In Mott’s Strike, More Than Paychecks at Stake

The story in a nutshell: Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, the company that owns the Mott’s apple juice plant in Williamson, says that their unionized workers make too much, even though the company is enjoying record profits this year. Apparently, Mott’s workers are supposed to be embarrassed that they’re not being paid like peasants, like the rest of their working-class brethren in harder-hit industries. (This attitude can also be found among bitterly unemployed master’s-degree holders as well, I’ve noticed.)

Kopple’s first film, Harlan County USA, was about labor struggles in an industry where the workers had yet to partake of the pay and security that other American workers enjoyed in the 1960s and ’70s. Her second film, American Dream, was about the confused Hormel plant strike where American workers began to lose their grip on what they’d won. This would make a great final chapter: the Mott’s workers as the last men standing, the tall poppies, with no one in America left to cheer them on in a clear fight that the coal miners in the first film would have well understood.

Dr Pepper Snapple has vigorously defended its stance. “The union contends that a profitable company shouldn’t seek concessions from its workers,” the company said in a statement. “This argument ignores the fact that as a public company, Dr Pepper Snapple Group has a fiduciary responsibility to operate in the best interests of all its constituents, recognizing that a profitable business attracts investment, generates jobs and builds communities.”

It would be interesting to parse what this corporation really means about “generating jobs” (are they saying they will be generating more, but lower-paying jobs for the community? Highly doubtful - they just want to pay the same amount of workers less) and “building community” (maybe they’re talking about building a company store).

However, Dr Pepper Snapple is, on another level, being honest. It is the duty of a profitable corporation to screw its workers over as much as possible. And it is the duty of a union to resist a blatant and open screwing. If you can get more than $14 an hour (or one billion dollars) for whatever work you do, it is self-evident that you are worth that much to someone powerful enough to pay it. It’s a fact of life that many Americans (despite their college educations) still don’t understand: you don’t get to be adequately paid just because you possess a piece of paper that says you’re in the club. If you must rely on a piece of paper, rely on a contract - and even then, not too much.

This is war, and it always was, despite many decades of niceties that are now past. Whose side are you on?

FAILFaire

FAILFaire features projects using mobiles and ICTs in international development that have, to put it simply, been a #FAIL. Busted, kaputt. Tongue firmly in cheek, we take a close look at what didn’t work and why the projects failed amidst the ICT4D hype we all are subjected to (and sometimes contributors to). We believe that only if we understand what DOESN’T WORK in this field and stop pushing our failures under the rug, can we collectively learn and get better, more effective, and have greater impact as we go forward.

See more at this NYT article about the most recent FailFest.

Instead of technology failures, FailFaire CNY could be an honest, open hashing-out of failed local initiatives and redevelopment schemes. (I suppose in order to avoid hurt feelings, there would have to be a moratorium on discussing any projects that failed less than ten years ago.) Syracuse B4 could be our keynote speaker!

Seriously, I’m not just trying to be snarky. Why should these discussions just be kept on the blogs?

Such are the benefits of Upstate New York being last in line for all the latest innovations. Sometimes, you get to smell the crap coming.

Facing eviction from her Tennessee apartment after several months of unpaid rent, Alexandra Jarrin packed up whatever she could fit into her two-door coupe recently and drove out of town. Ms. Jarrin is part of a hard-luck group of jobless Americans whose members have taken to calling themselves “99ers,” because they have exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they can claim.

Without the checks, many like Ms. Jarrin, who lost her job as director of client services at a small technology company in March 2008, are beginning to tumble over the economic cliff. The last vestiges of their former working-class or middle-class lives are gone; it is inescapable now that they are indigent… Ms. Jarrin had scrabbled for her foothold in the middle class. She graduated from college late in life, in 2003, attending classes while working full time. She used to believe that education would be her ticket to prosperity, but is now bitter about what it has gotten her.

“I owe $92,000 for an education which is basically worthless,” she said.

I don’t know why the NY Times keeps finding women of a certain age to talk to. Maybe it’s because these women are truly desperate and agree to talk, and men won’t. But over and over, the profile is the same: fiftysomething, single/divorced, usually with more than two kids, in debt because of mortgages, vacations, new cars or pricey graduate degrees. They’re intelligent, well-educated, and have plenty of job experience, but no one wants to hire them.

I don’t know what to say, because chances are these women are never getting anything resembling their old jobs back. In fact, employers find them attractive layoff prospects even in good economic times. The closer she gets to the age she can take early retirement, the more apt the company is to dump her. And companies also don’t want to pay out the health benefits, so it’s easy to cut off the aging woman who hasn’t got young kids to raise any more. Is it a female thing? Maybe not, but women also tend to network less in the workplace and carry more of the water, which may get some of them to a certain point on the corporate ladder, but might not serve them well enough when cutting time comes.

What is troubling to me is how many women don’t get this picture. It’s scary how many nonmarried (single/divorced) women lose sight of how expendable they are in the eyes of society, though, and enter their last real earning decades amassing more debt than they should. I won’t comment on the mortgages and Caribbean vacations, but the bright shining lie of “more education” in the form of expensive post-baccalaureate degrees is something that needs to be shattered. The woman in this story now has $92,000 of non-dischargeable educational debt. She’s very probably never going to be able to pay that back.

There might be a serious lesson for the younger single (nonmarried) woman here: These are effectively your best earning years. Don’t squander them. Don’t waste your money on things that will have no long-term return. Strengthen your finances and especially whatever personal relationships you have. Prepare for what you know is coming. Always know what time it is. This is Logan’s Run, and forget your biological clock — that flashing crystal on your palm has to do with money.

Modern feminism ought to be speaking to this. I don’t pretend to know what happened, but in the beginning, feminism was about making it easier for women to make choices - not to “have it all,” which is what the message is today. Early feminism sought to liberate single women from servitude not of their own choosing. It sought to give single women the tools and confidence to live with dignity and self-reliance, if they so chose. It was about living smart as a single woman, not about living large. Early feminism also had much to say to the married woman. This is why the institution of American feminism is so beautifully represented by the statue in Seneca Falls, of the married Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the single Susan B. Anthony first meeting in friendship.

So what happened? It’s sad to see how alone these older women are in these anecdotal news stories. Many times, their children are not helping them. It isn’t too late for women of a certain age to make a better future for themselves, but it’s going to involve turning away from a society that has pretty much shown its true colors in a time of stress, and has rejected them. In the Middle Ages, widows had the same problems, and in some parts of Europe they banded together and formed lay communities. Some of these communities became surprisingly big “players” in the wider community, much to the consternation of the Church. In American life today, this is a missing institution (as is traditional feminism).

Has the institution of higher education grown too large and usurped other institutions in importance (real or perceived)? I’m inclined to say yes. It’s not that there is anything wrong about higher education. But American higher education now purports to be all things to all people — the Great White Hope that, morally and practically, stands all alone against our corrupt financial institutions and a democratic system that is largely pay-to-play now. It doesn’t pass on knowledge, quite so much as it dispenses “educational treatments,” as Ivan Illich pointed out in his radical book Deschooling Society - inoculations of frankly questionable value, rather than necessary healing; an obligatory sheep-dip through which all the wayward flock must be herded. (”Take this shot of Education, or you will surely wind up in an economic hell from which there is no escape. Dominus vobiscum, suos cultores scientia coronat, oolee oolee oo.“)

When you put all your eggs in one basket, and all your trust into one social institution, that’s a recipe for disaster. Our society isn’t there yet, but with the decline and stress on so many other institutions — K-12 education, religious life, labor unions, the military — it’s getting dangerously close. It certainly was a disaster for the lady in this story.

Maybe someone also should write a treatise on Dejobbing Society - since the jobs are going away for all demographics. Is it possible that in the end all our former institutions will have to be upended and alternative ones formed, or re-formed?

I was expecting a little more from these Red Norlands. Oh well.

Updated: So I ate those potatoes, and now their picture has mysteriously disappeared off the server. (Shrug)

Now that this difficult week for the team has come to a conclusion (the team arrived back in Syracuse today), hopefully we here in Central New York can also “come home” to this issue as it pertains to us. The national media will quickly lose interest in the subject, leaving us to confront something that was always on our doorsteps, whether we wanted to think about it consciously or not. What does “nationhood” mean? Can you overlay nations on top of each other, like you can overlay area codes? Is it possible that the official, black-and-white, cut-and-dried American motto “Out of many, one” is actually “Out of many… still several?”

I don’t know how to tackle these weighty questions (and neither, I suspect, will the national media), so I will address the most pressing issue for us here locally: What would it mean to live in a New York that is also Iroquoia? Or an Onondaga County that is also a territory called “Onondaga”? What does it mean to grow up in, and live in, a Syracuse that is next to and part of a sovereign nation? All just people living here, but not the same people. All in the same boat, but not.

At this point, you come up against the first mental barrier. Either you accept there is (or even just may possibly be) a sovereign nation besides the U.S. here, or you don’t. Either you can look at it a different way than the history books may say - or you cannot, or do not. So the following isn’t meant to argue for Haudenosaunee sovereignty… just to describe what it’s like for those of us who are at least endeavoring to get our minds around it.

Sovereignty is kind of strange to contemplate anyway. No one extends this status to any group of people, although some nation-states or international organizations pretend that they do or don’t. What is clear that sovereignty, once acknowledged by a people themselves, has to be continually defended. (As Benjamin Franklin might have said to his own people, “A Republic… if you can keep it.“) I won’t go into the history of different kinds of measures the Haudenosaunee have taken to defend sovereignty over the years, except to mention some times and places that should be already known to informed Central New Yorkers — Route 81 in 1971, the Kinzua Dam, Ganienkeh, Oka, and of course the passports that are now world-famous.

To imagine a reality different than the one given in our own history books almost feels like science fiction. It’s funny, because I watch a current TV show that deals with two alternate universes that occupy the same ground — and when I think about it, it’s kind of a helpful metaphor. The two universes don’t just quietly exist separately in separate realities; they share a history. One fateful day, a door was opened between the two, and relations didn’t start off on the right foot; someone from one side stole something precious from the other side, not understanding the implications of what they were doing and the huge disruptions it would cause. On the show, the two worlds are currently readying for war on one another. But the situation is complicated. It turns out that some characters can come and go freely between worlds, and feel some degree of allegiance to both. There are also places where the boundary between universes is particularly thin because of events that happened in the past; and there, confusing things happen that defy the laws of physics. “Reality” is not an either-or thing any more, but encompasses both sets of realities.

Now that I’ve lost 9 out of the 10 people reading this far… let’s return to the real world, or at least, the slightly unreal world that is upstate New York, where real people deal with confusing issues every day. I can only say that I find it easier to explain a convoluted science-fiction TV show, than I find it to explain the twists and turns of Haudenosaunee/New York relations to someone who isn’t from around here. What is the deal with all those weird lawn signs in Cayuga County? Why is the gas at some stations in Oneida County so cheap? Strange phenomena also continue to manifest right here in Syracuse, such as wildly painted billboards along the interstate, and historical markers that are periodically blocked by posters, or disappear altogether without explanation (the corner of Erie and Oswego Boulevards being a particular nexus for such weirdness lately.)

Maybe the best way to characterize it is that we are living in a “thin spot” that defies history-book reality, even as some of us feel or insist that it does not, or should not. It seems that only one nation can occupy a space, but it also seems there might be two nations here anyway. It seems fantastical, but — depending on your vision, experience, knowledge, and perspective — it also seems as if it might be so.

The author of the 1892 U.S. Census Report, The Six Nations of New York, briefly entertained some of the same thoughts, treating the idea of “a nation within a nation” as a then-current issue to be examined rather than peremptorily swept away. It’s pretty amazing that the even the theoretical consideration of two nations in one land made it into an official U.S. document over a century ago, but even more so that the situation described by the report — “too many partial and conflicting laws are nominally in force, but without coherence and general application” — still exists. Clearly, the Haudenosaunee have been somewhat successfully asserting their sovereignty in the interim, and various other overlaid governments and municipalities have been asserting theirs right back. The author of the Census report, back in 1892, recommended “a higher and equally consistent principle of international law” as the “wholesome remedy” to any such confusion (albeit, with an eye toward making the Indian more like the white man), and were reluctant to recommend imposing U.S. citizenship in any case. Oddly enough, that’s still the issue today with those Haudenosaunee passports. (If the Haudenosaunee and other indigenous nations were recognized by the United Nations, as they have been long expecting, maybe they would have allowed to join in the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and would have been able to more speedily update their passports to comply with these regulations.)

But here in Central New York and in other parts of the state, we are left to grapple with the implications of more than one nation. We might not just “live next to” each other; we might occupy the same place. We might be more than just neighbors; we might be enemies, or allies. We might not be the same people (and this idea may be very hard for melting-pot Americans to accept), although the same place may have a personal claim on us. (And who are “we” anyway? Who in Washington, in an age of eroding personal rights and Kelo v. New London, defends our sovereignty anyhow? Are we even considered full citizens of our own nation, or do corporations have those rights instead?)

Once you have considered and accepted an alternate view of the Six Nations’ status, you are left only with more questions. These are not new questions. A long time ago, the Dutch and the Mohawks tried to figure out what to do about them. The Mohawks came up with an agreement that is known today as the Two Row Wampum, whose concepts of how two nations ought to relate to one another became the basis for all subsequent agreements between various peoples living together in this “thin spot” known as upstate New York. Including these same British who just refused to recognize Haudenosaunee passports. (The Two Row Wampum was last used as a basis for agreement a few years ago when the Lafayette School District had to decide what to do about Onondaga students’ request to wear regalia at graduation.)

Because we live in a special place, we here in Central New York have to live and work with the fact (or contention, as others say), of another nation’s sovereign existence. So in the end, it doesn’t matter what someone in Britain, or even Washington, says about Haudenosaunee passports. Those of us here in Central New York have to chart our own course about this, by our own lights. And we have been, in ways that may seem strange to non-CNY’ers. The purple flag of the Iroquois League flies over the city square. Native students wear their regalia. Our elected representatives speak on behalf of people who will never vote for them. None of this came about because of a master political plan. It came about because we are making decisions based on our lived experiences confronting “alternate reality” every day.

To those Central New Yorkers who see it this way, it’s very confusing, and sometimes frightening, and very different. But it could be that this is the sort of difference that eventually sets people apart, and makes them a nation… however small.

Sean Kirst brings up the Onondaga Lake aroma in a blog post related to his interview of Upstate Freshwater Institute’s Steve Leffler. Being from the 690 side of the lake, I can report that the smell we got riding by was definitely not only sewage. It was a sharp, choking smell that seemed to be equal parts chemical and crap. Not quite as sulfurous as a skunk spray — and while very unpleasant, it didn’t seem noxious. In the morning, it was an excellent indicator of how hot a summer’s day was going to get. The lake always seemed to know first.

I say “was” because the lake really does stink less now. Not just physically, but morally and politically — yesterday’s announcement of a new push for local control of the lake cleanup is very welcome news, especially the detail that the Onondaga Nation gets the equal seat at the table that it deserves.

I do have to agree with Jim Walsh’s concerns about the towns around the lake — Camillus, Geddes and Salina — needing to be involved as well in some way. Some people in Camillus, who live around the portentiously named Wastebed 13, still think everything stinks. While the community outreach over the Onondaga land rights action has been heartening to see since 2005, I sometimes have felt that it has been very oriented toward the city of Syracuse and the University, with less emphasis on the other lakeside communities. In unraveling the past history of the lake’s pollution and bad/illegal deals made, we have to remember that the communities along the lake (which later became Solvay and Liverpool) were planted here before the city of Syracuse was even a mirage in the swamp. Just because they are now filled with short-sighted suburbanites of a particular political persuasion, doesn’t mean they’re not part of the puzzle.

(Yes, this post’s subject is a tribute to my all-time favorite newspaper headline, from the Post-Standard: Bills Stink Less.)

Sale of lands around picturesque Hemlock and Canadice lakes by the city of Rochester to New York state, a goal of conservationists for decades, is now complete, officials announced Thursday… “This is without a doubt the most important land acquisition project the state has undertaken outside of the Adirondack and Catskill Parks in more than a generation,” said Pete Grannis, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which will manage the new forest.

Already people are grumbling about why New York has $13 million to buy land at a time when our economy is so bad that Gov. Paterson feels the need to hold a “veto-thon” because he thinks the Legislature’s budget doesn’t recognize reality. I kind of wonder what the timing of this has to do with Rochester mayor Robert Duffy’s new relationship with Albany as Cuomo’s lieutenant governor candidate. (Nothing, I’m sure, but that was my first crazy thought…)

Long ago, York Staters published an ode to Hemlock and Canadice Lakes. It’s worth another read, if you are undecided over whether this was a good purchase or not.

The study of history is supposed to enlarge one’s consciousness of reality, linking the past (and future) with the present. With the acquisition of more solid local knowledge, the mind’s eye can glance from 1981 to 1846 to 2072 in an instant. But in practice, creating historical memorials seems to often be more about limiting and controlling thoughts about this historical “space” we all live in.

Last week I was once again over by Cayuga Lake. Although the sour tang of the historical air there isn’t new to me, I got a fresh whiff of it when I started to notice how numerous and how well-kept the historical markers are over there. Especially as you get down near Aurora, there seems to be one on every other corner. I’ve never seen any other part of the state (except maybe in the Capital district) where they are so lovingly repainted and mowed around. People in Cayuga County want you to see their markers.

The other thing you notice is that not only are the “No Sovereign Nation - No Reservation” lawn signs as ubiquitous as ever, but they’re shiny and new. Even the well-to-do lakeside summer camp owners have them, something that always strikes me as particularly weird. The Cayugas are the only New York native nation who don’t have a reservation of their own, and they’re hardly rolling in serious dough (not like the Oneidas with Turning Stone), but I’ve always felt the palpable difference in the air when you’re in Cayuga country vs. Oneida country in terms of how disturbed the citizenry is about tax-free cigarettes and native land purchases.

The historical markers, I’m convinced, are there for the conservation of the present, not of the past. I call them “voodoo markers.” With protective magic, they glorify European and white American achievements, and help dispel the smoky miasma of the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign which hit Cayuga country especially hard. (My favorite one is the marker on Route 90 that says “INDIAN MOUNDS” but then goes on only to speak of the Jesuits.) The campaign was both a tactical military expedition and a deliberate land grab — and “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” The land is still being fought over in some vague, half-forgotten way. Therefore, the markers have to be kept legible and numerous.

But honestly I can’t be too critical of Cayuga residents, because these markers can be pretty convenient after all. For example, Fairmount doesn’t have very many old buildings left. The oldest building, the former Whelan’s Funeral Home at Fairmount Corners, was once only narrowly saved from demolition (for a gas station) in the late ’60s. (It’s up for sale again.) The property sports an older historical marker which implies that the building was the home of James Geddes. This is probably incorrect, as his house was actually across the street.

So why don’t I care a whole lot? Because in a world where old buildings get knocked down, even a misleading historical marker grants a certain enhanced value to a property. It becomes its own sort of “voodoo marker,” offering a magical, deceptive protection. And it’s a deception that I’m inclined to give tacit approval of. I suppose the same magical protections can be extended by other kinds of historical markers, such as books about historical subjects. I guess we’re all a little guilty.

When economic disaster happened to the Rust Belt (in slow motion), the same process took place. Gradually, our region and other neighboring Rust Belt areas and cities, such as Detroit and Buffalo, fell off America’s mental map. The locus of the American imagination is mostly centered around the big coastal metro strips and the South and West. Where New York used to be a big-cheese state culturally and politically, it’s mainly important today to the American story only because of its large and regionally lopsided population. Cities like Syracuse and Rochester have been forgotten, just like the Gulf Coast will be once it’s covered in oil (even though life there will continue, and fish may even continue to get caught).

This means that, over time, our collective knowledge of the “known world” gets smaller - by our own choice. It seems strange that this could happen in a world where every corner has now been explored and is part of a global economy. But as the years go by, these mental blank spots on the map get papered over with generalizations and assumptions instead of actual knowledge of the area. Our modern, progressive minds can only take so much uncertainty, after all. Given a choice between uncertain fears and willful ignorance, ignorance usually wins out.