Occupy Burlington Stands in Solidarity with Locked-Out Workers!
Thomas Grace
Hey Fellow Occupiers! Please forward far and wide!! The Labor Solidarity Working Group hopes to see you on this Wednesday @7:00 in Lafayette 300 for a Teach-in and Friday @ 2:30 on the ground floor of the Davis Center. Come join us in Solidarity with locked out Sotheby's workers! And if you can't join us at either event, there are other ways you can help!
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Can you imagine 6 months without pay?
Forty-two art handlers in New York City were locked out of their jobs without paychecks by Sotheby's international auction house in July 2011. The art handlers are represented by Teamsters Local Union 814. Sotheby’s has demanded pay cuts and the right to slash retirement benefits. The company also wants to replace experienced unionized handlers with temporary, unskilled employees. These demands come on the heels of record profits; in 2010, the company made profits of $774 million and it recently nearly doubled the salary of its CEO.
William Ruprecht is Sotheby’s union busting CEO, a particularly nasty and proud member of the 1% whose take home pay is $23,000 per day. And, in his free time, he sits on the UVM Board of Trustees—and, get this, he also sits on the Board’s Labor Advisory Group! And it gets even worse. Ruprecht will soon choose with the other Trustees the next UVM president. WE DEMAND: JUSTICE FOR SOTHEBY’S WORKERS! RUPRECHT OFF THE UVM BOARD OF TRUSTEES!
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
- Come to our teach-in: 7:00, Wednesday, February 1st in Lafayette 300 (UVM Campus)
- Come to our Sotheby's Worker Solidarity Protest at the UVM Board of Trustees meeting - meet on the ground floor of the Davis Center at 2:30pm on Friday, February 3rd
- Sign our petition!
-
Call or email Governor Shumlin: 802 828-3333 (Send the letter below, or write your own)
- Call or email the members of the UVM Board of Trustees!
Carolyn Whitney Branagan
(802) 527-7694
cbra...@leg.state.vt.us
cbra...@comcast.net
Kesha K. Ram
(802) 881-4433
kr...@leg.state.vt.us
Dave Potter
(802) 438-5385
dpo...@leg.state.vt.us
Donna Sweaney
(802) 674-5175
dswe...@leg.state.vt.us
Jeanette K. White
(802) 387-4379
jwh...@leg.state.vt.us
Dear Governor Shumlin,
One of your fellow members on the University of Vermont’s Board of Trustees, William Ruprecht, is also CEO of Sotheby’s art auction house. Despite record profits, Sotheby’s has demanded harsh concessions from its art handlers, including cuts in benefits and pay. It has also demanded that all new hires be nonunion, which threatens the fundamental right to collective bargaining. It has locked out forty-two art handlers in New York City, represented by Teamsters Local Union 814, since July, 2011.
Faculty, staff, students, and community members are calling on Ruprecht to stop this injustice and make a fair settlement with the art handlers. If he does not, we call on him to step down from UVM’s Board of Trustees. There is no place for this callous and unfair behavior at the University of Vermont.
Governor Shumlin, please join in this call, and ask William Ruprecht to do the right thing, or step down from the board.
Sincerely,
Stephen Marshall
<bettypa...@gmail.com <mailto:bettypa...@gmail.com>> to get in
on the conference call.
On 2/20/2012 10:15 AM, Cecile Green wrote:
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>> ~4~ On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Cecile Green
>> <cecile....@roundskysolutions.com
>> <mailto:cecile....@roundskysolutions.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Heather,
>> Some interest in the Goddard Ad Hoc committee came up at the
>> Burlington GA today. Should have asked for a point person
>> yesterday for the Goddard Ad hoc. Have you all chosen
>> someone? If not, could you make that happen and let me know
>> who to connect folks to?
>>
>>
>> ~3~ On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Heather Pipino
>> <bettypa...@gmail.com
>> <mailto:bettypa...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Well, we're all on point at this point. Trying to set up a
>> time for the four of us to meet. Maybe tomorrow
>> afternoon... The group is me, jay, brian, and renee.
>>
>
>> *~2~ From: *Heather Pipino <bettypa...@gmail.com
>> <mailto:bettypa...@gmail.com>>
>>
>> Cecile -- please have people be in touch with me, for now. We
>> nailed down a meeting time TONIGHT via conference call at
>> 5:30PM, so if folks from Burlington want to join us, have
>> them email me and I'll send them the number. We will be
>> nominating a point person as part of our call tonight, but
>> for now, just have people email me.
>>
>> thanks,
>> h
>>
>> ~1~ Hello Fabulous Facilitators!
>> I wanted to get this out to any members of Burlington's
>> Direct Action who are interested in contributing to the
>> conversation/solution around the Goddard Conference. Please
>> pass this on ASAP as the meeting on this topic is TONIGHT!
>>
-- This reply email has been edited to reduce volume and to simplify
reading it.
Stephen Marshall 11 Hungerford Terrace (out back)
Burlington Vermont 05401
Dispolemic.Blogspot.Com
802-861-2316 Landline
802-922-1446 Cell