Global Labor Strategies

A Condolence Ceremony for Tim From John Brown Childs

A Condolence Ceremony for Tim
From John Brown Childs
Santa Cruz, California
20 January 2010

I had the good fortune of meeting Tim many years ago through our mutual friend Jeremy Brecher.  I was immediately (and continuously) struck by the way in Tim was a compassionate world worker with a sharp intelligence, humility, powerful drive for justice, and an overall conviviality that personified and exemplified how to do and be globalization from below.

The documentary by Tim, Jeremy, and Brendan Smith, “Global Village or Global Pillage?” about globalization from below, that I have shown many times to my students, always strikes home with its clarity and deep current of social justice.  My students are always riveted by Tim’s easy to understand analysis of complex problems in that documentary.  Several thousand of my students have comment on his presentation and have benefited from it.  Many of them are now out in the world doing good work for humankind.

New York Harmon Law Firm Honors "Visionary" Tim Costello

We mourn the loss of visionary Tim Costello, a man who had prescient knowledge and understanding of the needs of hourly-wage workers and those at the lower end of the earning scale, those with little power to oppose outsourcing of jobs to other countries and the use of temporary workers - practices that eliminated jobs and job benefits for many American workers. He helped found Global Labor Strategies, "which fostered cross-boarder alliances to fight to improve wages and working conditions in the face of downward pressures from companies moving jobs over seas." Mr. Costello also founded the  North American Alliance for Fair Employment. Mr. Costello thought that "if you were on the left you will be working at it for the rest of your life, and you may not be successful, but it would be worth the effort." We are hopeful that others will step forward to fill the shoes of this exceptional advocate for the American worker.

Elance announces sad news of Tim's passing to thier membership

Sad news: Tim Costello, member of Enlace’s first Steering Committee has died: Tim Costello, an architect of innovative strategies for the labor movement and the author of numerous articles and books on labor and globalization, died at home on December 4, 2009.  The cause was pancreatic cancer.

Mr. Costello was born in Boston on June 13, 1945 to Thomas and Claire (MacPhee) Costello, and raised in Dedham, MA.  As a teenager he worked with his father as a construction laborer and learned from him the value of worker organization, often typing the correspondence of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, the union for which his father served as president for many years. Read the full post here

Seattle Times Publishes a Short Obit of Tim

Tim Costello, 64, a truck driver who became a labor advocate and theorist, the co-author of four books and the founder of an organization (Global Labor Strategies) which fostered cross-border alliances to fight for better wages and working conditions in the face of downward pressures from globalization, died of pancreatic cancer Dec. 4 in Cambridge, Mass.

Admiring Tim from a Distance

I was only able to admire the man from a distance and from publicity. Sorry for this loss, Gilly. (I don't know your email address.) You have a lot to be proud of. Enver Hoxha!

Craig Segal (Chicago, IL)

Labor and Climate Change: The Legacy of Tim Costello

On DailyKos "gmoke" writes about Tim's legacy:

Tim Costello was a labor activist with a world-wide network.  He organized around contingent work and, most recently, environment and labor issues, specifically climate change as one of the founders of theGlobal Labor Strategies blog.  I met him at various enviro/eco events and would see him in the food coop or walking down the street as he lived in my neighborhood.  We would have short conversations from time to time and I always wished they were longer.  He knew so damn much.

“Looking over their shoulders” Remembering Tim Costello

Much of what I have read about Tim lately speaks to him as a “worker-intellectual.” In another time, the words “organic intellectual” would have rolled off the tongue. But this is not a synonym. In fact, it is probably a much more accurate appellation: Tim may have come up as a truck driver who went on to write about the big ticket issues of the day, but his writing had very practical purposes. Personifying the Gramscian notion, he set out to solve general concerns of humanity-as-a-whole from the perspective of real problems of (and solutions from) working class organization and working people in their everyday lives.  In this, he was a perhaps singular voice that was at once pragmatic and utopian, a labor leader who could read Sartre but also strategize about a collective bargaining agreement. This short note cannot do justice to Tim’s life, work and many contributions to our common causes. Instead it is written from the perspective of someone who has had the good fortune to work with Tim on a day-to-day basis for over three years as a fellow coordinator of the North American Alliance for Fair Employment (NAAFE) starting in 2002.

Peter Waterman - "Tim was a natural-born internationalist"

The news of Tim's death reached me when I was sorting out my computers after a three-month absence. I recall sending a short note of condolence to Jeremy and Brendan but cannot now find it. Tim has continued to be on my mind with the passage of time and I have followed the obits and condolences on the blog. I particularly appreciated Jeremy's biographical piece since, although I once stayed for a week or so with Tim and Sus in Boston, and although I heard something of his remarkable life and travels, I clearly never learned the half of it.

No one who met Tim could fail to be enchanted by this laid-back and generous personality. Nor by his hard work, mostly in the backrooms of the labour movement. But neither was I able to separate his own contribution to the jointly-authored books and the jointly-promoted Global Labor Strategies project. This was a guy without an ego. Or without an ego that he felt needed promoting.

Tim was also a natural-born internationalist. Or a man who became one through his European experience and wide travels.

I regret that in the past decade I only met up with Tim at World Social Forums and then always too briefly. I think we last met at the Belem forum. I am not entirely sure about this since I was apparently myself ill, being later operated on in Rio. Although, when we met, I must have mentioned my own past brush with cancer, he did not mention his own condition. I regret this since I profoundly value the concern and solidarity others have offered to me. But - like another friend of mine threatened by cancer - I respect his reasons for keeping quiet about this.

The response to Tim's death revealed on  the GLS blog convinces me that there will be a publication, or publications, devoted to his memory, or - perhaps one should say - inspired by his life. I would welcome the opportunity  of contributing to such.

I also would like to hope it is possible to set up a foundation or prize in his name. Given his own contribution to this, I would love to see the one or the other devoted to labour and social movement internationalism. An annual award for an internationalist campaign or publication could be an appropriate way of commemorating this unforgettable comrade and friend.

Peter Waterman
Global Labour Charter Project
The Hague

in memoriam to a trailblazer

I didn't know Mr. Costello but am grateful for Global Labor Strategies. 

BTW I sent your great globalization pdf. to colleagues at the college with whom I'm proposing a Labor Studies dept. One request/suggestion: that your main webpage begin with an explanation of your website/Mr. Costello (i.e., with the personal comments farther down the page, so that the many web surfers will not turn away.)

Adelante!

Julie

UUSC will miss brilliant Tim

It’s hard to say more than all that has been written on these pages about Tim … his friends and colleagues have truly captured the brilliant mind and wonderful spirit that was and always will be the essence of Tim.

UUSC worked closely with Tim and GLS as we delved into the complex issues of workers’ rights in China and of the nexus between climate change and labor. We learned so much both from his vision and his actions. And it was so much fun to learn from him. (I enjoyed the fact that I often had difficulty in keeping up with his lightning-quick thinking. Each time that we met, I madly scribbled in my notebook as he talked, and later couldn’t always decipher what I’d written.)

My colleague Patricia Jones in UUSC’s Environmental Justice program wrote, “This is a great, great, loss to our movement. Tim was always ready to help us, whenever we called. He gave tirelessly to the movement for social justice, and UUSC. His knowledge, experience, intellectual capacity, generosity, hopeful outlook in the face of great challenges - very sorry to hear of this loss. We had so looked for his leadership from the labor movement on climate change.” 

From all of us at UUSC, our heartfelt condolences go to Tim’s family and friends. He will be dearly missed.

Ariel Jacobson

Economic Justice program, UUSC, Cambridge, MA