WGBH Journal; U Mass Teachers Protest

It strikes and job actions are the rule in today's news. Teachers at both the Amherst and Boston campuses of the University of Massachusetts protested against their stalled contract talks and there were pickets in front of several of the state's community colleges. The Fall Rivers teachers strike however is over. Meanwhile down in Norfolk prison inmates are continuing their 11 week strike over visitor harassment and the Department of Corrections controversial classification system. And Louis lines will wrap up the show with a look at the issues behind that long long newspaper strike in New York City. You'll hear about all that right after the news. Speaking at the State House before the subcommittee on children in need of services Massachusetts Mental Health Commissioner Robert oaken reported that his department has not been able to provide services to the most troubled children in the Commonwealth. At a hearing held yesterday oaken placed part of the blame on lack of resources. Under further questioning however he later admitted that one state program was spending $100000 a year for each child in it. This program had only five children in it when it began. Initially all of whom have escaped or been transferred since then. Critics of the mental health departments services claim that the real problem was in the type of programs that the children were placed in.

Criticisms were also levied by Boston Juvenile Court Judge Francis Potter asked Patras said. I'm faced every day with a child who needs a particular type of psychiatric care and you can be pretty sure you're not going to get the service from mental health. Governor Dukakis has offered Massachusetts State Police a nine million dollar pay raise their first raise since 1973. DUKAKIS announced yesterday that the state was accepting a fact finders recommendation for the twenty six point six percent raise. However trooper Fred Gary arrow the president of the State Police Association says he does not know if the union will accept the governor's offer. CARIO indicated that the Police Association may wait for a better offer from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Edward Jay king if he is elected. King has indicated support for a better pay settlement than the one offered by the caucus that 9 million dollar pay hike would bring a state trooper's maximum base salary from twelve thousand seven hundred fifty six dollars to sixteen thousand one hundred fifty eight dollars by October nine hundred seventy nine. The raise would be retroactive to July 976. Cambridge property owners will be paying a

$9 and 30 cent rate increase on their property taxes for the next year. City manager James L. Sullivan who made the unexpected announcement to the City Council Monday night attributes the tax hike to escalating school costs. City officials claim a 2 million dollar rise in the school budget most going to raises for teachers and administrative personnel is the source of increased school costs in addition to school expenditures totaling $400000 created a deficit which has to be made up in 78 79 school budget. Barbara Ackerman former Cambridge mayor and unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor today endorsed Francis Hatch the Republican nominee for governor. Ackerman said she could not support the Democratic nominee for governor Edwin J King. She cited King's record as Mass Port director and the fact that quote He is promising a massive tax cut without being able to explain how. Unquote as the reasons for her disavowal of King's candidacy. It was announced today the state has received more than 4 million dollars in federal funds for community housing for the mentally ill and retarded. It will pay for an existing and a new state wide demonstration project in community

housing for mentally ill citizens. Finally the Boston Clamshell Alliance a splinter group of the Clamshell Alliance announced plans for another anti-nuclear demonstration this Saturday at the Seabrook nuclear power plant. A spokesperson for the Boston clamshell So the demonstration will include nonviolent civil disobedience. Some of the 200 demonstrators are anticipating arrest. Thomas RATH A New Hampshire attorney general has said that his department is letting local and state police handle the demonstration and past demonstrations National Guard and state police reinforcements were present at the site. Several hundred other persons are also expected at a legal noon rally near the construction site. The University of Massachusetts faced major label trouble labor troubles on two fronts today

after months of stalled negotiations on a contract for faculty and staff at the Amherst campus about one hundred fifty members of the faculty began an occupation of the chancellor's offices at the Wigmore administration building here in Boston. Both students and faculty boycotted classes for the first of a two day protest. Reporter David Freud has details. I'm very right. That was the assessment at a noontime rally held today on a plaza at the Columbia Pointe campus of UMass. Inside the classroom buildings most rooms and hallways were vacant as three fourths of the faculty called in sick or cancelled classes as part of the second job action this year staged by the faculty staff union. Since July of 977 that union which despite today's support represents only a third of the faculty has sought its first contract across the board salary increases at 2 and 1 1/2

percent for the first year have already been settled. At issue now are several procedural questions on which the UMass administration will no longer bargain. These include how to distribute a special pool of money reserved for awarding meritorious faculty and the process of hiring reviewing and firing both librarians and part time faculty who comprise 400 employees at UMass Boston on the merit pool and the treatment of librarians and part timers. The union wants those affected by such decisions to have a say. The administration says nothing doing. With non full time faculty now at the center of the dispute even union activist Bob Swartz was surprised at the wide support for today's action. We thought at first that it would be you know hard to get full time faculty members out to support part timers and librarians wasn't hired at all these are common issues there and they are issues that affect full time faculty as well. One of

the major issues has to do with retrenchment retrenchment is a situation that arises when there's a financial crisis and there have to be cutbacks at the university. That means that the jobs of full time faculty would be threatened. I want one of the things that we want written into our contract that is usually written into other higher education contracts. Here's a policy for retrenching that is if there is a genuine verified financial crisis we feel that and retrenchment is absolutely necessary. We feel that it has to be undertaken in an orderly orderly way and that they have to be priorities should non tenured faculty members be released first rather than tenured faculty members always issues have to be discussed. Management has refused to bargain on retrenchment policy they want complete control over what happens if there is a need for retrenchment. We have even asked that if there is a

declared financial crisis that we've been given an opportunity to verify that and that be written into the contract they refused to agree to that as well so that they want they want to be in the position of deciding when there's a financial crisis and deciding who gets fired first. We don't like that at all. That's a real threat to our full time faculty UMass philosophy department chairman Bob Swartz about 200 students joined faculty and staff at today's rally. An ad hoc committee had called a two day sympathy boycott of classes after collecting some fifteen hundred signatures on a petition of support for the union. Jean rapper and of the student strike committee told the crowd what students have at stake. Now we need one to look at a. They really

already. 20. We meet trying to manually break anything. I'm a Marine and I'm here in the 90s married man. OK. And you came back a new gene wrapper and of the student strike committee.

Some faculty did hold classes today and some of the students attended but stayed afterward to watch the rally. I asked Deborah Way chorussed and Lauren Disney both biology majors if they had gone to class. Yeah I had to. Why because I receive information and understanding the science isn't allowed to me to do so it's hard if you don't attend prayers it's hard to understand someone's notes and to read the book and get around the room this time of year where of course it is the strike going on by some of the teachers today and it gets to my parents is in support of this right here. Hey how about you did you attend class and were you aware of the strike and that you consider that when you decided to attend. Well it's certainly but the thing is if the teacher is not straight. It's kind of hard to support a strike on behalf of someone that isn't striking himself you know what I mean. If the teacher is right there in their duty to me you know I'm supposed to

support a strike by you know showing up doesn't really make sense. How do you feel about the issues in the dispute or you're on the side of the administration or the side of the teachers. Oh no I'm well with the teachers you know but I mean I think they should all be OK because the cutbacks are very evident here. But how many of the students would you say feel that way if you can gauge from talking with people I haven't talked to many other people who say not everybody you know I mean when you look at really that he supports the teachers you know is there on our side really. So on behalf of part timers and librarians and certain procedural points the sick out by faculty and the boycott by students will go into its final day tomorrow possibly as some at today's rally hoped to shut down the campus of UMass Boston for GBH Journal. I'm David front. It's not.

The UMass demonstrations are not the only teachers protests in the area. Teachers in Fall River went back to work today to bring to an end their 18 day old strike. The hundred fifty member teachers union voted this morning to accept the city's latest offer of a three year contract. Teachers received almost the same pay raise they rejected Friday and a promise that the State Labor Relations Commission will determine if they have to pay $20000 in fines for each day that the strike lasted. The proposal after three years will bring the starting pay of teachers to 10000 and for ten thousand four hundred eighteen dollars and the pay for teachers with tops and Yardy and a bachelor's degree to seventeen thousand eight hundred ninety eight dollars. The contract dispute had centered on salary class size the number of hours in a school day and the length of the contract. The fines imposed by the Bristol County Superior Court will be referred to the State Labor Relations Board. In another story teachers picketed three of the state's 15 community colleges today protesting failure of the community college regional board

to ratify a contract agreement approved September 26 by faculty members. No classes were disrupted at the schools which serve about 30000 students. The dispute centered on a clause dealing with administrators who returned to teaching the board met with administrators to discuss the issue today at the mass Community College in Wellesley. The board withheld ratification of the contract until it could check the language of a clause requiring administrators who wish to return to classroom teaching to do so within three years or loosing Yardy rights and other benefits. Inmates at normal prison have held their strike together for just over three months now. They are demanding an end to strip searches of their visitors. The return of their 27 elected leaders

and they want to system of rehabilitation that works. The Department of Corrections says it has such a system known as classification. It is a kind of a step system designed to gradually reintegrate a prisoner back into his or her community. This through a series of transfers which slowly increase of prisoners freedom and responsibilities for maximum security Walpole say to medium security Norfolk. And from there to a minimum security prerelease Center in Boston or maybe Springfield a prisoner can theoretically earn these transfers by getting involved in classes counseling drug rehabilitation or other programs in his or her institution and by obeying the rules of the institution. Generally avoiding fights drugs etc.. But the men in Norfolk as well as men at Walpole where there was a brief strike on similar issues this summer said this is not how the classification system really works at all to begin with says Donna Finn of the strike support group Families and friends of prisoners. There aren't nearly enough prerelease placements to go around classification system is another name for a behavior modification program where

you have to work your way to that. The way that you do that is by participating in the programs that they make available to you. It boils down to a carrot and stick approach to corrections. The reality is that there are not enough carrot at the end of the stick so that you've got say four thousand people in the system all fighting for maybe top 300 flock in a community release educational release work release and Berlioz. That's the major abuse of the classification system itself a system that goes nowhere so that the guy say that it's being used as a punishment thing because it can't be used as anything else using There are no rewards although there are a punishment exactly the rewards are too few Corrections spokesperson Tom sellers acknowledged to me that a shortage of prerelease placements often has the entire classification system backed up to Walpole. But also cited figures showing that of the prisoners who have moved in the last two years or more have moved forward towards the street end of the system and backwards towards the Walpole end but the Norfolk

prisoners are not only concerned about the prerelease shortage they also say that it's very unclear even when prerelease slots are available. What one has to do to get into one of them or to give another example what one has to do to get transferred from Walpole to Norfolk. All transfers are ultimately granted or rejected by top corrections officials here in Boston. But first the inmate has to make it through at least two hearings with two separate classification boards and get approval from his or her prison superintendent. Judy Stahl is a lawyer who defends prisoners through the Prisoners Rights Project describes how this process affects inmates she knows the craft of occasions with them is completely removed from there. They have to go through a lengthy process of seeing a number of bored people on the board. Don't come into daily contact with them they generally commune from other institutions. People prepare themselves they work very hard to go through these hearings. They're denied they're not given reason even at that level. But even if they go into a classification hearing and are reclassified to a place they want to go

to. The decision is the only recommendation it goes downtown. I would estimate in at least 50 percent of the cases and that could be very off because I don't have to test if I just have my own sense from dealing with people. Those decisions are overturned at that level by people who are men and women never see can never touch know nothing about the decisions come down without reasons. Most of all they can't come down without any recommendations for what a person can do to change it to move. They don't tell the person what they're doing wrong. They don't tell a person what they need to do that's right. Some people feel they have complete lack of control over their lives it's a totally mysterious frustrating process and what it does to human beings is it's just complete frustration complete. The loss of touch with control over their lives.

I think crystal ball that you'll find that the inmates understand a lot more about the classification system than in people are going to lead on Corrections spokesperson Tom sellers. They know who's involved in making decisions they know how decisions are being made they know how the system works and how it operates. And a lot of times there's a certain enough gaffe that goes on about gee I really don't you know I don't understand this decision nobody explained it to me. In fact at all levels in the process at the board level where a man is brought back in and interviewed and told specifically what the recommendation of the board is and why and after e decisions been made up here in the central office the inmate is informed specifically of the reasons for the for the classification decision. Tom Sellers has to classify h as to classifications effect on the community a prisoner returns to and on the prisoner. Tom seller says the system does its job in providing a person with the educational vocational and general living skills needed to survive outside an institution. But Judy stylist thinks otherwise.

First of all a lot of people end up having to be poor old right out of wall people because they can't get through the classification system. I know of a couple cases in the past year where people have had be paroled right out of 10 block. Which is just a hellhole where people are locked up 24 hours a day you can imagine the difficulty of leaving a situation of 24 hour a day lock up and going into the community and the community can see what kind of results they're going to get from them. Could you be a little more specific when you say that essentially if you don't have a means of integrating a person into the community you take a person out of a terribly frustrating environment and environment they can't learn anything else where they can't work. They're going to be hitting the street totally KO'd What are they going to do they've got no money they don't know how to deal with things. The results are going to be that they're going to turn to the things that they know how to do it your crime. On that New York newspaper strike Louis Lyons thinks automation is the underlying issue.

I know if I'm neighbor's house that some other reporter our telephone are Laura. I admire that handsome woodpile. Yes and Mrs. Smith have likes a neat one Polly stacks of himself it's from our own woods. The manager gets a cut it takes one load for each load he leaves us. That's in cordwood stacks. Cuts it then just all right. So half the cost of their own warders labor and at that Herb Smith does the final cutting and stacking himself and pays the taxes on the wood lot. And so with other things as the main cost is labor labor saving has become the key to economical operations automation as its name is the product of the computer whose evolution extending now into every line replace is labor so labor unions fight automation their issue is job security. The struggle is most intense in those industries where unions have magnified labor costs by restrictive rules known as featherbedding notably in railroads and newspapers. Railway

clerks strike against automation on the Norfolk and Western Railroad began July 9. The president said it had brought practically all roads to a halt by last week when he obtained a court injunction that stops the strike for 60 days while a presidential board seeks element. This started trains rolling Monday. Yesterday the smaller of the three struck New York papers the post agreed to a separate settlement on such terms as I concluded with the other papers. This is expected to speeds up with the others to avoid competitive losses on top of their huge losses by the two months shutdown. So settlement terms of both strikes will soon show whether any new patterns evolve for peace in the automation war. The railway clerks dispute was building for three years with an African western over the introduction of computers that cut payroll 15 percent while the rural road was able to increase its tonnage by one third per man hour. But its tough president still held the road carried too many clerks. He

announced a stockholders meeting. He was bringing in an efficiency engineer to study productivity This set off the strike by the Clerks Union their pickets extended to 73 other roads when the union learned of their mutual aid fund that was supplying the Norfolk and Western $800000 a day during its strike. The New York printers had one job security in their 1974 contract that guaranteed life jobs for all regular printers and all substitute with big pay raises and pensions at full pay on retirement. But the pace of automation since then has all but wiped out the printing craft on New York papers. The typographical Union is now fighting for its own survival to the newspaper managers the issue is the right to apply modern technology to stay in business. The last big newspaper strike in New York 1066 brought the death of three newspapers a new cost conscious breed of management has

seized on the versatility of the computer to force efficiencies. On the New York Times even with the full job guarantees of an 1074 contract the force of eight hundred thirty printers has shrunk by 200 as the number of online attack machines was reduced from one hundred twenty nine to sixty one these last 61 The Times put up for sale this July. The remaining printers have been given a retraining course but the principal function available for them is pasting up the columns are printed on automatic photo composition machine produces at a speed equal to that or 200 liner type operators working side by side. The job guarantees are the 1974 contract represent the last hurrah for the hundred year old typographical union rights Raskin along the leading Labor reporter in this country. The union had strength enough to exact a high price for removing its veto power of automated processes but automation has effectively stripped it of future power. Raskin writes

this in the lead article in the October Atlantic Monthly. The big squeeze on labor unions management Raskin rights is now objecting to feather bearing rules that it considered when unions were in the driver's seat. The New York newspapers he says provoked a strike by unilaterally posting revised work rules that would free them to cut pressroom cruised by 70 percent. And do away with premium pay. That's featherbedding that brought the average pressman one hundred fifty dollars a week on top of his basic wage. What's happening to the New York print it seems likely to happen and many other unions including some of the strongest Rast predict in fact the same issues are the bases of Boston newspaper negotiations right now. Automation Rascon concludes is an action by weakening the labor movement he finds the construction industry that had the tightest of closed shops in the 60s is now more than half now on union in the port of New York the longshoreman's union has given up its long resistance to containerization in a

trade off for job guarantees. New tonnage records are broken with half the old manpower they have. CIO has lost over a million members in the last two years he reports only one wage earner in four now belongs to a union. The most conspicuous growth of unions has been among public employees. Ruskin observes strikes of firemen police teachers now meeting taxpayer resistance inventive new approaches are needed he says. And for this Raskin himself looks beyond the collective bargaining table. He sees a fruitful approach and no experiments and worker participation that he reports have been quietly conducted by General Motors and the Auto Workers Union. Before we go a little bit on the weather. I'm inside a studio with no windows but like you I just looked out the window and she says outside there is light drizzle and fog the temperature is 55 degrees 13 Celsius. The National Weather Service says it will be cloudy tonight with occasional rain continuing especially in the

evening. Temperatures will be in the low 50s south easterly winds at 15 to 25 miles per hour will be gusty but will diminish to 10 to 15 miles per hour later this evening. Tomorrow it will continue to be partly cloudy with temperatures in the high 60s probability of rain is 60 percent tonight and 20 percent Thursday and Thursday night. That's GBH journal for this Wednesday evening producer for today's show was Marsha Hertz the engineer was Perry Carter production assistant came from Becky ROR and Howard Horton. And I mean the sands have a good evening.