All workers in educational institutions.
Submitted on Sun, 03/05/2006 - 10:14pm
Industrial Worker - March 2006
Albuquerque Wobblies are assisting a member fired by the University of New Mexico despite ten years of dedicated, accident-free work for insisting on a safe workplace.
Feydoun “Fred” Mahinfarahmand’s job as woodshop supervisor was eliminated Dec. 2 by the School of Architecture and Planning, citing the unsafe conditions he had been protesting. The woodshop is now closed.
Fred was hired as woodshop supervisor in early 1996, helping students and teachers with their projects and teaching them how to use the shop safely. In 1998, UNM’s safety inspectors found that the shop’s dust collection system was far below OSHA standards. Dust inhalation is a major occupational hazard for woodworkers. The report estimated that the problem could be fixed for $8,000. The school promised to fix the dust collector in 1999, but nothing happened.
Submitted on Thu, 01/19/2006 - 6:14am
New York, NY. - Several chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) announced today, Monday, January 16, 2006, their intent to form a national organization and hold the first SDS national convention since 1969. "It seemed appropriate to make this announcement today, on the observed Martin Luther King day", said SDS regional organizer Thomas Good. "We have an anti-war movement that is addressing the issue of stopping the bloodletting in Iraq but the civil rights issue remains unaddressed", he added. The national convention is scheduled for Summer 2006 and will be preceded by a series of regional conferences occurring on the Memorial Day weekend.
The newly formed SDS national organization was the idea of a student anti-war activist who contacted other student and veteran organizers. Good joined the new SDS when Stonington High School (Connecticut) senior Pat Korte contacted him with the idea of linking nascent SDS chapters into a national structure.
Submitted on Wed, 12/14/2005 - 4:46am
By Joshua Frank - December 14, Online Journal
David Graeber, PhD, is an assistant professor of anthropology at Yale University, and the author of Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, among many other scholarly publications.
Last spring Prof. Graeber was informed that his teaching contract at Yale would not be extended. It was not Graeber's scholarship that was ever in question; rather it was his political philosophies that may have played a heavy hand in the administration's unwarranted decision. Graeber, a renowned anarchist scholar, spoke with me shortly after he was informed of his firing.
Submitted on Thu, 12/08/2005 - 3:27pm
By MATT APUZZO - Associated Press Writer, December 7, 2005.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- A professor and outspoken anarchist has agreed to leave Yale University this spring, ending an appeal over whether his termination was politically motivated.
David Graeber, one of the world's leading social anthropologists, said he will teach two classes next semester, then take a yearlong paid sabbatical after which he will not return.
"Normally, you get a sabbatical on the condition that you come back and teach the following year," Graeber said. "I'm getting the sabbatical on the condition that I don't come back and teach."
Submitted on Thu, 11/10/2005 - 3:34pm
Sisters and Brothers:
The decision of NYU President John Sexton to withdraw union recognition from graduate employees represents an affront to the dignity of those workers and belies any notion that NYU is some sort of enlightened institution. In response to the University's move, on October 31, the NYU graduate workers union (GSOC/Local 2110 UAW) voted by an overwhelming 85% majority to withhold their labor in defense of the right to free association. I write to you because, as an NYU undergraduate, you are uniquely positioned to make a major contribution to the struggle for social justice by supporting this strike. I'm also writing because without your support this strike will end in defeat.
The strike beginning at your school on November 9 will reverberate far beyond campus. If Sexton's gambit to break the union is allowed to succeed and grad workers are denied a contract, the ability of working people all over the country to build and maintain power at work will be negatively impacted.
Power in a Union
The education system, the media, religious institutions, and the labor movement itself have all failed to properly draw attention to the importance of unions or even accurately portray what a union is. First of all then, I'll share some thoughts on unions to illustrate why I believe the workers' cause at NYU deserves your support.