Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Fire is ignited
I can't believe how many Terps are excited about the idea of organizing (not necessarily creating a union) and creating an interpreter BILL OF RIGHTS. If you haven't joined already we encourage you to join the yahoo group NYCInterpretersforum. The question on many people's mind is what organization is watching the back of Terps regarding working conditions? RID? Not really. RID seems to be focussed on keeping up the quality of interpreting. An admirable quest and we support that ... but we feel more needs to be done regarding working conditions. If agencies don't accurately tell you about a job or a client how will a Terp know if they are qualified to take that job? If an agency abuses a Terp by not providing a team for a two hour lecture then that hurts the interpretation. If an agency gets a monopoly in an area and then reduces wages so Terps have to leave the profession this hurts the profession. How do Terps fight this? Has Metro RID done anything yet? We haven't seen it, but we Welcome them in this fight. WE MUST BAND TOGETHER.
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A meeting will be held this afternoon with the Newspaper Guild of New York, under the Communication Workers of America. The goal, from speaking with some fellow interpreters, is to see if this resource will be able to advocate for the establishment of interpreting standards into New York State law. The way to do this is by organizing, by establishing a single voice. With so many RID chapters across New York State, this has proven difficult. In the upcoming RID Region 1 conference, I plan on introducing a request to establish a chapter liaison position for New York State RID chapters. I will share what is happening with the CWA after the meeting today, as well as what the next step is, if any.
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