August 1, 2006

Shit hits the fan in Las Vegas

By Michael Ulreich
President, Chicago Newspaper Guild

First off, I hate Las Vegas.

I know that’s a strong statement but there’s few places I would rather not be for six days than Las Vegas except maybe Orlando…I don’t gamble, I’m beginning to dislike hot weather and I’m not that much into hookers and drinking. In Orlando, I developed a strong aversion to Mickey Mouse.

And the entertainment capital of the world, as Las Vegas calls itself, this week is featuring Barry Manilow, who was actually performing in my hotel, Celine Dion,  for $159, Boyz II Men, Howie Mandel and “Menopause, the Musical.’’  Mama Mia. Oh yeah that’s was here too.

But the main feature on my card was the looming convention of the Communications Workers of America, which was supposed to ponder the weighty issue of its Ready for the Future initiative. Little did I know that the issue that turned the convention on its head, at least for the newspaper union, came from the Canadian side of the border.

“What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas,’’ said TNG conference chairperson Carol Rothman, describing the need for convention delegates to let their members back home know what happened at convention….So, lacking any sort of personal foibles to report, here goes.

The “Ready for the Future’’ initiative  has been described as the CWA coming to grips with its past and contending for the future but, so far, the only real change proposed, with the exception of a perfunctory commitment to diversity, is a reallocation of the CWA’s massive defense fund to provide spending for organizing initiatives rather than just funding strikes.

“Today’s challenges call for a more aggressive strategy,’’ said a flyer put out supporting the “Vote Yes on SIF’’ campaign. “The attack on labor is coming from employers, elected bodies, regulatory bodies, courts and international trade agreements….Union newspapers are being sold and consolidated and union jobs walled off. This is a large scale attack and our response needs to match it. It needs to be strategic and well-funded…We can’t wait to fight only during bargaining, we can’t rely solely on our strikes and be predictable. ..SIF will give us the funds to launch large scale campaigns.’’

First up was the Newspaper Guild’s sector conference, which started three days before the CWA convention . The Guild used to have their own conventions until they merged with the CWA and now they’re called sector conferences because the Guild is a sector of the CWA.

After the usual round of opening speeches, much shorter this year than in previous years, Barbara Easterling, the grande dame of the CWA, also employed as its secretary-treasurer, gave a routine speech on sticking together and fighting the corporate powers that threaten working people everywhere.

Easterling is a far more interesting person than her speech would indicate, the first woman to rise so high in the CWA. Once a telephone operator in Ohio, she is now part and parcel of CWA history. But when long-time CWA president Morty Bahr retired, the CWA executive board by passed Barbara and went to vice president Larry Cohen. So much for diversity.

“If the past nine years have shown anything, it’s that the CWA and the Guild were made for each other,’’ Easterling said, who also issued a call for a general commitment for diversity. “We’re both in the business of communicating with the public. We’re both in the information age industries of the future.’’

(As a middle-aged white man, the subject of diversity means there are too many people like me in the movement, which can be somewhat depressing. But I am old, which means I can be discriminated against, which somehow doesn’t cheer one up.)

 Sometimes the push for diversity seems to me merely a PC trend that means nothing and will never come to anything.  If the organization, in this case the union, should reflect society’s diversity then, unless you have an actual policy of discrimination, the organization should naturally assume those characteristics. I don’t know that force-feeding demographics is the way to go.

II guess it’s just good to keep the issue in the public eye.

The goal of the Guild’s Human Rights and Equity committee is to increase the participation of “visible minorities’’ at all levels of the union and in all leadership positions. “Visible minorities’’ include those defined by age, color, creed, disability, race, sex and sexual orientation. The committee’s mission statement says that it “will strive to achieve a diversity of leadership to reflect our communities.’’ Objectives include outreach, a mentoring program, a survey, a network, literature, translations, a web page and a human rights program.

“The broader the perspectives we bring to the Executive Board, the smarter the decisions that emerge from it will be,’’ Easterling said. “The more our leaders reflect our members, the more responsive to their needs we will be.’’

Anyway enough on diversity. The Guild also has an initiative called the New Generation which seeks to encourage younger members, loosely defined as under 35,  and which again discriminates against older people, just not only white older people but all older people.

But that’s progress. The old goes out and the new comes in. But what’s really new about the CWA’s Ready for the Future initiative?

The battle over the Strategic Initiative Fund ( I proudly wore a SIF button on my lapel)  began and really ended over  the vote on an amendment to the original motion which would have put additional oversight over SIF expenditures. The amendment was first voted by a show of hands, then the room was divided and when the chair still couldn’t determine who won, a roll call vote was taken and the amendment failed by a vote of 250,000 to 197,000.

Four dollars a month per member goes into the CWA Members Relief Fund. Starting in September that money would go into the new SIF fund while the MRF would continue to grow from interest and appreciation. If the MRF fell below $300 million, the MRF contributions would revert back to the original fund.

The new Strategic Fund is expected to initially yield a total of over $20 million, $13.4 for the Telecom industry locals, $2.8 million for media locals and $3.9 million for manufacturing.

The money taken from the Defense Fund would be spent on organizing plans that, according to the rules, must include specific goals and a detailed budget. The fund is not to be used for any CWA salaries or debt payments, unless it’s for CWA members working on a SIF campaign..

The opponents of SIF argued that members had been promised when the fund was created that the money would only be used for the Defense Fund and not for other purposes. Under the current plan, any strategic plan would have to be approved by the CWA executive board and the CWA Defense Fund Oversight Committee.

I think a much better direction would be for the union to take on a much broader and greater responsibility, one that was addressed in an afternoon workshop with Guild secretary-treasurer Bernie Lunzer and international representative Bruce Meachum.

As part of a strong union push for national health insurance, Meachum called on union locals to work with management, if possible, on health care issues, a strategy later described as engaging in problem-solving with the publisher today in exchange for the publisher working politically with a drive for national health care in the future.

“We tend to think that management is on the other side of this issue, and in some ways they are, but in reality we’re in this together,’’ Meachum said.
      There were 45 million Americans without health insurance in 2003 and that number increases by 2 million every year.

“The bottom line in this is how to generate political action,’’ Meachum said. “We can talk about how to deal with it at the bargaining table but in the end the result will be political.’’

The vast number of uninsured, said Chicago Guild executive director Jerry Minkkinen, only increases the costs for those who are insured. “The only way to resolve this issue is for everybody to have access to affordable insurance,’’ Jerry said. “No matter what structure we have to share the premium load, it’s going to kill us.’’

Lunzer said it would be in the union’s own interest to have greater involvement in the drive for national health insurance.

“We need to start plugging in our activist group to change the problem at its core,’’ Lunzer said. “It is a network, we don’t have a magic answer but we have a network and if we can start to educate members, we’ll be a lot better off.’’

The CWA’s health care site can be reached at healthcare@cwa-union.org. You can also join the CWA’s Working Families E-Activist Network at www.unionvoice.org

Lunzer, who hasn’t had a haircut since Bush was first elected, offered to cut his hair if Guild members voted for him to do so. In order to vote, one had to contribute to the CWA’s political action fund COPE. The motion failed but the scheme was but a further attempt by Guild leaders to convince its members to make a greater investment in political activism, an activity so natural to CWA members but mostly shunned by journalists working for newspapers.

“We’re trying to make a point about COPE,’’ Lunzer said. “We want to make a difference and change the face of this nation and this culture,’’ he said, referring, in essence, to the Bush administration. “It’s political, I’m sorry, there it is. It’s time to stop bitching about management and build our own strong organization. There’s a great number of people in the Guild that want to be active politically and can be active politically.’’