Donna Shalala hires Barry Alvarez to coach UW Football before hightailing off to Washington to be Bill Clinton's Secretary of Health and Human Services. There are major fault lines within the Democratic Party and the chasm between establishment liberals and poor workers is becoming active.
Is Donna Shalala Anti-Union?: That's where we come to Shalala's behavior. Publicly, she has said that the university has no role in the negotiations and she displays all sorts of nice quotes about how the university needs to be a good corporate ciutizen. But, privately, she has allowed UNICCO to run an antiunion campaign; union organizers from SEIU were kicked off the campus when they were handing out food and water to the workers after Hurricane Wilma, the organizers aren't allowed on campus and students are prohibited from posting information about the union (so much for free speech).A prolonged strike is ongoing at the University of Miami. At issue are pay scales, job security and healthcare benefits for a largely immigrant janitorial staff employed by the cleaning firm UNICCO.
Miami Herald: Some janitors began a strike in early March to demand wage increases, healthcare and the right to form a union. The university has since raised service workers' wages to more than $8 an hour and offered healthcare, but negotiations have stalled over whether workers can unionize by signing cards rather than holding a secret election.The strike and union activism are spearheaded by Andrew Stern’s SEIU and this may be the model for future large scale social protests, as the socialists and their allies mount another attempt to gain control of the U.S. Government.
UM Janitor Strike: Sen. John Edwards and Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa spoke out against UNICCO, the University of Miami's cleaning contractor, and called on UM President Donna Shalala to intervene to ensure that the janitors on her campus are treated fairly."$500 a month for family health insurance, how can I pay that?" Said Clara Vargas a janitor at UM with a 10-year-old son. The progressive movement is going to ask that question over and over, then follow up with, “how can you afford the gasoline to get to work?”. Joking about the image of Ed Asner fasting is not a solution. The Republicans need to come up with serious and principled answers if they want to continue their hold on power.
Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the union helping the workers unite-the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is on his fifth day of a fast to call for justice. Each night he is joined by a growing list of supporters in the fast at Freedom City. In the past week, SEIU President Andy Stern and Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger, also chair of the 6 million-strong Change to Win labor federation have also fasted, along with actor Ed Asner and Florida state Sen. Tony Hill.
