Friends, please post and circulate. Thanks, Matt Noyes

1. New Audio --Confronting Corruption in Labor Unions

2. What's AUD worth? Letter from Kurt Richwerger

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1. New Audio -- Confronting Corruption in Labor Unions:

• What can be done to fight corruption in labor unions?
• What is the role of the government and law enforcement?
• What is the role of union members?
• What has been tried? What has worked and what hasn't?
  

On October 14th, 2006, AUD held a conference in New York City to address these questions. Eleven speakers with an extraordinary range and depth of experience assessed fifty years of efforts to rid unions of mob influence and corruption.

AUD has begun posting the audio from this conference, starting with presentations from Judith Schneider, Herman Benson, and James Jacobs.  Next up: Edwin Steir.

We welcome you to listen to the presentations and discussion and encourage you to blog, discuss, and debate them. Got a discussion list, forum, or blog and want people to talk about the conference on your site? Let us know.  We will post a link. (Thanks to Ken Nash for recording the conference.)

Listen at http://www.uniondemocracy.org/Education/audconffightingcorruption.htm

2. What's AUD worth? Letter from Kurt Richwerger

We are pleased to have you on the AUD updates list, we hope the website is useful to you. Please do listen to the conference audio – we think it offers a rare chance to think about a problem too many unionists face. If you value the AUD website and the other work we do, please remember AUD is here and available for you only because we are supported by unionists and others who understand how important democracy is in our unions and in our nation. We depend almost exclusively upon contributions from individuals.

We want you to know that every week at AUD we field emails, phone calls, faxes and letters from union members who do not know where else to turn, perhaps you or someone you know has emailed us. Unionists who contact us may have already talked to their shop steward, their local's business agent, their union president, the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, private lawyers, or even contacted their Congressperson about problems in their union.

But rarely have these persistent union members been given real practical information about their legal rights within their unions and support for their confidence in the power of union democracy to make a real change.

For more than 40 years we have helped workers campaign for their rights for fair union elections, non-discriminatory job referrals, equal rights for minority members, and against mob control and sexual harassment. By intervening in crucial court cases with the weight of our experience, AUD has been able to strengthen and implement union democracy law. By telling reformers' stories in our two publications, we provide a voice, and an audience, for those who mayhave found their own union officials unwilling to listen. In short, the service we perform at AUD is irreplaceable, and essential to a strong labor movement. We wish we could do more, but our resources are limited.

That's why we are asking for your support, and encourage you to join us in our mission by becoming an AUD Associate for just $30 per year.* 

Or, by giving just $10 a month, you can join our $100Plus Club and get our publications every month.

If you are reading this, you know our website and we hope that it has been helpful to you. (In fact, we encourage you to email us and let us about your situation, perhaps we will even write it up, with your permission. That is what we are here for.) Even if you wish we could do more for you, this is no reason not tojoin us -- our limited resources prevent us from undertaking projects that we know we could do -- but simply lack the time and money for. With a total budget of just over $140,000, we have to make every penny count, and invest every moment wisely.

So please contribute now. The labor movement is going through enormous challenges and changes. Help us make sure that union democracy isn't overlooked and forgotten.

--KurtRichwerger, Program and Development Director

*IRS regulations prohibit deduction of the first $30 of your total yearly contribution due to the publications received.

http://www.uniondemocracy.org/Home/joinaud.htm