People Before Profit blog

A Southern battleground for Communists and other heroes

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:34:00 +0000

BOOK REVIEW

“Defying Dixie. The Radical Roots of Civil Rights 1919-1950.”

By Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore.

W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 2008.

Hardcover, 640 pp., $39.95.

Professor Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore’s book, “Defying Dixie, The Radical Roots of Civil Rights 1919-1950,” creates full-color mosaic portraits of the great men and women who took on the horrific task of fighting for civil rights at a time and place when fearsome lynchings and race riots were common occurrences. Each delicate tile of each mosaic is gingerly placed in the natural flow of time, and in conjunction with the ever-clearer portraits of others involved in the same events.

It will come as no surprise that the earliest and bravest of these early fighters came from the newly formed Communist Party, USA. The great civil rights cases involving the Scottsboro Boys, accused of rape, and Angelo Herndon, accused of sedition, had Communists as the principals.

But Gilmore reveals many surprises in the details of the battles that made up the war against Southern racism. For example, who knew that the first American Black Communist was born in Dallas, Texas? How many were aware that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI kept up a merciless surveillance against all civil rights individuals and organizations before and during World War II? Who knew that Ella Mae Wiggins, martyr of the Gastonia Textile strike, was not African American, but an Anglo woman who was targeted because she stood up for full integration? Who knew that the dreaded House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) actually began as an anti-fascist investigation? Who knew that the fundamentals of the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were actually developed twenty years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott began? Who knew that, in 1937, the German Embassy actually tried to buy the Ku Klux Klan outright?

Even though Professor Gilmore’s wonderful descriptions breathe life into largely unknown historical characters and events, limits to the epic story are evident. In addition to what was generally known, Gilmore seems to add primarily from her research in the Soviet Archives and from the memoirs of North Carolina activist Pauli Murray. A great deal of the book is centered on Murray, and the point of view seems to come directly from her.

Like virtually every other history published in this capitalist world, the greatest lack in “Defying Dixie” is an understanding of the class struggle.

No historical event, neither the great civil rights struggles of the South, not even World War II itself, can make sense without the broader analysis of the ongoing class struggle.

“Defying Dixie” has no class basis. The author’s sympathies are clearly with the civil rights fighters and against all who oppose them, but they could have been understood better, and their contributions could be appreciated even more, if the author had included the underlying meaning of each of these wonderfully described battles.

Girls Rock around the clockfor equality!

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:29:00 +0000

BALTIMORE – “Its an eye-opener.” That’s how my 17 year old grand- daughter, Erin, reacted after viewing “Girls Rock,” a recently released documentary film by Shane King and Arne Johnson about the Rock & Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Oregon.

“So much of what we see is on the surface,” Erin continued. “This film showed us what is under the surface.” The 100 girls and young women at the camp, African American, Asian American, Latino and white, seem happy, Erin said. But behind the smiles and giggles, they are struggling against discrimination that shuts them out from many opportunities open to boys and young men. They struggle against corporate America’s profit-driven diktat that a woman should be physically attractive, a mother, or a poorly paid “wage slave,” not an equal person striving for full self-realization.

This film shows that 36 years after Congress passed Title IX of the Civil Rights Act requiring equal funding for girls and women in high school and college sports, they are still locked out in many fields of our society. The Dixie Chicks, Indigo Girls and several other women rock bands prove that progress has been made but still, we have a long, long way to go.

In this film, the girls’ rock from the noisy, raucous opening scenes to the final concert with the young women performing the rebellious and sometimes plaintive songs they have composed including one with the memorable line, “Bush is so stupid he won’t sign the Kyoto Accord.”

The film focuses on Misty, 17, a recovering meth addict who explains in an interview why she ran away from her parents, also meth addicts, in her early teenage years. She has been handed an electric guitar and by week’s end composes a haunting song about the struggles of teenagers like herself for a place under the sun.

Laura, 15, is a Korean-born adopted child from Oklahoma City. Round-faced, always smiling and hugging her classmates, she is a lovable “well-adjusted” teenager. Yet in the film, she says she struggles constantly with her negative self-image, seeing herself as ugly.

In the closing scenes, Laura, still smiling, composes and sings her song to the cheering crowd proclaiming that girls are the hardest rockers of all and will not be locked out.

Since the Portland Girls Rock & Roll Camp was founded seven years ago, the movement has spread across the nation and around the world with Girls Rock camps in the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, PA, Brooklyn, NY, Murfreesboro, Tenn., London, UK, and Popkollo, Sweden.

Everybody should see this film. Take your daughters and granddaughters. To find a theater, visit the Girls Rock web site at www.girlsrockmovie.com.

They take care of their own

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:25:00 +0000

If anything ever smelled of cronyism and favoritism it was the recent decision by the Federal Reserve to set up a special bargain basement where cheap loans are now available to Wall Street kingpins largely responsible for screwing up our economy.

The Fed has, in effect, put the biggest and most powerful investment banks on welfare at the expense of working-class taxpayers. The decision to do this settles, once and for all, the question of whether Wall Street interests have a controlling voice in the Federal Reserve Bank, an agency mandated in the 1930’s to protect an economy that was supposed to work for all of us.

A congressional investigation of the Federal Reserve Bank would be well justified because of this and further justified because the Fed has also shown that it will continue to ignore the mandate Congress gave it when Congress created it — the mandate to guarantee a full employment economy in the United States. Cronyism, favoritism and failure to carry out instructions from Congress would seem to be more than enough reasons to start a congressional probe.

The Fed’s new Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) is the mechanism created for the handouts to the financial kingpins. They get a cheap loan at a rock bottom interest rate of 2.5 percent and all they have to do is post some type of investment collateral — very often stocks or bonds that, themselves are of questionable value. The equivalent might be you getting a loan for a new car simply by posting your old clunker that has 200,000 miles on it as collateral! No job or income necessary!

While workers are forced to produce more for their stagnant or falling wages and receive no help as they try to accumulate assets, the Fed’s pals get nearly free government money to add to their pile of assets — as per JPMorgan gobbling up Bear Stearns.

Wall Street is banging down the doors at the Fed’s new loan handout facility. Within three days after its creation they ran in to grab $30 billion from U.S. taxpayers. Erin Callahan, treasurer of Lehman Brothers, called the deal “incredibly attractive.” Morgan Stanley’s treasurer, Colm Kelleher, said what he likes most is that the money is available for business as usual. In the past the kingpins couldn’t get the bargain rates unless they were in real trouble or, perhaps, suffering a severe seasonal cash shortfall. Those “tough” days are over. Now the Fed is saying loan giveaways are available to the super rich, whenever and however they want them.

This new “welfare” program for the richest investors amounts to government subsidizing of a massive thievery ring that takes from American workers. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, all now taking the new handouts, are huge profit makers. Even more insulting to workers, who get no help, is the fact that taxes paid by working people are given away to the very companies that have driven the worst trends in the U.S. economy — wage cuts, laying off of workers, export of jobs, union busting and outrageous pay for CEOs.

The Fed’s giveaway program further insults workers when we consider the following: Many families are losing their homes because of the mortgage crisis created by the very companies getting the handouts. If the families had access to 2.5 percent loans they would be staying in their homes. Instead, their tax dollars go to Wall Street, they lose their homes and they end up on the street.

For too long the Federal Reserve Bank has been viewed, or at least portrayed, as a stable watch dog of our economy, looking out for everyone’s good — like a kind of gentle Big Brother. Anyone attacking the Fed, particularly those in the labor movement, have been dismissed as crazy radicals. We couldn’t survive without the Federal Reserve Bank, is what most people believed. What we did not see was the reality that the door to the Fed is a revolving one with the Wall Street executive board rooms. What we did not see is that the Federal Reserve Bank is a ruling class agency that conducts policy in the interests of that class.

It won’t be like this forever. This latest move by the Fed in this crisis has opened the eyes of many to the reality of its role.

John Wojcik is labor editor of the People’s Weekly World.

Whats on

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:16:00 +0000

BERKELEY, Calif. May 3, Sat., café 7 p.m., cabaret 8 p.m. The Bolshevik Café: Music, stand-up comedy & spoken word plus display: 50 years of political posters, t-shirts & other left memorabilia. Put the social in socialism, the comic in communism & pizza in the proletariat! Sliding scale admission $5 - $15, food sold separately. At Finn Hall, 1819 10th St. Sponsored by Billie Holiday Collective. Info: (415) 863-6637 or staff@ncalofc.org.

CHICAGO May 4, Sun., 1 p.m. Yes we can! Si se puede! May Day & Cinco de Mayo Celebration. For a People’s Landslide Victory in November! At Unity Center, 3339 S. Halsted . Special performance by the Son Jarocho band: Fandanguero. Greetings: Larry Spivak, Pres, Ill Labor History Society & Regional Dir AFSCME Council 31, Teresa Albano, Editor, PWW; Katie Jordan, Chicago CLUW; performances by Ecos de Nuestra Cultura & Drew Chebuhar. $15 donation includes dinner. Hosts: PWW/NM & Dynamic Magazine. Info: 773-446-9932.

Free asthma screenings May 4, Sun., 10a.m. - 3p.m., Century Shopping Center, 2828 N. Clark Street.

Nationwide screenings sponsored by The American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. For more locations and dates: www.acaai.org.

MICHIGAN May 3, Sat., 1 - 4 p.m. Annual May Day picnic. Food, fun & activities. At 19178 Collinson, Eastpointe (north of Vernier, east of Kelly Rd). Donation: $8. Sponsored by Michigan Friends of the PWW. Info: (313) 262-7294.

ST LOUIS May 3, Sat., 9:30 a.m. MO/KS Friends of People’s Weekly World host 16th Annual Hershel Walker Peace & Justice Awards Breakfast. At the Postal Workers Union Hall, 1717 S. Broadway. Tickets $15 in advance, $20 at door. Tables $100. Information, tickets, program booklet ad-rates: call Tony Pecinovsky at (314) 776-7732 or e-mail tonypec@cpusa.org.

What’s On listings are 10 lines for $20, e-mail: ads @pww.org

Why young people should get involved with unions

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:09:00 +0000

Adapted from an article published in Dynamic magazine, in a series on basics of Marxism for young people.

Scanning the room at my first teachers union event, I could see that I was one of the youngest teachers in attendance. It got me thinking about my generation and possible explanations for its lack of representation. Were new teachers reaping the benefits of a union contract without understanding the decades of struggle that produced it? Was the union leadership resistant to change or out of touch? Were new teachers wary of unions or simply too overwhelmed by the demands of the job to come to a union meeting?

I still do not have the answer; it is likely some combination of all these elements. But I realized at that meeting how critical our generation’s participation is to the future of the labor movement, and that we have a vital contribution to make.

What’s a union?

One of the most important things that we can offer is our understanding of the role of unions. In its most basic form, a union is simply a group of workers who have won the legal right to negotiate over their wages and working conditions — a truly revolutionary idea for those who are used to the “what my boss says goes” conditions of a nonunion workplace.

But unions are more than just a written contract — the strength of that contract is entirely dependent on the strength and unity of the workers who fight for it and enforce the rights that they have won.

Last fall the school where I taught was undergoing construction. Teachers often conducted class with jack-hammering in the background (one day I had to stop teaching because I could not yell loud enough, and the school was literally falling apart around us. My mentor teacher came into his classroom one morning to find that a large chunk of plaster had fallen from the ceiling and shattered on the floor, leaving dust and plaster all over. Similar stories floated around the school for weeks; clearly the safe working conditions provision of the contract was being violated, not to mention the hazards to the health and safety of every person who entered the building. The school administration did nothing about it until the teachers finally got mad enough that they got together, filed a collective grievance and threatened to contact the local newspaper. In a nonunion workplace, who knows how long the problems would have gone unresolved?

I have often told this story to people who disparage teachers unions. The real union difference is not just in higher wages and benefits, but in something much more intagible — safety and respect, a sense of collective responsibility and power, and human dignity. Without a binding contract, workers are left at the whim of their supervisors and CEOs. A union contract not only guarantees rights and benefits, but also protects workers who take collective action at the workplace. We espouse democratic values in our society, so why should workers have to check their basic rights at the door of their workplace? This vision of unions, as a center of democratic and working-class struggle, is one of the most valuable contributions that we can make.

The benefits of unions are rarely extolled in our media and schools, and many people have no first-hand experience with unions to draw upon. Anti-union mythology pervades our national culture as much as anti-communism — and that’s no coincidence. Who hasn’t heard the claim that unions are corrupt, that they protect lazy workers, that they are run by “old white men” or are a relic of the industrial factory? While one could certainly find examples of unions (or any organization, company, school or workplace) that fit any of these qualities, these images are purposely distorted and dishonest. Companies spend billions of dollars each year to fight employees’ attempts to organize. Just like anti-communism, anti-union ideas are perpetuated in order to weaken and divide the working class and to distract people from seeking real solutions to the problems created by capitalism.

Are unions relevant?

Some may wonder if the labor movement is still relevant when only 13 percent of the American workforce is unionized.

When unionized workers win victories, they help the entire working class. My friends who work at nonunion charter schools are well aware of this — they indirectly benefit from union contract struggles because their schools are forced to raise their wages and benefits to keep up with the standard set by public school teachers.

The power of unions comes from the fact that they are the organized voice of the working class. Working people participate in many kinds of organizations — churches, neighborhood groups, parent organizations, ethnic and cultural groups — and all of these provide meaning in people’s lives and unite people around common interests. Yet, unions are different. Unions unite workers based on their economic role, crossing lines of race, gender, sexual orientation and immigration status. Unions are the only institution in our society that pool the resources and power of workers on a mass scale.

As Marx and Engels argued in “The Communist Manifesto,” workers and unions are uniquely positioned in capitalist production to directly challenge the power of capital, and therefore have the inherent potential to be the leading revolutionary force in a capitalist society. They described unionization as a critical step in the development of workers into a politically conscious class: “Now and then the workers are victorious but only for a time. The real fruit of their battle lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers.”

It is in the process of struggling for basic rights and improvements that many people develop and deepen their sense of being part of a larger movement, part of the working class, and gain an understanding of capitalism. In other words, class consciousness does not develop out of abstract theories and lectures; it is something that people develop over time through their experiences and relationships with others involved in struggle. Someone may initially get involved through a contract campaign, then be recruited to door-knock during a city council election, then be elected to a leadership position, and then be sent to a swing state to do political organizing.

This brings me back to the question of why mostly older teachers were at my union event. I think a big reason is that the veteran teachers were involved in major unionization efforts of the 1960s and ’70s, and the consciousness developed during those struggles has lived on.

Criticisms

Our generation has some legitimate concerns about unions. The labor movement does have a history of exclusion, and sometimes leaders or sections of union membership have supported candidates, contracts or positions that seem contrary to building a broader movement.

But first, it’s clear that the makeup of the leadership and membership is changing—over the past 20 years there have been significant increases in the leadership and participation of women, people of color and immigrant workers. Some unions have made this a top priority, while others still have significant work to do. We should be encouraging the involvement of young people, women, people of color and LGBT activists, rather than isolating ourselves from this arena of major struggles.

Second, some criticisms of unions represent a misunderstanding of the nature of a union. A union’s most basic responsibility is to represent the membership. Unions represent a broad array of political attitudes — even some Republicans! Unions do not play the same role as political parties, and can set themselves up for disaster by taking positions that are more “left” than the general sentiment of their membership. Leaders of any organization need to be pushed, but this pushing is often only effective when it comes from the dedicated members or allies of that organization.

‘In the trenches’

Finally, the most essential message is that we need to be involved in whatever way we can and encourage the involvement of our peers and co-workers — whether as members, community supporters, volunteers or staff.

I have been involved in the labor movement in all of these ways. I wondered, as I left my job as a union organizer for a job where I would actually be a member of a union, if I would miss the excitement of organizing. In my first few months as a teacher, my main involvement was attending the union’s new teachers dinner and the holiday party. In October, my mentor teacher asked me to write an article for the union newspaper about why I believed unions were important as a new teacher. When the article came out, teachers I hadn’t met before came up to me and told me how much they liked the article and how encouraged they were to see a young teacher involved in the union. That was when I realized: this is something I never could have done as a staff organizer.

As a member, I can talk to my co-workers about issues at work and politics and, even though I am new, what I say carries so much more weight because I am “in the trenches” with them (or at least sitting next to them at the holiday party).

C. Webb is a first-year public school teacher and former union organizer.

Flag pins dont cover hypocrisy

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:07:00 +0000

A disturbing study released last week by the RAND Corporation says about 300,000 service members and veterans — nearly one in five of the 1.6 million U.S. troops who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan — acknowledge experiencing major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. The study also says some 320,000 troops have returned with signs of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, which may be hard to recognize or to distinguish from psychological injury.

In a report made public last January, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) put the number of vets returning with combat-related mental illnesses even higher, at around 500,000, while finding a similar number of TBI cases. (See PWW 3/15-21.)

The RAND study also found that only a little over half those reporting depression or PTSD had sought treatment, and of those, about half had received “minimally adequate treatment.” Among those with possible TBI, more than half had not been evaluated for brain injury by a physician.

The head of the Veterans Administration mental health services has acknowledged that an average of 126 veterans from all wars commit suicide each week. Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth planned to include that admission as evidence in their lawsuit against the Veterans Administration, being heard this week in a San Francisco federal courtroom.

The veterans’ organizations charge the VA is not prepared to treat the Iraq and Afghanistan vets who are coming home with PTSD. They are urging the judge to issue a preliminary injunction forcing the VA to immediately treat veterans who show symptoms of PTSD and are at risk for suicide.

Taken together with the difficulties many soldiers have faced in getting proper treatment for physical injuries, these findings highlight the Bush administration’s shocking pattern of placing hundreds of thousands of our young people in the path of grievous harm, and turning its back on them when they need help the most. No matter how many flag pins the Bush-Cheney-McCain crowd wears, they can’t cover up their callous hypocrisy.

It’s long past time to bring home the troops who should never have been sent to war. And, to care for them properly when they return.

American Axle and the 2008 elections

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:43:00 +0000

Commentary

The workers at American Axle are doing all they can. Their cause is just, they are united in battle and unions from all over are coming to this plant on the Detroit-Hamtramck border to lend support. For seven weeks now, 3,650 workers have been on strike, resisting a very profitable company’s efforts to drastically reduce their wages (by as much as 50 percent) and benefits. However, the balance of forces in this fight is anything but even and they sure could use some help from high places.

Autoworkers are fighting two enemies at once: the company and a far-right Republican government in Washington whose agenda is to make workers suffer and sacrifice for corporate profits. While Democrats are not without blame, the lion’s share of the mess we’re in rests with the Republican Party.

Of all the wrongs to make right in the November elections, those faced by labor should be put on a fast track. For 30 years, the Republican right wing has hit hard at the trade union movement —Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers was just the beginning.

The scales of justice have been so tilted toward employers they have almost fallen over. Just think about what has taken place: Tax laws that reward companies for moving production out of the country. A National Labor Relations Board that should be called the National Corporate Get-Rid-of-Your-Union Relations Board. An Occupational Safety and Health Administration that has reduced staff and closed its eyes to dangerous work conditions. Free trade agreements that have made it easy for companies to set up production all over the world, worsened poverty and inequality in every country where they have been implemented and led to a massive loss of jobs here in the United States.

In this political climate workers are supposed to feel lucky just to be working and have no right complaining about corporate salaries and the halving of their wages and benefits. “We have the flexibility to source all of our business to other locations around the world and we have the right to do so,” said American Axle CEO Dick Dauch. Work for what I say or I’ll give your job to someone else, he’s saying.

Workers can win under such conditions, but why should it be so difficult? Isn’t it about time to send the Republicans packing?

In addition to the unity and solidarity being shown on the picket line, labor needs a Democratic landslide in the November elections — a landslide that sends a message to the next president and Congress that relief for working people is needed, and a landslide that will give labor the leverage to stop and even reverse the corporate attack.

The AFL-CIO’s “McCain Revealed” campaign shows him to be no friend of labor. His voting record is dismal. He’s voted to block the Employee Free Choice Act, voted to give Bush “fast track” authority on free trade legislation and voted to block a bill to protect overtime rights. McCain continues to be a strong supporter of the Iraq war and there is no way the needs of working people are going to be met while we’re spending three trillion dollars on the war. In other words, a McCain victory will be a continuation of Bush’s policies.

On most issues facing labor, Senators Obama and Clinton have both pledged policies opposite from McCain’s. A huge anti-McCain vote in November will be a defeat for the far-right and at the same time strengthen the hand of labor, the whole working class, women and youth. A big turnout by autoworkers in November will make battles on the picket line a lot easier.

John Rummel (jrummel@pww.org) is a Michigan correspondent for the People’s Weekly World.

Beware a wolf in sheeps clothing: a call to vote no on 98, yes on 99!

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:41:00 +0000

Dueling ballot initiatives dealing with the same subject — reforming the government’s ability to take private property under eminent domain — will share center stage in California’s June 3 statewide primary election. Though the official titles given propositions. 98 and 99 by the state attorney general are very similar, their intentions and effects couldn’t be farther apart.

Prop. 98’s opponents say that besides keeping governments from taking private property to transfer it to another private party, the measure would destroy rent control and eliminate most tenant protections, end requirements that developers must make part of their units “affordable,” and gut many environmental and land use regulations.

Their rival measure, Prop. 99, would keep the government from using eminent domain to take a home and transfer it to a private developer, period. It is written so that if both measures pass but Prop. 99 passes with a bigger margin, it would become law.

The No on 98, Yes on 99 campaign lists nearly 200 labor, business, environmental, tenant, mobile homeowner and other organizations and elected officials. Among them are two not often seen on the same page: the California Labor Federation and the California Chamber of Commerce.

Among Prop. 98’s initiators is the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. This is the far right group that 30 years ago initiated California’s Prop. 13, which claimed to protect homeowners from soaring taxes but in fact curbed local governments’ ability to fund education, libraries, fire departments and other municipal services.

Prop. 98 explicitly bars rent control after current residents of a rent-controlled property move out. But, warned Julie Spezia, Executive Director of the Housing California coalition, “Its impact is much broader than just the people who live with rent control. It includes all renters, because it would end the 60-day notice that must be given for a no-cause eviction.”

Laws requiring return of security deposits would also be affected.

Noting that the rental housing market has become tighter than ever in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, Spezia predicted destroying all protections against evictions would result in many more people becoming homeless, especially families who need housing with more bedrooms.

“We think [Prop. 98] is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Spezia said, “that essentially the concern the public has about eminent domain is being addressed in Prop. 99, with a fairly elegant and simple solution.”

According to the California Budget Project, over 4 out of 10 households in the state rent their homes.

Both Spezia and Jodi Reid, executive director of the California Alliance for Retired Americans, said seniors and disabled people would be most sharply affected.

A very large number of seniors in urban areas are renters, Reid said, while another large senior contingent lives in mobile home parks, renting the land on which their homes are placed.

While landlords whose property is under rent control, and mobile home park owners, can now raise rents annually based on the cost of living and the consumer price index, she said, allowing unlimited increases would create a disastrous situation.

“If you look at the contributions,” Reid added, “it’s the real estate community and the apartment house and mobile home park owners that have underwritten [Prop. 98], because this is a sneaky way to do what they have been trying to do for years, and do it under the auspices of eminent domain.”

Similar measures under the guise of eminent domain have surfaced in other states in recent years. In 2004 Oregon voters passed Measure 37, requiring local taxpayers to pay landowners for restricting development in protected zones, or waive rules to protect farmland, forests and water quality and allow development to proceed. But last November, the state’s voters passed a modified measure banning larger subdivisions, shopping centers and industrial plants in areas not planned for such development.

In 2006 California voters defeated Prop. 90, a similar but milder measure, by a margin of 50 to 48 percent. In the same year, voters in Washington and Idaho voted down comparable initiatives, two of which were portrayed as reforming eminent domain. However, such a measure passed in Arizona.

mbechtel @pww.org

U.S., Korean workers: Free trade pact spurs race to bottom

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:36:00 +0000

Despite strong resistance from labor and civic organizations in both the United States and South Korea, President Bush and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak vowed to push through the stalled Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA).

When Lee met with Bush April 18 at Camp David, according to Lee’s spokesperson, the two presidents chatted “like old friends,” and pledged that their countries’ legislatures would ratify the agreement.

Lee’s right-wing Grand National Party now dominates South Korea’s Parliament, so ratification there is likely, though there is a strong upsurge of grassroots protest. But U.S. ratification is much less likely. Contrary to Bush’s statements, Democrats in Congress, including presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are generally opposed to the agreement.

“The only trade agreements I believe in are ones that put workers first,” Sen. Obama told members of the United Auto Workers in November. “Because trade deals aren’t good for the American people if they aren’t good for working people. That’s why I opposed CAFTA. That’s why I oppose the South Korea Free Trade Agreement.”

Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, enthusiastically supports the agreement.

A recent statement issued jointly by the AFL-CIO and Change to Win in the U.S. and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions says, “The KORUS FTA is based on an economic model that has privileged investor rights over workers’ rights, public services and the environment.”

The joint statement continues, “It is clear that this model will permit restructuring and provoke a ‘race to the bottom’ on working standards in both countries, resulting in the deterioration of wages and working standards.”

If passed, KORUS will be the largest free trade agreement signed by the U.S. after NAFTA. Negotiations on it began in February 2006 and concluded last year. Ratification has been stalled by major protests, especially by labor and farmers’ groups, in both countries.

The Korean Alliance against KORUS FTA, which represents more than 300 Korean organizations, including labor, farmers’ groups and nongovernmental organizations, and hundreds of thousands of people, made clear their concerns in a 2007 report to the U.S. Congress.

The report charged the agreement would limit Koreans’ access to medicines and decrease Korean agricultural production by 45 percent, “meaning that roughly half of South Korea’s farmers will lose their livelihoods.” Further, implementation would diminish Korean authority to regulate water use and energy and even education. The alliance also expressed concern about harmful effects on Korean environmental policies.

Many Koreans, including progressives in the south and North Korean leaders, also fear that the agreement is a way for U.S. imperialist interests to strengthen their reach over the whole peninsula.

For American workers, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in April 2007 when the agreement was concluded, KORUS would “exacerbate and accelerate the loss of good jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector, especially in autos, apparel and electronics.”

South Korean President Lee represents the ultra-right Grand National Party, which has its roots in the dictatorship that ended in the 1980s. After years of liberal rule, the GNP won the presidential vote last December and the parliamentary vote this April, when it trounced the liberal United Democratic Party. The GNP won a majority of the 299-member legislature, while the UDP won only about 80 seats, in an election that commentators said was characterized, more than anything else, by widespread demoralization.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions says the reason for the ascendancy of the GNP was that, while most people agreed with the liberal UDP’s rapprochement with North Korea, the liberals weren’t able to address the growing rich/poor divide in South Korea.

What’s more, former liberal President Roh Moo-hyun was an original drafter of the KORUS agreement.

Consequently, facing a choice between a pro-KORUS liberal party that had lost the support of labor, the ultra-right GNP and a disunited left opposition, most South Koreans sat out the April vote, pushing voter turnout down to 46 percent, the lowest in South Korea’s history.

dmargolis@ pww.org

Talking economy with students

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:29:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Last month 80,000 jobs were lost throughout the country and the unemployment rate jumped from 4.8 to 5.1 percent. It was the third consecutive month of job loss. The private sector alone lost 98,000 jobs in March, the fourth consecutive decline. The number of unemployed people in the U.S. grew by 434,000 to 7.8 million.

Construction and manufacturing jobs continue to be the hardest hit, shedding 51,000 and 48,000 jobs, respectively. The retail sector has lost 100,000 jobs since last November. There is no doubt that the U.S. economy is in a recession, with the private sector now losing jobs at a rate that may exceed 100,000 per month. With real wages declining, and the plunge in house prices destroying home equity at a more than $2.5 trillion annual rate, it is likely that the rate of job loss will accelerate in the months ahead, analysts say.

To better understand what young people think about the current state of the economy, this reporter visited the University of Illinois at Chicago campus to talk with students.

“I feel like we’re on the edge of a recession,” said Aly Torres, 20, a junior originally from Peru who is studying anthropology. “People’s needs are up, including gas prices, food, home heating and electricity rates, not to mention the rising unemployment numbers,” she said. “People’s salaries are not up to par with the inflation rate and the Iraq war is a huge problem for the economy.” The war has a lot to do with our economic crisis, said Torres.

College tuition rates are high and interests rates on student loans are ridiculous, Torres added. “There should be a federal program to help students afford an education. We should be viewed as an investment, not as a financial hassle.”

Torres is a Barack Obama supporter and hopes if he or Hillary Clinton wins the presidential elections in November, the Iraq war will come to an end and that money could be used for people’s needs here at home.

Trent Thompson is a 23-year-old African American graduate student studying art and web design. “The economy definitely affects us and it’s a big deal,” he said. Thompson said he is concerned about his financial future, especially putting down a mortgage on a home. “As grad students we’re going to have to get out there and get jobs that may not exist — then what?” he said.

Thompson feels the economy is partly the fault of voters, “because we don’t elect the right kind of people to do the right kind of things for us.” He added, “And the war, it’s stupid and hasn’t been helping anybody. How much money has been put toward the Iraq war and for what?” he asked. “Bush, Halliburton and Cheney just want to make money there.

“Obama is a young fresh face and with his presentation he appeals to young people,” Thompson said. “Obama is like, ‘I feel you and know where you’re coming from.’”

“No matter who wins, Clinton or Obama, they will be a great improvement,” Thompson said. “As long as McCain doesn’t win,” he added.

The elections are very important and we have to be aware of who we are voting for, said Sergio Nieves, a 21-year-old urban planning and public affairs major who noted that the economy also affects undocumented workers and their families. “I’m pro-immigrant-rights, and there should be some sort of legal amnesty for undocumented workers,” he said. “Too many undocumented workers and their families don’t get a fair chance.” Nieves said some elected officials may think of immigration as a taboo subject but Congress needs to step up on this issue, including Obama and Clinton.

One 30-year-old graduate architecture student, who is white, said, “The U.S. economy does concern me but we have to deal with it in a more socio-economic way.” The student, who did not want her name published, said, “It’s a class-structured problem.” She pointed out, “The upper level people who have billions of dollars are running the show, and that’s the problem. And the tax system is all messed up too.

“People need to start paying more attention to the environment and climate change,” she said. “We need to take this problem seriously. This has everything to do with our economy and the future generations of young people.”

plozano@pww.org

Next stops: Indiana, North Carolina

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:55:00 +0000

Hillary Clinton kept alive her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination by winning Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary. National attention now turns to the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6. Polls show Obama leading in North Carolina and a dead heat in Indiana.

Obama carried Philadelphia by a huge 130,461 vote margin, spurred by a powerful grassroots get-out-the-vote drive and a rally of 39,000 people at Independence Mall April 18. Obama also carried Chester, Delaware, Dauphin, Lancaster and Centre counties.

But it was not enough to offset Clinton’s majorities in every other county including Allegheny, which includes Pittsburgh. More than 2,300,000 voters cast ballots. Election officials said it was twice the 26 percent turnout in 2004.

Obama still leads the popular vote by half a million votes. He also continues to lead in elected delegates, although with the Pennsylania vote Clinton has somewhat narrowed the elected delegate gap. Superdelegates have increasingly gravitated toward Obama.

Speaking at a victory rally in Philadelphia, with many in the crowd wearing union T-shirts, Clinton sounded a conciliatory note, starkly different from the negative attack ads she used against Obama in the past two weeks. She praised Obama, telling the big, multiracial crowd she and the Illinois senator are “in this journey together.”

Oddly, she did not mention Republican John McCain once in her speech.

Instead, she echoed Obama’s celebrated speech on race delivered last month at Philadelphia’s Constitution Center. The founding fathers envisioned a “more perfect union,” she said, adding, “Neither Senator Obama nor I were included in that vision. This next generation will grow up believing an African American or a woman can be the president of the United States.” It touched off the strongest applause she received.

Clinton’s change of tone may reflect the sharp criticism she has received for her negative campaign tactics, such as her slip of the tongue, “Osama, I mean, Obama,” and a last-minute TV ad that ominously flashed the image of Osama bin Laden on the screen.

A New York Times editorial the day after the Pennsylvania primary was headlined “The Low Road to Victory.” The Times, which had endorsed Clinton before Super Tuesday, declared, “It is past time for Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm her, her opponents, and the 2008 election.” Other observers point out that Clinton’s fear and smear strategy is a gift to McCain.

Pressure is growing for Democrats to determine the nominee by the end of June, to give the forces arrayed against McCain and the Republican right time to regroup and unite for the general election in November.

Donna Brazile, an uncommitted superdelegate who was Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, commented, “There’s a group around [Sen. Clinton] that really wants to take the fight to the convention. They don’t care about the party. It scares me and that’s what scares a lot of superdelegates.”

Nevertheless Clinton made clear in her victory speech that she intends to push ahead in the remaining primaries.

Obama, speaking to a crowd in Evansville, Ind., on April 22, congratulated Clinton and also thanked the hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians “who stood with our campaign today, closed the gap in Pennsylvania.” He was referring to polls as recent as February showing Clinton with a commanding lead — up to 30 points — over Obama. His campaign registered tens of thousands of new voters and thousands more transferred from the Republican to the Democratic Party. “It is those voters who will lead us to victory in November,” he said.

Obama hammered McCain as a George W. Bush clone who is offering voters “four more ears of a war with no exit strategy … a war that should never have been authorized and never should have been waged … four more years of tax cuts for CEOs and corporations.”

Obama decried “slice and dice” campaign tactics that divide the nation into “red states and blue states.” His campaign, by contrast, seeks to unite all ages, races and ethnicities into an all-encompassing movement for positive change, he said. Repeating a call for grassroots involvement in change that has been a hallmark of his campaign, Obama told the crowd, “I will also ask you to be part of the change we need. Real change doesn’t begin in the halls of Washington but in the streets of America, not from the top down but from the bottom up.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Hollywood to the docks labor power fills the streets

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:11:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES — More than 5,000 union activists and supporters rallied at the harbor here, April 17, roaring their approval of an assertive, one-for-all and all-for-one strategy to change the national and local direction this year.

Under the slogan of “the fight for good jobs,” workers from every walk of life, every racial, ethnic, age and gender group and every area neighborhood joined in a 28-mile, three-day march through the heart of Los Angeles — “From Hollywood to the Docks” — that culminated in the rally at the port.

“This is a once in a life time opportunity” for working people to give national leadership “if we all get out and vote,” Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. told the rally. “We will send George Bush home” and also reject “Mr. McCain … McBush, who we don’t want either,” he added.

Unite Here national leader John Wilhelm told the crowd that the united march showed “they will never more divide us by color, language or country we are from. We can win a better tomorrow by recapturing Congress and the White House.”

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said, “This is a march for the unions, families and communities of our nation.”

The 800,000-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor organized the march to kick off its bold plan to unite contract, organizing and electoral struggles by labor and its allies into one powerful campaign for good jobs. This year in Los Angeles County, 350,000 union workers in 30 unions are in contract negotiations, another 30,000 and more are fighting for union recognition, and all have a stake in what is considered the most important election cycle since the Depression of the 1930s.

Two major Hollywood unions, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, are now in negotiations for what could be the highest-profile labor struggles in the nation.

In the ports, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union is also in negotiations, along with a major organizing drive of port truckers by the Teamsters. The Los Angeles-Long Beach Harbor has over $700 billion in goods flowing through it each year. If port workers are strong, united and organized they can be a key leverage point for labor — local, national and international — in confronting global corporations. The ports represented by the ILWU on the West Coast handle 40 percent of the nation’s imports.

Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary treasurer of the L.A. labor federation, opening the march at the La Brea Tar Pits near downtown Los Angeles, said the action was in the tradition of Cesar Chavez and Gandhi, who spurred thousands to galvanize many times more, ultimately mobilizing millions.

The Los Angeles labor federation has been a national leader in the past decade in building unity and developing coalitions to win elections, organizing drives, strikes and contract struggles. Landmark victories have been won for janitors, hospitality workers, home health care workers and recently, security guards. In addition, fighters for working families have won election to local, state and congressional seats. The march drew on these experiences to raise labor’s activity to a higher level.

Some 173 “core marchers” participated in the entire march. They came from more than 30 unions and at least a dozen community organizations, and included leaders, staff, stewards and rank and file stalwarts.

Along the 28-mile route they held rallies at commercial centers, construction sites, immigrant communities targeted for gentrification, inner city schools, met with African American-led organizations for economic and social justice and joined a picket line outside a Wal-Mart store. Meal and lunch breaks were hosted by union and community groups. On the evening of April 16, after a barbecue meal served by union firefighters, marchers did phone banking for a labor candidate for L.A. county supervisor, state Sen Mark Ridley-Thomas, who marched many of the miles himself.

At every stop the core marchers were joined by hundreds of others, to learn of the plight and struggles of workers in key industries and neighborhoods, and to enjoy some of the area’s cultural richness as well.

The march starting point, the La Brea Tar Pits, was, a century ago, one of the major oil finds in the oil “rush” which fueled the Los Angeles area’s growth into a major national and global economic center. The area’s corporate oligarchy, partially portrayed in the movie “There Will be Blood,” used the oil profits to develop Los Angeles as a union-free environment. The major tactic of domination was dividing white, Black, Brown and Asian Pacific workers.

Unity was the key theme of this march. Labor-community efforts to win back jobs for African Americans in construction, reopening a comprehensive King Hospital in the African American/Latino community of South Los Angeles and support for organizing of jornaleros (day laborers) and “carwasheros” were highlighted.

“This march is a demonstration of the best that we are, part of our history and our future,” Ridley-Thomas told a morning rally at Harbor General Hospital on April 17.

rosalio_munoz@sbcglobal.net

Senate GOP blocks Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:46:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Again turning their backs on workers, Senate Republicans mustered enough votes to defeat pro-labor legislation on April 23. In this case, it was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay bill, which garnered a 56-42 majority, but needed 60 votes to halt the talkathon. The House passed it earlier. But the Senate vote may have killed it.

The Republicans responded to their business backers, who claimed the measure hurts them. The bill would reverse a Supreme Court 5-4 decision last May saying women, minorities and others suffering pay discrimination on the job can only sue within the first 180 days of its occurrence. If they uncover discrimination after that--as Ledbetter did via a tip many years later--they’re out of luck, the 5-man majority said.

The decision in Ledbetter vs. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., prompted an unusually public dissent by Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court’s only female justice, who called the majority “out of touch” with modern workplaces. She also said it was up to Congress to reverse the ruling. But the GOP halted the reversal.

Chief Senate sponsor Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) called the filibuster “outrageous” and vowed “this issue” of equal pay for equal work isn’t going away.”

Ledbetter, a retired supervisor at Goodyear’s Gadsden, Ala., plant, “was the victim of blatant pay discrimination, which she discovered too late,” said Marsha Zukowski, a Steel Workers vice president and president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women. Ledbetter previously told PAI rank-and-file female workers at Gadsden did not suffer blatant discrimination, due protection from their USW contract.

Under the court’s ruling “month after month after month, a worker could be paid less than a colleague based on sex, race, religion or disability,” Zukowski added. “They have to sue within 180 days of when the discrimination starts--and not within 180 days of when they learned about it.” That lets firms stall, discriminate--and get away with it.

“Paying a woman less than a man is an affront to human dignity,” added AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department Director Rosalyn Polles. The vote was on Equal Pay Day.‘

Ledbetter, a 19-year-10-month Goodyear veteran, pointed out she won’t get a dime if the law passes. The Supreme Court not only threw out Goodyear’s conviction on sexual pay discrimination charges, but also the $3.8 million in damages--later capped at $300,000—and $60,000 in back pay a jury awarded. “If my pay had been reasonably close to that of the men, I would have let this go,” Ledbetter, a 68-year-old grandmother, said. “But it’s not the money, it’s the discrimination,” she said.

Other speakers at the event, called in the midst of last-minute lobbying for the legislation, pointed out the court ruling hurts millions of people--and its impact goes far beyond pay. As Ledbetter herself noted, not only did she suffer pay discrimination for 19 years, but it also resulted in a lower pension, a lower 401(k), lower matches of that account by Goodyear, and lower Social Security payments.

“I have physicians, professors, teachers, nurses, you name it, writing me about the pay discrimination they suffer. You should see under my kitchen table; It’s crammed with boxes of letters” from women nationwide, Ledbetter said.

“Protection against pay discrimination is basic to democracy,” Senate Labor Committee Chairman Kennedy told colleagues before the vote. In an indication of the importance of the vote to working women, both Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sens. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), returned to the Senate from their hot contest to vote for the Lilly Ledbetter bill.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive GOP nominee, was one of two senators who did not vote. Six Republicans--four of them up for re-election this fall--voted against their party’s talkathon. They included Norman Coleman (Minn.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.). The other votes for it came from Democrats and independents.

Ledbetter said pay discrimination was abetted by Goodyear’s orders--common at many firms--to workers not to discuss pay with each other, under threat of firing. That gave Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), another longtime backer of equal pay, an opening to again campaign for his legislation that would force employers to disclose pay levels, but in broad categories of occupations at the same plant.

Such disclosure would help further the goal of equal pay for equal work--Equal Pay Day marks the day an average woman worker earns, in a year and the following months, what an average male earns in a year--“by giving people more information” to use to challenge pay discrimination.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) used the press conference to announce another anti-pay discrimination bill, offered by veteran Rep, Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who also spoke, would come up in his committee “in several weeks.” That bill puts teeth into the 1963 Equal Pay Act.

Equal Pay Day is the day an average woman worker earns enough, added to her pay from the year before, to equal the pay of an average male worker. Women earn 77 cents for every dollar an average male makes, a figure that barely budged “since the turn of this (21st) century,” one speaker said.

Metro Detroit AFL-CIO supports national health care

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:32:00 +0000

DETROIT — Almost every hand went up when John Dick asked the audience: “Who knows someone without health care?”

Dick, from National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 3126 in Royal Oak, Mich., was giving a presentation on the need for national health care at the Metro Detroit Labor Council office. He emphasized that “30 cents out of every one dollar spent for health care goes to the insurance companies and 50 percent of all bankruptcies are caused by medical bills.”

Not so long ago, he too was one the victims. In 1994, Dick broke his leg in 11 places and one year later had $50,000 in medical bills, forcing him to file for bankruptcy.

Saundra Williams, president of the council, said labor councils are focusing on health care because it is a key concern with trade unionists in this year’s election. Reminding people that McCain wants to tax workers’ benefits as income, Williams said, “With John Mc Cain you get more of the same.”

During April, more than 300 central labor councils around the country are dedicating their monthly meetings to helping local unions mobilize members around health care reform as part of labor’s 2008 drive to turn around America.

Labor support for HR 676, the single-payer bill introduced by Michigan Congressman John Conyers and co-sponsored by 88 more, continues to grow: 410 union organizations, 34 state AFL-CIOs, and nine international unions have all endorsed 676, Dick said.

Liv Boykins, special assistant to Conyers, said HR 676 is the only bill that would make health care a human right. She thanked Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney for the Michigan federation becoming the latest to endorse 676. Health care, dental care, prescription coverage and choice of physicians are basic features of the bill. Boykins said “How can I help you?” not “What kind of insurance do you have?” will be the first question asked when this bill is passed.

One day’s spending on the war in Iraq would fund SCHIP, the state children’s health insurance plan, declared Duron Marshall, an aide to Michigan Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick. He said it is shameful that the seniors who built this country are going broke trying to pay their bills.

John Freeman, chair of the Health Care for Michigan campaign, told the group about the campaign’s ballot initiative to add to Michigan’s constitution a statement that health care is a primary concern of the state. Petitioners have already started collecting signatures to place the referendum on the state’s November ballot. He said the strategy behind the Health Care for Michigan campaign is to “reach out to people and educate them on the need for reform.”

Freeman indicated the campaign will put pressure on the state Legislature to take action and will increase bottom-up pressure to support Conyers’ HR 676. It is a “twofer,” he said, that will drive health care reform at the state level and build more momentum and public support for national health care reform.

jrummel @ pww.org

Hollywood to the docks labor power fills the streets

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:18:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES — More than 5,000 union activists and supporters rallied at the harbor here, April 17, roaring their approval of an assertive, one-for-all and all-for-one strategy to change the national and local direction this year.

Under the slogan of “the fight for good jobs,” workers from every walk of life, every racial, ethnic, age and gender group and every area neighborhood joined in a 28-mile, three-day march through the heart of Los Angeles — “From Hollywood to the Docks” — that culminated in the rally at the port.

“This is a once in a life time opportunity” for working people to give national leadership “if we all get out and vote,” Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. told the rally. “We will send George Bush home” and also reject “Mr. McCain … McBush, who we don’t want either,” he added.

Unite Here national leader John Wilhelm told the crowd that the united march showed “they will never more divide us by color, language or country we are from. We can win a better tomorrow by recapturing Congress and the White House.”

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said, “This is a march for the unions, families and communities of our nation.”

The 800,000-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor organized the march to kick off its bold plan to unite contract, organizing and electoral struggles by labor and its allies into one powerful campaign for good jobs. This year in Los Angeles County, 350,000 union workers in 30 unions are in contract negotiations, another 30,000 and more are fighting for union recognition, and all have a stake in what is considered the most important election cycle since the Depression of the 1930s.

Two major Hollywood unions, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, are now in negotiations for what could be the highest-profile labor struggles in the nation.

In the ports, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union is also in negotiations, along with a major organizing drive of port truckers by the Teamsters. The Los Angeles-Long Beach Harbor has over $700 billion in goods flowing through it each year. If port workers are strong, united and organized they can be a key leverage point for labor — local, national and international — in confronting global corporations. The ports represented by the ILWU on the West Coast handle 40 percent of the nation’s imports.

Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary treasurer of the L.A. labor federation, opening the march at the La Brea Tar Pits near downtown Los Angeles, said the action was in the tradition of Cesar Chavez and Gandhi, who spurred thousands to galvanize many times more, ultimately mobilizing millions.

The Los Angeles labor federation has been a national leader in the past decade in building unity and developing coalitions to win elections, organizing drives, strikes and contract struggles. Landmark victories have been won for janitors, hospitality workers, home health care workers and recently, security guards. In addition, fighters for working families have won election to local, state and congressional seats. The march drew on these experiences to raise labor’s activity to a higher level.

Some 173 “core marchers” participated in the entire march. They came from more than 30 unions and at least a dozen community organizations, and included leaders, staff, stewards and rank and file stalwarts.

Along the 28-mile route they held rallies at commercial centers, construction sites, immigrant communities targeted for gentrification, inner city schools, met with African American-led organizations for economic and social justice and joined a picket line outside a Wal-Mart store. Meal and lunch breaks were hosted by union and community groups. On the evening of April 16, after a barbecue meal served by union firefighters, marchers did phone banking for a labor candidate for L.A. county supervisor, state Sen Mark Ridley-Thomas, who marched many of the miles himself.

At every stop the core marchers were joined by hundreds of others, to learn of the plight and struggles of workers in key industries and neighborhoods, and to enjoy some of the area’s cultural richness as well.

The march starting point, the La Brea Tar Pits, was, a century ago, one of the major oil finds in the oil “rush” which fueled the Los Angeles area’s growth into a major national and global economic center. The area’s corporate oligarchy, partially portrayed in the movie “There Will be Blood,” used the oil profits to develop Los Angeles as a union-free environment. The major tactic of domination was dividing white, Black, Brown and Asian Pacific workers.

Unity was the key theme of this march. Labor-community efforts to win back jobs for African Americans in construction, reopening a comprehensive King Hospital in the African American/Latino community of South Los Angeles, and support for organizing of jornaleros (day laborers) and “carwasheros” were highlighted.

“This march is a demonstration of the best that we are, part of our history and our future,” Ridley-Thomas told a morning rally at Harbor General Hospital on April 17.

A wolf in sheeps clothing: Vote No on 98, Yes on 99!

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:12:00 +0000

Dueling ballot initiatives dealing with the same subject — reforming the government’s ability to take private property under eminent domain — will share center stage in California’s June 3 statewide primary election. Though the official titles given Props. 98 and 99 by the state attorney general are very similar, their intentions and effects couldn’t be farther apart.

Prop. 98’s opponents say that besides keeping governments from taking private property to transfer it to another private party, the measure would destroy rent control and eliminate most tenant protections, end requirements that developers must make part of their units “affordable,” and gut many environmental and land use requirements.

Their rival measure, Prop. 99, would keep the government from using eminent domain to take a home and transfer it to a private developer, period. It is written so that if both measures pass but Prop. 99 passes with a bigger margin, it would become law.

The No on 98, Yes on 99 campaign lists nearly 200 labor, business, environmental, tenant, mobile homeowner and other organizations and elected officials. Among them are two not often seen on the same page: the California Labor Federation and the California Chamber of Commerce.

Among Prop. 98’s initiators is the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. This is the far right group that 30 years ago initiated California’s Prop. 13, which claimed to protect homeowners from soaring taxes but in fact curbed local governments’ ability to fund education, libraries and other municipal services.

Prop. 98 explicitly bars rent control after current residents of a rent-controlled property move out. But, warned Julie Spezia, Executive Director of the Housing California coalition, “Its impact is much broader than just the people who live with rent control. It includes all renters, because it would end the 60-day notice that must be given for a no-cause eviction.”

Noting that the rental housing market has become tighter than ever in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, Spezia predicted destroying all protections against evictions would result in many more people becoming homeless, especially families who need housing with more bedrooms.

“We think [Prop. 98] is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Spezia said, “that essentially the concern the public has about eminent domain is being addressed in Prop. 99, with a fairly elegant and simple solution.”

According to the California Budget Project, over 4 out of 10 households in the state rent their homes.

Both Spezia and Jodi Reid, executive director of the California Alliance for Retired Americans, said seniors and disabled people would be most sharply affected.

Mseniors in urban areas are renters, Reid said, while many more live in mobile home parks, renting land on which their homes are placed.

While landlords whose property is under rent control, and mobile home park owners, can now raise rents annually based on the cost of living and the consumer price index, she said, allowing unlimited increases would create a disastrous situation.

“If you look at the contributions,” Reid added, “it’s the real estate community and the apartment house and mobile home park owners that have underwritten [Prop. 98], because this is a sneaky way to do what they have been trying to do for years, and do it under the auspices of eminent domain.”

Though much attention has focused on tenants and mobile home residents, Prop. 98 has far broader potential consequences. “People want to have the ability to make decisions about how their communities are going to grow and change,” said Oakland-based planning and development consultant Vivian Kahn. “They feel communities should be able to make decisions to preserve those parts of the community that they want to keep, and to make improvements, and this measure would constrain that.”

In 2006 California voters defeated Prop. 90, a similar but milder measure, by 48 to 52 percent. In the same year, voters in Washington and Idaho voted down comparable initiatives, but such a measure passed in Alaska.

In 2004 Oregon voters passed a requirement that local taxpayers pay landowners for restricting development in protected zones, or waive protections and let development proceed. But last November they modified the measure.

mbechtel @pww.org

Texas nurses organize

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:02:00 +0000

HOUSTON – Nurses at Tenet Healthcare, owned by Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center Hospital, voted March 28 to organize and form a union with the California Nurses Association. The hospital is located in northwest Houston and employs 275 registered nurses.

The primary focus of the organizing campaign was patient care with the goal of improving nurse-to-patient ratios. Hospitals, similar to all industries, have been under pressure to increase profits and have been following in the footsteps of other enterprises by reducing staff. This has resulted in dangerous staff-to-patient ratios which put patients’ lives at risk and nurse’s licenses in jeopardy.

Nurses also want guaranteed wage increases, higher on-call pay and a pension plan, in addition to the hospital’s 401k program.

There are 29,000 licensed RNs in Harris County, which includes this city.

Texas AFL-CIO President Becky Moeller said, in a statement, “We are elated. The decision of registered nurses to organize at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center Hospital sends a message of hope to highly skilled workers across the state who can benefit greatly from the workplace rights only a union can deliver.”

She continued, “Too many nurses have seen their workplace conditions, right to overtime, right to organize and even the ability to practice their profession as they were taught attacked by politicians and bureaucrats. The National Nurses Organizing Committee’s decision to organize registered nurses at a private hospital in new and unfriendly territory has paid off and we hope it leads to many more successes for nurses across the state. The vote shows that despite exceptionally difficult conditions for organizing in any so-called ‘right to work’ state, it can be done in Texas.”

The AFL-CIO blog recorded the following reactions.

Josie Jupio, an RN at the hospital, rejoiced, “Finally our voice will be heard. This victory of the nurses’ unity will bring a change for the better, impacting patient care, improving the benefits and assuring an open door policy that is fair to all.”

Juanita Reyes, RN, of Cypress Fairbanks Hospital, declared, “Union means unity for the good of all, especially our patients who are the cause we are here for.”

Chris Williams, RN noted that the election came just one week before the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and points out the civil rights movement and the union movement are the nation’s “two most progressive movements. We nurses at CyFair will try to expand upon Dr. King’s vision with respect to patient care in Texas.”

The Houston Chronicle quoted E. Dale Wortham, president of the Harris County AFL-CIO and board member of the Harris County Hospital District as saying, “I can tell you the Texas Medical Center and all the member institutions are as nervous as house cats in a room full of rocking chairs.”

The house cats are also jittery in Dallas, according to an article in the Dallas Morning News. Tenet Healthcare is based in Dallas and the expectation is that the organizing effort will quickly spread to northern Texas.

The California Nurses Association has already contacted Parkland Hospital and requested contact information for the hospital’s 2,500 nurses. Managers swiftly held “informational meetings” with nurses about the union.

Tenet’s 2007 annual report indicates that 22 percent of its employees already have formed unions, primarily in California and Florida. The report also states, “We, and the hospital industry in general, are continuing to see an increase in the amount of union activity across the country.” Nurses and health care consumers hope this is just the beginning.

Opposition to racist sheriff's 'saturation raids' grows

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:21:00 +0000

PHOENIX – Elected officials, religious leaders, community organizations and civil libertarians have joined a rising chorus here of Arizonans condemning the blatantly racist grandstanding of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Since January 1, Arpaio's office has been conducting high-visibility sheriff deputy and posse raids on Latino and working-class areas of Arizona's biggest county.

The raids, which Arpaio claims are aimed at crime and undocumented immigrants, are really designed to stir up prime time TV publicity for the notoriously racist sheriff, and at terrorizing working-class neighborhoods.

The two-day raids start in the afternoon and last until after the evening news, allowing for lots of news cameras and opportunities for Arpaio to give sound bites on the evening news broadcasts.

Like a tornado that touches down at random, the sheriff and his 200-person patrols leave in their wake only arrests, deportations, harassment, paranoia and fear, not to mention loss of trade for the area's small businesses.

Arpaio begins by setting up his traveling circus-like command center at a prominent parking lot near the area that is the target for his patrols. He then creates a perimeter with yellow crime tape, and within the perimeter he parks a caravan of squad cars and vans to transport detainees. Additionally, he uses large trailers for a mobile temporary detention unit and RVs for offices and communication towers.

Once assembled, the sheriff meets officers and deputized posse members who then set out in patrol cars. These 'saturation patrols,' as they have been called, look for any and all minor violations such as a broken windshield or tail lamp. Once they stop someone, they demand proof of citizenship or immigration status. They typically make arrests.

With 160 officers officers trained for immigration enforcement, the Maricopa County Sheriff Office (MCSO) has the largest number of trained officers in contract with 287(g) under a Department of Homeland Security program. This is a contract that the Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff issues to outsource immigration oversight from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the local, county and state police units.

Community and immigrant rights activists, mobilized by a grassroots network, have been showing up at these command centers to protest the onslaught on the community. Among these groups are Somos America, the organization that led the large street marches in 2006, the 35th and Thomas Organizing Committee, whose leader is Salvador Reza, a leader of the Union de Jornaleros (day laborers union), and Los Abogados, an organization of the Hispanic Bar Association, whose local President-elect Salvador Ongaro is always present at the raids.

Protesters frequently find themselves in confrontation with groups that support Arpaio, including racist groups calling themselves 'United for a Sovereign America' and other far-right and neo-Nazi groups.

Civil rights groups have protested Arpaio's actions to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The Arizona Latino Legislative Caucus, for example, sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey requesting that the DOJ investigate whether the MCSO 'saturation patrols' violate civil rights. The Arizona Anti-Defamation League also issued a statement on Apr. 11 calling on the DOJ to look into accusations of racial profiling by the MCSO.

Local elected officials and police chiefs have rejected Arpaio's actions or have broken off relations with the racist sheriff. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has led the charge against Arpaio by publicly asking for a DOJ investigation of Arpaio. Phoenix, the nation's fifth largest city, is wholly within Maricopa County.

Guadalupe, Ariz. Mayor Rebecca Jimenez accused the MCSO of racial profiling and asked that Arpaio's contract with the city be terminated after one of Arpaio's command center raids into her mostly Latino and Native American city. El Mirage, Arizona similarly ended its contract with the MCSO to provide police services.

Police Chiefs Jack Harris of Phoenix and George Gascon of neighboring Mesa are openly at odds with and refuse to cooperate with Arpaio.

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano (D) has joined the opposition to Arpaio, calling the raids 'troublesome.'

Even the right-wing Goldwater Institute has questioned the propriety of Arpaio's sweeps. Arizona Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, has been absent and has not spoken out against Arpaio's human and civil rights abuses.

U.S. and Mexican workers join hands

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:52:00 +0000

The AFL-CIO announced April 17 that it has entered into a formal alliance with Enlace, a coalition of 21 Mexican labor rights groups representing 300,000 low-wage workers in that country.

Federation president John J. Sweeney said that American unions and the Mexican groups share the common goals of fighting for low wage workers and bringing balance to the struggle between the rich and the working poor.

The alliance takes on special significance because the AFL-CIO has no formal relations with Mexico’s official union federation which is essentially controlled by the country’s Institutional Revolutionary Party. That party has ruled Mexico for the 70 year period that began in 1929 and has often repressed workers trying to organize and the unions themselves.

The move by the AFL-CIO is part of a recent trend by U.S. labor unions to strengthen ties with groups that legitimately represent workers overseas.

The AFL-CIO and Enlace say they will concentrate on international campaigns, education and training and on building cooperation among unions and the less formal worker centers. Both say they will also focus on building solidarity between worker advocates on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The federation has already established formal relations with labor rights groups in the United States. These include the Taxi Drivers’ Alliance in New York, the Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice Center and the National Day Labor Organizing Network. The latter group is a coalition of U.S. day labor centers that advocates for low income Latino workers all over the United States.

The alliance with Mexican workers comes on the heels of numerous moves by U.S. labor unions to strengthen ties with workers in other countries. One of the latest of these moves is already winning tangible benefits for American workers.

The Communication Workers of America and Germany’s biggest union recently established a jointly run trans-Atlantic group, called T-Union, to organize and represent T-Mobile workers in America. Although T-Mobile is aggressively anti-union, its German parent firm, Deutsche Telekom, is unionized and has unionists on its board of directors. Those board members are pressuring the company to stop its anti-union activity and thereby assisting the CWA’s organizing drive.

The Steelworkers, the Machinists and the Auto Workers, among others, have also established working relationships with unions overseas.

Tell Congress to take action on global warming

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:31:00 +0000

Imagine hundreds of thousands of calls flooding Congressional phone lines.

That is what LCV and our coalition partners plan to generate today—Earth Day—to demand action on global warming.

As the global warming crisis continues to worsen, Congress still has not passed any comprehensive legislation to solve it. That is why LCV has partnered with our friends at the Earth Day Network on the Call for Climate campaign to generate an unprecedented number of calls to Congress this Earth Day to issue a wake-up call that they can't ignore.

Will you take a few minutes to add your voice to this extraordinary effort?

Here is the information you need to take action:

WHO: Contact your senators and representative: call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your senators' and/or representative's office. WHEN: TODAY, Tuesday, April 22 WHAT TO SAY: Tell the legislative staffer who answers that:

* As a constituent, I am calling to ask that Congress take action now on the most serious environmental problem we face: global warming.

* The global warming crisis is continuing to worsen, and scientists have warned that if we don't act now, some of the worst effects are less than ten years away.

* In order to make a real difference, we must enact legislation that reduces global warming pollution 80% by 2050.

After you have made your calls, please hit reply to this message and let us know how they went. Thank you once again for all you do for the Earth.

Sincerely,

Gene Karpinski President League of Conservation Voters