shellfish farming, agricultural work, restaurants, higher education, and construction to conduct the training.

The training will be from 10AM to 6PM on Saturday the 23rd and from 10am to 4pm on Sunday the 24th. In order to prepare materials and such, we are asking that people register beforehand here http://tinyurl.com/24k78pf . We’re asking attendees for a $5 registration fee to help cover food and transportation costs, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Lunch is included. If you are coming from out of town and will need housing you are strongly urged to preregister or contact us as soon as possible.

For more information or if you have questions about participating in the training, please call Joe at (607) 651-7705 or email binghamtoniww@gmail.com

I.W.W. General Interest Meeting Wednesday

joe112 — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 21:33:39 +0000

Binghamton University has decided to give its new interim President a $70,000 raise over the previous president, bringing his salary to $355,000. In addition, they also provide him with an apartment, a vehicle, a driver, air travel reimbursement, and an entertainment allowance! The same administration that approved these extravagant expenses recently destroyed an entire program – Philosophy, Interpretation, & Culture – in the name of budget cuts, hasn’t given Teaching Assistants a raise since 2007 (which is equivalent to a pay cut because the cost of food & rent has gone up), grossly underpays adjunct teachers, and continuously uses state budget cuts as a pretext to attack workers’ standards of living and slash programs left and right. While giving President Magrath a $70,000 raise, SUNY management also decided to raise tuition again just before the semester started. Politicians cite the economic crisis and a general lack of money as to justify cutting spending on education and social programs, yet they never seem to have a problem finding money for endless wars or for bailing out the banks that caused the economic crisis. SUNY management, like the rest of the elite, is actually cutting programs to give themselves more wealth, using the economic crisis as a pretext. They are at war with us, and things will only get worse until workers organize as a class and launch a counter-offensive. It is time to fight back!

The Industrial Workers of the World in Binghamton will be having a General Interest Meeting this Wednesday, September 15th, at 5pm in UU205. This is an introduction to the Industrial Workers of the World and its branch at SUNY-Binghamton, the Binghamton Education Workers Union. The IWW is an international workers rights organization. We use collective direct action to fight for workers against bosses. If you want to fight back, or are interested in anti-capitalism, workers rights, labor unions, or class struggle, this is an event you’ll want to attend.

Food will be served.

What’s Wrong with the GSEU

joe112 — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:34:53 +0000

Communication Workers of America Local 1104, also called GSEU on SUNY campuses, is the government-sponsored union for Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants throughout the SUNY system. Although the majority of Local 1104 members are Teaching or Graduate Assistants, it also represents a variety of unrelated occupations across the state, including telecommunication technicians, telephone operators, nurses, and accountants. GSEU is a flawed organization. It is corrupt, authoritarian, led by bigots, practices election fraud, achieves little for its members, and signed a secret deal with SUNY management selling out its members. Among the problems with GSEU/CWA 1104:

Corruption

GSEU pays $40,000/year to a non-union company, Crimson Technologies, for “computer system maintenance.” Maria Connelly, the wife of Local 1104 Secretary-Treasurer Ed Connelly, is an executive in Crimson Technologies.
President George Bloom pays himself $150,000/year and the Secretary-Treasurer pays himself $146,000/year. Neither has ever been a graduate student.
Dues Checkoff: The GSEU collects dues by having SUNY deduct dues from our paycheck whether or not we consent to it. Relying on employers to collect dues creates a conflict of interest for the union leadership, making it more likely to sign secret sweetheart deals, while reducing contact between union leaders and the membership. If there were no dues checkoff union leaders would have to interact more with union members, charge reasonable dues rates (instead of the current exorbitant 2%), and achieve real gains for the membership to convince large numbers of TA/GAs to pay dues.

Secret Sweetheart Deal

In 2005 the English department at SUNY-Binghamton unilaterally doubled the workload of most their TAs, requiring the majority to teach two full classes. According to the State’s own investigation, this requires more work than the 20 hours/week maximum specified in the contract between GSEU and SUNY. English TAs filed a grievance against the policy with the GSEU, but Executive Vice President Kathleen Sims signed a secret agreement allowing SUNY-Binghamton to increase the workload of any or all TAs as much as it wants. As late as early 2008 she was still denying she had signed any sort of agreement concerning the workload issue, but at the end of Spring Semester 2008 the state made the agreement public in order to diffuse renewed pressure to reverse the workload increases. Workload increases have since spread to other departments.

Election Fraud

In 2005 Local 1104 refused to hold elections. Victor Rosado of SUNY-Stony Brook, who wanted to run against Executive Vice President Kathleen Sims, sued the GSEU and forced them to hold elections in 2008.
In the 2008 elections the GSEU forbade first year graduate students from voting. Because graduate students are the largest section of the union, and the section most hostile to the current leadership, this allowed the incumbents to narrowly win reelection with the support of the minority of union members who are not graduate students.

Authoritarianism

Almost all decision-making power is concentrated in the power of full time paid GSEU leaders. The rank and file have no real say in what the union does. Union leaders are not required to hold meetings with members and if they do hold meetings, they are not required to allow voting on any matter. If they do allow votes, they are not required to abide by the results of the vote. Traditionally, union leaders at SUNY-Binghamton have not allowed voting (although SUNY-Binghamton has a new union boss, and he may change this). When rank and file members pressured then-Business Agent for SUNY-Binghamton Utku Balaban to allow votes at meetings he told them “no, you cannot vote.”
In 2000 then-President Monazir Khan forbade representatives from SUNY-Buffalo from serving on the negotiating committee because they would not vote the way Kahn wanted and were critical of his leadership.
In 2009 Executive Vice President Kathleen Sims fabricated allegations that SUNY-Binghamton Business Agent Utku Balaban, who had verbally criticized Sims, physically assaulted her. Although the charges were thrown out of court, the allegations were used as a pretext to take away his job and expel him from the union.
National CWA leaders are not directly elected.

Poor Agreements
GSEU/CWA 1104 has agreed:

TAs/GAs may be paid as little as $8,586 per year. Most departments voluntarily pay more because paying that little would harm recruitment of new grad students.
SUNY may choose not to give a tuition waiver to as many TA/GAs as it wants, and may require TA/GAs without tuition waivers to take 9 credits of courses even if they’re course complete or ABD.
TA/GAs may be paid up to two weeks late (meaning new TA/GAs normally aren’t paid until 1 month after starting work).
SUNY may layoff as many people as they want, and may increase tuition as much as they want.
GSEU also agreed to prevent any strike or work slowdown of TA/GAs, and that strikes against any government are not legitimate (if they did not agree to this, the state would refuse to deduct dues from our paychecks). The CWA puts no strike pledges in all their contracts.

Bigotry

Local 1104 Secretary-Treasurer Ed Connelly sent an e-mail accusing all Muslims of raping “Scandinavian girls and women,” burning down Christian churches, being “aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-traders,” and calling for all Muslims to leave the United States.
In the Spring 2010 issue of their newsletter a Local 1104 employee wrote, “you don’t engage a battalion of gooks with a squad of Marines, and expect to survive without ground, air and artillery support.”
President Bloom denounced Verizon as an “unwed Mother.”

Another Union is Possible!
Join the IWW!

The Industrial Workers of the World is a global organization committed to workplace democracy and the dignity of all working people. The IWW uses collective direct action to build workers power and fight for economic justice in the workplace. All workers have common interests against their employers. The IWW is a way to build solidarity among workers across regardless of occupation or whether or not they belong to another union. The IWW is also a tool to directly fight management without being hamstrung by the GSEU or other union bureaucrats, and can potentially also act to curb the worst abuses of the GSEU. Membership in the I.W.W. does not preclude membership in any other union, or vice versa. TA/GAs should also join the GSEU/CWA 1104 because it will force you to pay dues to them even if you don’t join, and joining gives you the option of voting in their elections.

As long as we allow others to organize instead of us, we will always have unions that are unresponsive to our demands. This is not simply an issue of corruption or unresponsive “representation,” this is an issue of power within the union. We have seen the corruption into which such a representative hierarchy leads and we have to say “No More!” It is time that our union is actually Our Union and that it advocates our rights to the bureaucrats, not their rights to us! It is time to come together for a union whose leaders are not one of those bureaucrats themselves! It is time to take the conditions of our own labor into our own hands!

GSEU/CWA’s anti-Asian Prejudice

joe112 — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:18:51 +0000

Below is a scan of the newsletter where Pete Cirillo (gseu/cwa1104 staff person in charge of health benefits) says:

I learned long ago that you don’t engage a battalion of gooks with a squad of Marines, and expect to survive without ground, air and artillery support. This also pertains to Verizon when you are dealing with Metlife, Workers’ Comp., or FMLA.

(emphasis added).
See the full article.

GSEU/CWA anti-Muslim Prejudice

joe112 — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:53:59 +0000

Below is a copy of an e-mail sent by GSEU/CWA local 1104 Secretary Treasurer Ed Connelly attacking all Muslims. Yet another example of bigotry by the GSEU/CWA. The e-mail addresses of the people he sent it to have been removed to protect their privacy.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Connelly, Edward <econnelly@cwa1104.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 7:36 AM
Subject: FW: Hooray for Michigan State

Hooray for A Michigan State Professor!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The story begins at Michigan State University

with a mechanical engineering professor named

Indrek Wichman.

Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student’s Association.

The e-mail was in response to the students’ protest

of the Danish cartoons

that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.

The group had complained the cartoons were

“hate speech.”

Enter Professor Wichman.

In his e-mail, he said the following:

Dear Moslem Association,

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU

I intend to protest your protest.

I am offended not by cartoons,

but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians,

cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders,

murders of Catholic priests

(the latest in Turkey ),

burnings of Christian churches,

the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt ,

the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims,

the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women

(called “whores” in your culture),

the murder of film directors in Holland ,

and the rioting and looting in Paris France .

This is what offends me,

a soft-spoken person and academic,

and many, many of my colleagues.

I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal,

and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems

to be very aware of this as you proceed

with your infantile “protests.”

If you do not like the values of the West

- see the 1st Amendment -

you are free to leave.

I hope for God’s sake

that most of you choose that option

Please return to your ancestral homelands

and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,

I. S. Wichman

Professor of Mechanical Engineering

As you can imagine,

the Muslim group at the university didn’t like this too well.

They’re demanding that Wichman be reprimanded

and the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty

and mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen.

Now the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray.

CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations,

apparently doesn’t believe that the good professor

had the right to express his opinion.

For its part,

the university is standing its ground

in support of Professor Wichman,

saying the e-mail was private,

and they don’t intend to publicly condemn his remarks.

============================================================

Send this to your friends, and ask them to do the same.

Tell them to keep passing it around until the whole country gets it.

We are in a war.

This political correctness crap is getting old and killing us.

If you agree with this,

please send it to all your friends,

if not simply delete it.

==============================

Professor Wichman E-mail

Claim: A Michigan professor sent an e-mail telling Muslim students to leave the country.

Status: True.

George Bloom Denounces Verizon as an “Unwed Mother”

joe112 — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:53:44 +0000

George Bloom is the President of Communication Workers of America local 1104, also called GSEU. They are prejudiced against single mothers.

IWW Organizer Training

joe112 — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:08:32 +0000

Dear Friends and Fellow Workers,

We are hosting a labor organizer training weekend here in Binghamton on February 27th-28th, and you are invited to join us.

This is an intensive two day training that includes an introduction to what a union is, what makes the IWW unique, stages of a campaign, the nuts and bolts of how to organize your workplace, labor law in a nutshell, and more. This training will also introduce you to the IWW’s style of unionism (solidarity unionism), a model of organizing that relies on worker-organizers, direct action, fighting for better conditions, and worker solidarity. We will be bringing in two experienced IWW organizers, one from the Starbucks Workers Union and one from the Education Workers Industrial Union, to conduct the training.

The training will be from 9AM to 5PM on Saturday the 27th and from 10am to 4pm on Sunday the 28th. In order to prepare materials and such, we are asking that people register beforehand here http://tinyurl.com/yh5b869 . We’re asking attendees for a $5 registration fee to help cover food and transportation costs, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Lunch is included.

For more information or if you have questions about participating in the training, please email binghamtoniww[at]gmail.com

The Education Worker #2 Is Out

joe112 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:03:48 +0000

The newest issue of our newsletter, the Education Worker, is out. Read an electronic version.

GSEU Signs Agreement With SUNY

joe112 — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:11:04 +0000

GSEU/CWA Local 1104, which (mis)represents Graduate Student Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants in the SUNY System, signed a contract with SUNY for 2007-2009. Read the Memorandum of Understanding for the 2007-2009 CWA-SUNY Contract