Tell a friend about this article
Previous Article: Carpenters Mystery
Next Article: Nurses ask court to back rights in NYS Association
Please give what you can.
AUDHome--> Union Democracy Review--> Articles
SUBSCRIBE to Union Democracy Review!
From the February 2008 issue of The $100 Plus Club News #109
An Interview with John Martin -- Columbia School of Journalism Professor, Former ABC News Reporter
The following interview with Columbia Journalism professor John Martin was prompted by his invitation to AUD Executive Director Judith Schneider to give a presentation to his seminar in late January. John Martin has won several prestigious awards for reporting over his 45-year career. Among them are 1) sharing the George Polk Award for reporting on the tobacco industry's manipulation of nicotine, 2) sharing an Emmy award for reporting on public subsidies for Ross Perot's private projects, and 3) winning an Award for Excellence from the National Association of Black Journalists for describing the role of 18,000 black sailors in the Civil War Union Navy. Martin is actively interested in the labor movement and union democracy. He teaches a weekly seminar called "Fault Lines," which is also the name of the labor-oriented journal written by the seminar's students. A Fault Lines story on Schneider's presentation follows this interview.
Plus Club: How did you become so interested in the labor movement and in union democracy in particular?
Martin: There were two factors, Vice Dean David Klatell and I brainstormed about a seminar that would tackle important issues. Labor unions: Dead or Alive came to mind immediately as a vastly underreported and little understood part of 21st Century America.
Plus Club: How and when did you discover AUD?
Martin: As a national correspondent for ABC News, I found myself interviewing Herman Benson for a story on union corruption. It must have been ten years ago, maybe more. He is a fascinating figure in the labor movement and I never forgot him or the work he performed. AUD is a terrific organization, a wonderful clearinghouse of information. Disclosure: I value AUD so highly that I support it with a small yearly contribution.
Plus Club: How did you come to set up the "Fault Lines" seminar/paper, how long have you been teaching it, and what do you mean by "fault lines"? It seems quite an innovative way of teaching, having the students be the reporters.
Martin: Fault Lines was born in that brainstorming session I mentioned with Vice Dean David Klatell. It was the fall of 2002. Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism was expanding the number of sections of its national affairs reporting seminar. I met with Dean Klatell to discuss what to teach.
David thought that we should use the metaphor of fault lines as a way to explore those areas where society's haves and have nots rub against each other, a bit like tectonic plates. Labor unions seemed to us to represent an effort by those less powerful to equalize the situation. Yet the tectonic plates seemed to be sliding faster and faster as labor unions hemorrhaged members. We thought it was wrong that labor and employment got so little coverage by the big newspapers and networks. We thought sending our reporters to cover labor might lead to more understanding and more coverage as they enter the work force and move up the ranks. We'll see.
I publish the journal Fault Lines from my laptop as a way to communicate with my reporters and to feature their work. We focus on four topics, one per month, over the course of a semester, beginning with labor unions and employment. The three others are digital technology, wrongful convictions, and national security.
The labor segment has been especially good for beginning reporters. We draw in experts in the field on the many sides of labor and employment. I've managed to recruit people from across the spectrum: AFL-CIO labor union officers, labor scholars, NLRB regulators, employment lawyers, labor reformers (AUD), corporate lawyers representing big companies and pro-business organizations (National Association of Manufacturers, National Right-to-Life Legal Foundation, Manhattan Institute, etc.) Each reporter gets a "single starter source" from me, someone he or she can call for a perspective. Then they start searching out others. Every story has to have three or more additional sources drawn from the field. We're very proud of their work. We think it's an important first step in grasping the realities of the work place.
For digital technology, we asked: Is there really a Digital Divide? And if so, do people on both sides of it benefit or only those on top? We chose wrongful convictions because of a Columbia law school professor who had been a Manhattan prosecutor. I thought we should study America as a prison state. He said the big issue was innocence, and why were there so many wrongful convictions. The final area is national security. We ask: in the war on terrorism, what are we giving up as a society to preserve the values we hold dear?
Plus Club: Thank you John, for your time and it's been great working with you.
Martin: Thanks very much for your interest. AUD is a wonderful organization and I'm very grateful for your help.
Legacy of Corruption: A Look at Roadblocks to Union Democracy
The nation's labor unions suffer from a legacy of corruption and authoritarianism which often hamper the ability of their members to dissent or gain reforms, according to Judith Schneider, a labor union advocate based in Brooklyn, NY.
"The raw exercise of power has to some extent disappeared," she told Fault Lines reporters in a talk summarizing a wide range of issues facing unions. Members still face roadblocks, she said, when they suspect foul play or seek to change policies... She cited the 1959 Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act as a major tool of union reformers looking to keep track of expenditures controlled by elected leaders. Without federal laws protecting their rights, she suggested, rank-and-file memberships might suffer the same fate as their predecessors in the 1950s, when, she said, organized crime controlled significant parts of the union movement.
"How did this happen?" asked Reporter Ailsa Chang, who sought a description of how criminal elements became part of the labor movement. Schneider said that from their earliest years of struggle, underfunded unions found themselves the object of undercover takeover efforts by elements of organized crime which saw them as a tool for extorting bribes from companies as well as embezzling members' pension fund contributions. Today, she suggested, the threat to union democracy came less from criminal elements than from the actions of autocratic union leaders who seek to eliminate dissent.
(courtesy of John Martin, Fault Lines, A Reporters' Journal of Labor, Technology, Justice, and National Security, Vol. 7, No. 2, Feb 5, 2008)
Previous Article: Carpenters Mystery
Next Article: Nurses ask court to back rights in NYS Association
This website is made possible by contributions from union members and supporters like you. Please help us build the movement for union democracy, join or contribute to AUD.
AUDHome; Legal Rights; Education; Union Democracy Review; Books; AUDLinks
Page designed by Matt Noyes, National
Writers Union/UAW, and Rachel Szekely
The Association for Union Democracy. www.uniondemocracy.org
104 Montgomery Street, Brooklyn,
New York, 11225; USA; 718-564-1114; info@uniondemocracy.org
This work is licensed
under a Creative
Commons License.
Use
the following credit line on the materials you use:
"From the
website of the Association for Union Democracy. www.uniondemocracy.org. Email:
info@uniondemocracy.org. 104 Montgomery Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11225; USA;
718-564-1114"
Please notify us at websteward@uniondemocracy.org when you use material from the site.
Send comments or suggestions on the website to websteward@uniondemocracy.org.