Thanks for the posting about organizing/career development.
I had to stop by the LRW this AM to load up 2,250 ice pops that we had in storage here for our union picnic today at Geauga Lake.
If anyone comes up with any workplaces that need a union, please contact me off list with the details. All inquiries will be handled in a confidential and delicate manner and passed on to one of our highly skilled organizers in your area.
There is a lot more about organizing and other topics of interest on the USWA website at uswa.org
I'll write more about organizing today, and, my thoughts on it which are much like those expressed by George and Leo.
Sincerely and fraternally, Tom Lehman
Doug Henwood wrote:
> $40 million ain't peanuts, is it? From the Trade Union Advisor, published
> by the Labor Research Association:
>
> Union Trends
> Steelworkers
> adopt $40 million
> organizing program.
>
> The Steelworkers adopted an expanded organizing program and dedicated a
> one-cent per hour dues payment for a new $40 million organizing fund
> starting next year. An additional penny per hour will go into the fund
> starting Jan. 1, 2000.
>
> Despite the need to change labor law that makes it easy for employers to
> thwart organizing drives, USWA President George Becker declared, "Laws
> don't organize; people organize. It takes money and it takes commitment.
> And we're going to have the money and the people."
>
> The Steelworkers are aiming to reverse declining membership and start
> growing by 10% a year. Once growth through mergers is taken out, the union
> has lost 100,000 members since 1987, according to Secretary-Treasurer Leo
> Gerard, who headed the Organizing Task Force that proposed the organizing
> fund.
>
> Half of the fund, created through a constitutional amendment, will be used
> to pay for organizing plans at the level of the Steelworkers 12 Districts
> or at the local level; one fourth of it will be used to help fund
> industry-wide, multi-district organizing programs; and one fourth is
> earmarked for training and development of local union organizers.
>
> "We want to have the same kind of foresight our predecessors did in the
> 1930s," District 11 Director David Foster said at a meeting of the
> Organizing Task Force. "They were participating in a labor movement that
> represented 10% of workers and dreamed what could be done if they had 40%.
> We're back where we started."