Feed aggregator

Vous êtes sur le site officiel des Travailleurs Industriels du Monde. Ici vous trouverez à peu près tout ce dont vous avez besoin pour rejoindre l'IWW et commencer à organiser vos lieux de travail et construire un grand syndicat au sein de votre communauté. La plupart des informations contenues ici traitent des Etats-unis et du Canada, mais nous avons aussi des liens vers d.autres sites IWW gérés ailleurs.

L'IWW est une organisation syndicale pour tous les travailleurs, un syndicat dédié à l'organisation des travailleurs sur leur lieu de travail, dans leurs industries et leurs communautés. Les membres des IWW organisent les travailleurs pour obtenir de meilleures conditions aujourd.hui et construisent pour demain un monde économique démocratique. Nous voulons que nos entreprises fonctionnent au profit des ouvriers et des communautés plutôt que pour une poignée de patrons et leur exécutif.

Nous sommes les Travailleurs Industriels du Monde parce que nous nous organisons industriellement. Ceci signifie que nous organisons tous les travailleurs produisant les mêmes biens ou fournissant les mêmes services dans un syndicat, plutôt que de les diviser par secteurs d.activité, ainsi nous pouvons mettre en commun notre force et faire triompher nos revendications ensemble. Depuis que l'IWW a été fondé en 1905, nous avons apporté des contributions significatives aux combats des travailleurs à travers le monde et nous sommes fiers de notre tradition visant à nous organiser indépendamment de critères sexuels, ethniques et raciaux bien avant que de telles méthodes soient courantes.

lire plus

As many of you know, Friday morning at around 3am Eastern Time, a fire broke out in Seattle at Internap which provides connectivity to the EchoDitto servers. To give you some quick background, EchoDitto uses Internap for co-location services; the Internap facility in Seattle is at Fisher Plaza, the only mission-critical business community in the Northwest.

Due to this emergency, all of the power to the hosting facility was cut for safety -- including backup power. This means that all of our hosted websites went down for approximately 24-36 hours. However, by yesterday afternoon several of our sites implemented temporary splash pages explaining the situation to visitors and redirecting as needed. The problem was very far reaching and affected many internet-related enterprises, including enterprise operations like authorize.net and Microsoft’s travel service website, bing.com/travel.

To be clear, at no time was any data, servers, or hardware at risk, nor were they damaged or compromised in any way. The main issue at hand during this situation was getting power back to the facility. Given the high profile nature of this outage, it received the highest level of attention from recovery teams on site. The EchoDitto team monitored the situation in real time and worked aggressively to transfer all of our services to a backup facility.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Twitter played a large role in communication regarding this event. Hashtags like #fisherfire, #fisherplazafire, and the ever misleading #serverbbq (misleading, of course, because the servers themselves were never "bbq’d") helped everyone effected by this event communicate efficiently with each other from the ground in Seattle to various locations, including EchoDitto HQ.

We have currently restored all websites affected by this outage. We are also working to reinforce data center redundancy for all of our sites should a situation like this arise in the future.

If you would like more information on this situation please email info@echoditto.com

Happy July 4th and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

written for associations but good: "Getting on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter is just the first step. As David Nour explains, a smart social media effort involves reaching out to the handful of people who can help you engage with many more."

"Yes, there is technology in Rwanda. And there will be more in the next few years. Rwanda is emerging rwanda-computer-muralas an interesting test case on how a digital divide is actually being bridged in a methodical, well-thought-out, step-by-step manner."

That is what the far right-wing Family Research Council asks about Kevin Jennings, founder and former executive director of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.

Well, since you asked, absolutely yes.

GLSEN has done admirable work in diversity education, and Jennings has been nominated as the new Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education for the Department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, so the Family Research Council is out for blood. Jennings spoke at last spring’s Representative Assembly of NYSUT, and gave an absolutely dynamite speech.

If you agree that he is fit to guide your children, you might want to sign the GLSEN petition in support of Jennings.

  One of the ugliest fights for worker justice has taken place in Tar Heel, North Carolina, which is about 80 miles south of Raleigh. For 17 years, thousands of workers, who labor under some pretty brutal conditions in the largest pork processing plant, have sought a modicum of justice and dignity. And they just got it.

  After a two-day vote, the workers approved the first-ever union contract at the Smithfield Foods plant. Here are the details via the United Food & Commercial Workers:

The new contract includes:

* Wage increases of $1.50/hour over the next four years. * Continued company-provided affordable family health care coverage. * Improved paid sick leave and vacation benefits. * Retirement security through protection of the existing pension plan. * Continued joint worker/management safety committee, including company funded safety training for workers. * Guaranteed weekly hours that protect full-time, family supporting jobs in the community * A system to resolve workplace issues. * Three working days of paid funeral leave following the death of immediate family members.

"This contract will completely transform our workplace," said Orlando Williams.  "This is the biggest four-year wage increase Smithfield workers have ever had and it will make a real difference for our families and in this community. We could never have gotten that increase without a chance to bargain with the company. We will finally have a sense of security on the job because through our union we can make sure we have a safe place to work, and that everyone’s treated fairly."

  The first thing to note is that the UFCW deserves a lot of credit. It stuck with this organizing campaign over 17 years through, among other things, a racketeering suit Smithfield filed against the union because of a very persistent corporate campaign waged by the union. In two previous union representation elections, the company brutally harassed the workers, and in particular, the union supporters, to the point that the National Labor Relations tossed out the results of the elections. Finally, last December, the union won overwhelmingly in an election that was more fair then anything in the past.

   Which brings us to this point: when workers have a chance to vote for a union--free of intimidation and threats--they will do so. And certainly one step in that direction will come with the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

  The point that I think is valuable to remember is this one:

Workers and union officials say that perhaps the most important change is that workers will be allowed to voice concerns and challenge management decisions through a formal grievance process. In the past, many workers have said they were treated disrespectfully by their supervisors and fired after speaking out or being injured.

"We really did accomplish something with this union," said Mattie Fulcher, a 10-year employee who helps usher pigs to their deaths. "We might not have gotten the raise that we wanted, but that will come in time. This is our first contract, and it is a start."

  Too often, in the public sphere, and among the talking heads, the focus on union jobs is about wages and benefits. No doubt, that is important. But, what the workers at Smithfield gained was some POWER over how they will be treated.

  Independence Day is about a lot of symbols--patriotism, flag-waving and I suppose mostly, now, a long weekend at the beach. But, it is also about gaining power and the triumph over tyranny. It is always ironic and sad to me that, too often, we assert that triumph by showcasing the very instruments of power that we now use to the detriment of other people around the world.

  But, I forget that when I sit back and think, for a moment, what these workers went through--the struggle, the fight, the commitment that held them together over so many dark days--this is the America that inspires me. They have triumphed over tyranny, they have gained back the power they deserve to shape their lives. That's what Independence Day means to me.

  One of the ugliest fights for worker justice has taken place in Tar Heel, North Carolina, which is about 80 miles south of Raleigh. For 17 years, thousands of workers, who labor under some pretty brutal conditions in the largest pork processing plant, have sought a modicum of justice and dignity. And they just got it.

  After a two-day vote, the workers approved the first-ever union contract at the Smithfield Foods plant. Here are the details via the United Food & Commercial Workers:

The new contract includes:

* Wage increases of $1.50/hour over the next four years. * Continued company-provided affordable family health care coverage. * Improved paid sick leave and vacation benefits. * Retirement security through protection of the existing pension plan. * Continued joint worker/management safety committee, including company funded safety training for workers. * Guaranteed weekly hours that protect full-time, family supporting jobs in the community * A system to resolve workplace issues. * Three working days of paid funeral leave following the death of immediate family members.

"This contract will completely transform our workplace," said Orlando Williams.  "This is the biggest four-year wage increase Smithfield workers have ever had and it will make a real difference for our families and in this community. We could never have gotten that increase without a chance to bargain with the company. We will finally have a sense of security on the job because through our union we can make sure we have a safe place to work, and that everyone’s treated fairly."

  The first thing to note is that the UFCW deserves a lot of credit. It stuck with this organizing campaign over 17 years through, among other things, a racketeering suit Smithfield filed against the union because of a very persistent corporate campaign waged by the union. In two previous union representation elections, the company brutally harassed the workers, and in particular, the union supporters, to the point that the National Labor Relations tossed out the results of the elections. Finally, last December, the union won overwhelmingly in an election that was more fair then anything in the past.

   Which brings us to this point: when workers have a chance to vote for a union--free of intimidation and threats--they will do so. And certainly one step in that direction will come with the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

  The point that I think is valuable to remember is this one:

Workers and union officials say that perhaps the most important change is that workers will be allowed to voice concerns and challenge management decisions through a formal grievance process. In the past, many workers have said they were treated disrespectfully by their supervisors and fired after speaking out or being injured.

"We really did accomplish something with this union," said Mattie Fulcher, a 10-year employee who helps usher pigs to their deaths. "We might not have gotten the raise that we wanted, but that will come in time. This is our first contract, and it is a start."

  Too often, in the public sphere, and among the talking heads, the focus on union jobs is about wages and benefits. No doubt, that is important. But, what the workers at Smithfield gained was some POWER over how they will be treated.

  Independence Day is about a lot of symbols--patriotism, flag-waving and I suppose mostly, now, a long weekend at the beach. But, it is also about gaining power and the triumph over tyranny. It is always ironic and sad to me that, too often, we assert that triumph by showcasing the very instruments of power that we now use to the detriment of other people around the world.

  But, I forget that when I sit back and think, for a moment, what these workers went through--the struggle, the fight, the commitment that held them together over so many dark days--this is the America that inspires me. They have triumphed over tyranny, they have gained back the power they deserve to shape their lives. That's what Independence Day means to me.

this is good. the only thing missing -- choose a short handle so that others can easily retweet

JVIS USA LLC is an international supplier for automotive components and tooling with facilities in 6 countries and customers all over the world. Their website helps them introduce their products to auto makers.

Going multilingual

When JVIS commissioned their website, they requested just a few static pages. It was built as a simple static HTML site (no CMS) and in English. Very soon after launching their new site JVIS decided to localize to Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian and Spanish. These are the languages spoken by their larger clients.

At that point Jason Marshall contacted us about translating JVIS' website. It was already built (as a collection of 23 HTML files), ready to be translated. Our translation service would have produced another 92 static HTML files which JVIS would have uploaded to their server. It was clear that JVIS was going to be adding new content on a regular basis and maintaining it all in several languages without using a content management system would have been a very unwelcome task.

The likely possibility of turning a client from being happy to frustrated, due to this manual content management, concerned us very much.

We suggested to Jason Marshall, the web designer who built JVIS website, to first migrate it all to a CMS and only then begin the translation process. The first choice was Drupal, given its powerful multilingual capabilities. Maintaining a multilingual Drupal site would be much simpler, not just for us, but mostly for the client. From the client's point of view, only English texts would need to be managed. Drupal would automatically handle everything else.

read more

EveryBlock released its source code. Holy moly!

   A long battle has taken one step forward to victory:

 

The Stella D’Oro Biscuit Company factory in the Bronx, where 134 workers on strike since last August have been replaced, must reinstate the workers and pay them wages going back to May, a federal administrative law judge has ruled.

The 134 workers, members of Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers, went on strike on Aug. 14, two weeks after their contract had expired.

Most of the workers at the factory, at 184 West 237th Street in Kingsbridge, are paid $18 to $23 an hour, according to the union’s lawyer, Louie Nikolaidis. The union and the company could not reach an agreement over a new contract. Stella D’Oro demanded a $5-an-hour wage reduction for certain workers, along with cuts in pension and heath care benefits, Mr. Nikolaidis said.

   Of course, the company can, and probably will, appeal the case to the full National Labor Relations Board. This is an example why elections matter: the NLRB, now lead by a Democrat, will be more inclined to affirm the decision.

   But, it's also another sign of the pathetic nature of workplace rights. A union has to fight for the rights of 134 workers who have been out of work almost a full year simply for trying to exercise the basic human right to strike--which means, obviously, time and energy drained from any attempt to organize new members.

 

   A long battle has taken one step forward to victory:

 

The Stella D’Oro Biscuit Company factory in the Bronx, where 134 workers on strike since last August have been replaced, must reinstate the workers and pay them wages going back to May, a federal administrative law judge has ruled.

The 134 workers, members of Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers, went on strike on Aug. 14, two weeks after their contract had expired.

Most of the workers at the factory, at 184 West 237th Street in Kingsbridge, are paid $18 to $23 an hour, according to the union’s lawyer, Louie Nikolaidis. The union and the company could not reach an agreement over a new contract. Stella D’Oro demanded a $5-an-hour wage reduction for certain workers, along with cuts in pension and heath care benefits, Mr. Nikolaidis said.

   Of course, the company can, and probably will, appeal the case to the full National Labor Relations Board. This is an example why elections matter: the NLRB, now lead by a Democrat, will be more inclined to affirm the decision.

   But, it's also another sign of the pathetic nature of workplace rights. A union has to fight for the rights of 134 workers who have been out of work almost a full year simply for trying to exercise the basic human right to strike--which means, obviously, time and energy drained from any attempt to organize new members.

 

Download Drupal 6.13
Download Drupal 5.19

Drupal 6.13 and 5.19, maintenance releases fixing problems reported using the bug tracking system, as well as critical security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. Both releases fix some other smaller issues as well.

Upgrading your existing Drupal 5 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 6.x release series, consult the Drupal 6.0 release announcement, more information on the 5.x releases can be found in Drupal 5.0 release announcement.

read more

Some of the comments are also interesting.

Randi Weingarten appeared on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” on Monday morning and spoke about the possible sunset of mayoral control (now a reality), among other topics.

[If the embedded audio player is not working, you can listen to the segment here.]

Howdy--I'm Katie, thet newest member of the Cambridge EchoDitto team. And yeah, I say howdy. It's a fantastic word--wait just a second while I go look up the etymology in the Oxford English Dictionary--and although not everyone says it in my recently departed home of Washington State, no one would smirk at a casual "howdy" thrown their way. Here's what the OED had to say about it: Howdy originates from the colloquial slurring of "How do you do"--or, more specifically, "There, how d'ye do now?" first found in Vanbrugh, circa 1697. I'm curious what other people think of howdy-ing. I personally have a soft spot for it; my father, an Idaho mountain man, greets everyone that way. He even tips the bill of his baseball cap. But, I can see that if you don't have that cowboy-mystique worked into your impression of howdy-ing it might sound like a holler from the stands of a greased pig catching contest, or something equally as unappealing. Disclaimer: I've never been to a greased pig catching contest, I'm only assuming it would be unpleasant.

There is something really fantastic about having the Oxford English Dictionary online at your fingertips. I just popped open a tab in mozilla and in seconds found more history of a single word than I could've scraped together in a day from books (excluding, of course, the print OED). It gives you a complete etymological history of a word--starting with the first recorded instance of it in print, with author and excerpt, and then traces its usage all the way to modern day. American English is blessed and cursed by its liquidity--our vocabulary is so fluid that the nuances of a word get forgotten too quickly. In speech that's fine, it's fun, but in writing . . . not so much. When a fiction writer calls his female character a lunatic, it's useful to know the rich history of the word (ie a person heavily influenced by the moon). The informed reader would not be surprised then when said woman transforms into a werewolf and goes on a grotesque hunting spree in the asylum that tried to hospitalize her five years earlier. That's not the greatest example, but you get the idea. Word play is only possible with a depth of knowledge. And there's too much knowledge to hold in our heads, so we've got to have accessible resources. All of this is somehow meandering to me telling you why I'm here at EchoDitto.

I'm not a technology person; I've even been accused of being a Luddite . . .but no worries I'm not that far lost. No, I just prefer sticky notes to emails, books to the Kindle. PS--I didn't tell Joshua that during the interview, so that's on the down-low. Is there any way to block certain paragraphs from certain readers? If so, please snailmail me a letter with detailed instructions.

Even I'll admit that some things are just better online, like the Oxford English Dictionary. It's highly unlikely that I would have run down to the library to look up "howdy" in the bound-version OED; especially since I haven't stumbled upon a public library yet in my week as a Cambridge resident. Plus, well, I'd be embarrassed if someone peeked over my shoulder and saw that "howdy" furrowed my brow. The feel I'm getting from EchoDitto is that they're just a bunch of folks helping conscientious organizations figure out the best way to use the internet. We separate the OEDonlines from the Myspaces. Then we help make the OEDs prettier. I am glad to be working here, figuring out how to use technology in a way that benefits everyone, even people like me.

Federal government has launched a site allowing users to dig into reports on federal IT spending, highlighting projects which need "attention" or review and providing comparisons to estimates, project phase information and accountable staff.

   A few days ago, I wrote about the coming crisis of retirement that could last for decades. Here's another example:

And even as its pension fund faces this giant bulge in payouts, G.M. is not putting any new money in — the company is not required to make any contributions to the fund until 2013.

The longer this goes on, the weaker the fund will be and the more uncertain its long-term viability.

For now, the pension payments to its younger “retirees,” part of a deal G.M. negotiated with the United Automobile Workers union in 2007, allow the company to drastically shrink its work force without having to come up with the cash to pay severance. The payments also relieve some of the burden on social service programs in the countless factory towns and counties around the country with large numbers of G.M.’s newly jobless.

   And...

In the short term, G.M.’s newly minted retirees, those in their 40s and 50s, have the most to lose if the plan is rapidly depleted and fails. But over time, the risk will shift to the government and the dwindling number of active U.A.W. workers still building cars at G.M. For those workers, a secure pension is already becoming an increasingly distant dream.

“They could find that they don’t get their full pensions when they retire, because the plan has had to be terminated because of the payments to current retirees,” Mr. Elliott said. “There are definitely these intergenerational transfer issues with underfunded pensions.”

   And, this article does dispell the notion that UAW retirees are living it up in retirement:

...split...

The total dollar amounts are not eye-popping. Unlike many pension plans in the public sector, G.M.’s U.A.W. plan cannot be “spiked” by working insane amounts of overtime just before retirement. Nor is it indexed for inflation.

“What we’re getting isn’t enough to live on,” said Dwayne Humphries, a 54-year-old G.M. retiree in Arlington, Tex., who completed his 30 years last year, retired, and is now getting the standard $3,150 a month, or $37,500 a year. Roughly half of the total, $19,000 a year, is the basic benefit. The rest duplicates Social Security.

“It’s tight,” said Mr. Humphries, who was earning $50,000 to $60,000 a year before his retirement. “It takes a different way of living than what you were used to.”

To make ends meet, he helps out with his son’s small business, cleaning swimming pools.

When a G.M. retiree turns 62, he joins Social Security, and the pension fund stops paying him the supplement. So eight years from now, Mr. Humphries will still be getting $37,500 a year, but only about $19,000 will come from the G.M. pension fund. The rest will come from Social Security.

   There is a lot to say here. Let me just reiterate the point I've made before: had we had a single-payer health care system in this country, General Motors would have been unburdened from tens of billions of dollars in health care costs, which it could have used for either investment and wages and--and it wouldn't have had to push thousand of people into retirement and off the payroll just to stay in business, the very process that is now depleting the pension funds at a more rapid rate.

   A few days ago, I wrote about the coming crisis of retirement that could last for decades. Here's another example:

And even as its pension fund faces this giant bulge in payouts, G.M. is not putting any new money in — the company is not required to make any contributions to the fund until 2013.

The longer this goes on, the weaker the fund will be and the more uncertain its long-term viability.

For now, the pension payments to its younger “retirees,” part of a deal G.M. negotiated with the United Automobile Workers union in 2007, allow the company to drastically shrink its work force without having to come up with the cash to pay severance. The payments also relieve some of the burden on social service programs in the countless factory towns and counties around the country with large numbers of G.M.’s newly jobless.

   And...

In the short term, G.M.’s newly minted retirees, those in their 40s and 50s, have the most to lose if the plan is rapidly depleted and fails. But over time, the risk will shift to the government and the dwindling number of active U.A.W. workers still building cars at G.M. For those workers, a secure pension is already becoming an increasingly distant dream.

“They could find that they don’t get their full pensions when they retire, because the plan has had to be terminated because of the payments to current retirees,” Mr. Elliott said. “There are definitely these intergenerational transfer issues with underfunded pensions.”

   And, this article does dispell the notion that UAW retirees are living it up in retirement:

...split...

The total dollar amounts are not eye-popping. Unlike many pension plans in the public sector, G.M.’s U.A.W. plan cannot be “spiked” by working insane amounts of overtime just before retirement. Nor is it indexed for inflation.

“What we’re getting isn’t enough to live on,” said Dwayne Humphries, a 54-year-old G.M. retiree in Arlington, Tex., who completed his 30 years last year, retired, and is now getting the standard $3,150 a month, or $37,500 a year. Roughly half of the total, $19,000 a year, is the basic benefit. The rest duplicates Social Security.

“It’s tight,” said Mr. Humphries, who was earning $50,000 to $60,000 a year before his retirement. “It takes a different way of living than what you were used to.”

To make ends meet, he helps out with his son’s small business, cleaning swimming pools.

When a G.M. retiree turns 62, he joins Social Security, and the pension fund stops paying him the supplement. So eight years from now, Mr. Humphries will still be getting $37,500 a year, but only about $19,000 will come from the G.M. pension fund. The rest will come from Social Security.

   There is a lot to say here. Let me just reiterate the point I've made before: had we had a single-payer health care system in this country, General Motors would have been unburdened from tens of billions of dollars in health care costs, which it could have used for either investment and wages and--and it wouldn't have had to push thousand of people into retirement and off the payroll just to stay in business, the very process that is now depleting the pension funds at a more rapid rate.