———

[Longshoremen] like to see themselves as rough and ready individuals, and that is the image that they project both to outsiders and to one another. It would be a mistake not to take this seriously, for no image of self can be maintained unless one is willing and at least marginally able to demonstrate when challenged that he has the attributes that he advertises.

—Willie Pilcher, longshoreman and anthropologist

January 2000 was a precarious time in South Carolina. The state was perched on the edge of change while clutching tenaciously to history and tradition. It was a canary in the coalmine of our national political life. In spite of its reputation for backwardness, South Carolina pointed the way to unprecedented political divisiveness, economic inequities, and cultural cruelty for the rest of the nation, the way we willingly followed for the decade to come.

That January’s critical events began on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with the biggest civil rights protest in four decades and certainly the biggest in South Carolina’s history. After six months of escalating media coverage of the state’s political polarization not unlike the kind our entire country would soon suffer, more than 46,000 people converged on the state’s capitol building to demand removal of the Confederate flag that had flown over the building since 1961. It was flown then to signify defiance to federal civil rights laws. Though Confederates had not been able to muster more than 7,000 for a counterprotest to the NAACP-sponsored march, they received equal if not more media time in the ongoing debate over “heritage” vs. “racism.”

South Carolina’s tiny organized labor force flexed its civil and labor rights muscle in support of the march. The most noticeable support came from the wealthiest and blackest union, Local 1422 of the International Longshoremen’s Association in Charleston. Ken Riley was the newly elected president of the small local with 600 permanent and 400 casual workers, almost all black. The master contract that covered all East Coast ports provided high wages and, therefore, healthy dues payments to the union. The local chartered buses to take protesters from Charleston to Columbia to attend the rally.

A week earlier, when Charleston’s popular white mayor Joe Riley organized a protest march to Columbia, an enthusiastic group of some twenty ILA members with bright T-shirts and signs joined in. Twice the mayor’s staff reminded them to move to the back of the line and quiet down because they were drawing attention away from the mayor.

After a second day of this treatment, union leader Ken Riley called off the union’s participation in the march. With his usual aplomb, Riley let the insulting treatment of the mayor’s staff roll off his back as just another one of those things that black people learn to tolerate in Charleston. With thirty years of successful service running Charleston-more than half the black union leader’s life-the mayor and his staff knew the limits of what a politician could get away with among his own constituents, especially black ones.

The handful of buses the union paid for to provide transportation to the demonstration in Columbia was nothing compared to the construction project the union was undertaking. Riley’s leadership team was in the middle of planning a $6.5 million building to replace the one down the street which the city was displacing with a new bridge. Such an expenditure was a financial leap of faith for the union, whose members decided to foot the cost of a substantial community hall and make it available for wedding receptions and other celebrations, meetings, and demonstrations. The union hall would become the center for progressive political action from the Democratic Party to grassroots community agitation for years to come and the space in which both the strongest promises and worst betrayals in modern South Carolina history would be forged.

But just days after the 46,000 protesters in Columbia dispersed to every corner of the country, Ken Riley and his local found themselves in the fight of their lives right in their own backyard: the Columbus Street Terminal in Charleston. This event would make the national and international news, too, but Riley didn’t have the NAACP’s media machine to back him up, so keeping it in the national eye would prove to be a challenge.

There had been forebodings. One was the State Law Enforcement Division’s (SLED) Lt. Buster Edwards’s visit to Ken Riley at the union hall. Edwards and Riley had developed a professional understanding during those tough times when the chicken companies tried to go nonunion at the port, as they were in their factories upstate. SLED had agreed to make Edwards a liaison to the local, in no small part because he was black, he was personable, and he could build rapport quickly. Now, whenever the union was going to picket or demonstrate at any of the terminals, Riley would let Edwards know how many people would be there so SLED wouldn’t have to turn out more police than necessary-which they both knew would just be a provocation-but there would be enough police presence to keep everything in order.

“I thought I ought to warn you of something,” Edwards said, getting down to business.

“What’s going on?” Riley asked.

“Well, I just got a call, and you’re not going to believe this… You know that Nordana trouble you guys’ve been having?”

“Sure, you know we’ve been picketing them every couple of weeks, ever since they went nonunion a few months ago,” Riley responded. “But we’ll get it worked out. We’ve been talking with the Ports Authority and the company.”

“Yeah, but there’s another ship coming in next week,” Edwards said. “Yep,” Riley confirmed. “We’ll have the usual thirty, maybe fifty folks out there with signs. We got the permits already. It’ll be fine; no big deal.”

“Well, it’s gonna be a big deal,” Edwards said.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s gonna be six hundred police out there to meet you guys,” Edwards said slowly. “Not five hundred ninety-nine, but six hundred exactly.”

“WHAT?” Riley said. “For what?”

“That’s exactly what I said when I was told. I can’t tell you what’s going on, but there’ll be six hundred police there when that ship comes to port.”

Riley had a hard time believing Edwards. Maybe he had bad information. Maybe it was an intentional rumor meant to scare them off. It was so outrageous he didn’t give it any more thought. Until the afternoon of January 19.

On his way to the hall that day, Riley stopped at the port’s offices to endure another futile negotiating session with State Ports Authority officials, Stevedoring Services of America, known simply as SSA, the company that hires and supervises the work of the union longshoremen, and Nordana, the shipping line that until recently had always hired union companies to work their ships. SSA, one of the largest global logistics firms in the world, hired all of its longshoremen out of the Local 1422 hall . But Nordana was tiny compared to its mega-container ship competitors and was having trouble competing on their scale. To reduce its freight-handling costs Nordana had dropped SSA and contracted with a nonunion stevedoring firm owned by Georgetown businessman Perry Collins.

Collins promised Nordana that his company could hire nonunion longshoremen to unload its ships at the old navy yard in North Charleston, outside the jurisdiction of the State Ports Authority and the union, but Collins’s plans had evaporated. Meanwhile workers had been protesting every Nordana ship that came to port at the Columbus Street Terminal, and Nordana’s clients were getting nervous.
That morning, sitting at the port’s offices negotiating, Nordana officials weren’t willing to change their minds and Collins’ nonunion workers were still unloading the ships for half the wages. The union’s three months of picketing and protesting had not changed the company’s position. Riley walked out of the fruitless and frustrating talks.

As lunchtime approached, Riley ran some errands near his home in West Ashley and headed back across town to the union hall around 3 p.m. He saw buses passing the on-ramp as he approached I-26. At first he thought they were full of tourists, the stock and trade of the other mainstay of Charleston’s economy besides the port. But as he caught up to the buses, he saw the gold state seals on their sides.

“Oh my God,” he thought. “Those buses are coming for us!”

They had the union in common, but most of them didn’t think of it that way…

Sample: The Union Rep’s Job Description

———

At SEIU Local 73 our members held a lot of different kinds of jobs. Some cleaned hospital floors, or stood guard at the entrance to an office building in Chicago. Some were toll collectors, and others baked ice cream cones. One large group – a few thousand – were clerical workers, and another were certified nursing assistants. About 60 percent of the local statewide was African American, but in the metropolitan area that percentage rose dramatically. Very few were Latino or east Indian or Asian, and the balance were white.

They had the union in common, but most of them didn’t think of it that way. They called us when something went wrong with their employers. Our staff’s job was to fix it. At my local, one union representative was responsible for about 2,500 members at multiple work sites and with sometimes as many as 10 employers. These members paid about $20 a month so we could bargain contracts, train members to help enforce those contracts at the work site, and usually step in to enforce them when things got hairy. Bargaining meant surveying members for what they wanted in their contract, developing proposals, choosing a bargaining committee, training the bargaining committee how to bargain, bargaining for months with management, and ratifying the final settlement by the members’ vote. In addition to simply “servicing the contract” as we called this, we were expected to push raffle tickets for the political action committee, mobilize members for rallies supporting our allies in struggles for social justice and living wages, motivate stewards to take a day off to go lobbying in Springfield, and inform all members of current pending legislation, such as NAFTA or efforts to destroy the 40-hour work week, laws which affected our ability to negotiate a decent contract the next time around.

Some sites got the same rep for decades. One group of members had the same rep for 20 years, and his stewards, the volunteer work site leaders, could call him two or three times a week. Sometimes his stewards called him at home, went to movies together or went to the funerals and weddings of each others’ families. But a lot of other members, like mine, saw a new rep every few years because we were reassigned by the president when someone on staff quit or was fired, burned out or moved up. In our office of 20 reps, 10 support staff and a handful of organizers I saw many come and go even in the 6 short years I worked there.

There was the mysterious departure of Craig at the end of the hall, who was hired to take on Barry’s work when Barry moved to the Springfield office. Craig was a former United Auto Worker member, he was proud to say, and a Master’s student at Loyola. He was in his late forties, and looked very much like the classic U.A.W. member with his graying hair, broad paunch hanging over a tight belt, deep voice and a bit of a drawl. Before he was here he was gone, his office emptied. When we asked, the president said that Craig didn’t make his probation.

Sandy was with us for almost a year and a half, her probation constantly being “extended” — as if that mattered since we were at will employees. She was a community organizer hired to do union work. This was always a tough transition; community organizers tend to see organizing as a life long effort, and an effort that, if effective, would improve life for citizens. Union organizers, on the other hand, know their job was much more a “blitzing”style, one site here and another there, strategic and often quick, before the employer could get a handle on it. They knew their organizing wasn’t guaranteed to improve anything. They knew that people could lose their jobs, a life’s work, and the union not even win the war. Sandy took too long. She couldn’t make the change.

The personal lives of reps, as much as one could see from the workplace, were just as transient. There was Luis, who was married with six kids one year, thrown out by his wife the next, and then back with her again the following. We could tell by who was sitting next to him at the political dinners we were sent to during the year. There was me, married with a new baby when I got there, separated for forever it seemed, and still greeting husband at union functions with as much familiarity as if we were still sleeping together. Bill, on the other hand, would never split up with Annette, but a newcomer couldn’t tell from the way he missed a week of work because they had a raging blow-out Sunday night. The next month she’d be next to him at another one of those dinners or helping him on a campaign. Before you knew it, amnesia set in and if someone asked. Are you guys back together? — Bill looked puzzled. “Oh yeah, we’re doing real good, why?”

At the center of it all was Rose, the administrative assistant to the president, sitting in the office next to mine, issuing new key cards and beepers and collecting the old ones, retyping telephone extensions with new staff names, deleting others. Rose had survived 20 years and four different union presidents. She said they all look about the same after awhile and she said that with the same somewhat cheery resignation she greeted my “Morning, how’s it going?” with her pat response: “same shit, different day” and a laugh. The only change in Rose in the years I knew her was when her mother died. After that Rose went home to Alabama every long weekend to look after her father a bit. Like clockwork Rose was at work at 8 a.m. and still going strong after five. So consistent was she that when one morning she decided to come in at 8:45, purposely late for a meeting she knew would start late anyway (this was the closest thing to an act of protest I ever saw out of Rose), Tom panicked. He was dialing the Chicago traffic police to see if she’d been in an accident when he heard her office door click open and her keys splash on her desk.

Friendships? We came close to friends in this job, but never too close. Friends couldn’t get fired from your life, but in the union movement, especially representing three shifts a day, your job was your life. There was only a little room for friendships outside the movement. Some of us were driven by that evangelism, and some us used it as an excuse. In this way we were not so different from workaholics at IBM or the Chicago Stock Exchange, but we’d never admit it.

We could be very boring to our friends outside of work — the friends we’d made before we took this job. We could only tell the stories of other staff, or a battle at a work site. We always carried with us some anecdote about a crazy member (like the guy who wanted us to stop the voices in his head), an out of control human resources rep (who, pushed past the limit, took the union rep by his shirt collar) or a wild steward (arrested for $5,000 worth of pyrotechnics he claimed were for the fourth of July). Someone who had left the labor movement had no interest in hearing these stories. Those who’d never been in “the movement” preferred to talk of travels, or politics, or lovers or a movie she’d seen lately. Most of this was foreign to the daily life of a rep. We traveled in terribly interconnected perhaps pitiable circles both in and outside of work. So, for all the vows of friendship made across the fourth round of beers, lifelong attachments seldom come to pass. The tops keep spinning, and the strings lay limp on the floor behind them.

I sought friends among the like-minded at work, and standing at each other’s office doors we traded stories of our weekends. Over lunch we shared guarded versions of our personal lives, but we usually used that hour out of the office to commiserate and trade tips about the job. Since we rarely received any formal training, there is always a wealth of union experience to exchange. But seldom did we cross that line and join each other at our homes, or on Saturday night. Weekend rallies and house visits for organizing drives took enough of our personal time away that I for one didn’t want to talk shop with a co-worker on an “off” night.

So that is what passed for relationships and this was how we spent our days: troubleshooting, putting out fires, chugging, running, bartering through the chaos each day brought, bargaining at every level, from saving one member’s job to squeezing out a four percent raise for 2,500. We spent them grinding our teeth, biting our nails, gnawing the insides of our cheeks, or picking at our chapped lips, chewing pencils, doodling, smoking or drinking, driving like maniacs from one work site to another or bluffing through meetings for which we had no time to prepare. All the while we were talking, talking, talking and talking, as if the words — enough of them, spoken well and with passion — could change the act, the truth, the reality, the fact that we can never do enough for the people we are supposed to represent, and we could never hold on tightly to any one person while the world spun all around us.

Sample: The Initiation

———

Two more children died today.
One was just a minute old.

The other in the bedroom
in the closet
on the floor
beside the shoes
on the dirty laundry
hoping
mom didn’t come home, no
one would hear, it would
go fast, the mess
would be small, the pain
not too strong.
She breathed like she saw
on t.v. and it hurt oh it
hurt so bad.
before it could cry
she wrapped it up quick
in the laundry, smothered it quiet
and dropped it
in the garbage bin
on her way
to school.
Two more children died today.
One was 13.

View the site »

View the site »

This website is a counterpart to a print publication put out by Cosmetologists Chicago, a trade association of beauty professionals. One section of the site is dedicated to business advice for salon owners. The job here was to incorporate another business partner — Office Max — into that advice. Bold text was linked in the original content.

Sample: The Supply Side of the Business

———

You may have come into the beauty business to create beautiful looks, but now you find you’re creating mountains of paper instead – tracking messages, posting personnel policies and calculating your tax liabilities!

Building your salon business, like building a home, means having the proper tools. Local office supply stores contain the widest variety of office needs — from paper clips to coffee filters — for salon professionals.

Discount office supply stores such as OfficeMax offer now offer one-stop-shopping for office supplies, convenient websites (like www.officemax.com) and delivery. At their site you can sign up as a regular customer, go to your favorite -most ordered – supplies and easily search for the discounts of the week.

Delivery is 1 – 3 days and is free for any orders over $50.

Print out this handy checklist to make sure you order the supplies you need:

• Message pads/bulletin board
• Receipt books
• Appointment calendars
• Personal appointment book
• Desk supplies
• Paper clips
• Pens and pencils
• Pen holders
• Stapler
• Tape
• Post-It Notes
• Tacks
• File cabinet for personnel and financial records
• File folders
• Computer and supplies
• Paper
• Toner cartridges
• Software
• Janitorial supplies
• Brooms
• Window cleaner
• Paper towels
• Coffee supplies
• Time clock and cards
• Restroom supplies

Sample: Patient Profile

———

“Life is so precious, and sometimes when we are in good health we take it for granted. We don’t appreciate our life until we are forced to.”
By Steven Ponton
At age 9
Journal entry

Name: Steven Ponton
Address: South Holland, IL
Age: 10
School: McKinley Elementary
Diagnosis: Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
(Steven and his mom Cheryl participated in this interview together.)

How did you react when you were diagnosed?

Steven: I felt really depressed, sad. I said that we’re going to just have to work with it. My family was scared too. We were all real scared. My mom was scared the most, scared of the unknown.

What gave you strength?

Steven: Jehovah, our God. And my family helped me get through it. When I got depressed, my mom would talk to me and give me comfort, so I could go through with it.

Cheryl: Family and friends took turns coming to the hospital; we were never really alone. We always had a flood of people. And Steven said, “It’s kind of cool because everybody is so good to you.”

Where did you find support?

Steven: I got a laptop from Make-a-Wish Foundation. I type on it and play video games. I like The Sims.

Cheryl: The Society invited us to the Man and Woman of the Year event, and introduced
Steven to a group of people and took his picture. They’ve also been very supportive financially. And Steven, tell them about the cocktail party.

Steven: I thought it was some kind of fish, and I didn’t get any.

Cheryl: You know cocktail sauce and shrimp? He thought that’s what a cocktail party was. (Laughs) Susan Tybon at the Society has just become a friend. She helped me put things in perspective. She’s always calling in. They’re very loving and warm and caring – everyone I’ve dealt with over there.

What is your greatest challenge every day?

Steven: The greatest challenge is not giving up.

What is the best advice anyone has given you to deal with this?

Steven: Keep on praying to Jehovah. I’ll say, “Please help me Jehovah to endure what I’m going through,” and then I’ll thank him that I’m still living. I’m glad, because I get to help people who are going through this situation – with this interview.

What is the worst thing someone has said to you about it?

Steven: One boy said, “Ooh, you look ugly bald.” I ignored him. My friend talked to him. He said, “It’s not cool to talk about people who have cancer and right now, Steven is going through a lot so please don’t talk about him.” I was glad that he explained it to him.

If you could say anything to someone without the disease, what would you say?

Steven: That if you ever go through this situation, come to me and I’ll comfort you. If you ever see a cancer patient, try to comfort him, because he or she’s going through a lot. Even though they look happy, really it’s hard on them. I know it because I went through it, and it’s hard on me. Try to make them laugh. Just saying, “you’re going to be all right” is not really going to comfort them. People say that to me, and that doesn’t comfort me. You have to put more into it. You have to spend time with somebody. You’ve got to talk to them, or play video games with them, and if you can, give them a little gift like a Teddy bear. And I’d say I hope you don’t ever go through this, and that you stay well.

Steven died less than a month after this interview was published.

———

OUR PRACTICE:

Workers Compensation
Medical Malpractice
Personal Injury
The Illinois Workers Compensation Act

IF…

• You’ve been injured on the job, or…
• You’ve contracted a disease or illness on the job, or…
• You’ve suffered an injury caused by repetitive motion at work, or…
• A pre-existing condition you had got worse because of your work…

…you may be covered by the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act or the Illinois Occupation Disease Act.

Contact a KBA attorney to learn more or read on for details.

Your Rights under ‘Workers Comp’

Since 1911, the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act has been protecting employees who are injured at work, and for just as long, employers and insurance companies have been doing their best to weaken the law in the courts and in Springfield.

Laws evolve with every court case and every legislative session. Here are some basic protections under the Act, but consult a KBA attorney for the latest and most accurate information.

• Under the law, your employer cannot retaliate against you in any way for exercising your rights – including filing a claim, recovering benefits or hiring an attorney. Harassment and retaliation could subject an employer to a separate lawsuit.
• You do not have to give a tape-recorded statement to an insurance company.
• You have the right to choose your own physician for your injury or for a second opinion. There are limitations to this provision, so it is important to consult with experienced attorneys.
• If your employer or its workers comp insurance company fails to pay for treatment for your work injuries in a timely way, they may have to pay penalties and attorneys fees.
• You are entitled to receive compensation equal to 66.6% of your gross average weekly wages while you are off of work under doctor’s orders. This is called Temporary and Total Disability benefits (TTD). If you have work restrictions because of your injuries, and your employer can’t accommodate those restrictions, you are entitled to TTD. If the insurance company fails to pay TTD in a timely way, it may be required to pay penalties and attorney fees.
• You may have the right to Temporary Partial Disability (TPD) if you return to work earning less money due to your temporary restrictions.
• At the end of your case, you may be entitled to a lump sum settlement or an award. This is called Permanent Partial Disability compensation (PPD). The value of your case will be based in part on the nature and extent of your injuries and on your wages. A skilled and experienced attorney can help you assess the value of your case.
• If you are considered permanently and totally disabled from employment, you are entitled to lifetime disability benefits. The parties often negotiate a lump sum settlement taking into account the present value of the lifetime benefits and potential future related needs.
• If your employer cannot accommodate your permanent medical restrictions, you may be entitled to Vocational Rehabilitation and Maintenance. In essence, the insurance company pays you the same 66.6% of your gross average weekly wages while Vocational Counselors either assist you in finding work or retrain you in another area of work. If you change jobs as a result of your restrictions, and your income is significantly reduced, you may be entitled to lifetime benefits equal to two-thirds of the difference in wages. This may also be negotiated into a large, lump sum settlement amount, if the parties agree.
• Trying and winning a case will entitle you to payment of future, related medical treatment. In some circumstances, this could be negotiated in a settlement.
• You may be entitled to much more than your employer’s insurance company is telling you. You can consult for free with a Kreiter, Byck and Associates attorney regarding your work injuries.
• The Workers’ Compensation Act limits attorneys’ fees, in general, to 20% of the amount of the permanent partial disability or permanent total disability compensation. There are other limitations that may apply as well.

Learn more with a free consultation with a KBA attorney. Remember: We don’t get paid until we win your case.

———

The Infant Welfare Society’s first patients were immigrants coming to the new world in 1911. Our first caregivers wore petticoats and shawls. These women worked out of storefronts in poor neighborhoods to offer clean, safe milk, and education to mothers and babies.

Our patients today are immigrants as well, but our caregivers wear lab coats and have professional degrees. No one has to line up at a storefront to receive care anymore.

Over the last 95 years, the Infant Welfare Society has grown into a Chicago institution, providing an extensive array of medical care to 8,000 women and children last year alone. We are here for the neediest in our community (most of our patients live below poverty level and are uninsured) but we care for every woman and child who walks through our doors. We remain steadfastly independent. We accept public aid and private insurance, and offer a sliding scale to patients with no health coverage at all. The rest of what we need we raise through private donations.

We offer comprehensive health care services

A pregnant woman who walks into our new facility in West Logan Square will be greeted in Spanish, Polish or English. On an average day, she will receive our services and be on her way within an hour. If she has other children, they will play in the area designed just for them, within easy sight of their mother.
She will get prenatal, family planning and gynecological care. She will be able to attend family support groups and get parenting advice. Her baby will receive every manner of well-baby and pediatric health care, even dental care, until adulthood. Her growing child will receive lead screening, vision tests, school physicals and more. She and her family will be eligible for depression screening, teen counseling and other mental health support if they ever need it. This woman, who may not have learned English, or ever left the neighborhood once she arrived, may have found the one place her family will ever need for medical care.

We want to do more

Our patients’ needs are growing, and we are growing to meet those needs. Last year, after a $3.5 million renovation, the Society moved from North Halsted Street and opened its doors in West Logan Square, in the center of a major Latino community and within easy reach of a substantial Polish community.

Under the direction of Dr. John Wilhelm, an obstetrician and former public health commissioner for the City of Chicago, the Infant Welfare Society is drawing an average of 100 more patients each month. The facility is more patient friendly. Wait times are shorter. Reminder calls to patients have brought appointment no-shows down to a miraculous 12 percent. The Society has already partnered with local hospitals and a local school and hopes to expand hours of operation in the next year to be more convenient for the neighborhood’s working people.

The Women’s Auxiliary

One of the Society’s greatest strengths is its non-profit auxiliary. Well-grounded in those early days giving out milk and weighing babies, the auxiliary’s membership of more than 1,300 is a financial umbilical cord for the Society. More than 45 fundraising events every year combined with sales from its onsite resale shop allow the auxiliary to supply 20 percent of the Society’s annual budget. These are dedicated women from all walks of life who strongly believe in the work of the Society.

What it takes to raise healthy children

Your gift to the Infant Welfare Society will have a direct effect on the programs and services we provide to some of Chicago’s neediest women and children.

A gift of…

• $50 provides asthma medication for a child for a year.
• $100 provides mammogram screening for one woman.
• $250 provides dental care for a child for a year.
• $500 provides a child over the age of one with well child care and immunizations.
• $1,000 provides well baby care and immunizations for an infant and well woman care for the mother for a year.
• $2,500 provides prenatal care for an expecting mother.

How to help

Your donation by check, cash or credit card is welcomed any time, but there may be more you can do for the women and infants who need your support. Please consider gifts of stock, matching gifts, honorariums or memorials, bequests, planned gifts, in-kind gifts and sponsorship or participation in special events. Your time is also a great gift, and our auxiliary and medical facility offer volunteer opportunities throughout the year.

Contact _________, Director of Development, ___________ or email him at xxx@infantwelfare.org to discuss the possibilities.

Salvadore: Profile of a [Recovering] Addict

———

After 20 years in America, Salvador had struck the perfect balance of work, cocaine, marijuana and alcohol. As a waiter at various Italian restaurants around Chicago, he could make $200 a day, enough to pay the rent and cover his habits. Salvador was often too tired and hung over from his late nights in after-hours joints all over town to work the lucrative lunch hours, but he had enough to get by on. It was the AVM, or Arterial Venal Malformation, that landed him in Stroger Hospital with a series of four brain surgeries to alleviate the debilitating headaches caused by the disease.

After reviewing his drug and alcohol use, the staff at Stroger told Salvador he was going to die if he didn’t stop. He figured he was going to die anyway.

“I told them to get out of my face,” he said. “Don’t talk to me about this.” Then he went home, he prayed and he called Healthcare Alternative Systems. In the beginning, he needed a ride and assistance to walk into the facility, but he kept coming. Eventually he progressed from individual to group sessions, and H.A.S. introduced him to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

“All of the people were there because of the courts,” he said. “I thought, well I’m on the right path. Nobody pushed me. I’m going because I want to.”

Salvador finished the program in a year and is now clean, sober and running his own retail sales business. He’s now on a payment plan to improve his credit and bought a new car for the first time. He says it’s a miracle that he’s walking and that he doesn’t suffer from cravings, even for cigarettes. In fact, when he walks past bars he used to frequent, he actually feels a headache coming on.

One of Salvador’s sisters came from Mexico to take care of him after his surgery. Her children and grandchildren, who call him Tio Loco (Crazy Uncle – a name he taught them years ago), came to visit recently, so he took them to Chicago’s museums and parks, and then drove to the Wisconsin Dells.

“I keep thinking I wasted half of my life and I’m going to take advantage of the other half,” he said. “I’m very lucky every way you see it!”

Sample: Jerome Adams: An undeniable dreamer

———

There once was a man who dreamed of being a theater performer. He memorized Dr. Martin Luther King’s speeches and could perform them on the spot. He earned his Associate of Arts degree in Chicago and eventually landed in New York City where he earned his Bachelor’s degree from New York University. He started his own catering business and with the help of his theater friends, began catering parties for some of the biggest recording companies and stars in New York. It was all working out. He would surround himself with creative people, and they would work hard and party harder. Life would be good and last forever.

Then, in the early 1980s, on a wild tour through Europe, Jerome Adams contracted AIDS. The news sent him to the one place he’d never dreamed of — the almost inescapable world of crack cocaine.

Within a few years, Jerome dropped so much weight his own father, picking him up at the airport, walked by him three times before he recognized him. There were times he would sit on the edge of his bed, open sores over every part of his body, and think only of getting his next fix. He’d hand his entire disability check over to one drug dealer, but there was another one looking for him.

Jerome didn’t walk into AIDS Care of Chicago once. He, like many addicts, had to walk in three different times before he stayed. Four years later, he’s no longer a resident; he’s Director of Residence Operations.
The winter of 2001 was Jerome’s first, and longest, at AIDS Care.

“I went into a deep slump here,” he says now. “It had just all come at once: How could my life had gone in this direction? How did I wind up here, with AIDS, twelve years addicted to crack cocaine, institutionalized basically?”

The guidance of a resident manager and access to the facility’s spectacular old mansion library sparked Jerome’s recovery.

“I was able to make some decisions,” he said. “One was that I was going to make a difference while I was here, and the other that I was going to get along with everybody here.”

Sitting in the rich, floor-to-ceiling wood paneled library in the depths of winter 2002, Jerome started to think of his own history: His great grandfather who co-founded Tuskegee University, and helped recruit Booker T. Washington as its first president; his aunt who had kept all those records. Who else had a rich history to share?

Jerome reached out to the director of resident services and to other residents for ideas and resources. He reached back to his experience mounting exhibits for a theater troupe on the South Side. And he reached deep inside for that creativity he had thrown aside in self pity and anger so many years before. Within weeks, AIDS Care had a Black History Month exhibit — open to all residents — that rivaled any professional display in the city, finished off with singing and performances of Dr. King speeches. Jerome had found a place to heal.

“I learned that there was something salvageable in my life,” he says now. “I could see my way back, I could really see there was a way back. It didn’t have to end the way it seemed to be ending – jail, institution or death.”

Jerome’s life has taken yet another turn he didn’t expect.

“I never thought I’d work in HIV,” he says, sitting in the break room of AIDS Care. “I said, ‘Never, never, never!’ I was intent in going back to theater, but something just tugged my heart about this.”

Jerome is still a man of dreams, but they are dreams of a different sort. He speaks of financing the education of African orphans, and maybe going to Kenya some day to work with people with HIV/AIDS. He has found what he can salvage from his life, and when he says it quietly, he smiles:

“I’ve never had so much hope.”

Sample: AFSCME Iowa members lobby legislature

———

Almost 200 AFSCME activists converged on the state capitol in March to educate legislators about the benefits of an increased cigarette sales tax and stronger corporate accounting laws.

First-time participants included an estimated 40 home care providers who care for the elderly and people with disabilities who would otherwise have to live in institutions. Some of those workers were accompanied by their “consumers” as well.

The annual Lobby Day began with comments by Gov. Tom Vilsack and Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson. AFSCME Legislative Director Marcia Nichols and AFSCME Researcher Chris Fox briefed the rank and file lobbyists before they hit the hill to talk to legislators.

“We talked to [Rep. Jeff] Kaufman, (R-Cedar),” said Paul Show, a mass transit operator from Iowa City and president of Local 183. “He was very affable, honest and open. He left us wondering if he was a Democrat or Republican!”

“It was a good opportunity to open my eyes and see what it entails,” said Lindy Peterson, who works at Iowa Workforce Development and is vice president of Local 3016. “AFSCME really does take capitol; we really do have a voice.”

AFSCME’s priorities this year were to lobby legislators on specific proposals that would raise enough revenue to maintain quality public services, especially in the face of ever-tightening federal budgets, and ongoing state budget troubles. AFSCME members take vacation or union leave days once a year to go to the capitol and track down legislators between sessions and meetings.

“It was all very positive,” said Show. “You feel like at least you’re in tune a little bit with what’s going on. You can see that Council 61 is doing its job.”

And besides, workers make the best lobbyists, Peterson said.

“Who knows how to speak better for the issue than the person who is actually in that job, working?”

Sample: Black Tie Event to Honor Olympic Gold Medallist

———

Speed skater Dan Jansen, Olympic Gold Medallist, will receive The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Illinois Chapter’s Humanitarian Award at this year’s Dream for a Cure Gala, Friday, May 2.

Jansen’s sister Jane died of leukemia while he was competing in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary. Just hours after hearing of his sister’s death, Jansen fell in both the 500- and 1,000-meter races. He returned in 1994 to win the gold in the 1,000-meter, set the world record and skate a victory lap with his baby daughter Jane in his arms.

An estimated 450 Society supporters from the top ranks of business, medicine and Chicago politics are expected to attend the second annual event at the Intercontinental Hotel in Chicago. Last year’s premiere gala raised more than $167,000 for research and patient support.

The event will begin with a private VIP party and continue with a cocktail reception, dinner and awards presentation. Ballroom dancing to the Peter Hennes Orchestra will top off the night.

Event Chair Kim Carney and her committee have also gathered an impressive array of goods for a high-end auction, including a professional skater’s jacket, signed by gold medal Olympic skaters (donated by Discover), a VIP train ride with dinner (donated by Burlington Northern) that opens with a $12,000 bid, 10 rooftop tickets to a Cubs game and more. The Society is also raffling off a Philips digital wide-screen TV.

“We’re very excited,” said Carney, who has chaired the event both years. “More than 300 tickets are already gone. We expect to sell out.” The Chicago sports media community is expected to join in the fun, with CBS Sports Director Mike Adamle announcing Jansen and emceeing the event.

Jansen continues to be a strong national supporter of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, donating his time, name and resources to promote the organization and raise funds for a cure.

Thousands of people stricken with leukemia and lymphoma are searching for information about their diseases, for people sharing the same experiences and for the scientists who are performing cutting edge research. And thousands of others want to support those researchers who make a difference through fundraising. The Illinois Chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society LINK newsletter brings them all together, giving hope and inspiration as well as critical information about the fight against blood-related cancers to researchers, funders, survivors and their families throughout the state.

Sample: Lymphoma treatment – ever changing, ever improving

———

In the twenty years he has been treating lymphoma patients, Dr. Parameswaran Venugopal has seen some big changes, with the most dramatic coming in the last decade.

The first, and most recent, breakthrough the doctor will tell you about is the ability to use DNA to predict how a patient will respond to treatment.

“Right now, many a time, we give the treatment and find out at the end if it worked or did not work,” explained Dr. Venugopal, who serves as the Co-Director of the Rush Cancer Institute Lymphoma Center in Chicago. “But now we have the ability to look at the DNA pattern of lymphoma. From the pattern we will be able to predict which patient will respond to a particular treatment. Right up front you can say, ‘This patient should get this treatment.’”

Then he’ll tell you about how new chemo treatments have made some of his patients positively scarce. “Some patients had to come every day to the clinic, but now they just get one shot and it lasts for two weeks.” And he adds that much more treatment is outpatient-based now, so patients can be at home where they are happier… and healthier. “The hospital is the worst place to keep a patient, because the bug you see in the hospital is already resistant to a lot of antibodies. I always encourage my patients to get out as quickly as possible. And the patient’s psychological status is significantly better in the home compared to being in the hospital.”

But perhaps the biggest change Dr. Venugopal has experienced is in his own faith in the human spirit’s ability to affect treatment. “When I started treating cancer patients 20 years back, I did not believe much that the patient attitude toward the disease, or will power, those kind of things, had influence. I thought it was the chemo or the care I gave,” he admitted. “As years go by, I become more and more convinced that patients’ attitudes toward the disease and treatment and the physician treating them makes a difference. Sometimes it has an impact as good as the treatment I give.” The doctor said he has two patients right now, close in age, with polar opposite reactions to their disease. One said from the start, “I’m going to beat this,” and is now leading a normal life. The other is depressed and dejected, hardly ever getting out of bed, unenthusiastic about his treatment, and the doctor hasn’t been able to get his cancer under control. “There’s a lot of influence the mind has on the body. It’s not only the patient but the family’s approach, their psychological approach, also influences the outcome.”

Dr. Venugopal’s own inspiration to get into the field of blood-related cancers may have given him his first hint at how the mind and heart affect illness. The doctor speaks of his role model, a teacher in medical school in India, at a time and place when diagnoses were not based on test results so much as they were on a good conversation with a patient.

“It was an art to make the diagnosis, and that guy used to do it in a manner that was amazing to me,” he explained. “The compassion he showed toward the patient – I developed an admiration for him.”

Looking back at all the progress and successes in lymphoma research, many of which lead cancer research throughout the world, this is one doctor who remains unabashedly optimistic.

“My vision for the future for a lymphoma patient is that the patient comes to me, I make a diagnosis on not only the type of lymphoma, but I should be able to do tests on the tumor and diagnosis which will tell me the exact treatment the patient needs, and that that’s the treatment that cures the patient. That’s the way I envision treatment in the future. It’s not just science fiction. There are very good indications it can work.”

box/pullout
Lymphomas, New Drugs,
New Outlook, and New Challenges
Thursday, May 29
4 to 8 p.m.
Radisson Hotel O’Hare
6810 N. Mannheim Rd.,
Rosemont, IL 60018.
For information, call
Susan Tybon at (312) 726-0003.

The 400-member Lawyers for the Creative Arts provides free or low cost legal services to artists and writers in the Chicago area. For their annual benefit, they put together a program book to showcase the work of the attorneys in an effort to increase donor interest. Ryan Du Val and Anna Seifert were two of the artists we profiled.

Sample: Artist Profiles

———

Ryan Du Val

Ryan DuVal came back from a trip to Italy with his parents last summer with a new appreciation for the arts. So when he arrived at Northwestern University, and looked up at the bland, institutional white ceiling of his dorm room, he let the muse – with a little help from house paint and the Internet – move him.

By the time he was done, Ryan’s rendition of Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel was getting him more attention than he’d ever expected, from the top administration to The Letterman Show.

“The university used my painting as an excuse to enforce an old policy that no one had ever heard of – all dorm rooms had to be bone white,” Ryan explained. After exhausting every avenue on campus, Ryan reached out to the Chicago legal community.

He called the Art Institute. He called the A.C.L.U. He called almost every law firm in Chicago, many of which refused to help because they had a lawyer on staff who had Northwestern as a client. One lawyer finally gave him the name of L.C.A. Patsy Felch, of Banner & Witcoff, could help.

In an eleventh-hour appeal to a stand-in emergency judge, Patsy successfully argued the Visual Artists Rights Act, under which nobody is allowed to copy, deface or destroy an artist’s work. Her efforts in front of the judge brought the university to the table to negotiate.

“One of the most wonderful things about Ryan’s case was that he brought in the factual situation that fit so beautifully within the law,” Patsy said. “That so seldom happens. When we went into court, it was so clear he was going to win.”

In the end, Ryan’s painting stayed up, at least until the end of the school year, which was all he’d wanted in the first place.

“They tried to play hard ball with it and they ended up looking pretty silly,”Ryan said of the university.”But I wouldn’t have had a chance if it weren’t for L.C.A.”

Anna Seifert

The recording world has the dubious reputation – deserved or not – for the kind of people it attracts to become managers and producers for young artists.

Anna Siefert met one of those four years ago when, then 17 years old, she moved from Milwaukee to Chicago to pursue her career as a rapper. A so-called manager heard her perform and offered her a contract that looked too good to be true. It was.

With guidance from Chicago entertainment attorney Laura Grochocki and L.C.A. Director Howard Arnette, Anna steered clear of that manager, and of a few others who came her way, learning to talk the talk of an artist who knows her way around the industry.

“They explained to me about copyright laws, about how to get my lyrics copyrighted in the first place, about publishing and about the music industry in general,” she said. “I am like thank God. I am so thankful for them. I feel so lucky.”

Anna continues to rap when she gets the chance, performing at her school, Columbia College after her beginnings in bars and clubs in her hometown. But during the day, inspired by an old friend of the family who is deaf, she’s studying to be a sign language interpreter.

Anna still calls upon her attorney to provide that sharp eye for bad guys, or at least bad contracts. “I’m still getting contracts from other managers and talking to other record companies, and they’re providing the legal assistance. I keep in contact with Laura about every week, and if something important comes up and she’s not there I talk to Howard.”

Anna sings the praises of L.C.A. comparing their excellent services with an expensive lawyer. “Better, they protect artists and their creativity,” she says. “That lets the artists get on with their work.”

“I’m working on finishing my demo. I just want to put stuff out there and let it get heard. I’ll always be rapping.”

And Laura’s going to do her best to make that happen. “I’m making sure she’s aware of the business side of the industry,” she explained. “On the flip side, I’m directing her to reputable producers with track records, who are legitimate and have a name in the industry.”

Growing Home is an upstart not-for-profit designed to use organic agriculture to teach self-sufficiency to homeless and other low-income. The organization needed a fundraising tool. While this is the language I originally proposed, the group eventually chose a more traditional not-for-profit tone for its final piece.

Sample: First we found the land…

Cover:
First we found the land…
Then we tilled it…
Then we planted it…
And now we will harvest it.

If you ever thought the answer to homelessness was self-sufficiency,
This is the program you need to know about.
Inside:

We have been the rootless of our community,
But we weren’t always that way.

We have names like Charles, Shirley, Ed, Cora. We had parents who cared for us, and some who couldn’t.
We have worked, and some of us have raised children. But when we couldn’t find work, we lost everything — including our homes.

Without roots, we could not grow,
But now we have that chance.

Since 1995 many of us have found hope through Growing Home. We’ve learned about business and marketing, and we’ve worked hard to build our garden which will provide chemical-free organic vegetables for consumers.

With the soil under our feet and our fingernails,
We are part of our community again.

Organic food is healthy for all of us. With Growing Home we’re learning how to grow organics, right in Chicago. But more than that, we’re learning business, job readiness and life skills that will make us marketable in today’s economy.
Our Growing Project

In 1995, the well-respected Chicago Coalition for the Homeless founded Growing Home. We established our own board and staff of community activists, ecologists and educators. Our goal was to build a self-sustaining not-for-profit group to train and employ homeless and near-homeless people for the job market. At the same time we could provide a useful, healthy product to our community.

Through the McKinney Act of 1987, Growing Home acquired a large city lot to grow organic produce. Using the latest available technology, we have turned the lot into a certified organic garden.

This year, Growing Home has expanded its efforts by acquiring another 10 acres in LaSalle County. Both of these lots will serve as training centers for future employable workers.

Outside:

Our Growing Market:
We have studied the Chicago market for organic foods, and already made progress laying the groundwork for our product.

Farmers’ Markets:
Through negotiations with the City of Chicago, Growing Home will have access to every Farmers’ Market in the City throughout the season.

Navy Pier:
We will also have our own stall at Navy Pier, where we can sell produce, herbs and value-added products made from our organic foods.

Gourmet Restaurants:
Organic is the food of choice for Chicago’s upscale restaurants as well, and Bistro 110 has already committed to buying all of its organic produce from us.

Grocery Stores:
We plan to approach local grocery stores and national health food chains as well.

The Neighborhood:
Growing Home’s gardens will be available to local residents to learn about and grow their own organic produce. We will establish a small farmers’ market on site to help residents sell their produce to their neighbors.
Back flap:

Growing Home:
We’re a growing part of the landscape.

Growing Home provides healthy work, healthy workers and healthy food for Chicago’s economy.

Join our group of advocates, scientists and citizens in a true growth experience.

Growing Home has room for you:

• As a donor — we’re still growing, so we welcome “venture capital” of any size until we get on our feet.
• As a volunteer — we’re developing our program right now. If you’d like to help, we’ll find a way.
• As a consumer — look for us at Farmers Markets and on Navy Pier this summer.

Take the time to buy organic, from a group that’s growing more than vegetables we’re Growing Home.

(312) 435-8601

Allegations by local election integrity activists were boosted by a dramatic report on the problems with touchscreen voting machines by respected journalist Dan Rather that aired on HD.Net, a national high definition television network, in August.

Among the problems uncovered by Rather was “drifting,” which causes a vote to appear somewhere other than where the voter touched the screen. In Centre County, election workers witnessed this problem with voting machines in Bellefonte.

“This individual punched one name and it showed up as the person above three times,” said pollwatcher Joanne Tosti-Vasey of one voter in the last election. “Both the judge and one of the clerks went over and observed this guy having the wrong vote occur three times in a row.”

Other allegations came from around the county.

“Even last week, at a picnic, someone approached me with a complaint about how much trouble they had in the May primary when the screen kept selecting a candidate other than the one they touched,” said activist Mary Vollero in a recent interview with Voices. “She had to try repeatedly to correct her vote.”

According to a Centre County election official, drifting was the only kind of problem reported across the county in the recent primary and it was limited.

“I think we had one precinct that has a drift issue on the screen … on occasion it drifts a little bit. Other than that I don’t believe we had any types of complaints,” said Wanda Hockenberry, assistant director of the elections and voter registration office. “We recalibrate them all before they go back out. They are done within a couple of weeks before they go out.”

The machines are manufactured by ES&S, which bills itself as the country’s largest electronic voting machine manufacturer. The company claims 67 million voters used 97,000 iVotronics machines in last November’s election. Every one of them requires calibration and testing before each use.

But one former manufacturer of voter-verified-ballot voting machines, Dennis Vadura of Acupoll, told Voices that ongoing calibration of such machines should not only be unnecessary, but actually invites problems.

“Any time you have thousands of machines you have to go recalibrate every time you have an election, some are going to get skipped, some are going to be bad,” explained Vadura, founder of Acupoll, referring to the machines manufactured by ES&S. “The point is, you shouldn’t rely on the end-user to have to do something to every single machine in order to have that machine run correctly for an election. Invariably human error comes into play. The fact that you’re doing it means there’s something else going on that’s causing it to be out of alignment, and there’s no guarantee it won’t be out of alignment by the time you get it to the polling place.”

The solution according to Vadura? “Eliminate as many of those interactions as you can. You can do all of that anyway and still run into trouble if your hardware doesn’t work.” He said his machines never needed calibrating after the first time.

This local’s publication has a strong “Teamster-style” voice that is in-your-face while also never talking down to its members. It includes updates on bargaining and organizing spliced with national economics and politics to illustrate the connection between bargaining power and the big picture.

Sample: Who’s to blame for rising drug costs?

———

Television’s “ad”-verse effects

The federal government let the genie out of the bottle 10 years ago when it allowed drug manufacturers to sell medicine the way soft drink makers hawk Mountain Dew.

In fact, Fortune 500 drug companies spent nearly three times (up to $30 million) the amount of their revenues on advertising than they did on research in 2000. Drug king Schering-Plough spent a staggering $136 million advertising the sinus drug Claritin in 1998, more than Coca-Cola spent on Coke or Anheuser-Busch spent on Budweiser.

Nice job if you can get it

Meanwhile, the former CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb made $74.9 million in 2001. The chairman of Wyeth made $40.5 million. The former chairman of Pfizer made $28.3 million. The current chairman of Pfizer made $23.8 million. The vice chairman made $15.9 million. That doesn’t even include those stock options Wall Street is always talking about. The five executives with the highest stock options had another $332 million coming to them in 2001.

Politicians: bought and paid for

Drug companies have spread mucho dollars around to protect their gravy train, too, dumping more than $330 million into lobbying the federal government since 1991. In the last election cycle, they handed over nearly $22 million in political contributions — with $17 million going to Republicans.

They play but they don’t pay

But pharmaceutical companies didn’t let advertising or executive salairies cut into their profits. Drug manufacturing is the most profitable industry in the country, raking in 18.6 percent profits, and outstripping the traditional money grabbers — commercial banks — which come in a distant second. They pass on their expenses to consumers of course. In the last three months of 2002, Pfizer Inc., makers of Lipitor and Neurontin, posted a 46 percent profit gain over the same three months of 2000. Imagine getting a 46 percent raise — after taxes — in just two years!

Working with SEIU’s President Andy Stern, the president of Local 73 was about to embark on a politically risky but crucial effort to realign the union membership of multiple amalgamated locals into industry-specific locals. All public sector members would end up in one local, all industrial in another and so on. More than half of Local 73′s members would be moved to other locals. This editorial in the union’s quarterly newspaper planted the seeds of this move months before it came before the membership.

Sample: Joining by Industry Strengthens Our Bargaining

The union movement is going through the biggest transformation since the 1930′s. Millions of dollars are being directed toward organizing working women and men who are suffering under bad wages and bad working conditions.

And we’re learning lessons from big business. Corporations join forces within their industries to become power houses – like the merger with Ameritech and SBC. We must look at our union and do the same. We must let go of nostalgia when it holds us back, divides us and makes us weak.

In the Chicago area we look at SEIU as one big union of almost 100,000 workers. The leaders of this union must examine how we can all become stronger voices at the bargaining table and in the legislature. This is our responsibility to the members we serve.

Local 73 has begun to do that with our historic merger with Local 119 in Champaign/Urbana. Bringing almost 1,000 more University of Illinois workers into one of our largest public sector units is going to boost our bargaining power when we face U. of I. officials as well as when we face state legislators.

Another example is the new industry strength we are enjoying in the Security Division. With the addition of more than 1,000 security officers from the former Local 25, our union has gained unprecedented power to negotiate better contracts for our security members.

We need to look now at our industrial and allied bargaining units, and work with other SEIU locals with larger industrial bases to continue to maximize the strength of all of our members in whatever sector they work.

The leaders of the Service Employees International Union must strengthen our position at the bargaining table. We are a union, after all. We come together, work together, struggle together, to demand more from our employers: more in wages, more fairness, more security, more justice. We must take a new approach to organizing ourselves, so that when we demand more, we get it.

This union of 2,000 professionals had only 500 active members, and was entering into negotiations for its second contract. Leaders needed to remind bargaining unit members what the union had accomplished, while also admitting there was much work left to be done, and inspiring people to join.

Sample: Building a Better Health Care System At UIHC

Professionals Know Best What Our Patients Need.
The Professional and Scientific staff at UIHC organized ourselves as a union in 1998 in response to arbitrary layoffs, threats of PTO and other cutbacks we saw endangering patient care and our own quality of life.

As a union, we have been able to negotiate an agreement with management which provided – for the first time – protection from arbitrary decisions. With that first contract, we laid the foundation upon which we can build a stronger, more effective second contract.

As a union, we have been able to negotiate an agreement with management which provided — for the first time — protection from arbitrary decisions. With that first contract, we laid the foundation upon which we can build a stronger, more effective second contract.

We succeeded in negotiating improvements such as:

• Time and a half pay for holidays.
• Consistent on -call pay for all staff.
• Seniority for layoffs and transfers.
• Guaranteed 10 hours off between shifts.
• Guaranteed across the board raises for all staff.
• No more than 3 weekends worked in a 6-week period.
• First Time Pay Differential for RT’s
• Pay for interrupted meal breaks

As an organization

• We provided P&S staff support and feedback mechanisms through surveys, regular committee meetings with management, unsafe staffing forms and a system of worksite leaders so we can all have a say in how we improve the quality of patient care.
• We successfully lobbied our state legislators for a Safe Needle study bill and are currently testifying in support of a bill that would mandate the use of safe needles in all Iowa hospitals.
• We won an arbitration in September that halts the use of nearly all mandatory overtime until 1/1/2001. At that time, contractual language goes into effect, limiting mandatory overtime to extraordinary circumstances.

Imagine what more we could do.
We are 2,000 professionals committed to providing the highest quality health care in the state. We are organized into one association with the legal status to speak as equals with management about staff retention, safe staffing levels, training and family-friendly work schedules. As our membership grows, we can more effectively fend off rising health insurance costs, staff reductions and other threats to our livelihood and to quality health care.

When you join SEIU Local 199 you not only lend your voice to that discussion, you make what we say as an organization stronger and more effective. Joining the union is the least of any commitment you can make to improving your working conditions at UIHC. And now, as we enter contract negotiations for the second time, your membership means more than ever.

Join Today Dues are ____% of gross monthly wages (up to $__), dedicated to bargaining, informing members on progress, receiving feedback and building the organization to more effectively represent you.

Dues Deduction Authorization
I hereby authorize my employer, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, to deduct membership dues in Service Employees International Union from wages due to me on a monthly basis and to transmit the same to Service Employees International Union at its office in Coralville.

The amount of monthly dues shall be the amount established by the Constitution and By-laws of Service Employees International Union and as certified to my employer by SEIU.

This authorization shall be effective with the first paycheck after receipt of this card by the employer, and continue in effect until revoked by me, pursuant to the requirements of Iowa Code Section 79.19.

Istanbul — Today I arrived, feeling jetlagged after eight hours in the air but with my adrenaline pumping. I am staying for a day at a friend’s house on the Strait of Bosphorus. Sitting on the expansive marble balcony, I hear the chugging tankers and freighters maneuvering up the narrow passage of water, the putt-putt of small watercraft, the upbeat music from passing tour boats, and the smooth, steady splash of ferry boats pushing their way from landing to landing. Across the way on the European side, fish restaurants, boat landings, and homes surround the remnants of a massive Byzantine fortress.

This vast and ancient city of 15 million people is the gateway between Europe and Asia. Here the world’s trade passes from the Atlantic through the Mediterranean, then the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus, and then to the Black Sea north of Turkey to Georgia and the other former Soviet republics. Some of the tankers and freighters I see churning slowly up and down the Bosphorus will stop to unload some of their stores – agricultural goods, textiles, and other products Turkey needs.

While in Turkey, I will visit with Esra Eren, a Turkish citizen and a graduate student in Penn State’s department of energy and geo-environmental engineering. Eren is studying ways to extract energy-rich compounds from asphaltite, a bituminous rock formed from the breakdown of petroleum. While Eren works with Penn State professor Semih Eser, her research is supported by the Turkish Petroleum Corporation as part of Turkey’s search for new energy sources.

Asphaltite — found in large deposits in the southeastern part of Turkey — contains a complex mixture of organic compounds: hydrocarbons, oxygen, sulfur, and nitrogen. Other countries have successfully extracted hydrocarbons from asphaltite to use as fuel, but the cost of that technology is very high, so Turkey continues to burn asphaltite like coal – an inefficient use of a potentially high-yielding energy source.

The country continues to search for oil, coal, and natural gas, and it is developing alternative energy sources, like hydropower and geothermal energy. Oil now makes up 40 percent of Turkey’s energy supply, coal 28 percent, and natural gas about 19 percent. Hydroelectric power supplies 2.9 percent of the total (but 36 percent of the electricity), while geothermal, solar, and wind still only account for less than two percent combined.

In State College, Eren had told me of the problem her country faces. “One day the oil will stop because the consumption rate is bigger than the production rate,” she said. “People are trying to find new ways, but the efficiency is lower. Petroleum and conventional resources are still better than geothermal, hydrogen, and other things,” she said. While Turkey generates 63,000 barrels of oil per day, it consumes ten times that amount. Its ratio of natural gas production to consumption is comparable. Turkey has become increasingly dependent on its neighbors in the Caspian region and Central Asia, with whom it has strong economic and historical ties, for oil and gas, according to a business group that monitors the infrastructure of Middle Eastern countries.

Over the next couple of weeks I will check in with Eren as she reconnects with family and former colleagues and collects samples of asphaltite for her research. But for now, I am getting reacquainted with the skyline – the familiar domes and minarets of the Sultanahmet, the Yeni (New) Mosques, and the Aya Sofia, which has seen 1,500 years as a church and a mosque, and is now a museum. Along the banks of the Bosphorous, prosperous merchants maintain antique homes with jutting bay windows, intricate wood-carved ornamentation, and towering balconies that overflow with greenery of tropical proportions. The surrounding hills are planted with more modest homes, small white and off-white boxes packed upon each other and cushioned by patches of trees in a spectacular feat of geometry and physics.

I haven’t been back to Istanbul since this region suffered a devastating earthquake more than five years ago – a cataclysm that killed 18,000 people and injured 49,000. Economic losses were estimated to have been between $10 billion and $40 billion. Paper mills, car manufacturers, metal works, sugar processors, and power plants were damaged or destroyed, and Turkey lost one of its national treasures, the carpet-making village of Hereke, where almost all of Turkey’s most highly-acclaimed carpet-makers, young women and girls, died. While the center of Istanbul was spared, Turkey’s overall economy, already suffering an inflation rate of more 50 percent, was dealt a severe blow, all the more reason why economic resources for ventures such as energy exploration are scarce.

Yet growth and modernization are evident. Driving through Istanbul and later walking down the streets my first day back in four years, I pass a new intercity bus station that would rival some mid-sized airports in the US. I notice more new road construction. The constant din of traffic and horns across the bridges that connect Turkey’s European and Asian sides is rivaled only by the occasional sounding of a tanker or freighter’s monstrous fog horn warning small boat traffic to get out of the way. And morning ‘til night, the ever-present tour boats and ferries crisscross the Bosphorus, as if stitching the two continents together with their wakes.

Find more of these dispatches at http://www.rps.psu.edu/turkey/

Sample: Wages will go up when we make the demand

I came back to Iowa after 11 years away for one reason: I missed it. I didn’t grow up in Iowa, but when I lived here through the decade of the 1980s, Iowa grew on me. I decided then that this is where I would make my home.

Despite my best efforts, I ended up moving away. My Iowa husband and I moved, in large part, because he had an excellent job offer in another state. That stayed true for the next 11 years. When we tried to get back to Iowa, we stalled out in Chicago for the same reason. The jobs were better. They paid real money. They had real benefits.

Still every year I came back to visit friends in Iowa City. I bought land outside of West Branch with the hope that some day I could retire on it. I walked through the Ped Mall and always ran into someone I knew. I felt at home.

Three years ago, I made one last ditch effort to make a go in Iowa. I left my high-paying communications job in Chicago, with my 14 percent pension and my car allowance, and I went into freelancing. I stayed in Chicago long enough, I thought, to develop a freelance clientele, and more importantly, to make sure my daughter was settled in and happy with her new stepmother.

When I came back to Iowa, I was only able to keep a few of my Chicago clients. I set up shop and starting passing cards. People were shocked to hear what I charged for my writing services. Being polite, they were kind enough not to express that shock; they just never hired me.

And who could afford to? Nobody has a job that pays well enough to hire anyone else at a rate that pays well. See? That’s how the economy goes. Good jobs breed more good jobs. Bad jobs breed poverty. I didn’t learn that in journalism school and I never went to business school. I just learned it by living it.

So last week, when I got my first chance to meet the governor and lieutenant governor in person, I told them that I was one of those Iowans who had heard the call and returned home. Now I’m making about half of what I made in Chicago (which is considered a decent wage for this area). My house is half the size of the one I lived in Chicago. My car is paid for thanks to my job in Chicago. My standard of living is half of what it was in Chicago, but my cost of living isn’t. At times I still draw on savings I put away there to pay for things I need here.

Now I’m dating a man who used to teach at the University of Iowa, but went to another university in another state because the job paid much better. As our relationship progresses, we don’t have a doubt what will happen. If we want to live together, we have to go where the better job is. I’ll have to leave Iowa again.

In one of my favorite quotes, Frederick Douglass once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” I hope some day, all of Iowa will make that demand and reap the reward of the better life that comes with it.

I look forward to the day I can retire. Maybe by the time that day comes I’ll be able to afford to live in Iowa. At least by then, wages won’t be the deciding factor.

Sample: Gods, Bears, Stones, and Stars

Spanish professor Roslyn Frank has spent the last 30 years chasing them across the centuries and across the European continent- behaving much like the main character of the work that first inspired her: Don Quijote.

“I was teaching Don Quixote,” Roslyn Frank explained recently. “There’s a great deal in that book about the Spanish Inquisition-it’s a hidden text that’s not all the hidden. I wanted to know what Cervantes was doing. What kind of risks was he taking?”

Within moments, Frank began to tell an ageless tale of stars and shamans, of power struggles and punishment. Incredible as her story first sounded, she didn’t seem to be tilting at windmills.
Imagine what it might mean to discover in the heart of Europe a living fossil of an entire civilization, where rituals, customs, and certain aspects of the economic system have changed little (or, at least, not so much) during the last two millennia. Looking at that culture would help us piece together a past about which we’re naturally curious. In fact, that’s what Frank has done through her love of language and her detective work into the society of the people who inhabit Euskal Herria, the Basque region in Spain and France.

Studying Don Quijote (published by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605 in Madrid) led Frank to the study of collectives organized by women, known as Beguines as early as the 12th century. That, in turn, led her to bears, jesters, stone octagons, archaic measuring systems, and the stars. In the end, Frank accumulated hundreds of clues that together suggest that, in times past, Basque culture was far more sophisticated and far less isolated than investigators have hitherto assumed. Furthermore, the Basques seem to have kept their distant history alive by actively passing down the old traditions and beliefs even into the 20th century.

Frank begins her story with the Beguines. These groups of women healers, educators, and seers had spread across much of Europe by the early 1300s, a period that coincided in time with the increasing movement of people from rural areas into the cities. While the prevalence of the movement is difficult to gauge continent-wide, Frank says that in medieval Strasburg statistical evidence from archival sources suggests that as many as one in three women were Beguines.

Think of these collectives as the manifestation of an early women’s movement. Although the Beguines worked with the poor and wrote in the vernaculars of the common people, they were often financed by members of the upper class. When a wealthy person died, it was one of these women -not a priest- who was called to offer the last rites. Inside the church, the Beguines were in charge of women’s rituals-many of which were later taken over by male sacristans- lighting the candles for the dead and making the bread offerings. Elder Beguines had helpers, whom they paid, thus making the women’s collectives an integral part of the economic as well as the belief system.

Frank says that she was intrigued by the name “Beguine,” a word that has no known etymology in any Indo-European language, and she researched it for some fifteen years. Finally, as she dug into the archives of the church of Bayonne in the Basque country, she uprooted the etymology of the term. It springs from an expression in Basque meaning “herb worker,” a term still used in Euskal Herria today.
How had these women’s organizations spread across Europe, penetrating different cultures and employing different languages? And why did the Inquisitors eventually target their members as heretics?

“It takes a bit of extrapolation,” Frank explains. “My suspicion is that this women’s movement goes deep in time, and that these Beguines were originally connected to other groups, like the traditional bear trainers and the jesters, or fools. The Beguines were probably too friendly with the Jesters’ Guild,” she says wryly. “All of these early medieval theater troupes were really an anathema for the church.” They threatened its authority.

When the church leaders struck out against their foes, the women healers fell victim to the same investigative methods the Inquisition applied to so many others: guilt by association.
In the Middle Ages urban culture was most often expressed in the streets, where the common people spent much of their lives. In those relatively trying times of hard labor, untreatable diseases, and often inescapable filth, life could be tedious. What a relief it must have been for common women and men, when the jesters, bards and musicians strolled into town to stage their entertainments. It’s at those performances that we discover bears are part of the complex puzzle of ancient culture that Frank has been working to piece together.

“It’s as if the values of your society are written in the sky. Imagine how powerful that can be.”
To tell their stories, the jesters sometimes used bears, animals credited with healing powers, along with sacred clowns whose job it was to poke fun at authority. “There were singers, bards, religious practitioners,” Frank says. “They were all people who kept the old belief system going, even though individually they might not have understood it completely. In one zone, these practices were seen as traditional; in another, as heretical.

According to Frank, it is very likely that over the centuries these bands of performers reinforced the common belief that bears held special powers, that humans descended from bears, and that animals and humans lived together in a symbiotic relationship on earth. Such ideas were most certainly pagan, a threat to all those Inquisitors who demanded loyalty to one all-powerful god and one all-controlling church.

European bear legends are “very old stuff,” Frank says. “These are remnants of belief from a hunter-gatherer culture.” She explains that the cognitive roots of the legends, which may go back as far as 12,000 BC, attribute to bears the desirable qualities of a sense of time, excellent hearing, and unsurpassed hunting and fishing skills, not to mention the magic of sleeping for an entire winter before waking again. At a time when hunters and gatherers shared the same basic diet and natural resources as bears, it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to think that humans would revere these animals, creatures that were bigger, stronger, and savvier at hunting than they were.

The Basque version of the legend tells of Little Bear (Hartz-Kume), born of a human woman and a mythical Great Bear, who is teased as a child because he’s different.

“This is a very modern, very 21st century story about multiculturalism,” Frank adds during her rapid-fire description of the tale. Little Bear puts up with the mockery for a while, “but he’s no pacifist” and he finally “lays out his scoffers.” Then he goes on a vision quest, meets up with other animals, is put to a test, and passes it by distributing the carcass of a dead animal fairly among all the other animals. When Little Bear needs to, he can shape-shift and take on the qualities of his helper animals and so the story continues.

Across Europe and to the northeast, the bear stories are remarkably consistent, remaining almost identical in areas hundreds of miles apart. Frank and her colleagues have speculated that the consistency and resilience of the bear stories could have been caused by migrations of the ursine belief system as the itinerant troupes of jesters and their dancing bears influenced one another, or by shared ecosystems -similar natural resources, diets, animals, and weather patterns. But there was another possible way to explain the transmission of the stories, one that the team of researchers didn’t recognize until relatively recently-the infinite and ageless sky above.

Frank believes that the folktales and related performance pieces staged by the jester-shamans and their trained bears hearken back to an astrally coded text that would explain why Europeans see the constellations of a Great Bear and a Little Bear rotating around the North Star. Some of the helper animals found in the folktales also appear to show up in the sky above -the Grey Mare killing the Black Wolf (Centaurus and Lupus) along with the Female Eagle (Aquila flying along the Milky Way).

The bears are the key across Europe for people once believed that they were descended from bears: that bears are our ancestors. No wonder so many European folktales and related performances tell the story of a half-bear, half-human being.

If her theory proves correct, it’s a sky-shattering (others might say quixotic) discovery that as early as 4,000 BC people were looking up, making shapes out of the stars, and using those constellations to retell their stories, validate their current realities, and justify their troubles-not to mention find their way around.

“It’s as if the values of society are written in the sky,” Frank explains. “Imagine how powerful that can be.”

But how on earth could the unschooled people of times past have used the sky as a tablet on which to record their folk stories?

Once again, Frank’s hypothesis is rooted in Basque culture and history. More than twenty-five years ago, she discovered some mysterious, almost perfect circles on the rocky slopes and plunging mountainsides of the Basques’ Pyrenean homeland. Mapped by a center stone and eight outlying stones-four aligned with each of the directions of the compass and four more marking the intercardinal points on the perimeter of the figure- these stone octagons have been built by the Basques for thousands of years.

The measurements used in creating the stone octagons only confirm Frank’s understanding of a culture’s ability to bring the stars down to earth and put them to practical use. The stones are not plopped down anywhere, but positioned precisely to mark the geographic north, south, east, and west. Most of us today even with a compass in hand, would fail to achieve the accuracy that the Basques managed to achieve with their rudimentary measuring tools.

“There is reason to believe,” Frank explains, “that the shape of these octagons actually reflects a coordinate system-they are a ritual manifestation of the system that they used in mapping and navigation. Conceptually the center stone is analogous to the North Star.”

Chronicled in the early Basque law codes, the history of the stone octagons illustrates how these simple structures permeated the culture of the region. They established legal and social boundaries and at times were useful as lawful evidence to settle disputes. Here again, the people of the Basque region held onto practices that their neighbors across Europe seem to have relinquished much earlier. For example, Frank notes that, as recently as ten years ago, collectives of Basque shepherds still used these stone octagons to map the territory they would use for winter and summer grazing.

As further argument for the astronomical connections she sees so clearly, Frank points out the unusual shape and size of these octagons. With a diameter spanning nearly a thousand feet, the octagons are laid out across some of the toughest terrain in the mountains. Of the octagons Frank and her colleagues have documented, the stones extend no more than a meter above the ground. These aren’t monoliths, but rather modest markers that, nonetheless, in many cases are located only meters away from what are indeed megalithic monuments.

“Yet the placement of the stones did not correspond to some practical purpose,” Frank says. Then she laughs. “Well, what is practical? The stones certainly weren’t going to keep the sheep in!” But the stones did outline for the shepherds those areas where they had to bed down their sheep and make their cheeses.

Clearly, the ancient Basques were connected to the earth and to the sky with an uncommon understanding.

In the Middle Ages, hundreds of years before the invention of the decimal metric system, the Basques measured things in units called gizabetes and performed mathematical calculations using multiples of seven. Skilled mariners, they employed a special navigational system which, like the stone octagons, utilized septarian units of measurement such as the septarian league. And their numbers worked out pretty well.

Historians know that the Basques were superb seamen, handling more than fifty percent of the traffic between the Old World and the New by the late 1500s. Frank believes Basque calculations were probably used three hundred years earlier to plot maps for sailing in the Mediterranean. Why does she think these people had the ability to chart the seas?

Once again, the writings of Basque authors tell the story. When other European cultures were seeking to determine the correct length of a nautical league, they were unsuccessful. Only the Basques retained the septarian value for the league, a value that fits precisely with the earlier coordinate system used in navigation and mapping, a value repeated over and over again in the works of Basque mariners.

Gods, bears, stones and stars…, they’ve propelled Frank through decades of detective work in a lifetime of scholarly adventure. Lured by the Basque language and curious about culture, she’s devoted herself to investigating cognitive systems that suggest that ancient Basques were far more than simple shepherds. At the least, they’ve managed to retain a cultural memory that sheds a little more light on our human history.

This article published in August 2000 received full front page coverage, banner headline and photos treatment, and jumped to an inside page. The Indiana Labor News is the oldest labor newspaper in Indiana, publishing since 1965.

Sample: Gary Gets Behind Hospital Workers

A strong union town, a disciplined picket line and community leaders willing to get down and dirty all contributed to a successful settlement in the 5-week strike at Methodist Hospital in Gary last month.

Workers risked their careers at the hospital to face intimidation and possible replacement, but the union and the community held together.

“We were over 85 – 90 percent at both campuses (Northlake and Southlake),” Tom Balanoff, president of Service Employees International Union Local 73, which represents the workers, reported. “There was only a 5 – 9 percent slippage over the 5 weeks,” he said. Such high numbers are rare in service worker strikes.

“The members were great. That’s the victory here,” added Chief Negotiator Alice Bush.

The strike of 650 service and maintenance workers June 1 at Gary’s only hospital was the last resort of workers who had faced two and three tier wage scales, excessive overtime and the ever-increasing use of temporary workers. The union leadership called upon community allies to bolster worker morale as well as move negotiations with Methodist. The Rev. Marion Johnson Jr., President of the Baptist Leadership Council, organized a rally, local politicians met with hospital officials, Rev. Jesse Jackson walked through the hospital, and Mayor Scott Cole forced the two sides together in a last ditch effort to come to an agreement and end the strike.

“We anticipated their moves and were always able to cut them off at the pass,” said Balanoff.

The janitors, nursing assistants, food service workers and other service workers will see 11 – 20 percent in wage increases over the course of the contract. Union bargainers were also able to close the gap between the tiers, and negotiate contract language intended to eliminate the use of temporaries and increase the number of permanent jobs. Union leaders improved the job security language as well, providing for hospital-wide seniority instead of the previous “cost-center” seniority. Cost centers can be units smaller than some departments. The contract was ratified by a 2-1 margin at a previously-scheduled union meeting just hours after the last bargaining session.

While Balanoff, son of recently-deceased Gary icon Jim Balanoff of USWA Local 1010, credits the reputation of Gary as a union town, (“they wouldn’t dare try to bring permanent replacements in, because we could build around that”), that reputation didn’t stop the hospital from hiring Asset Protection Team, APT, termed “professional goons” by Balanoff and known for their work in the Detroit Newspaper strike.

“They were intimidating, and as the strike went on they became provocative,” explained Balanoff. “They were trying to incite violence on the picket line so the hospital could get an injunction… which they were never able to do.” Gary police also worked off duty, in uniform and with full police power, until an incident at a rally where witnesses say two officers waded through the crowd of 200 workers. One pulled out his gun and arrested a union organizer. The city changed its policy on off-duty police work after the incident.

Despite some tense moments, worksite leaders from SEIU Local 73 reported that the strike was in many ways good for them and their co-workers.

“It was actually a positive experience being on strike,” said German Ortiz, a Food Service Worker with 13 years at the hospital. “People banded together and got to know each other in ways that they never would have.”

Negotiating team member Alicia Scegiel, a housekeeper at Methodist for 18 years, agreed. “We became one big family on the outside. That wouldn’t have occurred on the inside where everyone stays in their own little departments,” she said.

This piece appeared in American Anthropologist, this country’s top anthropological journal, in December 1999. It is part of a series of academic papers resulting from an anthropological study of a local union. Please note that all charts and graphs were removed in this online version.

Summary: Because of a change at a hospital we are able to contrast two different structures of leadership in a union worksite. Since we had tested a cognitive construct we call union consciousness before the change, the difference in structure provides a natural experiment to determine the consequences of structural change for cognition. We repeated the test after the change and found a different cognitive structure. We conclude that cognitive structures are not enduring configurations but that they change as structures change. This leads to the further conclusion that external structures are powerful determinants of patterns of thought.

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Introduction
For some the experiment is the hallmark of scientific research. An investigator deduces from theoretical conjecture and empirical findings that an independent variable is causally related to a dependent variable, determines procedures and practices by which to create a situation that tests the assertion, does the test, and assesses the results. Then philosophers take over and debate whether the finding confirms or merely fails to disconfirm the hypothesis while scientists integrate the result into the empirical findings and theoretical speculations of the field (Kuhn 1970; Kuznar 1997).

This is more or less the 19th century archetype of the practice of physics, which many take to be the ideal for scientific inquiry. Other sciences, among them, anthropology, developed techniques of observing and recording phenomena not readily amenable to experimental manipulation. However once in a while a natural experiment presents itself while we are observing and recording.

In the process of a study of a union local in Chicago (Durrenberger and Erem 1997a,b; Erem and Durrenberger 1997), I (Paul Durrenberger) had administered triads tests to the union local’s staff, stewards, and members at five hospitals and several industrial jobsites. Workers at a jobsite who are organized into a bargaining unit of a union local elect co-workers to enforce the provisions of the contract, convey worker concerns to management, help bargain new contracts, resolve worksite problems, and if they cannot be easily resolved by talking with supervisors, representing the worker at a second step grievance hearing with the supervisor. If this fails to untangle the difficulty, the steward may call a union representative who the local hires to represent members at a number of worksites. The union rep, as they are called, can represent the member at a third step hearing with the department manager and the company’s vice-president of human resources. If the grievance is not resolved at the third step hearing, and if both sides agree, it can be submitted to the judgment of an arbitrator whose decision is binding.

Thus law and practice have established a set of roles for dealing with workplace problems through union mechanisms. In the parlance of cognitive anthropology there is an “etic grid,” (Kay 1966) as illustrated in Figure 1, a set of categories, which are not defined by the consciousness of participants. However, members also develop their own conceptual structures or folk models (Durrenberger 1996) concerning the same relationships. It was these I was testing with the triads test.

This piece appeared in Anthropology and Humanism, December 1997.It is one of the last in a series of papers resulting from an anthropological study of a local union.

Summary: We have interleaved Suzan Erem’s personal essay on the passions and pitfalls of being a union representative with statements Paul Durrenberger recorded from workers at meetings and during interviews with stewards, reps, and union officers to depict some points of view about the labor movement in the United States today that are not articulated by unions, their opponents, or the press. These sometimes contradictory inside views come from several different structural positions. Paul Durrenberger collected the interview material during the course of a study that involved a number of worksites and the staff of Local 73.

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My job is part insurance agent, part activist. When janitors, security guards, auto workers, window washers, secretaries or carpenters seek protection from supervisors who show favoritism, from employers who won’t pay a living wages, from managers who treat them like children simply because they rely on a paycheck to feed their families, they call us.[more]“I’ve worked positions where there were no rights. I wanted to organize a union at [a hospital]. I left before it got in. The union is fair and doesn’t disrespect anyone. They come from the same background as I am. My son is in a union. They see strength, independence, determination. More outspoken.”

We fall between organized workers and union leadership. We look both ways and are troubled. Our hearts still vibrate with a passion of anger but our common sense tells us that reason will always prevail. We are union representatives. Many of us have given up the security of an 8-hour day, overtime, comp time, and a grievance procedure to take this union job–doing what we loved to do or were driven to do as stewards–doing it full time for pay. The novelty wears off quickly. I am here to tell you that we are tired, we are speechless, and we are slowly killing ourselves.

“They [the workers] see management say one thing and the union say another. They see controversy. The hospital does what they want to do. I say ‘You’re seeing this, but you have every right to fight.’ Some people are afraid to sign grievance forms. Threatened. . . . I’ve been places with them. I communicate with [the rep] and [the president] and I’ve been to a couple of retreats. I’ve learned a lot. That’s what got me involved here. That makes me more of a participant here. . . . It gets you inspired. No limitations. You have to believe in something.” Union steward.