December 3, 2015
By Joe Maniscalco
New York, NY – What could American icons Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and Franklin Delano Roosevelt possibly have in common with the ubiquitous smiley face? This week’s insightful edition of the LaborPress Radio Show/Podcast on WWRL 1600 AM, has the surprising answer.
But first, Unite Here Local 100 President Bill Granfield updates the LP team on efforts to pass a new bill in the City Council that could protect the jobs of food service workers throughout the metropolitan area.
The measure, introduced last week, is designed to shield food service workers from the immediate terminations now threatening so many working in the industry when businesses change hands. Back in 2002, the Worker Retention Act provided displaced building service workers with important safeguards that have kept many off the unemployment line. New legislation is attempting to do much the same for the thousands of food service workers employed at popular bars, restaurants and sports venues around town.
The lack of these important safeguards, as LP co-host Bill Hohlfeld and Granfield discuss, has created another “race to the bottom,” in which many longtime workers find themselves paying the price for greedy business owners intent on maximizing profits over people.
When he was president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt railed against the kinds of anti-worker policies that robbed men and women of their right to a living wage. N.G. Slater, the company specializing in producing pro-labor messages for unions and other worker advocates, has spent the last 80 years working on some of the most important social and political campaigns in American history.
On this week’s show, company principals Robert Slater and Stu Hauser talk about what it was like helping to craft those historic campaigns, as well as why they think the labor movement is actually more energized for change than ever before.
Long-suffering adjunct professors throughout the United States are certainly relying on their unions to help reverse the outrageous trend in higher education that is forcing increasing numbers of well-credentialed educators into poverty.
LaborPress guest Dr. Wanda Evans-Brewer, a Ph.D and author from Chicago, is one of those academics finding it impossible to survive exclusively on her university salary. While administrative pay packages balloon, Dr. Wanda Evans-Brewer, subject of the Brave New Films "Professors In Poverty" video, candidly talks about how she’s taken to driving an Uber car and renting out a room in her home, just so that she can continue teaching.
It’s an exciting week on the LaborPress Radio Show/Podcast. Tune into WWRL 1600 AM on Sunday morning at 11 a.m. for all this and lots more. Audio files are also available online at www.lainvasora.com, under “New York Voices.”
