Transport Workers Solidarity Committee

IBT BLET Rail Members Save the Right to Vote For Their Top Officers

http://tdu.org/blet-right-to-vote
BLET Members Save the Right to Vote
August 30, 2010: By an overwhelming vote of 6,305 to 2,452, members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) in the Teamsters have saved the Right to Vote for their top officers.

BLET members won the Right to Vote in 2006, by a smaller margin and lower turnout.

That was before three of the union’s top officers left in disgrace for misusing tens of thousands of dollars of union funds, double-dipping on expenses, and soliciting a $20,000 bribe from an attorney.

Members Organize

In December, officials from Divisions 13, 98, 155, and 236 started circulating petitions to take away the Right to Vote, and the issue was put to a referendum vote. Behind the scenes, top BLET officers campaigned hard to take away members’ democratic rights.

Right away, rank-and-file members and local officers mobilized to protect their rights.

“The Right to Vote gives us the tools to hold our leaders accountable, punish officers who violate our trust, and root out corruption from our union,” said Hugh Sawyer, President of BLET Division 316 and a member of TDU’s Steering Committee, in a letter that was mailed to all BLET members.

8/28 KPFA Labor Forum: Speak-Out On KPFA and Labor At ILWU Local 34/Co-Sponsored By TWSC

Saturday, August 28th
ILWU Local 34- labor forum
4 Berry Street
San Francisco, CA 94107-4pm
Time: 12-4pm

Who are the candidates for the election for the KPFA Local Station Board and where do they stand on what KPFA should
be doing on labor coverage and making KPFA a real voice for working people in the Bay Area and Pacifica nationally?
Should KPFA should be playing a major role in covering the labor movement and working class struggles and what happened
to the KPFA Labor Collective? Why is there no regular weekly one hour labor show at KPFA when there are regular
one hour labor shows on WBAI in New York, KPFK in Los Angeles and KPFT in Houston? These are some of the issues that will be discussed at this labor forum
on what's happening at KFPA and Pacifica and how it can be made a beacon for working people.
The slate that is supporting a regular labor program and KFPA and a Labor Department at KFPA is
Voices For Justice Radio www.voicesforjusticeradio.org
Vote For Voices For Justice Radio Candidates
STEVE ZELTZER, SUREYA SAYADI, JAIME CADER, FELIPE MESSINA

www.voicesforjusticradio.org

Turning up the heat in Orange County IBT Local 952
http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/10/turning-up-the-heat
Turning up the heat in Local 952
Edgar Esquivel, a UPS worker in Orange County, Calif., reports on the progress of the new reform movement in his Teamster local.
May 10, 2010

Teamsters Local 952 members on strike against the Orange Country Transportation Authority in 2007

FIVE MONTHS after it was born, the grassroots movement Reform Teamsters 952 has gained significant momentum through rank-and-file workers' efforts to change the direction of their union.

In recent weeks, the group, made up of pragmatic rank-and-file workers from Teamsters Local 952 in Orange County, Calif., has campaigned at numerous worksites, including UPS, CVS, Coca-Cola, Straub (the local Budweiser distributor), UPS Freight and Yellow Freight--and has been well-received by workers at each of these companies.

But perhaps the biggest shock to the Local 952 system came at the UPS hub in Laguna, Calif., where the reform movement was launched. In late April, UPSers from the Coast Center at the Laguna hub organized several votes of "no confidence" against their shop stewards, who were controlled by the union old guard.

Release The Japan Hosei University 6
Statement Of The Transport Workers Solidarity Committee

The Bay Area Transport Workers Solidarity Committee www.transportworkers.org calls for the immediate release
of 6 student activists from jail. They were jailed as a result of a political crackdown of
students protesting and organizing against privatization and militarization of Japanese education.
The university management went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Court to get an injunction to prevent the leafleting and
rallying on public streets in Tokyo next to Hosei University. Students and activists were arrested for leafletting and rallying
next to the university. This attack on basic democratic rights is inexcusable and we call for the immediate release of
these students and the dropping of charges of many others who have been arrested.
These students have stood against privatization of education and public services including transportation in Japan.
Transport Workers Solidarity Committee
2/18/2010

Retaliation at the Rails-Union Pacific Railway Targets Workers In Vegas
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=8726422&nav=menu102_2

Build Your Own Newscast
Threats and Warnings Against Former Rail Yard Employees
I-Team: Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 1
I-Team: Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 2

Federal inspectors have found a notable absence of security here.

Also on LasVegasNow.com
I-Team: Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 1
I-Team: Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 2

Former employees of Union Pacific who gave information to the I-Teamsay they've received death threats and other warnings because they were willing to talk to us.

Two men who worked at the Union Pacific yards for a subcontractor say they've received threatening phone calls and knocks on the door since providing information about serious problems at the train yards.

And neither the railroad nor its subcontractor wants to talk about it.

Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 1

"They're not acting like what I interpreted a big business to act like. They're acting like thugs or actual criminals." The former rail yard employee nicknamed Tony says his former employer is acting like a street punk in the wake of I-Team stories detailing glaring security lapses within the Union Pacific facilities in Las Vegas.

TWSC Statement of Solidarity With Doro-Chiba Against Raid By Japanese Police Forces During G-8 Meeting

The Transport Workers Solidarity Committee TWSC protests the vicious assault on the offices and members of Doro-Chiba union on July 4, 2008. Using false pretenses, the Japanese police forces were alledgedly looking for evidence of illegal activity in the protest against the G-8 conference in Japan. This effort to intimidate and silence those unions, workers organizations and many others who are protesting this governmental meeting is a flagrant violation of democratic rights. The record of the G-8 is a history of trampling on the rights of working people not only in the under-developed world but in the more industrialized countries. This organization which is fundamentally a tool of the United States and the multi-nationals which run it has pushed deregulation, privatization and the destruction of democratic rights for working people. The world drive by the G-8 and other organizations representing the billionaires to destroy the labor movement through privatization, deregulation and other union busting policies must be stopped. These neo-liberalism policies have been opposed by US workers including the shutdown of all West Coast ports by the ILWU to protest the November 1999 meeting of the WTO. The ILWU also joined with many other protesters.

NYC TWU Dissident Alleges Special Treatment Claim TWU Tilts Election

http://www.thechief-leader.com/news/2008/0523/news/007.html

Dissident Alleges Special Treatment
Claim TWU Tilts Election

By ARI PAUL

A candidate in a division election at Transport Workers Union Local 100 has claimed that the union's leadership is unfairly playing favorites by putting his opponent on release time and giving him lists of members in good standing with voting rights.

JOHN CHIARELLO: Local 100 playing favorites.
Line Equipment and Signal Division Recording Secretary John Chiarello is running against New York City Transit Signal Maintainer Shawn Welcome for one of the division's three executive board positions. The board position has been vacant since April 2007, when Richard Conte left the bargaining unit for a management position. Division rep Pete Foley, who is aligned with Mr. Chiarello, is running against Eli Harris, another division rep, for the vice chair position.

More Time to Campaign

But Mr. Chiarello, who was elected on the dissident Rail and Bus slate in December 2006, said that his opponent was put on release time, freeing him from his NYC Transit duties and giving him more time to campaign.

Throughout the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration has forced its neo-liberal policies on Iraq at the barrel of a gun: opening up Iraq's markets, oil resources, and labor to exploitation by multinational corporations. The suffering that the Iraqi working class has endured as a direct result of this illegal war is beyond words. On January 27, protesters backed by unions and labor groups will march on Washington, San Francisco, and other cities nationwide calling for U.S. troops to come home now!

With at least 650,000 Iraqi civilians—almost all from poor and working class families—now dead as a result of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, the state of Iraqi labor is in a critical condition. Paul Bremer, formerly the top US administrator in Iraq, rewrote the country's economic rules to make it a neoliberal fantasy before he left. Furthermore, the Iraqi puppet government has continued to enforce Saddam-era anti-union laws as a part of the neo-liberal agenda. These laws prohibit union organization, strikes, or disruption of any kind in a factory or other economically important enterprise. Anyone participating in a strike or union activity in Iraq is subject to arrest by the occupation authority and treatment as a prisoner of war.

By JACK HEYMAN - Originally published in Counterpunch, August 22 , 2006

Spying on grannies in Sacramento who were planning to “mark Mother’s Day urging the Governor and Legislature to support bringing California National Guardsmen home from Iraq by Labor Day”; doing undercover surveillance at a union rally for health care in San Francisco and prompting police to fire “less-than-lethal” weapons at anti-war protesters and longshore workers in the port of Oakland—this is the veiled face of the “war on terror” exposed in a just-released American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report.

The report, The State of Surveillance: Government Monitoring of Political Activity in Northern and Central California, written by Mark Schlosberg documents the trampling of constitutional rights by various government agencies, the F.B.I., the Department of Defense, the State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center, the California National Guard, at least one Sheriff’s Department and several Police Departments.