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Good evening and welcome to GBH journal I need the sands tonight Greg Fitzgerald profiles a new Labor Management Group which is stepping in to police and firefighter strikes around the state. Phyllis Schlafly and Karen to crow debate the E.R. at Ford hall forum former mental patient Judi Chamberlin argues against psychiatry and for patient controlled crisis centers. And finally Louis Lyons analyzes the political in-fighting around next year's presidential primaries. We'll have all of that right after the local news. Harvard University president Derek back says the university policy and shareholdings of South African stock will not be affected by recent Brandeis move. Last Friday Brandeis announced a decision to divest itself of a three hundred and fifty thousand dollar holdings in Ford Motor Company Benz because the school found that the company's business dealings in South Africa supported apartheid. Bach in an interview last night told the Boston Globe that the university will not change its policy of using shareholder resolutions to try to affect change in companies doing business with apartheid regime in South Africa. Bach said he thought it was unrealistic to expect Harvard to
review its policy from scratch each year. The city of Boston today withdrew its court case attempting to block the sale of portraits of George and Martha Washington. The legal action took place after the Boston Athenaeum postponed the 5 million dollar sale of the Gilbert Stuart paintings to the Smithsonian Institution. City lawyers had contended that the Athenaeum could not sell the portraits because part of the money used to buy them was raised by public subscription although the library denies the argument officials for the library today said they would not sell the paintings without informing the state attorney general and allowing the courts to settle legal issues involved. Meanwhile a fundraising drive is underway to keep the paintings at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where they have been on loan for more than a century. A bill that would require nonsmoking sections in certain restaurants airports clinics and doctor's offices has won initial approval in the Massachusetts Senate. The legislation expands some existing restrictions on smoking in public places and requires restaurants which seat more than 200 customers to set aside a section for nonsmokers. That provision would affect about 9
percent of the state's restaurants. Under the law airports and health care facilities will be required to provide nonsmoking sections and smoking would be banned entirely on school buses. A water town selectman was chosen today as commissioner of the Metropolitan District Commission guy Carbone who has been a lawyer with the Department of Labor and Industries and who was chief of engineering and construction in the development of State Building and government center was named today by Governor King to head the MDC post King's initial choice John Haggerty resigned six weeks ago following a barrage of public criticism and that the local news. Labor disputes between municipal workers and city and town governments have been a relatively
common occurrence during the past year strikes by fire and police departments across the country have often brought to light bitter struggles between worker and boss in Massachusetts. Those municipal labor disputes often never reach the front page status simply because they're usually settled early in the negotiating stage. That's due in part to a relatively new Mediation and Arbitration Committee which was created by the legislature 18 months ago. Greg Fitzgerald prepared this profile of the Massachusetts joint management labor committee several years ago the legislature enacted a law which provided for binding arbitration to be used when city and town workers had reached an impasse with municipal negotiators as the principle of binding arbitration began to be used in more labor disputes. A number of municipal governments began to see the effects of the process working against them. You know civil unions were doing well under this system. The taxpayers groups were unhappy with the result and intensive campaign against binding arbitration was initiated in the legislature and came close to overturning the law. A compromise was struck during that campaign however which
saw the birth of the joint management labor committee without a compromise binding arbitration would probably have been overturned with the compromise binding arbitration remains with the joint committee is used as a buffer before an operator implements the last best offer process. The joint committee is composed of 13 members headed by John Dunlop former secretary of labor. The remainder is made up of three police officers three firefighters and six municipal management representatives. The committee can be used in a number of ways as an informal advisory group as a mediator and in a number of cases when a middle ground can't be found as an operator. As a professional labor management Mediation Service the committee can offer both unions and city managers and education in the art of negotiating. Since most politicians don't seek office to become negotiators this service has been a useful tool for the management side and for small municipal unions with inexperience to go she added. The service has also served Labor's interests. Bob Curley is a management staff person on the committee and Casey
it Miyazaki is the research director I spoke to them both recently about the unique problems of municipal labor relations. Most of the training in labor relations since 1935 has been the private sector. In the private sector has a profit motive in the collective body in the public sector is an extension of the political process. You have to deal with certain political problems and I present in private sector negotiations. OK well people talking the selectmen or Finance Committee mends what we call in run by getting all our political power in a community the firefighters represent a certain amount number of loads or are somebody who is an elected office doesn't automatically mean he's a labor relations expert he may not know much about it. You also have decisions that are made on on a political judgment such as how much can we afford to Shia that's not based on a project manager and that's based on a political judgement which one makes by talking to the constituents in the community and how well off the community is at that given time what the cost of living is and those kinds of things and all those elements blended in to make for a political
process to do isn't present in the private sector. It seems in most kinds of labor just the biggest element that can. Bring along a successful mediation is trust how do you go in and build up some kind of a trust. To pretty well probably. Back to the policeman relates well as another policeman here. The fact that he's a policeman in another community sharing the same kinds of problems in the same working conditions makes it makes for the trust of the same would be true of a management official if you are on a finance committee in another town you have some empathy for the problems of other Finance Committee members and this is this place bring the leadership to bear on labor relations problems as been the success of the committee. How does the committee work in terms of you know there are some kind of an advocacy situation you're a management staff person as a labor staff person how does that whole operation work. What really should be advocated is the ability of both parties to find that settlement in which they can live together comfortably or as comfortably as you know given financial
environment. Well well. Given that sort of definition of advocacy I think both parties have been able to come to a mutual understanding that says we advocate settlement the most highly skilled job is when it is mediation. And oftentimes a technique in mediation Machiavelli's is to get the other side to both sides to direct their anger towards the neutral and away from themselves. And oftentimes it's a very effective method. Best of all possible worlds is to have both sides go away happy. Then you know you've really done your job. But more often than not the case is that both both sides may go away unhappy. That stage you still know you've done your job. Neither party got everything they wanted but that's just the nature of the dispute. Bob Curley and Casey Anthony ask the joint management labor committee a state funded Mediation Service which has got involved in 89 municipal labor disputes since
its beginning one year ago. Most of them have been settled. The legislature is due to vote on the continuation of funding for the committee. Its fate is presently before a joint conference committee which is expected to report favorably on refunding the committee for GBH Journal. I'm Greg Fitzgerald. Two arch rivals on the issue of the Equal Rights Amendment met face to face last night at Northeastern University as part of the Ford hall forum lecture series. Phyllis Schlafly a leading
conservative opponent to the amendment and Karen to crow a former president of the National Organization for Women presented the traditional arguments for and against the passage of what would be the twenty seventh amendment to the United States Constitution. Thirty five of the 38 states needed have voted for the amendment so far and an extension of the ratification deadline was recently passed to allow an additional three years for passage Schlafly opened with an attack on the unfairness of the extended deadline. But the debate quickly shifted to focus on the legal necessity for the right we hear first from Schlafly and then Karen to crow. First of all a RIAA won't change any parts of the Constitution itself. The cost of tuition itself is one of the most beautiful sex neutral documents ever written. It doesn't talk about men and women. The Great United States Constitution talks about persons and services and inhabitants and residents and electors and presidents and vice presidents and senators and representatives and ambassadors and all those words that equally apply to males and
females. Now some people are upset because it uses the pronoun he. But in any event all the nouns in the Constitution are six equal and E R A will not change that. Look at the employment law it's our employment laws are already sex equal the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination in hiring in pay and in in promotions and it sets up a very aggressive federal enforcement agency called the Equal Employment Opportunity agency. E r a. It will not add anything to women's employment rights. If you're among those who thought E.R. a had something to do with equal pay for equal work it simply doesn't. There is no provision of the employment law that is sex discriminatory. Now you may know some problems in employment but you just please distinguish between the law itself and enforceable. All laws are not perfectly obey. We have laws against murder murder still take
place. I do not believe that if we added another constitutional amendment saying you can't murder that that would solve the crime problem. You have the law and then you have unfortunately now our employment laws are sex neutral and ERISA will not do anything at all for women in the field of employment. Women in the United States do not have legal equality and there is only one way to get legal equality. For women in the United States and that is to pass a federal Equal Rights Amendment. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Who could object to that. There are thousands of laws state laws and federal laws which discriminate on the basis of sex. Over a hundred sections of the United States Code for example that are federal law contain sex discrimination. The Equal Rights Amendment will not change the country overnight. It will not force men to change diapers. It will not force women to
play professional football. It will not end sexism it will end sexism under the law. Sexism under the law it will tell every judge it will tell every state legislator will tell every member of Congress that discrimination on the basis of sex is illegal is unconstitutional. The judges on the Supreme Court are holding back they are waiting for the equal rights of women to pass. The proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment say the decision on equality for women is not premature and is not unnecessary. We need the Equal Rights Amendment to protect women who work outside the home. Opponents of the amendment will tell you we have all the laws we need to get equality in employment. We have this vigorous EEOC. If this is true of a mail list your $12000 and a female about $6000 Yosi isn't so vigorous and Phyllis Schlafly at last night's Ford hall forum the entire debate can be heard on Sunday May
13th. A very big word in mental health these days it's deinstitutionalization all over Massachusetts plans are in the works to move mental patients out of huge state hospitals and into community based halfway houses. The institutionalization is generally regarded as the answer to the depersonalized mind deadening atmosphere of state hospitals. There is
a small and vocal group of people who vehemently disagree. They are ex mental patients members of groups like the mental patients Liberation Front here in Boston and the mental patients Association in Vancouver Canada who say that the problem lies not only with mental hospitals but in the very system of psychiatry itself. One of their number Judy Chamberlain has now written a starling an eye opening book arguing that what people in extreme emotional crisis need is not a psychiatrist but other people who have been through the same kind of emotional crisis. In the book called on our own she profiles an emotional crisis center entirely run by ex mental patients. She also says that even well-meaning staffers in mental hospitals where she herself spent five months are usually unhelpful because they view themselves as fundamentally healthy and the patients as fundamentally sick. Think that if you took all the people who work in mental institutions of various types who were sadists and got rid of them you wouldn't really have made much of a dent in the problem because mostly it's people who are very well meaning who go into this field which is for people like attendance not a particularly high paying field certainly
who go into it out of a motivation of gee I want to help people but who are then trained and processed through a system which teaches them to filter out all their human feelings like the nurse who was told Don't put your arm around somebody who just heard about a death in the family and is crying which is really filtering out of all your human reactions because if you met anyone whether a close friend or just an acquaintance who suddenly heard your wife or husband or whatever just died you could reach out to them put your arm around them understand if they're going to cry and so forth. You know it sounds like what you're saying that you need from staff because you know from staff is some kind of admission that they're human like you. You know when you're a patient you know and then they have doubts and fears and that they've they've gone through feelings like yours and instead you're being told again implicitly or explicitly you're being told you're having those feelings as indication of how different you are from me because I don't have those feelings in the women's movement I mean I think that really started the movement was when women got together
and realized that they all have the same feel that they'd all thought they were the only ones they had a feeling and that they were therefore crazy. So I guess what I'm hearing you say is that. The way that you start if you feel like you're going crazy the way that you can start to come through that is when someone else says yeah I know what you mean like well that's the same way that the women's movement got stored in through those same kinds of techniques as that is the way that the mental patients movement got started and you advocating patient alternatives. Could you just how do you how do those I know some exist you describe them in your book could you you know describe some of them you know how they work. OK let me describe the mental patients Association of Vancouver because that's the one that the has been doing it the longest the most successful and so forth was started by a small group of former patients who got together started a consciousness raising process just like the women's movement you know talking about their experiences recognizing what some of their real needs were that weren't being met through the system and decided that one of their biggest needs was to have a place where you could go.
And they started running a drop in center letting people know by word of mouth that it was available. They didn't go out and hire a psychiatrist or a director or mental health workers or anything like that. People would come there because they wanted to be around other people somebody would come there feeling very needy somebody else would be there to talk to them. That grew over a period of months they found out that some people wanted to sleep there all night because the place that they lived was so horrible. So from that grew the idea well we don't know don't just need a drop in center we need a residence. And it is run completely unstaffed bases they have they have jobs for example somebody has to come in in the morning and open up a drop in center and start the coffee and stuff like that. And the way you get to have a job is you're elected by the membership. But you know what about people's problems. You know if you. Well mostly because most of people's problems that that that people only other people only begin seeing when somebody starts standing in the corner or pulling the covers over their head or walking down the street singing or whatever. Coming from basic needs that aren't being filled in this is sighted people really have a lot of trouble getting help until their problems become
overwhelming. And if you get in there a lot earlier and just say you can come here because you feel lonely and you want somebody to talk to. You can come here because you're cold and you can come in here to get out of cold. You can come here and you could you want to have coffee the coffee is free. Then you begin to attack problems at the point where the person is feeling lonely and isolated and alone where do I go and what do I do when there's suddenly a place where you can go. It still seems almost utopian really simple to me. You know I mean I've been in a couple of mental hospitals in the people I see in there. They're not like in contact with reality now. I know a lot of it has to be drugs and what have you just that sensory deprivation of all you have to do all day is sit there and sort of think about where you're at your mind is all sort of be fuddled with drugs anyway and under you know taken away any person and put them in a sensory deprivation environment you know in a dark room with no sound and stuff like that people anybody will begin having what a Taurean visual hallucinations within anywhere between 12 and 72 hours. So a lot of it is just that and that's the only diversion people have sometimes is listening to their
voices and at this place members association there are a lot of people who come there who've been in hospitals for a long time and do things like sit around talk to their voices and I remember one woman who had been in a state like that for many years apparently but who at the point that I met her was just a very active person in the mental patients association very busy and stuff like that talking to this going after this other woman who was very busy talking to her voices and saying Now you just tell those voices to shut up. And it was experience it was it was advice coming out of her own experience because she had found eventually that she got a lot more done and a lot more satisfaction in her life by paying attention to things other than her own voices and here she was trying to pass that advice on to another woman who was trying to deal with the same problem and one which might make one more comment which is when you said sounds very utopian It does sound very utopian. And the only thing that I can say about that is that you look at a group like the mental patients Association which has been in existence for eight years and which is doing it and it works.
Judi Chamberlin X mental patient and author of the book on our own. It's a little hard to believe that a year from now the first presidential primaries will be taking place. But those politicians with White House ambitions are aware of the upcoming state primaries and apparently so are the hosting States right now in fact New Hampshire is competing to retain its traditional position of the first primary state. Louis Lyons has more weekend noes tells of plans in part to recall politicians to set their primary date forward to compete in publicity would no
Hampshire and the New Hampshire reaction to their push their primaries even Elya than its present Feb. 26 date to keep ahead of anybody Texas politicians are reported maneuvering to advance their date from May to Monch in the interest of Governor Connally. The Senate leader says an early test and knowing that sort of set the whole tone for the campaign the record of recent events would suggest rather that the latest campaign's California Oregon and New Jersey have been more decisive. But the prospect of the headliners to those early Mr. Tench in New Hampshire certainly make the candidates nervous even if the total is only a fragmented few. Governor Connally supporters want to see his name among the front runners early in the race. The same reason that brought a man named Crane from Illinois to New Hampshire to make sure he would not be overlooked. And that brought California's Governor Brown a Democrat to accept a Republican invitation to no Hampshire a tactic that seems to boomerang. The consensus of the recent
American assembly was that New Hampshire primary is not only overrated but tends to distort the American political scene. And the press was largely responsible for magnifying it. The political ad it is and the assembly agreed with the political scientists. In fact it's long been obvious to any of us yet even though we know it's a very synthetic test some kind of unconscious mosts it affects our view of the shape up of the campaign. The assembly regional primaries being encouraged to represent a broader base and national primaries such as some have proposed would be just too much. Been recent attempts to set up regional primaries. Some progress is reported to have been made to bring a number of Southern states to a single date an effort for a New England Primary found representatives of four states willing to bring it up in their legislatures. But the movement was blocked by the New Hampshire threaten to move its date a week ahead of any other. Of course New Hampshire commercial interests exploit the migration of hordes of
press and politicians to the hustings. Theoretically the political parties have rules about primaries but it's not considered good manners in politics to press or rule against a popular candidate. A state senator in Texas says it's kind of a tradition here in Texas when we have someone running for president to jigger the election laws in his favor. The present course could have a corrective effect both by keeping the New Hampshire news and rational perspective and by exposing its absurdity. But when the president himself is up there to be sure his name is on the guest list that makes it harder for the press to play it now. His detour to New Hampshire the day of his major speech to the publishers in New York gave occasion for a fresh pledge of political speculation. Some observers suggest that the British election Thursday will be a forecast of ours next year. The signs are that the Labor government will lose and that the Trudeau government in Canada will go down a little later.
The Carter administration appears to many to be in about as sore straits should all three governments fall a common cause would surely be a sign of inflation. They were incapacity to cope with it. The resulting strikes and the insecurity has brought their populations. Why British workers should expect a better deal from a Tory government is a riddle but no more ourselves than the public employee unions in Massachusetts voted for a governor who threaten to stop all increases in public spending. It's always been a political issue ever left that bad times hurt the party in power. Inflation certainly spells bad times. But Alfred Khan says the Teamsters contract is not a non-inflationary but still not a serious enough threat to guidelines to make an issue of it. He got the aluminum company to reduce an announced price rise from four cents a pound three and the Scott Paper Company to roll back announced increases. The president personally persuaded the Giants is robot company to yield on its rejection of guidelines. But this piecemeal retarding of some costs was spawned in the sensational upward
surge of the whole price structure the government had to announce last week. The president was at least candid in telling his New Hampshire town meeting that the rising inflation is bound to continue for some time. But the same day he concentrated his speech to national publishes to win support for the SALT treaty. His successes have been in foreign policy on Panama China the Middle East. Will these be cancelled by the failure to deal with inflation. But some see Condit's continued priority to foreign policy as possibly and at salvaging the 1980 election. The rationale is that Howard Baker would be the hottest Republican to beat as nearest the middle of the road as Senate majority leader. Baker is obliged to take positions. His coming out against assault of pay is just an attempt to appease supporters of the more conservative candidates who are all the rest. Reg and Crane Connelly and so for the sophisticated also suspect
Democratic Party motive in the O'Neill diversion to our own commentator Louis lines. That's GBH journal for this Monday evening producer for Tonight Show's Marcia Hertz and the engineer Bill busuk production assistants came from Becky Rourke on tomorrow night's show. We'll be hearing some rare interviews with inmates in Walpole strebel block temp. And so tune in then. My name is Amy sands. Have a good evening.
Series
WGBH Journal
Episode
Arbitration Committee
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-85n8q1rk
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Description
Series Description
WGBH Journal is a magazine featuring segments on local news and current events.
Created Date
1979-03-30
Genres
News
Magazine
Topics
News
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:16
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 79-0160-04-30-001 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
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Citations
Chicago: “WGBH Journal; Arbitration Committee,” 1979-03-30, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-85n8q1rk.
MLA: “WGBH Journal; Arbitration Committee.” 1979-03-30. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-85n8q1rk>.
APA: WGBH Journal; Arbitration Committee. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-85n8q1rk