76 Arrested Protesting N.Y.U. Cutoff of Student Union

Karen W. Arenson

The president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the secretary-treasurer of the
United Auto Workers and a state senator were among nearly 80 people
who were arrested yesterday during a protest of New York University's
decision to end dealings with a union of graduate student teaching and
research assistants.

The protesters linked arms and sat down in front of the university's
Bobst Library, despite warnings from the police that they would be
charged with disorderly conduct.

Anonymous Comrade writes
A death in the family...
but we carry on.

On August 7, 2005, Walmart LP (Loss Prevention) workers in suburban Houston killed Stacy Driver who left the store without paying for diapers.

This is not a shock. It is the logical result of a massive illogical conspiracy to profit from our needs (and desires). We only have to look back to the 1992 L.A. riots to see when the system, in an immense social crisis, was forced to reveal its brutal, property-first ideology as police shot dozens of unarmed looters on sight. In these quieter times, a dead shoplifter here and there can be passed off as an accident. We are hardly fooled.

hydrarchist writes....The SEIU split from the AFL-CIO to establish the Change To Win group during June raised surprisingly little discussion on left radical sites. Below you'll find an article written by a trade unionist in Oregon with a very polemical and ideological tone. I post the link to the full article on Anarkismo here because it attracted interesting comments (attached to the article) from libertarians active within trade unionism in the US, which are more nuanced and articulate the problematic in more practical terms. Given that there are important similar discussions taking place in Europe, Australia etc in relation to precarity/casualization and biopolitical organization, this piece is germane to both contexts.

The future of the USA Labor Movement

Patrick Star, Northwest Anarchist Federation

The proposal for restructuring the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization

This decline in union membership across the USA is being felt through the decline of the standard of living. Wages have not kept up with the increased cost of living. There is a crisis in the labor movement and workers are going to have to devise strategies that will lay the foundations for the eventual upsurge in organizing at work.

100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE WOBBLIES: A New York City IWW Centenary Celebration

The hundredth anniversary of the Industrial Workers of the World will be celebrated by artists, historians, musicians and today's Wobbly activists. The event will feature performances, talks and a slide show commemorating the Wobblies role in Labor history.

-featuring-

DANIEL GROSS (Starbucks Workers Union, IWW)

PAUL BUHLE (historian; Senior Lecturer, Browne University; co-editor of 'Wobblies! A Graphic History')

HENRY FONER (Labor activist, musician, historian)

JOHN PIETARO (protest musician, Labor organizer, writer)

PETER KUPER (artist)

NICOLE SCHULMAN (artist, activist; co-editor of 'Wobblies! A Graphic History')

SABRINA JONES (illustrator)

SETH TOBOCMAN (comic book artist)

This event will also be the official release party of the new CD 'I DREAMED I HEARD JOE HILL LAST NIGHT...A CENTURY OF IWW SONG' by John Pietaro & The Flames of Discontent

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 6:30 PM

CUNY GRADUATE CENTER

365 5th AVENUE (at 34th St), NYC

-FREE ADMISSION-

for more info call 212-817-8215 or write to continuinged@gc.cuny.edu website: http://web.gc.cuny.edu

Fire the Boss! !Echan los Patrones! (español abajo)

Recuperated Factory Workers and Unemployed Worker Movements in Argentina come to share experiences with workers in North America.

From November 6 to the 18th, 2005 members of Argentina’s Recuperated Factories Movement and Unemployed Workers’ Movement (piqueteros) will tour North America speaking with local unions, independent workers’ organizations, day laborers, community organizations, and students.
Workers from Argentina and North America will share their
experiences on
the shop floor, in their communities, and in the streets. We hope to
create a space where we can learn from each others struggles, find
common
ground, and forge strategies for building international solidarity.

Chaos as BA flights grounded

Mark Milner and Mark Honigsbaum

Friday August 12, 2005

The Guardian

Thousands of passengers, many of them holidaymakers, saw their travel plans thrown into chaos yesterday after a walkout by British Airways baggage handlers and loading staff at Heathrow.

Five other companies - Sri Lankan Airlines, Finnair, GB Airlines, British Mediterranean Airlines and Qantas - suffered delays because they are serviced by BA ground staff. The action came at one of the busiest times of the year with BA running 550 flights a day in or out of Heathrow.

About 1,000 baggage handlers and loaders took unofficial action in support of workers at catering company Gate Gourmet who were sacked in a row over working practices. Terminals 1 and 4, those most used by BA, were the worst hit.

BA was forced to ground more than 100 short and long haul flights while a number of inbound flights were diverted to other airports. Thousands of passengers were stranded overseas by the chaos, which looks set to continue today. The airline said last night it had cancelled all flights into and out of Heathrow until at least 6pm tonight, affecting up to 70,000 passengers.

"Info-Labour and Precarisation"

Franco Berardi (Bifo), Generation online,

"We have no future because our present is too volatile. The only possibility that
remains is the management of risk. The spinning top of the scenarios of the present
moment." — W. Gibson: Pattern recognition, tr. It. L'accademia dei sogni

In February 2003 the American journalist Bob Herbert published in the New York
Times the results of a cognitive survey on a sample of hundreds of unemployed
youths in Chicago: none of their interviewees expected to find work the next few
years, none of them expected to be able to rebel, or to set off large scale
collective change. The general sense of the interviews was a sentiment of profound
impotence. The perception of decline did not seem focused on politics, but on a
deeper cause, the scenario of a social and psychical involution that seems to
cancel every possibility of building alternatives.

The fragmentation of the present time is reversed in the implosion of the future.

"N.Y.U. Moves to Disband Graduate Students Union"

Karen W. Arenson

New York University is moving to close down its graduate students union at the end of the summer, the labor movement's only toehold among graduate students at private universities.

Union officials quickly attacked N.Y.U. 's plan and vowed to fight the university in any way they could.

"Toni Negri: Against the Empire ... For a Capitalist Europe!"

Roberto Sarti

In the run up to the [French EU] referendum a very popular intellectual, Toni Negri, decided to weigh in for the debate. Negri has now put himself on the same side as Chirac and Raffarin, the French bosses and the worst social democratic reformists, and come out in favour of a "yes" vote.

UNITE HERE Local 100 writes:
On February 1, 2005, Cablevision cut off union health insurance for over two hundred Madison Square Garden workers and their families. This is part of Cablevision's attempt to force these workers to agree to changes in their contract that would cut work opportunities, health insurance and pension benefits for many employees. Many workers at Madison Square Garden already earn less than $10 an hour.

Three days after Cablevision cut off union health insurance for its employees at Madison Square Garden, it made a $600 million bid to develop the West Side rail yard.