Barred From Unionizing, Walmart Workers Form New Group To Fight For Better Conditions

Yesterday, the Supreme Court sided with Walmart in an enormous employment discrimination suit that denied 1.5 million female workers the chance to form a class action to sue the company for billions in damages for discriminatory pay and promotion practices. Walmart’s triumph is just the latest in the corporation’s decades-long campaign to prevent workers from banding together to fight for fair pay and decent working conditions. The corporation’s union-busting has become notorious, along with directly connecting to their sexist practices, appalling working conditions, and menial wages.

For more than 20 years, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the nation’s main union for retail workers, has been trying to help organize Walmart employees. Repeatedly prevented from forming unions, employees are now trying the non-union organizing route, with UFCW’s help. The New York Times reported last week on the “innovative” new group:

The group, Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart for short, says it has quietly signed up thousands of members in recent months, and it is going public this week with a Web site, ourwalmart.org, and a Facebook page. Organizers say they have more than 50 members at some stores, and they hope to soon have tens of thousands of members. Walmart has nearly 1.4 million workers nationwide.[...]

In recent weeks, OUR Walmart has organized gatherings of 10 to 80 workers in Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles and other cities…One big concern, they said, was low wages.[...]

“The managers at our store and others are running over their associates as if they didn’t exist,” [Margaret Van Ness, an overnight stocker at a Walmart store] said. “They treat them like cattle. They don’t seem to care about respect for the individuals. We need to bring back respect.”

Unlike a union, OUR Walmart will not be able to directly negotiate on behalf of its workers, but “members could benefit from federal labor laws that protect workers from retaliation for engaging in collective discussion and action.” Unsurprisingly, Walmart is fighting this new non-union group tooth and nail. Over the years, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, has spent countless millions shutting down organization efforts.

They spent millions fighting the Employee Free Choice Act in 2008, demanding their workers toe the company line, and are so recalcitrant they even spent $2 million and thousands of man-hours fighting a $7,000 fine from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. When the meatcutting department of a Texas store tried to organize in 2000, Walmart retaliated by phasing out all of its meatcutting departments.

Former Walmart Executive Vice President John Tate may have summed up the corporation’s outlook best when he said, “Labor unions are nothing but blood-sucking parasites living off the productive labor of people who work for a living.”

The OUR Walmart declaration asks only that the company heed the words of founder Sam Walton: “Share your profits with all your Associates, and treat them as partners.”

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After Taking Millions From Natural Gas, Pennsylvania Gov. Threatens To Veto Any Taxes On Industry

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R)

When it came time to fix his state’s $4 billion budget deficit, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) steadfastly refused to raise new revenues, even through a tax on natural gas extraction, despite the fact that Pennsylvania is the only state with hydrofracking that does not tax its use.

Instead of taxing fracking, a dangerous technique that fractures the ground to extract natural gas, or closing other tax loopholes, Corbett proposed eliminating $1 billion from the state’s education budget. Corbett’s cuts to education were so drastic that he was was overruled by his own party in the state House, which returned $600 million in funding. To offset the restoration of education funding, state Republicans proposed cuts that would negatively impact low-income Pennsylvanians.

But now, the state Senate has passed an extraction fee on natural gas drilling — the first of its kind in the state. However, Corbett said yesterday that he would veto any fiscal plan that includes a tax or even an impact fee on natural gas extraction, preferring to wait for a study on the matter to be released:

“I think it’s more important to come up with a good policy rather than jamming one through under budget-deadline pressures,” Corbett said.

This veto threat puts him at odds with members of his own party in the legislature and comes despite the fee’s potential to raise more than $310 million over the next two years.

So why has Corbett adamantly opposed taxing the natural gas industry? One reason could be the massive amount of campaign contributions the industry has given the governor. Pennsylvania has no individual campaign finance limits, which has helped the industry donate more than $1,042,116 to Corbett’s campaign for governor and $361,207 to Corbett while he was the state’s attorney general.

Corbett has already repaid the industry by lifting a moratorium on new natural gas drilling on public lands, and by requiring his office’s approval before any regulations against natural gas companies can be enforced. Now, he would rather cut $500 million in education funding and eliminate health care coverage for 100,000 low income Pennsylvanian’s than tax the industry. He even suggested that public universities should pay for themselves by allowing natural gas drilling on their campuses.

Corbett’s support from the natural gas industry was a significant campaign issue, with his Democratic opponent saying, “He will defend their profits and not do anything for taxpayers.” Throughout the campaign, however, Corbett said he was “not beholden to any” of his donors. But now it seems that Corbett would rather side with his donors from natural gas companies than his states’ students, poor, and those who will be impacted by increased gas drilling.

–Sean Savett

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A Simple Download Manager from Microsoft

I wasn’t even aware that Microsoft offers a standalone download manager for Windows until they updated the program to version 1.2 and it thus made a re-appearance in one of the feeds for Microsoft’s Download Center.



Microsoft Download Manager is a lightweight and easy-to-use tool that you may use to download files from the Internet. There are no complicated settings to configure and all you need to do is paste the file URL to begin the download process.

It can run minimized in the system tray and pops-up a unobtrusive notification every time a file download is complete or if the program has trouble downloading a particular file.

The software can only handle files that are served over the HTTP protocol (no FTP) but it does support downloading of files that require authentication. It was originally designed to help users download files from Microsoft sites but there’s nothing stopping you from using this program with any other site.

Microsoft Download Manager is compatible with all recent versions of Windows including XP, Vista and Windows 7.

 

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How to Make Phone Calls from your iPad

The iPad may look like an oversized iPhone except that it cannot make or receive phone calls. There are however apps, both free and paid, that can turn your iPad into a phone, sort of.

For instance, there’s Skype that lets you make voice and video calls calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world for free. Then there are apps like Fring and Truephone that you may use to call any landline or mobile number from the iPad over Wi-Fi or 3G.

Another option is Line2 that practically converts your iPad into an iPhone for a monthly fee. You can make phone calls, send text messages and the app runs in the background so you can even receive phone calls while not using the app.

Turn your iPad into an iPhone

The various apps that I have mentioned above use VoIP calling but wouldn’t it be cool if you could use the SIM card of your own mobile phone to make calls from the iPad without changing the number.

There’s a new Cydia app in town called PhoneIt-iPad that does exactly that. It can turn an iPad 3G into an iPhone allowing you to make or receive phone calls and text messages. The app is expensive at $19.99 and it works only on jailbroken iPad 1 running iOS 4.3.3 and not the newer iPad 2.

I haven’t tried the app myself but my friend Kawaljit Singh of NDTV just did and he sent me a note saying the thing works as advertised:

PhoneItiPad works exactly as advertised. Both SMS and phone works. Since there is no normal speakers on the iPad, the phone calls work via headphones or with speakerphone.

Here are some screenshots of the PhoneItiPad app in action.

   

And here’s a working video demo from the app developer himself:

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This story, How to Make Phone Calls from your iPad, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on June 13, 2011 under Ipad, Software.

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Let Others Know You’re Suffering from Email Overload

The past few days were hectic and you have not been able to reply to the various email messages that have piled up in your Gmail inbox. The email senders are waiting for your response and you’re still buried in the overloaded Inbox.

Let Everyone Know You’re Busy with Email

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were an automated way to let others know that you are suffering from email overload and that it would be unfair to expect an immediate response from your side?

Enter Courteous.ly, a new tool for Gmail that reads the current state of your Gmail inbox – stats like how many messages you have in the inbox, how many are unread, etc. – and then estimates how busy you are.

Your Inbox analysis is published to a separate web page and anyone may access that page to know if your current email load is light or high. Thus the expectations are set right.

The program connects with your Gmail account via OAutho and polls your inbox every 10 minutes. You may add your unique URL to your email signature, or to your out-of-office auto-reply, so people know where to go in case they don’t hear from you for long.

Thank you Amber Mac for the tip. The above “Do Not Disturb” drawing was made by Marc Johns and is available as a post-in note.

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This story, Let Others Know You’re Suffering from Email Overload, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on June 14, 2011 under Gmail, Internet.

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