|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
Hidden with code "Submitted as Feature" |
|
News :: Labor |
|
AFSCME 698 Holds Up the Show, Mainstream Media Buries the Story |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul Kotheimer
Email: herringb (nospam) prairienet.org (unverified!) |
09 Jul 2006
Modified: 03:41:40 PM |
|
UI Admin still stalling in negotiations with AFSCME 698. Workers picket Lincoln Hall renovation ceremony. Ceremony delayed by half-an-hour. President White comes out, shakes hands with AFSCME reps with lots of media swarming around. Where did the footage go? Down the memory hole? |
In a surprise lunch-hour picket on Friday, nearly 100 workers from American Federal State County and Municipal Employees Local (AFSCME) 698 disrupted a ceremony announcing the funding of renovations at UIUC's Lincoln Hall.
The group came out to the Quad chanting "Thank US, it's OUR pension!"--calling attention to the fact that the $3 million sum allocated for renovations at Lincoln Hall is to be juggled out of the state employee pension fund. They also chanted "FAIR CONTRACT NOW": Local 698 has been working under an expired contract for 11 months. Negotiations are stalled. The University's "best and final" offer is considered totally unacceptable by the membership.
Picketers marched around the presentation area, calling periodically for President White to "come on out." The start of the ceremony seemed to have been delayed in response to the picket. For half-an-hour or so, various well-dressed functionaries stood around doing not much of anything. An august-looking mahogany podium, flanked by the US flag and State flag of Illinois, stood vacant.
In an unusual event, at around 12:40PM, President White did in fact "come on out." He shook hands with an AFSCME picket organizer and with a member of the negotiating team. For three minutes or so, White seemed to be discussing the union's concerns face-to-face with AFSCME 698's representatives. At least ten media people, wielding pads and pens, cameras and microphones, gathered around President White and the AFSCME representatives.
Presumably, mainstream media from local television and print media were in attendance, along with a reporter from the Chicago who included the following, buried in the last paragraph:
"Before the news conference announcing the funding, about 70 university staff members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union formed a picket line at the building to call attention to stalled contract negotiations. White stopped to visit with the demonstrators, and they left before the news conference began."
If anyone can find any reference to this AFSCME event in the Champaign County corporate media, please post a link here... Otherwise we'll have to assume that, like the mysterious black monolith on the moon in <2001, A Space Odyssey,> "It seems to have been deliberately buried."
SOLIDARITY |
This work is in the public domain |
