Barnard College Professor Mona El-Ghobashy describes the tape linked below:
“The defining image from 2010 [elections in Egypt] was a surreptitiously shot four-minute video of a voter-free polling station in the Bilbays district of the Delta province of Sharqiyya. Two poll workers calmly filled out ballot after ballot, stacks of which were then carried off by other civil servants to be stuffed in boxes off camera.”
Real News Network interviewed me on today’s state of the union speech.
The NY Times profile of new NFL union leader DeMaurice Smith indicates he is putting to work all the key elements of successful union leadership: a strategic plan, internal union education, building good relationships with fellow unions and making a credible argument to the wider public.
It will be an uphill battle for the union, as always, but Smith comes to the table with a great skill set for the job as a former federal prosecutor and corporate lawyer. What he lacks in union experience itself he seems to be committed to making up quickly.
I like this guy.
Sadly, one of my professional associations, the Association of American Law Schools, decided to go ahead with its annual meeting this weekend at San Francisco hotels despite a union boycott in place to support collective bargaining. Pro-union law professors have attempted to organize support for the hotel workforce and will hold a rally in San Francisco on Friday, January 7. (A website on the rally is now here.) In a frustratingly ineffective effort to gain support for the union (there were a few exceptions, thankfully) I sent the following letters out to colleagues at Santa Clara as well as the head of the AALS’ securities regulation group:
Colleagues,
An end of term reminder that the AALS meeting this year is being held at a hotel that is under an official boycott by the union that represents its employees for failure to agree on a new collective bargaining agreement. Hilton is owned by the giant private equity group Blackstone which posted a 13% increase in profits last year but is refusing their workforce a modest increase in pay and benefits. An informational picket line is possible (as was the case during the recent meetings of the African Studies Association in San Francisco) and I have asked my AALS section, Securities Law, to move the meeting to a neutral venue such as a local law school. The letter I sent to my section is below.
In light of our law school’s longstanding commitment to equity and social justice I hope you can find a way to express your support for the labor force of the hotels such as by boycotting the AALS meetings, writing a letter in support of the workers to the AALS, many of them first or second generation Americans earning a fraction of what lawyers or academics earn, and asking your sections or panels to move to another venue. My understanding is that San Francisco law schools are making space available for various events.
For more information including whether or not a picket line will be present at the hotel, see this union website:
Sincerely,
Stephen F. Diamond
Associate Professor of Law
Santa Clara University School of Law
Hi, Elizabeth,
I appreciate your solicitation of member reactions to the situation at Hilton. I, for one, would not be willing to cross a picket line. My grandparents were lifelong trade unionists in San Francisco and in fact participated in the 1934 General Strike there. I was in the labor movement before law school and my experiences then had a lot to do with my decision to become a lawyer and law professor.
I had planned to attend AALS sessions this year but now have to reconsider. So I would hope that rescheduling at nearby law schools (we could likely accommodate some folks at SCU but that is about an hour south) or union friendly hotels is feasible. Otherwise I believe we should cancel the sessions in support of the collective bargaining process.
I would also suggest, however, contacting the union to find out the status of negotiations since January is a long ways away still and so there is always the possibility of a settlement.
Hope this is helpful. Please feel free to share my views as you see fit.
Best,
Steve Diamond
One of the most celebrated IPO’s in recent business history will likely be completed tomorrow. Underwriters bought all the shares on offer from GM today and will resell them to individual and institutional investors over the next few days.
But the Wall Street Journal notes some serious risks at the new company and my recent Research Note on the GM/UAW VEBA points out the continuing ties between GM and autoworker retirees.
Writing on the Wall: Putting the Brakes on the GM IPO Fervor – WSJ.com.
The international human rights movement can claim an important victory today with the release from a long house arrest of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the Burmese democracy movement. Coming as it did in the wake of the granting of this year’s Nobel Prize to Chinese imprisoned human rights activist Liu XIaobo it is a sign of the weakening of China’s hold on Asia generally. China has been a big financial supporter of the Burmese military dictatorship and had reacted harshly when Xiaobo was given the Prize.
Many thousands of people around the world took part in the various campaigns to support Suu Kyi’s release.
Here in the US, I helped out in a small way during a legal battle against oil giant Unocal which relied on the Burmese military to dragoon Burmese workers into helping build a natural gas pipeline. The suit led to a successful financial settlement to benefit the Burmese people. The international labor movement pressured the regime through the ILO and the UN system. And so on. This loosely organized but global effort has shown it can face down the most repressive of regimes.
It can only be hoped that the emergence of a democracy movement in Burma can in turn encourage efforts in Vietnam, China and elsewhere in Asia.
Michael Lind of the New America Foundation puts his finger on something deeper afoot in the wake of the electoral debacle for the liberal left.
He points to the tension between class politics that animates working class voters in Europe and the US versus the “multikulti” politically correct green politics so much in favor with the Democratic Party elite.
Here is one snippet:
“In general the parallels between the U.S. and Europe are striking. In
the U.S., as in Europe, the right is divided between a pro-business
right promoting policies of austerity and a populist, nativist right
energized by opposition to immigration and multiculturalism,
particularly where Muslims are involved. In the U.S., as in Europe,
the upper-middle-class activists and intellectuals of the center-left
devote far less energy to traditional social democratic issues like
social insurance and the minimum wage than to non-economic causes like
renewable energy, mass transit, the new urbanism, gay marriage,
identity politics and promotion of amnesty for illegal immigrants. On
both continents, conservatism is becoming more downscale while
progressives are increasingly upmarket.”
Why center-left parties are collapsing – War Room – Salon.com.
Tears certainly came to my eyes as I watched the rescue effort tonight.
I recalled working side by side with an exiled Chilean miner on an assembly line in the late 70s in northern California. A refugee from the Pinochet dictatorship, we worked together in an electronics plant for several months.
I helped him get the job, as a gesture to friends in the Chilean solidarity movement, and he could ill afford to lose it, but when a battle broke out with management – intent on shutting down the plant and shipping our jobs to a non-union state or overseas – he stood with us, without any doubts.
He spoke no English and only a little Spanish, as he was of Indian descent. But we understood each other. There was a toughness about him that I knew you could only be born with.
I am not surprised that his brothers have survived this ordeal.
After years of hard work by organized labor, pension activists and, finally, friendly politicians, the SEC has bit the bullet to allow shareholders under (very) limited circumstances to spend their own money to participate in shareholder democracy!
I am being ironic but also accurate. Until now managers use corporate resources to help directors get elected: they control access to the proxy statement that accompanies the proxy card that shareholders inevitably submit back to management who then vote onto boards their hand picked director candidates.
Now however shareholders can piggy back on the proxy material sent out by management and use that material to nominate independent candidates for corporate boards.
Much like the market for corporate control it may well be that the mere threat of the rule will be enough to change corporate behavior – event studies galore will no doubt emerge soon!
The link below is to a law professors’ site that is debating the issue and here is a link to the rule itself on the SEC website.
Steve Jobs says Foxconn is a “pretty nice” place to work. If he thinks that will stand up to even a cursory examination of life for China’s industrial workers, he is kidding himself. And if he thinks that can shield Apple from a big hit to its fragile brand image he is also kidding himself.
There are decades of academic and NGO research on the horrific conditions faced by Chinese workers. And this report by Bloomberg makes clear that Foxconn is no exception.
I recall a meeting I had a few years ago (in Steve Jobs’ hometown Palo Alto no less where he said so callously the other day that Gunn High School kids commit suicide, too) with a visiting workers compensation lawyer from China. He described the thousands of Chinese workers who return to their rural villages minus eyes and limbs or suffering from neurological or respiratory diseases, all the result of working in plants like those managed by Apple/Dell/Sony subcontractors.
I thought at the time that he was describing something resembling the return of wounded soldiers after the American Civil War.
Apple should publicly call for an independent investigation of conditions in Valley subcontractors and support the formation of independent trade unions and the establishment of enforceable labor laws.