Non-Trivial Pursuits
Case studies in basic legal rights. (Any resemblance to persons or institutions living or dead is largely coincidental.)
1. Two Minutes
What does the word "collective" mean in the phrase "collective bargaining?"
When can an individual employee or group of employees bargain their own contract with management?
2. Three Minutes
By Matt Noyes. Adapted from "El Tiro al Blanco" in Tecnicas Participativas Para La Educacion Popular, Tomo I.
By Matt Noyes (in collaboration with David Levin, David Pratt, and Steve Downs)
Okay, you have organized a rank-and-file reform group in your union. You are active and presenting a real challenge to the existing union administration. But how strong are you? How strong is the administration that you are challenging? How has your strength (and theirs) been changing? What are your weaknesses? What are theirs? Does everyone in your group share the same assessment? What are the implications for your strategy?
By Matt Noyes. (This case study is in the form of a "Problem-Based Learning" activity, an approach that is used often in medical schools to have students work through diagnosing and treating a condition. [[LINK]] Nick Bedell and David Bindman, teachers and fellow union members at the Consortium for Worker Education, introduced me to PBL.)
Summary:
My version of Leon Rosenblatt's great "Non-Trivial Pursuits."
Summary:
Participants discuss short case studies of workplace and union problems and answer questions about their legal rights and how to enforce them. Also puts legal rights in the context of reform organizing.
Good for:
By Matt Noyes. Based on a class taught for AUD by Steve Downs, a New York City train operator and reform activist who is an expert at Robert's Rules in the real world and a great improviser.
Summary:
By Matt Noyes. I started using diagrams to help explain the framework of legal rights and the importance of organizing, then found that the diagrams could also be used to explore people's visions of what unionism is and can/should be. I added the handout later as a kind of summary of my own view of the diagrams.
Objectives:
By Matt Noyes; the cuento vivo technique on which this is based comes from Alforja, Tomo I.
Summary:
One of the problems with Robert's Rules is that most union members have little or no experience with using them. Using a "Cuento Vivo" (live story) technique, this activity has people act out a scene from a union meeting. The scripted parts help people practice the language and shows how the rules can be used.
Materials:
