From: au329@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ronda Hauben)
Newsgroups: sci.econ,alt.amateur-comp,talk.politics.misc,misc.misc
Subject: Re: GM Plant Closures Again? Won't Solve the Economic Problems
Date: 15 Dec 1992 19:44:52 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: au329@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ronda Hauben)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


au329@cleveland.freenet.edu responding says:

In a previous article, bobp@hal.com (Bob Pendleton) says:

>>>> Do you get to read usenet news at work?  
>>> 
(discussion of reading usenet deleted)

>It doesn't and you can bet that when I have 80 hours of work to do in
>a week that I don't read usenet.
>
>> That's why there should be shorter hours laws - the people 
>> who do the work are a precious resource and society needs to 
>> defend them.
>
(some text deleted)
>me want to work long hours and I don't want your laws getting in the
>way.
>

My understanding of the labor laws is that they give someone the 
basis to defend their rights, if they choose to.

For example, I feel unions are an important right and that
the law against the employer paying a worker's union dues
so the worker can't be in a union is a violation of
that right. Thus I filed a complaint under that law at the 
National Labor Relations Board and at the Michigan Employment
Relations Commission. I don't know of any way that you would
be harrassed under that law if you didn't chose to file under it --

similarly I know someone who was told that he wouldn't be paid
for the hours he had spent at work. He called up the Federal
Dept of Labor and inquired as to whether there was any law 
requiring the employer to pay him for the hours he had been at work. He
was told lthere was and that he could file a charge if he wasn't paid.
HHe told the employer that he knew he had the right under the law
to be paid. The employer agreed to pay him but then toldl him
there was no further work for him.

It was good there was a law that required that he be paid
for the hours he was at work. It was bad that the law
has no teeth in it so the employer knows he will face a stiff
fine if he violates the law or penalizes the worker who wants
to defend his rights under the law.

>BTW, I'm exempt from the labor laws. I'm classed as an engineer.
>
Why is that? Are you considered a professional (I thought teachers
are considered professionals but still have rights under
labor laws).

>>>More importantly everyone in my company has access to email. Yes, I
>>>can send email dierectly to the president, CEO, all the VPs... you get 
>>>it. And I have and I do.  
>>> 

>> That's good to hear. Was there any problem in having this implemented?
>
>No, not really. It is seen as a necessity of doing business.
>
>But, in the last company I worked for it lead to some serious social
>problems in the company. The in company bulletin boards become a
>bloody battlefield when a bunch of fascists and bigots started posting
>their garbage there. It was the first time they had ever met people
>who would not tolerate their garbage. The flame wars nearly cost
>several people their jobs. They exposed several managers as grossly
>sexist and obscenely bigoted towards certain religous and ethnic
>groups.
>
It is good to hear that flame wars were used to fight against 
bigotry!

This seems important.

>The bulletin boards were shut down. But e-mail was maintained. The

Sorry to hear that the bulletin boards were shut down rather than 
being maintained in a more useful way.

>usenet connection wasn't affected.
>
>Open communications is not something that bigots like. And it can lead
>to major shifts in corporate power.
>
Interesting.

So open communications is something important in itself to have
a constructive environment.

>> How long has this been in effect?
>
>The company I work for is about 2.5 years old. (I've been here about a
>year and a half.) It has been this way since it was founded. The
>company I worked for before this has open access in one division and
>mostly open access in the other division for as long as I was there
>(nearly 6 years).
>
>I've had access to usenet news or arpanet mailing lists for about 9
>years out of the last 12.

That goes back to 1980? Were you on the arpanet mailing lists before
they were gated to usenet?
(I thought the gating happened about 1982?)  Were you on human.nets?
I have heard that that was a high quality mailing list.

>
>>>> Usenet News seems to have solved the problem of technical education -
>>>> that people have each othoer as a resource to get help with the 
>>>> technical problems they are having.
>>>
>>>Yes and no. It has partially solved the communications problem.
>>>
>> Why do you say partially?
>
>Many people don't have the communication skills needed to use it. Even
>more aren't tolerant enough to use it.
>
But I have found that if there is a reason to develop the 
communication skills, people develop them. Thus if access is
available, my sense is that people will develop the communication
skills - and my sense is also that many more people have the 
communication skills than one might think.

>> It would help to have such a show of support again for U.S.
>> workers so they could know they had some support in the hard job
>> of rebuilding their unions so they were democratic structures again.
>
>Why not just quit the UAW, stop paying dues. Then form a new union
>and join it? Is membership voluntary or not? If not, why not?
>
No membership isn't voluntary. It was when the sitdowners made
the Flint Sit Down strike and started the UAW. The pioneers
of the UAW say that voluntary membership is the most important
aspect of a workers' union and they protested when it was 
taken away (I think in the early 1950's). The sitdowners
were in favor of what is called a closed shop. That means
that if more than 50% of the workers vote for a union, that
union represents all workers in the shop. But only the workers
who choose voluntarily to be in the union are union members and
only union members pay union dues.

But in the 1950's the closed shop was replaced by what is known as 
the union shop. That meant that if more than 50% of the workers voted
for a union, all members had to pay union dues and all were
union members.

Thus the union was NO longer a VOLUNTARY organization.

It is at this same period of time that that the right of workers 
in the UAW to an uncensored press was taken away.

The trade union officials in a union have a great deal of power
and there is no mechanism of oversight over them currently.
Workers rights are not protected. 

I challenged the restriction in UAW Local 3000 on the right of
some workers to run for office. In that limited area there is
some labor law.  Because of the existence of the labor law
on my side, I found I was able to challenge the International
Union's effort to create a class of union members with no right to run
for office. 

Thus I found the law helpful in dealing with the UAW. But in 
general the law is very weak  in any support it gives to workers who
are trying to defend their rights against both the company officials
and the union officials.

I don't know why the law in this area is so weak. But I know that it 
has led to the decline both of democratic rights for workers in unions
and to the decline of union membership in the U.S.

>				Bob P.
    ---ronda

-- 
Ronda Hauben  Amateur Computerist Newsletter
P.O. Box 4344   other email addr:ae547@yfn.ysu.edu
Dearborn, MI 48126
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