Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Star-Gazette (Elmira, NY), March 27, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 Star-Gazette (Elmira, NY)
All Rights Reserved
Star-Gazette

March 27, 2005 Sunday

SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 1C

HEADLINE: CCC faculty OK labor pact

BYLINE: Larry Wilson, lwilson@stargazette.com

BODY:
" Deal is first negotiated between school, teachers union.
By LARRY WILSON
Star-Gazette Corning Bureau
CORNING - Corning Community College faculty members have ratified their first labor contract by a vote of 50 to 34.
Ernie Danforth, the union president, said Friday's vote was a relief.
"We've been nine months at it," Danforth said.
The proposal, details of which were not announced, goes to the college's board of trustees for approval April 20. It is the first labor agreement between the institution and the Professional Educators of Corning Community College, a union formed following a faculty vote in the fall of 2003.
Danforth said both sides employed a "mutual gains process" in the negotiations.
"Our hope is that we have come to a process whereby both sides can work together to benefit everyone," he said.
The union president said he was pleased that 93 of the 99 eligible faculty members voted on the pact. Only 84 votes counted because one was invalidated, and absentee votes were not tallied because they could not have affected the outcome, Danforth said.
"In many ways, the contract looks a lot like the rules we worked under before," Danforth said. "Hopefully we can maintain things pretty much as they were."
Negotiations on the agreement began in June. Danforth declined to specify the length of the tentative contract.
The college president, Floyd Amann, said he's pleased with the faculty vote. He said both sides took a risk in deciding against adversarial bargaining.
"We brought a person down from the Cornell IRL (Industrial and Labor Relations) school to train both teams how you can in a much more friendly way get to the resolution of issues," Amann said.
Amann said he will recommend to the college trustees that they accept the agreement April 20.
"There's a certain trust factor because we didn't set out everything precisely," he said. "It's a good beginning, and I think it will lead to better labor relations between the faculty and the administration."
Amann said he also is pleased with the pace of the negotiations.
"Actually it took less time than most of them do," he said. "These things usually take a lot longer than that."
AMANN

The Main Wire, March 24, 2005, Thursday

Copyright 2005 Market News International, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
The Main Wire

March 24, 2005 Thursday

HEADLINE: Reality Check: US Labor Unions Face Challenging Times -2-

DATELINE: NEW YORK

BODY:
By Gary Rosenberger
Another looming issue in the world of labor
relations is the way legacy airlines use bankruptcy "to change the
contours of labor agreements and free themselves from obligations they
had agreed to," the AFL-CIO's Richard Bank said. "There's very little in
bankruptcy law that gives workers and unions protections."
Bank singled out defined pension benefits as an area hit hard by
airline bankruptcies and fears "a domino effect" could result when
bankruptcy "strips employees of their rights and gives bankrupt airlines
a competitive edge."
He sees these as bleak times for unionized and non-unionized
workers alike. "I keep hearing that this is a full recovery. But I don't
see any diminishment in the problems and issues that we had when we were
in a recession. The recovery does not seem to be trickling down to
people working every day. It's not a recovery for the average working
person," he said.

"The average worker is doing worse than before 2001," Bank
continued. "Wage increases are moderate, healthcare costs go up and the
demands for concessions by management are relentless. The improved
economy has not mollified aggressive employer attitudes at the
bargaining table."
Even amid labor shortages in some sectors, like trucking, wage
increases appear to be moderate. James McCall, special counsel for the
Teamsters, noted that a master freight contract signed in 2003 continues
to apply through 2008, with hourly earnings up just 50 cents in the last
year to $20.25 an hour.
The increase in healthcare and benefits was triple that amount, a
reflection of driver shortages that were becoming apparent two years
ago. An aging workforce aggravates the shortage, with unionized drivers
averaging 48 to 51 years of age, McCall said.
In order to attract and retain younger drivers, who might be
hesitant to engage in a career that takes them far from home, trucking
firms have begun to remove progression clauses in the master agreement
that offer new drivers just 75% of the full rate of pay, McCall said.
But the issue overshadowing everything these days is the contest
over the future direction of the AFL-CIO after suffering defeat in last
fall's presidential elections. Several union officials stated that the
quadrennial convention in Las Vegas in July is likely to be highly
contentious.
There is anger aimed at the AFL-CIO leadership over its emphasis on
political action in lieu of needed investment in grassroots organizing,
with the SEIU, the Teamsters, UNITE-HERE and others clamoring to have
more say over how union dues are spent.
Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, who garnered 40% support during
a contentious Executive Council meeting earlier in March, is at the
forefront of the rebellion. "There is no question the labor movement is
in trouble and has been in trouble for a long time," said one source.
"Everyone is wondering, what if Stern pulls out of the AFL-CIO? Will he
be able to take other people with him? What are the prospects for labor
unity when the labor movement is shrinking and needs all the unity it
can get? There might be a revolution."
Andy Stern was unavailable for comment but keeps a blog in
www.unitetowin.org that explains his proposals to reinvigorate the labor
movement. The plan begins with "an initial $25 million per year to
challenge Wal-Mart's low-wage, no-benefit business model that threatens
to drag down standards throughout the economy."
The plan also seeks to ensure health coverage for everyone,
including efforts to win reforms at the state and local level. He and
others also demand a restructuring of the AFL-CIO to unite workers by
industry, prevent overlap, and consolidate unions with fewer than
100,000 members -- and ultimately question the heavy donations to the
Democratic Party.
Stern has blasted the AFL-CIO for attempting to water down a
Teamsters proposal that aims to shift more union funds toward local
organizing. "To ward off the Teamsters' proposal, they passed an
alternative resolution that would shift more of members' dues money to
the same political strategy the labor movement has been following for
the past 10 years," he complained.
"Our proposal to restructure the AFL-CIO has drawn support from
SEIU, UFCW, the Laborers and UNITE-HERE," said Teamsters spokeswoman
Leigh Strope. (The complete proposal can be found in www.Teamster.org,)
"The Teamsters are committed to strengthening the AFL-CIO, not
tearing it down," Strope stated. "Our vision is to empower workers. We
must change to strengthen their voice on the job, because the status quo
is not working. We can build power for workers by growing the labor
movement. There is strength in numbers. We cannot continue to rely on
politicians to do this for us."
Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor scholar at Cornell University, paints
a grim picture of labor's struggles. "Wages are stagnant. There's a
great disparity of wealth and incredible cutbacks in benefits," she
said.
"Workers are working harder and longer. Fewer workers have health
benefits and more have lost their defined pension plans. The American
worker is truly stressed," she continued. "If this is a recovery, it's a
recovery for corporations. It's not the kind of recovery that gives
workers confidence. Workers are scared."
By her estimate, 400,000 jobs were lost to Asia and Latin America
in the last year, including high-skilled, high-end, non-manufacturing
jobs -- and all this happened amid an election "disaster" from the
standpoint of the labor movement.
Labor now finds itself angry and divided. "Last year labor poured
money into elections instead of into organizing. It was a devastating
defeat and it's divided the movement," she said. "There's a lot of
introspection and debate over what to do next, and how much resources
should go to politics and how much to organizing."
She foresees the AFL-CIO's July convention as embodying a clash of
egos, testing old relationships and generating competing visions about
the labor movement's future.
Beyond that, she places health care as the big issue dominating
collective bargaining. "The problem can no longer be resolved at the
bargaining table. We have to deal with it at the legislative level. We
are out of step with modern society. The taxpayer pays when Wal-Mart
doesn't provide health coverage. We're paying for it one way or
another."

---
Editor's Note: Reality Check stories survey sentiment among
business people and their trade associations. They are intended to
complement and anticipate economic data and to provide a sounding into
specific sectors of the U.S. economy.

National Public Radio (NPR), Morning Edition, March 23, 2005, Wednesday

Copyright 2005 National Public Radio (R)
All Rights Reserved
National Public Radio (NPR)

SHOW: Morning Edition 10:00 AM EST NPR

March 23, 2005 Wednesday

HEADLINE: Guest-worker program for illegal immigrants is being pushed by President Bush

ANCHORS: RENEE MONTAGNE

REPORTERS: EMILY BAROCAS

BODY:
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
President Bush proposes to control the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico with a temporary worker program. The US government tried a similar program beginning during World War II. For over two decades, millions of Mexican farm workers entered the United States with temporary work visas. At first, the Bracero Program helped reduce illegal immigration. It was later criticized for tolerating the mistreatment of Mexican workers. NPR's Emily Barocas has the story of an original Bracero.
EMILY BAROCAS reporting:
Guadalupe Martinez lives in a comfortable home just south of Los Angeles with his wife and grown son. When he came to America in 1952 to work as a Bracero, he shared a one-room wooden shack with dozens of other men. The old military bunker was situated on the fields where the men spent their days working.
Mr. GUADALUPE MARTINEZ (Mexican Immigrant): (Sings in a foreign language)
BAROCAS: Martinez came from the farming village of Tiksdan(ph), Mexico.
Mr. MARTINEZ: (Through Translator) For two or three years around 1952, it didn't rain. Because there was no rain, there was no way for us to feed ourselves. And that is why I became a Bracero.
BAROCAS: The Bracero Program was supposed to reduce illegal immigration and fill an expected labor shortage. In its early years, it did neither. Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a conservative think tank, studied the effectiveness of the Bracero Program. He says it was a success eventually.
Mr. STUART ANDERSON (National Foundation for American Policy): Once increased Bracero admissions were combined with a more stable enforcement regime, we saw illegal entry drop dramatically.
BAROCAS: Very dramatically. Apprehensions of illegal immigrants dropped 95 percent at the peak of admissions. With a legal opportunity to come to America, thousands of workers from poor villages in Mexico flocked to recruiting stations, hoping for a job. Martinez was hired to pick onions on a farm in Sacramento. His contract was supposed to guarantee a minimum wage, housing, food and health care. But, says Vernon Briggs, professor of labor economics at Cornell University, these promises were often broken.
Professor VERNON BRIGGS (Cornell University): ...(Unintelligible) this is the problem of all these guest-worker programs, they do not enforce themselves.
BAROCAS: The Braceros worked under harsh conditions, up to 10 hours a day with hardly a break. Martinez explains.
Mr. MARTINEZ: (Through Translator) We would fill 900 boxes of onions for one truck. The smell was horrible and we had no way to protect ourselves from it, but that is how we had to work.
BAROCAS: More legal workers like Guadalupe Martinez meant there were fewer illegal workers, and the government went after those that remained. In Operation Wetback, the US rounded up and deported suspects, but, according to Vernon Briggs, it may have been too aggressive.
Prof. BRIGGS: Especially in those days, living along the border, a lot of poor people couldn't actually prove that they were US citizens and there was a massive deportation of what were perceived to be illegal immigrants.
BAROCAS: Congress ended the Bracero Program in the mid-'60s. By then, critics claimed humanitarian violations and farm work had become more mechanized. Without the guest-worker program, illegal immigration increased tenfold over the next dozen years. Briggs explains.
Prof. BRIGGS: They knew where the farms were that needed them. They know the employers wanted to hire them, and they knew how to find the jobs and how to get there.
BAROCAS: This set the stage for the explosion of illegal immigration that we see today, the problem the administration is looking to solve. Guadalupe Martinez came to America for the last time in 1976, 12 years after the Bracero Program ended. He eventually brought his family over. They lived illegally until the mid-1980s when an amnesty program made them legal residents.
Mr. MARTINEZ: (Through Translator) These are my stories, a little sad but they all happened.
BAROCAS: Four decades after the Bracero Program was abandoned, President Bush is again pushing for a guest-worker program. But to date, it remains a divisive issue in Congress.
Emily Barocas, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.

Business Wire, March 22, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Business Wire, Inc.
Business Wire

March 22, 2005 Tuesday 1:30 PM GMT

DISTRIBUTION: Business Editors

HEADLINE: Kodak Promotes Joyce Haag to General Counsel and Senior Vice President

DATELINE: ROCHESTER, N.Y. March 22, 2005

BODY:
Current General Counsel Gary Van Graafeiland Announces Retirement; Board Also Promotes Robert L. Berman to Senior Vice President
Eastman Kodak Company announced that Joyce Haag, currently General Counsel, Europe, Asia, and Middle Eastern Region (EAMER), has been promoted to General Counsel, reporting to Charles S. Brown Jr., Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Vice President. Haag, 54, succeeds Gary Van Graafeiland, presently General Counsel and Senior Vice President, who will retire on June 30. Haag also was elected a Senior Vice President of the company by the board of directors, along with Robert L. Berman, 47, currently Director, Human Resources and Vice President.
"Joyce Haag brings a wide range of experience to the office of the General Counsel," said Kodak Chairman and Chief Executive Daniel A. Carp. "In her 24 years at Kodak, Joyce has served as the company's senior legal counsel to the board of directors, as well as the director of the legal staff handling marketing and litigation. She understands well the needs of the company and is an excellent addition to the senior management staff."
Haag joined Kodak in 1981 as a staff attorney from the Rochester law firm of Boylan, Brown, Code, Vigdor & Wilson. She has a BA in mathematics from Mount Holyoke College, and earned her JD from Cornell Law School, graduating cum laude. She was elected Assistant Secretary in 1992 and Secretary of the Company in 1995. From August 2002 until February 2004, she was Director of the Marketing, Antitrust, Trademark & Litigation Group. She was appointed General Counsel, EAMER in March 2004.
Van Graafeiland, 59, joined the Kodak Legal Department in 1979. He was named assistant general counsel and director of the Corporate Legal Staff in January 1989, and was elected corporate secretary effective January 1990. He became General Counsel in February 1992. He is also the company's Chief Compliance Officer.
"As General Counsel, Gary Van Graafeiland has been a valuable and trusted advisor to the senior management of this company through many challenges," Carp said. "Noted for his wisdom and quiet reflection, Gary has made substantial contributions to the company throughout his career, and most recently through our transition from traditional to digital. I wish Gary and his family well; he will be missed."
A graduate of Union College with a BA in English, Van Graafeiland holds a JD degree from Cornell University Law School. He holds various memberships, including the Association of Corporate Counsel and Text Colorthe Association of General Counsel, and is President of the Association of General Counsel.
Since joining Kodak in 1983, Robert L. Berman has held a variety of key human resources positions, including Director of Human Resources for the Consumer Imaging business, Director of Human Resources for the Kodak Colorado Division, and Director and divisional vice president of Human Resources for Global Operations. He was appointed to his current position as Director, Human Resources and Vice President in January 2002.
"Under Bob Berman's leadership, the Human Resources function at Kodak has adopted a number of leading-edge practices in keeping with the company's broader transformation," said Carp. "He has been instrumental in shaping Kodak's approach to diversity and inclusion."
Berman holds a BS degree in business from the University of Minnesota and a Masters of Industrial and Labor Relations from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.
Editor's Note: For additional information about Kodak, visit our web site on the Internet at: www.kodak.com.

CONTACT: Eastman Kodak Jim Blamphin, 585-724-5036 james.blamphin@kodak.com

Business Wire, March 22, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Business Wire, Inc.
Business Wire

March 22, 2005 Tuesday 1:30 PM GMT

DISTRIBUTION: Business Editors

HEADLINE: Kodak Promotes Joyce Haag to General Counsel and Senior Vice President

DATELINE: ROCHESTER, N.Y. March 22, 2005

BODY:
Current General Counsel Gary Van Graafeiland Announces Retirement; Board Also Promotes Robert L. Berman to Senior Vice President
Eastman Kodak Company announced that Joyce Haag, currently General Counsel, Europe, Asia, and Middle Eastern Region (EAMER), has been promoted to General Counsel, reporting to Charles S. Brown Jr., Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Vice President. Haag, 54, succeeds Gary Van Graafeiland, presently General Counsel and Senior Vice President, who will retire on June 30. Haag also was elected a Senior Vice President of the company by the board of directors, along with Robert L. Berman, 47, currently Director, Human Resources and Vice President.
"Joyce Haag brings a wide range of experience to the office of the General Counsel," said Kodak Chairman and Chief Executive Daniel A. Carp. "In her 24 years at Kodak, Joyce has served as the company's senior legal counsel to the board of directors, as well as the director of the legal staff handling marketing and litigation. She understands well the needs of the company and is an excellent addition to the senior management staff."
Haag joined Kodak in 1981 as a staff attorney from the Rochester law firm of Boylan, Brown, Code, Vigdor & Wilson. She has a BA in mathematics from Mount Holyoke College, and earned her JD from Cornell Law School, graduating cum laude. She was elected Assistant Secretary in 1992 and Secretary of the Company in 1995. From August 2002 until February 2004, she was Director of the Marketing, Antitrust, Trademark & Litigation Group. She was appointed General Counsel, EAMER in March 2004.
Van Graafeiland, 59, joined the Kodak Legal Department in 1979. He was named assistant general counsel and director of the Corporate Legal Staff in January 1989, and was elected corporate secretary effective January 1990. He became General Counsel in February 1992. He is also the company's Chief Compliance Officer.
"As General Counsel, Gary Van Graafeiland has been a valuable and trusted advisor to the senior management of this company through many challenges," Carp said. "Noted for his wisdom and quiet reflection, Gary has made substantial contributions to the company throughout his career, and most recently through our transition from traditional to digital. I wish Gary and his family well; he will be missed."
A graduate of Union College with a BA in English, Van Graafeiland holds a JD degree from Cornell University Law School. He holds various memberships, including the Association of Corporate Counsel and the Association of General Counsel, and is President of the Association of General Counsel.
Since joining Kodak in 1983, Robert L. Berman has held a variety of key human resources positions, including Director of Human Resources for the Consumer Imaging business, Director of Human Resources for the Kodak Colorado Division, and Director and divisional vice president of Human Resources for Global Operations. He was appointed to his current position as Director, Human Resources and Vice President in January 2002.
"Under Bob Berman's leadership, the Human Resources function at Kodak has adopted a number of leading-edge practices in keeping with the company's broader transformation," said Carp. "He has been instrumental in shaping Kodak's approach to diversity and inclusion."
Berman holds a BS degree in business from the University of Minnesota and a Masters of Industrial and Labor Relations from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.
Editor's Note: For additional information about Kodak, visit our web site on the Internet at: www.kodak.com.


CONTACT: Eastman Kodak Jim Blamphin, 585-724-5036 james.blamphin@kodak.com

Mansfield News Journal (Mansfield, OH), March 20, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 Mansfield News Journal (Mansfield, OH)
All Rights Reserved
Mansfield News Journal

March 20, 2005 Sunday

SECTION: Pg. 7D

HEADLINE: Lumpkin -- Woods

BODY:
MANSFIELD -- The engagement of Amanda Jo Lumpkin and Steven David Woods is announced by their parents. The bride-elect is the daughter of Robert and Pat Lumpkin of Warren. The groom-elect is the son of Gerald and Doris Woods of 586 Dirlam Lane.
The couple plan to marry July 9 in a formal ceremony at Cleveland Botanical Gardens in Cleveland.
The bride-elect is a graduate of Howland High School and Miami University. She received a master's degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University in 1995. She is compensation manager for Eaton Corporation in Cleveland.
The groom-elect is a 1993 graduate of Lexington High School. He received a degree in paper science and engineering from Miami University in 1999. He is a calendar engineer for Seaman Corporation in Wooster.

MARKETPLACE MORNING REPORT (Minnesota Public Radio), March 15, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Minnesota Public Radio.
All Rights Reserved
MARKETPLACE MORNING REPORT

SHOW: Marketplace Morning Report 6:50 AM EST SYND

March 15, 2005 Tuesday

HEADLINE: Organized labor trying to retool

ANCHORS: KAI RYSSDAL

REPORTERS: JOHN DIMSDALE

BODY:
KAI RYSSDAL, anchor:
This is MARKETPLACE. I'm Kai Ryssdal.
Organized labor in this country has been losing both membership and political clout, so it's trying to retool. And union leaders have targeted the fastest-growing segment of the labor force. That is professional and technical workers. But traditional unions haven't really kept pace with the way white-collar work is changing, with the new world of contracting and outsourcing and temporary projects. MARKETPLACE's John Dimsdale reports labor knows it's got to change or else.
JOHN DIMSDALE reporting:
This week, nearly 200 union activists from around the country have come to Washington to hear some pep talk about the potential for reversing membership declines among white-collar professionals. To do that, unions will have to adapt to changes in the way professional workers relate to their employers. That's according to the AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida.
Mr. PAUL ALMEIDA (AFL-CIO): In this changing environment with globalization, with more people working part time and in a contingent basis, they work for multiple employers across the industry. Workers go from job to job, project by project. If labor is going to succeed, it's going to have to figure out how to be relevant to these workers.
DIMSDALE: Unions don't have the traditional workplace connection to these transient autonomous workers. But Lynn Karoly, who studied work force demographics for the Rand Corporation, says they can be found in virtual communities on the Internet, and these workers need something unions can provide.
Ms. LYNN KAROLY (Rand Corporation): And you can think of a union or a worker organization as being a type of a home base for an individual. So if they don't have a steady relationship with an employer, they have that steady relationship with this organization, and that's where they have the continued access to these types of benefits.
DIMSDALE: Benefits such as health care and pensions, but also training and education, as well as a clearinghouse for industry information and employment opportunities. Cornell University labor Professor Richard Hurd says this guild type of employee association offers unions some income-generating potential.
Professor RICHARD HURD (Cornell University): You not only have a membership, you pay for the educational programs. They sell information on the labor market, so you can get actually a printout of what workers in Europe, particular specialty earn in a particular urban area, so if you're going there to interview for a job, you know what your demands should be.
DIMSDALE: However, adapting the traditional union structure to this new employee-employer relationship won't be easy, says Ed McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Mr. ED McELROY (American Federation of Teacher): When you do that, sometimes you set up an automatic tension within that organization; traditional union members in a traditional environment for collective bargaining and everything else. Now the union attempts to squeeze in non-traditional workers in a different work force environment. Sometimes that doesn't work.
DIMSDALE: McElroy's idea is to create new unions to accommodate new types of workers, but more unions is just the opposite of what other labor leaders are pushing. They want fewer larger unions to give workers more clout with management. These and other arguments over the AFL-CIO's future will be decided this July when union members vote on whether to keep current president John Sweeney for another five-year term. In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for MARKETPLACE.
RYSSDAL: And in Los Angeles, I'm Kai Ryssdal. Thanks for being with us.

The Washington Daybook, March 15, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Federal Information and News Dispatch, Inc.
The Washington Daybook

March 15, 2005

ORGANIZATION: AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees holds a conference, "Organizing Professionals in the 21st Century," March 14-16.

AGENDA: Events begin at 9 a.m. Highlights :
-- 1:15 p.m. - Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Research and Dorothy Sue Cobble, Rutgers University, "Engendering Professionals: Professional Women Organize"

TIME: All Day

LOCATION: Crystal City Hilton, 2399 Jefferson David Highway, Arlington, Va.

CONTACT: Jamie Horwitz, 202-879-4447 or 202-549-4921; http://www.dpeaflcio.org/ORG_CONF_AGENDA.htm

TYPE: Conference

LN-ORG: AFL-CIO (91%);

COMPANY: AFL-CIO (91%);

SUBJECT: Labor; LABOR UNIONS (90%);

The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York), March 12, 2005, Saturday

Copyright 2005 Post-Standard
All Rights Reserved.
The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York)

March 12, 2005 Saturday
FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A6

HEADLINE: NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

BODY:
More than half of New Yorkers oppose President Bush's plan to allow people to privately invest part of their Social Security taxes, a Cornell University poll has found. The survey of 802 residents by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations Survey Research Institute found that 51 percent oppose the plan and 36 percent support it. Upstate residents were more likely to support it (45 percent) than<>Downstate residents (32 percent).

National Public Radio (NPR), News & Notes with Ed Gordon, March 9, 2005, Wednesday

Copyright 2005 National Public Radio (R)
All Rights Reserved
National Public Radio (NPR)

SHOW: News & Notes with Ed Gordon 9:00 AM EST NPR

March 9, 2005 Wednesday


HEADLINE: Nick Salvatore discusses the life and career of C.L. Franklin and his new book "Singing In A Strange Land"

ANCHORS: ED GORDON

BODY:
ED GORDON, host:
C.L. Franklin may be best known as Aretha Franklin's father, but from his pulpit at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Reverend Franklin became one of the most important African-American preachers of the civil rights movement. His cadence and preaching style are still imitated today in black churches across the country. Franklin's life has been chronicled in a new book called "Singing In A Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America." Author Nick Salvatore reflects on Franklin as a revolutionary preacher.
Mr. NICK SALVATORE (Author, "Singing In A Strange Land"): C.L. Franklin was part of a tradition that whooped or chanted a major part of the sermon. But what's most significant, I think, about C.L. Franklin as the exemplary practitioner of this particular approach to preaching was that not only did he build his sermons around an idea, but he also never lost his message even as he moved into the whoop. C.L. Franklin had a wonderful musical talent and so his sermons were really sacred performances and were masterpieces.
(Soundbite of sermon)
Reverend C.L. FRANKLIN: But to the Negro, when he embarked upon these shores, America to him was a valley...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...a valley of slave huts...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...a valley of slavery and oppression...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...a valley of sorrow...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...so that often we had to sing.
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: One of these days...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...I'm going to eat at the feastin' table.
Mr. SALVATORE: Some 75 of his sermons were recorded live and distributed ultimately by Chess Records. They were best-sellers in the black community in the '50s, '60s and '70s and are still available to this day.
GORDON: The interesting point about this man's life is they say timing is everything. I don't know that nationally people understood, or understand today, I should say, the power...
Mr. SALVATORE: Right.
GORDON: ...that this man had within religious circles.
Mr. SALVATORE: I think part of that is the effect of segregation that isolated much in the white imagination from what was going on in black America. He was well-known, both in the black community at large and specifically also within the black religious community. He was less well known, of course, in the white community.
GORDON: He is also someone who was very instrumental and perhaps not given enough credit in the civil rights movement. He was a contemporary of King's father...
Mr. SALVATORE: That's correct.
GORDON: ...and a mentor of King's.
Mr. SALVATORE: Very true. His overt political career began, really, in 1955. It was both the murder of and then the acquittal of the two men who, in fact, murdered Emmett Till that began to galvanize him in a different way. And he began to be involved in protests in Detroit concerning that. He created a political action committee along with Deacon Harry Kincaid and others, which brought in speakers--Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr., Congressman Adam Clayton Powell--did voter registration, actively attempted to raise the consciousness of people in Detroit, both in his congregation and, since his services on Sunday evening were broadcast live over Detroit radio, throughout the city as well.
GORDON: We talk about Aretha Franklin and she, of course, a phenomenon within herself. But much of what she gained by virtue of stature, stage presence, musicianship was learned at New Bethel Baptist Church.
Mr. SALVATORE: Very much so. She did her first solo at New Bethel at age 10. By age 14 she was recording live her first four gospel sides at New Bethel and they were distributed on Chess Records. And you listen to those early recordings of hers done in 1956; it is amazing the power and the command that she has, even though she has yet to come into her mature power. She's still only 14.
(Soundbite of song)
ARETHA FRANKLIN: (Singing) And ye shall go on.
Mr. SALVATORE: Franklin always placed an enormous emphasis on music and on the choir and on developing the music as part of that sacred performance. And she certainly learned it there, but she also learned it at home. Great gospel singers such as Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson, Alex Bradford and others, they were guests at the home, and she watched people perform in her living room, impromptu performances, as well as clearly at New Bethel. And then in 1956 she joins the gospel tour with her father.
GORDON: We should note, though, that this man was a complex individual...
Mr. SALVATORE: Yes.
GORDON: ...who really lived his life, perhaps more than some would like, in both worlds...
Mr. SALVATORE: That's right.
GORDON: ...if you will, the secular and the religious world.
Mr. SALVATORE: Yeah. He had a reputation in Detroit--for example, in the '50s and '60s, he was known as the Black Prince. He was known as the jitterbug preacher. He was a dynamic and charismatic individual. The same force from within that led him to be so effective and powerful in touching people from the pulpit also led him to what some felt clearly was to fall off the edge and lose the balance in navigating that sacred and secular. He was a womanizer. His wife died in 1952. He never remarried. And he felt there was nothing wrong with his going to the Flame Show Bar or other nightclubs when people whose music he liked and who were friends of his were playing. And then he brought them also into the church. B.B. King, for example, not only flew to Detroit in 1958 so that Franklin could marry him, but B.B. King said that Detroit was the only place where, no matter how late he closed a club on Saturday night, he would always be front and center at 10:45 for services at New Bethel Baptist, `because C.L. Franklin was my main preacher.'
GORDON: The story does not end happily, though. In 1979, C.L. Franklin is shot in his home during a burglary attempt and lay in a coma for years until his ultimate death. And this took not only a toll on the church but on his family, as one might imagine...
Mr. SALVATORE: Right.
GORDON: ...and, in particular, his daughter Aretha.
Mr. SALVATORE: First the church part of it--I mean, he was in a coma. He had a lifetime contract with the church that they had given him in 1951. And as the coma continued, the issue was: Who was going to direct the church? And a split ultimately occurred. I think on the family, they were clearly grieving well before his death about the condition of their father. The family was there constantly. And so every time there would be an involuntary movement, hopes would rise and the family really had a little more than five years of dealing with a father who was not responsive ultimately and yet with whom they couldn't help but hope that maybe a miracle would occur. But, of course, it didn't, and on July 27th of 1984, he died.
GORDON: Finally, let me ask you about the title of the book, "Singing In A Strange Land."
Mr. SALVATORE: The title comes from a sermon he gave called Without A Song, which was built around the 137th Psalm, `How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?'
(Soundbite of sermon)
Rev. FRANKLIN: But even under adverse circumstances...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...you ought to sing sometimes.
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: And not only sing, sing some of Zion's song.
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: I believe you know what I'm talking about.
Congregation: (In unison) Oh, yeah.
Mr. SALVATORE: If there's one central legacy of C.L. Franklin's life, it's his effort to encourage people in his congregation, people across the country who heard him on radio or heard him on his records, to find and develop their voices, both individually and then also to find, through that individual voice--to develop a collective voice to address some of the issues and questions that lay before African-American people. So the singing is the affirmation, in spite of the pain of living in a strange land, strange in the sense of segregation, strange in the sense of the hostility. And the singing is a way to both affirm that that is not the definition of who we are and to work to find solutions to go beyond and change those circumstances.
GORDON: Nick Salvatore is the author of "Singing In A Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America."
And that does it for today's show. Thanks for joining us. To listen to this program, visit npr.org. NEWS & NOTES was created by NPR News and the African-American Public Radio Consortium. We close today with Reverend C.L. Franklin's little girl, Aretha, with the classic gospel composition "Mary, Don't You Weep."
(Soundbite of "Mary, Don't You Weep")
Ms. FRANKLIN: (Singing) Listen, Mary...
Choir: (Singing) Mary, don't you weep.
Ms. FRANKLIN: (Singing) I tell you, sister, don't mourn.
Choir: (Singing) Don't, don't, don't you mourn.
Ms. FRANKLIN: (Singing) Pharaoh's army...
GORDON: I'm Ed Gordon. This is NEWS & NOTES.

Denver Post, March 8, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Copyright 2005 Denver Post
Denver Post

March 8, 2005, Tuesday

HEADLINE: Denver's Kroenke Sports Enterprises loses one of its top executives

BYLINE: By Julie Dunn

BODY:

David Ehrlich, recently named one of the country's hottest young sports executives by Sports Business Journal, has resigned from Denver's Kroenke Sports Enterprises, the company announced Monday.
Ehrlich, 39, who was chief operating officer at Kroenke Sports, will become an executive vice president at The Bonham Group, a Denver-based sports marketing firm.
"This is a very difficult day for me," Ehrlich said in a statement. "While I am excited about the new opportunity, I owe Stan Kroenke a debt of gratitude that I can never repay." Kroenke Sports said that "Stan Kroenke will continue to oversee business operations" with a senior management team. The company owns the Colorado Avalanche, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Rapids, the Colorado Crush and the Pepsi Center.
Ehrlich started his career as a corporate attorney. He moved into the sports business in 1994 when he became assistant general counsel for Ascent Entertainment Group, which owned the Nuggets, acquired the Avalanche and built the Pepsi Center.
In 2000, Kroenke -- a St. Louis-based real estate developer with close ties to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- purchased the teams from Liberty Media Corp., which had bought them from Ascent earlier that year. Ehrlich moved with the company, taking over operations after president Don Elliman retired in 2004.
"I think David is leaving Kroenke to go to an opportunity, not leaving to leave an opportunity," Elliman said. "I think he has a chance with Dean (Bonham, president and CEO of The Bonham Group) to really help build a business." Ehrlich's resignation is effective April 1, but he will continue working with Kroenke Sports, including on the 20,000-seat Prairie Gateway Soccer Complex, a pro soccer stadium in Commerce City that the company announced in July. The Bonham Group was hired last year by Kroenke Sports to find a naming-rights partner for the stadium.
A year ago, Kroenke spent millions of dollars launching Altitude Sports & Entertainment, a regional sports network, after ending its contract with Fox Sports.
The network televises Nuggets games and other programming but not Avalanche games because of the cancellation of the NHL season.
Many sports organizations nationally are struggling because of a loss of hockey revenues.
Bond-rating service Fitch Ratings said Monday it has placed the Denver Arena Trust, the organization responsible for the debt at the Pepsi Center, on Rating Watch Negative because of the season's cancellation.
KROENKE SPORTS ENTERPRISES: Since Stan Kroenke purchased the Colorado Avalanche, the Denver Nuggets and the Pepsi Center in 2000, Kroenke Sports Enterprises has expanded its holdings with new teams and venues. Some of the deals:
--September 2004: Launches Altitude Sports & Entertainment, a regional sports network to broadcast Nuggets, Avalanche and other teams.
--July 2004: Announces plans to build a $ 131 million, 20,000-seat soccer stadium in Commerce City, expected to open in 2007.
--September 2003: Purchases the Colorado Rapids professional soccer team.
--October 2002: Starts the Colorado Mammoth professional lacrosse team.
PROFILE: David Ehrlich
--Company: Kroenke Sports Enterprises
--Title: Chief operating officer
--Age: 39.
--Childhood: Grew up in the Greenwich Village area of New York City.
--Education: B.S., industrial and labor relations, Cornell University, 1987; J.D., Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, 1991
--Career: 1991-94: Paul, Hastings, Janofsky and Walker in Los Angeles, attorney, 1994-96: Sherman & Howard in Denver, attorney, 1996-2000: Ascent Entertainment Group, general counsel, 2000-05: Kroenke Sports Enterprises, vice president of business and legal affairs, executive vice president, chief operating officer
--Family: Wife, Meredith; son, Mason, 7; daughter, Eva, 5
--Awards: Recently named to Sports Business Journal's "40 under 40" list recognizing the industry's best young executives.
--Boards: Metro Denver Sports Commission advisory board, Gold Crown Foundation board
Sources: Kroenke Sports Enterprises, Sports Business Journal, The Denver Business Journal
-----

Observer-Dispatch (Utica, NY), March 8, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Observer-Dispatch (Utica, NY)
All Rights Reserved
Observer-Dispatch

March 8, 2005 Tuesday

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 2CA

HEADLINE: LOCAL PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

BYLINE: Staff

BODY:
Area career moves and successes highlighted
...
Steele named to Quinnipiac post
Quinnipiac University has appointed Sarah Steele as associate vice president of faculty relations. She had been director of personnel services at Hamilton College since 1983.
At Quinnipiac, Steele is the liaison between the faculty and the human resources office. She oversees development of policies and programs to attract and retain a diverse faculty and assure compliance with state and federal laws and university policies about personnel issues.
Steele graduated from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University and is a certified employee benefits specialist.

....

University Wire, March 8, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Cornell Daily Sun via U-Wire
University Wire

March 8, 2005 Tuesday

SECTION: COLUMN

HEADLINE: Ivy Leagues and the online-degree roulette

BYLINE: By Shaffique Adam, Cornell Daily Sun; SOURCE: Cornell U.

DATELINE: ITHACA, N.Y.

BODY:
Many interesting people come to the Alice Cook House. Last week it was Ralph Terkowitz '72, who introduces himself as a failed chemist. But don't let that fool you, Mr. Terkowitz has had a successful career in technology and has been a vice-president and later the CIO of the Washington Post company. He was visiting Ithaca as a judge for the annual Business Idea Competition, and spent much of his time mingling with students and describing the world of high-risk investment. "My investment strategy is easy," argued Mr. Terkowitz persuasively. "You can only lose 100 percent of your money." By this he meant that while the most you can lose is your initial capital, successful investments can double, or even quadruple, your principle. This allows for an investment strategy that deals in risky and innovative ideas. So long as half of the innovations succeed, you can write off the other half and still bring home a good return. This attitude is not just about investment, but about life itself.
The concept is simple. Try a whole bunch of radical and innovative ideas on how best to solve any problem, and eventually one of them will succeed and bring on a paradigm shift that will transform our lives; just like cell phones and online shopping did in the last decade. Mr. Terkowitz believes that the high-risk philosophy should even apply to education and universities, which is why the Washington Post invested in Kaplan to explore innovative methods in teaching. One of his companies uses Artificial Intelligence to analyze resumes and provide job placement; and he sees second-tier universities being out-competed by "anytime, anywhere" fully online degree programs like those offered by the University of Phoenix and Concord School of Law.
Some proponents of online education take this concept even further, arguing that Ivy Leagues are nothing but "name branding" in the teaching business. And there is no incentive for top schools to innovate or make radical changes to their traditional program, thereby gambling their reputations on a roulette wheel. On the other hand, generic online schools have nothing to lose, and are driven by competition to try innovative strategies. Supporters of the high-risk philosophy argue that statistically, some of these strategies will succeed and bring about a paradigm shift that will collapse the traditional education structure. They even cite the high number of Ivy League students who pay for the services of Kaplan to prepare for standardized tests, suggesting that these new innovative education strategies actually have something to offer that students cannot get at a traditional university.
Actually, I think the proponents of the online education are dead wrong. The Cornell degree is not about the piece of paper at the end of the day, but it is about the experiences, social and professional networks and exploration into the world of ideas that transforms the student into a responsible citizen of the world. It is about close interaction with one's peers and with leading academics and thinkers; it is about travel abroad and residential living and learning; it is about challenging the question instead of clicking on one of the multiple choice answers; and it is about initiative and innovation.
There is plenty of innovation at Cornell. For example, this Semester at Alice Cook House we experimented with the idea of having student-initiated courses for credit. The idea is simple: students come together and decide what they want to learn, design the course themselves, then take the course and get credit for it. Stanford University, as an initiative of their student government, has been doing this for a number of years (see: http://assu.stanford.edu/sic/), so why not try this at Cornell?
It was decided that the best structure would be a one-unit discussion seminar under the faculty direction of Andrew Bass. About 20 students showed up at the first meeting of "Brainstorms" to decide on topics and which guests to invite to facilitate the discussion. For example, students wanted a discussion on the value of the Cornell degree. An ILR student suggested Prof. Ron Ehrenberg, an expert on higher education, to lead the discussion. The group agreed, and the student took charge of contacting the professor and making all the arrangements.
In similar fashion, all the slots were filled with discussion leaders who include world-famous intellectuals: Isaac Kramnick, government professor and vice-provost for undergraduate education will lead a discussion on God and the Constitution; Philip McMichael, chair of rural and developmental sociology was picked for the American role in global development; Eve Tominey from the Center for Learning and Teaching will discuss successful teaching methods; and Mike Behe, an advocate of Intelligent Design from Lehigh University, will talk to the group on May 4 before a public lecture at the Alice Cook House.
There was even talk of perhaps bringing back Mr. Terkowitz to discuss his ideas on technology, innovation and the future of higher education. The most important facet of this seminar is that all speaker choices and logistics were done by the students themselves, resulting in a unique and exciting discussion group. This kind of learning is at the apex of innovative teaching and is already happening at top-tier universities.
If education was just about getting good test scores, then sure, putting out the most radical and innovative ideas on the roulette wheel will bring out the best methods; but for more complex and open-ended goals like building character and expanding the mind, we need to move beyond the investment strategy ideas that shaped the high tech boom and burst.
(C) 2005 Cornell Daily Sun via U-WIRE

University Wire, March 7, 2005, Monday

Copyright 2005 Cornell Daily Sun via U-Wire
University Wire

March 7, 2005 Monday

HEADLINE: Cornell brings school's dean search to three

BYLINE: By Michael Margolis, Cornell Daily Sun; SOURCE: Cornell U.

DATELINE: ITHACA, N.Y.

BODY:
The search committee for a new dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University has narrowed its pursuit down to three candidates.
The committee undertaking the search announced the three remaining candidates through their Web site last Wednesday and additionally e-mailed ILR students with an update.
The search began when present dean, Edward J. Lawler, announced in May 2004 his intention to return to the classroom this upcoming June.
The three finalists are Harry C. Katz, who serves as the Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining here on The Hill, Samuel Estreicher '74, Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law, NYU and Jan Svejnar '74, Everett E. Berg Professor of Business Administration, the University of Michigan.
The finalists will all be brought separately to campus for tours and a final round of interviews. Katz will interview first, on March 8 and 9, Estreicher will come March 14 and 15 and Svejnar will conclude the process on March 16 and 17.
According to a press release signed by Provost Biddy Martin, each interviewee will give a presentation to faculty and guests on the first day of their interview and a tape will be available of this presentation for those unable to attend.
The committee is made up of six faculty members, an additional faculty member from outside the school, an academic dean and an alumnus.
All Sun inquiries to the committee, whose co-chairs are Martin and Vice Provost John Siliciano '75, were referred to Michael Matier, manager for the school of Industrial and Labor Relations dean search.
He stated that the confidentiality agreement, which the committee is bound by, creates "some limits around just how much can be discussed."
Matier added that the committee has made a practice of using their various "Web sites as a means of communicating about the progress of the searches and to share relevant information".
Jay Jendrewski '05, president of the ILR student government organization said, "based on preliminary research, we have three outstanding candidates to look at over the next three weeks."
He and other students are looking forward to taking "an active role" in the process by giving feedback to the search committee.
According to Jendrewski, students have been involved in the process from the beginning by helping to define the qualities and characteristics that students look for in a dean.
"While I am looking forward to meeting these new candidates, I am sad that we will lose a good friend and dean in Ed Lawler, who has done a fantastic job as dean of our school," Jendrewski said. "But I am excited that he will remain here at Cornell."
Lawler came to Ithaca from the University of Iowa, where he taught for 22 years. He has authored or edited 15 books. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from California State University, Long Beach and then received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
(C) 2005 Cornell Daily Sun via U-WIRE

The Virginian-Pilot(Norfolk, Va.), March 7, 2005, Monday

Copyright 2005 Landmark Communications, Inc.
The Virginian-Pilot(Norfolk, Va.)

March 7, 2005 Monday Vp Zone Nc Edition

SECTION: Y, Pg. Y1

HEADLINE: Slaughterhouse safety unchecked

DATELINE: TAR HEEL

BODY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TAR HEEL -- The agency responsible for protecting North Carolina workers has started just its second inspection in 13 years of the Bladen County pork slaughterhouse that a human-rights group called the scene of widespread employee abuse.
About 6,000 people work at the Smithfield Packing Co. plant, the world's largest pork slaughterhouse, where more than 30,000 hogs are butchered every day. The animals are turned into 6 million pounds of shrink-wrapped pork chops and other meat products.
The plant in Tar Heel, about 100 miles south of Raleigh, has been described by some as a harsh and dangerous workplace where people toil until their bodies give out and they either quit or get fired.
Smithfield says injuries at its factories have been declining in recent years as the company has focused on safety.
What goes on at Smithfield Packing is unknown to the state Labor Department.
By law, three or more employees must be hurt in an accident, or a worker must die, before the state is notified. That means tens of thousands of injuries every year may never be recorded.
And while most companies provide a safe work environment for their employees, few ever see a state inspector on their property to confirm it.
The Labor Department's 110 inspectors reach fewer than 6,000 of North Carolina's 230,000 workplaces every year.
In the meanwhile, Smithfield's Tar Heel plant violates internationally recognized human rights because it exposes workers to dangers, coerces injured employees into silence, and denies them compensation, the watchdog group Human Rights Watch said in a report in January.
A Smithfield spokesman dismissed the report and said the company care about employees' health and safety .
"We know our efforts are working because we have seen a 31 percent reduction in worker injuries in our facilities over the last few years," said Jerry Hostetter, the company's vice president of investor relations and corporate communications.
Still, animal-slaughtering and processing plants record some of the highest injury rates in North Carolina: 9.2 cases for each 100 workers in 2003, the last year for which statistics are available. That was a big improvement since 1998, when nonfatal injuries were 18.3 per 100 workers.
A lecturer at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations who wrote the Human Rights Watch report questions the accuracy of the numbers.
"There is enormous pressure not to report injuries,"
Lance Compa said. " The company can always say that you didn't get hurt at work, you got hurt at home moving furniture or working on the car."
One of those who said they were hurt on the shop floor in Tar Heel and cast aside is Ray Hall, 42, of Fayetteville.
To him and thousands of others in eastern North Carolina, Smithfield offered opportunity. The company pays higher wages than many employers in the area. It also offers health insurance, a retirement savings plan, an employee assistance program and discounts on meat for workers .
"I loved the job," said Hall, who never finished eighth grade but made $11.60 an hour hooking split hogs .
The large sides of pork barreled down the conveyor belt, three seconds apart. Hall's job was to wrestle them into position, sink two hooks into them and slide the 50-pound pieces of meat to an adjacent table. An automatic counter made sure he and his co-workers kept up the pace.
On April 12, Hall said he felt something pull in his back. A nurse at the company health clinic told him he had just pulled a muscle and sent him back to work, Hall said.
Hall insists he signed a form saying he had suffered a work-related injury. The company's medical files show no record of that clinic visit. Hall says the document "disappeared."
An MRI showed two herniated discs in his spine.
Smithfield said the injury was not work-related, Hall's medical documents show.
Hall remains unemployed, unable to get medical treatment since he lost his health insurance.

GRAPHIC: SMITHFIELD PACKING CO., shown, employs about 6,000 people and produces 6 million pounds of shrink-wrapped pork chops and other meat products daily. The company says injuries at its factories have been declining in recent years.; HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, a watchdog group, claims in a report published in January that Smithfield's Tar Heel plant exposes workers to dangers, coerces injured employees into silence and denies them compensation for their injuries.; THE LABOR DEPARTMENT reaches fewer than 6,000 of North Carolina's 230,000 workplaces every year. Many injuries are never recorded because by law, three or more employees must be hurt or one must die before the state is notified.TRAVIS LONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS; Johny Madrid, 26, of Chiapas, Mexico, shows scars on his arm from an operation recently in Raeford , after a co-worker accidently stabbed him on a knife line while working at the Smithfield Packing Co. plant.

Buffalo News (New York), March 6, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 The Buffalo News
Buffalo News (New York)

March 6, 2005 Sunday
FINAL EDITION

SECTION: BOOK REVIEWS; Pg. G7


HEADLINE: EDITOR'S CHOICE

BYLINE: JEFF SIMON

BODY:
Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, The Black Church and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore (Little, Brown, 419 pp., $27.95). In late May 1944, Reverend C. L. Franklin, of Memphis' New Salem Baptist Church, came to Buffalo's Friendship Baptist Church on Hickory Street for the same reason that so many of his colleagues and compatriots left the South and traveled north. Writes Cornell University professor Nick Salvatore in "Singing in a Strange Land," "the economic opportunities for blacks in Buffalo meant that Friendship had many union workers attending and they could respond to the church financially better than the people of Memphis could. This translated into concrete improvement for the Franklin family: a higher salary, a comfortable house provided by the congregation, and the prospect of a new model car. . . . Buffalo had the added attraction of not being Memphis when it came to race. How many times in Memphis had Franklin been called 'boy?' How many times in Memphis had he been forced to quiet or suppress his own voice at such moments? Black Memphians faced persistent harassment, beatings and the threat of much worse on the city's segregated buses and in the city's factories and plants. Buffalo was no paradise, as C. L. would discover, but the city's absence of thoroughly segregated facilities loomed large from a distance."
The family C. L. Franklin eventually brought with him to Buffalo included three daughters, one of whom would grow up to be 90 percent of the reason Rev. Franklin is known today -- Aretha Franklin, the magnificent queen of soul, the woman who followed Ray Charles into the marriage of church and pop music and equalled (sometimes perhaps even surpassed) him in expressive power.
And that's, perhaps, the most important bit of historic surgery performed by this remarkable new book -- the 400-page separation of an enormously influential father from his (now) vastly more famous daughter. C. L. Franklin was, before Martin Luther King, the country's best-known African-American preacher. His recorded sermons and services -- with their fire, ecstasy and freedom calls -- were best-selling advances in a long-struggle for racial assertion and rights.
The family lived at 177 Glenwood Ave., right next door to a white family. Writes Salvatore: "it was during these years on Glenwood that the family sensed that Aretha might possess a special musical talent, her interest in singing and picking at the piano at age three already causing comment within the family."
C. L. Franklin's life within the black church and the civil rights movement is thoroughly and punctiliously documented for the first time in this exemplary book. From birth in the Mississippi Delta to his death 69 years later after a five-year coma caused by his being shot in a home invasion in Detroit, this is, to most of us, a little-known life and a milieu infinitely less known than it ought to be.
Schlock Value: Hollywood at its Worst by Richard Roeper (Hyperion, 218 pp., $16.95). If Richard Roeper -- who sits next to Roger Ebert's left arm on weekly TV -- is a movie critic, then John Ashcroft is a rap star and Camilla Parker-Bowles is a superstar model. Whatever it is that he does for a living, though, you have to admit he usually has an awfully good time doing it. He certainly does here in this fly-by-night personal scrapbook of Roeper's TV babbler's life and his reflections on Hollywood's current ignominy and inanity. He knows how to entertain, sling facts and snap judgments and get offstage in a hurry before anyone comes after him with a hook. There are worse strategies for putting a scrapbook together.

News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), March 6, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Copyright 2005 News & Observer
News & Observer

March 6, 2005, Sunday

LENGTH: 2693 words

HEADLINE: State probes safety at plant

BODY:

TAR HEEL -- Every day, 30,500 hogs enter a sprawling complex of metal buildings in Bladen County, emerging hours later in the form of 6 million pounds of shrink-wrapped pork chops and other meat products.
The job of killing, cutting and packaging is performed by 6,000 people at the Smithfield Packing Co. plant, the world's largest pork slaughterhouse.
The plant in Tar Heel, about 100 miles south of Raleigh, has been described by some as a harsh and dangerous workplace where people toil until their bodies give out and they either quit or get fired. The latest such salvo came in January, when an international human rights organization accused the company of widespread employee abuse.
Smithfield fired back the same day, saying the report was full of inaccuracies and false information. Injuries at Smithfield factories have been declining in recent years as the company has focused on safety, a company spokesman said.
But what really goes on inside the walls of the massive plant 100 miles south of Raleigh remains unknown, even to the state agency charged with protecting North Carolina workers.
No one at the N.C. Department of Labor can say today whether employees at Smithfield or anywhere else are safe on the job. No one knows which work sites have the most injuries.
By law, three or more employees must be hurt in an accident, or a worker must die, before their boss is required to pick up the phone and call the state. That means tens of thousands of injuries every year may never be accounted for.
Companies are required by law to provide a safe work environment for their employees, and most do. But few will ever see a state inspector on their property to confirm it.
Although the Labor Department now focuses almost all its planned inspections on industries with high injury rates including meat-packing plants its staff of 110 inspectors reaches fewer than 6,000 of North Carolina's 230,000 workplaces every year.
When the state initiated such an inspection at the Tar Heel plant last week, it was only the second planned inspection there since Smithfield began its operation in Bladen County 13 years ago. It could be up to six months before the results of the inspection will be made public.
The only North Carolina office that knows firsthand about injuries on the job is the N.C. Industrial Commission, which handles workers' compensation claims. The commission doesn't communicate with the Labor Department, however.
Its 28-year-old computer system is incapable of sorting and analyzing claims by employer, according to its chairman, Buck Lattimore.
This has created a worker protection system that relies almost entirely on employees to report problems, leaving most companies to regulate themselves.
"We can't inspect any place we want just because someone says there's an issue there," said Kevin Beauregard, the Labor Department's assistant director of safety and health. "It all starts with the willingness of employees to talk to us. If they don't, we probably won't be able to address their problem."
Ray Hall didn't have a problem at first.
He was among thousands of people in Eastern North Carolina who signed up to work at the Tar Heel plant in the past decade. To them, Smithfield offered opportunity.
The company pays higher wages than many employers in the area. It also offers health insurance, a retirement savings plan, an employee assistance program and discounts on meat for workers and their families.
"I loved the job," said Hall, 42, who lives in Fayetteville.
He made $ 11.60 an hour hooking split hogs at the conveyor belt big money for a man in his early 40s who never finished eighth grade.
The large sides of pork barreled down the belt, 3 seconds apart. Hall's job was to wrestle them into position, sink two hooks into them and slide the 50-pound pieces of meat to an adjacent table. There he clipped them in place so other workers could quickly cut out the loins.
In an eight-hour shift, he'd hook more than 9,000 sides. An automatic counter made sure he and his co-workers kept up the pace.
"Those lines flew," he said.
Eventually, the furious pace took its toll. On April 12, Hall said, a year after he started work at Smithfield, he felt something pull in his back. His supervisor sent him to the company health clinic across the street from the plant. A nurse told him he had just pulled a muscle and sent him back to work, Hall said.
Ergonomic injuries caused by repetitive motions continue to plague workers in the meat-packing industry, even though government statistics show such injuries have decreased in the past decade.
A January report by the Government Accountability Office says the industry's rates of carpal tunnel syndrome (6.8 cases per 100 workers in 2001) and tendinitis (3.5 cases per 100 workers) remain higher than in manufacturing as a whole.
Such injuries are often harder to prove than open, bleeding wounds or broken bones.
Hall insists he signed a form saying he had suffered a work-related injury. The company's medical files show no record of that clinic visit. Hall says the document "disappeared."
By the next day, his pain had become so severe that the company nurse asked him to see an outside doctor. An MRI showed two herniated discs in his spine.
Smithfield said then, and still maintains, that the injury was not work-related, Hall's medical documents show.
Hall says he didn't know in April to insist on workers' compensation, the insurance system that guarantees North Carolinians who suffer injuries on the job 66 percent of their weekly pay, up to $ 674, until they recover.
He tried once to return to work and was taken out in a wheelchair when the pain in his back became unbearable. In August, after the doctor said he remained unfit to work, Smithfield fired him.
Terry M. Kilbride, a Raleigh lawyer, estimates that he has handled 80 workers' compensation cases involving Smithfield employees. On behalf of Hall, he filed a complaint with the Industrial Commission in September, alleging that Smithfield had wrongly denied his client compensation for a work-related injury.
But contested claims can take many months to be heard; and without his paycheck, Hall was going broke. He and his girlfriend, who still works at the plant, worried that they would lose their home.
In January, Smithfield offered Hall $ 20,000 to settle the matter. Hall accepted, against the advice of his attorney.
"He accepted a short-term fix for a long-term problem, mainly because he couldn't make it," Kilbride said. "That's a sad fact for a lot of my clients."
Today, Hall remains unemployed. He has been unable to continue his medical treatment since he lost his health insurance.
The Human Rights Watch report, published in January, has barely made a ripple in North Carolina. The New York-based, independent watchdog organization, which exposes war crimes, labor violations and other human rights issues worldwide, was hoping for a rapid government response.
"It's disappointing," said Lance Compa, a lecturer at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the author of the 175-page report.
Compa spent a year interviewing more than 60 workers, company officials and union organizers at Smithfield's Tar Heel plant. His conclusion: The company violates internationally recognized human rights because it exposes workers to dangers, coerces injured employees into silence, denies them compensation, and crushes their efforts to form unions.
A Smithfield spokesman dismissed his report as "old news."
"We place top priority on the safety, health and well-being of our employees," said Jerry Hostetter, the company's vice president of investor relations and corporate communications. "We know our efforts are working because we have seen a 31 percent reduction in worker injuries in our facilities over the last few years."
Still, animal-slaughtering and processing plants record some of the highest injury rates in North Carolina: 9.2 cases for each 100 workers in 2003, the last year for which statistics are available. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles the data from interviews with about 8,000 North Carolina employers that are granted anonymity in return for sharing such information.
Compa questions the accuracy of the numbers. "There is enormous pressure not to report injuries," he said. "Especially with injuries that are not visible to the naked eye, the company can always say that you didn't get hurt at work, you got hurt at home moving furniture or working on the car."
The problem has been exacerbated, Compa thinks, with the influx of immigrants to the meat-packing industry.
Forty-two percent of employees in the nation's meat-packing plants are Hispanic, the GAO says. Smithfield declined to discuss the demographic makeup of the work force in the Tar Heel plant.
"They're often afraid to get their name in the system because they're not citizens," Compa said.
From 1998 to 2001, nonfatal injuries in North Carolina meat-packing plants dropped from an annual rate of 18.3 per 100 workers to 9.2, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That dramatic decline, mirrored nationwide, is a direct result of better safety and health programs, industry officials say.
But Compa and the GAO suggest that underreporting skews government surveys conducted to track occupational injury and illness rates. Among the GAO's recommendations to the U.S. Department of Labor: Set up inspection programs that specifically target workplaces that report a large reduction in injuries.
As a state that runs its own occupational safety and health program, North Carolina would be required to adopt such a program.
After a devastating 1991 fire that killed 25 people in a Hamlet, N.C., poultry processing plant, the state boosted its inspection program and enacted new laws to ensure that such an accident would never happen again. But even those changes didn't give North Carolina more leeway to inspect workplaces suspected of violating the law.
Government agencies continue to be constrained by state and federal court rulings that shield employers from capricious and unwarranted government inspections. Unless a work site happens to be scheduled for a planned inspection, inspectors must have some evidence of wrongdoing before they can show up.
Last year, the General Assembly appropriated money for the Industrial Commission to modernize its computers, a job that Lattimore, the commission chairman, said should be finished in 2007. Then it would be feasible for the Labor Department to have access to the 60,000 workers' compensation complaints filed annually and gain a clear picture of where workplace injuries occur.
For now, workers usually provide the best clues. Since Smithfield opened its Bladen County factory 13 years ago, employees at the plant have filed 14 complaints prompting inspections.
Allen McNeely, head of the state's occupational safety and health program, wishes more workers would pick up the phone.
"It puts us to the defensive rather than where we want to be," he said of the Human Rights Watch report. "It's better when they come straight to us."
Maria Carmona, like Hall, never called when she began to hurt. She didn't even know there was an agency investigating workers' complaints.
Carmona, now 38, was taken by ambulance from the Tar Heel plant to a hospital in Lumberton in April after the pain in her swollen shoulder became so severe that she had difficulty breathing.
Surgery two months later showed tendinitis and shoulder arthrosis, according to her medical records. The problem develops when cartilage in the shoulder begins to wear out.
Carmona had spent the previous four years cutting meat and tossing it on a conveyor belt, repeating the same motions over and over eight hours a day.
About 20 people worked side by side at her station. Carmona said the work was so hard that as many as four people in her group would quit in a single day. She stuck around because of the money: $ 10.60 an hour, more than eight times what she earned in her native Mexico.
"It pays well, but it kills you," is her assessment of work at the Tar Heel meat-packing plant.
The pain in her left shoulder began about a year after she started working there.
When Carmona didn't show up for work two weeks after her surgery she contends she had not recovered enough to return she was fired as well. She, too, found a lawyer who brought Smithfield to the bargaining table.
In October 2004, they settled for $ 15,500. After paying the attorney's fees and medical bills, Carmona said she was left with about $ 6,000. Today, she works as a baby sitter for friends in her small house in St. Pauls. It's a lot easier than cutting meat, but she's only earning about $ 50 a week.
If her shoulder ever heals, she may take a drive out to Smithfield to fill out another application.
"I still want to return to my old job," she said.
By Karin Rives, Kristin Collins and Michael Easterbrook
THE COMPANY: Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, with $ 7 billion in 2004 revenue, is the largest hog producer and processor in the world. In North Carolina, it employs 7,300 at six plants. Smithfield Packing Co. is a subsidiary.
The company announced plans last fall to build a 180,000-square-foot ham manufacturing plant in Kinston that will employ 206.
THE TAR HEEL PLANT
--Slaughters 30,500 hogs a day, or nearly 32 a minute, during two eight-hour shifts.
--Employs 6,000 workers who kill, split, cut up and package the meat. Smithfield also has contract workers who clean the factory at night and provide other services.
--Every day, 6 million pounds of packaged meat leave the factory by truck, making the plant the largest pork-processing facility in the world.
THE N.C. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR: Has 110 compliance inspectors charged with policing 230,000 North Carolina workplaces. It conducted a record 5,580 inspections in fiscal 2004, up from 1,193 in 1991.
Inspects when:
--A worker writes or calls in a complaint and agrees to sign that complaint (workers' names are not shown to employers). The number to call is: (800) NC-LABOR (625-2267), or (919) 807-2796. Complaints can also be filed online at www.nclabor.com.
--A work site is selected by a computer for inspection, as part of a random inspection schedule. High-hazard industries get priority.
It conducted 21 inspections at the Tar Heel plant between 1992 and February 2005. Of those, 14 were prompted by workers' complaints, two by accidents, and one by the random inspection schedule. Three others were classified as "monitoring," "follow-up" or "referral," usually from another government agency.
Since 1992, the company has been fined a total of $ 71,334 for minor and serious violations at the Tar Heel plant. One recurring theme has been insufficient training for new employees.
Poor training resulted in a worker's death in November 2003, the first in the plant's history, records show.
Glenn Birdsong, 25, of Fayetteville died when he was overcome by chemical fumes and fell into a large tank.
THE UNION: The United Food and Commercial Workers has been trying to organize workers at the plant for more than a decade. A collective bargaining contract would, among other things, strengthen worker safety programs at the plant, the union contends.
The union lost elections at the plant in 1994 and in 1997.
In December, the National Labor Relations Board ordered a new union election at the plant after it determined that the company had used unfair labor practices, including threats against employees, to try to quash the union campaign.

Orlando Sentinel (Florida), March 6, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 Sentinel Communications Co.
Orlando Sentinel (Florida)

March 6, 2005 Sunday
FINAL

SECTION: SEMINOLE; SEMINOLE; 2005 FLORIDA LEGISLATURE SANFORD ELECTIONS FOR MAYOR, COMMISSIONER; Pg. K1


HEADLINE: CANDIDATES SEE CITY OF PROMISE, CHALLENGES

BYLINE: Robert Perez, Sentinel Staff Writer

BODY:
SANFORD -- When voters go to the polls Tuesday, they will choose a city commissioner and mayor who will help lead the city during a time of great promise.
The city's downtown renaissance, decades in the making, is finally taking hold with new businesses moving in and a seven-story condominium project being built along the city's RiverWalk. One candidate, District 1 incumbent Commissioner Art Woodruff, said the city is poised for greatness.
But the nine candidates seeking office say Sanford also faces challenges ranging from divisiveness on the City Commission to a lack of a vision for its future.
Four people want to become the city's next mayor, the elected official who has historically provided the most guidance for the city. Current Mayor Brady Lessard is not seeking re-election.
Former City Commissioner Whitey Eckstein wants to bring unity to what he sees as a divided commission.
Eckstein, a retired schoolteacher, said he plans to let each city commissioner take a turn at running meetings to give them a taste of the mayor's job. He says that will help the commission come together as a team.
Ron Fraser, an independent distributor for a nutritional supplement, wants to improve communication between elected leaders and residents. Too often, projects are formulated and carried out without public input, he said. That disrespects the community and threatens to slow positive growth and erode the quality of life, he said.
Linda Kuhn, a former chief of the Seminole-Brevard State Attorney's Office victim's services division, says the city needs a grand plan or vision to guide it. Sanford, she said, must learn to hold out for better opportunities for development and be willing to fight for what's best for the city.
Dean Ray says all things revolve around public safety. He wants more cops on the road and better equipment for the city's Fire Department.
Five candidates -- Hank Dieckhaus, Bernard Mitchell, Lindsay Oyewale, Vance Taylor and Woodruff -- want to become the next commissioner from District 1, which covers northeast Sanford and includes downtown and the historic district.
Downtown business owner Dieckhaus wants better planning and stricter enforcement of city codes. New development in downtown Sanford should reflect its charm and historic architecture, he said.
Mitchell, a funeral home director, says crime remains the biggest issue in the district. Although criminal activity has dropped in the area, drug sales, prostitution and gambling remain. The city must give police the tools and training they need to excel , he said.
Lawyer Oyewale said residents want and need more activity for youths, especially teenagers. The city, she said, should craft an economic incentive plan that lures jobs and business, and require businesses that receive incentives to offer youth programs such as internships and job training.
Taylor, a retired Navy lieutenant commander, says there should be less government in people's lives. The city puts up too many obstacles for business and doesn't focus enough on issues such as roads, he said.
Woodruff, a high school physics teacher seeking a second four-year term, said development standards were improved during his first term and that he was instrumental in numerous programs that cut crime, eased flooding and built more sidewalks. He envisions doing more work to reduce crime and improve neighborhoods during a second term.
Four polls will be opened from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday.
District 1 -- Sanford Civic Center, 401 E. Seminole Blvd.
District 2 -- Westside Recreation Center, 919 S. Persimmon Ave.
District 3 -- First Church of the Nazarene, 2581 Sanford Ave.
District 4 -- Seminole County Health Department, 400 W. Airport Blvd.
Early voting will continue from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday at the Elections Supervisor's office, 1500 E. Airport Blvd.



CONTACT: Robert Perez can be reached at rperez@orlandosentinel.com or 407-772-8046.

GRAPHIC: BOX: SANFORD CITY COMMISSION, DISTRICT 1 CANDIDATES
HANK DIECKHAUS
Age: 57
Occupation: Owns Blue Hen Office Furniture in Sanford.
Education: High school graduate; attended LaSalle University in Philadelphia.
Personal: Married, two children. Served in the Marines. Vietnam veteran.
Civic: Member, All Souls Catholic Church; former member, PTA.
Hobbies: Sightseeing, music, arts.
Key issue: "With development exploding, we need to work with developers. We have to control growth so that, when all is said and done, we have something we like."
BERNARD MITCHELL
Age: 54
Occupation: Funeral home director, embalmer.
Education: Associate of science degree in mortuary science.
Personal: Married, six children.
Civic: Chairman of Sanford's Martin Luther King Jr. Steering Committee; immediate past district governor for the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association; former member, Sanford Code Enforcement Board, Cemetery Advisory Board, Georgetown Master Plan Committee, post office relocation committee; member, St. Matthews Missionary Baptist Church.
Hobbies: Cooking.
Key issue: "We continue to have a lot of prostitution, gambling and drugs in the district. We must work with the police department to provide them the tools, training and personnel they need to be a better organization."
LINDSAY OYEWALE
Age: 31
Occupation: Lawyer
Education: Bachelor's degree in labor relations, Cornell University. Law degree, Florida State University College of Law.
Personal: Married, two children.
Civic: Member, Seminole County NAACP, Orange County Bar Association, National Bar Association, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority; former member, Sanford Code Enforcement Board, Orlando Parks and Recreation Advisory Board.
Hobbies: Travel, reading, spending time with family.
Key issue: "Because District 1 is so diverse and eclectic, we need a commissioner who can talk to and address the needs of that group."
VANCE TAYLOR
Age: 74
Occupation: Retired Navy lieutenant commander.
Education: Degree in forest management, University of Florida.
Personal: Widowed; one child. Served aboard aircraft carriers during Korean War. Disabled veteran.
Civic: Member, Disabled American Veterans, Sanford Naval Officers Association, Experimental Aircraft Association.
Hobbies: Flying, building full-scale planes.
Key issue: "It's always been a little difficult to get over all the hurdles to start a business in Sanford. The rules and regulations need to be changed."
ART WOODRUFF
Age: 42
Occupation: Physics teacher at Oviedo High School.
Education: Bachelor's degrees in journalism and chemistry, University of North Carolina. Master's degree in education, University of Central Florida.
Personal: Married; two children.
Civic: Member, First Presbyterian Church of Sanford; church elder and serves on church's Christian education committee.
Hobbies: Scuba diving, water skiing, snow skiing, boating.
Key issue: "We need a formal plan to make every neighborhood a safe and inviting place to live."
PHOTO: Hank Dieckhaus
PHOTO: Bernard Mitchell
PHOTO: Lindsay Oyewale
PHOTO: Vance Taylor
PHOTO: Art Woodruff
PHOTO: Herbert 'Whitey' Eckstein
PHOTO: Ron Fraser
PHOTO: Linda Kuhn
PHOTO: Dean Ray
BOX: BOX: SANFORD MAYORAL CANDIDATES
Herbert `Whitey' Eckstein
Age: 59
Occupation: Retired schoolteacher.
Education: Bachelor of arts in education, University of Florida.
Personal: Wife, Pat; five children. Community service: Sanford city commissioner for 16 years.
Interests: Fishing, spending time with grandchildren.
Key issue: "The polarization of this city has gotten to a point where I don't know if the city manager can do his job."
Ron Fraser
Age: 51
Occupation: Independent distributor for Reliv International, a nutritional supplement.
Education: Bachelor of science in management, Southern Illinois University College of Business.
Personal: Single.
Community service: Vice chairman, Sanford Waterfront Master Plan Steering Committee; member, Optimist Club of Sanford (lieutenant governor, North Florida District of Optimist International; 1999 Sanford Optimist of the year).
Interests: Flying, scuba diving, boating, photography.
Key issue: "There has been a lot of turmoil in Sanford and the biggest reason is the lack of communication between the people and the city."
Linda Kuhn
Age: 55
Occupation: Retired chief of the Seminole-Brevard State Attorney's Office victim services division; certified law-enforcement officer.
Education: Graduate, Seminole High School; attended Austin Peay State University.
Personal: Husband, Robert Kuhn; two children.
Community service: Former member, Sanford Historic Trust Board, Civil Service Board and Seminole County Victim's Rights Coalition Board.
Interests: Gardening, boating, water sports, reading.
Key issue: "We need a grand plan for the city. If we had a good plan, the people would know what is being proposed and we would not have so much divisiveness."
Dean Ray
Age: 45
Occupation: Owns Ray's Appliance.
Education: High school diploma.
Personal: Wife, Janet; eight children.
Community service: Member, Sanford Citizens on Patrol, Sanford Police Citizens Advisory Board, Sanford Nuisance Abatement Board; vice president, Northeast Democratic Club; member, Seminole County Democratic Executive Committee.
Interests: Fishing, coaching softball.
Key issue: "Safety is always the top priority."

The Times Union (Albany, New York), March 6, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 The Hearst Corporation
The Times Union (Albany, New York)

March 6, 2005 Sunday
3 EDITION

SECTION: CAPITALAND REPORT; Pg. 35

HEADLINE: A BOTTOM-LINE BOOST AT WORKERS' EXPENSE

BYLINE: By DENNIS YUSKO Staff Writer

BODY:
ARGYLE - Business, government and the media have new jargon to describe laid-off workers like Kathryn Bosley.
Displaced. Outsourced. Offshored.
But the words mean little to her and the more than 300 former employees of Tyco International Ltd., whose jobs were shifted in January to lower-paid workers in Tijuana, Mexico, so the medical device maker could save on production costs.
Seeing their livelihood shipped across the border and facing the prospect of slipping from their life station, former members of the disbanded Local 15135 of the United Steelworkers of America are anxious and afraid.
"It leaves a very uncertain future," said Bosley, who worked as a finishing operator for 17 years in Tyco's Kendall Sherwood plant on Route 45 in Argyle. "Any of my skills are basically obsolete."
Relocating American jobs overseas, where companies can operate free from U.S. labor and environmental standards, has spread to all sectors of the economy and country as businesses seek to maximize their profits in an increasingly unregulated and tech-savvy global marketplace. The toll on workers, though, often leaves lasting bitterness, and outsourcing may have a negative, long-range effect on the overall U.S. economy, say employees, labor leaders and experts.
Former workers at the Tyco plant in Washington County have returned to school, accepted lower-paying positions, or are learning different skills since being laid off, Bosley said. The 53-year-old Glens Falls resident, who is looking for another job, expects she will earn $8.50 an hour, versus the $12.62 she made as a union employee at Tyco.
The union wage bought the then-single mother a home and helped her raise a daughter. Now, other factors are pushing her back to a job still to be determined. "I will need to get a job because of health insurance," she said.
Bosley's job was a manufacturing position, but white-collar and service jobs also are going to Mexico and Asia, said Gordon McClelland, labor relations instructor at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Albany.
Even construction jobs are outsourced, with foreign workers building fabrications overseas that are shipped to U.S. construction sites and swung into place, McClelland said. Outsourcing leads to wage stagnation, which means a smaller middle class and less national spending power, he said.
"This is a race to the bottom. Eventually, the economy has to be heavily impacted. How do you maintain a standard of living that Americans are accustomed to when the good jobs are being taken by others offshore at a much lower rate?" McClelland said.
Technological advances and the growth of an educated class in India and China have boosted the outsourcing trend, said Paul F. Cole, secretary-treasurer of the 2.5 million-member New York State AFL-CIO, the largest state labor group in the country. Technicians, engineers and even scientists abroad compete because they receive a fraction of the salary and benefits offered here, he said.
The Internet has fueled lower communication costs and made a much wider spectrum of jobs vulnerable to outsourcing. Routine work formerly done in America now can be transmitted to and from abroad with only clicks of the mouse, Cole said.
The state Department of Labor does not keep statistics on outsourced jobs. The Capital Region, particularly Albany and Saratoga Springs, had largely been insulated from outsourcing because their economies were based on government and tourism, which have yet to be offshored. But that may be changing as more companies experiment with their labor practices.
Albany Medical Center, for instance, decided late last year to send medical transcription work to India, ending contracts for the service with local firms. It expects to save $100,000 annually on having the oral notes of clinic doctors transcribed abroad.
But Tyco, while the latest, isn't the only high-profile example of outsourcing in the Capital Region.
Just before Thanksgiving 2002, about 90 workers at Altx Inc. in Colonie learned they would lose their jobs when Tubacex of Spain decided to close the steel-tube plant on Spring Street Road. Tubacex said U.S. orders had dried up due to competition from overseas.
And scores of workers at the former Decora Industries Inc. in Fort Edward - where Con-Tact brand adhesive paper had been made for 50 years - lost their jobs in 2003 when a new owner closed the factory and moved some of its work to Mexico.
Tyco, Altx and Decora workers became eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits under a federal program that provides retraining and financial aid when jobs are lost to increased imports or a shift in production.
But funding for TAA has decreased, and only a small fraction of former Tyco workers have applied for benefits, said Roselyn Mahoney, who was vice president of Local 15135.
Outsourcing American jobs increases corporate profits, but hurts workers, said Bosley, the former Tyco finishing operator.
"If you could see the women in their 60s and 70s that wanted to keep their jobs and work these 12-hour shifts when their health wasn't the best. It was incredible," she said. "They deserve a big applause and they got anything but."
McClelland, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations instructor, said the solution to outsourcing is to try to compete on quality and timeliness, rather than on cost and productivity. Bosley, though, had another idea.
"I'd love to start a union in Mexico," she said.
Dennis Yusko can be reached at 581-8438 or by e-mail at dyusko@timesunion.com.

Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), March 5, 2005, Saturday

Copyright 2005 The Morning Call, Inc.
Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania)

March 5, 2005 Saturday
SECOND EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. B6

HEADLINE: Francis A. Curry

BYLINE: The Morning Call

BODY:
Francis A. Budd Curry, 80, beloved father, brother, uncle, grandfather and friend, died Friday, March 4, 2005 in the home of his son, Bruce. He was predeceased by his wives, Agnes L. (Murphy) in 1974 and Jean (Cooke) in 2004.
A veteran of World War II, he received the a Bronze Star for valor for actions during the Battle of the Bulge. A successful businessman, he received his bachelors degree in industrial labor relations from Cornell University. He worked for Rockwell Manufacturing, Kearney, Nebraska, and later was president of Moser Industries, Allentown. Born in Rochester, N.Y., he was the son of the late Salvatore and Bertha (Faulk) Ciluffo.
Survivors: Along with his son, Bruce R. of Bethlehem are sons, Gary A. of Connersville, Ind., Keith F. of Overland Park, Kansas, Kevin D. of Mesquite, Texas; daughters, Nancy A., wife of Kent Stough, of Frederick, Md.; brother, Dr. William Ciluffo of Rochester; sister, Florence Carte of Napa, Calif.; 13 grandchildren, a stepgrandson, five great-grandchildren.
Services: 11 a.m. Tuesday, March 8, Trexler Funeral Home, 1625 Highland St., Allentown. Call 10-11 a.m. Tuesday in the funeral home.
Contributions: As someone who quietly and anonymously provided for those less fortunate than he, the family requests that in lieu of flowers, a donation be made to Lehigh Valley Hospice; Lehigh Valley Hospitals department of psychiatry or the charity of your choice in care of the funeral home 18102.