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Sophie Pedergnana, Helene Kesler, and Annick Lety. Gabriel Ramirez is an American student working as a teacher’s assistant and as translator.

In Paris, the City of Lights, the darkness is taking over for public sector workers. Like those in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and New York, too, public workers in France are being demonized as takers, as leeches sucking the blood from the veins of the country’s less fortunate citizens. The cheerleader in the charge against public sector workers is Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the Republic, and candidate for a second term, running on a platform of austerity for the fading middle class and an anti-immigration policy that keeps immigrants out and treats those already in residence with an iron fist.

Higher taxes, better care

Elisabeth Pesenti is the library worker.

France, like much of western Europe, has a cradle-to-the-grave approach to social welfare. Free medical care – France is considered by many to have the best health care system in the world – and other benefits are provided by the government for life and paid for with higher and more taxes than the average American can imagine.

“We’ve been under attack for the last five years. As teachers we are being constantly demeaned. The competitive tests we take to become teachers are very difficult and it is hard to become a teacher. The current government doesn’t like intellectuals and gets public opinion behind it by saying we don’t work enough.

“Anyone can be a teacher, they say. It shows how unimportant they are trying to make us. ‘They only work 15 or 18 hours a week and have lots of holidays and the summers off.’ They don’t understand how hard we work, that we are always working. During breaks, when I’m home, I’m always preparing a lesson, always marking papers, always doing something for my job. After 27 years I make $59,000 and can get only one more small increase.

“There was a time, two years ago, when new teachers were given a year to learn the job. They taught six hours a week and attended lectures and were mentored to make them better. It was very good training.

“For the last two years they teach full-time immediately. There is no time to be trained and so no real sense of what they are training for. Of course, it’s all about money: someone has to work those other hours in front of the classroom and has to be paid.

“Teaching is a life choice, it’s what I do, but those 15 hours of standing up in front of kids can be hell, exhausting, energy-depleting. We have become an easy target.”

Lifetime job security

In France, public workers, once hired, have lifetime contracts. They cannot be discharged except for cause, like misconduct, and the statutory terms apply whether the individual is employed at the national, regional or local level. In practice, civil servants are not allowed to engage in collective bargaining and their pay is set by statute with the same pay scales applying to all public sector workers.*

After his election in 2007, Sarkozy and Prime Minister François Fillon launched a civil service reform program whose purpose was to achieve structural reductions in the country’s public expenditures; “to do better with less” was the stated goal. Other goals were to modernize government, improve services for citizens and companies, ensure greater recognition for the work of civil servants, and promote a “culture of results.”**

“The new reforms look good from the outside but not so good from the inside. They are trying to hire people who will not have the same protections that we have. As the older ones retire, the new employees have less status and fewer protections.

“Our unions are trying to hold on to the things we have, not trying to get more. Little by little we are moving backwards and people don’t seem to understand what is happening to them.”

Loss in real wages

A case in point is retirement ages. When our teacher began her career she had to work 37 years for full retirement benefits; it is now 42 years. The minimum age for retirement was 60; now it is 64. An interesting aside is that years to retirement are pared one year for each child a person has. If the retirement age is 64 and you have two children it them becomes 62.

Another reality is the wage freeze of the last three years for public sector workers, along with an increase in pension fees that is equal to a 3 percent deduction in real wages. As workers retire, only one in two is replaced, thereby adding to the work while reducing the pay.

“Wage inequality is widening in Europe but still not as much as in the United States. The middle class is suffering. I was talking to a neighbor, a friend from Portugal who came to France to get better work. [Citizens of countries in the European Union are free to cross borders and work in any member country. In France, an exception is the police and other national security agencies.] He said there is no more middle class in Portugal. It’s just the rich or poor now.”

* “The Public Sector Pay Gap in France, Great Britain and Italy,” by Claudio Lucifora and Dominique Meurs, March 2004

** “A Duty to Modernize: Reforming the French Civil Service,” by Karim Tadjeddine, April, 2011.

Metro members:

The call is out for entries for Metro’s Communications Awards for Work in 2011. The deadline for entries is March 16.

Click here or on the image above to download the contest brochure.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget your membership renewal.

Yolanda Miller, a teacher at Richmond Hill HS in Queens. (Dave Sanders)

Civil rights pioneer W.E.B. DuBois’s epigram, “The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?” was the subtext of the Dec. 10 Stand for Freedom march and rally for voting rights that drew what rally organizers estimated were tens of thousands of demonstrators, including more than 700 UFT members.

The rally — on United Nations Human Rights Day — was sparked by recent Republican efforts to restrict voting rights by introducing photo ID requirements, shortening early voting and making it more difficult to register to vote. In 2011 alone, 14 states passed laws undermine the right to vote, an effort that NYU Law School’s Brennan  Center for Justice estimates could disenfranchise five million voters. Moreover, two-thirds of state legislatures introduced such laws this year. A recent NAACP report documents the disproportionate effect the new restrictions have on people of color, low-income, student, immigrant and senior voters.

The protesters assembled in front of the Midtown offices of Koch Industries, major bankrollers of state legislation to suppress voting, and marched to the United Nation’s Dag Hammarskjold Plaza for the rally.

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous accused the billionaire oil tycoon brothers David and Charles Koch and their allies of spearheading “the greatest attack on voting rights in over 100 years.” He cited the brothers’ massive and almost singlehanded sponsorship of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the rightwing lobbying and research center that models reactionary state bills and resolutions on voting restrictions and is the prime mover in attacking voting rights and unions.

“This isn’t partisan or a matter of black and white; it’s whether or not you believe in ‘one person, one vote,’” said Jealous. “This effort is an attack on our democracy. We should be making it easier to vote, not harder.”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew did not mince words. “Let us be clear,” Mulgrew said. “This is about trying to engineer election results. They’re saying that people who disagree with them don’t have a right to vote.”

Hazel Dukes, the president of the NAACP New York State Conference, said that she found it “truly disheartening to see that nearly 50 years after passage of landmark civil rights legislation, our nation has not fully embraced the idea of change and equality. Enactment of these state election laws is a reflection of a troubled past that we are forced to relive and will only continue to impede progress for America and its people.”

George Gresham, president of 1199 SEIU, framed the debate as a battle between the extremely wealthy and everyone else. “They want to change the rules,” he said. “We want to take the country back for working people. We’re here as the 99 percent to say we’ll protect our inalienable right to vote.”

Anthony Harmon, the UFT’s parent and community outreach coordinator, wasn’t surprised that so many UFT members turned out for the protest.

“This union has a history of doing what is right in support of social justice,” he said. “This march and rally is just the most recent example of how seriously the union takes issues of human and civil rights.”

One of those members was Geoffrey Tulloch, the chapter leader of West Midtown’s Food and Finance HS and a chef turned teacher. The demonstration wasn’t his first, nor would it be his last, Tulloch said.

So why did he spend his free time at a cold and blustery outdoor event?

“It’s the only way to get heard, when you stand up and advocate for the right things,” Tulloch said.

In a high turnout for an off year, voters in Ohio have overturned the anti-worker SB5 by a 61-39 margin.

In Ohio, the circumstance of a referendum brought to the fore the issue of collective bargaining, rather than submerging it in the program of a candidate or party. In response to the broad character of the assault on rights, the entire labor movement stood together: the private sector with the public sector; and within the public sector, uniformed with non-uniformed. Gathering over a million signatures to get the referendum on the ballot created an army of tens of thousands of union members, who remained active in the campaign that followed.

Multi-faceted communications work — honing the message, spreading the word within labor’s ranks, using actions to gain and maintain media coverage, producing flyers by the fistful, creating a powerful online presence and, in the final weeks, hitting the airwaves with broadcast ads – played a key role in the effort. The strength of this role lay in its close connection to solid, on-the-ground mobilization.

Of note, in the circumstances of the Ohio fight, labor did not hide its light under a bushel, but rather let its torch blaze for all to see.

Occupy Wall Street has struck a chord because those whose futures are being stolen are not only the thousands who have left college because they can no longer pay tuition, nor the millions who have lost their homes to foreclosure, nor even the tens of millions who have no job and no prospect of a job. It is the 99% of us.

The turnout of organized labor in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street has raised the profile and potential reach of the fight to make the rich pay. The challenge before us is to make this a beginning, not an end.

Going forward

Concrete political demands are on the agenda. Among those that have been mentioned in labor circles are: to tax the rich to pay for a jobs program; to create a financial transaction tax to do more of the same; and most difficultly, to take steps to relieve the crushing burden of debt on much of the population.

Yet, reducing the movement to lobbying for a handful of bills would raise the danger of ending up with neither a movement nor legislative gains.

At the present time, solidarity actions are underway in 200 different cities from coast to coast. It remains to be seen the extent to which they develop, and, crucially, the extent to which local labor forces find ways to embrace them and take them to another level. October 5th in New York City was a key moment, and kudos are due to the local unions and internationals who took a stand and made it possible. But what happens in the next days and weeks will tell us whether we have a movement that can endure.

Communication matters

From the outset, communication has been key for Occupy Wall Street and key for building labor support.

How do a few hundred core occupiers make their presence known in a city of 8 million? An imaginative action was only the starting point. It has been accompanied by tweeting, a website, a blog, a printed journal, and extensive media relations.

Building a labor turnout in a week — unions deciding to take the plunge, sharing that with each other, above all communicating with their members about it — took no less.

Going forward will demand more of communicators, not less. And as we go forward, the responsibility will fall that much more on labor communicators in particular to cut through the haze of misinformation.

Accompanying resources

Resources on Occupy Wall Street

• Declaration of the Occupation
• The Occupied Wall Street Journal
• We are the 99%
• OWS FAQ from The Nation

Resources on Labor’s response

• from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka
• from SEIU President Mary Kay Henry
• from the Next Up Summit

Resources on the October 5 rally

• Speech by TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen
• Online Slideshow

Resources on actions nationwide

• Daily Kos map and links

Expanding their reach beyond the confines of the immediate Wall Street area, a group of around a dozen labor activists from #OCCUPYWALLSTREET today disrupted an auction of contemporary art at the auction house Sotheby’s, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, in support of unionized art handlers locked out of their jobs by the company’s management.

Disguised as potential bidders, the activists entered the building and began their disruption at approximately 10:45 a.m., interrupting the auctioneer one at a time with shouts to “end the lockout” and “make Wall Street pay.” All of the protestors, who staggered their interruptions throughout a period of approximately 75 minutes, were escorted off the premises by security. No arrests were made.

“What’s being done to the art handlers is plain wrong,” said Will Russell, a student at Hunter College and one of the demonstrators who interrupted the auction. “Sotheby’s made $690 million in gross profit last year – but they can’t afford to pay their workers a fair wage? It’s ridiculous.”

Actress Ashley Straw also participated.

“The greed in this building is a direct example of the corporate greed that has ruined our economy,” she said. “Sotheby’s is auctioning off good middle class jobs to the lowest bidder.”

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET has released the following statement about the situation at Sotheby’s:

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET supporters are appalled at the persistent attack on workers rights. We support the right of the workers to collectively bargain. Sotheby’s wants all new hires to have no collective bargaining rights, no health benefits and no job security. After locking out their unionized work force, Sotheby’s continues to operate using scabs and a non-union subcontractor. Sotheby’s art auctions epitomize the disconnect of the extremely wealthy from the rest of us.

The 43 locked-out workers, all members of Teamsters Local 814, were locked out of their jobs by the company’s management on August 1, in the midst of contract negotiations. Among its demands, Sotheby’s, which just had its most profitable year ever in its 267 years of business and whose CEO, Bill Ruprecht, is paid approximately $60,000 a day, wants the art handlers to give up their 401K plan and work a reduced 36-hour week, effectively a 10 percent wage cut. The company also wants to cap workers’ overtime, eliminate certain titles that pay more, and, in initial bargaining, wanted workers to give up their right to sue over charges of discrimination.

The action today marks the first time that the dispute at Sotheby’s has spilled from the street onto the auction floor.

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET is an ongoing anti-corporate protest encampment, now in its sixth day, situated in Liberty Square (formerly Zuccotti Park) in lower Manhattan’s financial district.

In a bold yet thoroughly justified move, Metal Lathers Local 46 and Mason Tenders District Council have inverted this paradigm and struck out at unscrupulous contractors and construction managers. With unexpected vigor, Local 46 and the Mason Tenders have announced their intention to see the guilty prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The following excerpts from Tuesday’s press briefing at the Local 46 hiring hall are merely the opening salvos in what some building trades see as their defining battle in the 21st century.

Below, Local 46 Business Manager Bob Ledwith gives some introductory remarks regarding the RICO suit:

In the second video, attorney Tom Kennedy lays out the details of the suit:

For the full text of the complaint and more information, visit the official website of Metal Lathers Local 46.

The Matt Doherty/Gwen Wells — Excellence in Broadcast Media award was given to Greg Heires and Clarence Elie-Rivera, DC 37, AFSCME, for their work on this video:

See all of our winners »

GuildNet RNs (from left) Joan Schmidt and Brenda Williams and (from right) Meredith Nicolas and Cassandra Dowling with (center, from left) Renee Setteducato of Brooklyn’s Lutheran Medical Center and Cynthia McDaniel of Manhattan’s Jewish Home and Hospital Home Care, the Federation of Nurses/UFT chapter leaders who helped with their organizing drive. (Pat Arnow)

Federation of Nurses/UFT organizers scored an impressive victory on May 25 when registered nurses at GuildNet, a managed long-term home care operation run by the Jewish Guild for the Blind, voted solidly to join the UFT nurses group.

Despite an anti-union campaign by the employer, GuildNet nurses voted 72 to 22 in a National Labor Relations Board-certified election to form the new 168-nurse bargaining unit. Included are 21 out-of-state telecommuting RNs responsible for record keeping.

“It was an old-time union struggle, which is the only way to fight these days,” said UFT Special Representative Anne Goldman, who headed the organizing effort.

The health care operator, which provides in-home services to blind New Yorkers in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Nassau and Suffolk counties, has a history of treating employees arbitrarily. Among the complaints voiced to union organizers was that management unilaterally stripped new staff members of sick and vacation days.

Goldman said nurses confronted a “pervasively paternalistic organizational culture,” one that zigzagged from playing favorites to hammering critics.

In the process of organizing the new unit, six nurses were fired, Goldman attested. “Management did the best it could to weed out union supporters. They failed,” she said.

Among the union-busting practices: using managers as poll watchers, a potentially chilling practice that is strictly forbidden by federal labor law, Goldman said.

Even that intimidatingly close supervision didn’t stop the nurses from serving as poll watchers themselves for the election, something Goldman found “very exciting in this anti-union climate.”

A bare-bones three-person team mounted the organizing drive: Goldman along with Cynthia McDaniel, chapter chair of Manhattan’s Jewish Home and Hospital Home Care, and Renee Setteducato, chapter chair of Brooklyn’s Lutheran Medical Center.

Asked to explain the team’s success, Goldman replied, “We developed the issues with the nurses, we had a proven track record and we were always available.”

The effort also included quite a few all-nighters, Goldman acknowledged, plus numerous late night, early morning and lunch meetings.

The next hurdle for the new UFT chapter: negotiating a first contract with management.