Showing posts with label union busting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label union busting. Show all posts

Monday, March 17, 2014

Government Budget Transparency Suffering In Albany, New York City

Gov. Cuomo defends shady, closed-door budget negotiations

Andrew Cuomo photo andrew-cuomo-smiles-jpg-alg_zps9d0cdc97.jpg

Gov. Andrew Cuomo defended his closed-door budget negotiations, saying, “Just because something is done behind closed doors, doesn’t mean the process isn’t transparent,” the Politics On The Hudson blog is reporting, adding, “You can’t do everything in the public view always and have frank, candid meaningful conversations.”

In further remarks, Gov. Cuomo called past attempts at budget transparency, "silly theater."

Many politicians, once elected, cease acting on behalf of voters and, instead, become captured by big business interests. Gov. Cuomo has apparently crossed over to the "dark side." Within days of his inauguration in 2010, Gov. Cuomo proposed radical cuts to Medicaid that would lead to a further push to close a series of hospitals in a scorched earth approach to make healthcare cuts to the poor. Now, he's being accused of making tax cuts to benefit the wealthy, aggravating income and wealth inequalities in New York state. That the neoliberal governor is now trying to obfuscate the state's budget negotiations comes as no surprise. Gov. Cuomo is trying to control political blowback to his shady neoliberal machinations.

Mayor de Blasio has outsourced opaque negotiations of city labor contracts to an unpaid advisor, who is not accountable to voters

Further enshrouding government budgets behind a cloak of secrecy, Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed the political insider Stanley Brezenoff to be the city's "special unpaid adviser on 152 municipal labor contracts," The New York Daily News reported, noting that Mr. Brezenoff's choice was a "poor" one, given Mr. Brezenoff's history of driving Long Island College Hospital into bankruptcy.

When elected officials want to hide the government functions, they usually hide the business of government behind closed doors or special appointments.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew told The New York Daily News that he had "promised Mayor de Blasio not to negotiate in public," according to the news report. When Mayor de Blasio was later confronted by the media about his decision to set aside budget reserves in preparation for the costly city union labor negotiations, Mayor de Blasio refused to answer questions about cost savings, telling Politicker, "I’m not going to answer any specific question," Mr. de Blasio said, in part.

On one hand, you have a governor hiding the business of negotiating the state's $90 billion budget behind closed doors, and, on the other, you have the mayor, refusing to discuss details about the negotiation of what is being estimated to be $7 billion in union contracts, and that is just in back bay demands.

What happened to the Democratic Party's commitment to progressive values, like transparency ?

Attacking or "controlling" bloggers as a way to thwart scrutiny

To further thwart government transparency, the governor and mayor have been taken alternate approaches with respect to bloggers. Over the week-end, Gov. Cuomo discredited bloggers, who are not subject to corporate-controlled editors, for their critical observations of government and elected officials. For his part, Mayor de Blasio has tried to control parent bloggers, forcing them to reprint his political point-of-view in his campaign for universal pre-kinder.

Friday, February 14, 2014

2014 Cadillac ELR Coupe : "Rogue" French-Bashing Commercial Adds to GM Woes (UPDATED)

PUBLISHED : FRI, 14 FEB 2014, 04:06 PM
UPDATED : FRI, 11 APR 2014, 01:35 PM

The American carmaker General Motors has resorted to bashing French citizens for their unique culture in the new "Work Hard" TV commercial for the 2014 Cadillac ELR Coupe hybrid. Neal McDonough, who stars in the controversial new Cadillac commercial, mocks French cafés, the French family values sensibility that places a special importance on the annual summer vacation, and France's emphasis on quality of life. The commercial implies that the French do not work hard at all, nor are the French capable of accomplishing major scientific breakthroughs, like landing on the moon -- an example of "American exceptionalism." Meanwhile, the truth is that the French invented each of aviation, motion pictures, and antibiotics ; they revolutionized astronomy and statistics ; and a Frenchman created the first digital form of writing, Braille, amongst many other notable breakthroughs. Indeed, René Lorin, a Frenchman, invented the ramjet, a supersonic jet engine that allowed later jets to travel at speeds between Mach 3 and Mach 6. Mr. McDonough does not ever identify France in the commercial as the target of his scorn, but the litany of his generalizations and stereotypes unmistakably points to France, and, as if to remove all doubt, at the end of his rant, he asks with a knowing wink, "N'est-ce pas ?"

Adding to the controversy, this commercial has been being broadcast during the karmically-doommed Sochi Winter Olympics, the latter which has become the target of global protests over the violent anti-LGBT crackdown taking place in Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

(An earlier YouTube video of the Cadillac commercial, which went viral after TV viewers become outraged by the discriminatory commercial's theme, was mysteriously censored removed from YouTube. A replacement video was subsequently also censored removed from YouTube.)

Mr. McDonough, who stars in the Cadillac ELR Coupe hybrid commercial, is a handsome and charismatic actor, who has attracted widespread goodwill in Hollywood for his roles in movies, like Captain America : The First Avenger, in which he played Dum Dum Dugan. How much goodwill will it personally cost Mr. McDonough with his fans for having made this controversial commercial ? What's been the reputational risk ?

Social ills, like de facto discrimination, are usually based on ignorance. It's not known why U.S. networks on broadcast and cable TV would accept money in exchange for airing this commercial, given the controversial use of harmful and stupid generalizations of the French. For GM's part, that ignorance is all the more clear. The luxury automaker brand of Cadillac was named after a French explorer, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. It's unknown whether GM's advertising executives are even educated about how the new French-bashing Cadillac TV commercial actually attacks the company's namesake's own homeland ?

Perhaps in a wink and a nod to their Red State-minded target customers, the controversial Cadillac commercial was produced by a new advertising outfit known as Rogue, an Interpublic Group of Cos. team reporting to the following GM executives : Bob Ferguson, vice president of Global Cadillac ; Craig Bierley, Cadillac's advertising director ; and Steven Majoros, a former Campbell Ewald advertising agency executive now at Cadillac, according to a pre-commercial review of Cadillac's marketing team by Advertising Age. The advertising agency Campbell Ewald had previously done work for GM for its Chevrolet unit. Adweek provides the complete credits for the controversial Cadillac commercial.

That GM is integrating cultural contempt and bullying of the French in its new Cadillac commercial is a new low for the once great carmaker. Once the largest automobile manufacturer in the world, GM has since yielded that title to Toyota. In the wake of this "identity crisis" for GM, it's now developed a dubious track record of making commercials that have been judged to be controversial at best and racist at worst. The commercial for the 2013 Chevrolet Trax subcompact crossover was called racist over its use of a controversial Chinese soundtrack.

GM further sparked controversy when some politicians questioned whether the automaker was deliberately underpaying its new CEO, Mary Barra, because she is a woman. Institutionalised de facto discrimination runs rampant at GM. Whether you are French, Chinese, female, Black, or belong to a union, it seems that the troubled automaker is intent on insulting your equality.

Maybe GM wouldn't have such a hard time selling cars to people, if it first learned to treat people with dignity and respect. Compris ?

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Global Supermarket in Jackson Heights reopens, but union workers were not rehired

About 2 dozen union members, neighborhood residents, and members of Occupy Queens stood outside the new Global Supermarket at 75-07 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, to protest this morning the new supermarket owner, who refused to rehire former supermarket employees. The supermarket changed hands after the former owner, then operating under the name of Trade Fair, fired all of its employees and shut down right before Christmas in an ultimate act of union-busting against its employees.

Union employees at Trade Fair had been demanding better working conditions, and the supermarket had become the site of many demonstrations last year. Some of last year's demonstrations had even attracted mayoral candidates, including former Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who spoke at one protest last April :

Because the labor problems have dragged on from the previous owner to the successive owner at the Jackson Heights location, it was important to former Trade Fair employees that Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Queens) showed up this morning in a sign of solidarity with the former employees.

Some activists, including Congressman Crowley, distributed flyers, informing the community about the corrupt actions of the new supermarket owner. Other activists collected signatures on a petition, demanding that Global Supermarket rehire the former Trade Fair workers. Some of the former Trade Fair employees had been members of a local service union, Local 338 RWDSU/UFCW.

During this morning's protest, few neighbors walked in Global Supermarket. If local residents continue to express their disapproval with the new owner, perhaps the new owner will make the commercially-responsible decision : to rehire the former Trade Fair employees ? Otherwise, the store may fail anew -- and end up closed, for good.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Union Rat at 304 Park Ave. South - SL Green

SL Green properties has hired Topline Drywall to work on a renovation project at 304 Park Avenue South. But SL Green and Topline Drywall are not paying the construction workers the Area Standard Wages, including neither providing or making payments for family healthcare and pension benefits. Representatives from the New York District Council of Carpenters showed up to shame SL Green to do the right thing. Please call Andrew Mathias of SL Green at : (212) 594-2700 to do all they can to make right be Topline Drywall workers -- and to see that all Area Labor Standards are met at all SL Green projects.