This is some of the best news I've heard in a long time. Wonder if I
should do a Marketplace commentary about it and scare all the rentiers in
the audience? Where could I find out more?
Doug
Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)
On Wed, 26 Jan 1994, Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> PEN-Lers,
>
> Actually, Apple (against their will) has become a model employer of their
> janitorial staff. After a massive mobilization by SEIU and their Justice
> for Janitors campaign, including a threatened worldwide boycott of Apple
> computer, Apple conceded to the unions demands. Apple forced its landlord
> to hire a union contractor and Hewlett Packard almost immediately signed
> union contracts without a fight. With Oracle (or rather its landlord)
> agreeing to hire union workers with decent benefits, Silicon Valley is
> almost 100% unionized in the janitorial sector. This is one of the most
> dramatic accomplishments in unionization in many years.
>
> Following this success, SEIU has teamed up with a number of other unions
> (HERE, the Teamsters, ACTWU, maybe a couple others) to begin a mass
> community-wide organizing drive in San Jose. The unions involved
> have deployed 20 organizers and fourteen apprentices from the AFL-CIO
> Organizing Institute. Most innovatively, the unions are not beginning in
> the workplace but starting door-knocking in the ethnic communities around
> the area to create a mass community base as they target multiple
> industries all at once. They are knocking on 1400 doors each day, 10,000
> doors a week. The goal is to build a mass community base, then blitz
> low-wage service and light-manufacturing throughout the San Jose area.
>
> For me, it is one of the most exciting union campaigns in existence,
> since it involved not only multi-union collaboration but a serious
> application of community organizing as a method of union organizing.
>
> And much of this campaign is ultimately derived from the capitulation of
> Apple Computer to the original community-based campaign against the company.
>
> **************************************************
> * Nathan Newman: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
> * UC-Berkeley *
>
>
> On Wed, 26 Jan 1994, Jon Coifman wrote:
>
> > As long as we're at it, it should also be noted that Apple has a less than
> > stellar record on union activities among the janitorial staff at its
> > Cupertino, CA headquarters. Memory has not been kind regarding the
> > datails, but my recollection is that the decision to dump a contract with a
> > unionized maintance firm about a year and a half ago caused quite a flap.
> > Perhaps somone on the net remembers the outcome.
> >
> > Jon Coifman,
> > (via Macintosh)
> > Austin, TX
> >
> >
> >
