People Before Profit blog

Penn. labor calls for election unity

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:34:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA — Unity was the watchword at last week’s Pennsylvania state AFL-CIO biennial convention, as the 721 delegates cheered calls for a united effort to put a Democrat in the White House and to defeat John McCain in November.

The delegates gave a warm welcome to both candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, and, in keeping with the spirit of the occasion, the candidates concentrated their fire on McCain and the failed policies of eight years of the Bush administration.

In this battleground state steeped in labor history and trade union struggles, the convention became a testing ground for labor’s ability to unify the Democratic Party effort for the fall campaign.

The state AFL-CIO has not endorsed a candidate. Major unions in the state that have endorsed are about evenly split between Senators Obama and Clinton. In these circumstances, the labor leaders and all the major speakers drove home the unity message and the delegates responded in the same spirit.

State AFL-CIO President Bill George told the delegates on the first day, “Come November, we will all be united. You can’t separate us. Ask any delegate. They come from Main Street, not Wall Street.” Said AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, a Clinton supporter, “We have two great candidates, ten times better than that boob in the White House. Put a Democrat in the White House this November so America can be proud again.”

Before introducing his candidate, Henry Nicholas, Hospital Workers president and an Obama supporter, alluded to talk that he had heard from some pundits about division in labor’s ranks: “We say no, no, no. In November we will be one!” Senator Bob Casey, another Obama supporter, thanked the delegates for turning Pennsylvania blue and helping him get elected in 2006.

In her remarks, Senator Clinton promised to appoint pro-labor representatives to the National Labor Relations Board and to posts in the Labor Department. She also pledged to support the Employee Free Choice Act, to rebuild America’s infrastructure and create three million jobs and to replace the No Child Left Behind Act with a new law supporting public education. The next day Obama told the delegates, “It’s time we had a president who didn’t choke on the word union. It’s time to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s time to end the war in Iraq and take up the fight for decent health care at home and for good jobs at home.”

The convention addressed basic issues confronting Pennsylvania’s workers. In addition to calling for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, the delegates passed resolutions endorsing HR 676, “Enhanced Medicare for All,” supporting the AFL-CIO nationally in working for “balanced and job friendly national climate legislation,” opposing the Colombia Free Trade Act and condemning the murder of trade union leaders in Colombia.

The convention passed two other ground breaking resolutions on issues regarding international relations and foreign policy. Resolution 60, submitted by UFCW Local 1776, resolves that “the labor movement in the United States virulently opposes war,” and calls upon “our elected leaders not to go to war in the future, unless it is in self defense of our country, is declared war by the Congress of the United States and is not in violation of respected and long standing international law.”

In passing Resolution 61, submitted by the Philadelphia Central Labor Council, the convention supported the national AFL-CIO’s call for the “rapid withdrawal” of our troops from Iraq and decided to affiliate with U.S. Labor against the War (USLAW).

bikerbenn@aol.com

Rosita Johnson and Debbie Bell contributed to this story.

Week of action unites students, workers

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:19:00 +0000

Imagine a world where everyone who chooses to can go to college. Picture a world where workers on school campuses and in communities have a voice about their working conditions and where the fruits and vegetables that people eat are picked by workers who earn a living wage. Imagine a time when students and others can proudly wear university apparel, knowing the workers who made the clothing were paid fairly with basic rights including breaks, safe working conditions and an eight-hour workday. And finally, think about what it will be like when jobs not only support workers but also protect the environment.

These aims were the demand of thousands of youth and student leaders on over 100 campuses in more than 30 states during the ninth annual Student Labor Week of Action March 28-April 4. The Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) and dozens of other local and national student-worker solidarity groups sponsored the events.

The AFL-CIO co-sponsored the week of action to highlight the fight for fair wages and the freedom to form unions among low-wage workers. The anniversaries of Cesar Chavez’s birth and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were also recognized.

“This was a national movement to connect campaigns for a broader unity among youth, students and workers,” said Carlos Jimenez, SLAP national coordinator.

The week’s actions focused on raising awareness about the fight for living wages for campus employees and university codes of conduct supporting workers’ rights both on campus and overseas. Other objectives included developing green jobs that support workers in every community and promote a healthy environment, affirmative action and access to higher education for all, and fair wages and working conditions for people who grow food and harvest crops.

Jimenez said young people need to “take ownership” of their stake in the environmental, economic, civil rights and social justice movements, and connect the various issues for progressive change.

“The core of all our problems is greed,” he noted.

“Every hour the war in Iraq is costing us a student Pell grant,” Jimenez said. “I am fundamentally opposed to that. The war is a fiasco. We can’t stop talking about the war, especially since it’s an election year,” he added.

“The recent upsurge of young people voting sends a strong message of power and a united voice for political change, but we need to go beyond the ballot box and hold our elected officials accountable,” he added. “We have to work hard and confront the challenges ahead and take action. And we need to feel personally invested in these present struggles and do something to help change this country around.”

Lisa Chen, 20, chairs the working class caucus of the United States Students Association. Chen, a student at the University of California, San Diego, is a leader of the Student Worker Collective. She helped organize a successful civil disobedience action with AFSCME Local 3299, in Los Angeles on April 3, in which over 800 union workers, students, elected officials and religious leaders blocked street intersections at the UCLA campus. Chen said the workers are fighting for a statewide contract including a minimum wage increase for university service and patient care workers.

“It’s important to realize that labor struggles are in the forefront for real change and we have to see the effects of those struggles, which is key for us as students,” said Chen, adding that it is equally important that more students are getting involved, especially in the presidential elections.

“We’re just getting started and it’s an exciting moment in the student-worker alliance,” said Chen. “We need to know what’s going on in our communities and it’s a civic duty to be involved.”

plozano@pww.org

Im in a world of hurt

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:12:00 +0000

Shawn Boone did not die instantly five years ago at the Hayes Lemmerz plant in Huntington, Ind. He was lying on the floor, his body smoldering, as the aluminum dust burned through his flesh and then his muscles. With every breath he took, more of his internal organs burned. Still conscious and blinded from the initial blast, he begged for help as they loaded him into the ambulance.

Shawn and two co-workers had gone in to light a chip melt furnace at their plant, where aluminum automotive wheels are made. They stepped away from the furnace and waited a few minutes to make sure everything was okay and then went back to retrieve their tools. Shawn’s back was to the furnace when the first explosion knocked him down. Immediately after he got up a second, more intense blast knocked him down again. The copper piping in the room melted as his heart and lungs burned.

This was the story Shawn’s sister, Tammy Miser, told Congress last month when she testified at a House Education and Labor Committee hearing. Lawmakers on the committee are trying to force the Bush-controlled Occupational Safety and Health Administration to do its job and draft rules that will force industry to curb combustible dust hazards. The Bush administration is refusing to adopt such measures, now also beginning to gain some support among members of the Senate’s Workplace Safety Subcommittee.

The deadly hazards of combustible dust came to the fore again in February in the wake of a fatal sugar refinery explosion in Georgia. OSHA says it lacks sufficient data to act, even after that explosion, because the company has not yet completed its investigation.

The People’s Weekly World received copies of Miser’s testimony from PAI, the union news service. It read, in part:

“Hayes Lemmerz never bothered to call any of my family members to let them know that there was an explosion, or that Shawn was injured. The only call we received was from a friend of my husband, who told the family Shawn was being taken to a burn unit in Fort Wayne — five hours away. When we arrived we were told that Shawn was being kept alive but only so we could see him alive.

“The doctors had refused to treat Shawn, saying that even if they removed his limbs, his internal organs were burned beyond repair. This was apparent from the black sludge they were pumping from his body.”

Miser then described the heart-wrenching decision to disconnect her brother from life support and having to watch him die from “an accident that could have been prevented.”

She said her brother’s last words, as he begged to be taken off life support, were, “I’m in a world of hurt.”

On Feb. 7, after another combustible dust explosion, workers at the Imperial Sugar plant in Savannah, Ga., and their families entered that same “world of hurt.” That tragedy showed that this particular hazard is faced by workers in industries other than just aluminum and steel.

According to the United Food and Commercial Workers union, 25 percent of combustible dust-caused fires are in food processing plants, including sugar refineries, distilleries, and cocoa, chocolate, coffee and flour plants.

In spite of the evidence, OSHA administrator Edwin G. Foulke refused at the congressional hearing to promise lawmakers that his agency would act against dust hazards in the nation’s factories. He said more investigations are needed and that, in the meantime, companies are being asked to voluntarily reduce combustible dust levels.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) called OSHA’s failure to act ridiculous and vowed to push for legislation forcing the agency to act.

“Everyone already knows what caused the explosion at the Imperial Sugar plant,” Miser said, “But it would have been nice to prevent this from happening in the first place. It is beyond negligent for OSHA to expect a company that knows about these hazards and lets them exist to voluntarily fix the problem. OSHA must make it a requirement.”

jwojcik@pww.org PAI contributed to this article.