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RETIREES
___________
Freeland Launches ARA
Financial
Secretary-Treasurer Gene Freeland of the Dallas AFL-CIO told 75 listeners and 3
news reporters about the importance of organizing in North Texas. He spoke at
UAW848 during the regular retirees’ luncheon, with about 10 additional
activists from Jobs with Justice. Emphasis was placed on the opportunity that
North Texans have to organize seniors into the new Alliance of Retired
Americans. The new 2,000,000-member strong organization is taking the issue of
the high cost of prescription drugs for its first big project. Please download
the membership application below and start signing up new members:
Send application and
$10 check to Alliance for Retired Americans,
c/o AFL-CIO, 815 16th ST. NW, Washington, DC 20006
**
Join ARA, and Let’s Organize!
I received this in April:
From: James Parks [Jparks@aflcio.org]
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 12:28 PM
To: labor@att.net
Subject: Re: ara & unstable workforce
I am writing an article on the Alliance for Retired Americans
for America@work magazine and I'd like to use some of your
comments in the article. Do you mind if I take some of what you said and put it
in the article? Of course, I would quote you by name and title. Thanks.
>>> "Gene Lantz" <labor@att.net>
03/25/01 01:56AM >>>
Received my membership in ARA from President George Kourpias. I
was already in the National Council for Senior Citizens.
I think that the concept of an affinity group like ARA, with the
new feature of allowing non-union people to join, holds the key to the future.
I think all of the affinity groups should set up a dues structure, or some way
of getting financed, and then open up to the public.
The problem is one I've been mulling over for years: our union
movement is based on stable workplaces with stable workforces. But we don't
have either one any more. Every steward in the land is chasing around trying to
apply
"the man follows the work" to a situation gone beyond
just being fluid -- it's become quicksilver.
We chase the work from site to site, shop to shop, employer to
employer, state to state, technological change to new forms. Sometimes we're
good enough to figure out where the work went; but even then it likely went to
automation, a foreign land, or to exempt salaried workers.
So how do we organize a labor movement on such an unstable
foundation?
The answer has to be to find some way to organize people with or
without a stable worksite.
For some years I went around asking people about forming
something I called "union of the under-employed" with
"under-employed" meaning anybody who worked for wages but didn't
already have a union.
I've talked and listened on how to organize day laborers, how to
organize immigrants, how to organize techies, etc. But everybody I listened to
was still trying to fit them into the idea of a stable workforce with a stable
employer. Work just isn't like that any more.
Then along came the ARA. A union affinity group with some kind
of financing plan, some kind of publication plan, some kind of political
direction, and it's open to everybody while still being labor-led!
Let's do the same setup with LCLAA, APRI, CLUW, and, most of
all, with Jobs with Justice. Then let's finish organizing this American
workforce!
--Gene Lantz, Editor
UAW Local 848
2218 E Main Street
Grand Prairie TX 75050
labor@att.net
**