People Before Profit blog

Marchers link struggles past to promising future

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 07:29:00 +0000

DETROIT — Close to 70 Obama acceptance speech events took place in the Detroit metropolitan area last night, but by far the largest was at Bert’s Warehouse Theater in the city’s Eastern Market, where several thousand gathered.

A campaign-organized march to Bert’s was a great way to start the celebration. Forty-five years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I Have A Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. But in April that same year, Dr. King delivered a version of that now-famous speech right here in Detroit at Cobo Hall —after 200,000 people had marched down Woodward Ave., the city’s main thoroughfare. Organizers said last night’s march “linked our struggle’s past to its most promising future.”

Led by Detroit’s Cass Tech high school marching band, hundreds began their journey towards Bert’s with a 2-mile march from Cobo Hall. Marchers from the city and neighboring towns were full of excitement, both for the election of Barack Obama and for the changes they feel the country so desperately needs.

Southfield resident Irene Merritt said she wants the war to stop and to use some of the money here in the United States for universal health care and to help people facing foreclosure and filing for bankruptcy. She related a story she had read earlier in the day about an 85-year-old woman filing for bankruptcy, and said, “I think it’s just awful. She got sick and her medical bills piled up. It’s not right.” Merritt has been working on the Obama campaign in Southfield registering voters. She raised money selling $10 “bowl-a-rama” tickets with all the proceeds going to the campaign.

Detroit resident Sandra Dixon said she is supporting Obama because “we need somebody who cares about people who aren’t so rich.” She had closely followed the convention on TV and “thinks it’s awesome.” Henry Ford High School junior Candace Harmon said she wants to go to college and study nursing but worries about the huge expense it will entail. Along with her mother and others she’s gone door-to-door registering people to vote. Judy Duncan-Yantiss from Royal Oak said, “We don’t need four more years of the same.” She cited Obama’s integrity, character and unifying role — “he just brings people together” — as reasons she is supporting him. Duncan-Yantiss sounded a note heard from many of the marchers on viewing the convention on TV “I watched C-Span instead of listening to the talking heads,” she said. “I don’t need their opinion, I can form my own. CNN and others are always looking for the negative.”

Another Royal Oak resident in last night’s march was retired teacher April Smith, who was also at the 1963 Detroit march. She was 14 years old then, and remembers a sunny day with thousands of people, but the significance of the event didn’t dawn on her at the time, she said. It was a time when African Americans were demanding equality and that drew a racial backlash from the local white power structure, Smith recalled. “We’ve all come a long way and this election is our opportunity to confront the real issues, the real divisions, and have a chance to achieve Dr. King’s dream,” she said.

Westland resident Charlene Smith said she has been an Obama volunteer since the campaign opened in Michigan. “I can tell you I’ve never volunteered for a campaign before in my life,” she said. “It’s a new experience, a good thing. It’s really a labor of love for everyone down at the headquarters.”

She works full time as an accounting analyst but “pretty much leaves work and goes over to the headquarters.” I’m there every day. When I started out I didn’t intend to be as involved as I am but there is so much to be done.”

Obama’s ability to give people hope and his ideas on the changes needed brought her to his campaign. “People I know are struggling, having a really tough time. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, Black, pink or purple, we just really need to get past this and join together.”

Barry Short is a tax preparer from Southfield who has clients losing their homes, not because of sub-prime mortgages, but because they are losing their jobs by being forced out through outsourcing, buyouts and retirements.

“Two years ago I was making about $100,000; now I’m down to about $40,000 – that’s due to jobs being outsourced,” he said. “People have to get together and vote for Obama. McCain is the same old, same old; he’s a nightmare.”

Short added, “We must change the direction the country is going in. Everything this administrating has done has been against the general population. It’s broken our Constitution.”

Arriving at Bert’s after the 2-mile walk, we had two things to anticipate: viewing Obama’s history-making speech, and having a cold drink. Both were extremely satisfying.

jrummel @ pww.org

Largest-ever workplace raid terrorizes 600 workers in Miss.

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 06:08:00 +0000

Nearly 600 undocumented workers were rounded up Aug. 25 by federal agents in the small town of Laurel, Miss., the largest single workplace raid in U.S. history.

According to news reports, 595 workers were detained at the Howard Industries electrical transformer plant, with some forced to stay at the factory overnight.

About 100 of those arrested were released for “humanitarian reasons,” most of them mothers who were strapped with electronic monitoring bracelets and allowed to return to their children.

Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and Peru.

Some 475 were taken to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, La., and about nine under age 18 were put in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Eight appeared in federal court the day after the sweep and face criminal charges for allegedly using false Social Security and residency identification.

Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA), based in Jackson, Miss., met with 100 of the workers and their families in Laurel after the raid. Some of the workers showed up with ankle monitors strapped on, Chandler said in a phone interview.

“As far as we know nobody has been charged with anything yet,” said Chandler, referring to the hundreds of workers who were transported to the Jena holding facility. “That’s the major question.” His group has a legal team looking into the matter. “We suspect they are scaring the workers detained to sign documents they should not be signing,” he said, adding, “We still need pro-bono immigration attorneys to come here and help.”

Chandler said the workers were completely terrified by the raid and families were traumatized, including children who were left at school with teachers.

“It’s ironic that we have a Department of Homeland Security that supposedly fights against terrorism, yet it continues to inflict terror on the poor families of undocumented workers,” he said.

Immigration agents were seen arriving in Mississippi weeks before the raid, according to Chandler. He said MIRA members saw federal officials at hotels and restaurants in Hattiesburg, which is 35 miles from Laurel.

“Something was going down,” said Chandler. “So we very quickly initiated a ‘know your rights campaign.’ We went door knocking and met with the small Latino businesses and had house meetings after church to inform people what they need to do should they encounter immigration officials at work or at home. On Monday, the day of the raid, we got hundreds of calls from workers.”

The Howard Industries factory, which is owned by a wealthy family, employs about 1,000 workers. It is one of the nation’s top producers of transformers, said Chandler.

The federal agents “just burst into the plant. The workers thought it was a tornado or something and not a raid,” he said.

Chandler said the immigration agents shut down the plant and began segregating the Latino workers from the Black and white workers. “Then they began to interrogate the Latino workers.”

Referring to media reports that white workers cheered the raid, Chandler said, “It’s true that some, not all, of the white workers began to applaud while the undocumented workers were being arrested.”

The union at that factory is International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1317. The local did not return calls for comment on the situation.

Chandler, a 50-year union member and labor activist, noted that Mississippi is an anti-union “right-to-work” state dominated by Republicans who fan anti-immigrant tensions. This context may make some in local unions slow to organize Latino workers, he said, and there might be tension over the issue of undocumented workers. It doesn’t help, he said, when the media spreads divisive anti-immigrant rhetoric in the news.

One of the biggest challenges facing the labor movement is the fight against racism and white supremacy, said Chandler, noting that organizing workers in the Deep South has been considered a tough job. But, he said, “Let me be clear that the national leadership in the labor movement is doing great things to fight against racism in its rank and file membership, especially by working to elect Barack Obama as president.” But in some places the issue of immigration continues to play a divisive role that needs to be addressed, he added.

MIRA was founded in 2000 in an organizing drive among casino workers, said Chandler, and evolved into an advocacy group for immigrant families whose children were being denied entry into local schools because they did not have immigration papers. MIRA’s current board of directors consists of a coalition of state officials, faith-based, labor and community leaders.

“Most of us on the board of MIRA have a long history of working together on workers’ rights issues,” said Chandler. “Our mission is to connect the immigrant rights struggle and the general Latino community with the broader social justice movement, especially within the African American communities,” he said.

“We all have to work extremely hard to make sure Obama wins in November and elect more Democrats to Congress. The more Democrats we have in power, it will be easier to persuade them to move a more progressive and people’s agenda forward,” including immigration reform and workers’ rights, he added.

The raid in Laurel follows a similar one at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in May when nearly 400 workers were arrested. In December 2006, 1,297 were detained at Swift meatpacking plants in Nebraska and five other states. The pace of workplace immigration raids has ratcheted up, with more than 4,000 people nationwide have been arrested in workplace raids since October of last year. It has spurred a growing mass movement to demand a halt to the raids, and immigration reform that guarantees human and worker rights with a path to citizenship for immigrant workers.

plozano @ pww.org

Liberian rubber workers win union

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:49:00 +0000

In a historic victory for labor in Africa, Liberian rubber workers signed an agreement with Bridgestone/Firestone Company in mid-August securing improved working and living conditions.

The new contract follows decades of struggle by the rubber workers for an independent and democratic labor union. In July 2007, the company-controlled union was defeated in elections certified by observers from the United Steelworkers (USW) and the AFL-CIO. The two U.S. unions provided vital support to the new Firestone Agricultural Workers Union of Liberia (FAWUL).

Rubber tappers, who collect latex from rubber trees on Bridgestone/Firestone plantations, won a 24 percent wage increase and a 20 percent reduction in their daily collection quota. They will also be provided with transportation to bring the latex to weighing stations. As the AFL-CIO noted on its blog, rubber tappers used to have to walk long distances to the stations carrying 150 pounds of latex on their backs.

The poor working conditions were publicized over the past several years by various labor and human rights organizations. In November 2005, a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court by the International Labor Rights Forum alleged the company employed child and slave labor on its Liberian plantations. It also claimed plantation housing lacked toilets, running water and electricity. The lawsuit alleged the daily quota of tapping nearly 750 trees meant rubber workers had to enlist their families, including small children, to work “dawn to dusk.” The Japan-based company, with North American headquarters in Nashville, Tenn., denied the accusations.

The following year the United Nations charged Bridgestone/Firestone with buying rubber from plantations operated by ex-combatants from Liberia’s 14-year civil war. According to a BBC article, the UN said workers on those plantations were treated like slaves.

Liberia’s civil war ended in 2003 and the nation voted for Africa’s first female head of state, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, in democratic elections two years later. Firestone has operated in Liberia since 1926. Today it employs about 4,000 workers in the West African country.

The solidarity shown by the USW and AFL-CIO is especially noteworthy as unions increasingly coordinate their efforts across national boundaries. The USW represents Bridgestone/Firestone workers in the U.S. and along with the AFL-CIO conducted training workshops and educational programs for the rubber workers.

Even after the 2007 union election, Bridgestone/Firestone refused to deal with FAWUL. According to a USW press release, “Workers were violently repressed during strike actions which were initiated to win recognition of the results.” The press release continues, “Throughout a long and difficult process, FAWUL worked closely with the USW, initiating programs to build communications and solidarity within the union and to keep pressure on the company to respect workers rights.” Facing a persistent, united union, Bridgestone/Firestone was forced to negotiate the agreement with FAWUL.

USW President Leo Gerard proclaimed the pact “a crucial victory in the global fight for workers’ rights. These brave workers stood up to a powerful transnational corporation and declared that they will no longer be treated like second class citizens or indentured servants.”

His counterpart in FAWUL, Austin Natee, declared, “Our victory is shared with our brothers and sisters in the USW who provided vital solidarity and support every step of the way.”

On a continent where many governments are so eager for foreign capital they turn a blind eye to the exploitation of their citizens, the Liberian rubber workers’ agreement is an important precedent. Rubber tapping is not the only industry in Africa dominated by transnational corporations accused of using slave and child labor. The International Labor Rights Forum also filed cases against Nestlé and other companies for their involvement in the forced labor of children in cultivating and harvesting of cocoa beans, the primary ingredient in chocolate.

dlaumann @memphis.edu

Teacher talks about labor unity and the fight to elect Obama

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:36:00 +0000

Autoworker rides Harley to Denver to speak up for Obama

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:35:00 +0000

Labor activists speak up at pre-DNC labor rally

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:31:00 +0000

World-class service at union hotel

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:36:00 +0000

DENVER — It was a surprise when I walked into a labor caucus meeting here to be greeted with such warmth and friendliness by the Hyatt Regency banquet staff. A young 30-something woman with a chopstick-like pin spearing her hair up in a bun came up to me and explained the menu and the serving schedule. The staff had to time the salad, main entrée and coffee/tea service with the beginning and ending of a speaking program that had its own time glitches. Needless to say, this can be a challenge to banquet workers.

But this waitress liked my T-shirt, which continued our friendly conversation. I was wearing the red shirt of the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate “Working America,” which says on the back, “One in a million.”

Then a younger, 20-something hotel staffer, about 6 ft 2 inches tall with reddish blond hair, came by and picked up the conversation about unions. He was wearing a red and white union button on his banquet uniform. With shoulders back and chest proudly thrust forward he told me the Hyatt Regency is the first (and only) union-organized hotel in Denver in years.

We organized about a year and a half ago, he said. There were other unionized hotels in Denver but they were decertified over the years when a change in ownership came, he told me.

Turns out this young man, Barney Beck, was part of the Unite Here negotiating committee and is acting as union steward until the union local’s first elections.

“The bargaining unit includes restaurant, banquet, kitchen and housekeeping staff,” he said. Front desk and security are not part of the local. “We have 330 members. And really we are the only unionized hotel in the Rocky Mountain area.”

He then told me the union has really helped the workers’ working conditions, especially in housekeeping where injuries are abundant. With their jobs requiring lifting heavy mattresses and lots of straining to do above-the-head cleaning, the mainly women staff work in an industry that ranks high on the job injury list.

“Instead of cleaning 30 rooms per day we got the contract down to 18 rooms per day. And by the end of the contract it will be 16 rooms per day, which is below the Denver standard of 18,” he said.

Except for New Mexico to the south, Colorado is surrounded by “right-to-work (for less)” states. That means states pass laws prohibiting (or making very difficult) union organizing. Anti-union ballot measures are on the Colorado ballot this year, including passing a right-to-work law for the state. Wages and working conditions are generally worse in “right-to-work” states than in other states where the government doesn’t intrude so boldly on the side of employers and big corporations. Colorado’s labor movement and allies are mounting a vigorous campaign to block these ballot measures.

Unite Here General President Bruce Raynor told a 2,000-strong labor delegate rally here of the breakthrough contract. He said the Hyatt Regency was organized through “card check,” meaning if a majority of employees sign a union card the company recognizes the union. This way of organizing would be enshrined in federal law if and when the Employee Free Choice Act is passed. Most unions are forced to go through difficult National Labor Relations Board-supervised elections, which favor corporations and other employers. With the employer-friendly NLRB process, management can hold anti-union “captive” sessions with their workers to lobby them mercilessly before the election. With card check, the employer is not part of the process and not able to directly interfere in this way with a worker’s right to choose a union or not.

Raynor noted that the new contract gives the workers the right to keep their tips. “So tip them heavily,” he told the delegates and guests.

talbano @ pww.org

Unions mobilize to elect Obama

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:17:00 +0000

DENVER — Two thousand union members, more than half of them delegates to the Democratic National Convention, rallied here last week and then joined with delegates from numerous mass movements to launch an unprecedented effort to change America this fall. The huge labor gathering served to kick off and set the tone for the entire convention. In a dramatic show of unity Aug. 24, leaders of the AFL-CIO, the National Education Association (NEA) and Change to Win clasped hands and raised their arms above their heads. The gesture brought down the house as African American, Latino, Asian American and white members of nearly every union in the country rose in prolonged applause, chanting, “O-BA-MA, O-BA-MA!”

The presidential race is the first since several unions left the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win coalition. “It’s important to note we are united in our determination to turn around America,” declared AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “And by united, I mean all of us — the AFL-CIO, the NEA, Change to Win, 17 million members, 28 million potential voters from union households — all of us together. We are united behind two champions of a better America — Barack Obama and Joe Biden — an incredible choice.”

Civil rights, peace, women’s, youth and other movements were fully in there with labor making their impact here. It was reflected in a range of powerful convention speeches, including those by Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, and in the party platform.

Speakers at an economics forum attended by 200 delegates during the convention noted that sections of the party that supported “free trade” and loosening of regulations on the finance industry in the 1990s are shifting in a more progressive direction now. It is seen as a new political realignment with the center more and more joining with those further to the left. The platform has the strongest plank ever on women’s rights and trade union organizing rights. At the labor rally, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker laid out the labor delegates’ “special responsibility.”

“We are making sure this week that every single delegate to this convention understands as well as we do that we cannot turn around America unless we restore the free choice of working people to come together in unions and bargain for better wages and benefits and a real voice on the job.

“Barack Obama gets it,” she declared. “He knows the Employee Free Choice Act is key to rebuilding our middle class and restoring hope to working America.”

Obama is a co-sponsor of the EFCA and has repeatedly pledged to sign it into law. “Barack Obama has a 98 percent voting record for working families,” Holt-Baker said, “while John McCain has a stunning record of voting with President Bush 89 percent of the time.” When retired steelworker Steve Skvara took the podium, saying, “Now I know what corporations really fear — us,” he brought down the house a second time.

Skvara’s moving account at the AFL-CIO presidential debates in Chicago last year of how he and his wife had to choose which of them would get health insurance was viewed on TV by millions of Americans. “Our feet have got to hit the street to get Barack Obama elected,” he told the cheering crowd here.

He was followed by a virtual parade of leaders of almost every major union in the country, who brought the crowd to their feet over and over. Among them was Leo Gerard, president of the Steelworkers, who said the country needs another New Deal.

“The message from labor and then the message from this whole convention to the Bush-McCain crowd is that if they even dream about dividing us along lines of race, sex, age, religion, cultural ideas or anything else we are going to wake them up so we can knock them out,” declared Reg Weaver, NEA president.

“If someone tells you they aren’t ready to vote for Obama because of his race, you tell them ‘That’s too bad but this is 2008 and I am ready. America is ready. This is a matter of our economic survival’,” declared Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer.

Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers, related how he had just gotten an offer to appear on a right-wing talk show: “The host said, ‘Hey, O’Sullivan, what’s up with all this I hear about you supporting Obama?’ I told him what’s up. Unemployment, prices, gas at the pump, the number of jobs shipped overseas, the death toll of our soldiers in Iraq, the cost of health care, and when the workers win, after Obama is elected, the time for Bush, McCain and all his crowd will be up.” The right-wing pundit, O’Sullivan said, decided against having him on the show.

Get ready for a bigger-than-ever attack by the right wing, the union leaders warned. “After today, what they’ve thrown at us in the last years will only get worse,” declared Gerald McEntee, president of AFSCME and the federation’s political action director. “Bush, Cheney, the corporate crowd, the right wing — they’ve hit us with the kitchen sink and we’ve been tattooed, beaten up, bruised and thrown against the wall.

“We can’t let them get away with this. Not this time, not ever again. Labor, the sleeping giant, woke up. Now the giant must stand up and fight like hell.”

Biggest labor presence in history at Dem convention in Denver

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 03:49:00 +0000

DENVER — Union members are arriving here by the tens of thousands for the Democratic National Convention and they are coming by train, plane, automobile, bus and even on foot. Thousands will participate in labor actions outside the convention and tens of thousands of them will be among the crowds that pack the Mile High Stadium on the night of Aug. 28 to hear Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.

If that’s not history enough, one in every four of the convention’s 4,200 delegates are union members themselves, both active and retired, or members of union households. By all accounts it is the heaviest labor presence at any major party political convention in the history of the United States.

Some of the unionists who are delegates were here already by Aug. 21 — well before the official Aug. 24 start date. While some were able to fly in and book rooms at hotels many had to drive and are sleeping in spare rooms or on spare floor space offered by friends or volunteers here.

One delegate from the battleground state of Alaska loaded up her car with provisions in Juneau and drove the 2,60-mile stretch from there.

Alaska, her point of origin, which has long been considered a Republican state, is in play for the Democrats this year because of scandals involving almost every Republican holding statewide office.

Cindy Spanyers, who was still making her 2,600 mile journey from Alaska to Denver on Aug. 22, said in an interview with an AFL-CIO blogger the day before that what motivated her to make the trip was “the dire need to do something about jobs and health care. Trying to make it into the middle class has become impossible,” she said.

Spanyers is an Obama delegate elected from Alaska’s only congressional district, and a member of the Alaska Public Employees Association.

She described herself as a “strong supporter of Obama because he has a program to create jobs, end the stagnant wages and fight for a fair deal for working people. He also understands the need to have strong unions and make it easier for people to join unions.”

Spanyers says it is her intention to talk to everyone she can, inside and outside the convention, about the need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill, which passed in the House last year but was blocked in the Senate, would make it easier for workers to form unions. It replaces the current system of company-rigged “elections” with a card check system that requires employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority indicate by signing the cards that they want to be represented by the union.

John Clark, a member of Local 1 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, is one of 17 labor delegates here from Missouri, another battleground or “swing” state.

Talking to the same blogger, he said that he was excited about the convention because he sees “so many people coming together to turn this country around.” He told the World that “without organized labor this very important job would not be able to be accomplished. Labor has a special ability to fight for and build up the kind of unity we need to defeat the Republicans.”

A special labor caucus will be held August 24, the day before the convention opens. All 1,050 labor delegates are invited and at the gathering they will discuss ways to put forward the issues important to the labor movement, including jobs programs, the Employee Free Choice Act, fair trade and health care.

The AFL-CIO will sponsor a major economic forum entitled, “All boats Rising,” during the convention.

One of the greatest stories of all times The Memphis sanitation workers strike remembered

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:19:00 +0000

BOOK REVIEW

Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign.

By Michael K. Honey.

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2007, 623 pp.

SAN FRANCISCO — Fortieth anniversary events this year have highlighted the historic struggle of African American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. — in 1968 among the country’s most oppressed workers — for union rights, decent wages and conditions, respect and dignity, and the fusing of labor, civil rights and peace struggles in that crucible. They have also pointed to the struggles that continue today.

Last January strike veterans including union leaders, ministers and community leaders joined in the AFL-CIO’s Martin Luther King Day observance in Memphis. On April 4, veterans of the struggle again came together with labor and civil rights leaders and the Memphis community to rally and march to the Lorraine Motel — now the National Civil Rights Museum — where King was cut down by an assassin’s bullet.

The anniversary was a powerful thread running through the national convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees here last month — cited by speakers and highlighted by a special workshop and the unveiling of a new video on the strike and King’s crucial role.

Memphis strike marks crossroad

The workshop featured William Lucy, in 1968 one of the AFSCME leaders who went to Memphis to aid the strikers and now AFSCME’s secretary-treasurer, and Michael Honey, the labor historian whose book, “Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign,” was published last year.

Lucy told participants in the packed workshop that the long struggle and over two month-long strike by the 1,300 men at the bottom of the economic ladder, “who knew all their gains could go up in smoke,” was “one of the greatest stories of all time.”

Saying the struggle marked “a crossroads of moving from one kind of society to another kind of society,” Honey added, “We’re still on the trajectory of moving into that other society. We have a Black presidential candidate who says he wants to continue the long march of those who came before us for a more just, equal, free, kind and prosperous America … He can’t do it alone; it has to be us, the working people that make the difference, and that’s the lesson of the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike.”

“Going Down Jericho Road” tells the gripping story of the complex struggles for civil rights, labor rights, equality and peace that melded together in Memphis 40 years ago to win union rights and a foothold toward a better life for workers forced to the very fringes by racism and economic oppression.

King’s question

The book takes its title from King’s “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech, delivered on the wildly stormy night of April 3, 1968, at Memphis’ Mason Temple. King invokes Christ’s story of the good Samaritan who, after others have passed by, stops to aid a robbery victim along the road between Jericho and Jerusalem. Calling the Jericho Road “a dangerous road,” King tells the thousands of strike supporters crowded into the church: “The question is not, ‘If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That’s the question.”

As the author has pointed out, the story of the sanitation workers’ strike often takes second place to other episodes in accounts of the 1960s civil rights struggles, while Memphis is usually remembered as the site of Dr. King’s assassination.

Strike details come alive

Along with the central contest between the Black workers and Memphis’ white establishment, Honey’s account analyzes the events and forces that helped fuse the workers, union and African American community into a powerful united movement, as well as the contradictions and strains that made keeping that unity an ongoing struggle. The heroism of the strikers and their supporters contrasts sharply with the wavering of local white liberals and the overwhelming viciousness of the police.

The story emerges through the voices of the characters in the drama: the workers who rise up spontaneously after two are crushed in an ancient and dilapidated garbage truck; the AFSCME unionists including then-President Jerry Wurf and then-Associate Director for Legislation William Lucy who arrive to support them; the city’s African American ministers and community leaders including Rev. James Lawson; the small core of white strike supporters; Dr. King and other civil rights leaders and the Black power advocates who contend with them over strategy and tactics; and of course the white civic establishment led by Mayor Henry Loeb. Their personal back-stories and first-hand observations give this exhaustively researched study the momentum of a fine historical novel.

Where labor, civil rights meet

King, whose long roots with organized labor are detailed, was in the midst of organizing for the Poor People’s Campaign when he was asked to come to Memphis. In the book, Lucy calls King’s response to the situation a work of genius, based on King’s “incredible ability” to understand and interpret the issues, and his realization that the sanitation strike represented a shift to economic justice for the working poor.

The support from organized labor — according to Honey, unprecedented in the south at that time — is chronicled here as well. After years of struggle by sanitation workers, AFSCME Local 1733 had been chartered in 1964. When the strike erupted, the Memphis and Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Councils were quick to support it despite ambivalence of many white unionists. The AFL-CIO donated tens of thousands of dollars to the strike fund and urged its affiliates to do likewise.

The role of the FBI and other local and national government and police agencies in exaggerating internal differences, inserting provocateurs, instigating disruptions, and relentlessly red-baiting King and others while concealing death threats and depriving them of police protection is detailed here as well.

The now-famous “I AM A MAN” placards emerged following the police use of military grade mace on marchers in late February. The words, first spoken by Lucy during a strategy session, became the emblem of the strike.

Among the many, mostly unsung, heroes were the Black women who raised funds, marched, picketed, helped organize support and worked in the union office.

The previous year, in April 1967, King had spoken at New York City’s Riverside Church, attacking and condemning the Vietnam War. He dissected its consequences including destruction of the War on Poverty, and proclaimed the need for “a true revolution of values” to prioritize the needs of the world’s poor and oppressed.

It was in this context, before a huge public meeting March 18, that King uttered words that resonate powerfully today:

“My friends, we are living as a people in a literal depression … Now the problem is not only unemployment. Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen, and it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income.”

Today’s Jericho journey

In a conversation after the workshop, Honey emphasized that along with progress in some areas, workers — especially workers of color — face many similar problems today.

“The South remains the country’s biggest non-union area, where workers are beaten down by ‘right-to-work’ laws and in many other ways,” he said. “Even in Memphis where the sanitation workers have a union shop, they can’t have a closed shop. Every union in the South is dealing with that.” (In fact, an article last April in the Memphis Commercial Appeal quoted a present-day sanitation worker as saying he and his fellow workers still lack a guaranteed pension plan.)

At the same time, Honey said, today’s immigrant workers “are very much in the same mold of the working poor as the Memphis sanitation workers,” and face many of the same challenges.

“Probably a third of the U.S. workforce” today are among or almost among the working poor who lack decent wages and workers’ rights,” he said. “People are afraid to lose what they have, and when you add the problems racism causes, the struggle ahead is hard, but not impossible.”

Commending the AFL-CIO’s commitment to upholding the rights of immigrant workers, Honey said the national labor federation is keenly aware the labor movement’s future is linked with their future.

Among priorities Honey cited for an incoming Democratic president: a more strongly Democratic Congress and the movement supporting them, repeal of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act and a massive shift toward creating jobs.

mbechtel @pww.org

Show me the jobs, brewery workers tell InBev Beer and globalization dont mix in St. Louis

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:06:00 +0000

St. LOUIS – “InBev, we aren’t going to have a race to the bottom here,” said Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) to 1,000 Teamsters and their allies as they rallied here Aug. 16.

InBev, a Belgian-based multi-national that recently purchased Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion, is known around the world for its anti-union, slash and burn tactics. Nationwide, 12 Anheuser-Busch breweries that make half the beer consumed in the United States and employ 8,000 Teamsters are affected by the purchase.

Chip Roth, a leader of the Teamsters Brewery and Soft Drink Workers Conference, said, “InBev has targeted workers’ wages and benefits in other countries. They have a history of taking care of the executives. Well, we are just as important.”

St. Louis residents are not accepting at face value InBev’s promises to maintain their city as the North American headquarters of the Budweiser brand, and keep all 12 U.S. breweries open with minimal job losses.

“I’m from Missouri, the Show Me State,” Carnahan told the crowd, “and I’m skeptical. InBev has to show us that it is going to keep its promises to the workers, to the union, to the retirees and to the community.”

Estimates are that Anheuser-Busch was worth $195 million in business to St. Louis last year alone and $985 million to the state of Missouri. The company paid $12 million in taxes to the city and employs 13,000 people in the state.

Another community concern is what will happen to the enormous philanthropic efforts made by Anheuser-Busch which last year donated $13 million to charitable organizations across the country. InBev has a history of cutting all non-core expenses and demanding tax breaks. It will likely eliminate or sell off Sea-World, Busch Gardens and other Anheuser-Busch properties that are of tremendous benefit to the public.

The Teamsters are cooperating with unions overseas in an attempt to pressure the company into doing the right thing.

Roger Van Vlasselaer, national coordinator of the largest InBev union in Belgium spoke at the rally and said, “We have to try to organize a global union structure in all InBev plants around the world. The InBev shareholders have already organized themselves. The unions need to organize on a global level as well. To InBev, only profits count, everything else is disposable.”

Siderlei Oliveira, president of Brazil’s 1.2 million member food workers union, said Brazillian workers have “very bitter” experiences with the company.

He said that when the company took over his country’s breweries it cut the number of them almost in half, from 23 to 13 and that it slashed the workforce from 23,000 to 9,000, with no cut in production. He said that the company treats workers as if they were in the military, rather than at a workplace.

Workers in Chile, Peru, Argentina and the Dominican Republic have had similar experiences, he said.

Wal-Mart bullies workers on elections

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:57:00 +0000

Charging retail giant Wal-Mart with illegally pressuring employees to vote for Republicans and John McCain in November, labor unions and community organizations filed a formal complaint last week with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

Wal-Mart held mandatory meetings at which thousands of employees were told how to vote in the upcoming election, according to the complaint.

Federal law prohibits employers from pressuring hourly employees to vote a certain way in a federal election.

One worker told the Wall Street Journal that the message of the mandatory Wal-Mart meetings was clear. 'I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote.” Other employees were told that voting for McCain was the right choice to make.

Both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federations, along with American Rights at Work and WakeUpWalMart.com filed the complaint Aug. 15, which said Wal-Mart made “prohibited corporate expenditures by expressly advocating against Senator Obama’s election to employees...”

The formal complaint further requested the FEC “immediately open an investigation to determine whether a violation occurred and, if so, to take all appropriate steps to remedy that violation of federal election law.”

In a press statement announcing the decision to file the complaint, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, “Wal-Mart has bullied its workers and managers for years. Now it wants to bully the political process, and the FEC should take Wal-Mart’s threats very seriously.”

Change to Win Executive Director Chris Chafe, in a statement released as the Wall Street Journal story broke, said, “In an election season driven by the desire for change and a demand by working families for better jobs, better wages, pension security and health care for all Americans, it should come as no surprise that Wal-Mart is weighing-in heavily – and possibly illegally – with its employees over the choices they face this November.'

The labor movement complaint noted that Wal-Mart used the pressure tactic against its employees because it opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would stiffen penalties against employers that use illegal measures to prevent employees from joining unions. The bill has already passed in the House of Representatives but was stalled by a McCain-led Republican filibuster in the Senate.

New details emerged in the press Aug. 14 that show Wal-Mart managers leading the meetings spread misinformation about the EFCA. A worker at a Wal-Mart in the South made a digital recording at one of the mandatory meetings.

The leader, in the recording, tells employees that their wages may be reduced to minimum wage for up to three months before a contract is negotiated, that union authorization cards violate workers’ right to privacy by including their Social Security numbers on them and that if a small unit within a store votes to unionize, the entire store will be unionized.

“If you have 10 associates in a photo lab and six sign union authorization cards, now the store is unionized,” the meeting leader told employees. “Six people can make a decision for 350 people,” which is about the normal number of workers at a Wal-Mart super-store.

Labor lawyers say that remarks like those are inaccurate not just of the EFCA but of labor law in general and, as such, are illegal and in violation of the currently in-place National Labor Relations Act.

Wal-Mart’s violation of election law seems to be backfiring in more ways than one. Two workers on a break outside a Wal-Mart just west of Chicago told the World that they had never even heard of the EFCA until the company started its campaign against it. “That law is exactly what we need,” one of them said, adding, “now I have even more reason to vote for Obama.”

According to the recording, the meeting leader, a human resources manager, began by saying she was going to talk about the company and unions and “a little bit of politics,” specifically the EFCA. “If Democrats get the votes they need and elect a Democratic president, they said it will be the first bill presented and that’s scary,” she said.

More scary, however, is Wal-Mart’s systematic violation of workers rights, documented in a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch. The report said the company uses unlawful threats of retaliation, spying, and mandatory 'captive audience' meetings to instill its anti-union message.

Most of these actions are illegal, but sanctions are so minimal that Wal-Mart has little incentive to obey the law, the report stated. The Employee Free Choice Act would provide that incentive.

Barack Obama has pledged to sign the bill if elected. In addition to signing the labor rights bill, Obama said he would reform the federal agencies that oversee labor relations to prevent them from being 'tilted against workers.'

“Wal-Mart has shown exactly why our nation needs the Employee Free Choice Act – we must outlaw the kind of behavior for which Wal-Mart is famous and give workers a free and fair choice on whether to form a union,” Sweeney said.

jwendland@politicalafffairs.net. John Wojcik contributed to this story.

Poultry workers: Poster-child for Employee Free Choice Act

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:13:00 +0000

WINESBURG, Ohio — After working 20 years at the Case Farms poultry plant here Ken Brown, 55, gets $8.10 an hour.

“You can’t live on that,” he said, “especially with the rising prices of fuel and food.”

On July 17, Brown and 160 other members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 880 walked off the job to the cheers of church and community supporters waiting on Holmes County Road 160.

The action came after over a year of fruitless “non-negotiations,” said Tim Mullins, the union staff representative. “They threw a ream of paper at us, but wouldn’t discuss wages. Finally, they made a ‘final offer’ — a 15 cent raise. The workers voted 294-12 to reject and went on strike.”

Mullins said the strike is “the poster child” for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill supported by presidential candidate Barack Obama and congressional Democrats that would require companies to recognize a union when a majority of workers sign union cards, and would impose binding arbitration if a contract is not signed in a timely fashion.

A company like Case Farms would face steep fines for noncompliance, Mullins said.

At a recent “Listen To America” hearing held in Cleveland by the Democratic National Platform Committee, Brown presented emotional testimony about the strike.

“There’s no seniority,” he said. “And no insurance to speak of. My wife has MS and needs three prescriptions. I need three prescriptions as well. You call the insurance company and they put you on music. The company doesn’t care.”

The conditions in the plant are also very difficult, said Guy Torch, 59, who works with Brown in the box department making containers for the chicken meat.

“There’s no ventilation,” Torch said. “We work under electric boxes and the temperature gets up to 120. There’s no water fountain. We need four people in the department, but there is only the two of us.”

For a short time Sheila Martinez, 26, worked in the box department. She had been recruited four months ago in Puerto Rico where Case Farms holds job fairs and now is recruiting strikebreakers. Martinez was transferred to the breast deboning line where workers make cuts in chilled chicken carcasses moving at high speed.

“It moves too fast” she said in Spanish and held out her hands to show where her fingers had been frozen and her arms had been injured.

The plant kills and processes 100,000 chickens a day, Mullins said. The birds come from 100 nearby farms. Workers on the deboning lines must process 40 breasts a minute and the company keeps speeding up the line.

The great majority of the workers, Mullins said, are immigrants from Guatemala and Romania.

Carmen, a young Guatemalan woman on the negotiating committee, has worked at the plant for five years on the breast deboning line.

“We work nine or 10 hours a day, five or six days a week,” she said. “We get a 10-minute break in the morning and one in the afternoon and a 35-minute break for lunch.”

Her husband works at the unionized Park Farms poultry plant in Canton where workers make $11.50 an hour and have much better treatment. She and her husband have a child and together with four other adults share a house in New Philadelphia where the rent is $600 a month.

After the strike began Case recruited 30 workers from Puerto Rico, making them sign contracts that they would have to repay all travel and housing expenses if they quit or joined the strike.

“They’re intimidated,” Mullins said. “Their contract has no legal standing. They have the right to walk out like any other worker without penalty.”

While he spoke workers filed out of the plant and sat down against the wall for their lunch break. Two supervisors stood in front of them with arms crossed, staring at the pickets on the road.

At the strike tent, Melvin Rios of the Hispanic Ministries of Tuscarawas County picked up a bullhorn and appealed to the workers.

“We are fighting for you, as well,” he said in Spanish. “The people on top hate you. They don’t care about you. There are better conditions elsewhere. Join the strike. Don’t be afraid. We are fighting for a little bit of respect. We are fighting for your rights and dignity. The union is power.”

Mullins picked up the horn and asked, “Why do they pay you $3 less then other companies? We are fighting for everyone. Nothing will change. The company will not change. Join us!”

Although strikers receive minimal benefits from the union, Mullins said there are many hardship cases and contributions are welcome. Funds can be sent to: Hispanic Ministries of Tuscarawas County, 818 Boulevard St., Dover OH 44622.

Picket line fun in the sun

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:51:00 +0000

Jugglers, a stilt-walker, kids’ games and bright summer gear livened the scene Aug. 14 as dozens of labor activists picketed the Woodfin Suites Hotel in Emeryville, Calif.

The carnival-themed demonstration organized by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy called attention to the Woodfin workers’ struggle to be paid some $250,000 in back wages owed them under Measure C, a hospitality industry living wage ordinance city voters passed in November 2005. The City Council backs the workers’ demands; the Woodfin rejects them.

An Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled in April that Measure C is valid and Emeryville can require hotels to pay back wages for violations of the law, but said the city must hold a new hearing to address technical concerns.

Meanwhile, EBASE and the workers continue to urge a boycott of the hotel.

— Marilyn Bechtel, mbechtel @pww.org

Bush Admin. rushes to issue secret rule on worker health risks

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 05:59:00 +0000

In a last minute action, political operatives at the US Department of Labor are rushing to lock in new requirements that would make it harder for the next administration to develop and issue protective workplace health rules. This new rule would change the procedures and criteria OSHA and MSHA use to assess worker health risks when developing new standards. It would add years of delay to the standard setting process and weaken protections for workers.

This cynical move by the Bush administration comes after eight years of failing to protect workers from job hazards, starting with the repeal of OSHA’s ergonomics standard in 2001. Since then, the Bush administration has withdrawn dozens of pending rules, and refused to set needed standards on crane safety, silica, tuberculosis and noise. The administration has issued only one OSHA health rule – on hexavalent chromium – and that was a result of a court order.

This risk assessment rule was never listed on the public regulatory agenda. It was developed in secret by political operatives without the involvement of OSHA and MSHA scientists, and sent in July to the Office and Management and Budget (OMB) for review. If this measure goes into effect, it will cripple future efforts to set workplace standards for chemical hazards. The proposal would:

* Require a new unnecessary extra step to seek comments on risk assessments before issuing any proposed health rules, adding years of delay to setting new standards. * Change the criteria that OSHA and MSHA standards protect workers if exposed over a working lifetime of 45 years, and instead base exposures on the average of years working in an industry. This would increase permissible exposures for all workers and put long-term workers, including coal miners, construction workers and chemical workers at much greater risk of developing disease. * Go into effect without the public hearings, which have been conducted for all other OSHA health standards.

We need to act now to stop the Bush Administration’s Secret Rule:

* Send a letter or e-mail to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao demanding that she withdraw this rule that will put workers in danger. (1-866-4-USA-DOL; TTY: 1-877-889-5627; * Contact your and urge them to support and cosponsor legislation to block the DOL secret rule (H.R. 6660). * Share this information with your co-workers and urge them to take action.

Labor Department's secret OSHA rule

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 05:55:00 +0000

AFL-CIO Executive Council statement, August 05, 2008

CHICAGO – For nearly eight years, the Bush administration has failed to protect the health and safety of America's workers. Within weeks of taking office in 2001, President Bush supported and signed legislation repealing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's ergonomics standard—a rule that was 10 years in the making and would have prevented hundreds of thousands of serious injuries each year. Driven by an intense anti-regulatory ideology (except when it comes to imposing new onerous and intrusive regulatory burdens on labor organizations and their representatives), the administration has withdrawn dozens of worker protection rules that were under development and has failed to issue new health and safety rules on serious hazards such as silica, diacetyl and crane safety. During its entire tenure, the administration has issued only two major OSHA rules, and only as a result of union lawsuits. Employers have gotten the message. In far too many workplaces, worker health and safety is given short shrift, as we have seen in tragedies such as those at the Sago Mine, BP, Crandall Canyon and Imperial Sugar, as well as the continuing fatalities from collapsing cranes, falls, explosions, occupational disease and other hazards.

Apparently, eight years of harmful neglect are not enough for the political ideologues at the Department of Labor. Now, in a last-minute action, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao’s political operatives are moving quickly and secretly to adopt a rule to tie the hands of future administrations and cripple their ability to adopt new rules to protect the health and well-being of America's workers. On July 7, 2008—without any prior notice to the public, and in violation of the Bush administration’s own policy of not issuing new proposals after June 1, 2008—the Department of Labor sent a proposed rule to the Office of Management and Budget for approval. The proposal, which was developed by political operatives and not experts within OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), would dictate changes in the way OSHA and MSHA assess the risks posed by workplace hazards, and would erect new procedural hurdles for adopting new regulations in the future to protect workers from these hazards. The public outcry from unions, worker safety and public health advocates, leaders in Congress including Rep. George Miller and Sen. Edward Kennedy, scientists and others has been swift, and it is growing as this secret last-minute action gains more attention.

This administration has done enough damage to worker safety and health. The Bush administration should withdraw this secret rule. If it does not, Congress must act to stop this cynical midnight regulation.

3 million volunteers, unionists included

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:51:00 +0000

CHICAGO (PAI)--Imagine mobilizing one of every 100 Americans, a population equal to that of the entire city of Chicago, and putting them out on the campaign trail. That’s what Barack Obama’s presidential campaign seeks to do. In talks August 5 to the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Chicago, Obama’s top two staffers, strategist David Axelrod and manager David Plouffe, set that as their goal for nationwide mobilization. They now have 1.2 million volunteers.

“We were impressed,” AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said in an exclusive interview with Press Associates Union News Service and with the Bureau of National Affairs after the meeting closed. Politics, as might be expected, dominated the meeting.

Axelrod and Plouffe, joined by Obama himself on a videoconference to the council that day, again pushed for labor’s wholehearted support for the presumed Democratic presidential nominee in this fall’s election.

“I need labor’s mobilization to win,” Obama told the union leaders. They did not seek a numerical “pledges or commitments,” Sweeney said. Nevertheless, he added, the AFL-CIO and the Obama campaign are already talking about specific geographic areas” where we may be able to help in volunteers,” the AFL-CIO president added.

“We’ll discuss in which cities they need our people the most,” Sweeney said. “The program we outlined is what we’ll discuss with the Obama people,” he added. That program, federation Political Director Karen Ackerman has said in the past, includes hundreds of thousands of volunteers, millions of worksite visits and flyers, and at least $54 million in get-out-the-vote and educational spending.

In the August 6 interview, ranging over the content of the 2-day meeting in Chicago, Sweeney said he was most impressed with “how active our affiliates”--its member unions--“are, in so many different ways,” not just politically. Other activism he mentioned included:

New organizing drives, particularly by the American Federation of Teachers Texas, by the Steel Workers among car wash workers in Los Angeles and--though the Auto Workers did not come to Chicago--the UAW among Atlantic City casino workers.

Sweeney also noted that Dennis Van Roekel, who will take office Sept. 1 as president of the National Education Association, challenged the executive council on August 6 on organizing. The independent NEA, with 3.2 million members, is the nation’s largest union. In some states, including Minnesota and New York, NEA and the American Federation of Teachers have a joint affiliate.

“His main focus is for us to consider change, to look at new models for organ-izing, and that we don’t have workers in the same sectors we had, like manufacturing,” Sweeney said. Van Roekel admitted “it took some working at it to accept change and to in the right directions to go” in organizing. Sweeney said he has the impression, from this meeting, that AFL-CIO member unions are moving in that direction, too.

* The growth of Working America, the federation’s affiliate for people who lack opportunity to formally organize into a local union and collectively bargain. The group,, founded in 2003, has 2.5 million members and another 1.5 million relatives, he said. Working America members, who pay nominal yearly dues, agree with the federation on various issues, but need a vehicle to express them, Sweeney said. There is little difference, Working America canvassers noted, “between the members they sign up and the union member next door.”

“They realized they had to be part of a movement to address issues” affecting the middle class, Sweeney said of Working America’s millions. “They’re just not at the point of achieving collective bargaining.”

Continuing cooperation with both NEA and Change to Win on politics, primarily through the Solidarity Charter program--which has been extended through the AFL-CIO convention in November 2009--with CTW member unions and the Labor Solidarity Partnership program with NEA locals. The NEA partnerships let those locals participate in AFL-CIO affairs as if they were directly affiliated local unions, not members of an international union. “Some of the Change to Win unions are fully engaged,” in the AFL-CIO’s political program, Sweeney said, singling out the Laborers, who rejoined the federation’s Building Trades Department earlier this year. Other CTW affiliates “are partially engaged,” Sweeney added. There are more than 3,000 Solidarity charters for locals of the seen CTW unions: The Laborers, Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, UNITE HERE, Carpenters, Farm Workers and Service Employees.

But an AFL-CIO council statement, approved in its closing hours, indicated that not all may be sweetness and light in the Solidarity Charters program. It said if a CTW member local “raids” an AFL-CIO local--or dumps its charter before launching a raid--the AFL-CIO may be forced to retaliate by yanking the charters from other locals in the raiding local’s union. Sweeney specifically cited a nasty confrontation this year between the AFL-CIO member California Nurses Association, and SEIU in Ohio. All of this, however, is against the backdrop of the presidential election. “We’re mindful we have to do our damnedest to elect Barack Obama,” Sweeney said.

Council elects three replacement members

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:28:00 +0000

CHICAGO (PAI)--The AFL-CIO Executive Council elected three new members on August 5, slightly expanding its female membership while seeing the number of African-Americans decline by one. Named to the council were new American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, Theatrical and Stage Employees President Matthew Loeb, and School Administrators President Jill Levy.

Levy and Weingarten, both from New York City, succeed retiring presidents Ed McElroy (AFT) and Baxter Anderson (School Administrators). AFT Executive Vice-President Nat LaCour, who also retired from the union last month, also left the executive council. Anderson and LaCour are African-American and their departure leaves the number of African-Americans on the council at eight.

Adding Levy and Weingarten brings the number of female council members to 11, a gain of two. Both figures include AFL-CIO Executive Vice-President Arlene Holt-Baker, who is a black woman. Last year, she replaced Linda Chavez-Thompson in the post. With her departure, there are no Hispanics on the council.

The AFL-CIO’s goal, with a deadline of its convention in Las Vegas in November 2009, is that leadership of the union movement should look more like its membership. Labor Department data for 2006, the latest year available, show 45% of unionists are women, 14% are African-American and 12% are Hispanic. The figures cover all unions.

Fed already moving vs. shenanigans at polls

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:24:00 +0000

CHICAGO (PAI)--Remember Florida’s hanging chads in 2000? Or the long lines due to the lack of voting machines in Columbus, Ohio in 2004? The nation’s unions do. Led by AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, they’re already moving to prevent a repeat of such shenanigans--and others--at the polls this year. And if the record of the presidential primaries is any indication, they’ll have their work cut out for them, protecting people’s right to vote.

Turnout in the primaries hit a record. For example, even though home-state Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) coasted to easy wins in the Illinois primary early this year, turnout rose by 900,000 voters--and from 29% to 41%. Illinois didn’t have problems at the polls, but Maryland--with a similarly uncontested primary--did. Polling places in Baltimore ran out of ballots, among other things. And election officials nationwide are bracing for similar problems, due to a flood of new registrations and continuing voter registration drives by unions, both parties and independent groups.

But millions of new voters are not the only problem that could overwhelm the election system this fall, and that has the AFL-CIO concerned. States are switching vote tabulation systems and many are untried, and the federation still is concerned about voter suppression, says Andrea Brooks, an AFGE Vice President. She serves on a committee, chaired by Baker, that is taking on the “voter suppression” issues.

The Supreme Court threw an additional problem into the mix, adds Brooks, an Indianapolis resident: Its recent ruling that lets states set stiff voter identification requirements--using government-issued IDs--before people can cast their ballots.

To combat problems that could deprive people of their right to vote, invalidate their ballots, or both, the AFL-CIO has formed teams targeting nine states where it believes “voter suppression” could change the election’s outcome: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia and Florida.

In those states, federation teams are already meeting with state and local elections officials and quizzing them: “These are what the problems are. What do you plan to do about them? We expect turnout will be in unprecedented numbers.”

AFGE alone has 700 local “fair practice coordinators” who will be monitoring the election preparations of state and local governments. Other unions will add more. The objective is eventually to cover all 50 states with observers, poll monitors, a toll-free number for complaints and other ways for voters to ensure their votes count.

But the High Court ruling may produce another complication, as states may adopt the government-issued-ID rule. That could disadvantage minority voters in particular, Brooks said. Those voters often lack the time to take off to register, money for the IDs (such as drivers licenses), nearness to county seats or other registration sites, or--if they’re already registered--the resources and knowledge to ensure they stay on the voter rolls and are not mistakenly or deliberately “purged” by election officials.

The fed is also warning voters against accepting so-called “provisional ballots” I their rights to vote are challenged at the polls. Such ballots may not be counted, Brooks pointed out.

“They’re starting to purge voters’ names, and we want to make sure people check to see they’re registered. The excuse they will use” to deny ballots to voters “is that ‘If you don’t vote at the right polling place, in the right precinct, they won’t count.’”

Michigan labor rejects McCain's energy policy, demands alternatives

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:39:00 +0000

Monroe County, Mich. – I don't usually try to see how 'close' I can get to a nuclear power plant but whenever John McCain steps foot in Michigan, labor has vowed to be there to 'greet' him. On Tuesday, August 5, that took me to the front gates of the Michigan Fermi II nuclear power plant McCain was visiting.

To 'greet' the Republican candidate, Monroe Democratic Party County Commissioner Jerry Oley brought an oversized check made out to John McCain from 'Exxon and friends' for $2 million dollars noting on the memo line 'Thanks for staying in the tank for oil.'

Oley informed the crowd that in June alone, McCain raised more than $1 million from oil companies, most of which came after he changed his position and announced support for off shore drilling. Ten Hess corporation executives (one of the nation's top five oil companies) and members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to help McCain's Presidential campaign.

McCain's visit came a day after Barack Obama's visit to Lansing, Michigan where he unveiled his 'New Energy for America Plan,' that offered immediate relief in the form of an 'Emergency Energy Rebate' of $1,000 per family or $500 per individual. It also included working with the auto industry to increase fuel efficiency, investing $150 billion to create clean energy technologies and five million new jobs, and taking a 'use it or lose it' approach to existing oil company leases (68 million acres go unused) and other measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Brent Gillette, State Field Director of the Michigan AFL-CIO told this reporter a McCain Presidency would result in the same policies that have been wrecking America all along. 'We in the AFL-CIO feel that we need a change and we need someone who will champion working family's issues. We have to change the rule makers, the people that allow the erosion of jobs offshore. We need to make that change with Barack Obama.'

Gillette said the Employee Free Choice Act is a big issue because 'a lot of workers in our country would love to organize, would love to have that collective power and strength, but are feeling very intimidated.' Far too many of our country's workforce cannot even organize because Bush made their joining unions illegal by executive order and Gillette asked, 'In a country of democracy and freedom, how can you make those kinds of policies?'

James Hunter, Political Action Coordinator for the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO, said this entire election cycle is 'forcing people to think about how their lives are being affected by what is going on in the outside world.' It requires people 'to get off of square one' and see the bigger picture Hunter indicated that this process can take time and explains why some are still undecided.

But Hunter remains optimistic. 'The pendulum is swinging back in our favor. There's something afoot here and everybody is catching a little part of that breeze. It's refreshing.'

Hunter pointed out that McCain has bailed out on many groups he claims to support. Hunter is a 12-year military veteran and notes 'John McCain has done absolutely nothing for veterans.'

To the question what would a McCain presidency mean, United Steelworkers representative Al Cholger said 'continuing speculation that has driven up oil prices and a missed opportunity to transform the Michigan economy into a green economy. It would be deadly for Michigan workers.'

'We're standing in the shadows of the cooling towers and McCain is using this visit to focus on nuclear power which is another high profit, low value source of energy' added Cholger. Looking at the wind blowing steam from the cooling towers he indicated that if there were row after row of wind energy generators, the same workers and the steelworkers could build platforms and create as much energy as is generated by the plant here.

He went on to say that 'Michigan workers will benefit from the production of wind and solar energy because Michigan imports so much energy in the form of oil, coal and natural gas – things we don't produce here.'

Kelly Correy of Lincoln Park is a peace and environmental activist who in her own words is 'all about alternative energy.' She struck a similar theme to Cholger by saying that 'in Michigan, we have the manufacturing capability. With auto plants being shut down, we could be putting people back to work, building both green cars and the alternative energy needed to power them and our communities.'

Dan Farough from Progress Michigan (part of the Blue/Green Alliance) said that McCain has a terrible Congressional record of offering tax breaks to big oil and protecting the profits they make on the backs of Michigan families. His group works to hold public officials accountable. One can imagine they've had their 'hands full' the last eight years.