[lbo-talk] Strike Funds

Michael Pugliese michael.098762001 at gmail.com
Wed Nov 23 07:22:12 PST 2005


Yoshie >...Even union strike benefits aren't fat enough to compensate for all sacrifices that workers make during strikes.

Not always. I was on strike with 95% or so of the teachers covered under the then expired NEA/OEA contract in the Oakland, Ca. USD back in 1985 for 5 or 6 weeks. Strike benefits were over twice what daily substitute teacher pay was then. I'll more than grant, of coarse, that $125 a day strike benefits were less than a regular teacher would have made. $625 a week times 4 =$2500 a month, starting teachers before the strike would pull in $27K a yr. paid eith in 9 (get paid once a month during the Sept-June school yr.) or 12, so one gets paid during the summer when one is recovering from the stress of teaching unruly brats, or working a low paid summer job, like some of my high school teachers did.

Yoshie>...As a matter of general principle, though, it's odd to say that one can't advocate for X unless one has the means to pay for all consequences of X.

I can't believe that you as a seasoned organizer can say this.How do you answer the concerns of someone, esp. w/o a union contract, esp. if they are the sole breadwinner in a family or if both parents work at really low wage jobs barely scraping by with no savings or liquid assets, if they lose their munificient $6-12 hr. job w/o benefits, by being fired for walking off the job, under an, "at will, " (of the much more powerful mgrs/capitalists) contract? It would be a different matter for ($100,000+ a yr. ILWU workers) to stop loading war related cargo for Iraq at the docks. That would have far more effect than a few hundred max. walking out under the bullhorns of the Becker brothers and Gloria La Riva.I helped to destroy train tracks at the Concord Naval Weapons Station that carried war materiel bound for El Salvador during Reagan. For a week at least nothing was sent via those tracks to kill Salvadoreans. This walk out is gonna have very, very impact. Wish it could but, it won't. TONC/WWP has the weight of a feather.We need a hammer to the hell out of Iraq.

-- Michael Pugliese, infamous troll pugliese montages http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:d6pa2Mql3_kJ:montages.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_montages_archive.html+infamous+troll+pugliese+montages Heh. The Devil Made me do It!



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