The possibility that some UUPers may be paid less than other members because of their race or ethnicity is something the union takes very seriously.

Enter the UUP Task Force on Pay Equity Based on Race. The task force is charged with looking into whether such a situation exists. To accomplish that, task force members are working on a membership online survey that will provide them with enough data to begin its pay equity study.

The survey will be posted soon on UUP’s website at www.uupinfo.org. 

According to task force member Charles Callahan III, the project’s principal investigator, it’s critical that as many members as possible answer the survey to create a data pool large enough to allow it to begin testing to see if inequalities exist.

“Participation is the primary thing,”

he said. “We’re hoping people are willing to provide this crucial information so we can make reasonable inferences about the data we collect. We need a large enough sample of members to substantiate if there are inequities.”

Task force Chair Charles Hines added, “I see this survey as a tool and it’s a positive tool. I believe this information will help everyone.”

CONFIDENTIALITY ASSURED

Hines and Callahan said that personal information submitted in the survey—members’ names, specific job titles, and other references that would allow them to be identified—is strictly confidential and will be left out of the final report.

“Anything that might be construed as personal or private information is going to be written so that no one is identified,” Callahan said. “That level of detail will be protected.”

Last year, the task force distributed a trial questionnaire to several campuses, including UAlbany, Brockport and Stony Brook HSC, but only a small number of the questionnaires were returned. That’s partly because members were worried about being identified if they responded, Callahan said.

Hines	Callahan

HELPFUL DATA

The survey information may prove useful in other ways. “Depending on the findings, chapters may be able to use the data as a tool for retention and recruitment,” said Hines.

Plus, the information may be helpful in future UUP studies, Callahan said.

“We’re trying to build a comprehensive data set that can be used for more than one purpose to benefit the membership, and that’s important for people to know,” he said.

— Michael Lisi

As a businessman, UUP member Chris Scalzo knows a interesting opportunity when he sees one.

As a volunteer, he knows how good it feels to help.

So, when Scalzo, an associate professor of business and entrepreneurship at Morrisville, learned there were not-for-profit organizations that send professors and business professionals overseas to help grow businesses in developing nations, he investigated and offered his assistance.

That was two years ago.

In 2009, Scalzo traveled to Honduras with Winrock International, an Arkansas-based assistance program that sends volunteer experts to help sustain natural resources and increase economic opportunity all over the world.

In Honduras, he spent three weeks working with a consortium of 18 dairy farmers on cost analysis. That project won him the President’s Volunteer Service Award, a notable national honor given by the Obama administration that recognizes contributions volunteers are making in their communities.

KENYAN ADVENTURE

Scalzo was on the move again in summer 2010, heading to Kenya to volunteer his time working with a company called Soy Afric, which makes and sells soy flour and soy meal in Kenya and to the United Nations for emergency food relief programs. This time, he traveled with CNFA, a nonpartisan, non-profit Washington, D.C.-based group dedicated to stimulating international economic growth by nurturing entrepreneurship and private enterprise.

It cost Scalzo nothing but his time to make the trips; airfare, hotel, meals and incidentals were covered by the agencies that sent him. But these weren’t sightseeing trips; in Kenya, Scalzo put in eight-hour days working with Soy Afric executives and department heads during the three weeks he spent there in May.

Before he left, Scalzo spent two months researching soy production and processing, knowing he would need the knowledge once he arrived in Kenya. The factory is located outside of Nairobi.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

“I want to change people’s lives,” said Scalzo. “I can make the world a better place and I can show my own kids and my students that there are opportunities out there in the world, if you look for them. They need to see what’s going on around us. Its companies like these that we’ll be competing with in the next 20 or 30 years.”

Once in Kenya, Scalzo met with department heads to get an idea of how Soy Afric does business and what the company’s goals are. Using his business expertise, Scalzo assessed the information and offered suggestions to redesign the plant’s layout. He also worked to help the company set up a new financial and accounting system.

“This is a company that’s growing and they want to employ people,” he said. “These people want you to help, they want our advice. They’re looking at what we can offer and they will take what you have.”

RETURN TRIP

Scalzo is planning a return trip to Kenya in May 2011 to put a marketing plan into place that will help the company break into new markets; the company is looking at expanding into 10 surrounding countries, including the Congo, Tanzania and Uganda.

He might not be going alone, though. He submitted a U.S. Department of Education grant proposal to cover costs for two Syracuse-area school administrators and a colleague at St. John Fisher College to make the trek.

“Where they are now, that’s where the U.S. was in the 1930s,” said Scalzo of businesses in Kenya and Africa. “You’re looking at a group of people in Kenya who lift and unload 25-pound sacks of soy flour by hand, and these guys run. They’ll close that 80-year gap in 20 to 30 years.”

While Scalzo is disappointed that there wasn’t funding to bring students with him to Kenya or Honduras, his trips will result in some key teaching moments.

“These are real-life scenarios they will run into,” he said. “They can learn so much from these real-life situations.”

Scalzo certainly did. He’s learned a lot about life in Kenya, and the strong work ethic of the people there. Helping Soy Afric grow and succeed was far more rewarding than he ever thought it would be.

“These experiences were incredible,” he said. “I was a person who went with no expectations and got great adventures and experiences.”

—    Michael Lisi

Morris “Whitey” Passoff couldn’t believe his eyes.

The 15-year-old copy boy for the New York World watched in horror as Triangle Shirtwaist Co. employees, most of them young women and teenage girls, climbed out windows and stood in groups of twos and threes on the thin ledges outside the upper floors of the blazing Asch Building.

Then they jumped.

Some held hands as they leaped, their long dresses flapping and tresses whipped by the wind before thudding the pavement below. They fell eight, nine, ten stories, choosing instant death over dying in the inferno that killed 146 workers—many of them female Jewish and Italian immigrants—on a sunny Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911.

“When my father got there, the fire was going full blast. He couldn’t turn away. Those kids jumping out the windows, it was a memory he never forgot,” said UUP retiree member Judy Wishnia, Passoff’s daughter, whose dad told her the story when she was a child. “He said it was like watching angels dropping.”

Unions have never forgotten these fallen workers, whose deaths led to sweeping workplace reforms and a huge boost for the fledgling labor movement. In March, labor across America will pay tribute as they mark the 100th anniversary of the Triangle fire.

A March 25 memorial will be held at the Asch building in Manhattan by Workers United, which includes former members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), which ceased after a 1995 merger. The ILGWU, a key player in labor history in the early 20th century, counted a number of Triangle employees as members.

In Albany, UUP, NYSUT, and other unions will take part in a Triangle memorial at the New York State Museum. The names of the deceased will be read at both events.

FIRE!

No one knows how the Triangle factory caught fire; the fire marshal blamed it on a lit cigarette tossed in a scrap fabric bin under a cutter’s table.

The horror began around closing time, at 4:45 p.m. That’s when worker Eva Harris screamed to factory manager Samuel Bernstein and pointed to smoke in a corner of the eighth floor. Bernstein tried to turn a hose on the flames, but it didn’t work. Workers doused the fire with buckets of water, but the blaze was already raging.

An eighth floor bookkeeper who phoned 10th floor employees about the fire couldn’t reach the ninth floor, which lacked fire alarms. One of the two exits on that floor was bolted shut; management locked workers in so they wouldn’t steal. Dozens of employees were able to scramble out the second exit, which led to the roof. But fire blocked it minutes later.

Terrified workers jammed into two freight elevators, which only held 12 people at a time. The elevator operators saved dozens of lives before the fire—and the bodies of workers who jumped down the shafts in a desperate attempt to escape—ground them to a halt.

The flimsy fire escape twisted and snapped under the fire’s heat and the crush of workers clinging to it, sending victims spiraling to a concrete courtyard more than 100 feet below. The fire department’s ladder trucks were useless; they only reached the sixth floor.

It was over in 30 minutes, but by then, nearly 150 workers had perished. Of those, 54 died by jumping; their bodies lay in piles on the street as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze. Ironically, the building itself was fireproof.

“It was for that generation as traumatic I suppose as the World Trade Center disaster was for us,” David Von Drehle, author of “Triangle: The Fire that Changed America,” in a 2003 National Public Radio interview. “It was a beautiful spring afternoon in the middle of bustling Manhattan and hundreds, then thousands, of people gathered to watch this fire burn through this factory and see these jumping and falling bodies.”

JOIN A UNION!

The Triangle blaze sparked intense interest in unions, which saw a sudden upsurge in membership after the tragedy; workers flocked to join the ILGWU and its fight for worker safety reforms and better conditions for factory laborers.

 And join they did. The ILGWU’s ranks swelled from 2,200 in 1904 to 58,400 by 1912, according to The Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor by J.C. Docherty. The Triangle fire and large-scale strikes like the Uprising of 20,000 in 1909-10 were major catalysts. More than 120,000 marched in a funeral procession for the fire victims in a citywide day of mourning called by the ILGWU.

“The fire certainly called attention to what unions had been fighting for and was vindication of what unions were talking about,” said UUPer Ivan Steen, a UAlbany history professor. “After this event, the public saw that the unions were right, there was a problem.”

“The garment industry was an immigrant industry by and large and most people didn’t understand what unions did,” said Edgar Romney, secretary-treasurer for Workers United and a longtime ILGWU member. “The fire propelled unions’ growth as the public realized there was a need for safety measures for these workers.”

UNSAFE WORKPLACE

As workers joined unions in droves, an outraged public demanded action to improve unsafe workplace conditions. In June, 1911, the Factory Investigating Commission was created; union leader Samuel Gompers was a commissioner and Frances Perkins—who became U.S. Secretary of Labor—also served. The committee spurred more than 30 new workplace safety laws, including the installation of automatic sprinklers, lighted exit signs, fire walls, fire extinguishers and fire alarms in factories. Also ordered: building inspections, and proper lighting, ventilation and cleanliness in factories.

“There were other workplace tragedies, but the Triangle fire led to major health and safety reforms,” said Paul Cole, executive director of the Albany-based American Labor Studies Center.

Those reforms were a pipe dream for workers in sweatshops like the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. where employees toiled 12 hours a day, six days a week and were paid between $3 and $20 weekly, depending on their expertise and experience.

 “The Triangle Shirtwaist fire stands out because of the innocence of the people who were killed, they were mostly female victims, and employer disregard led to their deaths,” said UUPer David Cingranelli, a political science professor at Binghamton University. “Most workplace atrocities happened out of view, but this happened in the middle of a big city in front of thousands.”

Perkins was one of those onlookers; the Triangle fire fueled her strong support for workers’ rights. As labor secretary, Perkins wrote New Deal legislation and was instrumental in bringing about landmark worker reforms such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Social Security Act in the 1930s.

SAFETY FIRST

While the Triangle fire sparked New York’s upgraded safety standards, it took decades for the rest of the nation to catch up. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Act—which had firm union backing— wasn’t enacted until 1970. Labor has been at the fore of workers’ rights, and those gains may not have occurred without labor’s push.

 “If you don’t have a union, it’s hard to insist on safety in your workplace,” Cingranelli said.

And history repeats itself, like it did in December 2010, when 26 workers died and more than 100 were injured in a blaze on the ninth floor of a Bangladesh garment factory. Many of the workers jumped to their deaths; the exits to that factory were locked by management, to keep workers from stealing.

 “Things haven’t changed that much,” said Wishnia. “If it wasn’t for unions, there would be no worker safety at all.”

— Michael Lisi

An atmosphere of intense focus and 10-hour days helped shape UUP’s priorities for contract negotiations with the state, as members of the union’s Negotiations Team and Negotiations Committee met for three days in January to review and assess members’ comments collected over the last several months.

“The individuals who have volunteered to serve on the Negotiations Team and Committee share a strong sense of purpose,” said Chief Negotiator Jamie Dangler of Cortland. “They were extremely hard-working and productive in their commitment to clarify and prioritize the issues of greatest concern to their colleagues.”

The Jan. 18-20 work session in Rye brought together a group as diverse as UUP’s membership, with academic, professional, part-time and full-time employees from all campus types and chapters represented. Before the three-day session was over, dozens of posters lined the walls, each one summarizing priorities identified by seven subcommittees charged with going over members’ input on specific terms and conditions of employment.

The work session included a presentation by NYSUT/UUP Labor Relations Specialist Ed Giblin on mandatory, non-mandatory and prohibited subjects of negotiations.

“Before the Team and Committee could be expected to thoroughly review and discuss the data, they needed to be clear about exactly what UUP can address at the table,” Dangler said.

“It was extremely helpful to have the expertise of a labor relations specialist go over the rules and regulations of collective bargaining.”

MEMBERS’ COMMENTS COUNT

The seven subcommittees drew on a number of resources in assessing members’ concerns. Throughout the fall, members of the Negotiations Team embarked on a dedicated listening tour of every chapter in the state, where they heard members’ questions and opinions during chapter meetings. Information was also collected through task force and committee reports, during an open hearing at the 2010 Fall Delegate Assembly, and in face-to-face talks with members.

The subcommittees also studied the results of a comprehensive online negotiations survey and member suggestions forms.

“This was the first time UUP used hard-copy and electronic member suggestion forms,” said Associate Chief Negotiator Mike Smiles of Farmingdale. “This greatly increased the number of responses.”

The union’s Ad Hoc Advisory Committee, which consists of one professional and one academic from every UUP chapter, also gathered information. Ad hoc members came up with a variety of ways to encourage colleagues at their chapters to share ideas, concerns and anecdotes regarding salary and other terms and conditions of employment. Among them: questionnaires, special department rep meetings, and focus groups.

Negotiations Committee member Carol Braund is confident that members’ voices were heard.

“I was very impressed by the process. The survey and member suggestion forms gave individuals a chance to say what they felt was important—and the privacy to know that it could be returned without identification,” said Braund, UUP chapter president at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. “It definitely met my expectations in terms of encouraging people to be involved and sharing their thoughts.”

GETTING IT DONE

Armed with members’ comments and tabulated results from the negotiations survey, subcommittee members hunkered down with the paperwork and quietly went about categorizing the comments and rating the frequency of concerns. Each group summarized their issues and made oral presentations to the full group.

“Our group worked well together,” said Lori Nash of Oswego, the academic part-time representative on the Negotiations Committee. “We quickly agreed on how we would approach the work we had to do. There was a lot of agreement about the issues that were in the member input, so everything moved along quite smoothly.”

What’s next in the process? The Negotiations Team has a full schedule of meetings in February and March to prepare specific language for the package of proposals that will be presented to the state and to proceed with other preparations for negotiations. The Negotiations Committee must accept the conceptual proposals before the Team can sit down to bargain.

There is no time frame for when the two sides will meet to exchange proposals. Gov. Andrew Cuomo must first put a negotiations team in place. The contracts of the state’s two largest unions—Civil Service Employees Association and Public Employees Federation—expire April 1. UUP’s contract expires July 1.

“We are unsure as to when we’ll sit down with the state,” Dangler said. “But we are sure of one thing. When we do sit down, we’ll be ready to negotiate a contract that best reflects the needs of our members.”

— Karen L. Mattison

Labor Relations Specialist Susan Bloom Jones has been promoted to NYSUT/UUP director of staff. She replaces Martin Coffey, who retired in February after 19 years of service to NYSUT and UUP.

“Susan has done a tremendous job for UUP as a labor relations specialist, and we are confident that she will continue to serve our members well as director of staff,” said UUP President Phil Smith.

Prior to being named director of staff, Jones served since 1998 as a labor relations specialist assigned to UUP chapters at New Paltz, Maritime, Purchase and Optometry. She began as a labor relations specialist in 1989, assigned to NYSUT K-12 locals in the Elmsford-Tarrytown region. Before that, she worked in NYSUT’s Office of General Counsel in New York City, where she handled litigation matters, hearings and appeals.

— Karen L. Mattison

Mark Agnello, a graduate student at UAlbany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, was hired in January as a John M. Reilly legislative intern. He joins intern Matt Annis to help handle UUP’s political action and outreach efforts.

Agnello is working 20 hours a week tracking proposed legislation, researching and analyzing issues for potential legislation, arranging visits to lawmakers’ offices, and handling other duties associated with the union’s Legislation Department.

Agnello is pursuing a master’s degree in public adminis-tration, with concentrations in homeland security and public finance. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history, with a minor in political science, from UAlbany. He spent his junior year at the University of Nottingham in England, completing coursework in international political and security studies.

Prior to joining UUP, Agnello was a planning intern with the state Office of Emergency Management. Before that, he was a field operations clerk for the U.S. Census Bureau, and an intern for U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer.

“Mark has proven himself as an asset to UUP’s legislative efforts, which comes as no surprise considering his personal and professional experiences,” said UUP Secretary Eileen Landy, who heads the Legislation Department.

The internship is named in honor of John Reilly, UUP’s president from 1987-1993.

— Karen L. Mattison