Mediator Ted Kheel

Having just come off of collective bargaining negotiations I found this memorial fascinating. Watch it here. Last Word | Ted Kheel

Health Care Safety Net

Author David Leonhardt makes a good argument in favor of covering everyone in the Health Care bill. Social Security and Medicare allows our seniors to retire with dignity. Leonhardt writes that "Guaranteeing people a decent retirement and decent health care does more than smooth out the rough edges of capitalism. Those guarantees give people the freedom to take risks." Read his article here: Opposition to Health Law Is Steeped in Tradition

BP Reacts to Spill!

"GLENN BECK HAS NAZI TOURETTES!" - Lewis Black Steamrolls Glenn Beck!

Follow Your Bliss

We are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be. You have to learn to recognize your own depth.All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time-namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be-Joseph Campbell

On God and Unconscious Will

Saw this exchange between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. I thought it was worth sharing. Joseph Campbell was known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. He coined the phrase "Follow your bliss."



MOYERS: So the experience of God is beyond description, but we feel compelled to try to describe it?


CAMPBELL: That’s right. Schopenhauer, in his splendid essay called "On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual," points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others, The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.

It’s a magnificent idea – an idea that appears in India in the mythic image of the Net of Indra, which is a net of gems, where at every crossing of one thread over another there is a gem reflecting all the other reflective gems. Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can’t blame anybody for anything. It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka on Bill Moyers

Here is the link to the video: Bill Moyers Journal.  Richard Trumka: "There are two economies in this country. There's the real economy that makes things. And there's the financial economy that was supposed to provide them with the capital to make things. This was subservient, and the real economy was supposed to be the master. Somewhere along the line, that got turned on its head. And the financial community became the master. And they actually started sucking money out of the real economy, 'cause you could get a better return passing complex instruments around, rather than making steel or autos or anything else. So, it's up to us to correct that imbalance. To make it so that the real economy is actually the dominant economy. And the financial economy is a servant to enable them to do their job."

Pre-Contract Negotiations Meetings

President Carlos Contreras will be hosting a series of meetings to get your input on the upcoming contract negotiations. President Contreras is asking that if you have a specific proposal to put it in writing so the Contract Negotiating Committee can study it. The meetings will be at the Union Hall in the conference room where the union meetings are held. The meeting times are below. There is a flyer in the Union bulletin boards with further information about the meetings. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact myself or President Contreras.

Hot End          “A” Shift 1/23/10        6:15 am

                       “B” Shift 1/25/10        6:15 pm

                       “C” Shift 1/18/10        6:15 pm

                       “D” Shift 1/22/10        6:15 pm

Cold End        “A” Shift 1/20/10         6:15 am

                       “B” Shift 1/26/10        6:15 pm

                       “C” Shift 1/19/10        6:15 pm

                       “D” Shift 2/5/10          6:15 am

Warehouse      “A” Shift 1/21/10        6:15 am

                       “B” Shift 1/27/10        6:15 pm

                       “C” Shift 1/20/10        6:15 pm

                       “D” Shift 2/1/10          6:15 am

Day Shift       

Maintenance                2/2/10              2:15 pm

Mach. Rep                  2/3/10              2:15 pm

Batch/Janitors              2/4/10              3:15 pm

Unions and health care reform

The Senate version of the health care reform bill wants to tax employer sponsored insurance plans to help pay for health care reform. Plans that have annual premiums of $8,500 for singles and $23,000 for families would be affected. Many union leaders oppose the tax and say that 1 in 4 union members could be affected by the new tax. In the House version they help pay for the reform by imposing an income tax surcharge on couples that make over one million dollars a year. President Obama is meeting with labor leaders today to discuss the issue. My opinion is that a small tax on millionaires, who profited greatly during the Bush administration, makes more sense than a tax on the middle class workers who are struggling to keep their heads above water in these tough times. Read about it here: Unions Rally to Oppose a Tax on Health Insurance, Obama Confronts Labor, Lawmakers on Plan to Tax Health Benefits, White House Defends Health Tax Opposed by Labor

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis

On page A-5 in today’s Modesto Bee is an article about Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and her efforts to protect workers through better enforcement of overtime rules and enforcement of workplace safety regulations. Naturally businesses are not happy and pine for the days of President Bush and what they called “compliance assistance”, which essentially means figuring out how to get around laws and regulations. One new rule Labor Secretary Solis is putting in place will be forcing companies to disclose whether they use anti-union consultants. I had a good feeling about her when President Obama pegged her to be labor secretary. So far she has exceeded expectations. Read the article here: New Labor Secretary Means Business