James Riley – RI Future

October 2, 2015May 15, 2016

Verizon workers rally for a fair contract

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2015-10-01 Verizon 016 — **Dave Fontaine, IBEW 2323**

Nearly three hundred workers representing over a dozen different unions, as well as family members, gathered outside the Verizon offices on Washington Street in Providence to rally in support of 900 IBEW 2323 members who are entering their second month of working without a contract. When the contract with Verizon expired on August 1st at midnight, 39,000 IBEW & CWA, from Massachusetts to Virginia, were affected.

Even as Verizon demands cuts in job security, health care and retirement security, and even seeks to eliminate benefits for workers injured on the job or caring for a sick family member, the company “made over $18 billion in profits over the last 18 months–$1 billion per month–and paid its top executives $249 million over the last five years,” according to a press release.

Meanwhile, here in Rhode Island, “many of our neighborhoods are suffering from neglected phone and internet services… Verizon has even refused to build their new high-speed internet lines, FiOS, in low income communities, communities of color, and rural areas, again claiming poverty as the reason they can’t put people to work doing much needed repairs.” Workers see these areas as growth opportunities for Verizon, and are eager to “string the lines.”

After IBEW workers David Fontaine and Bill Dunn opened the event with “The Star Spangled Banner,’ a steady stream of union officials and one state representative took the stage, promising to support workers in their bid to negotiate a fair contract. Over all their message was simple: Stay strong, organized labor has your back, and we can win this fight.

Below is the video of the speakers.

Dan Musard, IBEW 2323

Jim Riley, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 328

RI State Representative Ken Marshall

Chris Buffery, Asst Business Agent, IBEW 2323

Maureen Martin, AFL-CIO

Michael Sabitoni, Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council

Matt Taibi, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 251

Frank Flynn, Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals

Paul MacDonald, Providence Central Labor Council

Michael Daley, IBEW 99

Mike Araujo, RI Jobs With Justice

Steve Murphy, Business Manager, IBEW 2323

December 20, 2014August 9, 2016

Gourmet Heaven in Providence accused of wage theft

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Supporters, activists and former employees stormed Gourmet Heaven, an upscale deli on Weybosset Street in downtown Providence Friday. They say employees are owed more than $100,000 in back wages, as is the case at Connecticut delis under the same ownership.

The protesters entered the Providence deli at noon and temporarily stifled the business to the consternation of the manager on duty. “Get out!” she yelled.

“We’ll leave when you pay your workers what they are owed,” replied one of the protesters.

“What you’re doing is illegal,” said another.

Gourmet Heaven is owned by Chung Cho, and he runs two other Gourmet Heaven outlets in New Haven, Connecticut. There was also a Gourmet Heaven on Meeting Street here in Providence, but it recently closed. In New Haven, Cho has been charged with “42 felony and misdemeanors” for wage theft, and was “arrested twice for discrimination and retaliation related to these claims.”

Labor activists here say Rhode Islanders are owed more than $100,000 in minimum wage and overtime pay. Phoebe Gardener, organizer at Fuerza Laboral, a workers’ rights center in Central Falls, has filed claims here in Rhode Island for seven workers.

After about five minutes of protest inside Cho’s downtown deli, the Providence Police Department arrived and the protesters left the store. But they continued to picket and chant outside Gourmet Heaven on the Weybosset Street sidewalk for the next hour, seriously impacting business. Flyers are distributed to passersby explaining the reason for the protest.

This protest was marked by excellent, artful signs and a few fun touches such as a rat mask and Hulk gloves.

In Connecticut, Cho reached an agreement with the Department of Labor to pay $140,000 in back wages to 25 workers, but has so far not made his payments in a timely manner. There are reports that the New Haven stores are in the process of closing.

In November, Mohamed Masaud, manager of Weybosset Street Gourmet Heaven, claimed that there were no such violations going on in Providence.

Gardener and Jesse Strecker of Rhode Island Jobs with Justice, claim to have found ten workers who are owed thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars in back pay. All told, it is asserted that over $100,000 in minimum wage and overtime pay is owed to workers here in Rhode island.

“I worked grueling 84 hour weeks, 7 days a week, 12 hours a day on the night shift, from 7pm to 7am,” said Pedro Us in a written statement, “For all that work, and on the night shift, I was paid only $360 a week, way below minimum wage and with no overtime.”

Pedro Guarcas worked, at both the downtown and Meeting St locations of Gourmet Heaven. Guarcas claims that while on the job, he suffered workplace injuries and physical abuse.

“The managers pressured us to work so fast that I slipped and fell down the stairs twice and hurt my foot badly. This past April, the kitchen supervisor… punched me in the stomach when I was taking out the trash, but when I reported it to the store manager, he didn’t do anything about it.”

Guarcas claims that he worked 72 hour weeks for less than $400 a week, a paltry $5.50 an hour and well under Rhode Island’s minimum wage. Guarcas did not file any complaints because he has “a family to feed and it is hard to find another job.” Now that he no longer works for Gourmet Heaven he is speaking up in the hope of collecting his lost wages and because he wants justice.

Guarcas and another former Gourmet Heaven worker from Rhode Island, as well as a former worker from Connecticut, spoke at the protest. In addition George Nee, president of the RI AFL-CIO, James Riley, Secretary-Treasurer of UFCW Local 328, Providence City Councillor Carmen Castillo and union organizer Marino Cruz, recently dismissed from his job at the Providence Renaissance Hotel for his unionization efforts also spoke briefly to the protesters.

Support Steve Ahlquist!

October 25, 2012October 25, 2012

What’s at Stake Nov. 6: Our Shared Federal Lands

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One of Clean Water Action’s core missions is to make democracy work. The cornerstone of this strategic focus is to hold our elected officials accountable to voters. A crucial problem underlying many pollution problems, we believe, is an imbalance of political power that distorts our political system and hampers good policy.

The protection of the environment, investment in the renewable energy economy and reduction in power of special interest takes strength in numbers. This holds true in Congress as well. For that reason, candidates must be judged in context of who they will call friends. Our Congress has few green-blooded environmentalists left.

First District, First:

Mr. Doherty:

[The Infrastructure Jobs and Energy Independence Act] dedicates revenues from new energy exploration to slash our deficit, build clean-coal plants, clean up our air and water, increase our use of renewable energy, and rebuild our crumbling highways and bridges.

Not so bad. Though “clean-coal” is a fairy tale. There is as much clean coal in our nation as there are glaciers inFlorida. Even President Obama, endorsed by by CWA, Sierra Club and Environment America, has swallowed this pill in order to win Ohio.

Mr. Cicilline, your rebuttal:

…with gas close to $4 a gallon, it is time to end our addiction to foreign energy. David has been working hard to rein in excessive Wall Street oil speculation, which many experts agree is part of the rising price consumers are paying at the pump. David is also focused on the long-term energy independence of our nation. The only way to get gas prices down in the long run, while also helping improve our environment, is to support the development of renewable energy and advanced vehicle technologies.

It isn’t hard to be an environmentalist in Rhode Island. It is a single fishing trip off Point Judith, kayak tour of Narrow River, spring hike in Lincoln Woods or daring leap off the cliffs at Beavertail. Every Rhode Islander connects quality of life with the environment. Every Rhode Island Congressman goes to Washington. Folks in that town brought us the Safe Drinking Water Act and then exempted hydraulic fracturing chemicals from its oversight.

Doherty will claim to reach across the aisle if elected. Scott Brown said that too. A New England Republican might do so in support of environmental protections, see John Chafee and Mitt Romney v. 1.0. Sen. Brown’s F on the most recent environmental report card indicates otherwise. This Congress took 297 votes to weaken public health and environmental protections. On which side of that aisle will Doherty sit? I think we can keep our support with Cicilline, he’s already spent two years supporting the environment.

Instead of canned website statements, let’s look at the 2nd District’s first debate. The environment was finally addressed with this interesting question (start at 51:00). Arlene Violet asks:

Mr. Riley, on your website you say entitlements should be paid for by ‘revenue ideas’ not taxes to shore up the safety net. Specifically, what ‘revenue ideas’ or projects would you implement.

To which Riley responds:

The revenue ideas I identified in the Riley plan have to do with the huge amount of federal lands that we own. As citizens we have assets, and we have liabilities. That is how you would look at the balance sheet of America…you and I, and everyone in this room, has a share in the land. Under these lands are a vast quantity of gas, oil, whatever, rare minerals, rare earth minerals, those kinds of things, which are laying fallow. We’re not using them. We’re not selling them. We’re not lending out royalty rights. Not doing leasing rights. That revenue is not coming in. That should be coming in to help pay down those areas like entitlements where we have underfunded them. Why do we always assume that we gotta to go and tax the richest guy we see? Why don’t we actually utilize our balance sheet and bring dollars in for everyone and pay down the problems?

I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. Langevin, after the question is changed to coal and fracturing, returns:

I don’t believe there is such a thing as clean coal. Coal is a dirty fossil fuel and we have to get ourselves off our dependence on fossil fuels in general. In the short run I think we should explore and use utilize all of our energy resources… The real future of controlling our energy costs is developing alternative energy sources, whether it’s winds, solar or biofuels, and by the way, that’s a real jobs opportunity for Rhode Island. We could be the first state in the country to have a first, functioning wind farm off our coast. Those wind turbines would be built in Quonset-Davisville, in my district… If we are the first, we’ll be a hub for building these up and down the east coast and that’s real jobs for Rhode Island.

Langevin gives the best answer of the night. Clean coal is a myth! Build wind turbines at Quonset Point. Let’s get Block Island off diesel generators. Sounds better than leasing the Everglades.

August 30, 2011January 6, 2012

Remember Saylesville: The Long Memory is the most radical idea in America

“The long memory is the memory radical idea in the country.” — Utah Phillips

On Monday, September 5 there will be a Labor Day rally at the Saylesville Massacre Monument at 11:00 AM. Jim Riley, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 328, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the RI AFL-CIO’s largest organization, will speak about our history and the current state of affairs.

The monument is located in Moshassuck Cemetery, 978 Lonsdale Avenue in Central Falls, still the scene of Labor-Management strife. Come and commemorate the martyred activists from the 1934 textile strike, hear blistering talk, and show the world we haven’t forgotten our roots and we’re not going away.

From prior posts

Celebrate Labor Day this year by remembering the Great Textile Strike of 1934 and the Battle of the Gravestones .

Join the Rhode Island Labor History Society this Monday at the Moshassuck Cemetery in Central Falls, 978 Lonsdale Ave, at 11:00 AM for a ceremony remembering the valiant battle waged by the workers against the power of the State and corporate exploitation.

On Labor Day, 1934, a national textile strike began in Rhode Island and spread to southern cloth mills in an attempt to raise wages and improve working conditions during the Great Depression.

The event turned ugly when local management ask for protection at the non-union Sayles Finishing Company. National Guardsmen, with fixed bayonets, confronted hundreds of unarmed strikers and chased them into the Moshassuck Cemetery. Ironically, union picketers too cover behind headstones in the graveyard. The bullet holes remain dozens of stones to this day. Strife there lasted almost three weeks resulting in the injury and wounding of hundreds of protesters and the deaths of several others. The strike would erupt in violence in Woonsocket as well.

In this period of the Great Recession, let’s remember the struggle of our ancestors and learn the lessons of the past. Pay homage to those who made sacrifices so long ago so that we, their grand children, could have a better life. And in doing, we must learn to mobilize in a very different world to maintain the food life that our families fought and died for.

***

Original Post

This year is the 75th anniversary of The Uprising of ’34. The “Uprising” was a national textile workers strike that saw some intense street fighting in the Saylesville neighborhood of Lincoln. Check out this VIDEO. Anyway, while researching the strike for a project with the Rhode Island Labor History Society, I came across this section of text is an issue of Time Magazine. Governor TF Green, after declaring that there was no strike, but “It is a Communist insurrection,” he faced the following situation:

Jitters, Lawyer, banker, scholar, Fellow of Brown University, 66-year-old Governor Green belongs by birth to Rhode Island’s Republican mill-owning class but has cast his lot with plebeian Democrats. Last week he was an old man badly frightened when he asked his State Assembly for: 1) $100,000 to up the State police force from 51 to 1,000 during the emergency; 2) $100,000 more to put 1,000 War veterans under arms; 3) power to close any or all textile mills in the State; 4) power to call in Federal troops, which he said President Roosevelt had promised him.
Republicans lined up behind the Governor, his own partymen against him. The Republican leader of the Senate said he had received the following message from Brig.-General Herbert R. Dean, commander of the State’s National Guard: “I think I can control the situation but for God’s sake tell the Legislature to do something. We need Federal troops!”
Answered the Democratic leader of the Senate: “Don’t call in the regular army! Don’t militarize Rhode Island for the sake of the selfish interests of a small group of mill-owners! If you want to stop the trouble, stop it at its source, the mills, which are a cancer in this body politic.”

When the shouting died that night the Assembly had granted none of the Governor’s requests. Voluntarily mills at Woonsocket, Saylesville and four other trouble spots closed and the Governor started a Communist round-up on his own authority. Though Federal troops were reported mobilizing in New York and New England, President Roosevelt at Hyde Park appeared to be in no rush to send them to Rhode Island.