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Civil Servants

Nonprofit, Human Services Workers Are Starting To Unionize

June 28, 2022 Rick Karlin, Portside. , ,
Makayla Wahaus’ journey to union activism started at Rensselaear Polytechnic Institute where she was a physics major. A course on food systems sparked an interest in social problems like food deserts and poor nutrition and the 2020 graduate ended up working for the non-profit Capital Roots, which works to make fresh produce available to people in neighborhoods where there are no nearby supermarkets or other healthy food sources. She says she loves her job, but wants more say in how the organization is run, and like others, says it’s increasingly  hard to survive on the pay, which for many is under $15-an-hour. “Those are all factors that came together and made us want to organize collectively,” she said of the current drive to have Capital Roots employees join the Service Employees International (SEIU) union.

Federal Employees Turn To Encryption To Privately Discuss New Boss Trump

February 3, 2017 Kate Cox, www.consumerist.com , , , ,
By Kate Cox for Consumerist - Every new President brings a wave of change to D.C., but the first two weeks of the Trump administration have been busier and more controversial than usual — to put it very mildly. While much attention has been paid to the public response to the White House’s newest tenant, there are federal employees who can’t be so vocal about their concerns, particularly when chatting over government-supplied devices. That’s why some federal staffers are turning to new encryption technologies to keep their discussions away from unwanted scrutiny. Politico reports today that across agencies, some federal employees are seriously stepping up their tech security game.

Why We Must Support Federal Worker Noncooperation

February 2, 2017 Adriana Calvarezi, www.truth-out.org , ,
By Adriana Calvarezi for Truthout - After 17 years at the US State Department, for example, TJ Lunardi decided to call it quits. Like other senior foreign service officers who, on January 25, 2017, left in what Washington Post journalist Josh Rogin characterized as an "ongoing mass exodus," Lunardi concluded that he "simply could not serve in an executive branch" where he "would have to carry out [Trump's] orders as president." Trump, he decided, is "a threat to our constitutional values." After Trump ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on that same day to remove its climate change page from the EPA website, an anonymous Badlands National Park federal employee

State Dept. Employees Dissent Over Trump Muslim Ban Amid “Constitutional Crisis”

February 1, 2017 Sam Sacks, www.districtsentinel.com , ,
By Sam Sacks for The District Sentinel - An executive order signed by President Donald Trump last Friday that has sparked protests around the country has now created unrest within the US State Department. Career Foreign Service officers at the department submitted a memo through an official channel raising their objections to the administration’s decision to ban travelers, including refugees, from seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States. “This ban stands in opposition to the core American and constitutional values that we, as federal employees, took an oath to uphold,” the diplomats wrote.

Manufacturing Dissent Out Of Control Of Our Puppet Masters

February 1, 2017 Mitchel Cohen, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
By Mitchel Cohen. CJ Hopkins has penned, below, a very perceptive, snide (and funny) analysis of what we're facing. Might as well call it "Manufacturing Dissent." I pretty much agree with it, except that as a participant in many radical movements I've noted that things happen in the course of movements that the puppet-masters can't control, although they try. So the neoliberal Dems' bolstering of the anti-Trump movement is a gambit that they're willing to risk, just as they've done many times in the past. Usually they've emerged victorious, but with unanticipated side effects. Our job is to make those "side effects" come back to haunt them. Remember when the robber-baron Jay Gould in the 1880's bragged that he could hire half the working class to kill the other half? His observation was correct -- and so workers organized into the Knights of Labor, Western Federation of Miners, the Wobblies, and other militant working class organizations whose goals included unifying sectors of the working class around defending workers through direct action.

Civil Servants Unofficial Twitter Resistance

January 28, 2017 Nancy Scola, www.politico.com , , ,
By Nancy Scola for Politico - Trump has yet to tweet a response to all the needling. But his team may be realizing months too late that it’s up against a foe it didn’t reckon with. Donald Trump may be a master of combat on Twitter, but he’s suddenly run into a growing digital uprising — anonymous federal workers who are using social media to tweak the president even as his agencies crack down on information-sharing. This Twitter rebellion, apparently centered at the National Park Service, is winning cheers from liberal activists who seize on every 140-character outburst for signs of anti-Trump resistance.
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