ON THE LINE
SLAUGHTER, JANE & Gautschi, Amy & Anner, John & Manalo, Isabel
ON THE LINE Bias Suit Targets Fleet Bank Buffalo, New York Fleet Bank doesn't have a great record. In 1989, Gerald Bogacz, senior vice president of Fleet, shocked African-American employees by...
...His frequent use of loaded symbols has led to controversy and censorship in some of the galleries that have shown his work...
...Such largess contrasts sharply with "the downsizing of women," says Marilyn Clement, executive director of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom...
...says Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee...
...From maquiladoras in Mexico and Central America to a slave-labor factory in El Monte, California, poor young women trapped in desperate conditions are making designer clothes for upscale consumers...
...Currently a painting fellow at the American Academy in Rome, the thirty-one-year-old artist will exhibit his paintings at the Annina Nosei Gallery this October in New York City...
...But Ocampo insists on being known as an artist first and foremost over a Filipino artist, and resists any thematic or stylistic classification of his art...
...No Mayo Records, "the power of music helping people in need," was born in 1990 out of his frustration...
...The refugees made it to San Francisco, but life in the United States proved tougher than they had imagined...
...Again the bank settled...
...Since 1993, ArtSmart has carried out fifteen projects at six different Bay Area high schools...
...Now an eighteen-year-old high-school senior, Sokly "Don Bonus" Nye turns the camera on himself to create o.k-o Don Bonus, an unflinchingly honest self-portrait...
...He was sending us a message...
...Now African-American employees of Fleet Bank are suing their employer for $1.8 billion, alleging racial discrimination and a pattern of disrespectful treatment...
...Waking Assets president Michael Ki-eschnick has urged Fleet's CEO to correct any racist behavior, but he hasn't decided to pull jje Working Assets account...
...The company will tie future management bonuses to enrollment in the program...
...Lucky owed the women more than $10,000 in back wages...
...In a painting titled "Once Again First in the World," a figure in a Klansman's cape and a pointed hood flaunts a rifle with one hand, while grasping an eagle's neck with the other...
...It's these guys...
...a.k,a Don Bonus airs nationally on P.O.V., Tuesday, June 25, on PBS (check local listings...
...He Georgia attorney general said the bank was charging usurious interest rates to African Americans...
...Sam Donaldson, the ABC news correspondent, collects $97,000 annually in government subsidies on his sheep and angora ranch in New Mexico...
...Fleet dismissed Bogacz...
...A third has a large clock for an ear...
...Because subcontractors—not the clothing manufacturers themselves—employ these workers, the industry has managed to fend off traditional organizing efforts...
...To contact Working Assets, call 1-800-788-0898...
...Isabel Manalo...
...McClintock is a purveyor of frilly prom dresses and other "romantic" clothing, an image that does not fit well with pictures of sweatshops filled with underpaid women workers...
...The clothing manufacturers are vulnerable...
...A set of twelve posters is available for $20, including postage...
...that a white manager was pressured to change the performance evaluations of black workers...
...AIWA conducted a creative, multi-faceted campaign in cities across the country, which included several full-page ads in The New York Times portraying McClintock as a heartless Marie Antoinette saying to the starving workers...
...In 1994, the United States spent only $14.4 billion on social-welfare programs altogether...
...In response to the current suit, Fleet has announced a new diversity-training program for bank managers...
...Catholic guilt, and oppression presented as empty signs...
...AIWA had been mobilizing community pressure for three years to win justice for a dozen women who lost their jobs while making clothing for McClintock, Inc...
...For more information, conMt Hershel Berry at No Mag Records, 209 Post Street, SOB 1105, San Francisco, CA 94JM (415) 421-3361, and MeredB Charpantier at ArtSmart,® Dolores #3, San Francisco, B 94110,(415)255-8691...
...On the painting's periphery, darker-skinned faces float in a fiery hell...
...that blacks were paid less than whites for the same work...
...Ocampo's compositions are anything but innocuous...
...Only I percent of the federal budget goes to Aid to Families with Dependent Children...
...AIWA contacted the Department of Labor, notifying them of the Garment Workers Justice Campaign and the glaring contradiction between McClintock's verbal commitment to worker protections and the company's use of sweatshop labor...
...Berry and No Mayo are "making a difference in urban communities" by using the profits of No Mayo merchandise—recordings and a clothing line—to support two major projects: No Mayo Employment Service and Art-Smart...
...In 1989, Gerald Bogacz, senior vice president of Fleet, shocked African-American employees by cracking a bullwhip over their heads and shouting, "Yo, get back to work...
...The break in the campaign came last fall when the Department of Labor published a list of "fair labor fashion trendsetters"—corporations notable for their commitment to upholding worker protections...
...He got a job writing jingles, but that work was not for him...
...ArtSmart reaches out to disadvantaged youth by offering them a chance to explore a variety of fields including music, video, computer art, graphics, performance, and fine arts...
...that one branch manager with twenty years' seniority and excellent evaluations, a black woman, was suddenly demoted to clerk...
...Fleet agreed to pay back wages...
...Being a Filipino has affected my work formally in terms of Catholic symbolism, color, etc...
...So when he started a nonprofit R&B company, the name was easy for him: "No Mayo...
...Most also make reference to Spanish colonization, which lasted more than 300 years in the Philippines...
...My work is about having political content, loaded phrases and symbols, images of racial stereotypes, sexual perversion...
...DON BONUS Jit 1979, three-year-old Sokly Nye and his family fled Cambodia, traveling through the jungle on foot to escape the Khmer Rouge...
...hopes eventually to look nationwide...
...Born in Quezon City, Philippines, Ocampo moved to the United States at age twenty...
...The settlement with McClintock includes back wages for the laid-off workers, a garment-workers' education fund and scholarships, an outreach campaign to inform garment workers of their rights, and a toll-free hotline in English and Cantonese that can be used to report illegal wages and working conditions...
...They've gotten fat and lazy, and with the right strategy we can beat them, even though we can't match their resources...
...In 1993, Fleet was again called on the carpet...
...When the Department of Labor investigated...
...Although No Mayo Records has focused on producing rhythm and blues San Francisco artists...
...Altogether, federal aid to corporations and wealthy individuals cost taxpayers $104.3 billion in 1994...
...The company has received calls and letters from all over tie country, demanding that it stop doing business with Fleet...
...The employment service provides counseling, training, and job placement for at-risk youth in the San Francisco Bay Area...
...Another poster boy is Dwayne O. Andreas, Chairman and Chief Executive of Archer Daniels Midland Company, which controls 60 percent of the ethanol market in the United States and receives about $550 million a year in tax credits...
...People think it's women and children who are a drag on the economy...
...Los Angeles, California Manuel Ocampo likes to crash symbols together...
...For more information, contact Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1213 Race Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107, (215) 563-7110...
...Or contact the National Welfare Rights Union, 13220 Woodward Ave., Highland Park, Ml 48203, (313) 868-3660...
...He was treating us as slaves," says William Payton, a Fleet employee...
...a.k.a...
...An Oakland, California, garment subcontractor for McClintock called Lucky Sewing Company declared bankruptcy in 1992, leaving its workers unpaid...
...Working Assets, the progressive credit-card and long-distance company, is a client of Fleet Bank...
...John Anner CORPORATE WELFARE POSTER BOYS On April 15, tax day, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, in cooperation with the National Welfare Rights Union, launched a poster campaign to educate taxpayers about how corporate giants benefit from tax dollars...
...For more information, contact the Coalition for Economic Justice at (716) 833-6416...
...That's not true...
...Amy GautS* Sweatshop Workers Organize and Win Oakland, CA The sweatshop is back with a vengeance...
...Jane Slaughter Hold the Mayo San Francisco, California Hershel Berry hates fluff...
...But it's just a coincidence that I was born a Filipino...
...We want to show people what is behind the economic crisis both here and worldwide," says Clement...
...The Asian Immigrant Women's Association (AIWA) announced in April that it had reached a settlement with millionaire fashion designer Jessica McClintock...
...Faced with the prospect of removal from the list, McClintock gave in...
...Such images confront the violent history of racial oppression...
...and that black workers put up with a series of racial slurs and "insensitive statements...
...After Berry graduated from college in 1989, he knew that he wanted to work in the music industry...
...In the meantime, its can> mitment to local artists confll ues...
...In 1992, a Department of Labor investigation in Buffalo found pay discrimination against twenty-two women and two black men...
...Many of his paintings include phrases in broken Spanish, and the national language of the Philippines...
...It is planning to get involved with community groups and youth centers, and will also be implementing an internship program for college art students...
...He felt that everyone involved—from performers to producers—should take on greater social responsibility...
...Artists are just glorified sign painters," says Ocampo...
...The Corporate Welfare Poster Boys campaign features Ed Rensi, President and CEO of McDonald's Corporation, whose overseas promotion of Chicken Mc-Nuggets in Turkey cost taxpayers $466,000 in 1992...
...The business of merely selling struck him as empty...
...Clement points out that women will suffer disproportionately as a result of recent cuts in social services...
...He hates it in everything—in food, people, music, and everything else...
...It also serves as a link between young people and "corporate and community mentors...
...Tagalog...
...One face has its lower lip turned into an ashtray, another has a pincushion head...
...This is not the first time Fleet has been in trouble for discrimination...
...McClintock, Inc., was listed...
...In particular, he thought a percentage of the profits should be given to the community "to help people in a tangible way...
...The Los Angeles-based artist uses symbols of cultural domination like the cross, the eagle, the Klansman's hood, and the swastika to make statements...
...Let them eat lace...
...The twenty-one employees and former employees say that in Buffalo, Fleet promoted junior white employees ahead of qualified blacks...
...No Mayo's next release, eft out in the fall, will be a record^ by Mike Marshall, currentlyg tour with The Red Hot Clg Peppers and Primus...
...AIWA launched the Garment Workers Justice Campaign against McClintock, arguing that it had a moral responsibility to reimburse the workers even though the company was not legally liable for Lucky Sewing's financial problems...
...But a recent victory demonstrates the value of using strategies that go beyond usual labor-organizing practice...
Vol. 60 • June 1996 • No. 6
