Union Leaders Arrested at N.Y. University Rally

AFT vice president William Scheuerman was one of 76 unionists, including AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, who was handcuffed and led away from a rally at New York University on Aug. 31. They were arrested for blocking a college building in protest over union busting at the private university.

Part of more than 1,000 supporters gathered in solidarity, the demonstrators blasted the university administration’s refusal to negotiate a second contract with the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, the United Auto Workers’ affiliate that has represented NYU graduate employees since 2000. Last year, in a politically motivated ruling, the National Labor Relations Board reversed itself and said that graduate employees at private universities are students and therefore do not have the right to collective bargaining.

The rally drew supporters from all over the city and from as far away as the Midwest. First among them was the AFT’s Union of Clerical, Administrative and Technical Staff. “We’ve been helping the TAs since 1996,” says UCATS president Steve Rechner. “We used to be the university pariah until GSOC came along.”

In blunt language, Sweeney said he was there to express “pure anger and disgust” at the NYU administration. “Union busting is for corporate criminals who have no values, not for an educational institution.”

Scheuerman, president of the United University Professionals, spoke for many when he shouted this parting comment as he was led away: “We’ll be back!”

With a countless number of state employees victimized by a silent stalker at 25 Sigourney St. in Hartford, Conn., the Administrative & Residual Employees Union (A&R) has petitioned Gov. Jodi Rell to relocate the building’s more than 1,000 workers. From the AFT affiliate’s perspective, it’s a reasonable request.

The culprit: fungi, bacteria, dust and other allergens largely resulting from structural deficiencies that invited chronic water leaks. The building has a rap sheet dating back to 1995 when state workers started occupying the building—and started getting sick. A record of more than 30 studies, reports and inspections conducted by various authorities is posted on the Connecticut Department of Public Works (DPW) Web site. “This is the most studied building in the world, according to NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health),” says A&R president Mike Winkler.

A&R member Anna Crawford, who works for the Department of Revenue Services, one of the three state agencies occupying the building, says water leaks have been so pervasive that, during severe storms, employees have been told “not to turn their computers on because there’s standing water [on the floor] and they could get shocked.”

Private physicians as well as specialists at the University of Connecticut Health Center have substantiated the union’s charges that 25 Sigourney St. is a sick building. More than 200 workers are being treated for varying degrees of respiratory ailments and skin irritation, and a handful of members with doctors’ orders have been allowed to work from satellite locations.

Nevertheless, the state agencies involved, including DPW and the Department of Administrative Services, steadfastly refuse to vacate the building. Instead, the state has spent more than
$7 million on piecemeal remediation over the last several years.

Because there are no scientific standards for indoor mold and bacteria, state officials refuse to move workers out of the building, says Crawford.

Grace Garrison, a registered nurse with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York and before that, an emergency room hospital nurse, thought she had seen it all. But then came Hurricane Katrina. Garrison went to Montgomery, Ala., to volunteer with the Red Cross to help care for Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

“I’ve never, ever seen anything like this before. Nothing compares to this,” Garrison said after completing the first week of a two-week stint in late September.

Garrison is one of several United Federation of Teachers nurses and other health professionals who answered the call for medical assistance in the Gulf Coast region.

The needs of the evacuees were enormous, their stories disturbing, and the work overwhelming and emotionally trying, but Garrison says patients were appreciative. “I’ve never gotten so many hugs in my whole life,” she says. With a backpack of supplies provided by AFT Healthcare, Garrison ventured South and was assigned to a one-stop service facility in Montgomery for evacuees from New Orleans, Baton Rouge and elsewhere. She saw about 60 patients a day with a variety of problems, including missing glasses, dentures and medication; cuts; extremely high blood sugar and blood pressure; and stress-related ailments.

She recounted the story of a woman in her 60s who had been shuffled among five shelters in various cities. Once she arrived in Montgomery, she couldn’t find a place to stay and had no money for a hotel room, so she slept in the truck that she traveled in. “When I saw her, her blood sugar was in the 500s and her blood pressure was 240 over 100-something,” said Garrison.