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Thursday, August 31, 2017
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J
Jim Keady posted a condolence
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Bob,
You were a sacred warrior for justice in the truest sense. I am happy to have know you and your work. You both educated and inspired me. Your work will resonnate for generations.
Peace, Jim Keady
K
Khai Nguyen posted a condolence
Thursday, August 6, 2015
My brother-in-law, Bob Senser, and I had many differences in terms of age, languages, cultures, and political views. He was a democrat and I registered as a republican although my choices were relatively issue-oriented. However, Bob and I had one important thing in common: we both were interested in workers' rights and human rights.
Bob had written many articles on labor in 1980s and 1990s. In 2009, he published a book entitled "Justice at Work - Globalization and the Human Rights of Workers." When Bob served as a labor attaché in Vietnam, he introduced me to the leaders of the National Federation of Labor Unions. Since then, workers' rights became an important social issue to me.
Since I retired from the World Bank, I had more time to study and fight for the rights of workers and people in Vietnam. These works involving the U.S. laws concerning the Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiation, put me in contact with labor and U.S. government organizations, and members of the U.S. Congress. Bob always happily shared his experiences with me whenever I needed.
I learned a lot from him. I am so sad to lose a big brother and a great supporter of workers' rights and human rights.
D
Dr. Quan Nguyen posted a condolence
Thursday, August 6, 2015
A True Champion for Human Rights and Labor Rights
It has been a great privilege for me to know and work with Bob. I first met Bob in 1991 when the International Committee to Support The Non-Violent Movement For Human Rights in Vietnam was formed. Together, we discussed at length Vietnam's serious human rights & labor rights violations. Bob greatly wanted to help change Vietnam for the better, so I invited him to join the movement as our special Adviser to work toward our common goals. Bob became an invaluable Adviser and an ardent supporter for the movement. Over the next two decades, Bob helped the movement in enormous ways.
As Program Director for AFL-CIO's Asian- American Free Labor Institute, Bob introduced the Committee to many leaders of AFL-CIO including President Lane Kirkland, Jim Baker, Assistant to the President, Charles Gray, Director of Asian- American Free Labor Institute and his Assistant Kenneth Hutchinson& Bob was able to convince AFL-CIO to fully support our newly formed movement, which was a huge stepping stone for the Committee. With Bob's help, the Committee was invited to join the AFL-CIO Solidarity Day on August 31st, 1991 in Washington DC which helped to increase our support and broaden our audience.
Working within AFL-CIO, Bob convinced the leaders to not recognize the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor (VGCL) because it represents the party and employers, but not the workers, and intervened intensively for the release of political prisoners such as Dr. Nguyen Dan Que and The Most Venerable Thich Quang Do..
In 1994, the Committee raised a campaign for Joint Resolution SJ 168 which was subsequently passed and then signed into Public Law 103-258 designating May 11 as Vietnam Human Rights Day. Bob worked quietly and diligently behind the scene to draft the content of the Resolution. Since 1994, May 11th is commemorated every year as Vietnam Human Rights Day on Capitol Hill. And on this day particularly, I will always think of my good friend Bob and remember fondly all the things that we accomplished together.
I was very fortunate to know Bob, and admired him for his dedication for human rights & labor rights. It was always a great pleasure to work with him. Bob was not only a dear friend, but my adviser and mentor.
Bob, may you rest in peace. We will miss your presence every day. With your spirit in mind, the Committee and I, pledge to continue advocating for human rights in Vietnam.
Quan Nguyen M.D
Chairman, The International Committee To Support The Non-Violent
Movement For Human Rights in Vietnam
P
Pham Trong Le posted a condolence
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Bob Senser belongs to the "greatest generation" --the title of Tom Brokaw's book celebrating the generation of Americans born in the 1920s who came of age during the Depression and the 2nd World War and went on to build America. At 20 years old, Bob joined the US Army and served for 4 years. The war over, he went to Loyola University in Chicago under the GI Bills and graduated with a Bachelor of Science. He served as an editor of the magazine Commonweal for 15 years and for 21 years he joined the Foreign Service as labor attaché on various posts, including Saigon. After government service, Bob joined AFL-CIO as program director and served in the International Committee for Human Rights for Workers. For many years he maintained his website of the same name, and in 2009 published his book "Justice at Work: Globalization and the Human Rights of Workers," a collection of articles on the plight of working men and women, child labor, sweatshops, corporate responsibility, themes dear to his heart as a writer and labor rights advocate. His short pieces in January 2012 in his blogspot, written when he was over 90 and in the rehab center, included his cherished thoughts on freshly baked rye sandwich; Adbulai, the caregiver who had the task of cleaning up his dirty pants when he could not reach the toilet in time; and his wife Ngoc Dung, his rock. For years his articles appeared in the Commonweal, Monthly Labor Review and Foreign Affairs. So long as his writings are read, and discussed among corporate leaders, policy makers, and students of industrial relations in the corridors of the State Department or in the lecture halls of Cornell University, his ideas and ideals remain alive and well.
His departure marks an accomplishment of a life well lived and devoted not only to American workers, but also to working men and women and children around the world. Let's find some consolation in a
few lines of a poem by Tagore, the Bengali poet from India and Nobel prize in literature:
Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
Let the fight through the sky end in the folding of the wings on the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
--With respect and admiration from
Pham Trong Le (English Teacher and Librarian--retired)
L
Lance Compa posted a condolence
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Bob was a pioneer in the field of international labor and human rights both during his working career and in his post-retirement years. In his retirement, he was a model of continued engagement to which we all aspire. I was privileged to know him and to benefit from his experience in the early years of the International Labor Rights Forum, and in communication and collaboration since then, always with his valuable insights and analysis.
T
Tim Ryan posted a condolence
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Bob was one of the first people I met at the Asian-American Free Labor Institute when I first interviewed for a job (t)here in 1989; he always struck me as this incredible balance of passionate about human and labor rights and at the same time a practical and concrete thinker about how to improve the situation. We shared a love of writing and I really appreciated his guidance and advice as one of my mentors at AAFLI even after he left the organization. His humor and his spirit kept him young and he was an inspiration in that way to me also. I always appreciated his support and insight, and feel richer for having known him.
J
Jim Baker posted a condolence
Monday, August 3, 2015
I was one of many fortunate people to have known and worked with Bob Senser over many years; both before and after he "retired". This covered the few years that I worked in Washington, DC as well as many years abroad.
Bob was a "true believer" in human rights, in social justice, in trade unionism. He was passionate about issues and people and all of those he touched were moved by the force of his character, his beliefs, and his engagement. He also had a profound sense of family and of community.
I knew Bob when he was young. From a chronological point of view, that may sound foolish; he was about 30 years older than me, but I always felt that he was younger. That was part of what made him endearing; his youthful enthusiasm, his refusal to fall into pessimism and cynicism; his hope for the future even when times were tough.
Unfortunately, after I left Washington, DC in 1997, our contact was limited to e-mails, his human rights publication and blog and, later, FACEBOOK, but even through those limited means, his youthfulness showed through the words. And, did he ever have a way with words.
In closing, I would like to recall a very special and emotional evening that Bob was heavily involved in organizing. Lane Kirkland was no longer President of the AFL-CIO (I had been his Executive Assistant). His successors had done their best to air-brush him out of history. It was at that moment that the dinner by the Vietnamese community in Northern Virginia paid tribute to Lane's leadership on Vietnam.
The end of the War had made overlooking human rights violations in Vietnam fashionable among what Lane called "the chattering classes", but Lane and the AFL-CIO never forgot the Vietnamese people and their frustrating struggle for freedom. It was a very special evening for Lane, and for me (by association) because he was able to see that, in the Vietnamese-American community, he had not been relegated to the ash can of history..
I shall miss Bob Senser. He was a good trade unionist and a good, inspiring human being. Bob will live on in his wife and the rest of his family, but also in all of those like me who have been touched by him and by his life. If synonyms existed for names, the synonym for "Bob Sensor", in every sense of the word, would be "decent".
N
Nguyen Ngoc Bich posted a condolence
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Dear Ngoc Dung and Family,
My first recollection of Bob will always be his smile and concern about Human Rights and especially, Workers Rights issues in Vietnam. This was to be expected to a certain extent in view of his long association with AFL-CIO and his kind nature.
His exposure to Vietnam not only came from his years as Foreign Officer in our country but, I am sure, was deepened by his marriage to you, Ngoc Dung, and his love for the children. Although I have not had the pleasure of working with Bob, our conversation whenever we met always reverted to the plight of Vietnamese workers, especially the condition of women and children in Vietnam. He was very much concerned with their being exploited in a communist country gone "jungle capitalist." So much so that he even wrote a manual for workers rights for use in training in a situation like Vietnam's.
He was so impassioned by this issue that in the decades that followed his retirement he created and ran a website devoted to labor rights. And every time we met he reminded me of sending him news of labor rights violations in Vietnam. It's regretful that I could not provide him with all the bad news from Vietnam regarding the workers having their rights denied them by both the goverrnment and the foreign investors in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
So Farewell to you, Bob! I will always remember you as a kind, a great soul!
BICH August 2, 2015
B
Bo Jonsson posted a condolence
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Dear family Senser.
It was in Brussels I met Bob. It was in the seventies. We maintained contact on and off in later years, especially when internet was made available to people.
I was much less experienced than Bob, about 13 years younger and coming from the Swedish trade unions which had some sort of superiority complex, at least in regard to organising workers and job policies, they learned other ways later, since US could export unbrideled capitalism through IMF and WB, which Bob asked me about what unions could do. ICFTU tried to influence both agencies, in vain I must say, these were too involved in the service of capitalism and against its own research of the effects of austerity, nowadays, in the service of crushing the lefts growth oriented borrowing from the financial market, which anyhow is overcrowded by financial resources that speculate. Such policy makers are forced to buy the less evil of protectorate rule than leaving the Euro. That is relevant to all southern European countries, like the small northern European countries, that have to conform since they cannot match the ECB causing bank crises. that would the FED never do.
Our first talks was about the US enterprises hiring Mexican workers. To Bob I made the comment asking why these enterprises just did not move across the border. Sadly to say, Bob confirmed to me later that was precisely what they did. But none of us imagined that the Mexican government was so inept planning and structuring cities that grew up around the jobs and secure labour rights and a functioning labour market, neglecting life work balance and improving social life which is the purpose of working for a salary. Is not US paying the price now for that neglect.
I was supposed to start training unionist in making proposals to governments for job creation. Bob was very supportive of that. It was an important encouragement especially since union leaders were aware of their limitations even defending basic labour rights, and more so countering by making constructive proposal. It was a bit hard to overcome the leaders fear that the trained unionists and researchers would take over the unions, like in India at national level. I relied on some advice from Bob to manage and stay clear of imposing myself in other fields than research, job and wage statistics to be used and employment policy.
We shared a view that unions could cooperate internationally much more than they were able to do or perhaps willing to do and actions suffered from the importance leaders saw to erect demarcation lines over which other union bodies should not tresspass. The ICFTU, now ITUC, was much of a talking shop on issues that it had no real influence over neglecting helping unions getting more democratic and proactive. Before unions came to grips with structural adjustment issues these unions became more marginalised in view of the so called liberalisation and privitisation of assets of national importance, a thinking which continues in the minds of politicians. Market solutions to every problem, inspite of such policies failing dismally to creat real wealth for people and only enormous money for the few, who according to Robert Reich as well as Robert Senser was felt by the top people as an entitlement, while such business men accused poor people of relying on entitlement to survive. Bob's struggle to reveal corporate missdeads and management's outright enimosity against unions he and we with others realised it was an increasingly uphill struggle, inspite of victories in the UN machinery to try to get CSR criteria for company performance implemented, and the EU now abandoning its committments in the name of competition. Before long the sad thing we experienced was that governments were unable and later unwilling to tame the capital to serve people. The latest developments in trade deals and management of debt crises is aiming at replacing government's democratic decisions by not transparent decision making in company boards. Bob also envisaged that development in our later correspondence. I missed his website and blog very much. I did not know the family, but it did not take second place to his work, he lived fully his life in family and work.
Bo Jonsson only 80 years old, now retired in Thailand
J
John J O'Grady posted a condolence
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Thank you Bob for your faithfulness to the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. May God abundantly reward you!
R
Rev. Will Lawbaugh posted a condolence
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Bob, my dearest friend, I weep for you but we know you are in the loving arms of Jesus, so I weep for my loss. I laugh when I recall all of those lunch meetings with Gabe Migala and Jack Dunne at Clyde's (still my fav), so I laugh at myself for not realizing that those were our Last Suppers and that we were with the Lord. I recall our more recent visits when you were so weakened, one less than two weeks ago when we had Holy Eucharist and you were anointed. And now I seem to be running out of room so I bless you and your family, my friend. Look down in mercy upon us. We will see you soon. Will+
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