Help A Fellow Worker (text version) -Forwarded (fwd)

[Chegitz Guevara <mluziett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marc, "the Chegitz," Luzietti
personal homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett
political homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett/chegitz.html

"I just saved your fucking life Mom," YT said, "the least you could is to
offer me an Oreo."

Neal Stephenson's, "Snow Crash."

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 15 Jan 1996 14:40:20
From: RLBuntin@xxxxxxx
To: Recipients of conference <iww-news@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Help A Fellow Worker (text version) -Forwarded

From: RLBuntin@xxxxxxx (RLBuntin)
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 19 96:98
Subject: Help A Fellow Worker (text version) -Forwarded

I believe this is the message that was previously sent with an attachment full
of code.  This one has letters for humans to understand.

Rob
*** ASCII enclosure follows.  Original filename: MESSAGE
---------------
Dear Friends: I wanted to send all working class movements online
information about this case, which I have written below. Please share it
with other lists that you may belong to. We cannot allow this sort of thing
to go on, and we must give serious material aid to this fellow worker.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin


        COMPANY TERRORISM AGAINST BLACK WORKER?
        by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

Ralph Williams is a city bus driver for the Chattanooga Area Regional
Transportation Authority [CARTA] in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  He has been
employed for the bus company for almost ten years, and in that time has seen
all kinds of racial discrimination, both in hiring and disciplinary
practices. He has also seen every Black worker who spoke out against company
policies harrassed and fired. In fact, the conditions for Black workers are
so bad that the Black workers call CARTA "the plantation" and chafe at being
treated as nothing but slaves. However,  in 1993 all this began to change
when a Black worker, James Jones, who was fired because of his wife's civil
right activism, would'nt take his dismissal lying down and filed a
discrimination complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
This was apparently the first such complaint filed, and it shook up the
company and its racially biased management.

Jones then began to encourage other CARTA employees to complain about the
many cases of racial discrimination and to take their cases to court. Ralph
williams was one of those employees who did so. He had already filed a
compaliant with a city "Human Rights" agency, and this simple act of filing
a grievance outside the company earned him the eternal hatred of the CARTA
management. They then targeted him for harassment and job termination, on
one occasion they said to his face that they would fire him "just like James
Jones". However this threat of termination did not intimidate Ralph, and he
then filed an EEOC case of his own, and although the local agency took no
action because of "political reasons" [the company was protected by the
then-U.S. Congresswoman Marilyn Lloyd and other local politicians]. Ralph
began to keep a daily journal of all the acts of managment harassment
against him and send it to EEOC and other agencies as proof of illegal
retaliation, which is a federal adminsitrative charge itself in EEOC cases.
But again, nothing was done to protect him.

So in addition to the complaint with the EEOC, in 1994 Ralph also filed a
federal civil rights lawsuit against the company for discrimination and
harassment. In return, the company began to follow him on his routes, scream
at him over the two way radio, and file a series of bogus disciplinary
reports which caused him to lose a number of days off and pay hours. They
hoped to pressure him to give up, and resign from his job, or to pad his
record with false reports which would justify his firing. Failing that, they
hoped to drive him to a nervous breakdown, so the company could force a
medical pension down his throat. None of that worked however, and Ralph
continuted to report for duty each day without fail--and with a smile on his
face! Company officials were extremely frustrated because they had never had
anyone fight them so hard, and yet remain so cool in the face of their
outrageous daily provocations.

But Ralph held on for years, and he then began to organize on the job. He
got other workers to also file complaints when they were mistreated,
including a number of Black women subjected to sexual pressure from the
corrupt union president and a company vice president. He enlisted a number
of labor-based groups, such as the Workers Solidarity Alliance, IWW, Black
Workers Organizing Project, as well as labor and civil rights groups all
over the country to write complaint letters. And it did stop the severity of
the harassment for a while, but then management got desperate to stop this
on the job unity, and really bore down on anyone who stood up. Some people
unfortunately folded and went into a shell, and some sold out entirely. Even
though the harassment by the company wore the women down and they dropped
their EEOC charges, Ralph never waivered. In 1995 he and a group of Black
passengers, organized as the "Chattanaooga Bus Riders Union", filed a
complaint with the federal Department of Transportation, alleging that the
Bus company was engaged in racial discrimination in its employment and
disciplinary practices,  its neighborhood routing, and its overall
operations, and the complaint asked that all federal grants be terminated
that were earmarked for the company, pursuant to Title VI of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. Later, after the DOT failed to act, the Bus Riders Union
and several CARTA employees filed a lawsuit in federal court charging these
same issues, but also also seeking a court injunction against a proposed
$.25 fare hike which they said would hurt poor and elderly riders. This
really marked Ralph for harassment by management, and he was given a number
of bogus disciplinary reports, along with numerous days off without pay, and
told that if he did "anything else" against company rules he would be
summarily fired.

Even in the face of this threat, Ralph continued to organize. He filed a
complaint for unfair labor practices against the company and its lapdog
union local, 1212 of the Amalgamated Transit Union with the National Labor
Relations Board, and filed another lawsuit over the harrassment. Seeing that
they would never stop him by *legal* means, someone sympathetic to the
company decided to use outright terrorism to shut him up. In the early
morning hours of January 5, 1996, an arsonist spread gasoline on his front
porch and set the house on fire, literally burning it down to the ground.
Fortunately Ralph was not there that night or he might have been killed in
his bed. An arson investigator from the city fire department , who came to
inspect the damage from the fire the next morning, told him it was
definitely arson. He asked Ralph who it was he "had made so mad?" In reply,
Ralph told him "only those clowns I work for". Even though it was clear that
the fire was the work of hired arsonists, designed to intimidate him from
excercising his rights to organize a union and to petition the courts with a
lawsuit, the local cops and FBI refused to investigate. In that small town
the cops tend to cover up for the dirty work of prominent citizens, killer
cops, and major corporations esp. when it comes to the rights of Black
people. In that racist town, Black people have no rights that white people
are bound to respect.

Of course, Ralph does not know who actually committed the fire, but he knows
who had a motive: his employers at CARTA and the company labor union. Ralph
has lost everthing he materially owned, but he continues to fight on even in
the face of new threats to his life. He wants to install a new union and
drive out the corrupt union officials, so a real union would bring an end to
these types of injustices against workers. Ralph is very strong, but the
truth is that he should not have to fight alone, everyone of us who believes
in racial justice, and that a worker has a right to organize and protest
company misconduct on his job, should join in his solitary fight. Many
workers in Chattanooga are even more frightened now to say anything because
of this act of terrorism, but we don't have to be afraid. Clearly he needs
our help, and we should give it to him. The terrorists cannot be allowed to
succeed in silencing this symbol of the best that unionism is all about. If
he is crushed the workforce has no hope there at all.

                        WHAT CAN YOU DO?

1.  Write, fax, or telephone a complaint to CARTA company management to
protest this harassment of Ralph Williams and other Black/female workers.
Send these complaints to the head of the company and to the union at the
same address:

        Tom Dugan, CEO
        CARTA
        1716 Wilcox Avenue
        Chattanooga, TN. 37404
        Tel: 615/629-1411  or 615/698-2749 (fax)

2. All of Ralph's furniture, food and clothing, along with his word
processor and papers were destroyed in the fire, and must be replaced. Send
funds to Ralph Wills at: Workers Aid Fund, c/o Atlanta WSA, 673 Wylie St.,
SE, Atlanta, GA. 30316-1162.  Please send all funds in U.S. currency only.

3. Write to Ralph and tell him you stand with him in this firght, send
copies of your protest letters to:

        Ralph Williams
        2506 E. 3rd Street
        Chattanooga, TN. 37404

LET'S TAKE A STAND AGAINST RACISM AND THE HARASSMENT OF WORKERS!!!









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