I continue to get members and gifts of money and this all helps in forming our nascent organization. I can now reach out to the approximately 6000 agency fee payers and will soon be in touch with the approximately 4000 union members. This union does not speak for the majority of HX, TX and RX workers at the University of California. Many union members I have spoken to are ready to quit this union, they just need to be encouraged and shown how to do it. Ask your coworkers who have paid $25 to $35 a month ($900 to $1260) for the last three years as union dues if union leadership has used over $10,000,000 they have taken from us over this period has been used wisely for our benefit. They pissed away about $1,000,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by their own clerical staff for not paying overtime to their own employees. Imagine that, a union that fails to pay it's own employees who then go on to protect themselves by forming their own union because their employer, a union, failed to pay them overtime. Both bizarre and pathetic.
UPTE did not send the people who sent objection letters the monthly payment for December so about 20 people filed a charge with my help with the California Public Employment Relations Board. UPTE then said it sent the checks but I'll be checking to see if everyone eligible really did get these checks. UPTE has played the old "the check is in the mail" game before. In January, they sent copies of checks for about $75 to me and the Board as proof that they paid about 50 people who filed charges. When I checked with these people, it seems that they did not actually get these checks. UPTE then sent new checks in late March and April. In both cases, they claimed that the checks were not sent due to "administrative error". My friends are preparing more charges and let us see if the Board is stupid enough to accept a third, fourth or fifth "administrative error".On a lighter note, the "box model" puzzle has been solved in extremely clever fashion by Jason Finely at UCLA (jfinley@ucla.edu). Many years ago, I solved this problem extemporaneously at a management conference using one straight line (although it took me three tries). Jason has solved this using one straight line and then topped himself by solving it with zero lines. See his elegant solutions at http://homepage.mac.com/uniace/box-2lines.JPG, http://homepage.mac.com/uniace/box-2lines.AVI, http://homepage.mac.com/uniace/box/box-0lines1.jpg, http://homepage.mac.com/uniace/box/box-0lines2.jpg, http://homepage.mac.com/uniace/box/box-0lines3.jpg, http://homepage.mac.com/uniace/box/box-0lines4.jpg, http://homepage.mac.com/uniace/box/box-0lines5.jpg. He did receive the $100 prize from me, you can ask him if my check is "in the mail" or if he actually received it.
Finally, I ask those of you who are behind me to understand that this will be a long, drawn out battle. From one gadfly in the first year of this fight, to twelve angry men the second year, to 300 insurgents the third. Join me in a war dance my friends, a revolution this year.
Werner