DATELINES

Jr, Mike Wettstein & Gormican, John & Gannon, Kathy & Schulz, William F.

D A T E L I N E S Caught in the Cross Fire PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN The war in Afghanistan between the Soviet-dominated government and rebels fighting to regain control of their nation spills into...

...Mike Wettstein Jr...
...Brenner workers have increased productivity by nearly 40 per cent since 1980, the union adds, and should not have their wages set by comparison with less efficient operations elsewhere...
...The government in Kabul is said to offer a reward to anyone who bombs a Pakistani government building...
...Pakistan's officials have yet to devise a strategy for coping...
...Fostering Prejudice BOSTON A decision to place state foster children only in "traditional family settings" has embroiled the Massachusetts Department of Social Services in controversy—and in a lawsuit filed by a gay couple whom the Department had previously commended for the care they provided for two young boys...
...At the time we went on strike, we had the biggest backlog in the history of the company," Clements says...
...The bombings may unleash the anger accompanying the influx of refugees...
...the city is now home to at least two million Afghan refugees— the official count—and possibly as many as three million...
...That's the shame of it all...
...Our last and final offer is on the table," says company spokesman Tim Grahl...
...An end to the civil war across the border is the only hope for the Northwest Frontier...
...Community support has been surprisingly strong...
...Restrictions on the movement of refugees are under consideration—restrictions that would affect not only genuine refugees but also Khad agents in disguise...
...The state transferred the boys to a different home and, in late May, announced a new policy prohibiting gays from being foster parents...
...D A T E L I N E S Caught in the Cross Fire PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN The war in Afghanistan between the Soviet-dominated government and rebels fighting to regain control of their nation spills into Pakistan with bloody regularity...
...Attorneys for Babets and Jean, however, believe that the strong language from Chief Justice Morse represents "a major victory" and gives them hope for winning the suit...
...Steel Workers on the Line FOND DU LAC, WISCONSIN "They want to do one of two things...
...Since then, Governor Michael Dukakis, regarded as a liberal Democrat, has backed the Department in its foster-care policy...
...The Brenner management has vowed not to speak with the union until it decides to accept the unacceptable terms...
...He also points out that union members wouldn't try to destroy their place of employment: "All we're asking for is a living wage and a fair benefit package...
...It leads the industry in sales and has a backlog of orders estimated at four months...
...If Brenner can do it here, it gives a signal to the rest of these companies that they can do the same thing...
...That is the judgment of Richard Clements, president of United Steelworkers Local 8868, whose members are on strike against the Brenner Tank Company...
...But when the men's sexual preference was publicized, the Department changed its mind...
...It demanded a 16.6 per cent reduction in wages, cutbacks in insurance benefits and vacation days, putting 25 per cent of the work force on part-time duty, and changes in work rules that would adversely affect promotion and seniority...
...But Labor Day saw the Brenner strikers marching defiantly down Main Street, their ranks swollen by families, friends, and supporters, and five months into the strike, nothing has changed...
...In the year and a half since he wrote the policy," claims the Gay and Lesbian Defense Committee, "Dukakis has not produced a shred of clinical data to support his contention that traditional heterosexual married couples are the ideal setting for foster children...
...I've been there six years with it and seven years without it, and it's not going down...
...After repeated warnings to the Afghan charge d'affaires in Islamabad, Pakistan shot down a Soviet jet last summer and sent a second limping back home...
...And there have been no further meetings between the two sides...
...Over 50 per cent of contracts settled in America since 1980 have been settled with concessions in them and that hasn't happened at Brenner Tank...
...Three million refugees would tax the resources of even the most prosperous nation...
...The company's draconian terms and obstinacy over bargaining have attracted few apologists...
...Our union employees have to understand that they're competing with their peers in our industry...
...In pure financial terms, it's certainly justified, morally speaking...
...The men told officials they were gay when they applied for foster parenthood, and the state has acknowledged that the boys' "emotional and physical condition improved dramatically" under their foster fathers' care...
...But the union says its offer of a wage freeze is a concession...
...Kathy Gannon (Kathy Gannon is a Canadian journalist who recently returned from an eight-month stay in Peshawar and five trips into war-torn Afghanistan...
...They seem bent on destroying the union and keeping us out here...
...Grahl also offers the opinion that the union is "trying to break the company...
...Tank production has dropped drastically since the strike began, and several serious accidents involving the inexperienced replacements have occurred in the plant...
...This is kind of a showcase...
...As it is, the Frontier trembles with anti-Afghan anger at the intrigues that result in Peshawar's frequent bomb blasts, at Afghans who take jobs from Pakistanis, at refugee-directed aid money that drives up the price of everything from food to housing...
...The state asked the court to throw out the lawsuit but lost that bid in September, when Chief Justice Thomas R. Morse Jr...
...But even if it were desirable, controlling the movements of three million people whose appearance differs not at all from that of the native population is an unsolvable problem in logistics...
...The territory is rife with Khad—the Afghan secret police—and KGB agents trying to lure the tribal chiefs to their side...
...Brenner's workers stood to lose $600,000 in the first year of such a contract...
...The union's not going down," says striker Orv Abraham...
...At about the same time, bomb explosions in the provincial capital of Peshawar, about twenty-five miles from the border, killed dozens and wounded hundreds more...
...For the 149 union members, who averaged $9.47 an hour, the cuts amounted to wage losses of about $3,000 each, plus the burden of insurance co-payments...
...We're gonna give it one hell of a shot for however long it takes...
...We understand that they have lost a number of orders already...
...The Afghan rebels slip back and forth across the border, which could be effectively closed to them if not for the tribes' cooperation...
...The union offered to freeze wages for a year and bargain again later, but the company flatly rejected the idea...
...The bait includes money, American-made M-16 rifles, and offers of schooling in the Soviet Union for the children of tribal chiefs...
...The Northwest Frontier includes a fifty-mile-wide strip of political no-man's land inhabited by tribal people who fall under Pakistan's authority but shun its law...
...William F. Schulz (The Reverend William F. Schulz is president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations in North America...
...What we're doing is not against the national trend...
...Any exclusion of homosexuals from consideration as foster parents, all things being equal, is blatantly irrational," he stated...
...Pakistan, too, uses economic enticements—and occasionally force—to woo the tribes...
...Either break us entirely or have us go in and sign this contract that really has us powerless in there...
...No union members and fewer than twenty local people are among the 100 replacement workers Brenner has hired...
...Government buildings, hotels, restaurants, airline ticket offices, television stations, trains, shops, and markets have all been targets of the bombers who have turned Peshawar into a war zone...
...There is a point at which you must face up to the challenge...
...But the Department of Social Services will not back down...
...and John Gormican (Mike Wettstein Jr...
...bomb explodes in crowded bazaar, 21 hurt...
...In April 1985, the Department placed the boys, brothers then aged two and three, in the custody of Donald Ba-bets and David Jean...
...Three policemen die in bomb blast...
...Peshawar's population before the Soviets invaded its neighbor was about 700,000...
...Rocket attacks on Pakistan's border towns and incursions into its air space by Afghan or Soviet airplanes are frequent...
...Since 1980, there's been a movement across the country to do just what's been done here," says Clements...
...Thousands more arrive daily...
...It has turned a profit each of the last two years, recently bought up another tank company, and may be in pursuit of still another...
...The new rules were immediately labeled as discriminatory and, in January 1986, Babets and Jean filed suit to challenge them...
...On June 29, the union walked out...
...of the Massachusetts Superior Court ruled in favor of Babets and Jean...
...It is the children whose interests are paramount, and prospective foster parents should be selected on the basis of their ability to provide temporary care and support for children, not on the basis of an arbitrary factor such as marital status...
...We're losing hundreds, but they're losing millions...
...The international press has paid little attention, but recent headlines in local newspapers tell the story: Car bomb kills four, injures 50...
...By the second week, the company was calling in permanent replacements...
...The supposed aim is the de-stabilization of the Frontier, so that Pakistan will have second thoughts about harboring the Afghan rebels...
...Its attorney, Donald Stern, says the Dukakis administration "is confident that when the facts are fully developed as the case progresses, the ultimate finding of the court will be that the department's regulation serves the best interest of children who are in foster care...
...I think a lot of the other unions in the city are looking at the same thing...
...In the meantime, social workers, labor unions, political organizations, feminists, child-care experts, and gay and lesbian activists have raised voices again and again, asking Dukakis to rescind this injurious policy...
...But when the three-year contract with its workers came up for renegotiation last summer, the company asked for stiff concessions...
...The trail of refugees is like a fuse, shortened with each new arrival, threatening an explosion that will rock the Frontier and send shock waves throughout Pakistan...
...Explosion derails train, one dies...
...in an undeveloped region like this, chaos seems inevitable...
...In the early days of the strike, a mediation session failed...
...It patrols the 300-mile-long region with 50,000 troops...
...Brenner, which makes stainless-steel tanks for transporting chemical, food, and dairy products, is prosperous enough...
...But the schism yawns...
...Fond du Lac residents have, instead, been amazed by the company's hostility to reasonable union demands and miffed at the sight of outsiders taking away local jobs...
...The tribes' cash crop is opium poppies, and Pakistan's U.S.-funded campaign against growing them does not curry favor with the tribes...
...Khad or the KGB is rumored to be behind the bombings...
...and John Gormican are free-lance writers in Fond du Lac...
...The company had hopes that enough strikers would cross the picket lines to train the new work force, but it hasn't happened...

Vol. 51 • January 1987 • No. 1


 
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