Submitted on Wed, 04/24/2013 - 6:04pm
By Steve Ongerth - April 17, 2013
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.
A recent item on truth-out.org, published on April 8, 2013, features an interview by Steve Horn of Ozzie Zehner, author of the book Green Illusions: the Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism . Titled, “Power Shift Away from Green Illusions” the interview would have been more appropriately named, “Deep Dive into a Vat of Malthusian Miasma.”
The interviewee, author Ozzie Zehner, argues that the public is being offered a false choice between fossil fuel based civilization and a renewable energy / clean tech based alternative, and that “most environmentalists” have “jumped on board the bandwagon”.
Submitted on Sun, 01/20/2013 - 3:44pm
Beyond Chron (January 15, 2013)
http://www.BeyondChron.org/news.php?itemid=10856
Marc Norton Online
http://MarcNorton.us/153222/154222.html
Brothers and sisters from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) put in a lot of legwork on the Hotel Frank picket line, so it was only natural that I responded to their call to join an IWW picket line at the Berkeley Ecology Center last Thursday, January 10. The Ecology Center brags on its website that they “provide good, green-collar jobs.” Try telling that to the thirty workers and supporters who were on the picket line last Thursday.
Submitted on Tue, 01/08/2013 - 9:12pm
For Immediate Release: Contact Bay Area IWW (510) 845-0540
Fellow Workers and Supporters of the IWW and the working class: Negotiations for a new contract with the Ecology Center are not going at all well. Their latest proposal includes a worse Kaiser plan, making the workers pay for part of the premium, no raise after the first year of the contract, and a reduction in what the employer pays into the workers' annuity plan. Workers are saying that all they've been getting in recent contracts are cuts and where will it all end?
The Ecology Center is openly saying that they expect "more work for less pay." A strike on Feb. 1 remains possible. We are organizing a protest rally at the work place for this Thursday at noon. The rally will be held at the corner of Second and Gillman Streets, in Berkeley (near the Gilman Street exit off of Eastshore Freeway / I-80 & 580) where it will be more visible. We urge all supporters to attend and to bring friends.
The IWW has had a union contract with the Ecology Center since 1989.
Submitted on Thu, 10/04/2012 - 7:16pm
By Ryan Faulkner - September 18, 2012
Domino’s Pizza sucks. Not just in the sense that it treats its workers heinously, the pizza itself is of a low quality. Eating a slice of Domino’s pizza is a similar experience to swallowing a salt shaker. So its not surprising that on a Saturday night in Berkeley, the Domino’s storefront was dead. A delivery car would run out the back every 15 minutes or so, but business was not booming.
Us Wobblies posted up at a Chinese restaurant next door, waiting for 6 PM, when our demonstration was set to begin. We had committed to stage an action in solidarity with Domino’s Delivery Drivers in Australia, who have received an arbitrary wage cut of 19%, a punishment for the 23 delivery drivers who raised complaints over a trend of paychecks that came up short of their promised salaries.
The consensus in the Chinese restaurant was that this was going to be a git ’er done and out kind of deal. Walk around with signs in front of the location for a couple hours, chant some angry chants, and flyer passersby. Hopefully, by the end of the night, we’d cost Domino’s a few customers, get the workers thinking about the stability of their own wages, and bother the boss enough that they’d give corporate management a call.
But we got so much more.
Submitted on Fri, 05/04/2012 - 10:30am
By John Reimann
The boss was sweating bullets. The IWW was in the house, his workers were about to stop work for May Day, and he wasn’t happy about it at all. But there was nothing he could do about it since all his workers were IWW members and they support the union. This was at Buy Back recycling in Berkeley, which functions under an IWW contract as does Curbside Pickups, the work place next door, whose workers were also about to stop work for May Day, 2012.
IWW organizers and union members on the job had been organizing a stop-work rally for the previous two weeks and here it was.
Workers from both work places stopped work for about an hour to celebrate International Workers Day in a work place rally. Most of those who spoke were the Curbside and Buy Back workers themselves, and they spoke about the conditions of their jobs and the attacks on their health benefits and other such concerns. A worker at Curbside had recently had a very serious injury (which resulted in having to have a foot amputated). Several Curbside workers commented on this and the belief that the long hours of overtime may well have been related to this, because when workers are tired accidents are more likely to happen. There were several speakers from outside the work place including Boots Riley, the revolutionary Oakland rap artist, who spoke among other things about his experiences with workers in Italy. Other fellow workers spoke on a number of issues including the history of May Day, issues for grocery workers, and on privatization and the union busting in the Oakland public school system. One noteworthy message of greeting was read from a representative of the Pakistan Labor Party. The message referred to some of the strikes in Pakistan recently and concluded by calling for the workers of the world to unite. The rally concluded with a speech from a fellow worker who called for revolution (and got a good hand of applause for that).
We all gathered round for a group photo taken by one of our members. The executive director of the Curbside operation just “happened” to be on hand and came running over, a big s___t-eating grin spread over his face. He offered to take the photo for us so that we could all be in the photo at once. We sent him packing.
It was the perfect end to a great event. We started the event by making one boss sweat. We ended it by telling another to get lost. What better way to celebrate International Workers Day?