Clear Channel to U.S. Military Veterans:“No Jobs in Massachusetts for You” Vets ask J Kerry 4 help

[Omaha Steve]

http://unionreview.com/node/125

Clear Channel to U.S. Military Veterans:“No Jobs in Massachusetts for You”

Boston, MA. Texas-based Clear Channel Outdoor chose the week of Memorial Day to tell striking billboard workers, including a significant number of U.S. Military veterans employed by the company, that they no longer had jobs. Members of Sign Local #391 have been on strike in Eastern Massachusetts since March 19th.


Photo by Steve Dondley, Prometheus Labor Communications

The striking workers including U.S. Army and U.S. Marine veterans met with U.S. Senator John Kerry to ask for his support and assistance in settling the strike.
“The upper management of Clear Channel is nothing more then cowards, hiding in corporate offices in Texas, while stealing jobs from workers who have served in the country's military branches,” said Painters District Council #35 Communications Director John Laughlin. “Clear Channel Executives didn't have the courage to face these workers at the bargaining table and now they'd leave veterans and their families in the street on Memorial Day”.
The strikers, members of Sign & Pictorial Local #391, work on hanging and posting over 2400 billboards in Eastern Massachusetts. Most have at least 10 years, and many more than 25 years, of working for Ackerley Communication, AK Media and now Clear Channel, which bought the company five years ago. After 18 months of negotiations, Clear Channel abandoned bargaining and unilaterally implemented a $60-a day paycut, a 7-day work week, took away pensions and health care from the workers and eliminated the grievance and union security protections. Clear Channel's actions forced the workers onto the street and the Union to file Unfair Labor Practice charges with the federal government.

Clear Channel had paid strikebreakers already at the plant on March 19th and has been flying strikebreakers into Massachusetts from Florida, Georgia and Texas on a weekly basis to take the jobs of Massachusetts workers said Laughlin.

[whistle]

1. The Iraq War II vets have no economy to come back to...Bush's

....bubble was entirely based on war spending, tax cuts, savings depletion and massive debt. All the jobs which might have been created were shipped out of the country. The real unemployment rates are going to begin to surface and I know these will be in the double digits. Bush's mess will be felt in every sector of the U.S. but Bush's base of 485 of the wealthiest shysters to whom he made his appeal back in 2000 will have done great with unimagined and dazzling wealth. The 15% of the professional and supporting class working for these fat cats will have done just fine for themselves also, but they will have big debts to repay. Those remaining 85% of which more than half used to be called the middle class, are now beginning to feel what it is like to be living on the edges of society for we are all the new poor of the U.S.

[whometense]

3. Clear Channel was the late sponsor

of Boston's Air America/progressive talk radio stations. Yeah, all two of them, with the collective air power of your 25-year-old lawnmower, and now both dead and gone.

What creeps. I hope Kerry can find a way to help, but as you said, in Bush's mess of an economy (hel-lo robber barons!!!) I wonder what one senator will be able to do.

[beachmom]

2. When I hear Clear Channel, I always think Rush Limbaugh.

This is terrible. I hope JK can help solve these workers' problems.

[Scriptor Ignotus]

4. your subject line is a wee bit misleading, no?

trust me, i'm no fan of clearchannel but they're not targeting veterans or anything. they're stiffing their workers, some of whom happen to be vets. important difference I think.

[karynnj]

5. In fairness, he is repeating the union's framing

They are making a point that this action was taken around memorial day and that many of the workers are veterans. I agree the union could generate more outrage if the company issued a "No veterans need apply program" or fired all the veterans and only the veterans.

It shows me that the union believes that they couldn't get the support they need from the population by framing this as anti-union. There were times when an action like this could lead to people calling for a Clear Channel boycott etc because of their failure to negotiate in good faith.

It might be that in these times when, at least in words, our veterans and soldiers are held in high esteem that they are trying to put positive faces on the people victimized here. Senator Kerry is doing a good job meeting with them - whether they are seen as veterans or as union members. At minimum, Kerry and his staff can see if there were any MA laws broken.

[blm]

6. So, it's dramatized for THEIR framing. A tactic that the GOPs have employed for

decades now.

Clrear Channel framed everyone who was against the war as being anti-American. Now if THAT doesn't take the cake when it comes to being overly dramatical, then what does?