Cognition Issue 14
On
Planet ProMess
When last we met our heroes, they had hidden out on an abandoned ice planet
while they waited for the victorious ProMess union election to be settled
in the courts. Things had gotten kind of sleepy. While the pro-union workers
had trounced the opposition by a two-vote avalanche, the eleven challenged
ballots threw the election's outcome into uncertainty. The National Labor
Relations Board was investigating several charges made by both sides regarding
the other sides' conduct during the campaign.
ProMess owner Joel Ritch, not entirely unlike Rick Moranis in Spaceballs,
was a sinister if slightly buffoonish archvillian. The company's compensation
schemes were so wildly illegal that to pay back ProMess workers would cost
slightly more than the GDP of certain West African nations. And the workers
had sued. Just before Thanksgiving, the Superior Court Judge hearing the massive
wage and hour lawsuit of ProMess workers ordered Joel Ritch to turn over the
names of all the workers since April of 1996, so they could be given the option
of getting some serious cash money in the lawsuit.
Mr. Ritch panicked at massive liabilities looming and approached International
Longshore & Warehouse Union President Brian McWilliams in early December
to cut a deal. Flush from having just trampled global capitalism in Seattle
at the WTO, President McWilliams told Joel that he could not make a deal,
and that he would still have to talk to his workers. After some two months
of running in circles and posturing, Joel agreed to sit down with union representatives
with Pro workers on hand to settle union recognition, a union contract, and
the lawsuit all at once. The workers proposed settling the $1.5 million lawsuit
for a modest $412,000, and demanding in the contract only such improvements
as would be necessary to equalize heinous variations among many Pro workers
who get paid differently for the same work. Joel announced that the workers
were being unreasonable, and offered $10,000 and no changes in wages and benefits.
Meanwhile, the legal system was on its inexorable march towards Joel Ritch.
He coughed up names and addresses of 1200 former Pro workers who may want
to join the lawsuit. And the National Labor Relations Board issued sixteen
(count 'em!) complaints against ProMess over its illegal conduct during the
union election campaign in August and September. This anti-union activity
ranged from threats and bribes to attempting to make the employees independent
contractors and turn their finances over to the National Independent Contractors
Association. (NICA, incidentally, had been convicted of eleven counts of felony
over workers compensation fraud. Curiously, the NLRB was also rumbling about
charging whitebread union supporter and bike messenger Bill Bridges with improperly
electioneering in Punjabi.) The NLRB determined to bring ProMess to trial
in March, and to seek a bargaining order which would require Joel to recognize
the union and begin negotiating in good faith regardless of any lingering
challenge ballots.
The mighty workers of ProMess, emboldened by the support of the American justice
system, took matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, February 8 they stopped
work and headed to 600 Bryant Street by 5pm. They picketed and chanted and
hollered. When the UPS drivers arrived as scheduled to collect overnight packages
for ProMess going across the country, they honored the picket line and the
packages did not move. The UPS drivers honored the picket line because they
are Teamsters and they know the meaning of solidarity. The strike/picket completely
took Pro management by surprise. They trembled with fear, and not knowing
if the strike would continue the next morning, they sent intown packages by
UPS later instead of having Pro workers deliver them.
Having stirred from their icy lair, the Pro Mess organizing committee has
sent a message loud and clear that they are going to make the cost of fighting
the union greater than the cost of working with the union. They are going
to make it near impossible for Joel Ritch to continue to run his business
like it was his own personal playpen. Workers who have heretofore not been
particularly involved in the union drive joined the work stoppage on Tuesday.
They will continue until they get justice. -Nato
We've had enough of lies and bluff/We want our share for sure! -Jimmy Cliff
DMS Action Update
As you are probably aware, on Wednesday, January 12 DMS messengers struck
without warning and presented DMS management with demands for higher pay,
winter bonuses, and better working conditions. The strike---which closed
down the entire SF biker boards, and much of the in-town vehicle board---lasted
5 days, the longest same-day messenger strike in San Francisco history.
Striking messengers returned to work on Wednesday, January 19, satisfied
that we had demonstrated our collective power and unity. DMS Vice-President
Patrick Gallagher, who was sent from New York when the strike hit, promised
that real changes would be implemented ASAP. We, in turn promised that DMS
would continue to face turmoil if shit doesnât shape up fast. The
basic conditions we placed upon returning to work---that confiscated radios
and pagers be returned, that scabs be let go by the morning of January 19,
and that a striking driver whose car was totaled during the strike be provided
with a new vehicle so he could work---have been fulfilled. Additionally,
since returning to work, DMS management has announced that starting February
1st all bike and walking messengers will receive a $40 winter bonus per
week.
While DMS management is certainly on the defensive, they are simultaneously
mounting a counter-offensive (as expected). In the three weeks since the
end of the strike, DMS management has attempted to create conditions that
will cause those who participated in the strike to feel demoralized and
quit. This has been done by management's stalling on implementation of changes,
routing work away from bicyclists, and other punitive measures. In response,
on February 1st and 2nd, bicyclists conducted a work slow down that severely
hampered DMS business.
We are keeping the pressure up. At a meeting with management on February
8th, we presented documentation showing that new riders consistently have
had 15% shaved off their payout. This slimy manipulation is the tip of the
iceberg of DMS abuse and wasnât recognized until the strike gave us
the opportunity to cross-reference payouts. Management has agreed to rectify
this situation and compensate people retroactively. Pressure is also being
exerted to increase payouts for all messengers.
Learning form this most recent strike and from the worker actions over the
last two years at DMS, it is clear that increasing our paychecks requires
connecting with all DMS personnel and coordinated actions at all major courier
companies. We are resisting the temptation to shuttle from one shitty courier
firm to another as that only assists management in maintaining a fragmented
and docile workforce.
Beyond
the Economics of Scarcity
The world is in a process by which communities are taking and maintaining
the economic initiative in the face of the formidable physical capital and
credit advantages of the massive corporations and political states, i.e.,
the non-collateral loan program empowering women in Bangladesh or the case
of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe in the United States. These actions continue
as people reform the context in which they live instead of reforming humans,
by doing more with less. The wealth regenerating prospects of such design
will induce all humanity to realize full, lasting economic and physical
success plus worthwhile employment of all the Earth.
Since the middle of the twentieth century the world has turned from wire
to wireless, from track to trackless, from visible structure to invisible
structure. In each instance humans are able to do more with less. During
the same period, the worldâs financial and political institutions
have abandoned gold, silver, and copper as the basis for currency. Yet the
institu tional world maintains the same mindset of currency and economies
based upon scarcity out of habit rather than assessment of reality.
Currency is presently based upon productivity and credit. In the latter
half of the twentieth century the world's currency flow has expanded tremendously.
Now it is the time for more realistic distribution of resources. Enough
food, clothing, housing etc., are being produced to provide for the whole
of humankind. Where people think there is enough for all, the possibility
exists for a more realistic approach to the distribution of goods and services
rather than to waste valuable rescues in war and the practice of hegemony.
---Dr. Howard L. Meredith
The bourgeoisie had better watch out for me/All across this so-called nation---Bad
Brains
Movie Review: "The Messenger"
Directed by Luc Besson, Screenplay by Luc Besson and Andrew Birkin
Most reviews of this flick have dumped on it... and with some reason. "Kill
the Messenger! " screamed the title of the East Bay "Express"
review. Others were even less sympathetic.
But let's get real: most reviewers are just a bunch of wimpy indoor people
not really able to understand what Messengers are about whether they're
us or a 15th Century French Catholic girl trying to throw foreign invaders
out of her homeland. Of course the more important question is whether the
people who made "The Messenger" are a bunch of indoor people or
have some idea about what it takes to deliver a message through celluloid
thick and thin.
My answer is a definite and rock solid "They do---sort of."
"The Messenger" is based on the true story of Joan of Arc (played
by Milla Jovovich), a French teenage girl in the 1420s who went from being
an illiterate peasant to leading her nation's armies against English invaders.
Joan of Arc faced a powerful English army that had occupied northern France
since 1337. Paris was in English hands as was much of the wine country.
The French had been fighting for almost 100 years (so that's why they called
it the Hundred Years War) and couldn't kick out these soccer hooligans with
bad cuisine. So when an illiterate teenage girl came to the French crown
prince (played by John Malkovich) and claimed that voices from Heaven had
told her to lead the French army to victory, the prince did what any reasonable
person in his position would do---he put her in charge of the army. She
won some major victories and liberated a major part of France. The problem
with this flick is that it tries to do too much. It has great battle scenes
that will certainly attract the male adolescents who make up a big part
of the American movie audience: decapitations by maces, amputations, all
kinds of medieval weapons causing all kinds of medieval mayhem. Speaking
as a former adolescent I dug it! But of course I want more than that in
a flick especially for $5.50 for a matinee. Much of the dialogue was more
1990s than 1420s. "Yeah" and "whatever" were all over
the first half of the film. But the gory battle scenes in the middle of
the flick provide an ironic transition to the last---and very serious---part
of the movie. After Joan has liberated enough territory for the Crown Prince
to be crowned Charles VII, the king refuses to give her any more military
support to liberate the rest of France. That's gratitude for you. A Messenger
gets a kingdom for some lazy wimp and he can't even say "Thanks"
in a decent way. Joan who's been doing these miracles for God and France
not some ungrateful monarch raises a smaller army and tries to liberate
the rest of her homeland. She fails and is captured by pro-English French
forces who turn her over to their English masters. This actually presents
the English with a problem. They want to kill her but they need to make
it look legal and proper. Their soldiers want to believe they're killing
and dying for what's right not just a claim on France by their king. The
English leaders are convinced that Joan is a witch because they just can't
believe a peasant girl can beat the best army in Western Europe. This arrogance
isn't unusual. When the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho wiped out Custer in
1876, newspapers began spreading fertilized stories that Sitting Bull was
secretly a white man who had graduated from West Point because they just
couldn't believe that a Civil War general could be beaten by a bunch of
illiterate savages.* So the English forced the local Catholic bishop to
try Joan on witchcraft. Here the film gets into issues of heresy and sainthood,
self-defense (and national defense) and a believer's duties to the Church
on Earth when it appears to conflict with the Church in Heaven. The movie
raises more questions than it answers and some of the answers won't work
with me---or many of you---but it does make the audience members think not
just react... and the "Yeahs" and "Whatevers" miraculously
disappear. In one scene Joan's conscience (played by Dustin Hoffman) says
to her, "What makes you think God needs a messenger? " We all
know the answer to that one: God doesn't need messengers---God WANTS messengers.
Ever notice that the saints and angels are called Messengers of God? They're
not called Lawyers of God or Accountants of God and certainly not Investment
Advisors of God. I won't tell you the ending but it's basically true to
history (unlike some of the beginning scenes). "The Messenger"---check
it out . . . when the video comes out.---HW
*Last Confederate general to surrender in the Civil War: Stand Watie, Cherokee Indian. Fuck Custer.---ed.
Questionbiker:
Has the unionizing movement affected you?
- and -
Have you ever been doored?
SARAH BLUE (Go!): Uhh - Well, it hasn't at all - not at all. Not at my company.
There's no chance of it.
Doored? Half a door.
COLIN (Times Up): It's
given me greater faith in my coworkers.
Doored? Three times.
MONGO (Express Network):
Just made my company aware: treat us how you want us to treat your clients.
After we met with union reps, they [management] bounce more ideas at us.
They take more seriously. I've noticed a change in other companies and as
well.
Doored? Never doored.
RICO (ProMess): Oh shit,
I'm not sure. I just got hired at Pro and now they only hire IC's, but I
can always can work some where else. I'm glad there is union. When I was
at Advanced the union was trying to help us out.
Doored? Once. - Rak