Letters to the Editor
DC 37 Tries to Stifle Dissent

To the Editor:

Unfortunately, the utter mis-leadership of District Council 37 has so affected the behavior of all of its leaders at all levels that our shop stewards are not only not willing but they are unable to address issues that are facing their members. Rather, in order to squash any dissent, my shop steward in Local 384, Rita Gregory, called campus security and made a complaint that I was harassing her.

Now, I suppose harassment can be defined in a variety of manners, but I do admit that I called her to make sure that she was following up on the issues addressed in a chapter meeting.

The new management of Human Resources at City College has defined some of our jobs as "confidential," and therefore the workers in that category will no longer be given union protection. We asked our shop stewards to demand a meeting with college officials and explain that this was an unfair labor practice and that they should cease and desist.

We also asked that before the administration put in six transformers which will take up 16,000 square feet of library space, it do an environmental impact study. Not unreasonable. The response to this request was that the president of Local 384 knew about it. When she was going to get to it was anyone's guess. And since we still do not have a contract, I'm guessing it will be quite a while. We therefore drew up a petition to the president, Sandy Tucker, to demand that she deal with these most urgent issues.

Rather than encouraging this, my shop steward intimidated people into not signing and, in order to be certain that we did not create trouble, campus security was called.

What business does campus security have in internal union affairs except to quiet dissent and intimidate people further? It is no wonder that management has no respect for DC 37, knowing full well that it can get away with whatever it wishes because it will encounter no opposition from the union.

This unfortunately comes from the top. The culture of DC 37 is to play ball with management and discourage any attempt to create a union that encourages workers to stand up for themselves since there is little backing when we do so. All of the leaders from Lillian Roberts on down are guilty of corralling the members in order to continue their collusion with management and remain in their accustomed lifestyles.

The risk to workers, though, is very high. Not only will these workers who have been unilaterally reclassified be unprotected, but the union will lose dues, since they are no longer in the union. The leadership, once again, has demonstrated its unwillingness to fight and therefore has put the membership in jeopardy. It takes years to get a contract, and generally they don't keep up with inflation when we finally get one. But more importantly, the union itself is in jeopardy, since management can, at its whim take people out.

This should be a red flag to all unions, but sadly the leadership is too mired in its backstabbing behavior and in its desire to obtain large salaries and perks to make any changes. Therefore, the membership has to do so or we will all be even more vulnerable to management's whims - harkening back to the days before workers had unions at all.

CAROL LANG, Local 384