Support collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin's public sector employees!
UPDATE: JLC Western Region President Floyd Glen-Lambert reports that Los Angeles JLC staff and lay activists traveled by bus to Madison in solidarity with public sector workers in Wisconsin. Boston-based New England JLCers also went to a solidarity rally, according to NE JLC Director Marya Axner, and Michael Hersch, Philadelphia JLC director, tells us that they also rallied. On Friday, February 25, JLC Executive Director Martin Schwartz and Associate Director Arieh Lebowitz carried JLC signs aloft at a rainy but well-attended rally in Trenton, New Jersey ...
February 17, 2011: JLC on the scene at the ongoing mass protests in Wisconsin against Governor Scott Walker's attempt to eviscerate the collective bargaining rights of public employees. In Madison, Chad Alan Goldberg, Vice President, United Faculty & Academic Staff (AFT Local 223), was among the more than 50,000 Wisconsinites who, according to the state AFL-CIO, "have poured into the state capitol to express their opposition to Governor Walker's attempt to rob the state's workers of their rights."
Rabbi Jonathan Biatch, a congregational rabbi in Madison, WI, issued the following statement in support of Wisconsin workers:
"Jewish tradition, from the Hebrew Bible, to Talmud, to our modern American religious movement, supports fair and appropriate treatment of workers, as well as the right to bargain collectively. Our faith tradition knows that from these important and just practices come many benefits: from increased standards of living to increased productivity and profits. Judaism supports the rights of all workers to speak with employers, negotiate in good faith, and come to a final agreement that has everyone's assent. I therefore I cannot support Governor Walker's proposal in his Budget Repair Bill to remove collective bargaining rights for public workers."
See his writing on "The Jewish Connection to Labor Issues" here.