People Before Profit blog

CDREVIEW

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:37:00 +0000

For many years Cameroon-born Kaïssa worked as a backup singer for artists such as Cesaria Evora, Jean-Michel Jarre and Diana Ross. “Looking There” is her first solo CD, and judging by the quality of the 12 tracks, it is a successful effort. “Looking There” is a meditation on social injustice, love and religious faith. Kaïssa has a strong, appealing voice that resonates. Mostly sung in her native Cameronian and infused with African melodies, the songs swing from the uplifting “Senga” and “Joy” to the breezy, reflective “O Si Keka” and “Ombwa Te.” Her cover of Steve Wonder’s 1970s hit “Big Brother” is an outstanding reinterpretation of this classic song, suffused with a bluesy-African tinged beat. If this is Kaïssa’s first solo CD, then we have much to look forward from her in the future. “Looking There” is a wonderful first effort. (Makai Records, 2005.)

LETTERS

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:29:00 +0000

LETTERS

Paul Robeson stamp

After a long struggle, the U.S. Postal Service finally issued the Paul Robeson stamp in 2004. Today it is no longer available for purchase. At the postal store you can get the first-day cover and by telephone you can get an anonymous collection of stamps, both of which include it. Both of these cost more than the usual price for ordinary stamps to be used for postage. Why should this new stamp suddenly become unavailable for the ordinary use it was designed for? Is there dirty work at the crossroads? Any info would be appreciated.

Ros Spitzer, Via e-mail

Peace doves fly to Crawford

Hundreds of peace activists are flocking to the closest town to President Bush’s ranch. Yes, the tiny Crawford Peace House is filled offering limited floor sleeping space, phone information, water, juice and fresh produce.

Cindy Sheehan has spawned a revolution. She wants to know for what noble cause her son was killed at 24 years. Ms. Sheehan wants a visit with the president. She wants answers. Why have nearly 2,000 American deaths occurred? How did “our oil” get under their soil?

Other parents and families of soldiers lost in this Iraq invasion are with Cindy. Also, Gold Star mothers, Military Families Against the War, Veterans For Peace and Iraq war veterans.

Cindy’s revolution is a complete change from government-as-usual. Congress has not stopped the carnage in Iraq. Congress appropriated the funds for the invasion of Iraq. Neither presidential candidate stood for an immediate troop withdrawal. Maybe government is too important to be left to the politicians.

Cindy’s grieving witness in Texas to stop war may be the spark seen and heard around the world. Peace pilgrims are en route from everywhere to support her. All roads lead to Crawford. Contributions from all over the country, particularly Texas, are feeding the growing city.

A peaceful revolution can only go forward or backward. A complete change cannot mark time. Let’s march forward toward Crawford. Only passionate dissent can stop war policy and killing.

Walking Mary, Bisbee AZ

Editor’s note: Mary, a Grandma for Peace, wrote this on a Greyhound bus traveling from Arizona to El Paso, Texas, en route to the Crawford Peace House.

Housing bubble (out)burst

I am amazed at how politically motivated minds tend to blame any national problem on those with whom they disagree, in this case President Bush. There is even a silly and irrelevant claim that one of Bush’s brothers somehow benefited from the S&L bailout years ago. (“The housing bubble,” PWW 7/16-22).

The bad guys in this scenario will turn out to be individual investors and mortgage lenders who provide too easy terms to the lowly — the very same lowly citizen that the writer has howled needed more help from the banking industry.

The hens have certainly come home to roost, which the writer fails to see. The feds are supposed to regulate and monitor the mortgage market, and these folks, in case the writer isn’t aware, are our wonderful civil service folks, none of whom is related to a Bush.

Kent Beuchert, Via e-mail

Art Perlo replies:

The primary point of my article is that the overheated housing bubble will bring distress to millions of families who are stuck with unpayable mortgages, and that the puncturing of the housing bubble could well trigger a recession which will hurt the entire working class. I addressed the likely consequences of the housing bubble, not the causes. Therefore, I did not blame the problem on Bush (or anyone else).

But the president’s response to the 2001 recession was to oppose any meaningful relief for its primary victims, while using it as an excuse for huge tax cuts and other handouts for the wealthy and the biggest monopolies. My article suggests that Bush’s response to a crisis resulting from the housing bubble will be similar. Neil Bush’s escapade with the $1.3 billion bankruptcy of Silverado Savings and Loan in 1988 is an indication of the kind of crony capitalism we can expect in a future financial crisis: those responsible walk free, while the rest of us are stuck with the bills.

The writer correctly states, “The feds are supposed to regulate and monitor the mortgage market.” They are also supposed to regulate the banking industry and Wall Street. While regulatory oversight has been undermined by legislation and by policy decisions of successive administrations for at least 25 years, the Bush administration has set new records for turning regulatory agencies over to the industries they are supposed to regulate. Civil servants are frequently frustrated because administration policies prevent them from doing their jobs.

I agree with the writer that mortgage lenders bear significant responsibility. But I never said anything about “lowly citizens” needing help from the banking industry. Ordinary workers do need the help of a rational federal housing program, which addresses the needs of renters and homeowners, as well as considering local government finances and environmental concerns — but that is another article.

Cuban artist in Moscow

You ran a fine tribute for Cuban artist Ibrahim Ferrer (PWW 8/20-8/26). It was a good roundup of Ferrer’s life, music and legacy. There is just one “factoid” that was overlooked, and perhaps not very well known. The tribute mentions Ferrer “had been a star in Cuba for decades, but it wasn’t until” 1997 that the U.S. heard of him. More than 30 years earlier, in 1962, Ferrer performed in Moscow, USSR and even had lunch with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. I think that is significant.

Steve Cooper, Los Angeles CA

Taking issue

Reading your letters column in the August 13-19 newspaper, the letter called “Cloning blooper” caught my eye since I have willed stem cell research, cloning and transplants in my advance directive.

However, I disagree with the statement [humorously describing Bush’s views] that “the Bible actually does state that Social Security should be privatized and the New Deal was not ordained by God and should be abolished.” Some people will twist around verses (although none was offered) for their own “justification.” Social Security may not have existed in the old Roman Empire, but Jesus did extol the virtues of helping the poor and needy!

I believe the international poor and working people to be the true morality anyway.

Profit is theft and the only way the rich have what they do is from legally stealing it from the toilers.

Rev. Gary W. McIntire, St. Paris OH

LABOR UPDATE

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:44:00 +0000

LABOR UPDATE

Conyers to speak at Boston hearing on health care crisis

The Greater Boston Labor Council and several local unions are among the more than 30 grassroots organizations sponsoring a hearing at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall on Sept. 1 to step up the pressure on policymakers for comprehensive health care reform.

The hearing is part of a campaign to build a stronger movement for a “Medicare for All” solution (HR 676) to the health care crisis, say the hearing’s sponsors. Passage of HR 676 would ensure that everyone would receive high quality and affordable health care, they say.

HR 676’s lead sponsor, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), will speak at the hearing, and local media personality Sarah-Ann Shaw will moderate.

All members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation have been invited to the hearing. Rep. Stephen Lynch has already said he will attend.

The hearing is organized by Jobs with Justice’s Health Care Action Committee. Co-sponsors include the Greater Boston Labor Council, Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo, Communications Workers of America-District 1, CWA Local 1365, IBEW Locals 2222 and 2322, IUE/CWA Local 201, Massachusetts Nurses Association, SEIU Local 2020 and UE-District 2.

The hearing will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. For more information, visit www.massjwj.net

Meet me in St. Louis

Activists can come together to celebrate victories, share experiences, learn new skills and build stronger relationships at the annual Jobs with Justice meeting to be held this year in St. Louis, Sept. 23-25, says JwJ media organizer Erica Smiley. Participants will include hundreds of leaders and activists from around the country and the world who are working to build powerful coalitions for workers’ rights and economic justice, says Smiley.

This year, the annual meeting will also host a National Workers’ Rights Board hearing on Wal-Mart and a Student Labor Action Project pre-conference. To get more information about the meeting or to register on-line, visit www.jwj.org.

Break time at last

The Humane Treatment of Hotel Room Attendants Act, passed by the Illinois General Assembly this spring, will benefit thousands of women who clean hotel rooms, Unite Here, the union representing hotel workers, announced. The law requires hotels to give two paid 15-minute rest breaks per day. Room attendants — overwhelmingly female — have been struggling with increased workloads as hotels upgrade their bedding and amenities.

The Aug. 10 signing ceremony featured room attendants representing their co-workers, who come from Chicago and all over the globe — Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.

Steel solidarity

The leaders of two of the largest metalworkers’ unions in Brazil called on Brazilian steel-making giant Gerdau S.A. and its Tampa-based subsidiary, Gerdau Ameristeel, to end the company’s lockout of North American steelworkers in Beaumont, Texas.

“We call on Gerdau to immediately end its unfair lockout of United Steelworkers Local 8586 in Beaumont, put the membership back to work, and negotiate a fair agreement,” said Fernando Lopes, secretary-general of CNM/CUT, the National Metalworkers’ Confederation of Brazil, and Nair Goulart, international relations secretary of CNTM, the National Confederation of Steelworkers — Força Sindical.

Lopes and Goulart, along with steelworkers from Beaumont and representatives from USW headquarters in Pittsburgh, addressed a rally outside the company’s Tampa headquarters before entering the building to present management with petitions from Gerdau’s North American workforce.

The group also distributed flyers contrasting “record profits for Tampa executives” with “pay cuts and an illegal lockout for Texas steelworkers.”

Labor Update is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood @ pww.org).

Letters

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:18:00 +0000

Bush in a hidey hole

It has been an uplifting week of joy and jubilation seeing the war criminal George Bush pinned down at his hidey hole in Crawford, Texas, by a righteously angry and sorely grieving mother of a deceased Iraq war soldier.

Better than any other demonstration or congressional hearing to date, the determined and victorious Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey Sheehan, has put President Bush on trial morally and politically for his illegal war, in front of not only the entire nation, but the entire world, and has branded him guilty as charged!

Val Eisman

Oakland CA

Cindy Sheehan, one honest woman

Diogenes, the Greek philosopher and social commentator, reportedly went about shining a lantern in the faces of strangers looking for “one honest man.” Cindy Sheehan is one honest woman, and Bush doesn’t know what to do with her. Used to scripted speeches given to pre-screened cheering audiences, he doesn’t know how to handle an honest woman who speaks plain truth, and instead lets his red-neck friends mow down the crosses and American flags put up around her.

Naturally, the right-wing press labels her “a tool of leftist agitators,” conveniently forgetting that she went to Crawford entirely on her own. I, who am a Republican but despise Bush, am going to do something I’ve never done before: demonstrate in public, in support of Cindy Sheehan. In fact, I’ve made up 12 signs for one of the many candlelight rallies going on around the country in support of Ms. Sheehan.

Cindy Sheehan is the Betsy Ross of our time. I sent her a dozen roses through Code Pink (codepink4peace.org). I urge everyone else to do the same.

Wright Salisbury

Via e-mail

Maria Montelibre presente!

It is with great sadness that I read of the death of Maria Montelibre (PWW 7/30-8/5). I became aware of her by trading the Blue Collar Review for the Montelibre Monthly for the last five years. Her loss is a great one for all of us who struggle for a better world and the information that she published on Cuba will indeed be missed.

La luta continua.

Al Markowitz

Partisan Press (partisanpress.org)

Inhumane and degrading

John McCain and some other senators are working on legislation that would ban the U.S. military from hiding detainees from the Red Cross and bar American soldiers from participating in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. I wish them luck.

By the way, George Bush is against this legislation. So, this is “compassionate conservatism”?

Chuck Mann

Greensboro NC

Mubarak’s crimes

On July 23 Egypt and the whole world were shocked and terrified by the suicidal terrorist attack in Sharm El-Sheikh, a resort in Sinai-Egypt. Soon after, the Egyptian government denounced the attack and blamed some radical groups for waging unholy war against innocent civilians.

Egyptian President Mubarak found it a golden opportunity to resurface back out of the history bin as a strong statesman who can lead his people through such a hardship. Sounds like a story with a happy ending but it definitely is not.

For decades, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other civil and human rights groups have denounced the systematic practice of incommunicado detention, torture and rape — to name just a few practices — of his authoritarian regime.

Mubarak has been using all of his tricks to hold absolute power for 24 years and is willing to compromise any and everything to sustain it. Egyptians are on the verge of civil disobedience and unified behind one request: Get the dictator out of office and no to the proposed succession of the dictator’s groomed younger son.

There is no reason under the sun to justify a terrorist attack. However, the Egyptian people have every reason under the sun to expose the dictator and request his trial for crimes against humanity in front of an international court. If we decry once the terrorist attacks against hundreds, how many times do we decry sustained terrorist attacks for 24 years against a whole great nation?

Mohamad Anwar

St. Paul MN

Labor article jogged memory

I just finished reading the July 23-29 feature on the impact of anticommunism on the labor movement (“The debates in labor: Lessons from the past”).

I have a few memories about late 1952, getting fired for ... yes, trying to organize a union at my place of work. It was not just any union: I wanted our shop to hook up with the United Electrical Workers (UE). The boss knew that I was the inside organizer, and I got fired.

Then on Feb. 12, 1953 (the birthday of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator), I was drafted to be part of the “police action” in Korea.

All the above came rushing back in the course of reading your centerfold piece. Today I have a paper route: four locals of the Electrical Workers Union where I am greeted with a smile and a “Thank you, brother,” when I drop off 10 or 12 papers.

Jesse Kern

St. Petersburg FL

Roberts not ‘mainstream’

We are being told that the nomination of Judge John Roberts is “non-controversial,” that there will be no filibuster, and that the Bush administration has made a brilliant move. On whose planet and in what century?

Roberts fits the class profile of the corporate attorneys who controlled the Supreme Court between the Civil War and the New Deal and knocked down most progressive legislation providing for minimum wages, abolishing child labor and regulating business. With justices like that, we wouldn’t have any Social Security or unemployment insurance or wages and hours legislation or any federal protection against union-busting.

It is true Roberts hasn’t pledged to burn doctors who do pregnancy terminations at the stake and he hasn’t advocated turning public school rooms into church pews. Does that make him “mainstream”?

I think it would be a great idea for some candidate planning to run for president to pledge to put a progressive labor lawyer on the Supreme Court before we all drown in the Republicans “mainstream.”

Norman Markowitz

Via e-mail

Senate blocks military aid to Indonesia

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:06:00 +0000

News Analysis

The U.S. Senate voted last month to keep restrictions against financial aid and training for the Indonesian military.

President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have pushed for full restoration of all military ties to Indonesia, citing the so-called war on terrorism. Some observers, however, point to the discovery of oil in Aceh in northwest Indonesia and oil and gas in East Timor as the motive for the administration’s actions.

In June the House of Representatives voted to restore full military aid. The Senate move has blocked, at least for a time, millions of dollars for the Indonesian military. The bill now goes to a House-Senate conference committee.

U.S. military aid to Indonesia was cut off in 2002 after the ambush murder of two U.S. citizens and an Indonesian in the province of West Papua. In the House debate, Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said, “Lingering concerns exist regarding human rights issues and violence in places such as Aceh and West Papua.”

An important issue is military training. IMET, or International Military Education and Training, parallels the notorious Georgia-based School of the Americas, renamed “The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.” IMET also has a reputation for churning out soldiers and police who frequently turn up on lists of human rights abusers or worse. IMET training takes place in the U.S.

Still another program, Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET), sends Special Forces teams to other countries, particularly Indonesia. Chalmers Johnson, in his book “Blowback,” cites JCET training as a direct link to rapes and murders of civilians in Indonesia.

The U.S. historical relationship with Indonesia is a sordid one. In 1958, Alan L. Pope, an American pilot, was shot down while on a bombing run over the Indonesian archipelago. The excuse for the raid was that “rebels” had bombed a church and an outdoor market. In fact, the U.S. had orchestrated the bombing and strafing raids on the civilian population in an attempt to destabilize the government of President Sukarno, founder of the country’s independence movement.

In 1965 the U.S. played a significant role in the overthrow of Sukarno and the subsequent murders of over 500,000 people. In one of the worst mass murders in history, huge numbers of people, often whole families, were rounded up. Many were members of the PKI, Indonesia’s Communist Party, with an estimated 1 million members.

Hundreds of thousands became political prisoners. One of them, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who was sympathetic to the PKI, was placed in an island concentration camp for 17 years. Pramoedya is one of Indonesia’s most famous writers.

The military and Gen. Suharto, who subsequently took power, said the justification for their massive crime was an imminent takeover of Indonesia by the PKI. In recent years, documents have proven this excuse to be a fabrication.

To this day, those involved in this crime against humanity remain free.

Ten years after the mass murder of over half a million leftists, East Timor, having just received her independence from Portugal, was invaded by the Indonesian military with the blessing and material support of the U.S. government. Within a short period of time, at least 200,000 civilians were killed in the takeover. In 1991, an infamous massacre in East Timor was covered by the world press. Only then did the U.S. government restrict some weapons from going to the Indonesian military.

In 1998, oil was discovered off East Timor. The next year, East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia. The U.S., Australia, Britain and the UN supported its move for independence. The Indonesian government’s response was to burn down and destroy much of the newly independent country on their way out.

Aceh is a mostly poor, primarily Muslim area that was hardest hit by last year’s tsunami. Over 100,000 lives were said to be lost.

About 30 years ago, oil and natural gas deposits were discovered in the Aceh region. An Aceh independence movement was formed, GAM, and it has been battling the Indonesian government since 1976. Over 10,000 have died in the conflict. A peace agreement was just signed but it is unknown if it will hold.

Letters

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 04:39:00 +0000

Bog project unwise

I have been traveling through Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan this summer. Every place I have been, every place I look, we are destroying our most precious ecosystems — the bogs and wetlands. In the process we are destroying ourselves.

In Minnesota, 52 percent of our original wetlands have been destroyed, and there is currently a peat mining project that will cause an environmental nightmare.

Pine Island State Forest is a part of what is known in Minnesota as the Big Bog, the main freshwater aquifer for the northern part of the state. A company from Canada received the green light to mine this pristine, wetland ecosystem for horticultural sphagnum peat moss. The plan is to mine the bog for the next 30 to 50 years! Reclamation will be impossible; this bog took Mother Nature over 6,000 years to create.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, politicians, and various other government and private agencies have bulldozed this project into fruition. The Red Lake Band of Ojibwa has a longstanding opposition to any type of commercial development of the bog. This area is their land and they have survived on it for many years. The agencies that have pushed this project through have left them totally out of the picture.

We have to start thinking about what we are allowing corporations to do in the name of accumulating profits.

Janet Johnson

Eveleth MN

State-based health care solutions not viable

I am sure Marilyn Bechtel means well when she promotes California’s health care bill (PWW 7/30-8/5). But this is a place where incrementalism is destructive.

There is really no place for state-generated and administered programs in our struggle for a national health care service. If the states take a stab at it, Congress can sit further back and say it doesn’t have to act.

No state, even the wealthiest like California, Texas and New York, can afford meaningful health care for its people. Only the federal machinery has the resources to carry out such a needed program. The potential for extortion, nepotism and fiscal shenanigans is bad enough in Washington. Imagine how it would be in any state capital.

Health care must be single-payer, federally administered, comprehensive, universal, portable, readily accessible. Only the feds can pull this off. It will dilute our efforts if we settle for anything else.

Don Sloan, M.D.

New York City

Marilyn Bechtel responds:

I share your goal that one day, a national, federally funded health care system must provide comprehensive care to all people in our country without charge or discrimination. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) has repeatedly introduced a bill to establish a U.S. Health Service: HR 3000. In the meantime, however, many health policy analysts believe comprehensive, single-payer health care can be effectively implemented at the state level and can contribute to the struggle for a national system. As we aim for a national solution to the health care crisis, it seems worthwhile to strive for interim measures like California’s SB 840 that can bring relief to millions now uninsured or with inadequate coverage.

Cloning blooper

In Emile Schepers’ article “The soul of the anti-abortion stance” (PWW 7/9-15), there is a glaring scientific error that, although probably unintentional, should be clarified.

Describing cloned offspring as individuals with half the number of chromosomes as their parent is incorrect: that would make the clone a different kind of being from its parent, which if nothing else contradicts the definition that “clone” means “exact copy.”

A cloned individual is simply one that is created by asexual reproduction. It still has the same number of chromosomes as its parent. I am guessing the author meant to say “traits” when he wrote “chromosomes,” because having two parents provides seemingly double the number of traits for the offspring. (But it should be noted that the parents could have some traits in common as well, such as human baldness, and that not all the available traits are acquired by the offspring.)

In the end, the author makes excellent points, noting that life began billions of years ago and it doesn’t begin at conception, and that the Christian discussion of the morality about sperm, embryos, etc., is somewhat new (and self-serving) because there was no knowledge of such entities when Christianity was “born.”

However, all things evolve and religion is no exception. Apparently, to paraphrase a comedian I heard recently, George Bush and the “Christian” right discovered that upon more in-depth reading, the Bible actually does state that Social Security should be privatized and the New Deal was not ordained by God and should be abolished.

Bruce Smith

Via e-mail

Emile Schepers responds:

You are correct in that I absentmindedly conflated the concept of parthenogenesis with cloning, as in the case of Dolly the sheep. They are related, but not the same. Parthenogenesis, or asexual reproduction, sometimes produces haploid individuals (having only half the normal number of chromosomes) and sometimes diploid (having two sets of chromosomes, as most of us do), depending on differences of species and circumstances too complicated to go into here.

In some closely related species of bees, you have parthenogenesis that produces haploid individuals in one species and diploid ones in another species. The late Dolly was, of course, diploid, in spite of having no papa. But there are even weirder variations.

When two species of salamanders in the U.S., the Jefferson’s salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonium) and the blue spotted salamander (Ambystoma laterale), interbreed, they produce a whole series of all-female genetic anomalies some of whom have three, four or five complete sets of chromosomes, and can evidently also reproduce asexually (they are characterized as polyploid). But in all cases, they militate against the idea that a sperm coming from a male and an ovum coming from a female are the be-all and end-all definition of when life begins.

Anti-abortion militants falsely accuse the left of secretly plotting to create cloned humans so we can chop them up for body parts, but it is in reality they themselves who want to define life in such a narrow and invalid way. As for me, I don’t care how many sets of chromosomes you have; if you have human emotions, you’re human, and I will try to treat you as such.

Emile Schepers

Via e-mail

Labor Update

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 04:22:00 +0000

Two big wins for workers in North Carolina

North Carolina ranks as the state in the U.S. with the lowest percentage of union members, but that status may be ripe for change if two recent organizing victories are any indication.

Autoworkers: In Highpoint, N.C., 714 workers at Thomas Built Bus voted yes for the United Auto Workers on June 29. The National Labor Relations Board rejected an objection to the election filed by attorneys from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, according to a statement issued by the UAW.

“Democracy is the big winner today,” said Niels Chapman, president of UAW Local 5287. “We’re ready to bargain a contract that will improve our plant and improve our jobs.”

Steelworkers: Meanwhile, workers in a Goodyear Tire wire plant in Asheboro voted June 14-15 to be part of the United Steelworkers (USW) by a vote of 173-147. The workers had already decided a year earlier to go for union representation. But the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation challenged the process — a card-check election. Faced with the prospect of languishing without union rights for years while the appeal worked its way through the courts, the union reached a settlement that called for the NLRB-conducted election.

“The workers at Asheboro didn’t require the unnecessary outside interference by a third party to determine what rights they wanted to exercise,” said USW organizer Brad Smoyer, referring to the role of the so-called right to work organization.

EFCA gains new sponsors

With the addition of six new co-sponsors, including two from North Carolina, the Employee Free Choice Act now has more than 200 co-sponsors in the U.S. House. Corrine Brown (Fla.), James Clyburne (S.C.), Mel Watt (N.C.), Jim Marshall (Ga.), Melissa Bean (Ill.) and Brad Miller (N.C.) have signed on, increasing the total number of co-sponsors in the House to 201 and 38 in the Senate.

For a complete list of co-sponsors as well as a summary and fact sheets on the bill, which would stregthen workers’ ability to form a union, log onto the Voice@Work PrivateNet at https://

privatenet.aflcio.org.

Single-payer momentum

Two more unions have endorsed HR 676, the universal single-payer health care legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.). The newest endorsers are Local 619, Graphic Communications Conference/IBT, Louisville, Ky., and Local 409, Plumbers and Pipefitters, San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Organizing in Iowa

Professional and scientific (P&S) staff at the University of Iowa had two reasons to celebrate on July 20 at an outdoor rally and picnic in Iowa City. The Iowa Public Employment Board set July 27 as the beginning of a three-week mail-in ballot process for union recognition for P&S workers at UI, so they are another step closer to their goal of organizing with the Service Employees International Union. Approximately 2,300 University of Iowa P&S staff, ranging from environmental engineers to web masters, are eligible to vote in the election.

The rally also marked the seventh anniversary of SEIU Local 199 representing nurses and health care workers at the huge University of Iowa hospital complex. Key issues in the organizing campaign include minuscule pay increases; the lack of a career path for research assistants; job security for workers on grant-funded projects; and the desire for real influence on working conditions for P&S staff.

Idahoans reject Wal-Mart

TWIN FALLS, Idaho — By a vote of 6 to 2 the Twin Falls City Council rejected Wal-Mart’s bid for a SuperCenter in a subdivision here, reports a PWW reader. But, the reader adds, Wal-Mart is expected to start an expensive and exhaustive appeal.

Labor Update is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org). Rohn Webb contributed to this week’s update.