WGBH Journal; Strikes In Lynn; Worcester

Good evening I'm Greg Fitzgerald and this is GBH Journal. Tonight we'll look at a strike which has crippled the General Electric aircraft plant in Lynn. We'll explore a Boston Art weekend's local artist open up their galleries and their homes to the public. Two local producers have produced a series of reports on hunger which will air on Channel 2 in November. Hear about that series from its producer and reporter. And finally a discussion of the old and the new guard in Boston sports journalism. First a look at the news. GBH Journal learned this afternoon that inmates at Norfolk prison went back to work today in a show of good faith after prison superintendent Michael Phair agreed to one of their major demands this morning. Fehr agreed to stop searches of prisoners visitors including strip searches and pat down searches. Instead prisoners themselves will be searched after visiting sessions. The strike has lasted close to three months. Still to be negotiated are the inmates demands that families and friends be allowed to participate in prison rehabilitation programs. Demand demands for changes in the prison classification system and demands for the return of 27 inmate strike leaders who were transferred

out of the prison at the beginning of the strike. Harvard University Alumni yesterday threatened to undermine a major fund drive unless a faculty dispute is settled at the School of Public Health. Howard Hiatt dean of the School of Public Health urged the alumni not to dissuade potential donors from financially supporting the school. Hiatt said that money is needed to increase the number of tenured professor ships for student aid and to continue executive management programs. He added that it is more important to put the best interest of the school above all other considerations. The dispute focuses on the new direction the school will take in the immediate future under Hyatt's leadership specifically which departments will grow or be cut back and how much say the faculty will have in the decisions. Harvard president Derek Bok has repeatedly supported Hyatt. Challenges counter challenges and cries of unfair with the fair today in Massachusetts political news. Gubernatorial candidates King and hatch met yesterday for the first face to face confrontation

which had the appearance of an out and out political debate. Both men tried to justify their past performances. Kings as director of Massport in Hatch's state senator when property taxes were debated. HATCH accused king of talking Proposition 13 rhetoric while King responded saying he could funnel money back into the state by cutting ineligible persons off welfare rolls. Meanwhile Edward Brooke and Paul Tsongas still neck and neck in the Senate race agreed to face each other in a debate at the Kennedy School of Government Harvard later this month. The debate will probably be televised. Yesterday Democratic candidate King attacked the media for slanted coverage of his campaign. And today congressional candidate William Barr instead followed suit as he told the two reporters who gathered at his press conference that he doubts his chances of defeating House leader Tip O'Neill Banstead also announced the beginning of his campaign for the same congressional seat in 1980. A consumer group said today that more than half the complaints filed with the state insurance department of Massachusetts during the

first half of 1978 related to alleged failure by companies to fill out their contract contractual obligations. Jermoluk Shea president of the Association of Massachusetts consumers. So the complaints may well represent the tip of an iceberg Shae said Insurance Department statistics show more than 3000 out of fifty five hundred fifty two complaints involved alleged failure by companies to pay claims for property damage collision medical treatment or other auto related incidents. Strike by more than thirty five hundred General Electric aircraft engine employees continues in Lynn today as members of local Tulo one of the International Union of

electrical radio and machine workers support some 88 inspectors who walked off their assembly lines 10 days ago over a classification issue. According to union spokespersons inspectors rated R 20 a classification which now pays $6 97 cents an hour has been on the books since 1943. But recently General Electric has been using inspectors at a lower rate and accordingly paid lower to do the same work. Although this particular issue directly affects less than 3 percent of the aircraft employee's membership local to a one President Al Hamilton feels acceptance of a lower classification would severely threaten job security. Plant wide the broader issue is union members. It is today the inspectors tomorrow the entire workforce. Who's Next if you will. The inspectors historically think quite Krapp's when their responsibility is reliability performance standards. Making and ensuring that good pads I made

to these aircraft and they think like that and also where that goes the pride of possession of their high rated classification so they look at these. If it's if the company was real and the company has initiated the additions in the workforce of lower rated people who are encroaching upon the jobs of higher rated people to the point where the incumbents and I have made it work. I fear for what it portends. The complete elimination of their high rated work. The original 88 inspectors who had had enough. He felt that the company's office up to that date were nothing more than feeble attempts at watering the issue until we got into the holiday season and took a hike. And when the issue was explained to the remainder of the workforce they too saw it as an attempt piecemeal attempt if you will.

So we rode the rates of the higher classifications with a lower rate of people. What further complicated what began as a strike by only 88 members of the Union was a layoff of G.E. employees whose work required inspection by the striking inspectors an official of General Electric told me today that the layoff was required by the number of idled workers at the plant. But union president Hamilton said the layoff procedure was a more was more to intimidate the striking inspectors. But if intimidation was the goal it was not successful as last Thursday the inspectors and those affected by the layoffs rejected the company offer design to settle the grievance. Twenty four hours later the executive committee of the union voted to shut down the entire aircraft engine division pulling the remaining 3000 workers out of the Linn plant. General Electric would not comment on most matters of the G-III strike today but the Boston Globe last Friday published a statement issued by G.E. management which stated quote the companies and the union's negotiating committee have actually agreed on a solution that was

responsive to the concerned raised by the representatives of the AR 20 inspectors. The union leadership recommended this proposal to the employees affected. We feel that this issue has needlessly escalated into a very serious matter in our view the statement continued. The employees and the company would be better served if everyone were back at work while the parties continued to discuss the issue unquote. Again Union President Al Hamilton and interim operator had been made which the striking group found unacceptable. It is not abnormal abnormal in the labor relations for JI underestimate it completely. They owe atmosphere of dissatisfaction. Surrounding this kind of issue the issue arose in an area of the plant which historically has enjoyed better union management relations in other areas of the plant. So I underestimated the force of the union position if you will as represented by the support of the membership. The keystone of a

settlement will be cruel and clear delineation of work assignments between the two groups are 18 and 20. I think that's the keystone of any settlement before the resumption of work. But you're now is that we will not resume work while those things are examined or investigated. There is little certainty of how long this General Electric strike could last in land. G.E. is Len's largest employer and has been the case there historically that when that what's economically good for G.E. is good as well for Lent. The reverse is also true. Fortunately for the city the aircraft strike does not affect the forty five hundred members of Marine and industrial steam turbine division. Also inland. Another Labor conflict in the Bay State is now at an impasse. The members of Worcester is Amalgamated Transit workers have halted all public bus service in the state's second largest city for 10 weeks. There are roughly 26000 commuters in the Worcester area like this afternoon Walker spoke to federal mediator Thomas McNally

about today's negotiations. Two issues. And the economic. That's the amount of wage increase for the three for each of the three years as well as the cost of living to laws which is when the contract I see and what exactly happened today with the negotiations. Not a great deal. They have been the breakthrough predicted in the local papers here because there was a meeting of the board of the regional transit company with the union at the union's request last Monday and I quoted one of the officials as saying that they might be in change of position and along with my colleague Commissioner John Heatley. We held a meeting today and there was no change of position for me. And the complete impasse seems to be the same as it's been since August 4th. There is no change in the position.

The mediators feel that immediate meetings in the future would be fruitless. But we have impressed on both sides that we're very anxious to meet. If you don't want to ask for a meeting you have one just. From October 14th through October 22nd curious Art lovers will be able to take a look in the studios and homes in which Tardis do their work. The event is part of art week a week of activities sponsored by artist galleries in the mayor's office and includes communities in the Boston area. Apart from being able to look at artist work places special events are being planned by individual communities and for $2 you can buy a catalogue and map from the artist foundation to guard you on a tour of events.

Reporter Vivian Dukat spent this past Sunday visiting artist studios in Cambridge and some avail and prepared this report. Art Week was sponsored an engineered by the artists Foundation a nonprofit arts organization. The mayor's office and the various galleries museums and arts councils throughout the area according to coordinator Cura Montague. The main reason behind running such an event was to give newer artists a chance for badly needed exposure. The idea grew out of a workshop on marketing but the foundation had about a year ago. And they had gallery people and successful artists talking to whoever signed up for the workshop about what they ought to be doing to market themselves properly to get themselves an audience and sales and museum shows and fame and glory. And at the end of the whole program there was just an appalling reality that was presented which was that there wasn't a gallery in 10 who could handle

another new artist at this point practically. You know or to be fair to whoever they had already committed themselves to they simply couldn't tackle more people. So here is a room full of 50 people who had just been told that they should have perfect slides and beautifully packaged matted framed whatever when they went out. And of course everybody was interested in seeing them come in to go oris. But basically there was nowhere to go. So it was really partly a solution to that sense of depression that sparked the idea for me. While giving visitors a chance to observe how artists live and work according to Painter Nicholas Kilmer studio visits provide a great opportunity for artists to observe a public they rarely see. I think I've gotten so used to being in a studio myself that I don't realize how odd it is for some people to see the workplace.

It's hard for me to take myself away from the experience of what's coming. But I do see people coming in and looking with a great deal of interest at the labels in my paint. In the same way as you look at the ingredients of anything that gets cooked and it seems an obvious and sensible thing to do it's very pleasant to see and reconsider my work from that very sort of elementary point of view. I was interested in seeing artists in their working spaces which is pretty unusual you always see pieces of art put on to walls but you never have a sense of where the people are doing their work and how to be nice to find that out. Many of the people wandering through the studios were themselves artists and came for advice and techniques in various media. It's a lot of fun. We've been talking about where inspiration came from and technique for picking up cues on how to stretch canvasses different ways. It's been very enjoyable very informative. Then I like taking pictures now and see what they really like. Have people

taught you things. Like how to take a picture you know not not just yet think like so it looks good not just a plain picture so you get it right. I get the sense that some visitors however came for reasons that had little to do with art. If you can walk free. You're free to walk around any place you want. And besides all those things I'm just interested to see what people are doing in the neighborhood with a pretty cost here and I'm just interested to see what kind of stereo works coming in right around here. You know it's nice that you can see the stuff here and signed on rather than going to Boston or going to a gallery somewhere where there's nothing but galleries. Coordinator Cura Montague would like to see Art Week become a Boston tradition and perhaps more immediately she'd be happy of a few more artists could hang their work in a few more places. Hopefully it'll do few things it'll have exposed the work of a great

number of people. And so where interest really clusters will be clear and some gallery exhibitions have certainly been lined up as a consequence. Quite a few that I'm aware of and I hope the museum shows will come about also. And I think that because there are so many artists involved and partially because we've had a catalog and we've had enough time to tell people in other cities a bit about this and there may be follow up artists may find that they attract the attention of dealers in other parts of the country. Here Montagu coordinator of art week in Boston for GBH Journal Vivien ducat. For over a year now a producer and a reporter at the 10 o'clock news on WGBH TV Channel 2 have been preparing a report on the state of hunger in

Boston. Their conclusions will appear in the form of a five part series next month examines the social causes of hunger and malnutrition that affect infants runaway teenagers alcoholics the elderly and others who are stricken with poverty. David Freud broke spoke recently with the two who researched the series producer Ron Blau. And reporter Art Cohen the kind of hunger one finds in Boston is not generally starvation. There are people who starve but not many of them. So that if we look at hunger in Boston in the same terms which we use for what we think of as hunger you know in Bangladesh or in Africa will say oh well there's not a very severe problem. They're not people are not starving you don't go and see kids with bloated bellies walking the streets of Boston. That's just the first level and that's not the issue. There are people who are hungry there are thousands of people who are hungry. We heard on one estimate that says that

there are 25 to 40 thousand people in the Boston area who must struggle to eat. And of those 5000 to 8000 are severely hungry. Now those are rough estimates. Part of the reason they're rough is because we don't have a social system which can count the hungry people very well and that in itself is part of the problem people don't know who's hungry. One thing we can say is that it is sociate with poverty which is obvious in Boston is not a problem of famine or weather or harvests. It's a problem of poverty and that's what we ran into. Time and again people who have to trade the trade off between. Enough money for food and money for clothing enough money to heat their homes because NS won't meet. Also there are different constituencies of hungry people. There are street kids. One of the groups in fact the group that we deal with in the first segment who

are teenagers often runaways sometimes from middle class homes who are living on the street for one reason or another and literally don't know where their next meal is coming from. To some extent they live on the street by choice. They've left their home because of difficult conditions there perhaps so maybe it isn't choice but they don't know what else to do so they've left their homes and they're surviving on the streets some of them still. Admittedly these kids have very different problems from the old really hungry and have very different problems from infants who are hungry. And so there are different constituencies constituencies each with their own special problems that have to be dealt with differently. You know often that's not understood especially by government which tends to homogenise everything. One of the big constituencies of hunger in Boston is among the elderly they find themselves without a high income pinching pennies on government

relief programs. What is the scope of hunger among the elderly in Boston. I don't think anybody has an answer in terms of numbers. But it's it's large it's huge probably I mean there are vast numbers of elderly who live in the south and who live along with Fenway in a sense they've been abandoned by their families that's a strong word. But I think that it's a phenomena of at least this half of the 20th century that the families don't want to do with their or their parents and they put them away in nursing homes and then they just forget about them. There are people who would as I've heard rather starve than go on SSI Supplemental Security Income. They feel that after a lifetime of working it's a real and really embarrassing thing to go on the dole. And some of them I've heard just want. And so the people who are hungry out of out of pride. And it's really hard and

it's really hard to blame somebody for that. However it's a really unfortunate situation and systems which deal with elderly hungry know about that and will make sure they don't undercut their clients dignity for example we visited places in the south and united South and settlements. Harriet Tubman house there there's a lunch program every day and there's a 50 cent fee for the lunch. So anybody who goes there has a sense of paying for the meal. Well certainly the meal costs more than 50 cents to put together but it's not charity. It's surprising I guess. You know even when you're hungry and starving you will try to maintain some dignity. And there are men and women who are at one time or another very productive members of society and in most cases you do feel you know pretty good about their lives and now don't want to be shunted aside. They don't want to feel it taking charity. They want to feel that they are and in many

cases they still are capable to be productive and they're not allowed to be productive and so they starve. It is very sad it's one of the saddest things I think that we encountered. People need to begin to open up their eyes and see what's going on around them have some compassion for other people once in a while. One way to look forward will be on the 10 o'clock news the week of November 13th Monday through Friday of that week will be a five part series picking the problems of hunger in Boston talking with reporter Art Cohen and producer Ron Brown for the 10 o'clock news for GBH Journal. I'm David Friedberg. In what will undoubtedly be our last Red Sox story of this baseball season we

take a look now at some of the people who have been bringing us the baseball news for months to Boston sportswriters and sportscasters. A lot of behind the scenes politics seems to be going on there. That's the subject of this discussion between mark on a man who teaches sports history at Northeastern University and Sid Blumenthal a freelance writer covering sports and politics who was recently banned from the press box at Fenway Park. You've been banned from the press box at Fenway Park. Could you tell us a little bit how that came about why it happened. Well I've been banned from the press box for writing an article in Boston Magazine about the sports writers. In the article deals with the politics of the press box what happens with the boys who cover the boys of summer and apparently that offended a lot of the sports writers because they considered themselves off limits as a subject which is ironic since they require that the players personal lives be open to them at all times and

yet their sensitivity to what goes on within the press box seems to be very cute. Another Red Sox informed me that Joe Chalabi who writes for The Herald covers the Red Sox for the Herald American president of the Baseball Writers Association that I was no longer allowed in to the inner sanctum that I had been excluded. So the Boston Baseball Writers Association that controls the press box in a way. And they say who can come in and who cannot come in. That's right they have the ultimate jurisdiction although I think it's informal I don't know. I wonder about its legal basis. But the Red Sox are really the Red Sox organization really does not control who gets in. Let's talk for a second about these seemingly complex political structure with an old guard and a new guard in the difference between electronic and print media I guess the radio and television people have been told to sit on the left hand side of the press box and there seem to be camps there are schisms between the Globe and The Herald the young writers and the old writers and so on and I think it does affect the team.

And it doesn't affect the theme just because there are schisms. But because of the nature of the groups within those within those conflicts how what are the differences in the nature of the groups. Well the group that controls the Baseball Writers Association is very conservative consists mainly of the older writers the writers who have really been on the beat for a long time who and I think that the people from the Herald American have essentially exercised control of that group for years and have systematically excluded the people from the globe. They have a much closer relationship to the Red Sox organization and have had that over the years than the globe people which doesn't mean that the globe people don't get the stories. They've gone out and done stories on for instance the sale of the Red Sox team that the Herald never covered and partly I think that that's because of some Herald writers very close ties to the new ownership.

How does the old guard in the new guard line up on the question of women in the locker room is there a clear difference there. No I think that there's not a clear difference although it can be said that the old guard the conservative older sportswriter are unanimously opposed to it. Now you have women writers and I think that's the most deeply threatening in a in a way because it means that the press box is no longer a masculine preserve that you can no longer maintain the illusion that you're living some kind of sporting life. Above and beyond that of ordinary journalist that there's something very special about your own existence that is very closely tied to a masculine identity an exclusive club. Why exactly I think it's you know it's a fraternity of sorts that exists on the roof of Fenway Park. Well the press boxes will certainly be full tonight politics or no at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles for the sixth and possibly last game of the World Series. Well the Dodgers

have the edge tonight with being the home team the Yankees are riding on a three game winning streak and we all know how lethal that can be. And that is GBH journal for this Tuesday evening. The program is produced and directed by Marshall Hertz the engineer tonight Gary Carter. Production assistants for today's programs who was by news Walker Diane Slade and Becky Rourke. I'm Greg Fitzgerald. Have a pleasant evening.