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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJack Lew’s union-busting past
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/09/jack_lews_union_busting_past/
Jack Lews union-busting past
In a little reported episode, our possible next treasury secretary played a critical role trouncing an NYU union
Wednesday, Jan 9, 2013 05:00 PM EST
Josh Eidelson
With President Obama poised to tap current chief of staff Jack Lew as his next treasury secretary, Republicans are already attacking Lew for supposed slights during budget talks. Some progressives may bring renewed scrutiny to his time at CitiGroup. But if history is any guide, there will be little talk about another line on Lews résumé: The key role he played in New York Universitys campaign to rid itself of a graduate student workers union.
Lew, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, joined NYU as chief operating officer and executive vice president in 2004. At the time, NYU was the only private university in the United States whose graduate students had a union contract. By the time Lew left two years later, NYU graduate students had lost their collective bargaining rights. In between, picketers hoisted Wanted posters with his face on them.
Reached over email, Andrew Ross, NYU professor of social and cultural analysis, charged that the administration followed every page of the union-busting playbook, as instructed by the anti-union lawyers retained for that purpose. Ross, a co-editor of the anthology The University Against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace, wrote that despite broad faculty and community support for the union, students on the picket line were threatened with expulsion. There was no indication that Lew, as a senior member of the team who executed this policy, disagreed with any of these practices. To all appearances, he was a willing, and loyal, executor of decisions that trampled all over the students democratic right to organize.
When contacted for a response, White House spokesperson Eric Schultz emailed: Jack Lew has been a strong supporter of the right of workers to organize as has the President. And that support will not change in his new role as Treasury Secretary.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Never-mind that this "activity" occurred in a different role 10 years ago and his more recent record. All of recent history is irrelevant when posing attacks.
MotherPetrie
(3,145 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)see I believe in a person's ability to evolve ... and where current acts out-weigh past conduct.
JoeyT
(6,785 posts)There'd be fifty OPs about this right now if it was a Bush appointment. Basically there's no transgression that Obama can't absolve someone of. He can even accept apologies on behalf of minorities he doesn't belong to. Isn't *that* the most awesome thing you've ever heard?
Edited to add: And anyone that tells you otherwise is full of it. Witness all the OPs about how awful Romney was for assaulting someone and cutting his hair which was a damned sight more than a decade ago. (Which is right: It was awful. But so is this.)
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)We'll account for his time at CITI during the crash too, better?
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)going back a decade or pointing to a lawfully act done in the past and in a different role, while ignoring subsequent acts is a smear.
TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)Hell, the fucker was just running CITI into the dirt.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)And Manson has done nothing positive either.
Okay, you don't like Lew. Let's leave it at that ... rather than your continuing to find outrage.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)And union busting is a model application.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)protecting entitlements (yeah, right) before he was willing to cut them.
JARED BERNSTEIN, Former Chief Economist to Vice President Joe Biden
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june13/lew_01-10.html
Just another neo liberal globalist with fascist tendencies.