I don't get to post often anymore. Mostly, it's the darn Master's Degree, just months away now for my fingers to grasp. Today, I can't help but take my lunch time to point out something pretty freaking disturbing. In The Hill today, there's a post up on a letter from the AFL-CIO to Congress on the possible Colombian Free Trade Agreement. The crux of the letter is this:

Included with the letter was a list of names of the 22 union leaders who have been killed in Colombia, 15 of those after the United States agreed to a labor action plan with the South American country in April to improve its labor rights record, according to the AFL-CIO. Labor has long vehemently opposed a trade deal with Colombia because of its record of violence against union activists.

Colombia kills union activists. And this, is somehow, reason to celebrate in the comments section on The Hill

Could we get them to do it here? There are more than enough union thug bosses already. BY David on 09/27/2011 at 10:52

yeah, I believe this guy is a CEO, right:

I serve as President of a major corporation in the U.S. All these people want to do is create trouble for us. I look forward to the day we have a government that is sympathetic to the job creators and allow us to handle the unions like Columbia has done.BY RG Brewer on 09/27/2011 at 11:08

I wonder if those killing the labor slugs in Colombia can outsource that work here.BY canuck on 09/26/2011 at 19:00

There are worse comments. They are mostly a jumble of thinly veiled threats against union activists from folks who use pithy comment names like: hateslibs, Holyman, imam obama, Justice For All and Tea Party Patriot and of course the thinly veiled racist comments like the one referring to the President as a "pimp" and the person who thinks "imam obama" was a pithy by line, an out right reference to Obama being Muslim. As of now, the most vile and offensive of the posts have finally been moderated by the hill, but the stench from reading the vile comments can't be removed. If you feel you need to see how horrible and violent and offensive, head over to Dave's post today. He has some of the worst, even ones I would not reprint here. In a world that is increasingly inter-connected and complex, the only salvation we really have is to see each other as human beings. When people degrade and "joke" about violence or cheer the death of others, it makes me sick and it horrifies me to think of the kind of world my daughter is going to inherit. I had really hoped we'd found a way to turn down the violent rhetoric, but apparently, I'm wrong, dead wrong.

Read More...

I got an e-mail and wanted to share:

in Illinois, a young mother and her two little kids were killed in a t-bone crash Thursday night. The crash took the lives of Amanda Jahn, 27, and her children, Ryan Jahn, 3 years, 11 months old, and Kaitlyn Jahn, 11 1/2 months old....the ENTIRE FAMILY of Dwight (IL) Firefighter Josh Jahn.The driver of the car that struck the Jahn vehicle, Ann Marie Goetz, 43 was transported to the hospital, where she remains a patient....she has already been charged with blowing a stop sign and felony driving while drunk.

Firefighter's Wife, Amanda Jahn, was heading home with her kids. Imagine your family doing that. It's easy-every family does that.

Where were they coming from? Amanda was a violinist...she was on her way back from teaching lessons and had stopped at her Mom & Dad's house to pick up the kids and go home. That's when "Drunk Driver" Goetz's car shot through the stop sign and struck the Jahn family on the driver's side door.

Following the violent t-bone crash, the Jahns car rolled over multiple times.... Amanda was trapped inside the vehicle...the 2 children, Ryan and Kaitllyn were EJECTED IN AND FROM THEIR CAR SEATS...and Mom WAS WEARING HER SEATBELT...but it couldn't save them from the drunk driver. The crash actually ripped the Jahn car apart into multiple pieces.

As we have also heard before, Veteran Drunk Driver Goetz has a lengthy criminal record, including prior DUIs dating back to 2000. Most of us are all very familiar with the impacts of a Firefighters death, in this case, this death will all but take the life of Firefighter Josh Jahn.

3 Quick Points:

1 If you are interested in expressing your condolences, the FD sent us FF Josh Jahns e-mail address, which will be checked and passed along to him....so if you wanna send a few words, here ya go.

jjahn@dwightfire.org

2 The holiday season is just about here. And while we are always at risk on this job, operate on or off the job extra defensively this time of year because of the drunk drivers.

3 Us. "Us" also are familiar with "us" drinking and driving ...mostly off the job, but sometimes even on the job in the firehouse.

Don't ignore it.

Don't allow it.

Speak up.

Stop it.

Know a FF with a problem? Get'm help...do whatever it takes. You into the Brotherhood stuff? Cool. Prove it. We aren't saying don't have a drink when off duty-we are saying if "us" are ever drinking, "we" cannot ever drive. And "we" need to look out for "us".

The on-duty issue speaks for itself, hopefully.

The "drinking" issue-internally or externally has impacted Firefighters throughout our entire history...and again most recently, at the above "firefighters deaths" -the preventable deaths of FF Josh Jahns' Family.
Our sincere condolences to FF Josh Jahn. What a nightmare.

My thoughts exactly. Although this site isn't specific to IAFF, I still want to pass it on. Fire fighter Close Calls, it's like the weekly toll, but specific to first responders, specifically, fire fighters.

Read More...

In the recent past, Mayor of DC, Adrian Fenty has been all too willing to throw workers under the bus in his obsessed mantra of "Accountability". But for once, Adrian isn't calling for the head (yet) of any case workers in this horrific case of abuse and death from the Washington Post:

Early Saturday, Calvert authorities made a gruesome discovery: the bodies of two children encased in ice in a freezer in the home of Renee D. Bowman, 43. Bowman has been receiving a monthly government subsidy of $2,400 to care for her three adopted children: the 7-year-old girl on the street and two others who are now officially missing.

"You think you've seen it all," Sheriff Mike Evans said yesterday in announcing the discovery, "but you haven't."

With Bowman in jail, charged with child abuse, and investigators working to piece together what happened, the case again shined a spotlight on the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, which recommended Bowman to a D.C. Superior Court judge as a suitable adoptive parent in 2001 and 2004. The girls had been wards of the D.C. government.

Adrian came out to say that there will be an invesigation, but, uncharacteristically, he did not mention firing, yet.

What I've noticed about Mayor Fenty is his willingness to hold workers accountable for things that they may not have the ability to control. In the recent past, The Department of Child and Family Services has been inundated with cases yet they have not been inundated with new social workers nor have they been able to reduce the overwhelming case load most social workers now carry in the District. The case load issue falls directly in Fenty's lap. It is his poor choices in terms of the all encompassing "accountability" mantra that has caused the increase in case load and his firings which have also caused a decrease in staffing. And all of this leads to poor morale.

A few months back I had a chance to speak to a middle manager within family services and she noted that she'd read my posts on these issues (available here), and that yeah, the case load is more than excessive and yep, it sucks coming into the job never knowing if you'll have your job the next day or if you've missed one child too many who needed your help. She noted that as much as all of this sucked, that the worst part was knowing that she didn't become a social worker for money. She did it because she wanted to make a difference in the lives of families. She wanted to protect children and help moms and dads find their way. But she no longer felt that she could do this and was really just waiting to leave.

Besides being an interesting discussion about staffing, cases and families, it was more interesting to hear a perspective of "All I want to do is help, but I no longer can in my current job." There was frustration at missing kids and parents who'd fallen through the cracks. There was this sound in her voice that made me think she'd given up. This is what is saddest of all. Someone who'd only went to school to get a degree so she could help families was no so unhappy that she really just didn't seem to think anything could be done any longer.

See, this is one aspect of the Adrianisms that I have been writing about, the idea that accountability should be about real accountability. And accountability doesn't start with overworked, over stretched and stressed out workers, it begins at the highest levels first. It begins with Adrian Fenty.

I'm hopeful that Council will hold hearings (if they haven't already) on the staffing issues within all of DC government. Children shouldn't suffer the way these three children have suffered. It's time for DC City Council to address service staffing and they need to do it now before any more children die.

Read More...

From the Washington Post:

A second baby who was the subject of a neglect case by the District's Child and Family Services Agency died yesterday -- the same day that the long-troubled agency tried to explain a 2,000-case backlog at a D.C. Council hearing called to address the recent death of a 6-month-old boy.

2000 case backlog. In the last installment of the Adrianism of the “buck stops at front line workers” we learned that the Mayor is not shy about firing people who he forces into having workloads that aren’t even manageable. Today we learn that not only are those case loads not manageable and that social workers can’t get to the investigational parts of their jobs, but that there are 2000 cases sitting.

Now, when I say “case” I mean children at risk. These are people, human beings and it just doesn’t seem as if the Mayor takes these people seriously. If he did, there’d be more social workers, more investigation, more case workers and there wouldn’t be a backlog of 2000 people. If he really took it seriously, we wouldn’t have to read about 15 year old mothers rolling on top of their babies, smothering:

Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), chairman of the Committee on Human Services, said it was his understanding that the child's 15-year-old mother "rolled over and slept on him." No official cause of death had been released.
Wells also said that the 4-month-old's case was part of the "backlog," the catchall term for cases in which investigations have not been completed within 30 days.

But 2000 cases? That’s beyond belief and as the mayor continues to fire social workers, he isn’t replacing them quick enough to staunch the tied of cases being reported.

The unnamed social worker in Isiah's case went from carrying four cases in January to juggling 50 and hadn't seen children in 17 of those cases at the time of Isiah's death.

So, she’s fired, her supervisor suspended and two children dead. There is no such thing as a back log, these are people and they need help, and I’m not talking about the children in crisis, I’m talking about the front line workers who want to be effective in their jobs. I can’t imagine any of them want to think about the lives they weren’t able to save because of resources they didn’t have in the office. So, Mr. Mayor, how many more children need to die before resources are allocated to social workers? How many more kids will die before they get the staff and case loads that can save lives? How much are these kids lives worth to you Mr. Mayor?

Read More...

Today, I had a very odd search (yep, site meter does tell me what you are searching for when you find my Uniongal blog site).

You see a company in New York search for

can I fire someone who threatens to kill himself

So, you must be wondering how in the hell anyone found uniongal from this search, well, it’s because I blogged about Wesley N. Higdon, 25.

Who’s Wesley N Higdon? He’s the reason there are 6 dead in Kentucky


Here’s what bothers me the most is that Wesley threatened suicide the day before he had a disagreement with a supervisor about cell phone usage and wearing goggles. The day before he told his girlfriend he wanted to kill himself and the day of the shooting…

he called his girlfriend late Tuesday and told her that he wanted to kill his boss, according to police. The girlfriend didn't warn anyone, police said, and Higdon returned to the plant and began shooting.

Teresa Solano Ventura, 20, said Higdon threatened to kill himself Tuesday while they were on the phone, but he had made such threats before and she didn't believe him. (article from Kansascity.com but no longer available at original link

25 years old and threatening suicide and murder over cell phones and goggles? Instead of anyone getting this guy some help, no one listened and he then opened fire on his boss and co-workers. At the end of his rampage, there were 6 dead.

So, I e-mailed a couple of friends. Richard from UnionReview told me to contact authorities. I thought that was a good idea and having worked in the field at one time, I searched for crisis intervention and found a neighboring county, Madison, with crisis intervention. Wrong county, so they suggested I try Contact.

Contact provides referral services and telephone counseling to those in crisis. They told me that I could put the phone number for Contact up on my site or contact the person who left the comment. I explained there was no comment, they were searching for the information.

I asked Contact if I could send them the information and I was told that it was my word that there was someone in crisis and that wasn’t enough for them to get involved because it was outside of their scope.

Gee, that was entirely un-helpful.

Not being deterred, I called the company. I got voicemail.

I then called the police. I wanted to know what crisis intervention team or perhaps county or city department handles mental health issues. The very nice officer told me that it is NOT ILLEGAL to commit suicide. There was nothing that they could do. And no, there is no mental health agency in Syracuse for me to call.

Which brings me to the reason for this posting. YOU DO NOT EVER FIRE SOMEONE IN CRISIS.

Let me perfectly clear about this…

You Don’t EVER FIRE someone in CRISIS. If you want to send them over the edge, go ahead, but if not, find them help. Call a local hospital and report what they have told you. If it wasn’t told to you in confidence (ie., you’re not a lawyer with a client or a mental health worker), find this person some help.

If you know anyone in Syracuse who deals with Mental Health issues and they would be able to do an intervention for this company, please, drop me a line. A company searching for this information probably needs a way to help their employee, not just fire them. I want to give them that help.

Read More...

UFCW has a great new ad campaign in DC for Smithfield Justice. I'm hoping that one of us can get pictures of the ads up on this site this week, but on a similar note in terms of food, I ran across a Time article posted on Yahoo. What's interesting about this is that I noticed this last week when I went grocery shopping. I noticed that I'm paying the same for less stuff. And I mostly noticed this when I left my local union store Giant with less stuff in the bag and fewer bags than I would have just a few months ago.

So, have you ever wondered why?

Reducing the size of products as a way of increasing prices is not new. Frito-Lay cut the amount of chips in their bags and Poland Springs reduced its water cooler jugs from 6 to 5 gallons years ago, all while keeping prices the same. Still, says Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federal of America, "What's going on now is definitely reflective of rising food costs and rising fuel costs." Waldrop says he doesn't blame manufacturers for taking the step to protect their bottom lines, but says the food companies should be honest with their customers about it. "If they're transparent and open, consumers are less willing to think [manufacturers] are trying to pull one over on them," says Waldrop. The changing product sizes are part of the reason the Bureau of Labor Statistics says groceries cost 5.8% more than the same time last year. Price checkers in the department measure more than 2,000 food items to determine overall food inflation, and when they notice product size changes, they adjust the inflation index accordingly, according to Ephraim Leibtag, an economist with the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture.


When a product amount drops below a benchmark like "1 pound" or "1 gallon" consumers often take note, according to Gourville. But after that, it's much easier for manufacturers to further whittle down amounts. It's all about taking away consumers' ability to compare apples to apples. The best way to compare food products if you're not sure if sizes have changed is to look at the "unit price," which breaks down the cost per ounce or per quart.

I always look at the unit price to compare products. I also try to shop for items that are union made, which is a bit harder in terms of food items, especially locally grown produce. However, because of these habits, I don't shop at Trader Joe's. And why is that important in terms of talking about food? Well, it has to do with the death of Maria Isabel Vasquez and how Trader Joe's sells wine produced by Frank Franzia who co-owns the farm where Isabel died:

Trader Joe’s assertion: The company employing the young farm worker has no more of a relation to Trader Joe's than they do to any other wine retailer or restaurant.

Reality: The facts in this case are clear: Maria Isabel Jimenez died a tragic death while working on a farm--West Coast Farms--co-owned by Fred Franzia. Mr. Franzia is also the owner of Bronco Winery, which produces Charles Shaw wines. It is widely reported that 5-13 million cases of Charles Shaw wine is sold at Trader Joe's stores per year.

We are not denying that Maria was paid through a farm labor contractor. As attorney Robert Perez who is representing Maria's family in a wrongful death lawsuit told the Sacramento Bee, "The reason why corporate farms hire labor contractors is not to have to deal with farmworkers themselves and to shield themselves from liability."

So, Trader Joe's uses contractor's to get around unionized farms and farm labor. So, as consumers, we're paying the same for less, and the farms where Trader Joe's gets their stuff has relationships with heartless bastards who take advantage of the poor to the detriment of the men and women working in the fields. Less stuff at a much higher price, the price of a human life. It's not a perfect connection between the two issues, but when it comes to putting food on my table, I'd like to think that the workers creating it or harvesting it are at least paid a fair price and aren't toiling themselves into the grave. That's just not an acceptable cost for anything I buy.

Read More...

I wandered over to Unbossed again and found something interesting, a listing of their previous reports on the Mine disaster and a bunch of linky goodness to a number of other resources as well.

More on the Crandall Canyon Mine Disaster
unbossed has had many reports on the August 6, 2007 Crandall Canyon Mine disaster. The latest news is Rep. George Miller's call for indictments.

Here are prior stories related to the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster. Feel free to skip them to get to the story here.

February 02, 2008 Mine Safety - The Report of the Crandall Canyon Mine Commission
http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1938

February 25, 2008 Unsafe at Any Mine
http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1970

November 23, 2007 A Stickler - But Not a Stickler for Mine Safety II
http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1855

March 09, 2008 Crandall Canyon Mine: "Murray Energy, disregarded dangerous conditions at the mine"
http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1995

Of the events and the committee's investigation, Rep. George Miller states:

On August 6, 2007, a section of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah became the site of the worst coal mining tragedy of 2007. Pillars of coal supporting a roof burst, sending coal flying and creating enough force to register a 3.9 on the Richter scale. Rubble blocked every exit, entombing six miners somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 feet underground. Three courageous rescuers who attempted to reach them also died in the rescue effort.

The Committee launched an investigation immediately after the disaster, finding it likely that the tragedy was the result of a flawed plan for conducting retreat mining in the area of the mine where the deaths occurred.

In this letter, Rep. George Miller asks Attorney General Mukasey to investigate a cover of conditions up by Laine Adair. The letter recounts events and the reasons for the referral. It also includes references to support each claim.

You can find an overview of events in a memorandum from Miller here.

All of these documents are available from links at this website.

And more Linky goodness from Unbossed
MSHA
mining,
crandall-canyon,
work,
labor,
health,
safety,

Read More...