ON THE LINE
Bermann, Karl & Fearer, Mark & Foley, Dylan & Perkinson, Robert
ON THE LINE Sweatshop Victory Bonao Free Trade Zone, Dominican Republic Women workers are claiming victory in the first legal strike in the ^ history of the Do-/wlft minican Republic's \ V/...
...In December, the Warriors performed their third annual "Fight Back Carols," sung to the tune of Deck the Halls: "Pack the halls with angry mothers, ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma...
...The company has agreed to build a new cafeteria and provide purified drinking water on each production line...
...He gives out condoms to his fellow prostitutes, as well as others...
...Community, and Family in Boulder is fighting dra-conian legislation in that state...
...CA 90048...
...Besides Bonahan...
...The groups are also organizing low-income students on college campuses, a growing segment, given the increases in tuitions and decreases in financial aid...
...Members have testified before the state's welfare-reform committee, and have made presentations to social-service agencies about being mistreated by their case workers...
...African Americans...
...located in the Bonao Free Trade Zone, is a subsidiary of the Korean-owned Hanchang Apparel Group...
...Meanwhile, similar legislation is pending in fourteen other states and in Congress...
...Despite arrests and the teargassing of strikers by police, the strike grew...
...twentv-two...
...Some 420 maquiladoras produce apparel, footwear, electronics, and other products for the North American market...
...Their successful strategies have spawned other Welfare Warriors groups in several cities, including San Diego and Albany, New York...
...ON THE LINE Sweatshop Victory Bonao Free Trade Zone, Dominican Republic Women workers are claiming victory in the first legal strike in the ^ history of the Do-/wlft minican Republic's \ V/ export-assembly industry...
...NYPAEC has found that fund-in ti is hard to come bv for a program that uses former and current hustlers to do its outreach...
...D\ l AN FOLEI ENDANGERED CHILDREN Last year, Guatemalan officials reported to the U.N...
...there arc people who don't know how to use condoms...
...Often, people need someone to talk to more than any tiling else...
...says Poely...
...Despite more than 400 letters from professors around the country urging Yale not to retaliate against students for their political activities, the administration is threatening teaching assistants with a spring lockout and even expulsion...
...companies...
...including clean needles...
...But as Yale labor historian David Montgomery points out, there is another way...
...The federation is also helping with organizing efforts in low-wage garment plants in Honduras and El Salvador...
...Latinos, straights, gays, and transves-tites...
...This coalition is especially significant because it's bipartisan," says Jessica Dreben, a spokesperson for "Women Won't Go Back...
...Dean Richard Brodhead says the grade strike is "a morally wretched thing to do...
...I think the work you are doing is great, but my foundation is too conscrvati\e to lund you.'" NYPAEC founder Springer savs...
...What we are trying to do is push for the end of impunity the security forces have benefited from in Guatemala," says Bruce Harris, executive director of Casa Alianza...
...I became a peer educator because I see so manv HIV-infected people on the stroll...
...213) 651-0495...
...Besides safe-sex information, he gives other advice: "I tell people not to go with a 'date' who is drunk or drugged, and not to work while you're high...
...When workers began organizing, the company illegally fired the union leaders...
...For more information, contact Women Won't Go Back, The Feminist Majority Foundation, 8105 W. Third Street, Suite I, Los Angeles...
...They have a real sense of fatalism—thev know they are going to die because they are constantly exposed to death through AIDS and violence...
...Nearby, Betty Reid Mandell of the Massachusetts Welfare Rights Union and Survivors...
...The grade strike is GESO's most powerful tactic yet...
...who is the director of organizing for UNITE, called his union's role in the successful Bonahan drive part of a "new strategy and new approach to international solidarity...
...On November 22...
...And associate vice president Peter Vallone declares, "The University has been clear from day one...
...A notorious sweatshop, Bonahan has been cited by the Dominican labor ministry for numerous labor-code violations, including physical abuse of workers, refusal to pay overtime or allow rest breaks, lack of adequate ventilation, and the use of two-way mirrors in the bathrooms...
...Some professors have promised to blacklist their students or refuse to write them letters of recommendation...
...The addition of the women's coalition to the many groups that already oppose the California Civil Rights Initiative could finally overpower the anti-affirmative-action drive in California, members hope...
...he says...
...Like other universities, Yale has responded to leaner economic times by restructuring in the image of a corporation...
...I do a lot of suicide interventions...
...Our members in other cities put them out on the street so that moms can find them in grocery stores," Gowens explains...
...and promotes safe drug use...
...203) 624-5161...
...has been a peer educator and outreach worker for two years...
...Samuel "Poely" Johnson III...
...Even now...
...Given Yale's reaction thus far, there is the prospect of a protracted strike in the spring...
...Faced with Yale's longstanding refusal to create a more equitable relationship, graduate students voted 4-to-l last spring to form a union...
...And because the Graduate Employee and Student Organization (GESO), which represents 1,050 graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, has formed a strategic alliance with Yale's two other abor unions—Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 34, which represents 2,500 clerical and technical workers, and Local 35, which represents 1,250 service and maintenance workers—it may be in an even stronger position when classes resume...
...Two of the group's original outreach workers died of AIDS, and some current members are HIV-positive...
...That way lies chaos...
...I was eating out of garbage cans and living under train platforms...
...This is a very divisive issue for the Republicans—a lot of Republican women are opposing the initiative...
...Their wages remain low, while their health-insurance costs have risen 123 percent in the past five years...
...market, and the hemisphere's second largest export-processing industry after Mexico...
...says Luscious...
...affiliate, the recently amalgamated Union of Needletrades...
...The Albany group sang at the governor's Christmas-tree lighting...
...Rosario Mejia...
...Though NYPAEC has three full-time staff, all decisions are made by vote among all the members...
...His experience with the group has led to a job as a caseworker for a community clinic, though he still hustles part-time...
...Bonahan...
...The work is exhilarating and rewarding, but can be depressing...
...We say to our clients...
...Mediation efforts by the government failed and the workers struck on October 31...
...NYPAEC also provides group support sessions for them...
...Working out of a donated church space, social worker Edith Springer, the N Y PA E C f o under, o f f e r e d stipends of $20 a week and free meals to her twelve original peer educators...
...only four Dominican maquiladoras have union contracts...
...Founder Pat Gowens publishes a newspaper called Welfare Mother's Voice, with a national circulation of 16,000...
...Jeff Hermanson...
...They caroled at malls and public buildings around the nation...
...I act real loud and carry mv condoms where they can be seen...
...That really brought home to us that we had to start working with our brothers and sisters down there...
...Despite earning a record 15.7 percent profit on its $4 billion endowment last year...
...In group...
...Firefighters, police, and other traditionally male occupations could be closed to women based on this clause...
...The union victory at Bonahan is especially significant because the Dominican Republic is one of the largest assemblers of apparel for the U.S...
...With a 1600-person mailing list, the group "empowers low-income women to take action on their own behalf," says Annie Boone, a longtime JEDI organizer...
...It also agreed to reinstate fired union leaders with back pay...
...Box 025216, Miami, FL 33102...
...Mark Fearer AIDS Education for Teen Prostitutes Vf»t York City Michael Links started hustling and prostituting himself on the Manhattan piers when he was . fourteen to support HIV his crack habit...
...The Bonahan union got help from the Federation of Free Zone Workers, a transnational organizing project initiated by the International Textile...
...Committee Against Torture that "torture does not exist in Guatemala...
...In Massachusetts, like-minded people have joined the Campaign for Real Welfare Reform, a loose coalition of welfare-rights groups...
...On the other hand, "nothing would be worse . . . than for the administration to approach these negotiations with the attitude that every other business concern is grinding down its workers nowadays, so Yale should join the pack...
...Poely has plans to start an 1IIY AIDS chat room for teens on the Internet...
...At present, there are twenty-four outreach workers, men and women ranging in age from sixteen to twentv-six...
...savs Springer...
...Let us show you how to do things safely.'" NYPAEC provides safe-sex information and condoms for prostitutes and other teenagers at risk of contracting HIV...
...Academics Against Poverty, is preparing to document "human-rights abuses that will happen to people who are kicked off welfare and subjected to various indignities by officials...
...Luscious is an articulate, twenty-year-old male prostitute who is an outreach worker for NYPAEC...
...It was a difficult step," GESO chair Robin Brown explains...
...For more information, contact Covenant House Latin America...
...Hermanson said...
...contractor, and the Dominican government...
...A coalition that includes the Feminist Majority and the YWCA, along with more than seventy other women's organizations, has launched the "Women Won't Go Back" campaign to stop the initiative...
...We have submitted ballistics proof, fingerprints—but the security forces have literally gotten away with murder...
...Graduate-student teachers, who have been struggling to organize a labor union at Yale since 1990, voted on December 7 to withhold their students' fall grades until university officials agree to negotiate with them in good faith...
...He says many of his male clients wear their wedding rings when they pick him up...
...Bad Marks for Yale's Labor Policies New Haven, Connecticut During the spring semester at Yale University, students usually tuck in their shirts, spice up their resumes, and head off to interviews at elite corporations and graduate schools...
...Garment, and Leather Workers Federation...
...reach work in AIDS prevention education among his fellow hustlers on the prostitution strolls...
...It] won't recognize GESO and won't negotiate with GESO...
...Mandell said another group she works with...
...Casa Alianza began operating in Guatemala in 1981 as a refuge for children orphaned by the civil war...
...We are educators— we show them choices, but we don't tell them what the goals are...
...But Yale has left us no other recourse...
...You are great and you need to survive...
...rest breaks, meals, and transportation...
...UNITE provided advice and training, while Hermanson coordinated efforts to exert pressure on the Jones Apparel Group, Bonahan's U.S...
...he said...
...Accordingly- Yale is pulling out all the stops to crush the strike...
...Overtime workers will get extra pay...
...One clause in particular aims to restore "bona fide qualifications based on sex which are reasonably necessary" for the "normal operation" of certain jobs...
...Luscious works in drag in Manhattan's meatpacking district...
...Graduate students spend more time teaching in the classroom than full-time faculty, yet they have no negotiated rights as employees...
...We lost on our big battle, because the state did pass the harshest welfare bill in the country in February," says Campaign staffer Betsy Wright...
...The union contract calls for sweeping improvements in working conditions...
...SJO 1039...
...They also help run the NYPAEC office, which is near the meatpacking district...
...at the age ?n^Tll/F ot nineteen, he was MlftlllVt lccl-LUlL.d to do out...
...This year, however, the eager Ivy Leaguers may be missing an important accessory—their transcripts...
...When 1 get on the subway...
...But we've succeeded in doing tremendous community education and outreach...
...label Jones New York...
...after a strike lasting only five days, the Bonahan Apparel Company agreed to sign a contract with the United Bonahan Workers' Union...
...1 stalled turning tricks when I was thirteen...
...The powers that be don't really give a damn about them...
...The solidarity among these workers with the graduate students is ground-breaking...
...The peer educators are still paid onlv $20 a week and are required to make twenty outreach contacts a week...
...Further west, the JEDI Women (Justice, Economic Dignity, and Independence) in Salt Lake City, Utah, has 125 active members, most of whom are AFDC recipients and low-income women...
...Nearly one in seven New Haven workers receives a check from Yale...
...Yale's labor policies have a profound impact on one of the poorest cities in the United States...
...Those were signed last year, after the Dominican government suspended one sweatshop's export license, under pressure from labor leaders in the United States...
...The conflict highlights fundamental changes in higher education...
...The group that recruited him...
...I feel that I can discuss anything because people have been through everything...
...At least four graduate students face disciplinary charges...
...CCRI will not only gut affirmative action for women and minorities in California, but will also destroy the very foundation of California women's rights law," Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, said at a December press conference...
...Most are women, often fresh from the countryside, with no prior experience of unions or industrial labor...
...The glossy, book-length report is full of photographs of children, some being detained by police, some posing quietly for the camera, showing their cigarette burns or scars, some lying in coffins, or in the alleys where their bodies were dumped...
...Yale is demanding lower wages for new workers and benefit cuts in its contract negotiations with Locals 34 and 35...
...a sewing-machine operator and general secretary of the union, called the strikers' victory over company and police repression "one of the greatest experiences of my life...
...One of the oldest and busiest welfare-rights groups is the Welfare Warriors, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin...
...They earn the minimum wage of about 50 cents an hour...
...Manv of them are still hustling, and some are active drug users...
...We don't like to take action that affects students...
...Academically, Yale has cut expensive full-time faculty positions and left graduate students to pick up the slack...
...1 feel like I am supported 110 percent...
...The groups do continuous demonstrations at the state capitol, along with other protests...
...The head ot a major foundation told me...
...Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) and the AFL-CIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) also helped the Bonahan workers...
...the New York Peer AIDS Education Coalition (NYPAEC), was started in 1L)LX) to reach an estimated 10.000 to 20.000 teenage-hustlers, runaways, and prostitutes in New York Citv...
...It's part of Covenant House, the largest private, nonprofit child-welfare organization in the United States...
...But a number of groups of women on welfare have sprung up-around the country to oppose the punitive welfare-reform drive.Women United for Justice...
...Karl Bhrmann CIVIL-RIGHTS RIGHT Women in California are rallying to defeat the ill-named California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI...
...They include whites...
...Michael Links has been doing peer education for NYPAEC for five years...
...A very high proportion of the kids we work with have HIV...
...The group now works with street children in urban areas throughout Guatemala, and has initiated more than 200 court cases accusing police of torturing and murdering street children...
...Robert Perkinson...
...For its part, the administration has dug in its heels...
...We've been reaching religious groups, battered-women's groups, labor groups, academia, and we've probably organized hundreds of speaking engagements...
...Welfare Moms Organize Boulder, Colorado As the federal government prepares to cut off support for millions of people on welfare, it sometimes seems as if things can't get any worse...
...And Yale has refused to issue a clear policy on labor activism and academic freedom...
...Already there are more than a dozen graduate-teachers' unions at universities nationwide, but GESO would be the first at a private school...
...For more information, contact the Federation of University Employees, 425 College St., New Haven, CT 06511...
...He ran away from a bad foster-care situation when he was eighteen...
...Delegates at the Modern Language Association, the nation's largest academic conference, voted overwhelmingly to censure Yale for "failing to protect the rights of Yale's graduate teaching staff to participate in union activities, including job actions, without fear of reprisals against their academic careers...
...The International Federation's U.S...
...In February, the JEDI Women got cozy with the governor when they occupied his office over the issue of affordable childcare...
...As soon as we put our tents up, within an hour, the governor sent a letter out, saying he would increase affordable housing this year," Boone says...
...Our request is only for dialogue, to have some say over the shape of our lives here...
...Schools could also invoke the clause to favor boys' programs over girls' programs, opponents of the initiative argue...
...The company employs about 700 workers, mostly women, to assemble garments for the U.S...
...If Yale has the will, these disputes can be "resolved by serious discussion around the negotiating table," he says...
...Some 160.000 Dominicans work in the plants...
...Those of us in the New York apparel industry see the cut pieces being loaded for the Dominican Republic every time we walk down Seventh Avenue...
...Most are U.S.-owned or produced under contracts with U.S...
...If it passes in November 1996, it will do away with affirmative action in public employment...
...Besides training other outreach workers...
...And last fall, they joined Locals 34 and 35 in an escalating series of demonstrations...
...In response, the human-rights group Casa Alianza has released a graphic report documenting the murder and torture of Guatemalan street children over the last five years...
...Young people ask for them...
...Five POSITIVE years ago...
...casalnza@sol.racsa.co.cr...
...e-mail...
...Inc., puts out the newspaper Survival News...
...Members built a tent city next to Utah's capitol building in September...
Vol. 60 • February 1996 • No. 2
