Chicago GMB

This is the news page for our Chicago General Membership Branch. To get an overview about our contact info, news and events, please visit our home page.

31st Street Transit Co-operative

Posted Sun, 09/26/2010 - 12:44pm by x344543

Originally posted here.

Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood has been without accessible bus service for over a decade. The CTA’s 31st st. bus route was eliminated as a ‘cost-cutting measure’ in 1998, leaving schools, businesses, and residents isolated from the city’s expansive transit network. The Little Village community, LVLHS, and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization spent years mounting an unsuccessful campaign to reopen/expand the CTA’s 31st St. route; as of the recent cuts in bus service throughout Chicago, which have resulted in the loss of nine express routes and over 1,000 transit jobs, it has become clear that progress is impossible unless members of the community take control of their transit options.

Greek Solidarity Demo in Chicago - 5/13/2010

Posted Wed, 06/09/2010 - 1:32pm by x344543

Originally posted here

To friends and comrades in Greece,

On Thursday, May 13 a dozen of us held a demonstration against the Greek Consulate in Chicago. We want to remind you that even in the most difficult times, you have the active solidarity of uncounted others around the world. A vast subversive project is still taking shape everywhere, however slowly, and your struggle is one node among many.

Repression may be raging against you there, and our numbers here might be small, but the important thing to remember is that you've found your resonance. This resonance spreads around the world, laying foundations for real connections and the deepening of struggles.

Fellow Worker Franklin Rosemont 1943-2009

Posted Fri, 04/17/2009 - 11:13pm by x344543

Franklin Rosemont, celebrated poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and surrealist activist, died Sunday, April 12 in Chicago.

He was 65 years old. With his partner and comrade, Penelope Rosemont, and lifelong friend Paul Garon, he co-founded the Chicago Surrealist Group, an enduring and adventuresome collection of characters that would make the city a center for the reemergence of that movement of artistic and political revolt. Over the course of the following four decades, Franklin and his Chicago comrades produced a body of work, of declarations, manifestos, poetry, collage, hidden histories, and other interventions that has, without doubt, inspired an entirely new generation of revolution in the service of the marvelous.

Franklin Rosemont was born in Chicago on October 2, 1943 to two of the area’s more significant rank-and-file labor activists, the printer Henry Rosemont and the jazz musician Sally Rosemont. Dropping out of Maywood schools after his third year of high school (and instead spending countless hours in the Art Institute of Chicago’s library learning about surrealism), he managed nonetheless to enter Roosevelt University in 1962. Already radicalized through family tradition, and his own investigation of political comics, the Freedom Rides, and the Cuban Revolution, Franklin was immediately drawn into the stormy student movement at Roosevelt.

IWW Member Laid Off By Starbucks After Confronting CEO and Blogging About It - IWW Immediately Hits Starbucks with Legal Action

Posted Fri, 03/20/2009 - 3:35pm by x344543
Chicago, IL (03-19-2009)- The Starbucks Coffee Co. informed outspoken union member and barista, Joe Tessone, yesterday that it was laying him off, just two weeks after he confronted CEO Howard Schultz over the company's squeezing of employees.  Mr. Tessone's blog post on the encounter entitled, "Howard the Coward: The Day My Boss Ran Away" quickly became an Internet hit among fast food workers and their supporters (online at: http://www.iww.org/en/node/4618).

"When I heard Howard Schultz was in town, I knew had to get to the store and make my voice heard as a barista and union member," said Tessone, a 4-year veteran of the company with an excellent performance record. "He said he'd speak to me after his interview with the Wall Street Journal only to scurry through the emergency exit the first chance he got.  I told Schultz that it was time to dialogue with union baristas and that too many of us we're living in poverty but he showed nothing but cowardice."

Shortly after his exchange with Schultz, Tessone was ordered into a one-on-one meeting with a Starbucks Regional Director rather than the store manager who would normally administer discipline.  The director warned Tessone that he was out of compliance with Starbucks' new "Optimal Scheduling" policy which pries open baristas' availability to work without guaranteeing any work hours.  The problem with the director's rationale: Tessone's availability was indeed in complete compliance with Optimal Scheduling requirements which are laid out in a written policy.  The same rationale was erroneously deployed by Tessone's store manager yesterday when he was laid off.

Howard the Coward: The Day My Boss Ran Away

Posted Wed, 03/11/2009 - 12:01am by x357737

by Joe Tessone

03/03/09- The time is 8:55 AM, 5 minutes before my alarm clock was supposed to sound I am awoken by a text message which says that Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO and #1 union buster, is having a press conference at the Oak and Rush Starbucks location. I jump out of bed, get dressed, and haul downtown. By the time I get there, the news cameras are gone. I look around and there he is sitting behind a merchandise wall in an interview with a few reporters. I order an Iced Tall Passion Tea… no need for caffeine, I’m fired up.

My old District Manager is in the cafe greeting customers and she asks me why I’m there. “Just getting a drink,” I respond. She then proceeds to make a call on her cell phone, obviously calling upper management. After I get my beverage, I find a seat, set my bag down, and I approach him.