Labor News Roundup

Week of July 1, 2013

Interview: AT&T Tech Blew the Whistle on NSA Spying—in 2006

Many are shocked by the U.S. government spying revealed by Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on the National Security Agency (NSA). But we shouldn’t have been surprised. Signs of this program received media attention in 2006, thanks to a union AT&T technician in San Francisco, Mark Klein, who documented suspicious activities at his workplace.

Labor Notes interviewed Klein.

How did you discover the NSA spying in 2002?

…We learned that this one tech was being given security clearance by the NSA to work in a “secret room” which was being built at a nearby central office….

In 2003 … I gathered three AT&T engineering documents which revealed how the “secret room” on the sixth floor was tapping into the internet data stream flowing through the seventh floor main room.

Critical to this was a cabinet containing “splitters,” which are glass prisms that split the laser light beam that carries the data. Each half of the split carries all the data, effectively making an exact copy of the data, every second of every day. And the wiring documents clearly showed that the copies were being sent to the “secret room.”

… I learned they had similar splitters installed in other cities. I was literally wiring up the “Big Brother machine,” and I did not like it.

…when I retired in mid-2004, I took the documents with me. When the New York Times revealed in December 2005 that President Bush was doing repeated warrantless surveillance on Americans …, I decided to come forward.

Why didn't more people go public, do you think?

People are afraid of losing their jobs, and of what the company and/or the government might do to you in other ways, such as prosecute you or retaliate with lawsuits. That’s why I did nothing until after I retired.

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…the company threatened to sue me for stealing company documents, and that could have bankrupted me. But in the end they never sued me, probably because they had had enough bad publicity and wanted to get out of court altogether.

What are your thoughts on Edward Snowden's whistleblowing?

Edward Snowden is a heroic whistleblower who threw away a very comfortable life in order to make a stand for the Constitution and democratic principles. He should be hailed and defended by all who cherish civil liberties.

At Last, Hyatt Workers Win Deal—With Room to Grow

After a four-year campaign against the Hyatt hotel empire, the hotel workers union announced an agreement July 1. In addition to raises, Hyatt agreed to what the UNITE HERE union calls “a fair process” for recognizing unions at several hotels.

Union members in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Chicago will vote on the proposed contract.

The union held out for a contract that will help organizers recruit members at more hotels, by requiring management to remain neutral. These include hotels in San Antonio, Indianapolis, and Baltimore.

The contract reserves for union workers the right to strike, after a year, if their sisters and brothers at the hotels being organized are not treated right.

Over the last three years, workers employed nearly every tactic against Hyatt.

They conducted several waves of short strikes, from a day to a week long, in the U.S. and Canada. They denounced the chain’s owners, the Pritzker family of Chicago, for conditions in the hotels.

The tipping point may well have come when President Obama nominated Penny Pritzker for U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Hotel workers went to Washington to protest.

This time, the negative publicity likely made Pritzker want to settle. The Hyatt contract was largely agreed on by June 18, and Pritzker was confirmed by the Senate a week later.